International competitiveness of japanese manufacturing

This paper deals with the effect of corporate management practices on the efficiency of Japanese manufacturing and their international trade performance. It also looks at the relative cost position in comparison with the major industrialized countries. Such cost comparisons reflect changes in productivity performance, inflation and exchange rate changes that have been so marked that the United States has become the lowest-cost producer of manufactured products recently for the first time in the post-war period. Some effects of these changes on the trade and balance of payments positions of Japan in relation to North America are outlined. The paper includes data for selected years from 1950 to 1988 for real GDP per employed person, real output per hour for manufacturing, and unit labour costs for manufacturing for the United States, Japan, Canada and six of the major European countries.     

Intrametropolitan planning for community-based residential care: a goals programming approach.

Small community-based residential facilities have increasingly supplanted large-scale institutions as treatment settings for mentally and physically disabled, indigent, elderly and ex-offender populations in the United States. Because the intrametropolitan assignment of these service-dependent populations and their community care facilities has not been purposively planned, most facilities and clients have clustered in inner cities, resulting in the formation of service-dependent population ghettos. This paper outlines a goals programming approach to the client/facility assignment problem. The model provides a basis for an intrametropolitan distribution of residential service facilities that balances equity and efficiency goals and that protects both client and community rights. A regional fair-share plan that incorporates negotiation and arbitration techniques is offered as an institutional mechanism for implementing the goals programming framework.     

Existence of continuous residential land-use equilibria

This paper presents a general result on the existence of competitive equilibria for residential land markets in continuous space. Following standard residential land-use theory, such markets are postulated to involve finitely many types of household continua bidding for land within a continuous finite-dimensional space. In contrast to the standard approach of defining an excess-demand correspondence on a price space, the problem here is reformulated in terms of a ‘population excess-supply correspondence’ on a utility space. This approach allows the analysis to be carried out entirely in terms of finite-dimensional methods, and in particular, allows standard types of fixed-point arguments to be employed.     

Residential Building Permits in Urban Counties: 1990–1997

This paper presents simple empirical models of residential building permits for urban counties in the United States for the period 1990–1997. Building permits, as a percentage of the housing stock, are greater the larger are population growth, the proportion of units that are old (built before 1940), and the proportion of units that are new. A higher initial vacancy rate reduces building permits.     

Explaining the Choice Among Regulatory Plans in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry

We investigate why different states in the United States choose different regulatory plans in their telecommunications industry. We present a simple theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the issue. We find that a state is more likely to replace rate-of-return regulation with incentive regulation when: (1) residential basic local service rates have historically been relatively high; (2) allowed earnings under rate-of-return regulation in the state have been either particularly high or particularly low; (3) the state's leaders tend to come from both major political parties, rather than from a single party; (4) the state's urban population is growing relatively rapidly; and (5) the bypass activity of competitors in the state is less pronounced.     

Optimizing placement of residential shelters for human trafficking survivors

Residential shelters play a critical role in the stabilization and eventual reintegration to society for trafficked persons and entail a large investment. In the United States, survivors of human trafficking live in every state. However, in 2018 a majority of states lack dedicated residential shelters for trafficking survivors. Even in states with shelters, data suggests that demand greatly exceeds capacity, and significant disparity exists between states with respect to the legislative environment and provision of auxiliary services for survivors. We present an optimization approach to evaluate the societal impact of locating dedicated shelters for trafficking survivors at a regional level. Using concepts from health and social welfare economics, we develop an optimization model that allocates a budget for locating residential shelters in a manner that maximizes a measure of societal impact while respecting budgetary constraints. For our case study, we measure this impact via a societal value quantified by a combination of labor productivity gained, reduction in juvenile arrests, disability-adjusted life years averted, and legislative environment, adjusted for the demand for shelters and the current number of shelters available, less construction and operating costs. We illustrate the utility of the model via our case study that allocates a budget among a candidate set of residential shelters for female sex trafficking survivors in the United States. Via sensitivity analyses on a robust set of uncertain parameters, we present policy implications of shelter placements to support this critical societal concern.     

美国城市增长管理的方法与启示

介绍美国主要的三类城市增长管理方法,即管理和控制城市增长区间和特点的方法;保护自然资源、环境质量和生态特征的方法;提供有效的公共基础设施的方法.分别对每一类方法进行了系统的介绍,进而指出对中国城市增长管理和土地利用管制的启示.     

Using Medicare data for short-run projections of the elderly population.

As the elderly population of the United States grows in absolute number and as a proportion of total population, accurate projections of that population become increasingly important for sound policy decisions. Cohort component techniques are typically used for state and local projections of the elderly population, but are often outdated or even nonexistent for many local areas. This paper suggests an alternative approach, based on Medicare data and simple projection techniques. Projections for several base periods and projection horizons are made for all states and for counties in Florida and are compared with actual Medicare enrollment. On the basis of these comparisons it appears that Medicare data and simple projection techniques can produce very useful short-run projections of the elderly population for states and local areas.     

Energy footprint of the city: Effects of urban land use and transportation policies

Urban land use and transportation policies have dramatic effects on the density and spatial distribution of residences in large cities. Effects of these policies have been analyzed using numerical urban simulation models. At the same time, the US Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey has allowed researchers to investigate the relation between household energy consumption and characteristics of housing units.This paper links these two lines of inquiry by demonstrating how simulation results on the implications of land use and transportation policies for the spatial form of cities can be used to compute implications for energy consumption. The resulting Urban Energy Footprint Model, “UEFM,” allows one to trace the implications of a change in land use zoning or transportation policy through its effects on housing markets and residential location to the resulting changes in energy use for residential and commuting purposes – i.e. to understand the energy footprint of transportation, housing, and land use policies. Accordingly, the UEFM provides, perhaps for the first time, a link between urban and energy economics, and can allow measurement of rebound effects of energy policies in a more general equilibrium context.     

Compensation Rules and Investment under Land-Taking

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between urban systems and compensation rules when government takes private land for public use. Numerous papers in Law and Economics have analyzed the problem of title transfer in land transactions. They do not, however, deal with land-taking or title transfer in the framework of spatial economics for simplification of the model. When government plans for provision of public goods, it often needs land in the region to do it. In the United States, for example, if public goods increase the utility level of each household in the city, the land required to provide them can be expropriated with fair compensation. In this paper, we focus on this compensation rule for land-taking and attempt to analyze the effects of it on a spatial model and the landowners. investment behavior on their own land.     

The baby boom,the baby bust,and the housing market

This paper explores the impact of demographic changes on the housing market in the US, 1st by reviewing the facts about the Baby Boom, 2nd by linking age and housing demand using census data for 1970 and 1980, 3rd by computing the effect of demand on price of housing and on the quantity of residential capital, and last by constructing a theoretical model to plot the predictability of the jump in demand caused by the Baby Boom. The Baby Boom in the U.S. lasted from 1946-1964, with a peak in 1957 when 4.3 million babies were born. In 1980 19.7% of the population were aged 20-30, compared to 13.3% in 1960. Demand for housing was modeled for a given household from census data, resulting in the finding that demand rises sharply at age 20-30, then declines after age 40 by 1% per year. Thus between 1970 and 1980 the real value of housing for an adult at any given age jumped 50%, while the real disposable personal income per capita rose 22%. The structure of demand is such that the swelling in the rate of growth in housing demand peaked in 1980, with a rate of 1.66% per year. Housing demand and real price of housing were highly correlated and inelastic. If this relationship holds in the future, the real price of housing should fall about 3% per year, or 47% by 2007. The theoretical model, a variation of the Poterba model, ignoring inflation and taxation, suggests that fluctuations in prices caused by changes in demand are not foreseen by the market, even though they are predictable in principle 20 years in advance. As the effects of falling housing prices become apparent, there may be a potential for economic instability, but people may be induced to save more because their homes will no longer provide the funds for retirement.     

Challenges of green consumption in China: a household energy use perspective

To encourage economic progress, China's government has been pushing domestic consumption as a substitute for its waning growth in investment and exports. It has also been promoting greener policies for growth, of which green consumerism is a prime component. By examining the economy through the lens of household energy consumption, this paper lays out the challenges the nation must overcome through green consumption. We explore the trends in household energy use and decompose energy used indirectly by households into six factors: changes in total population, urbanization rate, energy efficiency, interindustry input mix, household consumption preferences, and per capita household consumption level. Doing so yields insights into how progress in industrial technology, household income, urbanization, and lifestyles has affected energy use in the production of goods and services used by households. It also offers policy suggestions on how China might guide lifestyle changes to effect green consumption.     

广东省人口城市化与土地城市化速率比对

以城市化进程较快的广东省作为研究区域,基于国内外人口城市化与土地城市化关系方面的理论和研究进展,采用相关和回归分析方法,对广东省1996-2007年间城市化进程中人口城市化与土地城市化之间的关系进行了研究。结果显示,1996-2007年间,广东省人口城市化与土地城市化水平之间显著正相关,土地城市化水平每增长1%,户籍人口城市化水平增长约15%;与全国范围内土地城市化快于人口城市化不同,广东省土地城市化与人口城市化的进程基本同步。     

Land rent and housing policy: a case study of the San Francisco Bay area rental housing market

In the San Francisco Bay Area, where residential rent is among the highest in the United States, an analysis of data from several sources demonstrates that high rent cannot be accounted for by higher quality, higher operating costs, or higher construction costs. At least one-third of the total rent paid is land rent. Despite increases in real incomes, very-low-income tenants in the Bay Area today have less income remaining after payment of rent than tenants did in 1960. High land rent is a long-term feature of the Bay Area rental market that results mostly from its geography, the density of its urban centers, and a strong economy, rather than from regulatory barriers to new multifamily construction. Deregulation is not a sufficient response to the effects of land rent on low-income tenants. Government should subsidize non-profit housing organizations, particularly land trusts that remove residential land from the market. Taxes on land rent would be a particularly appropriate funding source.     

Future changes in age and household patterns: Some implications for public finances

Using stochastic forecasting techniques, this paper assesses the consequences for public finances of changes in age and household structures in Denmark over the period 2008–2037. Focusing on components of welfare provisions and tax payments with noticeable differences across age and household status, we show that, based on a point forecast, the fiscal impact of changes in household structures amounts to an annual negative effect of 0.5% of GDP, and the effect of changes in age structures is forecast to worsen the public budget by 3.7% of GDP per year. While being subject to a considerable amount of uncertainty, the prospect of such a dramatic weakening of public finances is likely to trigger demands for welfare reforms characterized by a more individualized system of public transfer and tax payments, in addition to the measures that have already been taken to address the fiscal effects of population ageing.     

The demand for housing in developing countries: The case of Korea

This paper presents the results of an analysis of urban housing demand for Korea taking into account the most recent findings of housing demand analysis concerning specification and aggregation biases. In order to obtain correctly specified demand functions, a procedure based on a model of the housing market originally proposed by Muth is used. Drawing on the detailed land information available in Korea, this procedure permits the calculation of an individual price per unit of housing services for each household. The results show conclusively that both the income and price elasticity of the demand for housing services in Korea are comparable to those found in the United States: the income elasticity is smaller than one and the price elasticity is negative and smaller than one in absolute value. Given the number of countries found within the per capita income range between Korea ($700) and the United States ($7800), the finding that these two countries have comparable demand elasticities is of major significance: in the absence of good national estimates, the order of magnitudes found here would be used for other country analyses.     

Systems engineering approach in residential land planning

Residential land planning, which is concerned with the physical development of land for residential use, is a multidisciplinary activity wherein the physical planner, engineer and architect play very prominent roles. Cost is paramount for low-income households. Therefore, in residential land planning for producing lots for this economic group, all possible efforts have to be made for reducing the cost per lot consistent with acceptable standards. To achieve this objective, residential land planning should be concerned not only with physical planning but should also take into account the interaction between the spatial design, the architectural design of the dwelling and the design and layout of utility systems so that the cost per lot including the service connection cost is minimised. In the paper, the systems nature of the residential land planning problem has been discussed and a cost-optimisation model for obtaining the optimum physical design of a planning module (a unit of design) fulfilling the given constraints has been developed using the technique of geometric programming. Application of the model is illustrated with a number of example problems using the field data, which show large cost differences from one system solution to another. This establishes the need for such an approach if cost reduction is the primary objective. The geometric programming technique of optimisation adopted in the paper could be used by a designer in the smallest design office with the help of a low-cost programmable calculator and the programmes developed by the author.     

Economics of residential crowding in developing countries

In an attempt to eliminate residential crowding, most countries pursue the policy objective of providing one dwelling unit per household. However, we know little about the demand for various dimensions of housing space which affects the levels of crowding. This paper analyzes the nature of demand for residential space and multiple occupancy in order to identify the major determinants of crowding. The result indicates that to a great extent crowding is explained by economic factors and that the current policy approach to elimination of crowding, which emphasizes one dwelling per household, is not likely to be effective.     

Optimal density of radial major roads in a two-dimensional monocentric city with endogenous residential distribution and housing prices

This paper proposes an analytical urban system equilibrium model for optimizing the density of radial major roads in a two-dimensional monocentric city. The proposed model involves four types of agents: local authorities, property developers, households and household workers (i.e. commuters). The local authorities aim to maximize the total social welfare of the urban system by determining the optimal density of radial major roads in the city. The property developers seek to determine the intensity of their capital investment in the land market to maximize the net profit generated from the housing supply. The households choose residential locations that maximize their utility within a budget constraint, and the commuters choose the radial major roads that minimize their individual costs of travel between home and workplace. A heuristic solution procedure is developed to find the urban system equilibrium solution. A system optimum model is also proposed to optimize the density of radial major roads that maximizes the social welfare of the urban system. The proposed model can endogenously determine household residential distribution and land values across the city, along with the housing market structure in terms of housing prices and space. Numerical comparative static analyses of congestion pricing and road infrastructure investment (adding a new radial major road) are carried out together with evaluation of the effects of the service level of radial major roads, urban population size, and household income level on the urban economy.     

An exploratory empirical note on determinants of inter-regional living-cost differentials in the United States, 1970 and 1975

This paper examines and compares the determinant of geographic living-cost differentials in the United States for the years 1970 and 1975. In both cases the cost of living is affected by population density, population size, per capita income and right-to-work legislation.