How responsive is the demand for residential land to changes in its price?

Richard Voith's estimates help measure the effect of public policies on land consumption in the United States.Land use

Does the federal tax treatment of housing affect the pattern of metropolitan development?

The U.S. tax code allows home owners to deduct mortgage interest and property taxes on their federal income tax forms. It also gives special treatment to the capital gains realized from the sale of owner-occupied housing. These advantages encourage investment in owner-occupied housing. But do these tax breaks have other, more far-reaching consequences? In this article, Dick Voith looks at how the tax code's special treatment of owner-occupied housing may affect metropolitan developmentHousing - Finance ; Metropolitan areas - Statistics ; Taxation

The tax treatment of housing: its effects on bounded and unbounded communities

This paper examines the potential impact of the federal tax treatment of housing, which provides tax advantages that increase with income and house value, on the pattern of development in U.S. metropolitan areas. The authors argue that the tax treatment of housing is likely to have impacts on older, developed communities with fixed boundaries, such as central cities, that differ from those on suburban areas, where there is an elastic supply of land. Using simple analytic models, the authors show that the tax treatment of housing not only increases the incentives for lower density development, but it also provides incentives for increased sorting of high- and low-income households into separate communities. Given the very large magnitude of the annual subsidies to housing ($65 billion) and the fact that these subsidies accrue to a relatively small share of home owners, the authors believe that the impact of these subsidies on the pattern of metropolitan development is potentially very important.Housing ; Taxation

Capitalization of federal taxes, the relative price of housing, and urban form: density and sorting effects.

The authors investigate the impact of the tax treatment of owner-occupied housing on urban form in an economy in which high- and low-income households choose among city and suburban communities. Because housing tax policies differentially affect the relative, after-tax price of housing for high- and low-income households, and because the extent of capitalization of housing tax policies can differ across city and suburban communities, their analysis finds that housing tax policies can affect not only the density of the metropolitan area, but also can influence where rich and poor households choose to live.> > The authors also show that the impacts of housing tax policies differ depending upon whether land use constraints such as suburban large lot zoning exist. If there are no land use constraints present, increasing a subsidy to home ownership that is positively correlated with the income of the owner tends to lead to the decentralization of both rich and poor, although there are conditions under which the rich would choose to concentrate in the central city. The ambiguity of the effect on the choices of high income households suggests that impacts of the federal tax treatment of housing may differ across metropolitan areas.> > In the presence of binding large lot zoning in the suburbs, the rich have a greater incentive to decentralize while the poor are constrained to the city. Thus, housing tax policy that affects the relative price of land differentially for the rich and poor could have helped exacerbate the intense residential sorting by income that we see in many parts of the United States. Importantly, our analysis of community choice is not driven by different preferences for city or suburb that may be associated with the income elasticity of housing demand. Rather, it results from changes in relative after-tax housing prices faced by poor and rich households. Determining the empirical relevance of prices versus preferences in this matter should be an urgent task for future research.Housing ; Taxation

Exploring the Relationship Between Neighborhoods and Intimate Partner Violence

Background: Due to high prevalence rates and deleterious effects on individuals, families, and communities, intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health problem. Because IPV occurs in the context of communities and neighborhoods, research must examine the broader environment in addition to individual-level factors to successfully facilitate behavior change. Stemming in part from the lack of theory, predictors of the relation between neighborhoods and intimate partner violence are under-identified, and a dearth of mediation studies exist that inductively build and deductively confirm theoretical frameworks. Methods: This dissertation contributes to gaps in the literature via a mixed methods study yielding three manuscripts, i.e., Chapters 2, 3, and 4. First, using a combined theoretical model to guide the analysis, an integrative review of the literature spanning 1995 to 2014 elucidates the field\u27s understanding of predictors and potential mechanisms driving the relation between neighborhoods and IPV. Second, theory-informed neighborhood-level predictors of IPV were tested using hierarchical linear modeling. Third, using grounded theory and focus groups with 32 men in batterer intervention programs, processes by which neighborhoods influence men’s use of partner violence were explored. Results: Results from the first study indicate that macro-, exo-, and meso-level predictors and mediators in the proposed conceptual model have some empirical support; however, concepts at each ecological level have yet to be researched. In the second study concentrated disadvantage (i.e., neighborhood-level factor) and female-to-male partner violence (i.e., individual-level factor) were robust predictors of women’s IPV victimization. In the third study, three core categories -titled ACEs and Trauma, Structural Forces, and Systemic Forces - emerged from focused and axial coding, explaining how neighborhoods influenced men’s IPV perpetration. Theoretical coding illuminated how these core categories related to each other and their sequence of events. Implications: Considering the results of each study in context of one another suggests that a well-defined and integrative theoretical framework, that is inductively built and deductively refined, will enhance the field’s understanding of ecological effects on IPV via an expanded scope of predictors and potential underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, this work informs a comprehensive ecological approach to IPV aimed at prevention and intervention

The CPI for rents: a case of understated inflation.

Until the end of 1977, the method used in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) to measure rent inflation tended to omit rent increases when units had a change of tenants or were vacant. Since such units typically had more rapid increases in rents than average units, this response bias biased inflation estimates downward. Beginning in 1978, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implemented a series of methodological changes that reduced response bias but substantial bias remained until 1985. We set up a model of response bias, parameterize it, and test it using a BLS microdata set for rents. We conclude that from 1940 to 1985 the CPI inflation rate for rent most likely was understated by 1.4 percentage points annually in U.S. data. We construct an improved rental inflation series for 1940 to 2000; at the starting point in 1940, the revised index is 54 percent as large as the official CPI.Consumer price indexes ; Rent ; Inflation (Finance)

Measuring American rents: a revisionist history.

Until the end of 1977, the method used to measure changes in rent of primary residence in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) tended to omit price changes when units changed tenants or were temporarily vacant. Since such units typically had more rapid increases in rents than average units, omitting them biased inflation estimates downward. Beginning in 1978, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implemented a series of methodological changes that reduced this bias. The authors use data from the American Housing Survey to check the success of the corrections. They compare estimates of the historical series adjusted for the BLS changes in methodology with a new hedonic estimate of changes in rental rates. The authors conclude that from 1940 to 1977 the CPI for rent would have been about 60 percent higher if current BLS practices had been used – between 1.3 and 3.5 percentage points. Even after the corrections have been made, the authors' hedonic estimates suggest that the current CPI methodology may still understate the rental inflation rate by one-half to 1 percentage point.Rent

Diffusion of myosin V on microtubules

Organelle transport in eukaryotes employs both microtubule and actin tracks to deliver cargo effectively to their destinations, but the question of how the two systems cooperate is still largely unanswered. Recently, in vitro studies revealed that the actin-based processive motor myosin V also binds to, and diffuses along microtubules. This biophysical trick enables cells to exploit both tracks for the same transport process without switching motors. The detailed mechanisms underlying this behavior remain to be solved. By means of single molecule Total Internal Reflection Microscopy (TIRFM), we show here that electrostatic tethering between the positively charged loop 2 and the negatively charged C-terminal E-hooks of microtubules is dispensable. Furthermore, our data indicate that in addition to charge-charge interactions, other interaction forces such as non-ionic attraction might account for myosin V diffusion. These findings provide evidence for a novel way of myosin tethering to microtubules that does not interfere with other E-hook-dependent processes