Ergonomics in the Workplace: Is It Time for an OSHA Standard?

Improper ergonomic design of jobs is one of the leading causes of work-related illness, accounting for perhaps a third of employers’ costs under state workers’ compensation laws. Due to the wide variety of circumstances, however, any comprehensive standard would probably have to be complex and costly, while scientific understanding of the problem is not complete

Local Growth Empirics

Using a newly constructed data panel on U.S. locality attributes, this paper sketches four sets of empirical facts on economic growth across U.S. counties. A first set of facts focuses on the time series and cross-correlation properties of local economic growth as measured by net migration, per capita income growth, and housing price growth. A second and a third set of facts focus on the geographical correlates of local growth over the 20th century and the non-government correlates of local growth over the period 1970 to 1990. A fourth set of facts focuses on the government fiscal policy correlates of local growth. Local economic growth from 1970 to 1990 is strongly negatively correlated with financial measures of initial local government size. This negative correlation is extremely robust across alternative specifications; an extensive set of control variables eliminates any obvious omitted variable bias; there is no indication of reverse causality; and the result is not driven by the elderly. Controlling for local government size, local growth is positively correlated with expenditures on elementary and secondary school education; it is negatively correlated with the percent of local tax revenue derived from personal income and selective sales taxes. A neoclassical model of local growth provides a framework for interpreting these correlations.Economic Growth, Factor Mobility, Migration, Compensating Differentials, Geography, Local Government

Why are Some Cities So Crowded?

Population Density, Productivity, Quality-of-Life, Compensating Differentials, Economic Growth

Consumption amenities and city crowdedness

Crowdedness varies widely among U.S. cities. A simple, static general equilibrium model suggests that plausible differences in metro areas’ consumption amenities can account for much of the observed variation. Under a baseline calibration, differences in amenities valued at 30 percent of average consumption expenditures suffice to support a twenty-fold difference in population density. Empirical results confirm that amenities help support crowdedness and suggest that they are becoming a more important determinant of where people choose to live. But for the moment, local productivity appears to be the more important cause of local crowdedness.Productivity ; Consumption (Economics)

A productivity model of city crowdedness

Population density varies widely across U.S. cities. A simple, static general equilibrium model suggests that moderate-sized differences in cities’ total factor productivity can account for such variation. Nevertheless, the productivity required to sustain above-average population densities considerably exceeds estimates of the increase in productivity caused by such high density. In contrast, increasing returns to scale may be able to sustain multiple equilibria at below-average population densities.Cities and towns ; Productivity ; Population

U.S. urban decline and growth, 1950 to 2000

Following World War II, many large U.S. cities began to rapidly lose population. This urban decline climaxed during the 1970s when New York City, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Atlanta each lost more than 10 percent of their population. The sharp declines of these and numerous other U.S. urban municipalities led many to believe that large U.S. cities were dying. ; Then, during the 1980s, New York and Boston began to grow again. In the 1990s, so did Chicago, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. The reversal of population declines by these and a few other U.S. urban municipalities has led many to believe that large U.S. cities were coming back. ; Rappaport explains why, contrary to such perceptions, recent U.S. history has not been characterized by a period of pervasive urban decline followed by a widespread urban renaissance. To be sure, a few large cities were able to successfully reverse steep population declines. But over the past 50 years, most large U.S. cities either declined continuously or else grew continuously. Such varied growth experiences resulted from a complex combination of national, regional, metropolitan area, and local factors. These included a continuing shift of population from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West, a slowing shift of population from cities to suburbs, and the much more rapid growth of some metropolitan areas relative to others.Urban economics

The affordability of homeownership to middle-income Americans

From 1971 through mid-2007, the nominal national sales price of housing grew almost eightfold. Controlling for inflation, this represented a near doubling in the relative price of housing. The retrenchment in prices that began in 2007 has so far remained small compared to the earlier increase. ; As house prices climbed, many people complained that housing had become unaffordable to middle-income Americans. As early as 1998, newspapers warned that homeownership was becoming a heavy financial burden. As sales price rises accelerated in 2003 and crested in 2006, homeownership was increasingly portrayed as the “unattainable” American dream. ; Notwithstanding such concerns, homeownership actually rose strongly beginning in the mid-1990s and in 2004 attained its highest level ever. The more recent surge in foreclosures suggests many households indeed purchased homes they could not afford. Still, this does not necessarily imply that housing in general has become unaffordable to middle-income households. Instead, it may be that many defaults resulted from specific households purchasing specific houses whose location, size, and other attributes made their sales price too high relative to the purchasers’ financial resources. ; Rappaport seeks to answer the question of whether homeownership has indeed become less affordable to middle-income Americans. He also discusses some reasons why perceptions of affordability may have decreased. past.

The shared fortunes of cities and suburbs

For more than 50 years, suburbs throughout the United States have prospered, while many of the large cities they surround have stagnated. Hence, many people perceive that cities and suburbs tend to grow at each other’s expense—and thus compete for residents and jobs. While there is some truth in this perception, it misses the fact that a metro area’s cities and suburbs also depend on each other for economic growth. Cities and their suburbs share a multitude of resources, such as airports, highways, mass transit, cultural amenities, entertainment venues, air quality, potential employers, and many more. These shared resources may be even more important than the differences between cities and suburbs in determining where people live and jobs locate. Rappaport examines the main forces that have influenced the growth of cities and suburbs over the past century. He finds that, while cities and suburbs do sometimes grow at each other’s expense, more often they grow or decline together. Thus, while it may make sense for cities and their suburbs to compete along some dimensions, there are also strong incentives for the two to cooperate to make their metro areas attractive and productive places to live and work.Cities and towns

The effectiveness of homeownership in building household wealth

The recent economic and financial crisis and the current slow recovery highlight that homeownership plays a critical role in the U.S. economy. The estimated “equivalent rent” implicitly paid by homeowners accounts for more than 8 percent of gross domestic product. Investment in single-family housing also represents a significant share of GDP and is closely tied to the business cycle. During the past decade, such investment has ranged from as little as 1.3 percent of GDP during recessions to as much as 3.4 percent during expansions. The associated large fluctuations in demand for owner-occupied housing play an important role in driving the business cycle. In addition, demand for owner-occupied housing is especially sensitive to intermediate-term real interest rates and hence to inflation and monetary policy expectations. ; Homeownership also plays an important role in determining household saving, which has implications for national saving and investment. Some aspects of homeownership increase household and national saving. For example, renters intending to purchase a home have an incentive to save to make a down payment on their first home. In addition, new homeowners must promise to save far into the future by making monthly mortgage principal payments. On the other hand, homeownership typically requires large house-related payments and so can reduce household cash flows available to invest in financial assets such as stocks and bonds. ; For decades, conventional wisdom has viewed homeownership as an effective way to build household wealth. However, the recent fall in house prices has caused some observers to question this belief. Rappaport examines whether homeownership effectively builds household wealth. He develops an analytical framework to compare the wealth that homeowners have historically accumulated by building equity in their houses with the wealth they could have accumulated by renting an identical house and investing the resulting saved cash flow in stocks and bonds.

Moving to high quality of life

The U.S. population has been migrating to places with high perceived quality of life. A calibrated general-equilibrium model shows that such migration follows from broad-based technological progress. Rising national wages increase demand for consumption amenities. Under a baseline parameterization, a place with amenities for which individuals would pay 5 percent of their income grows 0.3 percent faster than an otherwise identical place. Productivity is shown to be a decreasingly important determinant of local population. The faster growth of high-amenity places is considerably strengthened if they have low initial equilibrium population density underpinned by low relative productivity. Places with identical amenities asymptotically converge to an identical population density, regardless of their relative productivity levels. An implication is that the high growth rates of high-amenity localities should eventually taper off.>Consumption (Economics) ; Quality of life