Intrametropolitan migration: A simultaneous model of employment and residential location of white and black households

This study explores the relationship between the home and job location of the household within a metropolitan area. The model is an extension of the Alonso-Muth framework and allows the household to simultaneously choose its residential and employment location, monthly rent, number of rooms and the type of structure of the dwelling unit, so as to maximize its utility subject to the budget constraint.The data base is the Home Interview Survey conducted in 1965 by the (San Francisco) Bay Area Transportation Study Commission. The coefficients in the simultaneous model are estimated by two-stage least squares. The cross-section sample is stratified by tenure into renters and homeowners; by race into black and white households; and further by position in the life-cycle.The results of the location equations reveal that both the home and job location are responsive to each other which implies that the decentralization of jobs will result in the decentralization of residences for black households. The results of the housing equations imply that black and white households have almost identical elasticity of demand for housing. There is very slight evidence of price discrimination against black households. However, there is evidence that black households do face a geographical segregated market for rental housing.The results of this study argue that the decentralization of population is not due solely to rising incomes and will continue as long as industry decentralizes. Furthermore, governmental policies of increasing the income of central city residents, through subsidies to employers to locate in the central city will have a strong effect: inducing those residents to remain in or move into the central city. Thus, a policy that is meant to alleviate the plight of the city center may only result in strengthening the racial and income split between the suburb and the central city inhabitants.     

The effect of search frictions on wages

We aim to test whether the degree of informational search frictions in the labor market has a negative effect on wages. In a range of equilibrium search models of the labor market, this effect is predicted to be negative. Nevertheless, this has never been tested. We perform tests with matched worker–firm data. The worker data are informative on individual wages and labor market transitions, and this allows for estimation of the degree of search frictions. The firm data are informative on labor productivity. This allows us to investigate how the mean difference between labor productivity and wages in a market depends on the degree of frictions and other determinants, and to assess the quantitative relevance of frictions for wages.     

The ambiguous effect of minimum wages on hours

In a competitive model we ease the assumption that efficiency units of labour are the product of hours and workers. We show that a minimum wage may either increase or decrease hours per worker and the change will have the opposite sign to the slope of the equilibrium hours hourly wage locus. Similarly, total hours worked may rise or fall. We illustrate the results throughout with a Cobb-Douglas example.     

The effect of international firm mobility on wages and unemployment

Although the increase in international firm mobility is well documented, its effects on macroeconomic aggregates and the labour market remain controversial. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) benefit from an international outside option during wage bargaining, leading to a decrease in average wages. However, a strategic incentive to hire extra workers in a foreign (home) plant in order to reduce wages in the home (foreign) plant has an indirect positive effect on wages due to spillovers resulting from an increased demand for labour. In a framework of frictional unemployment, permitting MNEs leads to a decrease in unemployment. Abstracting from transport and plant fixed costs, MNEs lead to higher wages. Including transport and plant costs generally leads to lower wages, though the effects are small. The strategic hiring effect is important in mitigating the fall in wages.     

The combined equilibrium of travel networks and residential location markets

The combined ‘user’ equilibrium of travel networks and residential location markets is shown to exist and to be unique in the expected allocation of households to residential locations and to the routes and links of the network, in the vacancies and rents of residential locations and in the congested travel time and cost of each network link. The formulation combines a multinomial logit model of households' location and route choices derived from utility maximization, a binary logit model of house owners' offer decisions derived from profit maximization and the standard model of network congestion. A travel disutility measure (consistent with utility maximization) replaces the standard ‘generalized cost function’. The proof utilizes a non-linear programming formulation which reproduces the simultaneous equilibrium conditions of the behavioral formulation. The stability of the unique equilibrium position is briefly discussed, a computational algorithm is proposed and hints for generalized formulations are provided.     

住宅小区入口设计对小区物理环境的影响

人们往往关注小区入口对交通、防御、形象及标示的作用,而忽略它对小区物理环境的影响。从建筑物理环境的角度关注小区入口的形式及位置设计是提升建筑设计质量的重要一环。通过对住宅小区入口类型的研究,根据实地的调研测试及数据模拟分析,研究了小区入口设计对建筑风环境和声环境的影响,提出了改善小区入口物理环境的设计方法。     

A psychometric analysis of residential location

Traditional housing needs studies focus on the trade-off between location and housing amenities. In most models, mode choice is viewed as conditional behavior in a given setting. New movers, however, select a new environment which includes a house, neighbourhood and transportation system. By using psychometric techniques, the attitudes and preferences of new movers to the suburbs of a large northeast city were analyzed to determine the relative importance in their selection process of the transportation characteristics of the new location. It was found that local and regional transportation and public transit played little role in selecting an apartment. There was no evidence of tradeoffs between travel time and living space postulated by urban economics. Most important to the choice process of these residents were internal characteristics of the apartment and pricing issues. This supports the idea that suburbanites chose to be captive auto users even when equivalent housing opportunities with transport alternatives are available. Implications for public transit and land use planning alternatives for the suburbs are discussed.     

A generalization of residential location theory

This paper offers a more general theory of residential location as an alternative to the ‘trade- off’ model. The theory takes account of multiple employment centers, time as well as income constraints, environmental quality, non-work trips, local jurisdictions, the restricted number of houses available for occupation at any time and the constraints on choice imposed by the search process. The result is a very irregular bid rent surface. Its implications for the aggregate rent surface are discussed.     

Labour market oligopsonistic competition: The effect of worker immobility on wages

We suggest that firms in a local labour market may be able to exploit worker mobility costs and offer immobile workers wages that are lower than their marginal product. If so, the ability of employers to exploit worker immobility in setting wages would decline in the competitiveness of the local labour market. We test this intuition using a measure of individual mobility costs and measures of local labour market competition. Our findings suggest that worker immobility causes substantial wage variation across workers in small, weakly competitive markets, and in occupations where wages are individually bargained.     

The impact of minimum wages on wages,work and poverty in Nicaragua

In this paper we use an individual- and household-level panel data set to study the impact of changes in legal minimum wages on a host of labor market outcomes including: a) wages and employment, b) transitions of workers across jobs (in the covered and uncovered sectors) and employment status (unemployment and out of the labor force), and c) transitions into and out of poverty. We find that changes in the legal minimum wage affect only those workers whose initial wage (before the change in minimum wages) is close to the minimum. For example, increases in the legal minimum wage lead to significant increases in the wages and decreases in employment of private covered sector workers who have wages within 20% of the minimum wage before the change, but have no significant impact on wages in other parts of the distribution. The estimates from the employment transition equations suggest that the decrease in covered private sector employment is due to a combination of layoffs and reductions in hiring. Most workers who lose their jobs in the covered private sector as a result of higher legal minimum wages leave the labor force or go into unpaid family work; a smaller proportion find work in the public sector. We find no evidence that these workers become unemployed.Our analysis of the relationship between the minimum wage and household income finds: a) increases in legal minimum wages increase the probability that a poor worker's family will move out of poverty, and b) increases in legal minimum wages are more likely to reduce the incidence of poverty and improve the transition from poor to non-poor if they impact the head of the household rather than the non-head; this is because the head of the household is less likely than a non-head to lose his/her covered sector employment due to a minimum wage increase and because those heads that do lose covered sector employment are more likely to go to another paying job than are non-heads (who are more likely to go into unpaid family work or leave the labor force).     

The effect of widowhood on housing and location choices

The number of elderly persons living alone is increasing and their influence on the housing market is getting larger. This paper investigates the effect of the loss of a spouse on housing and location choices. A partner’s death induces a decrease in income which may lead to downsizing. Widowhood may also reveal new preferences, such as the need to be close to care givers and health services. We estimate the effect of a transition to widowhood on housing consumption and location choices using the French Housing Surveys. Widowhood significantly increases residential mobility, especially at older ages and for those who have children. Mobile widows tend to live closer to their relatives but do not move to co-reside with a child. Housing and location adjustments are consistent with new widows moving to dwellings that are smaller, more often apartments and in the rental sector, and on average located in larger municipalities where services are more accessible. The housing demand of widows will be significant in the next 20 years, especially the demand for small dwellings.     

The effect of business taxation on the location of industry

A theoretical and econometric model is specified which permits the estimation of the effect of local taxes on economic activity in a locality. A location elasticity of ?0.35 is found for manufacturing activity in New York City with respect to business taxes, while no significant elasticity is found for nonmanufacturing activity. The deadweight losses and revenue effects of the tax are analyzed and calculated, as are the optimal second-best taxes for a locality.     

Racial gaps in the transition to first-time homeownership: The role of residential location

Evidence suggests that African Americans wait longer to transition into first-time homeownership than white households with similar endowments. This paper relies on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine the contribution of residential location toward the black–white gap in first-time homeownership transitions. For a sample of young renters who first left their parents' home during the period 1978 through 1987, I estimate continuous time duration models that explain racial gaps in rental tenure durations prior to first-time homeownership as a function of individual, household, and location-specific covariates. I find that while several residential location characteristics, particularly those associated with the supply of affordable owner-occupied housing, impinge upon racial gaps in first-time homeownership transitions, most of the racial gap in homeownership transitions would be eliminated if blacks and whites had similar individual and household characteristics.     

Equivalence between welfare and entropy approaches to residential location

An optimization model for residential location in an urban area is presented. As the objective, a welfare measure is considered which is derived as aggregated expected utility based on utility-maximizing individual behaviour. The utilities include travel costs for work trips as well as a measure of the disutility with high-density living. The problem of finding a welfare maximizing housing allocation is shown to be equivalent to an entropy maximizing problem provided that a certain condition is met. By considering a dual formulation, a computationally more expedient problem is obtained. The model approach is illustrated by a few applications to the Stockholm region.     

Transport improvements,commuting costs,and residential location

This paper develops a theoretical framework for evaluating one of the long-run or secondary effects of a transport improvement. The familiar model of residential location is manipulated to derive an estimating equation relating changes in travel costs to changes in the household's preferred location. When estimated for a particular transport situation the major finding is the importance of the price effect. Although direct cost savings are important, especially in the short-run, in the long-run and especially for innovations with substantially increased speed or reduced operating costs the price effect may completely dwarf the income effect.     

State minimum wages and business location: Evidence from a refined border approach

This study examines the effect of state minimum wage changes on new and existing business establishments. It employs a refined border approach in conjunction with other differencing methods to control for unobserved heterogeneous area characteristics. The findings suggest that state minimum wage increases deter new establishments from locating in an area, particularly in industries that rely on low-education workforces, such as the retail and manufacturing industries. However, existing establishments, regardless of industry type, are not found to be adversely affected by minimum wage policy.     

The effect of state maternity leave legislation and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act on employment and wages

In 1993, President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Similar to the 12 states that already had maternity leave mandates, the FMLA guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave for eligible mothers. I evaluate the effects of maternity leave legislation on employment and wages, taking advantage of variation created by state legislation and the FMLA. My results show that maternity leave legislation has small and statistically insignificant effects on employment and wages. Maternity leave legislation may have little effect because the mandated leave is short and unpaid and many employers provided maternity leave benefits prior to the statutes.     

A theory of residential location decisions of two-worker households

This paper presents a model of the residential location of a household with two members working in separate urban employment centers. A three-dimensional bid-rent surface is developed and compared with the bid-rent surfaces for three other types of land users. The resulting bid-rent surfaces are used to describe the location and shape of the regions where these various types of households will choose to reside in an urban community.