On Amenities, Natural Advantage and Agglomeration

A prominent feature of economic geography in America is the positive correlation amongst local incomes, housing costs and city population. This paper embeds a “black box” agglomeration economy within a more neoclassical general equilibrium model of local wages, rents and population to assess the ability of various conceptual models to predict this cross-sectional variation. I use exogenous changes in housing supply to induce changes in population and examine whether the changes in rents and wages move in the same direction under neo-classical assumptions, agglomeration economies in production, congestion in production, or urbanization economies in consumption. On their own, none of these urban scale effects generate the observed pattern. All urban scale effects generate a negative correlation between rents and population. Combining natural advantage with the urban scale effects improves the models’ output. It generally predicts positive correlations amongst the three variables, although some of these effects are ambiguous in the production agglomeration model. If natural advantage and housing supply constraints vary more-or-less independently, the results suggest a better fit of the data is provided by either the congestion in production or the agglomeration in consumption models. The micro-economics of such consumption-oriented agglomeration economies have received less attention than production-oriented agglomeration economies. The results of this model thus suggest that consumption-oriented agglomeration and congestion should receive more attention in the future.agglomeration, urbanization economies, congestion, regional equilibrium, natural advantage, economic geography

Some Evidence on the Nature of Urbanization Economies

Urbanization economies – the effects on productivity and utility created endogenously by larger cities – are a fundamental component of both the economic geography of modern societies and the perpetuation of innovation and economic growth at a national level. Cities account for vast majorities of population – and even larger proportions of production and innovation – in all advanced economies. The nature of these endogenous effects of city size is thus of considerable importance. Krupka (2008) presents a general model in which exogenous variation in local productivity ("natural advantage") and development constraints generate covariation in local incomes, housing prices and population. In that model, the strength of the correlation amongst these variables depends on the nature of the dominant urbanization economy (or diseconomy). This paper looks at the data over the last several decades and finds that the data is consistent with city size increasing consumer/resident happiness and/or reducing productivity of employers.agglomeration, urbanization economies, congestion, regional equilibrium, natural advantage, economic geography

Wages, Rents and Heterogeneous Moving Costs (second version)

The model of compensating differentials in regional labor and land markets was formalized by Roback (1982). The model interprets regional differences in constant quality wages and rents as compensating firms and residents for inter-regional differences in amenities. While the model assumes that the costs of relocating to a new city are zero, the results hold in the presence of moving costs for the marginal migrant. This paper extends the Roback model to allow for moving costs which vary among a city's residents and businesses. This modification of the model generates new interpretations of regional differences in rents and wages. The theoretical results suggests that the interpretation of inter-city rent and wage differentials as compensating is misguided, that such differentials are inappropriate as weights in QOL comparisons and stresses the importance of local housing and labor market parameters in the determination of these differentials. The importance of amenities is retained, but housing supply becomes the main other determinant of regional rents. Housing supply was ignored in the literature following on Roback's initial insight. The new perspective also provides a bridge between the neoclassical perspective implicit in Roback's approach and the newer literature on agglomeration economies. Working Paper 08-0

Georgia's Immigrants: Past, Present, and Future

This report uses data from the most recent decennial censuses to analyze and assess the composition and experience ofimmigrants to Georgia, with special attention paid to the Atlanta metropolitan area, where the majority of the immigrants have settled. FRC Report 17

Neighborhood Dynamics and Price Effects of Superfund Site Clean-Up

This report uses census data to analyze the price effects of superfund site clean-up, inclusive of both direct price effects and indirect effects through clean-up's effect on neighborhood demographic transitions and reinvestment in the housing stock. FRC Report 11

Determinants of Historic and Cultural Landmark Designation: Why We Preserve What We Preserve

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This paper builds an economic model of a landmark designation that highlights the tensions between the interests of owners of cultural amenities and the interests of the neighboring community. We perform empirical tests by estimating a discrete choice model for landmark preservation using data from Chicago, combining the Chicago Historical Resources Survey of over 17,000 historic structures with property sales, Census, and other geographic data. The data allow us to explain why some properties were designated landmarks (or landmark districts) and others were not. The results identify the influence of property characteristics, local socio-economic factors, and measures of historic and cultural quality. The results emphasize the political economy of implementing preservation policies.heritage preservation policy, landmark designation

Empowerment Zones, Neighborhood Change and Owner Occupied Housing

This paper examines the effects of a generous, spatially-targeted economic development policy (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on local neighborhood characteristics and on the neighborhood quality of life, taking into account the interactions amongst the policy, changes in neighborhood demographics and neighborhood housing stock. Urban economic theory posits that housing prices in a small area should increase as quality of life increases, because people will be more willing to pay to live in the area, but these changes in prices and quality of life will also affect the demographics of the population through sorting and the housing stock through reinvestment. Using census block-group-level data, we examine how housing prices respond to the Empowerment Zone policy intervention. Changes in the other dimensions of neighborhood quality (demographics and housing stock characteristics) will also help determine the total, or full effect on housing values of the policy intervention. This paper estimates these direct and indirect effects in a simultaneous equations setting, compares indirect and full effects, and examines the robustness of the effects to alternate estimation strategies. We find strong evidence for substantively large and highly significant direct price effects, while results suggest that the indirect effects are substantively small or even negative.economic development, empowerment zones, porperty values, household mobility, sorting

Making – or Picking – Winners: Evidence of Internal and External Price Effects in Historic Preservation Policies

Much has been written identifying property price effects of historic preservation policies. Little attention has been paid to the possible policy endogeneity in hedonic price models. This paper outlines a general case of land use regulation in the presence of externalities and then demonstrates the usefulness of the model in an instrumental-variables estimation of a hedonic price analysis – with an application to historic preservation in Chicago. The theoretical model casts doubt on previous results concerning price effects of preservation policies. The comparative statics identify some determinants of regulation that seem, on the face of it, most unlikely to also belong in a hedonic price equation. The analysis employs these determinants as instruments for endogenous regulatory treatment in a hedonic price analysis. OLS estimation of the hedonic offers results consistent with much of previous literature, namely that property values are higher for historic landmarks. In the 2SLS hedonic, robust estimates of the "own" price effect of historic designation are shown to be large and negative (approx. -27%) for homes in landmark districts. Further, significant and substantively important (positive) external price effects of landmark designations are found. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings for historic preservation.hedonics, built heritage, heritage valuation, real estate economics

Neighborhood Dynamics and the Housing Price Effects of Spatially Targeted Economic Development Policy

Neighborhoods are the result of a complicated interplay between residential choice, housing supply and the influences of the larger metropolitan system on its constituent parts. We model this interplay as a system of reduced-form equations in order to examine the effects of a generous spatially targeted economic development program (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on neighborhood characteristics, especially housing values. This system of equations approach allows us to compute direct effects of the policy intervention as well as the effects mediated through non-price channels such as changes in the housing stock or neighborhood demographics. In the process, we are able to shed light on the rich simultaneity among neighborhood characteristics, including housing prices.economic development, simultaneity

Location-specific human capital, location choice and amenity demand

The role of amenities in the flow of migrants has been debated for some years. This paper advances an original model of amenities that work through household production instead of directly through the utility function. Area characteristics (amenities) affect household production, causing certain kinds of human capital investments to be rewarded more than others. Area heterogeneity makes such investments location-specific, in that some areas' characteristics will reward certain kinds of knowledge more than others. This specificity - along with a period of exogenous location (before migration can be carried out) - increases the opportunity costs of moving, diminishes migration flows between dissimilar locations and increases valuation of amenities which were present in the originating area. These theoretical results emphasize people's sorting across areas and thus differ from the results of the standard model of compensating differentials. Empirical tests of the model's predictions using NLSY79 data show that childhood investments affect migration flows in the way proposed by the model