Coexistence and segregation of two groups in a metropolitan area through externalities

This paper proposes to regard the population distributions of two groups in a metropolitan area as equilibrium solutions of systems of ordinary differential equations. This approach—an extension of the Miyao's single subarea model to a many subarea case—allows us to incorporate the effect of fiscal/pecuniary neighborhood externalities into the classic Alonso-Mills-Muth model. This paper investigates its three typical cases, and obtains one coexistent and two segregated solutions. Consideration on these cases leads to the conclusion that substantial neighborhood externalities other than simple tax redistribution exist between the groups in the United States. As by-products of this analysis, it is also shown that positive bid gradients and discontinuities of bid prices are realized under suitable conditions.     

Residential change and economic choice behavior

Theory of economic choice behavior is applied to construct a dynamic model of residential change at the neighborhood scale. The utility of a neighborhood depends on the investor's decisions, and two different specifications are considered. In the first, these decisions result from a strategy fixed a priori. The model can then be easily studied. The second is concerned with the simplified case of a single neighborhood and supposes that the housing price and quality are dependent on maintenance expenditures viewed as a function of the number of individuals living in the neighborhood. It is then shown how different processes of residential change can be generated by purely economic factors.     

Landlords, tenants and the public sector in a spatial equilibrium model of rent control

A spatial model is used to explore the effects of urban rent control. When landlords and tenants can alter economic and location decisions, policy effects in controlled and uncontrolled zones may differ from standard predictions. Tenants in both zones may benefit from the control, even after unfavorable landlord adjustments, but these gains are likely to come at the expense of landlords and the public sector. Efforts to restore profits and fiscal balance, without negating utility gains to renters, may fail unless control distortions can be adequately shifted to absentee landowners through lower site rents. Lump-sum renter subsidies may offer equivalent utility gains with less severe impacts on landlords and the public sector, but the supply elasticity of land again matters.     

Rehabilitation decisions in rental housing: An empirical analysis

Housing policy-makers show increased interest in encouraging rehabilitation of the existing housing stock. But little is known about what factors influence the decision to invest, particularly in rental housing, making policy design difficult. This paper presents an empirical analysis of individual landlords' housing rehabilitation decisions in one housing market. The analysis tests hypotheses about the impacts of detailed neighborhood, structure, and site characteristics on each owner's investment activity. Findings support the general hypothesis that economic returns to investment have a major effect on rehabilitation decisions, identify some other important circumstances, and suggest which among many specific policy levers should be effective.     

Experimental evidence of gender effects in arbitration decisions

The study investigates arbitrator gender and arbitrator-grievant gender effects on the decisions of 146 arbitrators rendered on a hypothetical sexual harassment case. Gender was not found to have a statistically significant effect on the decisions examined. However, other characteristics of the arbitrator—level of experience and level of education—were found to influence the arbitral decision.     

Multiple objectives in the theory of the firm

An objective function with measures for two objectives is maximized to determine production decisions. These are shown to be analogous to production decisions under pure profit maximization, but using prices which include internally determined prices, different from market prices. The standard case of pure profit maximization results as a special case—as a testable hypothesis—by particular restrictions on parameters.A first draft of this paper was presented at the Philadelphia ORSA/TIMS Conference in 1990. The first draft was coauthored by Wolfgang Schwander, who contributed the empirical part to it, which has been deleted. Matthew S. Goldberg of the Institute for Defense Analyses and Götz Uebe of Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, provided helpful comments on the first draft. The revised versions benefitted substantially from the very constructive comments by three referees. The refereeing process of this paper was handled through Knox Lovell.     

Economics of information examples in location and land-use theory

In many contexts a decision taken by one economic agent reveals valuable market information to other agents. Two such examples are displayed. In the first case, the location of a retailer reduces locally the uncertainty in the spatial variation of demand, thereby attracting other retailers. In the second case, the change in the quality of rental housing in a homogeneous neighborhood reveals consumer demand which may invite other landlords to follow suit causing capid neighborhood change.     

Adherence to environmental law: the strategic complementarities of compliance decisions

In this paper we address why firms comply with environmental regulations when enforcement is weak by suggesting that firms choose their level of environmental compliance strategically. Our theoretical model shows that compliance decisions among firms are strategic complements—increased compliance by one firm will positively influence the compliance rate of its rival. In our empirical analysis we find that the compliance rates of other regulated entities have a positive and significant effect on a regulated source's compliance behavior in three of our four heavily regulated industries. If compliance decisions are strategic complements, this may partially explain high compliance rates in the presence of limited regulatory pressure.     

Affirmative Action: The Facts, the Myths, and the Future

This article focuses on recent federal court rulings affecting preferential treatment programs mandated by affirmative action policies and programs. The article addresses the greater burden that these decisions now place on organizations to justifying race-based remedial actions, and the standards by which these actions are judged. However, the programs affected by these rulings are only those imposed by federal, state or local governments. This article also discusses the narrow scope of these decisions—what programs they have not changed. As will be demonstrated, a broad range of voluntary private sector programs remain unaffected.     

A Model of Small Firm Capital Acquisition Decisions

This paper presents a model that describes the dynamics of small firm capital acquisition decisions. The model proposes that the primary factors influencing capital acquisition decisions are (1) availability of information, (2) ease of capital acquisition, (3) owner’s goals, and (4) terms of external providers of capital. The paper discusses the relationships between these primary influence variables and capital acquisition decisions. A better understanding of the factors influencing capital acquisition can provide insight into the process by which small firms make capital acquisition decisions. A better understanding of these dynamics can also lead to improved support systems and conditions for small businesses that may be searching for capital. Insight from the model can be useful for business owners, business consultants, and classroom instructors.     

Looking across borders: A test of spatial policy interdependence using local government efficiency ratings

Spatial patterns in (local) government taxation and spending decisions have received a lot of attention. Still, the focus on taxation or expenditure levels in previous studies may be incomplete. Indeed, (rational) individuals are likely to consider the level of spending on (or taxation for) public goods provision simultaneously with how much public goods they actually receive—thus assessing the ‘price/quantity’ of government policies. Therefore, the present paper argues that incumbents may want their ‘price/quantity’ ratio to be close to that in neighbouring regions. Analysing Flemish local governments' efficiency ratings for the year 2000 (which relate total spending to the quantity of locally provided public goods), we confirm the existence of neighbourhood effects in local government policies.     

Does neighborhood income mix affect earnings of adults? New evidence from Sweden

This paper contributes to the literature on obtaining unbiased estimates of neighborhood effects, explored in the context of a centralized social welfare state. We employ a longitudinal database comprised of all working age adults in metropolitan Sweden 1991–1999 to investigate the degree to which neighborhood income mix relates to subsequent labor incomes of adults and how this relationship varies by gender and employment status. We control for unobserved, time-invariant individual characteristics by estimating a first-difference equation of changes in average incomes between the 1991–1995 and 1996–1999 periods. We further control for unobserved time varying characteristics through an analysis of non-movers. These methods substantially reduce the magnitude of the apparent effect of neighborhood shares of low-, middle- and high-income males. Nevertheless, statistically and substantively significant neighborhood effects persist, though relationships are nonlinear and vary by gender and employment status. Males who are not fully employed appear most sensitive to neighborhood economic mix in all contexts.     

Length of residence discounts,turnover, and demand elasticity. Should long-term tenants pay less than new tenants?

Previous academic work on rental contracts has predicted that landlords will attempt to minimize turnover costs by giving discounts to long-term tenants. If long-term tenants have less elastic demand than short-term tenants, however, landlords might prefer to give discounts to short-term tenants. A model is developed in this paper in which landlords take account of both turnover costs and demand elasticity. Evidence from a survey of apartment managers is consistent with the model and shows that length-of-residence discounts are less common than discounts on the first month’s rent for new tenants.     

Measuring the effects of mixed land uses on housing values

Mixing land uses has become one of the key planning principles of the Smart Growth movement and other land use planning strategies. This article analyzes the impact on the prices of single family houses when mixed land uses are included in neighborhoods. We first develop several quantitative measures of mixed land uses through the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) data and compute these measures for various neighborhoods in Washington County, OR. We then incorporate those measures in a hedonic price analysis. We conclude from this research that housing prices increase with their proximity to—or with increasing amount of—public parks or neighborhood commercial land uses. We also find, however, that housing prices are higher in neighborhoods dominated by single-family residential land use, where non-residential land uses were evenly distributed, and where more service jobs are available. Finally, we find that housing prices tended to fall with proximity to multi-family residential units.     

A model of residential change and neighborhood tipping

This paper applies the theory of probabilistic consumer demand to an analysis of residential change at the urban neighborhood scale. By developing the profit maximizing pricing behavior of housing suppliers, it is shown that neighborhood transitions from high income to low income and from white to black can be explained on purely economic grounds without involving prejudicial preferences. The analytical model explains two types of transition. In the first, a neighborhood's social mix changes gradually in response to gradual exogenous changes. In the second, a neighborhood “tips” suddenly in response to similar exogenous changes. The two transitions can occur depending on the characteristics of the demand functions for the two competing groups.     

Spatial competition with free entry, Chamberlinian tangencies, and social efficiency

Free entry in Löschian spatial competition leads to a tangency between each firm's negatively sloped average revenue and the downsloping portion of average costs—as in Chamberlin's monopolistic competition. It is generally concluded that this equilibrium involves too many inefficiently small firms. However, this conclusion is incorrect. The difference between price and firm marginal production costs in spatial equilibrium is just sufficient to cover the additional marginal cost of output resulting from availability of multiple locations. This Chamberlinian tangency does not imply inefficiency, because it does not include all the social costs and benefits resulting from spatial competition.     

A dynamic,policy oriented model of the regulated housing market: The Swedish prototype

The design and preliminary implementation of a dynamic, policy oriented model of the regulated housing market is presented. The model is developed in the context of the Swedish housing market institutions which combine nearly all features encountered in other nations. Free buying and selling by homeowners, black markets, swapping of dwellings and rationing of price controlled dwellings both by landlords and a public authority are included as explicit transaction options (with distinct costs) available to existing and newly formed households in the market. The model simulates a sequence of temporary annual equilibria which are obtained by balancing effective demands with effective supplies. Household mobility choices, landlords' selling decisions and the rationing of dwellings at fixed prices are derived from stochastic maximization resulting in multinomial or nested logit models of choice behavior. An aggregated preliminary 16-equation version is calibrated with partly real, partly guesstimated data for the Greater Stockholm region in the mid-seventies. Qualitative comparative statatics and income compensated policy simulations with this version illustrate some unintended effects of Swedish housing policy resulting from the manipulation of the income tax, an income tax dependent property tax and housing allowances. The model provides a tool whereby deregulating institutional changes which are potentially Pareto improving can be identified. If, however, current institutions such as the rationing of dwellings result in sufficiently lower transactions costs for households relative to the free market, then deregulation is not Pareto preferred.     

Informal pressures, mobilization, and campaigns in the management of centrally planned economies

Summary Following a short presentation of the striking deficiencies of plan instructions and financial regulation — the formal means of control of today's socialist centrally planned economies — we state that in actual fact these are not the basic means of control in these systems.The basic means of control is mobilization. Historically, this method originated from the declared unity of society. People — first of all economic managers — have to identify themselves with the objectives declared by the authorities. Moreover, the deficiencies of the formal means of control perpetuate the basic task assigned to mobilization.Campaigns are a specific kind of mobilization, meant for the implementation of new national economic objectives or tasks that have become newly important. Although mobilization facilitates the functioning of the economic system, we also have to underline two kinds of its negative consequences. First, mobilization oversimplifies the economic problems, tasks which in reality are tremedously complex. To be sure, some tasks can be implemented with its help, but certainly at high costs. Second, the never-ending repetition of the prevailing (campaign) slogans and the fact that they cannot be really contradicted weakens the capacity of central planners to forecast the future.This paper — the basic idea of which had already been present in Soós (1985) — was written while the author was visiting the European University Institute in April 1986, within the Research Project on East-West Trade and Financial Relations, directed by Professor D. M. Nuti. The paper was presented to the seminar of the working group on Comparative Economic Systems on 17 April 1986. The author wishes to thank Professor Paul Marer for his editorial help in preparing this final version.     

Transaction costs, capital-gains taxes, and housing demand

The paper considers the effect of transaction costs—particularly in the form of capital-gains taxes—on the aggregate demand for owner-occupied housing. The framework is an overlapping-generations model, where consumers can avoid the transaction costs (taxes) by keeping the same house for both periods of life. The first part of the paper analyzes the consumer's choice problem. It distinguishes between costs that are fixed irrespective of the size of the house bought or sold, and costs such as capital-gains taxes that are related to the house value. It is shown that higher transaction costs have lock-in effects, inducing consumers to keep the same house for both periods. Also it is found that under a wide variety of circumstances the amount of housing demanded will increase as the household is being locked in. Finally, the paper looks at the effects on aggregate demand from an increase in capital-gains taxes. It is shown that an increased rate of taxation decreases demand for low tax rates. But for high tax rates, when lock-in effects become important, one generally gets the opposite effect; high tax rates tend to increase housing demand.     

The Japanese Tenant Protection Law and Asymmetric Information on Tenure Length

The Japanese Tenant Protection Law (JTPL) protects tenure security to such an extent that landlords cannot terminate a contract at the end of a tenancy period without just cause. Hence, information on intended tenure length is important for landlords in managing rental housing. A model is developed in which landlords cannot foresee the intended tenure length of prospective tenants. If landlords are sufficiently risk-averse under asymmetric information on tenure length, the JTPL reduces the equilibrium quantity of rental housing, resulting in inefficiency of the Japanese rental-housing market.