Capitalization of Central Government Grants into Local House Prices

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008. Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national government provides an exogenous source of variation in grants that we exploit to identify their causal effect on house prices. Our results indicate substantial or even full capitalization. We also find that house prices respond more strongly in locations in which new construction is constrained by physical barriers. Our results imply that (i) during our sample period grants were largely used in a way that is valued by the marginal homebuyer and (ii) increases in grants to a LA may mainly benefit the typically better off property owners (homeowners and absentee landlords) in that LA.

The impact of supply constraints on house prices in England

We explore the impact of different types of supply constraints on House prices in England by exploiting a unique panel dataset of 353 local planning authorities ranging from 1974 to 2008. Using exogenous variation from a policy reform, vote shares and historical density to identify the endogenous constraints-measures, we find that: i) Regulatory constraints have a substantive positive impact on the house price-earnings elasticity; ii) The effect of constraints due to scarcity of developable land is largely confined to highly urbanised areas; iii) Uneven topography has a quantitatively less meaningful impact; and iv) The effects of supply constraints are greater during boom than bust periods

The impact of supply constraints on house prices in England

We test the theoretical prediction that house prices respond more strongly to changes in local earnings in places with tight supply constraints using a unique panel dataset of 353 Local Planning Authorities in England between 1974 and 2008. Exploiting exogenous variation from a policy reform, vote shares and historical density to identify the endogenous constraints‐measures, we find that: regulatory constraints have a substantive positive impact on the house price‐earnings elasticity; the effect of constraints due to scarcity of developable land is largely confined to highly urbanised areas; and uneven topography has a quantitatively less meaningful impact

Why are house prices in London so high?

Strict regulation is affecting supply in the South East's property market, argue Christian Hilber and Wouter Vermeule

Object identification and characterization with hyperspectral imagery to identify structure and function of Natura 2000 habitats

Habitat monitoring of designated areas under the EU Habitats Directive requires every 6 years information on area, range, structure and function for the protected (Annex I) habitat types. First results from studies on heathland areas in Belgium and the Netherlands show that hyperspectral imagery can be an important source of information to assist the evaluation of the habitat conservation status. Hyperspectral imagery can provide continuous maps of habitat quality indicators (e.g., life forms or structure types, management activities, grass, shrub and tree encroachment) at the pixel level. At the same time, terrain managers, nature conservation agencies and national authorities responsible for the reporting to the EU are not directly interested in pixels, but rather in information at the level of vegetation patches, groups of patches or the protected site as a whole. Such local level information is needed for management purposes, e.g., exact location of patches of habitat types and the sizes and quality of these patches within a protected site. Site complexity determines not only the classification success of remote sensing imagery, but influences also the results of aggregation of information from the pixel to the site level. For all these reasons, it is important to identify and characterize the vegetation patches. This paper focuses on the use of segmentation techniques to identify relevant vegetation patches in combination with spectral mixture analysis of hyperspectral imagery from the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner (AHS). Comparison with traditional vegetation maps shows that the habitat or vegetation patches can be identified by segmentation of hyperspectral imagery. This paper shows that spectral mixture analysis in combination with segmentation techniques on hyperspectral imagery can provide useful information on processes such as grass encroachment that determine the conservation status of Natura 2000 heathland areas to a large extent. A limitation is that both advanced remote sensing approaches and traditional field based vegetation surveys seem to cause over and underestimations of grass encroachment for specific categories, but the first provides a better basis for monitoring if specific species are not directly considered

Modelling Catchment-Scale Evapotranspiration and Net Primary Production in Sub-Humid African Grasslands: Towards Understanding Carbon and Water Trade-Offs in Communal Rangelands

Being able to confidently predict net primary production within intensively used rangeland systems has become the goal of many rangeland scientists. The communally-managed rangelands of Africa, with their very high livestock numbers, represent such a challenge, as above-ground biomass is most often depleted before it has had chance to accumulate. In order to provide more accurate estimates of NPP for these rangelands, we explored the use of direct measurements of canopy cover, standing biomass and leaf area index, against standard vegetation indices from the Sentinel 2 sensors. Following intensive field surveys, we developed regression models of the relationships between Sentinel 2 NDVI and these three bio-physical attributes. Repeated measurements along an NDVI gradient revealed a good relationship between NDVI and LAI, which was used to predict the ET across landscapes under communal tenure arrangements. Although un-improved grasslands and abandoned cultivated lands are the dominant land cover classes in the study area, woody invasive alien plants (IAPs) along seep-lines have increased in spatial extent since their introduction in the middle of the last century. These IAPs are now responsible for most of the catchment ET in these highly modified ecosystems. Grass biomass production for the upper reaches of the Umzimvubu catchment was calculated using the relationship between Sentinel 2 NDVI and grass canopy cover

Local economic conditions and the nature of new housing supply

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the city’s share of multi-family housing in new construction and (ii) lead to the construction of smaller units. We exploit the metro area samples of the American Housing Survey from 1984 to 2004 and find support for both predictions. We confirm that the adjustment process is driven by migration and is hindered by strict local land use control. Our findings imply that tight regulation may hamper metro area level labor market adjustment to positive economic shocks not only through limits on the quantity of newly supplied units but also by constraining their type to single-family houses and larger units that may be less suitable for would-be-migrants