Rent control and homelessness

The purposes of this paper are to produce more precise estimates of the effect of rent control on homelessness using microdata on housed and homeless households and to provide evidence concerning the mechanisms through which rent control might affect homelessness. Our results suggest that rent control does increase homelessness by decreasing the rental vacancy rate and increasing the rental price of housing in the uncontrolled sector but that these effects of rent control are offset by other effects that decrease homelessness. We cannot reject the hypothesis that rent control has no net effect on homelessness.     

Rent control with reputation: theory and evidence

Rent-control policy is modeled as an implicit contract between voters of a community and suppliers of rental housing. It is shown that if residents can make an ex ante commitment to never adopt rent controls they will do so. When precommitment is not possible there are conditions under which a policy of never adopting rent controls is not self-enforcing. Under such circumstances a state-invariant ceiling price is shown to be a subgame-perfect equilibrium rent-control policy. The model is tested using data for New Jersey where local option regarding the choice of rent control policy was declared constitutional in the early 1970s. Probit analysis is used to determine whether predictions of the model are supported by an investigation of factors leading to imposition of rent controls by 64 of the 245 communities in the sample.     

Rent control and complete contract equilibria

This paper develops a theoretical model for analysing the effects of rent control. The model incorporates the roles of optimal long-term contractual arrangements and the responses of individual agents to rent control in determining the economic characteristics of the controlled market equilibrium, and can help to explain the wide variation in empirical results observed across jurisdictions. Necessary and sufficient conditions for a complete contract equilibrium, where the characteristics of the competitive and controlled solutions are identical, are established. It is shown that housing quality, new construction, and the distribution of wealth may not be affected by rent control.     

Welfare analysis of rent control with side payments: a natural experiment in Cairo, Egypt

Anecdotal evidence suggests that bribery is a common means of obtaining rent controlled apartments. Increased tenant maintenance is a less often noted, but potentially important, phenomenon in controlled markets. Previous empirical studies of the effects of rent control have neglected these side payments, presumably for lack of data. This paper presents evidence on their size and incidence for the controlled market of Cairo, Egypt, as well as estimates of effects such side payments have on welfare gains and losses from controls.     

Estimation of variance of housing prices using spatial conditional heteroskedasticity (SARCH) model with an application to Boston housing price data

In this paper we investigate housing price volatility within a spatial econometrics setting. We propose an extended spatial regression model of the real estate market that includes the effects of both conditional heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation. Our suggested model has features similar to those of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) in the time-series context. We utilize the spatial ARCH (SARCH) model to analyze Boston housing price data used by Harrison and Rubinfeld (1978) and Gilley and Pace (1996). We show that measuring the variability of housing prices is an important issue and our SARCH model captures the conditional spatial variability of Boston housing prices. We argue that there is a different source of spatial variation, which is independent of traditional housing and neighborhood characteristics, and is captured by the SARCH model.     

住房政策的局限性:政策的初衷与实施效果的背离

在房价上涨过快的背景下,基于舆论的压力,政府常常会出台一些旨在稳定房价、解决住房短缺问题的政策,然而有些政策的实施效果却常常背离政策的初衷.回顾了美国40年代实施的房租管制,并分析了中国正在实施的提高税收和经济适用房政策,发现这些政策的实施效果大都适得其反,不仅没有达到预期的目标,反而使得住房问题恶化.     

对某市廉租房政策的另类思考

本文以某城市近期拟为低收入者大量新建廉租房的住房政策引出问题,从住宅经济学中的过滤理论和某些国家在类似住房政策实施方面的经验这两个角度出发,对此问题进行一些分析,并提出笔者的一些看法:该市此项住房政策可能导致其房地产市场的退化;造成资源的浪费;并带来许多社会问题.     

On the long-run relationship between inflation and output in a spatial overlapping generations model

The paper builds a model that features spatial differentiation of markets, and then uses it to study, first, the relationship between inflation and the steady-state level of output, and second, the relationship between inflation and the steady-state distribution of output across the economy. A steady-state of the model entails a stationary distribution of money across the locations of the economy. With all else held fixed, a change in the rate of money-growth induces a change in the distribution of money, which leads to a change in labour supply and production throughout the economy. Thus the distribution of money provides a channel through which a change in monetary policy affects real economic activity.     

2SLS and OLS in a spatial autoregressive model with equal spatial weights

The paper considers a Cliff–Ord type spatial model with a spatially lagged dependent variable and a row normalized weighting matrix with equal weights. We show that the 2SLS and OLS estimators are inconsistent unless panel data are available. The weighting matrix in question is one which would naturally be considered if all units are neighbors to each other, and there is no other reasonable or observable measure of distance between them.     

Competition in the public school sector: Evidence on strategic interaction among US school districts

This paper provides evidence on strategic interaction among local school districts. The analysis makes use of a significant change in the institutional environment for school districts in Michigan in 1996, when the state established a voluntary inter-district choice program. The school districts' participation decisions are modelled as discrete choice decisions using a spatial latent variable model. Strong effects are found saying that lagged adoptions of neighbors positively affect the current probability of participation. A simple test exploiting limitations of student mobility in inter-district transfers suggests that the driving force for interdependencies among adoption decisions was competition for students.     

大城市保障性住房空间布局的社会问题与治理途径

本文研究了北京、上海、南京等五大城市保障性住房空间布局特征,指出大城市保障性住房普遍存在空间选址偏僻、大规模集中建设、配套设施不完善等现实问题.在分析以上问题形成原因的基础上,认为大城市保障性住房集中建设在偏远郊区可能导致社会隔离与排斥加剧、出现城市贫民区与贫困文化、贫困的代际延续与社会风险加剧等一系列社会问题.因此建...     

The cost of strikes in the Spanish mining sector: modelling an undesirable input with a distance function

In some contexts, firms have to deal with certain elements or factors that affect the production outcome but which are non-market in nature and therefore do not have a price. In this paper we propose a new use of a production economics tool, the input distance function, to empirically measure the effects of these factors. Although we suggest a general use of this methodology, it has been developed in the context of measuring the effects of labor disputes in a particular declining industry, that of Spanish coal mining. We have estimated an equation system comprising an input distance function and cost share equations to calculate the cost generated by strikes.

Pareto improving interventions in a general equilibrium model with private provision of public goods

Most of the literature on government intervention in models of voluntary public goods supply focuses on interventions that increase the total level of a public good, which is considered to be typically underprovided. However, an intervention that is successful in increasing the public good level need not benefit everyone. In this paper we take a direct approach to welfare properties of voluntary provision equilibria in a full blown general equilibrium model with public goods and study interventions that have the goal of Pareto improving on the voluntary provision outcome. Towards this end, we study a model with many private goods and non-linear production technology for the public good, and hence allow for relative price effects to serve as a powerful channel of intervention. In this setup we show that Pareto improving interventions generally do exist. In particular, direct government provision financed by “small” , or “local” , lump-sum taxes can be used generically to Pareto improve upon the voluntary provision outcome.     

Outsourcing and trade in a spatial world

This paper provides an analysis of outsourcing and trade in a spatial model à la Hotelling. In this setting, we discuss the trade-off between transport-cost-related disadvantages and outsourcing-related production cost advantages of a large economy and we investigate how the existence of national transport costs influences both the structure of industrial production and the pattern of final goods trade. In addition, the model gives a rich picture of the possible welfare effects of trade liberalization. In particular, we show that a final goods exporting country definitely gains from economic integration, while a final goods importing country may lose. Finally, when lowering domestic outsourcing activities, trade liberalization may reduce world welfare, even if pro-competitive effects lead to a decline in consumer prices.     

Unions in a changing climate: MSF and Unison experiences in the new public sector

Through an examination of national policies, case study and survey material, this article looks at the question of the possibility of union renewal through an examination of the various and varying responses of two unions, MSF and Unison, to the changing work and employment practices in the NHS.     

Strategic human capital and the performance of public sector organizations

Organization scientists have long considered human capital as a strategic asset that contributes to organizational effectiveness. Whereas the strategic importance of human capital has been widely studied in the case of for-profit organizations, measurement difficulties and the role of human capital in the public sector have received little attention. The present study attempts to bridge this gap by suggesting a behavioral approach to measuring organization-specific human capital and examining its impact on the financial performance of local government authorities in Israel. The results confirm the strategic importance of human capital. Local government authorities that possess strategic human capital—namely, a workforce that is highly educated, that exhibits organization-specific competencies and experience, and that is valuable, unique, and imperfectly imitable—exhibited a better financial performance, as measured by a three-financial ratio scale over 2 fiscal years.     

Monetary policy transmission in a model with animal spirits and house price booms and busts

Can monetary policy trigger pronounced boom-bust cycles in house prices and create persistent business cycles? We address this question by building heuristics into an otherwise standard DSGE model. As a result, monetary policy sets off waves of optimism and pessimism (“animal spirits”) that drive house prices, that, in turn, have strong repercussions on the business cycle. We compare our findings to a standard model with rational expectations by means of impulse responses. We suggest that a standard Taylor rule is not well-suited to maintain macroeconomic stability. Instead, an augmented rule that incorporates house prices is shown to be superior.     

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.