American Real Estate and Urban Economics a Canadian Perspective

AREUEA membership spans both the United States and Canada and there is a tendency to homogenize real estate and urban economics into a "North American" cauldron. However, Canadian and American real estate markets, and the cities within which they operate, differ in fundamental ways. If we are to develop appropriate means for analyzing real estate and financial markets in these two countries it is imperative that we understand the underlying differences between American and Canadian cities. This paper sets out in summary form some of the differences that have been identified to date, differences that relate not only to the cities in the two nations, but to the broader cultural and institutional underpinnings as well.     

Housing and Urban Development Indicators: A Good Idea Whose Time Has Returned

This special issue of Real Estate Economics is devoted to "Housing and Urban Development Indicators." The issue has been underwritten by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development as a U.S. Contribution to the United Nation's Habitat II Conference, held in Istanbul, Turkey in June 1996. This introduction first briefly explains the role of indicators in urban research. Current research on indicators is then described, including a major international research effort undertaken in over fifty countries with support from numerous academics and other researchers, the United Nations, the World Bank and a number of governments. Finally, the papers in this issue are introduced and placed in context.     

Impact Fees and the Price of New Housing: An Empirical Study

Development exactions in the form of impact fees are being used increasingly by local governments to fund the cost of providing public services necessitated by growth and development. This paper presents the results of an empirical study designed to ascertain the extent to which impact fees are capitalized into the price of new, single-family dwellings. On June 3, 1974, the city of Dunedin, located in Pinellas County, Florida, began assessing impact fees of $1,150 against all new, single-family construction. Using data on 5,839 new home sales in Dunedin and three other cities in Pinellas County from 1971–1982, it was found that builders were able to pass forward the total cost of impact fees to new home buyers. However, the price differential due to impact fees for new dwellings in Dunedin compared to the price of new dwellings in the other three cities disappeared after approximately six years. This is explained by the nature of the fee structure in Dunedin, adjustments in factor costs, increases in the price of housing in competing cities, and unrealized expectations regarding the benefits to be provided by impact fee collections.     

How does broadband infrastructure promote entrepreneurship in China: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment

Using the Broadband China strategy as a quasi-natural experiment, our study attempts to understand how broadband infrastructure (BI) impacts entrepreneurship in China. Employing a staggered difference-in-difference approach, we argue that BI significantly enhances entrepreneurship, and that this conclusion holds after considering the identification of assumptions and a range of other factors that may interfere with the estimation results. The mechanism exploration reveals that human capital agglomeration and financial development are the main pathways through which BI encourages entrepreneurial activities. Furthermore, the positive effects of BI are bigger in eastern cities, high market-oriented cities, and among cities with excellent traditional infrastructure. Our findings reveal the role of improving BI in facilitating the development of new ventures in China.     

基于AHP和灰色评价的河北省区域经济竞争力差异评价

基于河北省经济年鉴统计数据,选取GDP、地方财政收入、社会零售品消费总额等指标构成区域经济竞争力评价指标体系,并运用灰色综合评判法对河北省经济竞争力进行了综合评价,结果表明:目前河北省的11个地级市经济发展不平衡,区域经济竞争力较强的城市位于环京津地区、沿海地区和省会(唐山、石家庄分别位居第一、第二),南北两端的城市经济竞争力水平相对较低。因此,缩小城市间的经济差距、发挥各城市的优势资源是提升河北省整体区域经济竞争力水平的关键,从而实现河北省区域经济的协调发展。     

发展经济学视阙下的“一带一路”与可持续发展

发展是实现人民幸福的关键。中国政府倡导的全球发展倡议有两大理论和实践来源:2030联合国可持续发展目标是促成国家间合作和提供全球公共产品的重要动力;中国的"一带一路"倡议作为全球合作平台和公共产品的提供者,为国际社会提供了中国方案和中国智慧。本文结合"一带一路"倡议的理念与实践、2030联合国可持续发展目标,从发展经济学的研究视角,提炼出贫困与不平等、经济发展、健康与可持续的社会、气候与环境、投资与援助这五大关键变量,建构了发展经济学视阙下的"一带一路"倡议和可持续发展目标的分析框架,阐明全球发展倡议的生命力。通过文中的相关案例和实践研究得出:"一带一路"倡议完美契合2030联合国可持续发展目标,彰显了可持续发展的中国方案;面对全球公共卫生危机、大国竞争态势和实现联合国可持续发展目标的挑战,推动"一带一路"高质量发展继续为全球可持续发展赋能。     

京津冀区域经济差异时空特征分析

区域经济一体化发展的前提是区域内各单元发展差异逐渐缩小，因此探究区域经济发展的差异问题对促进区域协调发展具有重要意义。本文首先应用熵权法连续测算了京津冀13个城市2001～2014年经济发展实力综合得分。在此基础上，将指数分析方法和探索性空间数据分析方法相结合，将时间尺度和空间尺度相结合，全面探究了京津冀13个城市区域经济差异的演变过程。结果表明，京津冀地区经过10几年的发展，合理的城市空间结构已基本显现，区域经济一体化已经具备良好的条件，但仍然需要从基础设施、发展优势、空间布局等方面入手，促进京津冀区域经济更快更好发展。     

Exclusive Dealing and Its Effects: The Impact of Large Music Festivals on Local Music Venues

This paper examines how local music venues are affected by exclusive contracts used by four of the United States’ most prominent music festivals. By utilizing a unique industry and multi-year dataset, as well as variation in the use of exclusive dealing across the country determined by the location of large music festivals, this paper adds to the paucity of empirical analysis of exclusive dealing and provides new insight into an ignored sector of the music industry. Results show that exclusive contracts correlate with a decrease in the number of venues in affected cities by 7–28 % when compared to those unaffected cities, with smaller cities being disproportionately affected.     

Gentrification Trends in New Transit-Oriented Communities: Evidence from 14 Cities That Expanded and Built Rail Transit Systems

Over 25 billion dollars were spent between 1970 and 2000 in 14 major cities in the United States on the construction of new rail transit lines. This massive investment in rail transit construction and expansion allows me to study the consequences of local public goods improvements for communities nearby new stations. This article uses a 14-city census tract–level panel data set covering the years 1970 to 2000 to document significant heterogeneity in the effects of rail transit expansions across the 14 cities. Communities receiving increased access to new "Walk and Ride" stations experience greater gentrification than communities that are now close to new "Park and Ride" stations.     

The case for a real options approach to ex-ante cost-benefit analyses of agricultural research projects

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), like many other development agencies and donors, increasingly emphasizes evidence-based programming. This requires assessments of project performance at all stages of implementation, comprising ex-ante impact assessment, monitoring and evaluation, and ex-post attribution of outcomes. Ex-ante impact assessment, in particular, involves performing Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) to determine the Expected Net Present Value (ENPV) of the project in question. Unfortunately, the traditional ENPV approach has proven inadequate for dealing with uncertainty in the timing of investments and flexibility in future decision making. This is especially relevant for Research and Development (R&D) projects which require several stages of product development and multiple rounds of testing prior to releasing final products. As a consequence, the real-options approach to CBA has increasingly been used to evaluate private sector R&D projects. This paper advocates for the adoption of the real options approach in the evaluation of public investments in agricultural research, and illustrates its practical utility with an assessment conducted by USAID to determine the economic viability of a proposed project to develop improved varieties of critical food security crops in Uganda.     

科学发展观视角下西部资源型城市科学转型研究——以甘肃省为例

伴随着主体资源的桔竭,曾为国家和地区经济发展以及城市化进程做出了重要贡献的资源型城市,将不得不面临转型的现实选择。资源型城市的转型是一项系统工程,不仅是指资源型企业的转型,更是涉及到经济、社会、生态、文化等多种耦合因素的转型。文章以西部地区典型的资源型省份甘肃省为例。从资源型产业周期特点出发,结合甘肃资源型城市转型中所面临的现实问题,提出了在科学发展观指导下甘肃资源型城市科学转型的思路,并在这一思路的基础上提出了促进甘肃资源型城市转型的对策建议,以期对西部其他省份资源型城市转型提供借鉴。     

The Performance of Annual Housing Survey Quality Measures in Explaining Dwelling Rentals in 20 Metropolitan Areas

Articles concerned with the Hedonic Estimation of the Price of Housing Services have often employed the concept of housing "quality." Quality measurement is best defined as employment of distinct variables to classify dwelling attributes which are for some reason not decomposed into their unidimensional components. The Annual Housing Survey reports a series of variables which, describing the performance of housing attributes, may be classified as quality variables. Past studies have not properly identified the stochastic nature of the performance measure-quality relationships. This paper defines that relationship and devises a procedure to measure the rent performance relationship for twenty cities in the survey. Empirical results confirm the usefulness of the measures explaining housing quality within and among metropolitan areas.     

Land Development Regulation: A Case Study of Dallas and Houston, Texas

This paper compares the approaches to land development regulation in Dallas and Houston and attempts to measure the impact of regulation on lot prices in the two cities. Land development in Dallas appears to be subject to a greater degree of regulation than in Houston, especially with respect to zoning and the provision of utilities. In Houston, utilities are provided by Municipal Utility Districts which give developers greater flexibility in subdivision site selection. Other regulations concerning land use, platting, road financing and environment are examined for their impact on development costs in the two cities. The paper closes with a "full" lot cost comparison for selected subdivisions in Dallas and Houston. Lot prices are found to be lower in Houston. The difference is largely explained by differences in regulation and a transfer of cost from the private to the public sector.     

Information and communication technologies for development: assessing the potential and the risks

This article provides a review of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) Working Group on ICTs and Development Report (Knowledge Societies: Information Technology for Sustainable Development, Oxford University Press, 1998). The author highlights key issues of ICTs in a development context; and summarizes the Report’s assessment of both potential and risks of ICTs for developing countries. A check-list derived from the Report provides guidelines for issues to consider in developing ICT policies and implementation strategies.     

Clustering Methods for Real Estate Portfolios

A clustering algorithm is applied to effective rents for twenty-one metropolitan U.S. office markets, and to twenty-two metropolitan markets using vacancy data. It provides support for the conjecture that there exists a few major "families" of cities: including an oil and gas group and an industrial Northeast group. Unlike other clustering studies, we find strong evidence of bicoastal city associations among cities such as Boston and Los Angeles. We present a bootstrapping methodology for investigating the robustness of the clustering algorithm, and develop a means for testing the significance of city associations. While the analysis is limited to aggregate rent and vacancy data, the results provide a guideline for the further application of cluster analysis to other types of real estate and economic information.     

国外建设创业型城市的主要做法与启示

相关国家推进创业，建设创业型城市的基本做法是：各具特色的创业教育体系，包括全社会参与的美国创业教育，政府财政资金支持下的英国创业教育，瑞典、荷兰和法国等国的创新型创业教育，注重实践运用的日本创业教育，置于国家战略下的印度、新加坡创业教育，从中小学开始的澳大利亚创业教育；重点突出的创业扶持政策，包括以小企业为重点的美国创业扶持政策，以高新技术为产业重点的日本创业扶持政策，健全的欧洲国家小企业创业扶持政策，更加优惠的大学生创业扶持政策和全方位的留学归国人员创业扶持政策，适合女性特点的创业扶持政策，支持创业孵化基地建设等。这些做法对于我国相关城市在确定创业扶持政策时的主要启示至少有：因地制宜，分类扶持，政策配套，从起步开始。     

The new product development process: part 2. Improving the process of new product development

This paper describes work on evaluating and improving the New Product Development Process (NPDP). The relevant results of a survey of current practice in NPDP within 149 companies are presented. The development and experimental application, within a commercial company, of a methodology for evaluating and improving the NPDP is also described.     

资源型城市企业家人力资本对区域创新影响的实证分析——以山西省为例

转型发展是资源型城市实现可持续发展的根本出路,经济转型归根结底是从资源依赖到创新驱动的转型,即核心是提升区域创新能力。作为经济增长方式转变的微观推动者,企业家对于提升区域创新能力、促进资源型城市的经济转型具有重要意义。本文就企业家人力资本对于区域创新能力的影响机理进行了理论分析,以煤炭资源大省山西为例,应用面板数据模型对理论进行了验证。本文的理论与实证分析表明,企业家人力资本的提升是资源型地区转型发展的关键。     

The auto makers and their related party transactions in indonesia

This paper provides a profile of three major automobile manufacturers in Indonesia: the Astra group, the Suzuki group and the Matsubishi Krama Yudha group. Together, they control more than 85 percent of the automobile market in Indonesia. Various types of related party transactions in the auto industry and their transfer prices are also discussed. It appears that Japanese multinational companies are playing a dominant role in the development of the auto industry in Indonesia.The research on which this paper is based was funded by the United Nations Development Programme and the Centre on Transnational Corporations.     

2010年和2020年全国煤炭供需预测

结合当前的经济发展态势,分别对2010年、2020年全国煤炭需求和供应进行了预测,并提出了相应的对策措施建议。预测2010年全国煤炭需求量为26.5亿～28.5亿t,比国家发展和改革委员会正式发布的《煤炭工业发展"十一五"规划》的26亿t多0.5亿～2.5亿t;预测2020年全国煤炭需求量为31亿～34亿t,比《煤炭工业中长期发展规划(国家发改委)》的28亿t多3亿～6亿t。预测未来15年我国需要新建和扩建煤矿规模达12亿～15亿t,其中"十一五"期间为4亿～6亿t。