Income class, modal choice, and urban spatial structure

This paper analyzes the impacts of urban transportation system changes and income changes on the welfare of people and on the urban spatial structure, in a setting where the income level differs between two groups, and two transportation modes compete with each other in a city. It is demonstrated that an improvement in some transport facility will not necessarily increase the welfare level of every household, and, at times decreases the welfare of some households. It also is argued that under particular situations, an improvement in a particular transport mode may produce a contraction in the city size rather than an expansion. Similarly, an increase in income of one group might have an adverse effect on the welfare of another income group as a result of competition in the land market.     

Transport subsidies, system choice, and urban sprawl

This paper analyzes the effect of transport subsidies on the spatial expansion of cities, asking whether such subsidies are a source of undesirable urban sprawl. Even though the cost-reducing effect of transport subsidies is offset by a higher general tax burden (which reduces the demand for space), the analysis shows that subsidies nevertheless lead to spatial expansion of cities. If the transport system exhibits constant returns to scale, the subsidies are inefficient, making the urban expansion they entail undesirable. The paper also studies transport “system choice,” with the city portrayed as selecting its transport system from along a continuum of money cost/time cost choices. The analysis shows that subsidies inefficiently bias choice in the direction of a high money cost/low time cost option. Lastly, the paper considers system choice in a city with rich and poor groups, showing that the rich favor a system with a high money cost and low time cost, but that their choice, if implemented, leads to a city whose spatial size is smaller than optimal. Thus, rich control of system choice does not lead to urban sprawl.     

Local income taxation in an urban area

This paper indicates the response of a metropolitan area to the levying of a local income tax. The analysis is focused on a central city and its surrounding suburbs but allows for migration to and from the metropolitan area. Of primary interest are the spatial effects of local income taxation and the associated welfare costs derived from additional transportation expenditures. The analysis indicates the forms of compensation to central city high-income households for the fiscal deficit they bear. Changes in wage rates and land rentals are derived and the question of full capitalization is considered.     

住房、交通与城市空间规划

首先归纳了城市空间结构理论框架下居住模式和交通体系空间互动关系的基本理论,之后对国际学术界相关的定量研究成果进行了综述,着重讨论了住房与交通相互作用所形成的社会效应,包括对居民住房支付能力、中低收入者福利和环境的影响,最后提出了住房和交通相协调的城市空间规划的三个目标,并就我国目前的实际情况提出了若干政策建议.     

Two models of urban air pollution

In this paper, the impact of pollution on locational decisions and the production of pollution by individuals are modeled. This is done for pollution produced by transportation and for that produced by stationary sources. The nature of pollution as an externality distorts the pattern of land use. Transport pollution produces cities which are too dispersed or too large, whereas the reverse is true for pollution from stationary sources. The optimal spatial pattern of income classes in the model of transport pollution is that the better off people live further away from the center of the city; the reverse is true for the model of pollution from stationary sources.     

On revenue recycling and the welfare effects of second-best congestion pricing in a monocentric city

This paper examines congestion taxes in a monocentric city with pre-existing labor taxation. When road toll revenue is used to finance labor tax cuts, 35% of the optimal road tax in our numerical model does not reflect marginal external congestion costs, but rather functions as a Ramsey–Mirrlees tax, i.e. an efficiency enhancing mechanism allowing for an indirect spatial differentiation of the labor tax. This adds a quite different motivation to road pricing, since welfare gains can be produced even in absence of congestion. We find that the optimal road tax is non-monotonic across space, reflecting the different impacts of labor supply elasticity and marginal utility of income, which both vary over space. The relative efficiencies of some archetype second-best pricing schemes (cordon toll, flat kilometer tax) are high (84% and 70% respectively). When road toll revenue is recycled lump-sum, the optimal toll lies below its Pigouvian level. Extensions in a bimodal framework show that the optimality of using road toll revenue to subsidize public transport depends on the initial inefficiency in public transport pricing.     

The golden rule of urban transportation investment

The purpose of this paper is to find an optimal taxation rule for transportation investment in an ever growing urban economy. First we dynamize a standard circular-city model with identical residents by introducing population growth and transportation improvements over time. Assuming that utility functions are of a constant-elasticity form and transportation investment is financed by an income tax, we prove the existence, uniqueness and stability of a balanced growth equilibrium for each given tax rate. Then, an optimal tax rate is determined so as to maximize the balanced growth equilibrium level of utility for every resident in the city. It is also shown that our simple rule remains valid in the case of two income classes.     

An extension of Mohring's model for land rent distribution

In an early paper Herbert Mohring (J. Pol. Econ., 49 (1961)) presented a model for land rent distribution yielding the well-known result that the price of land must fall with the distance from the city center to offset transportation costs. Our paper is an extension of Mohring's model in which we relax some of his drastic simplifying assumptions. This extended model has been incorporated in a method for economic evaluation of city master plans which has been applied to a Swedish city. In this method the interdependence among housing, heating, and transportation, the durability of urban structures, and the uncertainty of future demand are explicitly considered within a cost-benefit approach. Some empirical results from this pilot study concerning land rent distributions are also presented here.     

The social cost of through traffic: Contribution to the suburban-central city exploitation thesis

This paper deals with the conflict between local and through traffic when allocating land for transportation at the expense of residential consumption. The model developed in this paper gives the optimal allocation of land between both uses, via Pontryagin's Maximum Principle, and shows the impact of through traffic on the urban structure, on local transportation costs and on the cost of housing supply. The cost functionals are used to measure the total burden to the inner city and a connection is made to the ongoing discussion of the ‘exploitation’ thesis.     

Auto pollution and congestion in an urban model: An analysis of alternative strategies

Congestion and pollution externalities associated with automobile driving are examined for their effect on urban structure. A monocentric urban model which incorporates household preferences for both an unpolluted environment and for leisure time is presented, and used to evaluate alternative pricing and emissions policies on automobile use and their effects on city structure. Optimal tax gradients for driving are derived, and compared with second best cases of per mile taxes and no taxes. As externalities gradients become more nonlinear, the welfare gains from employing optimal taxes rather than a per mile tax are increased. The appropriate choices of an emission standard, highway capacity, and highway pricing policy must be made simultaneously and depend on household preferences.     

低碳城市发展地域系统优化研究：以上海临港新城为例

城市地域系统的结构决定了城市低碳发展的基础。在反思传统城市地域系统规划低碳发展的局限性基础上,以临港新城低碳城市地域系统优化案例为研究对象,对空间结构、土地利用、交通体系等城市地域系统核心构成要素进行低碳优化分析。研究指出低碳城市地域系统在空间结构上具有高密度、高容积率、高层的紧凑型特征,多中心的梯级空间格局,分散组团式的空间开发;集约化、多样化的复合功能的土地开发;公共交通导向的走廊式空间规划,发达的小地域空间道路体系等特点。     

Use-Value Assessment Tax Expenditures in Urban Areas

Use-value assessment is the practice of valuing land for property tax purposes in its current use, rather than at its full market value. This practice is widespread in the U.S. and is intended to reduce the property tax burden on agricultural land near urban areas and slow the pace of land development. We examine the foregone property tax revenue, or tax expenditure, due to use-value assessment. Data sets for two case studies are employed in empirical estimation of spatial models of the difference between market value and use value, providing the analytic basis for estimates of tax expenditures.     

TAXATION OF ECONOMIC RENTS

Economic rents have long been identified as an efficient tax base. In addition, the recent literature documents that rent income is highly concentrated and that rents are quickly increasing. Rent taxation thus seems attractive for reasons of both efficiency and equity. Nevertheless, rent taxation remains a marginal topic in research and policy making. In a systematic review of the neoclassical literature on different rent types, we find that some types of rents reflect inefficiencies and should thus be minimized, while others reward investments and should be supported in line with social welfare. What remains for taxation are land rents, one of the few true scarcity rents. Land rents have significant potential to improve the efficiency of the tax system. We then begin to develop a comprehensive theory of land rent taxation by identifying relevant efficiency and equity effects. The interaction of many of these effects remains unexplored, which might explain policymakers' hesitation in using land taxes to date.     

基于百度地图实时路况的昆明市道路拥堵研究

基于百度地图实时路况的调查资料,应用ArcGIS中全局空间自相关分析模块和局部空间聚集性模块方法,对昆明市交通拥堵进行时空分布特征研究。结果显示全局聚集分析中昆明市交通拥堵点呈现聚集性分布,局部空间聚集性分析中昆明市交通拥堵点局部聚集性强,分布区域集中在商业、客运中心和旅游休闲区域,空间上临近区域拥堵情况类似,土地利用性质对周围的交通存在显著的影响。拥堵的时间规律特征主要受人们活动规律的影响。     

Siting noxious facilities: A siting lottery with victim compensation

This paper proposes a scheme to facilitate the siting of noxious facilities. A regional government announces that it will (a) use a lottery to choose a site for a noxious facility and (b) transfer income from tenants to host-city landowners to at least partly offset the effects of the noxious facility on local property values. The government will hold the lottery only if all citizens agree, in advance, to abide by the resulting siting decision. The lottery approach is superior to the conventional approach to siting (advance notification) in the sense that the lottery approach achieves unanimous support for the siting decision with less compensation. The compensation scheme can be financed with a regionwide tenant tax or a tax on residents in the nonhost city. For “small” compensation programs, the nonhost tax is superior to the regional tax.     

Optimal tax progressivity in imperfect labour markets

All modern labour market theories capable of explaining involuntary unemployment as an equilibrium phenomenon imply that increased income tax progressivity reduces unemployment, but they also imply that higher progressivity tends to reduce work effort and labour productivity. This suggests that there may be an optimal degree of tax progressivity where the marginal welfare gain from reduced involuntary unemployment is just offset by the marginal welfare loss from lower productivity. This paper sets up four different models of an imperfect labour market in order to identify the degree of tax progressivity which would maximise the welfare of the representative wage earner. Simulations with these models suggest that the optimal degree of tax progressivity could be quite large, although the results are sensitive to the generosity of unemployment benefits and to the after-tax wage elasticity of work effort.     

Determinants of urban population density functions: a procedure for efficient estimates

A model of urban population density functions is proposed that uses all available data on densities in urban areas. "This model postulates that population density at each census tract in each city is determined by city size, transportation costs, land supply, income and age of city." The model is applied to data on cities in Israel.     

国有企业所得税与绩效目标的福利效应

结合国有企业的相对绩效考核机制,本文建立了一个包含国有企业等多元所有制部门的开放经济模型,以考察国有企业所得税、绩效目标等外生政策调整时的福利效应。数值分析结果表明,当国企相对业绩目标低于市场水平时,适度提高国企所得税负可增进经济效率与社会福利,减轻国企所得税负将适得其反。根据这一发现,为纠正2007年企业所得税改革对国企经营的约束放松,避免经济效率与社会福利损失,政府应提高对国企的绩效考核目标。     

The general equilibrium effects of congestion externalities

This is the second in a series of three articles on the topic of congestion externalities. We use an urban general-equilibrium model to compute two types of cities: the market-equilibrium city, in which congestion externalities occur, and the optimum city. The optimum city has a more dispersed distribution of employment, and a more concentrated distribution of residence. If the population of the city is fixed, the optimum pricing of transportation generates a per capita welfare gain of $3.78 per week. If the population of the city is endogenous, the internalization of congestion externalities causes the city to grow.     

An extension of the monocentric urban spatial equilibrium model to a multicenter setting: The case of the two-center city

Firms in a monocentric city conforming in substance to the “new urban economics” produce an export commodity under agglomeration economies and employ homogeneous labor and capital. Workers reside about the CBD in decreasing densities with distance. A developer establishes a second export production center within the city's residential area. Conditions for economic viability and growth of the subcenter are examined, and its impacts on short-run and long-run city location patterns are discussed. A limiting condition on subcenter employment size is provided.