The effects of zoning on population and employment density

This article examines zoning's impacts on population and employment density. It develops a model to explore the effects of zoning on the density of residential and nonresidential land use. Drawing on this model, density gradients that incorporate the effects of zoning are estimated for Greensboro, North Carolina. The model is used to simulate the effects of a change in restrictive-use residential zoning. The simulation shows that a 1 percent increase in the level of restrictive-use residential zoning across all neighborhoods in the city is associated with a 0.3 percent increase in gross population density and a 0.1 percent decline in net density (intensity). It suggests that restrictive-use zoning affects both the density and the intensity of residential land use through its effects on the value of residential land.     

Risk preferences in multi-period consumption models, the equity premium puzzle, and habit formation utility

The relationship between the relative risk aversion measure for the utility function for consumption and that for the value function for wealth is a derived relationship whose properties depend on how consumption and wealth are defined and measured. This fact together with information concerning estimates for these two relative risk aversion measures is used to give another perspective on the equity premium puzzle, and to explain why it is that the habit formation utility function is effective in eliminating that puzzle. A time separable utility function that can serve as an alternative to the assumption of habit formation is also presented.     

EMPLOYMENT-RELATED LEGAL OBLIGATIONS: A RISK MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE OF FEDERAL ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAWS

Abstract: The authors examine the statutes, protected classes and damages under federal antidiscrimination laws. Because of the limitations of insurance as a loss financing tool, the authors contend that loss control is a more prudent course of action for employers than loss financing.     

The usefulness of inaccurate models: Towards an understanding of the emergence of financial risk management

Is the growth of modern financial risk management a result of the accuracy and reliability of risk models? This paper argues that the remarkable success of today’s financial risk management methods should be attributed primarily to their communicative and organizational usefulness and less to the accuracy of the results they produced. This paper traces the intertwined historical paths of financial risk management and financial derivatives markets. Spanning from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, the paper analyses the social, political and organizational factors that underpinned the exponential success of one of today’s leading risk management methodologies, the applications based on the Black–Scholes–Merton options pricing model. Using primary documents and interviews, the paper shows how financial risk management became part of central market practices and gained reputation among the different organisational market participants (trading firms, the options clearinghouse and the securities regulator). Ultimately, the events in the aftermath of the market crash of October 1987 showed that the practical usefulness of financial risk management methods overshadowed the fact that when financial risk management was critically needed the risk model was inaccurate.     

Does progress matter?

This paper, presented as an addresss to the Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, argues that writing history may be more interesting if progress is not made the leitmotif. Starting from an examination of early causal accounts of the history of political economy, written in the ninteenth century by Marx, Toynbee, Ingram and Leslie, a plea is made for narratives rather than explanations. Consistent with the former historians of economic thought this may be perceived as eavesdropping on conversations of the past. To understand the richness of these conversations they need to perceive their work not just as a sub-discipline of economics but in a wider interdisciplinary setting.     

The Nonparametric Approach to Applied Welfare Analysis

Changes in total surplus are traditional measures of economic welfare. We propose necessary and sufficient conditions for rationalizing individual and aggregate consumer demand data with individual quasilinear and homothetic utility functions. Under these conditions, consumer surplus is a valid measure of consumer welfare. For nonmarketed goods, we propose necessary and sufficient conditions on input market data for efficient production, i.e. production at minimum cost. Under these conditions we derive a cost function for the nonmarketed good, where producer surplus is the area above the marginal cost curve. We are greatful to helpful remarks and comments of the referees and the editor. The work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, through Grant BEC2002-2130, the Generalitat de Catlaunya, through Grant 2005SGR-00454 and the Barcelona Economics Program (CREA).     

The aggregated excess demand function and other aggregation procedures

Summary Two theorems are given; the first extends the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem characterizing aggregate demand functions from the set ofn2 commodities to all of the 2 ⁿ –(n+1) subsets of two or more commodities. The second theorem concerns spatial voting models for k2 candidates over a space of n2 issues. The theorem characterizes the sincere elecion rankings of thek candidates over all of the 2 ⁿ –1 subsets of one or more issues. Both theorems have the same kind of conclusion; anything can happen. By demonstrating the mathematical reasons for these conclusions and by recalling related, recent results from statistics, voting, and economics, it is argued that this anything can happen conclusion is the type one must anticipate for aggregation procedures; particularly for the processes commonly used in economic models where the procedure is responsive to changes in agents' preferences, changes in data, etc.I am pleased to acknowledge conversations with L. Hurwicz, A. Mas-Colell and C. Simon about this material. In particular, I want to thank J. Jordan for his several helpful suggestions. Also, I benefited from comments made at meetings and seminars where these results were presented; this includes a June, 1990, conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Some stylistic suggestions were made by Arvid and Padon Kalinen. This research was supported, in part, by NSF Grant IRI-8803505.