Questions about the equivalence of market rents and user costs for owner occupied housing

For modern nations, it is recognized as important that temporal and spatial variations in costs for comparable dwelling services are carefully measured. The costs of owner occupied as well as rental housing have important roles to play in both the consumer price index (CPI) and the System of National Accounts (SNA). The 1993 System of National Accounts (SNA93) specifies that a rental value of the housing stock should be included as part of the aggregates for personal consumption, personal income, income of proprietors and value added for the real estate industry. Yet, little attention has been devoted to an underlying commonality of practice: the implicit assumption that housing cost information for either renters or owner occupiers can be used for assessing movements over time and spatial differences in the cost of housing for both renters and owners, after allowing for differences regarding payment for taxes and certain ongoing expenses such as insurance and utilities. But in the real world, are the services that renters and owner occupiers get from their dwellings comparable? Also, for both renters and owner occupiers, are there place-related differences in the services they derive from their dwellings? And if so, what are the implications for official statistics making? These are the questions raised by the empirical results presented in this paper.     

INFORMAL SECTOR, NETWORKS AND INTRA-CITY VARIATIONS IN ACTIVITIES: FINDINGS FROM DELHI SLUMS

Based on a micro-survey of around 800 slum households in Delhi this paper highlights the role of networks in accessing jobs in the urban labor market. Primarily three types of networks have been identified, which operate through kinship bonds, caste and ethnicity bonds, and formal channels like NGOs and employment exchanges. The type of networks used seems to vary across occupations. Based on a multinomial logit model the paper notes that given the differences in the nature of economic activities performed in different parts of the city, factors like networks and the urge to reside near the contact person and the work place make the urban labor market highly segmented. Hence, certain pockets within the city tend to get crowded by the growth of slums, and secondly inter-spatial variations in terms of activities/occupations make slum population in the city a heterogeneous set, and thus their problems and need vary substantially. Hence, any uniform policy for clusters located in different zones may not be able to tackle effectively the problems of slum dwellers in the city.     

The effect of reimbursement of worker's transport costs: The case of urban areas in Japan

In some economies, workers are compensated for their commuting costs to the workplace. The spatial structure of an urban area is analyzed comparing a transport cost compensated system to one where expenses are borne by workers. Profit maximizing behavior by firms results in lower wages being paid in the city where transport costs are compensated. It is shown that worker renters achieve a higher level of utility in the area where transport costs are not compensated. Numerical examples are constructed using a range of parameter values which yields measures of the increase in spatial size of the city where transport costs are compensated. The loss in welfare is also evaluated.     

Implications of alternate policies on welfare of slum dwellers: Evidence from Pune,India

In this paper we examine how slum dwellers value location-based amenities. In most developing country cities, residents living in slums have poor-quality dwellings and limited access to basic public services and amenities. Using data from Pune, India, we estimate the residential location choices of slum dwellers, which are conditional on housing quality, neighborhood amenities, and community structure. We use these estimates to simulate the impact of alternate interventions on household welfare. We find that households derive benefits from housing quality and neighborhood amenities. While relocating households to the periphery has adverse consequences for household welfare, we show that households could be adequately compensated out of the increased tax revenue accruing from alternative uses of the vacated central land.     

THE ROLE OF TENURE SECURITY IN HOUSING SELF-IMPROVEMENT: A CASE-STUDY OF SURABAYA, INDONESIA

Some developing countries are tapping into the opportunities offered by self-help gradual improvement of houses in order to relieve the environmental problems besetting their urban areas. For decisionmakers and planners it is important to know the factors that can entice slum dwellers to improve their houses. Using Indonesian data, this paper has tested and verified the assumption that tenure security is a powerful factor that can entice slum dwellers to internalize the benefits from neighborhood environmental quality improvement.     

Does home owning smooth the variability of future housing consumption?

We show that the hedging benefit of owning a home reduces the variability of housing consumption after a move. When a current home owner’s house price covaries positively with housing costs in a future city, changes in the future cost of housing are offset by commensurate changes in wealth before the move. Using Census micro-data, we find that the cross-sectional variation in house values subsequent to a move is lower for home owners who moved between more highly covarying cities. Our preferred estimates imply that an increase in covariance of one standard deviation reduces the variance of subsequent housing consumption by about 11%. Households at the top end of the covariance distribution who are likely to have owned large homes before moving get the largest reductions, of up to 40% relative to households at the median.     

SLUM DWELLERS' ACCESS TO BASIC AMENITIES: THE ROLE OF POLITICAL CONTACT, ITS DETERMINANTS AND ADVERSE EFFECTS

This paper analyzes slum dwellers' access to basic amenities and the ways in which they gain access. Associations between Indian states' share of slums, proportions of notified slums, and prevailing conditions in terms of basic amenities present political contact as a key factor. Based on the political economy framework, slum survey data (2004–2005) show that political contact helps access facilities such as land tenure and basic amenities. The logit model identifies determinants of political contact by examining social networks and individual endowments. While political accessibility is crucial as a survival strategy, slum dwellers' vulnerability hardly diminishes over time; on the contrary, the political use of slums perpetuates it. However, strong social networks can prevent low income households from declining to a low equilibrium. The role of political contact is less applicable in other Asian countries. Instead, rational policies have greater relevance in improving the conditions of these low income households.     

城市化、农地征用与失地农民利益补偿

政府主导的低成本获取城建用地的城市化,并没有为我国生产出低价位的城市产品。这是由于我国现有的农地征用制度与对失地农民利益补偿机制的缺陷,从而内生出高昂的交易费用,其根源于我国现有的农地产权制度。因此发展我国的农地产权,赋予农民土地发展权,是问题的关键所在。     

The impact of site characteristics on housing cost estimates

Hedonic housing regressions using micro data for owners and renters from the 1972–1973 Consumer Expenditure Survey are presented. By including tract characteristics and public goods in these regressions, evidence is presented which indicates sensitivity of the physical housing variable coefficients to the choice of included site-related characteristics. Furthermore, omission of public good variables can result in misleading, and possibly perverse, coefficients on access. Intermetropolitan housing cost estimates, however, are shown to be relatively insensitive to the choice of site-related characteristics.     

Targeted saving by renters for housing purchase in Japan

This paper examines the extent to which wealth accumulation for housing purchase increases household savings and suppresses consumption. The study employs an estimation method based on simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables developed by Nelson and Olson to examine the relationship between wealth accumulation and housing purchase plans, using data relating to young Japanese renters. The estimation results provide evidence that young Japanese households severely reduce their consumption by around 30–40 percent.     

榆林市城乡群众体育活动现状的调研分析及对策研究

本文采用问卷调查、数理统计等研究方法,对榆林市城乡群众体育活动现状及其影响开展因素进行了调研分析,结果表明:榆林市城乡群众体育活动的开展总体较好,城乡群众在体育活动中对项目选择、持续时间、锻炼频次、活动时间段、地点上表现出差异,同时也显现出城乡群众的体育意识和体育消费在逐渐加强。但是,也存在着城乡群众体育活动自发性、随意性的特点,农村群众体育活动开展乏力的问题。最后,提出了相应的现实可行性对策。     

总价包干合同的成本预测和控制

总价包干是目前使用较为广泛的一种建筑市场承发包方式。对项目业主而言,总价包干方式的投资额一目了然,有利于控制投资成本。对于承包商而言,总价包干方式虽然有获利较大的机会,但风险要比其他承包方式大得多。减少这种承发包方式风险的最有效方法是成本控制法：通过合同形成前的成本测算控制承包总价,并通过落实项目承包责任制和项目成本监管来实施项目成本控制。文章结合项目合同的2个阶段的情况,分析探讨规避和消除总价包干方式风险的主要方法和措施。     

Residential search and choice of displaced households

Centrographic analysis is used to compare the residential search and choice behavior of 41 households who experienced either short-term or long-term displacement costs after moving out of the inner city of Saskatoon, with the behavior of 90 households who moved as if voluntarily. While the displaced households tended to search for housing in the same neighbourhoods as the voluntary movers, they chose a “new” home much farther away from their “old” home. By means of a logistic regression, the reasons for this more distant move are inferred to reflect both the tightness of the housing market and the housing search barriers that displaced households, who were more likely to be young or old renters, would have encountered.     

The effects of city size and moving costs on public project benefits

This paper uses a simulation model to investigate the benefits of an urban public project when the size of the system of cities (or regions) in which migration occurs can vary and when moving costs impede migration. The model captures the range of possibilities between the perfectly open and closed city cases. We find that the total number of households migrating between cities declines sharply as moving costs rise. Also the level and distribution of project benefits between renters and landowners in the project city and other cities is sensitive to both the level of moving costs and the size of the urban system. The total benefits of the project fall by half or more when moving costs are introduced, even when moving costs themselves are netted out.     

Optimal wage contracts under asymmetric information and moral hazard when investment decisions are delegated

I derive an optimal wage contract when risky investment decisions are delegated by riskaverse owners/investors to risk-neutral agents. The owners/investors do not know the probability distribution over the returns of any investment made by an agent. They know only the mean and the variance, and the upper and lower bounds of the return realizations of the different positive net present value (NPV) investment opportunities that can be discovered by their agents. They observe only the returns realized at the end of the period. Moral hazard with respect to investments made by agents, who are protected by limited liability, is also possible: an agent can falsely claim to have invested in one type of positive NPV investment opportunity and invest in another, or the agent can falsely claim to have invested in a positive NPV investment and invest in a negative NPV investment. I show that an optimal wage contract is simple under such conditions of severe asymmetric information and moral hazard. (JEL G20, G31)     

公租房小区的特征及治理

公租房小区有三个特征:一是租房者和买房者的混居;二是政府在公租房小区有着相当比重的经济利益;三是居民都是社会的收入中下阶层。公租房小区要避免变成贫民窟,其关键之一是中下阶层的居民能够也愿意参与到小区的治理中来。在此基础上,公租房小区的治理应该强调以小区居民代表为主体组成小区管理委员会,居民代表由居民大会选举产生,买房者的投票权高于租房者,政府代表拥有一定比例的投票权。     

企业技术创新能力对资本成本影响差异性的实证研究——基于不同生命周期视角

通过研究2013—2016年深市中小板上市公司发现，企业技术创新能力越强，权益和债务资本成本也就越低，同时技术创新能力对权益资本成本的影响程度要大于对债务资本成本的影响。进一步研究发现，不同生命周期的企业技术创新能力对权益和债务资本成本的影响有明显差异，处于成熟期的企业技术创新能力对权益资本成本影响更大，处于成长期的企业技术创新能力对债务资本成本影响更大。因此企业应注重提高技术创新能力，降低资本成本。同时股东和债权人应充分识别投资企业所处生命周期阶段，从而选取合理投资方案。     

Paying for Pipes,Claiming Citizenship: Political Agency and Water Reforms at the Urban Periphery

This article interrogates the nature of political agency deployed at sites of market‐oriented water reforms. It presents a case study from Bangalore, India of a water project mandating significant ‘beneficiary’ cash contributions from lower‐middle‐class dwellers for the capital cost of extending piped water to the city's peripheries. Drawing on quantitative and ethnographic data, it illustrates why property owners who lack formal water access and land tenure — groups referred to in this article as the ‘peripheralized middle class’ — consent to paying for pipes rather than resist all together despite the high cost involved. It argues that far from reflecting an internalization of a ‘willingness to pay’ or ‘stakeholder’ ethos celebrated by development practitioners today, payment for water provides an insurgent means to bargain for greater symbolic recognition, respectability and material benefits from the state. In particular, payment for pipes enables peripheral dwellers to strengthen their claims to secure land tenure in an era of exclusionary and punitive spatial policies. Payment thus comprises a terrain of contested meaning making and political struggle, at the heart of which lie the stakes of urban citizenship. In documenting the process by which property related interests and tenure claims are advanced under a scenario of reforms, this article contributes to Gramscian political‐ecological conversations on subaltern political agency and the lived character of hegemony in urban environments.     

WORKERS' COMPENSATION COSTS AND REGIONAL GROWTH DYNAMICS*

This paper attempts to gauge the effect of workplace regulation, against the background of other influences, on the increasing or decreasing competitive advantage of particular regions relative to the nation. We employ two measures of regional growth. The first is the differential rate of investment growth across states between 1978 and 1984. The results for output growth show that states both in the South and outside the South stand to lose their competitive edge in manufacturing activity from rising unit labor cost and energy cost. Rising taxes hurt industrial activity in the North but are not critical in the South. Agglomeration economies that benefit the North, apparently have no detrimental effect in the South. Rising workers' compensation cost is significant in the decline in southern competitiveness; it is not in the North. Both regions enhance their competitive position when local markets grow. For regional manufacturing investment, we find that unit labor cost and energy cost have no significant effect on the competitive position of states in the South. However, taxes and workers' compensation costs hurt investment opportunities in South.     

浅议中小型建设项目设计阶段造价管理

设计阶段进行造价管理既是必须的又是行之有效的,这是工程造价管理界的共识,在但中小型建设项目设计阶段的造价管理存在着诸多问题。本文从业主角度出发,针对存在的问题进行探讨,提出相应的对策,以期提高业主方设计阶段的造价管理水平,取得最佳投资效益。