Property taxes and the timing of urban land development

This paper develops an optimal timing model which extends our understanding of the effects which property taxes have on the timing of land development. Comparative static effects of changes in property tax rates are investigated and policy rules are developed for the use of differential pre- and post-development tax rates to affect the timing of development. Changes in the property tax rate are found to be non-neutral with respect to the timing of development in most cases, accelerating or delaying development depending upon specific market conditions.     

Productivity and Welfare

Technical change is generally characterized by a rate and biases, both evaluated for given producer prices. This paper examines the potential discrepancy between this rate and the corresponding rate of consumer welfare change as measured by Allais distributable surplus. We postulate a general equilibrium context with various market failures (taxes, quotas, imperfect competition, and “poorly priced” commodities), and use comparative statics to express the rate of welfare change in terms of the rate and biases of the technical change. An elementary simulation model of a taxed economy suggests that the rate of welfare change may differ from the rate of technical change by as much as 50% under plausible circumstances.     

Job satisfaction and gender: Why are women so happy at work?

By most objective standards, women's jobs are worse than men's, yet women report higher levels of job satisfaction than do men. This paper uses a recent large-scale British survey to document the extent of this gender differential for eight measures of job satisfaction and to evaluate the proposition that identical men and women in identical jobs should be equally satisfied. Neither the different jobs that men and women do, their different work values, nor sample selection account for the gender satisfaction differential. The paper's proposed explanation appeals to the notion of relative well-being, especially relative to workers' expectations. An identical man and woman with the same jobs and expectations would indeed report identical job satisfaction, but women's expectations are argued to be lower than men's. This hypothesis is supported by the finding that the gender satisfaction differential disappears for the young, the higher-educated, professionals and those in male-dominated workplaces, for all of whom there is less likely to be a gender difference in job expectations.     

Product attributes and models of multiple discreteness

Demand for product characteristics is examined within the context of models that allow for both corner and interior solutions corresponding to zero and non-zero demand. Product attribute information is associated with marginal utility and curvature (satiation) parameters of various utility functions. Empirical applications demonstrate the need for incorporating characteristics in a fairly general way. We also compare our approach to an ideal point and pure Lancasterian versions of our nonlinear utility model. The data support our model over either the ideal point or Lancasterian variants.     

Land use externalities, open space preservation, and urban sprawl

Parcel data on residential land conversion are used to investigate how land use externalities influence the rate of development and modify policies designed to manage urban growth and preserve open space. Several “smart growth” policies are found to significantly influence land conversion, including a development clustering policy that concentrates development and generates preserved open space. In addition to directly affecting a parcel's hazard rate of conversion, this policy is found to affect neighboring parcels' conversion by generating a positive open space externality that hastens their development. The implication that the clustering policy could generate a more sprawled pattern of development is explored using spatial simulation.     

A two-stage stratified Warner’s randomized response model using optimal allocation

This paper applies Kim and Wardes (2004) stratified Warners randomized response model to Mangat and Singhs (1990) two-stage randomized response model. The proposed stratified randomized response model has an optimal allocation and a large gain in precision. Hence, the estimator based on the proposed method is more efficient than Kim and Wardes (2004) and Mangat and Singhs (1990) estimators under the conditions presented in both the case of completely truthful reporting and that of not completely truthful reporting by the respondents.     

Stock market volatility,the news,and monetary policy

The dynamic relationship linking the volatility of equity prices with “the news” and the expected path for monetary policy is investigated. Previous results that link the impact of the news about real activity to changes in current and future interest rates are employed in developing a positive link between changes in volatility and the news. Empirically, our results uncover a positive and statistically significant response of the CBOE volatility index, VIX, to unanticipated changes in employment, but not to inflation. Hence, agents' expectations for the policy response to news have an important influence on the expected volatility of stock prices. (JEL E44, E52)     

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS[1]

Human resource management (HRM) is a term which is now widely used but very loosely defined. In this paper it is argued that if the concept is to have any social scientific value, it should be defined in such a way as to differentiate it from traditional personnel management and to allow the development of testable hypotheses about its impact. Based on theoretical work in the field of organizational behaviour it is proposed that HRM comprises a set of policies designed to maximize organizational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work. Within this model, collective industrial relations have, at best, only a minor role. Despite the apparent attractions of HRM to managements, there is very little evidence of any quality about its impact. Furthermore very few UK organizations appear to practise a distinctive form of HRM, although many are moving slowly in that direction through, for example, policies of employee involvement.     

Are robust estimation methods useful in the structural errors-in-variables model?

Summary In this paper it is investigated whether robust estimation procedures for the parameters of a regression model are also applicable when the observations are generated by the errors-in-variables model. Specifically, attention is paid to bounded-influence estimators, i.e. estimators that are constructed in such a way that the influence of a single observation on the outcome of the estimator is bounded. Both the classical errors-in-variables model and models with contaminated observational errors are considered.The authors are indebted to a referee for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.