Is Urban Decay Bad? Is Urban Revitalization Bad Too?

Many observers argue that urban revitalization harms the poor, primarily by raising rents. Others argue that urban decline harms the poor by reducing job opportunities, the quality of local public services, and other neighborhood amenities. While both decay and revitalization can have negative effects if moving costs are sufficiently high, in general the impact of neighborhood change on utility depends on the strength of price responses to neighborhood quality changes. Data from the American Housing Survey are used to estimate a discrete choice model identifying households' willingness-to-pay for neighborhood quality. These willingness-to-pay estimates are then compared to the actual price changes that accompany observed changes in neighborhood quality. The results suggest that price increases associated with revitalization are smaller than most households' willingness to pay for neighborhood improvements. The results imply that, in general, neighborhood revitalization is more favorable than neighborhood decline.

The Katrina Effect: Was There a Bright Side to the Evacuation of Greater New Orleans?

In the presence of moving costs, individuals may remain in a region even when they expect to attain a higher standard of living elsewhere. When a natural disaster or other exogenous shock forces individuals to move, the net impact on living standards could be positive or negative. This paper uses longitudinal data from Current Population Surveys conducted between 2004 and 2006 to estimate the net impact of Hurricane Katrina-related evacuation on various indicators of well-being. While evacuees who have returned to the affected region show evidence of returning to normalcy in terms of labor supply and earnings, those who persisted in other locations exhibit large and persistent gaps, even relative to the poor outcomes of New Orleans-area residents prior to the storm. Evacuee outcomes show few if any relationships with host community characteristics, including unemployment and growth rates. The impact of evacuation on total income was blunted to some extent by government transfer payments and by self-employment activities. Overall, there is little evidence to support the notion that poor underemployed residents of the New Orleans area were disadvantaged by their location in a relatively depressed region.

Malthus Revisited: Fertility Decision Making based on Quasi-Linear Preferences

Malthus’ (1798) population hypothesis is inconsistent with the demographic transition and the concurrent massive expansion of incomes observed among industrialised countries. This study shows that eliminating the income-effect on the demand for children from the Malthusian model makes it harmonise well with industrial development.demographic transition; fertility; Malthus

Stone Age Economics: The Origins of Agriculture and the Emergence of Non-Food Specialists.

This paper examines the prehistoric shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Among hunters and gatherers, all community members were engaged in food provision. Agricultural societies, in contrast, avail themselves of non-food specialists. This paper argues that the adoption of agriculture necessitated the introduction of non-food specialists. Since the release of labour from food generating activities stimulates economic development, this implies that the shift to agriculture literally bore the seeds of later economic growth. The model shows, in accordance with archaeological evidence, that hunters and gatherers, faced with redistribution costs arising from division of labour, delay the adoption of agricultural techniques for a period of time, after which a large step forward in food procurement technology–a ’Neolithic revolution’–is associated with the shift to farming.hunting-gathering; leisure time; neolithic revolution; nonfood specialists, transition

Made for Toil: Natural selection at the dawn of agriculture

The labour input among pre-historic foragers was normally rewarded within the same day of the effort. For the first farmers, by contrast, labour input and its rewards could be far apart. However, the patience was worthwhile: population growth rates among early agriculturalists were up to 60 times higher than those of their foraging counterparts. It is well-known from the biological science that humans differ with respect to metabolism. This study argues that rates of metabolism well-suited for the many hours of labour input required for farming gained an evolutionary advantage with the advent of agriculture. This theory helps shedding light on the puzzles why farming was adopted despite its high labour costs, and why people of agricultural societies work more than their foraging counterparts.hunting ; labour input ; Malthus ; metabolism ; neolithic revolution ; patience capital

From Foraging to Farming: Explaining the Neolithic Revolution

This paper reviews the main theories and evidence regarding the prehistoric shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, an event which took place for the first time some 10,000 years ago. The transition, which is also known as the Neolithic Revolution, led to the rise of civilisation as we know it, and seems to have borne the seeds for the later process of industrialisation and for economic growth in general. The paper provides a brief historical survey of the leading hypotheses concerning the rise of agriculture proposed in the archaeological and anthropological literature. It then turns to a more detailed review of the theories proposed in the economic literature.agriculture; hunting-gathering; neolithic revolution; transition