urban land supply natural and contrived restrictions abstract both large bodies of water and local governments restrict the supply of urban land in this paper we measure water s restriction on supply and test its effect on land price we then extend hamilton s and fischel s pioneering work on governmental restriction providing an improved test of the monopoly zoning hypothesis that such restriction further affects land price regression analysis of data from 45 urban areas suggests that the two restrictions combine to explain 40 of typical interurban price differentials

tariff equivalents of nontariff measures the case of european horticultural and fish imports from african countries in the context of the partnership agreements between the european union eu and the african caribbean and pacific countries this study estimates ad valorem tariff equivalents of european food safety standards on imports of key horticultural and fish products from kenya tanzania uganda and zambia the study uses an extension of the price wedge method to account for imperfect substitution and factor endowment in monopolistic competition the estimated tariff equivalents are 55 and 98 for imports of fresh peas from zambia to the netherlands and the u k respectively they range from 39 to 64 for imports of green beans and avocados from kenya and from 63 to 270 for imports of frozen fish fillets in eu countries from the east african community we also observe large variations in tariff equivalents for the horticultural and fish products over time and eu importing countries 2012 international association of agricultural economists

evaluating prior beliefs in a demand system the case of meat demand in canada an almost ideal demand system for meats is estimated using canadian data a bayesian approach is used to impose inequality restrictions on substitution elasticities via monte carlo integration and importance sampling in order to conform with prior beliefs about curvature and monotonicity restrictions and substitution relationships results are more consistent with the concavity and monotonicity restrictions from demand theory than with the added restriction that all meats are substitutes

capitalization and the theory of local public finance the tiebout literature is incomplete this paper argues because it has not fully accounted for the capitalization of local fiscal variables into house values the paper explains why capitalization arises why it persists in long run equilibrium how it affects both residential location and the outcome of local voting and why it interferes with the efficiency of a system of local governments the analysis which is based on the main tiebout assumptions plus a property tax combines a model of household bids in a housing market with a median voter model of local public service determination

accounting price of an exhaustible resource response and extensions wei environ resour econ 60 579 581 2015 presents a novel derivation of the accounting price for an exhaustible resource in a non optimal economy subject to an allocation mechanism we show that wei 2015 and hamilton and ruta environ resour econ 42 53 64 2009 are in fact employing different and mutually exclusive allocation mechanisms for the economy and this explains the differences between the respective accounting prices because accounting prices must be defined subject to the allocation mechanism for the economy the prices derived in the two papers are equally valid within their respective allocation domains further analysis shows that if there is declining marginal product of factors a hartwick investment rule for the model economy set investment just equal to depletion valued at the accounting price will lead to declining consumption for the wei 2015 accounting price and increasing consumption for the hamilton and ruta 2009 accounting price this result is extended to consider the accounting standards recommended in the un seea system of environmental economic accounting 2012 central framework united nations european commission food and agriculture organization of the united nations international monetary fund organisation for economic co operation and development world bank 2012 as well as accounting for environmental externalities from resource use

measuring sustainability in the un system of environmental economic accounting the adoption of the system of environmental economic accounting 2012 central framework as a un statistical standard is a landmark in environmental accounting the seea has the same authority and weight as the system of national accounts in the pantheon of official statistics the seea defines the unit value of depletion of an exhaustible resource to equal the average unit value of the asset the total asset value divided by the physical stock of resource by applying this definition to a non optimal dasgupta heal solow model of an extractive economy we show that depletion adjusted net saving as defined in the seea supports a generalized version of the hartwick rule this measure of saving can guide policies for sustainable development in extractive economies in particular fiscal policies concerning consumption and investment expenditures funded by resource rents the conditions required to support this finding are i that extraction declines over time at a constant rate and ii that the marginal cost of resource extraction is constant a less general result holds in the case of increasing marginal extraction costs

tax subsidies to owner occupied housing an asset market approach inflation reduces the effective cost of homeownership and raises the tax subsidy to owner occupation this paper presents an asset market model of the housing market and estimates how changes in the expected inflation rate affect the real price of houses and the equilibrium size of the housing capital stock simulation results suggest that the accelerating inflation of the 1970s which substantially reduced homeowners user costs could have accounted for as much as a 30 percent increase in real house prices persistent high inflation rates could lead ultimately to a sizable increase in the stock of owner occupied housing

accounting price of an exhaustible resource a comment in a paper titled wealth accounting exhaustible resources and social welfare hamilton and ruta environ resour econ 42 1 53 64 2009 derived accounting price for an exhaustible resource in eq 18 in the so called el serafy economy el serafy in environmental accounting for sustainable development the world bank washington 1989 however the result is not plausible since they improperly replace constant extraction in the value of the resource stock eq 17 with current resource stock divided by reserve life in their derivation in the short comment i show that the accounting price should be the same as the unit user cost defined by el serafy environmental accounting for sustainable development the world bank washington 1989

consistent estimation of armington demand models traditional methods of empirically implementing the popular armington trade model are shown to result in theoretically and statistically inconsistent parameter estimates a method for removing these inconsistencies within the framework of the armington model is provided along with a comparison of results of our new consistent procedure with those of the previous procedure

the welfare economics of land use planning abstract this paper presents an empirical methodology for the evaluation of the benefits and costs of land use planning the technique is applied in the context of the town and country planning system of the uk and examines the gross and net benefits of land use regulation and their distribution across income groups the results show that the welfare and distributional impacts can be large

wealth accounting exhaustible resources and social welfare the empirical literature on natural resource accounting uses methods which implicitly or explicitly entail measuring changes in total resource asset value when an exhaustible resource is depleted in contrast the growth theoretic literature on saving social welfare and sustainable development is built upon a central finding that the change in real wealth as measured by net or genuine saving is proportional to the change in social welfare we show that the change in total wealth exceeds the change in real wealth in optimal and non optimal models of resource extracting economies this suggests that the change in social welfare is over estimated when the change in total resource asset value is used as the measure of depletion a simple empirical exercise using world bank data on adjusted net saving reinforces the results from theory

mobility and redistribution the ability of individuals to move freely from one jurisdiction to another is generally seen as a constraint on the amount of redistribution that each jurisdiction within a system of governments can undertake in this paper we look at this proposition by developing a positive analysis of income redistribution by local governments in a federal system we ask how much redistribution occurs when only local governments can have tax transfer instruments individuals can move freely among jurisdictions and voters in each jurisdiction are fully aware of the migration effects of redistributive policies local redistribution is shown to induce sorting of the population with the poorest households located in the communities that provide the most redistribution while the threat of out migration affects the potential for redistribution our results suggest that significant local redistribution is nonetheless feasible numerical computations indicate that the proportion of residents who are renters is a major factor affecting the local choice of level of redistribution

a two stage analysis of the effectiveness of promotion programs for u s apples export promotion programs are intended to help u s exporters enter maintain and expand foreign markets but little is known of their success in achieving each of these goals in this paper we attempt to determine the effectiveness of export promotion in increasing both u s market share and total import consumption using apple imports by singapore and the united kingdom as case studies estimates of a two stage linear expenditure system les almost ideal demand system aids model show that promotion increases consumption of apples in both the united kingdom and singapore but increases u s market share only in the united kingdom the results suggest that free riding on u s promotion can be significant

explaining armington what determines substitutability between home and foreign goods for decades trade economists have modeled imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods in consumption often called the armington assumption with little analysis of what explains the wide variation in these substitution elasticities across sectors using a varying coefficients model the authors estimate armington elasticities between u s domestic and foreign goods across over one hundred industrial sectors from 1980 to 1988 and examine the role of product industry political and home bias factors as determinants they find strong support that the presence of foreign owned affiliates affects armington elasticities in important ways and some support that entry barriers and union presence have an effect

valuing open space in a residential sorting model of the twin cities abstract we present an analysis of how open space amenities affect residential location choices using a horizontal sorting model to estimate household preferences for open space to parameterize the model a new and rich dataset spanning 17 years of home sales in the seven county twin cities area of minnesota was assembled heterogeneity across types of open space and across households is shown to be a critical determinant of the welfare impacts of open space conservation our general equilibrium simulations allow housing prices to re equilibrate in response to policy induced demand shifts demonstrating that as the scale of intervention becomes larger general equilibrium and partial equilibrium welfare measures increasingly diverge finally we find that the spatial structure of policy is an important component of policy design suggesting open space policy should be place specific in its design and implementation

product aggregation bias as a specification error in demand systems inherent in all demand studies is some form of product aggregation which can lead to product aggregation bias this article develops a simple procedure for incorporating product aggregation bias in demand systems that permits testing of product aggregation bias with a standard likelihood ratio test an empirical illustration of the procedure demonstrates the importance of proper product aggregation

public open space conservation under a budget constraint abstract this paper analyzes the fiscal and land value impacts of public open space conservation in a budget constrained city it derives the necessary and sufficient conditions for open space conservation to increase the level of municipal services and the total land value within the city the theoretical results together with the empirical evidence found in the literature suggest that open space conservation can increase the level of municipal services and total land value in a significant share of american cities even if it generates no amenities open space conservation will likely increase total land values and municipal services in metropolitan areas that have stringent land use regulations high development densities and relatively little open space but will likely reduce municipal services and total land values in small lightly regulated cities surrounded by rural land and fiscally constrained in providing essential public goods h4 r3 q2

investing exhaustible resource rents and the path of consumption we set out dollar valued net national product for an economy with a wasting essential stock oil deposit we take up maintaining capital intact and locally unchan ging consumption the percentage change in net investment or genuine savings relative to the market rate of interest denotes whether current consumption is rising

on the price of land and the value of amenities a house represents not only a bundle of structural characteristics but also a set of location specific characteristics adding locational coordinates and site area to other house characteristics makes it possible to estimate a land rent surface as well as thle hedonic prices attached to local patterns of land use and other neighbourhood characteristics one can then estimate how the value of such location specific characteristics are capitalized into land prices this analysis illustrated with estimates based on data from two british towns has a number of wider implications it generates a more parsimonious method of estimating amenity values it also reveals likely systematic biases produced by conventional hedonic studies which exclude land and location finally it clarifies the conceptual definition of land and suggests that monocentric models can perform well despite recent criticism