The Strategic Industry Supply Curve*

In this paper, we develop the concept of the strategic industry supply curve, representing the locus of Nash equilibrium outputs and prices arising from additive shocks to demand. We show that the standard analysis of partial equilibrium under perfect competition, including the graphical representation of supply and demand, due to Marshall, can be extended to encompass imperfectly competitive markets. Our approach permits a unified treatment of monopoly, oligopoly and competition in linear supply schedules. Further, our model satisfies the five principles of incidence set out by Weyl and Fabinger [2013].     

保障性住房供给的博弈分析

目前我国房价增长远远大于居民可支配收入的增长,越来越多的人望房兴叹,保障性住房制度为中低收入者提供了住房保障,但是我国实行保障性住房制度以来,一直存在保障性住房供给不足的问题.丈章通过建立博弈模型,对该现象进行分析,揭示了保障性住房供给不足的根本原因是保障性住房供应制度存在问题.针对所发现的问题,为我国增加保降性住房供应提出了对策和建议.     

The Other Side of Eight Mile: Suburban Population and Housing Supply

This article establishes a linkage between decadal changes in suburban population and the supply of suburban dwelling units. It then estimates an econometric supply-and-demand model for 317 U.S. suburban areas for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s using the State of the Cities database. Suburban supply is more elastic than central city supply, with suburban estimates between +1.26 and +1.42. However, separate estimates by geographic region lead to supply elasticities of +0.89 for the northeastern quadrant of the United States and +1.86 for the remainder of the United States.     

Housing Supply,Land Costs and Price Adjustment

We analyze relationships between housing supply elasticities, land costs and house price dynamics, contributing three main insights. First, higher housing supply elasticities help contain short‐run price spikes following demand shocks. Second, land price dynamics influence this relationship; supply responses are lessened and house price spikes are exacerbated as land prices increase. Third, we estimate a system of regional equations modeling housing supply using a Tobin's‐q specification (incorporating construction and land costs) and show that regional price dynamics are a function of the region's supply elasticity.     

The Industrial Organization of Housing Supply: Market Activity, Land Supply and the Size of Homebuilder Firms

Existing studies of housing markets assume that homebuilding is a homogeneous, perfectly competitive industry. This paper uses MSA-level data on the average size of homebuilder establishments and homebuilder market concentration to test the appropriateness of this paradigm. The data reveal a wide and systematic variation across metropolitan-area housing markets in both the average size of builders and the market share for the largest builders in an MSA. These results are more consistent with treating homebuilders as monopolistically competitive suppliers of a differentiated product than with treating them as perfectly competitive homogeneous firms. Builders are larger in more active housing markets and where there is a greater supply of readily developed land suitable for large developments. Builder size and concentration are sensitive to the type of regulating jurisdiction imposing land-use regulation. Both are lower when land-use regulations are imposed by smaller jurisdictions, and this is particularly true when the smaller jurisdictions impose more intense regulation.     

Supply Elasticity and the Housing Cycle of the 2000s

There is no evidence that differences in supply elasticity caused cross‐sectional variation among U.S. housing markets in the severity of the 2000s housing cycle. This is true in three sets of empirical specifications: a first that assumes identical demand changes in the 2000s across markets, a second that proxies for supply elasticity and demand changes in the 2000s with estimates based on price and quantity changes in the 1980s and a third that uses physical and regulatory constraints to proxy for supply elasticity and uses state fixed effects to capture variation in demand conditions.     

税收政策对保障性住房供给的影响分析

在我国保障性住房有效供给严重不足、政府决心加大保障性住房建设的情况下,对保障性住房供给方式以及税收政策的影响进行了分析与研究。根据住房过滤与梯度消费理论,完善性地构建了保障性住房多层次供给模型。并以这个模型作为税收政策对保障性住房作用的契入点,分析了现有的税收政策对各种保障性住房供给的影响,提出了对保障性住房供给方税收政策改革的合理化建议。     

世界能源供需现状与发展趋势

现阶段世界能源消费呈现以下热点：1)受经济发展和人口增长的影响,世界一次能源消费量不断增加;2)世界能源消费呈现不同的增长模式,发达国家因进入后工业化社会,经济向低能耗、高产出的产业结构发展,能源消费增长速率明显低于发展中国家;5)世界能源消费结构趋向优质化,但地区差异仍然很大;4)世界能源资源仍比较丰富,但能源贸易及运输压力增大。未来,伴随着能源消费的持续增长和能源资源分布集中度的日益增大,对能源资源的争夺将日趋激烈,争夺的方式也更加复杂;同时,化石能源对环境的污染和全球气候的影响将日趋严重。面对以上挑战,世界能源供应和消费将向多元化、清洁化、高效化、全球化和市场化趋势发展。鉴于国情,我国应特别注意依靠科技进步和政策引导,提高能源效率,寻求能源的清洁化利用,积极倡导能源、环境和经济的可持续发展,并积极借鉴国际先进经验,建立和完善我国能源安全体系。     

The Individual Housing Account

This paper summarizes the available information about the proposed Individual Housing Account (IHA), a tax-exempt savings account designed to facilitate the accumulation of the downpayment on a home for would-be first-time homebuyers. We review both the limited body of U.S. research and data on a similar Canadian program which has been in existence since 1974. We find little evidence to suggest that the IHA would stimulate homeownership or housing construction to any noticeable extent. It would enable potential buyers to save enough for a downpayment more rapidly than they now can, but this would increase homeownership only during the start-up period for the program, not in the long run. We also estimate the foregone tax revenues from the program to be in the neighborhood of $2 to $3 billion annually, once the program has reached maturity.     

The Resale Housing Market

This paper describes and analyzes the structure and operation of the market for existing single-family homes. The paper develops aggregative models of sales and renovation activity based on the adjustment choice decisions of households to alter their housing consumption by moving or by undertaking renovations. The models demonstrate that housing resales and renovation expenditures occur when the present value of the gains associated with a housing adjustment exceeds the costs of the transaction. The choice of the adjustment mode is shown to be significantly influenced by the relative transactions costs of moving versus renovating.     

The Effect of Subsidized Housing on Values of Adjacent Housing

This is a case study of the effect of subsidized housing on the value of adjacent non-subsidized housing. Four townhouse clusters in Fairfax County, Virginia, were selected for study because of the high degree of homogeneity between clusters. The clusters are all in the same community but vary in distance from subsidized housing. Sale prices were analyzed using a regression model which included distance from subsidized housing as an independent variable. Based on the results of the regression analysis, the authors conclude that the subsidized housing had a negative impact on the values of adjacent properties.     

The Demand for Housing Additions: An Empirical Analysis

Little is known of a household's decision to make a housing addition despite the large and growing size of these expenditures. This paper examines this decision in a two-step empirical process: first, those factors that influence the probability of a housing addition are determined, and second, the value of the addition made is analyzed. Preliminary results indicate that unmet housing consumption needs, but not the investment potential of housing additions, have a significant impact on both the probability of an addition and the value of an addition made. Furthermore, ceteris paribus, non-white households have a greater probability of making a housing addition, and on average, spend more on housing additions than do white households.     

从供需角度分析美国住房保障

文章介绍了美国从20世纪30年代至今针对中低收入阶层的住房保障政策,并通过供给和需求两个角度来分析美国在不同阶段采取不同住房保障模式的历史原因.结合中国现状指出美国住房保障对中国的借鉴意义.     

The Affordability of Adequate Housing

A "quality-based" measure of housing affordability problems employing the cost of housing just meeting adequacy standards is proposed as an improvement over the conventional "high" rent-to-income criterion. Based on Annual Housing Survey data, affordability difficulties grew between 1975 and 1983 by either measure. The conventional measure, however, overestimated the extent of quality-based affordability difficulty for renters by 20% in 1975 and 24% in 1983 based upon Section 8 housing quality standards. In addition, 35% of rental households with an affordability problem by the conventional measure did not have an affordability problem by the quality-based measure, while 19 to 23% of rental households found to have an affordability problem by the quality-based measure were not so classified using the conventional measure.     

Price Strategies for Idiosyncratic Goods—The Case of Housing

We determine the mechanism that a rational, profit-maximizing seller would use to revise his reservation price for a heterogeneous or infrequently exchanged good. For instance, while one dimension of a home's quality may be easily determined in competitive markets (e.g., the valuation of floor size, location, etc.), other dimensions of quality may be idiosyncratic (unit specific) and unobservable by the seller (e.g., aesthetics of the home). Here, a seller of a new or infrequently exchanged housing unit may use sales success information to revise his expectation of the unit's market-determined value and hence revise his reservation price. The rational seller will, upon arrival of the first buyer inspecting the unit, determine a sequence of reservation prices for this and expected subsequent buyers. This price sequence falls for subsequent buyers and starts from a lower initial price if the first buyer arrives later than expected. Through this mechanism, we offer an explanation for price dispersion and vacancy durations in housing markets. While we explicitly model the real estate market here, this price revision mechanism is also applicable to rental markets, labor markets, used car markets, and other markets characterized by heterogeneity and infrequent sales.     

The NELS Curve: Replicating The Bell Curve Analyses with the National Education Longitudinal Study

This study uses the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) to replicate both the analysis in The Bell Curve and that of several of its previous replications. We examine the relative importance of test scores and family background in predicting dropping out of high school, starting college, arrests, and out-of-wedlock fertility. Our results relax several arbitrary assumptions made in The Bell Curve . We strongly reject The Bell Curve's conclusion that family background is almost always less important than test scores in predicting outcomes. In addition, our analysis casts doubt on some of The Bell Curve's claims concerning reverse discrimination in education.     

A Future for Public Housing

Two primary reforms are needed for the future success of the current public housing program: revision of the funding system for operating subsidy and development of a strategy for capital improvements and future use of the inventory. The current funding system has been criticized because of the dramatic growth in operating costs in the last decade and because of apparent over-funding of some public housing authorities (PHAs) and a distributional bias against housing authorities operating in distressed environments. Either a cost-based operating subsidy system or a market-rent based system would have strengths as well as weaknesses. Either type of system can provide adequate, fair, constrained, and predictable subsidies. The current level of deterioration of the public housing stock, the concentration of social and physical problems in 7-to-15% of the inventory, and the perverse incentives of the present modernization program, suggest a need for reform of the capital improvement funding system. Each PHA should be provided fixed levels of funds, based on its needs, both for rehabilitating and maintaining projects. Further, a project-by-project assessment should be made to identify those which cannot be cost-effectively managed or rehabilitated.
The President's Commission on Housing contributed importantly to public discussion of these policy areas, by recommending a dramatic reassessment of each project and its future use in the context of a change to a market-based subsidy system.