Indivisibilities and development timing the shopping-center problem

The subject of this paper is the timing and efficiency of development decisions in urban or regional markets for establishments like shopping centers, hotels, and commercial office buildings where indivisibilities are important. It presents a model of the land development process that incorporates indivisibilities. A non-optimality theorem is proved to confirm that market-controlled development timing is not optimal, and that sometimes the market undersupplies indivisible establishments once a terminal state is reached. Further, during the period of development the market may oversupply establishments for intervals of time. In contrast to static analysis, indivisibilities do not allow developers to earn positive profits. These are competed away by foresighted, sequential development timing.     

Ex-ante agricultural research evaluation with site specific technology generation: the case of sorghum in Kenya

Agricultural commodity research has very site-specific productivity impacts. Crucial determinants of the magnitude and distribution of research benefits include agroecological conditions for technology generation and adoption, as well as commodity market-structure. This paper presents a process for ex-ante research evaluation which accounts for these factors with a dynamic, spatial multi-market model. Simulation results based on sorghum research in Kenya demonstrate that potential research benefits can vary dramatically research program research target zones. In Kenya, however, population-induced demand growth not technological development will have the greatest influence on future sorghum markets.     

Has the United States Overinvested in Housing?

Several economists have concluded that housing investment has been excessive relative to industrial investment in the U.S. Most blame provisions of the federal income tax that favor owner-occupied housing.
This paper poses the question within a two-sector neoclassical growth model which permits the social return to housing to differ from that to non-housing. The model is estimated using national income accounts and capital stock data from 1929 to 1983. The conclusion is that the return to housing capital is about half that to non-housing capital and that the housing stock should be about 75% of its 1983 volume.     

Money substitutes and monetary policy in the U.K., 1922–1974

In the U.K., following the publication of the Radcliffe Report, it was widely believed that monetary policy was impotent because any attempt to make use of monetary policy would be fully offset by perfect money substitutes which were not controlled by the monetary authorities. This paper tests whether such substitutes exist. The technique is to fit a money demand function to a long run of data allowing the interest elasticity to vary from observation to observation, and using a procedure which permits infinite values of the elasticity. It was found that, although the elasticity does vary, no observation was consistent with the Radcliffe view. This was true for both interest rates tried, and the function proved very stable when tested. We conclude that the Radcliffe Hypothesis can be decisively rejected.