Public Benefits of Undeveloped Lands on Urban Outskirts: Non-Market Valuation Studies and their Role in Land Use Plans

Over the past three decades, the economics profession has developed methods for estimating the public benefits of green spaces, providing an opportunity to incorporate such information into land-use planning. While federal regulations routinely require such estimates for major regulations, the extent to which they are used in local land use plans is not clear. This paper reviews the literature on public values for lands on urban outskirts, not just to survey their methods or empirical findings, but to evaluate the role they have played--or have the potential to play-- in actual land use plans. Based on interviews with authors and representatives of funding agencies and local land trusts, it appears that academic work has had a mixed reception in the policy world. Reasons for this include a lack of interest in making academic work accessible to policy makers, emphasizing revealed preference methods which are inconsistent with policy priorities related to nonuse values, and emphasis on benefit-cost analyses. Nevertheless, there are examples of success stories that illustrate how such information can play a vital role in the design of conservation policies. Working Paper 07-2

Cracks in the Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, and Segregation *

Abstract This paper examines whether the large wave of Mexican immigration to the United States since 1970 has lowered non-Hispanic demand for public education. Our analysis focuses on California, where many of these immigrants settled, accounts for endogeneity of immigrant inflows using established settlement patterns, and uses relative outflows of children from a district to identify shifts in district choice working through schools. We find that between 1970 and 2000, the average metropolitan school district in California lost at least 12 non-Hispanic children to other school districts and two to private school within district for every ten additional low-English Hispanic arrivals in its public schools. These responses are similar in magnitude to "white flight" from school districts court-ordered to desegregate in the 1960s and 1970s

Pass a Law, Any Law, Fast! State Legislative Responses to the Kelo Backlash

The Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London left protection of property against takings for economic development to the states. Since Kelo, thirty-seven states have enacted legislation to update their eminent domain laws. This paper is the first to theoretically and empirically analyze the factors that influence whether, in what manner, and how quickly states change their laws through new legislation. Fourteen of the thirty-seven new laws offer only weak protections against development takings. The legislative response to Kelo was responsive to measures of the backlash but only in the binary decision whether to pass any new law. The decision to enact a meaningful restriction was more a function of relevant political economy measures. States with more economic freedom, greater value of new housing construction, and less racial and income inequality are more likely to have enacted stronger restrictions, and sooner. Of the thirteen states that have not updated, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi are highly likely to do so in the future. Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York are unlikely to update ever if at all

Cracks in the Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, and Segregation *

Abstract Recent research finds that native-born Americans avoid settling in immigrant neighborhoods. We examine whether sorting stems from reductions in native demand for public education. Our analysis focuses on Mexican immigration to California, addresses endogeneity of immigrant inflows using established settlement patterns, and uses a comparison group to account for the effects of immigration on other district attributes. We find that between 1970 and 2000, the average metropolitan school district in California lost 16 non-Hispanic households with children to other school districts for every 10 additional households enrolling low-English Hispanics in public schools. Our findings suggest that the native reaction to immigration disproportionally affects children, and thus may have longer-run consequences than previously thought