A Century of Housing Shelter Prices: Is There a Downward Bias in the CPI?

Tenant rental shelter is by far the most important component of the CPI, because it is used as a proxy for owner-occupied housing. This paper develops a wide variety of current and historical evidence dating back to 1914 to demonstrate that the CPI rent index is biased downward for all of the last century. The CPI rises roughly 2 percent per year slower than quality-unadjusted indexes of gross rent, setting a challenge for this research of measuring the rate of quality change in rental apartments. If quality increased at a rate of 2 percent per year, the CPI was not biased downward at all, but if quality increased at a slower rate of 1 percent per year, then the CPI was biased downward at a rate of 1 percent. Our analysis of a rich set of data sources goes backward chronologically, starting with a hedonic regression analysis on a large set of panel data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) covering 1975-2003. Prior to 1975, we have large micro data files from the U. S. Census of Housing extending back to 1930. In addition to the hedonic regression data, we stitch together data on the diffusion of important quality attributes of rental units, including plumbing, heating, and electrification, over the period 1918-73. Our final piece of evidence is based on a study of quality-adjusted rents in a single local community, Evanston IL, covering the period 1925-99. Our overall conclusions are surprisingly consistent across sources and eras, that the CPI bias was roughly -1.0 percent prior to the methodological improvements in the CPI that date from the mid-1980s. Our reliance on a wide variety of methodologies and evidence on types of quality change and their importance, while leaving the outcome still uncertain, at least in our view substantially narrows the range of possibilities regarding the history of CPI bias for rental shelter over the twentieth century.

Canada, Empire and Indigenous People in the Americas

This article argues that Canada is an imperial power in the global order, and that more traditional notions of Canada as a rich dependency or arguments that call for a project to defend Canadian sovereignty fail to properly account for this. Central to the Canadian state project, both in its historical and contemporary manifestations, is an agenda of accumulation by dispossession, in which Indigenous nations are a central target. In the period of neoliberalism, Canadian capital, facilitated by the state, is searching out new spaces of accumulation in Canada and abroad, particularly in Latin America, and Indigenous land and labour are crucial to its success. Instead of defending Canadian sovereignty, the Left must respond by developing a sharp anti-imperialist analysis of Canada’s role in the global economy. This article will draw on the policies and strategies of Canada’s mining industry, which is a powerful actor at home and abroad, as one important example of the imperialist dynamics it is tracing

Integrating Regional Economic Indicators with the Real Estate Cycle

Previous literature has followed an evolutionary path in the examination of office market volatility. Where initial models were designed to show the close relationship between economic fundamentals and volatility at the national level, more recent models have focused on metro-level volatility. This study quantifies the volatility associated with metropolitan markets in terms of vacancy rates and identifies those economic factors that underlie this risk. The analysis suggests that movements in vacancy rates are likely to be affected by different factors at different stages of the cycle. In the long run, this analysis shows that the availability of capital had the strongest effect on the volatility of office vacancy rates. In periods that follow excess construction, market-specific, demand-side factors appear to be the dominant influence.

Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Information Gap: Results from a Survey of Home Energy Auditors

Commercial and residential buildings are responsible for 42 percent of all U.S. energy consumption and 41 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions. Engineering studies identify several investments in new enegy-efficiency equipment or building retrofits that would more than pay for themselves in terms of lower future energy costs, but homeowners and businesses generally do not have good information about how to take advantage of these opportunities. Energy auditors make up a growing industry of professionals who evaluate building energy use and provide this information to building owners. This paper reports the results of a survey of nearly 500 home energy auditors and contractors that Resources for the Future conducted in summer 2011. The survey asked about the characteristics of these businesses and the services they provide, the degree to which homeowners follow up on their recommendations, and the respondents’ opinions on barriers to home energy retrofits and the role for government. Findings from the survey suggest that the audit industry only partially is filling the information gap. Not enough homeowners know about or understand audits, and the follow-through on recommendations once they do have audits is incomplete. But the survey findings suggest that low energy prices and the high cost of retrofits may be more responsible for these outcomes than failures of information.energy efficiency, climate change

Tools for 3D scientific visualization in computational aerodynamics

The purpose is to describe the tools and techniques in use at the NASA Ames Research Center for performing visualization of computational aerodynamics, for example visualization of flow fields from computer simulations of fluid dynamics about vehicles such as the Space Shuttle. The hardware used for visualization is a high-performance graphics workstation connected to a super computer with a high speed channel. At present, the workstation is a Silicon Graphics IRIS 3130, the supercomputer is a CRAY2, and the high speed channel is a hyperchannel. The three techniques used for visualization are post-processing, tracking, and steering. Post-processing analysis is done after the simulation. Tracking analysis is done during a simulation but is not interactive, whereas steering analysis involves modifying the simulation interactively during the simulation. Using post-processing methods, a flow simulation is executed on a supercomputer and, after the simulation is complete, the results of the simulation are processed for viewing. The software in use and under development at NASA Ames Research Center for performing these types of tasks in computational aerodynamics is described. Workstation performance issues, benchmarking, and high-performance networks for this purpose are also discussed as well as descriptions of other hardware for digital video and film recording

Quantum dot behavior in graphene nanoconstrictions

Graphene nanoribbons display an imperfectly understood transport gap. We measure transport through nanoribbon devices of several lengths. In nanoribbons of length greater than or equal to 250 nm we observe transport through multiple quantum dots in series, while shorter constrictions of length less than or equal to 60 nm display behavior characteristic of single and double quantum dots. Dot size scales with constriction width. We propose a model where transport occurs through quantum dots that are nucleated by background disorder potentials in the presence of a confinement gap.Comment: published version: 24 pages, 9 figures (includes supplementary information

Youth ice hockey coaches\u27 perceptions of a team-building intervention program

The purpose of the current study was to explain youth ice hockey coaches’ perceptions of the effectiveness of a team-building intervention program. Eight Peewee-level hockey coaches implemented the same team-building activities with their teams throughout the regular season. Data were gathered using 3 methods. Specifically, coaches answered questions on a pre-and postintervention form after each team-building activity, coaches’ behaviors were observed by members of the research team, and each coach completed a semistructured exit interview after the completion of the regular season. Results highlighted the benefits of the team-building intervention program. Specifically, coaches felt athletes enjoyed this experience and improved or acquired a variety of important life skills and abilities. Coaches also felt that athletes bonded during activities and improved their abilities to work together as a group. Finally, coaches felt that their own personal communication skills improved