primitive accumulation agrarian reform and socialist transitions an argument this essay constructs a preliminary argument concerning the position of the peasantry in the twin transitions the first to industrialisation and the second towards socialism within orthodox marxian theory the two transitions are also sequential with the socialist order emerging from the crisis breakdown and overthrow of the capitalist system which in its maturity becomes a fetter upon further development and begets with the inexorability of a law of nature its own negation marx 1969 144 at this juncture the process of proletarianisation has been completed in the economy as a whole including the agricultural sector where the petty peasant producers and artisans have been separated from their means of production and have been reduced to the status of sellers of labour power while the landlords and or sections of the middle and rich peasantry have emerged as capitalist farmers who treat agriculture as a branch of industry integrated fully with the rest of the economy however this bit of marx s theory of history was drafted without the benefit of hindsight and thus far history has resisted conforming to what was expected of it the first socialist revolution broke the capitalist chain not at the strongest but rather at the weakest link and subsequent socialist transitions have also been initiated through revolutionary movements in arenas which display low initial levels of economic especially industrial development at the time of the revolutionary break with the past none of the present roll of socialist economies boasted an advanced industrial sector in none of them was the process of rural proletarianisation anywhere near completion indeed in most cases on both counts the situation was as far from the marxian postulation as could be imagined as such these countries have entered the socialist transition not through the crossroads of industrialisation instead they have launched upon the twin transitions simultaneously

original accumulation equity and late industrialization the cases of socialist china and capitalist taiwan abstract this paper explores two dynamic approaches to original accumulation one socialist and one capitalist in a search for clues to the developmental options available for pre industrial predominantly agrarian nations the comparative analysis of two cases which have been hailed in widely divergent literatures for their developmental implications highlights the human costs associated with each indeed it suggests the necessity to rethink the categories of socialist and capitalist development paths the analysis focuses on the relationships among the state the peasantry and the dominant landed classes in the struggle to control and channel the agricultural surplus and on state mechanisms to transfer resources from agriculture to industry and from the private sector to the state and the institutions it controls

liquidity constraints and housing prices theory and evidence from the va mortgage program abstract this paper employs a simple intertemporal model to show that presence of liquidity constraints can depress the price of a durable good below its net present rental value regardless of the overall supply elasticity the existence of price effects implies that the relaxation of liquidity constraints is not pareto improving and may in fact be regressive historical evidence which exploits the fact that a clearly identifiable group war veterans enjoyed the most favored access to mortgage credit after world war ii supports the model the results suggest that more recent mortgage market innovations have served primarily to increase prices rather than home ownership rates and that such innovations have the potential to exacerbate socioeconomic disparities in ownership rates

the dynamics of real estate prices institute of university of i business and v california at i economic research berkeley fisher center for real estate and urban economics p working paper series working paper no 88 151 the dynamics of real estate prices by these papers are preliminary in nature their purpose is to i e z i d 2f iz e ey bradford case are nottobccited ortluotedin john mq quigley any publication without the ex press permission of the author walter a haas school of business

the role and growth of new car leasing theory and evidence abstractthere has been substantial growth in rates of new car leasing over the last few decades building on recent theoretical research we construct a model of the leasing decision in which leasing mitigates adverse selection and reduces transaction costs but moral hazard limits its use in our model the prevalence of leasing is related to new car reliability which suggests that the recent growth in leasing is at least partly due to improvements in new car reliability we use this model to derive testable implications and then conduct an empirical analysis to investigate whether the operation of the new and used car markets is consistent with the predictions of this theoretical approach our empirical results support the theoretical predictions of our model in particular we provide direct evidence that leasing mitigates adverse selection and that an important factor in the growth in new car leasing rates has indeed been the growth of new car reliability

depreciation of housing an empirical consideration of the filtering hypothesis a ssumptions regarding the depreciation ax rate for housing play an important role in the urban economics literature 1 the notion that houses filter down from higher to lower quality is prevalent in both academic and policy discussions of the nature of urban problems yet there has been no attempt to specify which depreciation rates are appropriate to these discussions and little empirical investigation of depreciation in housing this paper presents estimates of depreciation rates for housing which are appropriate to consideration of the filtering hypothesis estimates of these depreciation rates must be pursued differently from estimates of the depreciation rates for the aggregate capital stock of housing a brief review of previous studies which points out some of the difficulties which confound observation of depreciation rates is presented in section i section ii discusses specification and section iii describes the data and estimation technique used results are presented in section iv section v is a brief conclusion

redevelopment and the urban land price gradient abstract this paper presents the first careful test of an equilibrium model of urban redevelopment in addition it demonstrates a new methodology for recovering vacant urban land prices in areas that have already been developed using data on single family detached homes sold in vancouver b c we estimate the price of vacant land based on properties that were sold and redeveloped the price of developed land is also estimated based on properties that were sold and not redeveloped various tests overwhelmingly support the hypothesis that housing is redeveloped when the price of vacant land exceeds the price of land in its current use this result provides support for various theoretical models of urban spatial growth and indicates that one can recover vacant urban land prices by examining redeveloped properties

the agrarian barrier to industrial growth it is argued here that in transitional economies industrial growth depends not so much on the size of the agricultural surplus but rather on the rates of productivity growth and population growth in agriculture via their effects on the size of the home market for manufactures in developing this argument estimates of the agricultural surplus and inter sectoral market shares in post restoration japan and post independence india are compared a typology of agrarian systems is then suggested based on how alternative systems influence productivity and population trends in agriculture the typology is illustrated with historical comparisons from europe japan and india

psychological factors and stock option exercise we investigate stock option exercise decisions by over 50 000 employees at seven corporations controlling for economic factors psychological factors influence exercise consistent with psychological models of beliefs employees exercise in response to stock price trends exercise is positively related to stock returns during the preceding month and negatively related to returns over longer horizons consistent with psychological models of values that include reference points employee exercise activity roughly doubles when the stock price exceeds the maximum price attained during the previous year

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

neighborhood externality risk and the homeownership status of properties in contrast to corporate and institutional investors single owner occupiers cannot adequately diversify housing investment risk consequently homeownership should be relatively less likely in places with higher housing investment risk using the american housing survey it is documented that neighborhood externality risk a major component of housing investment risk substantially reduces the probability that a housing unit is owner occupied even when controlling for housing type and numerous location and household specific characteristics the effects are quantitatively meaningful and change in change estimates suggest that the effects are causal

credit rationing and the demand for owner occupied housing abstract this study applies cross sectional data to test whether default risk induced credit constraints affect the demand for owner occupied housing credit constrained households are argued to exhibit different elasticities of demand for housing than less constrained households housing demand elasticities are then estimated separately for households obtaining va insured and non va loans the government guarantee on va loans insures lenders against default enabling lenders to apply easier nonprice terms of credit results indicate that observed demand elasticities differ significantly across va and conventional mortgage holders that marginal changes in credit constraints affect housing demand and that fha financing mitigates the effect of mortgage constraints

urban decline and durable housing urban decline is not the mirror image of growth and durable housing is the primary reason the nature of decline is so different this paper presents a model of urban decline with durable housing and verifies these implications of the model 1 city growth rates are skewed so that cities grow more quickly than they decline 2 urban decline is highly persistent 3 positive shocks increase population more than they increase housing prices 4 negative shocks decrease housing prices more than they decrease population 5 if housing prices are below construction costs then the city declines and 6 the combination of cheap housing and weak labor demand attracts individuals with low levels of human capital to declining cities

are private markets and filtering a viable source of low income housing estimates from a repeat income model while filtering has long been considered the primary mechanism by which markets supply low income housing direct estimates of that process have been absent this has contributed to doubts about the viability of markets and to misplaced policy i fill this gap by estimating a repeat income model using 1985 2011 panel data real annual filtering rates are faster for rental housing 2 5 percent than owner occupied 0 5 percent vary inversely with the income elasticity of demand and house price inflation and are sensitive to tenure transitions as homes age for most locations filtering is robust which lends support for housing voucher programs jel r21 r31 r38

testing the present value relation for housing prices should i leave my house in san francisco abstract we examine the efficiency of residential housing markets by examining price rent and cost of capital indices generated from a transactions level data base for alameda and san francisco counties in northern california we can reject both constant and nonconstant discount rate versions of the housing price present value relation in the short run long run results are consistent with the housing price present value relation when we adjust the discount factor for changes in both tax rates and borrowing costs that characterize our 1970 1988 sample period our preferred explanation for the short run rejection of but long run consistency with the present value model is the high transaction costs that characterize the housing market however we cannot rule out the possibility that deviations of actual and present value price are due to asset market bubbles or nonrational expectations

precaution and liquidity in the demand for housing we exploit cross sectional mortgage data to investigate the importance of liquidity constraints and a precautionary motive in the demand for housing households that are not liquidity constrained consume housing services essentially as the life cycle hypothesis suggests but with a significant precautionary component households that are liquidity constrained in terms of not meeting standard loan to value or payments to income constraints are similar to unconstrained households in most respects including the precautionary motive but they respond somewhat less to fluctuations in their lifetime income suggesting some influence of bank induced liquidity constraints we additionally find however that banks enforce liquidity constraints only weakly jel d91 d12 r21 i introduction the benchmark theory in the economics of consumption is the life cycle or permanent income hypothesis lcpi based on the work of modigliani and brumberg 1954 and friedman 1957 its empirical validity is sometimes questionable especially when compared against alternatives that incorporate liquidity constraints or the precautionary motive for saving see for instance deaton 1992 for a survey rejection of the lcpi may however be just a manifestation of the poor quality of consumption data at the micro level these data are typically subject to the reporting biases and omissions inherent in consumer surveys there are further difficulties in measuring a desired stream of consumption services nondurable consumption goods are a small fraction of total consumption and in the case of food essentials hardly a consumer choice variable durable consumption goods have the feature that they are lumpy and that the consumption services at any point in time are hard to measure we propose to test the lcpi at the micro level with a quite different type of data the data are obtained from the residential mortgage finance database collected by the national association of realtors they are based on actual home purchases and the associated mortgage transactions reported by realtors and thus avoid some of the reporting biases of the consumer surveys more important they allow us to accurately identify households that in principle have instantaneous access to additional liquidity by lowering the down payment for the house purchase or increasing the size of the loan further the purchase of a house provides an accurate measure of a relatively large fraction of consumption services obtained for a medium to long horizon and measured at the time of the consumption decision although our data also have some serious shortcomings they allow a look at the lcpi from an unconventional vantage point perhaps the most influential study employing the standard consumer survey in testing the lcpi at the micro level is that of hall and mishkin 1982 it examines food expenditure from the panel study of income dynamics one of their key results is that consumption tracks income more closely than would be expected under the lcpi they demonstrate that this result could be explained by assuming a group of liquidity constrained consumers consuming their income at each point in time of 20 of the total sample some of the drawbacks of this study are the use of food expenditures to represent consumption the underreporting of income and absence of proper wealth data inherent in the consumer survey and the associated inability to individually separate liquidity constrained consumers from the rest of the sample several previous studies have attempted to improve on this way of testing the lcpi by examining other data sets bernanke 1984 used data on durable consumption goods automobiles to overcome the drawbacks of using food consumption in the hall and mishkin study his results support the lcpi but are still suspect because of possible reporting biases and the lack of good wealth and savings observations

taxation and executive compensation evidence from stock options abstract understanding the effects of taxes on executive compensation provides insight into the process determining this compensation and is a key input to top income tax rate policy a 2010 tax reform in canada which greatly increased the effective tax rate on stock option compensation for a subset of firms provides a natural experiment with which to address this issue difference in differences estimates suggest that this tax increase resulted in an immediate reduction in both stock option grants and the fraction of total compensation made up of stock options with limited if any substitution towards other components of compensation

do the rich and poor colocate in large cities abstract this paper focuses on colocation rather than segregation in the context of japanese large cities using the time cost of commuting from traditional urban economic theory we analyze how different income households are sorted according to the distance from the city center by examining microdata on housing prices and rents in tokyo metropolitan area we find that the rich and poor tend to colocate and are sorted by income near the city center for detached housing prices this is predicted if the income differential is large enough we also find that different income groups coexist in the same location for condominium prices this is predicted if the income elasticity of demand for space is close to one and the pecuniary cost of commuting is zero

agriculture for development new paradigm and options for success the role of agriculture as an instrument for industrialization had been rigorously conceptualized in the 1960s and 1970s under theclassicalparadigmofdevelopmenteconomics aftermanyimplementationfailuresunderimportsubstitutionindustrialization policies and protracted neglect of agriculture under the policies of the washington consensus that followed the debt crisis agriculture has gradually returned in the development agenda especially with the food crisis we argue in this article that a new paradigm has started to emerge as to how to use agriculture for development pursuing a broadened development agenda we explore the specifications of this paradigm and discuss conditions for successful implementation jel classifications b20 o13 q18

re evaluating the impact of immigration on the u s rental housing market abstract previous studies provide evidence that immigration increases housing prices and rents to deal with endogenous location choices of immigrants these studies often use a shift share instrumental variable approach this approach however fails to adequately account for the natural attraction of immigrants to cities with thriving economies high immigration cities provide more economic opportunities and thus exhibit persistently rising housing prices and rents this paper improves upon the traditional empirical approach by explicitly controlling for initial city characteristics that lead to both increases in immigration and the evolution of rents results suggest that after controlling for endogenous sorting of immigrants the positive effect of immigration on rents is attenuated while the impact of immigrant inflows is smaller an extension of the main results suggests the effects of immigration on rents remains larger than that of native inflows

the effects of government housing policies in a vintage filtering model abstract long run and short run effects of low income government housing policies are examined in a model that treats housing as a durable good which declines in quality over time short run and long run market equilibria are characterized rent subsidies are analyzed in detail and results for other policies are presented

portfolio choices for homeowners abstract in this paper i show that introducing frictions associated with housing into standard life cycle models can partially resolve the portfolio choice puzzle i calibrate a model in which a representative household endogenously transits from renting to mortgage financed homeownership the household can later adjust housing status either voluntarily or because of a forced move by paying transaction costs it is shown that homeownership crowds out stock market participation risky owner occupied housing substitutes for stocks while bonds provide liquidity young and middle aged households regardless of whether they are currently homeowners hold much less stock than predicted by traditional models without housing

depreciation of housing capital maintenance and house price inflation estimates from a repeat sales model abstract the rate at which physical capital depreciates is fundamental to investment in the economy nevertheless although housing capital accounts for one third of the total capital stock the rate at which housing capital depreciates has only rarely been directly estimated in part because prior studies do not control for maintenance for that same reason widely publicized measures of house price appreciation overstate the capital gain from homeownership using data from the american housing survey we examine these issues over the 1983 to 2001 period results indicate that gross of maintenance housing depreciates at roughly 2 5 percent per year while net of maintenance housing depreciates at approximately 2 percent per year moreover although the typical home appreciated at an annual real rate of roughly 0 75 percent after allowing for depreciation and maintenance the average homeowner experienced little capital gain

teardowns and land values in the chicago metropolitan area an empirical model of residential housing demolitions and the redevelopment process in the chicago metropolitan area supports the theoretical prediction that the sales price of teardown property is approximately equal to its land value we control for sample selection bias associated with non random demolition permit applications using a probit model that accounts for misclassification of the dependent variable the probit models provide statistically significant evidence of misclassification and suggest that prime teardown candidates are small older homes near public transportation and traditional village centers

old homes externalities and poor neighborhoods a model of urban decline and renewal abstract this paper investigates urban decline and renewal in the united states using three panels that follow neighborhoods on a geographically consistent basis over extended periods of time findings indicate that change in neighborhood economic status is common averaging roughly 13 percent per decade roughly two thirds of neighborhoods studied in 1950 were of quite different economic status fifty years later panel unit root tests for 35 msas indicate that neighborhood economic status is a stationary process consistent with long running cycles of decline and renewal in philadelphia county a complete cycle appears to last up to 100 years aging housing stocks and redevelopment contribute to these patterns as do local externalities associated with social interactions lower income neighborhoods appear to be especially sensitive to the presence of individuals that provide social capital many of the factors that drive change at the local level have large and policy relevant effects

a model of housing in the presence of adjustment costs a structural interpretation of habit persistence building on the model of sanford j grossman and guy laroque 1990 this paper provides a model of household consumption and portfolio allocation which incorporates the role of housing as both a consumption good and as a component of wealth the model captures the following features of the household s problem a utility depends probably nonseparably on two distinct goods nondurable consumption and housing b nondurable consumption can be adjusted cost lessly but housing is subject to an adjustment cost c households face housing price risk in the sense that the relative price of housing varies over time and d in addition to the house the household can invest in a wide variety of financial assets this single reasonably tractable model generates testable implications for portfolio allocation risk aversion asset pricing and the dynamics of nondurable consumption because the original grossman and laroque model considers a utility function in which the durable good is the sole argument and thus abstracts completely from nondurable consump tion their analysis cannot address either the potential spillover effects of the adjustment costs of the durable good on the dynamics of nondurable consumption or the implications for portfolio allocation of housing risk arising from variation in the relative price of housing in addition to generating implications for issues on which the original grossman and laroque model was silent the housing model delivers a strikingly different message concerning asset pricing that is in contrast to the grossman and laroque result that the consumption based capital asset pricing model consumption capm fails the housing model implies that the consumptioncapm holds we assume that the household incurs an adjustment cost when altering the holding of the dura ble good or house although financial assets can be bought and sold costlessly consumption of the nondurable good can also be adjusted costlessly when choosing a new house the consumer takes into account the fact that the consumption of housing services will be constant at the new level until the subsequent stopping time when it is again worthwhile to incur the adjustment cost thus the home purchase decision is endogenous and fully rational but because of the adjustment cost infrequent in this continuous time setting the household s decision process has a recursive structure at each instant the household first decides whether it is optimal to sell the house immediately on those rare occasions that it is optimal to incur the adjustment cost the household sells the old house and buys a new one instantaneously if the household decides that it is not optimal to sell the house immediately it then determines its optimal holdings of financial assets and optimal level of nondurable consumption conditional on the current housing stock in essence because of the adjustment costs associated with the durable good the current

housing and location choices of retiring households evidence from france in this paper a study is made of the mobility and housing choices of the elderly when retiring using household data collected in france from a theoretical viewpoint individuals are likely to decrease their housing quantity because of an income loss when retiring but they may also increase it to benefit from more housing comfort for leisure using the 1992 trois generations survey it is first shown that housing mobility at retirement is substantial in france with a variety of self reported motives then using the 1994 2001 french europanel survey evidence is found of both upsizing and downsizing for mobile recent retirees in many cases housing adjustments lead to a correction of the initial disequilibrium between the number of rooms and the number of occupants however a significant proportion of mobile recent retirees improve the quality of their dwelling

a hedonic approach to residential succession a model of neighborhood turnover drawn from bond and coulson 1989 is proposed the type of turnover process that is obtained is shown to depend mainly on the hedonic bid functions for housing and neighborhood quality a demand system of four hedonic attributes is estimated the main results are that the traditional model of filtering by age of unit does not occur and that filtering by housing size does tipping due to changes in median neighborhood income is also quite possible tipping through changes in racial composition appears less likely copyright 1990 by mit press

measuring the external benefits of homeownership abstract the subsidization of homeownership is justified on efficiency grounds only to the extent that it provides benefits to people other than the homeowner we use the clustered neighborhoods subsample in the american housing survey to measure that benefit in the form of higher housing prices in neighborhoods with higher ownership rates and lower vacancies we attempt to account for unobservable neighborhood and house attributes that may be correlated with occupancy and ownership through instrumental variables switching regressions and panel methods estimates indicate that a housing transition from renting to owning creates approximately 1300 in measured benefits

the role of agriculture in economic development visible and invisible surplus transfers the financial surplus of agriculture has been central to theories of the role of agriculture in economic development morrisson and thorbecke mt have used a constant price social accounting matrix sam framework to measure rigorously the financial surplus of agriculture and decompose the mechanisms of surplus extraction history and theory have however stressed the role of prices as an invisible transfer mechanism in addition to the visible transfers identified in the sam framework we extend the mt approach by defining and measuring the real surplus of agriculture and decomposing the mechanisms of surplus extraction between visible and invisible financial transfers using an archetype computable general equilibrium model for poor african nations we trace the generation transfer and use of an agricultural surplus created by a productivity gain in agriculture this shows that prices indeed play an overwhelmingly important role in transferring a surplus from agriculture to the benefit of the rest of

the effect of marginal tax rates on taxable income a panel study of the 1988 tax flattening in canada abstract federal tax reform in 1988 flattened the canadian personal income tax schedule changing the marginal tax rates for many individuals using methods similar to those applied by auten and carroll rev econ 81 4 1999 681 in the study of the effects of the 1986 u s tax reform act we estimate the responsiveness of income to changes in taxes to be substantially smaller in canada however we find evidence of a much higher response in self employment income in the labor income of seniors and from those with high incomes

tenure neutral and equitable housing taxation equity and neutrality are distinct concepts in housing taxation and weak and strong tenure neutrality should be distinguished when a tax system is tested for those criteria the taxes paid by landlords must be included as they affect the rents renters pay this paper defines appropriate tests applies them to a stylised tax system and proposes tax changes designed to restore tenure equity and or neutrality it shows how the homeowner s implicit income should be computed for taxes to be fundamentally tenure neutral or equitable or both it also shows the key role played by the cost differential in producing housing services under owner occupation and renting

effects of homeownership on household savings abstract causal effects of homeownership decisions on the level and composition of household savings accumulation are estimated genuine positive impacts on both total and nonhousing savings as a function of house value chosen are found the findings suggest however that the homeownership decision in conjunction with choice of an average owner occupied house value does not substantially alter the total amount of accumulated household savings

buying a home with a resale value location location location we develop a dynamic multiregion model where a household s choice of housing location depends on its current wealth and its current type and involves both consumption and investment considerations the relative strength of the consumption motive and the investment motive determines the equilibrium pattern of residential sorting a strong investment consumption motive implies sorting according to household type wealth the model predicts that large house price fluctuations are associated with a low degree of sorting by type this prediction is consistent with evidence from us metropolitan areas when income education and age are used as proxies for household type

homeownership in the 1980s and 1990s aggregate trends and racial gaps abstract housing policy under the clinton and bush administrations has sought to boost homeownership while also narrowing racial gaps in owner occupancy rates against that backdrop homeownership rose sharply in the 1990s but white minority gaps remain in excess of 25 percentage points we analyze these patterns using data from the 1983 to 2001 survey of consumer finances results indicate that household characteristics explain most of the increase in homeownership and roughly two thirds of the white minority homeownership gap credit barriers account for no more than 5 percentage points of the remaining gap this suggests that policy makers will need to look beyond innovations in mortgage finance if their goal is to further expand homeownership

labor income uncertainty skewness and homeownership a panel data study for germany and spain abstract in this paper we empirically investigate the effect of labor income uncertainty on the probability of homeownership in germany and spain this study is motivated by two facts firstly theoretical models tend to provide ambiguous results on this issue secondly previous empirical evidence focuses exclusively on the us housing market to carry out our analysis we propose more precise income uncertainty measures based on panel data labor income equations we observe that households facing high levels of income uncertainty display a preference for renting while those located in more positively skewed income distributions show a greater propensity for homeownership

volunteering to be taxed business improvement districts and the extra governmental provision of public safety abstract when the median voter s preference sets the level of local public goods some voters are left unsatisfied is there an institution by which subsets of voters can resolve the collective action problem and increase the local provision of public goods if so what are the consequences in response to problems such as crime and vandalism neighborhood property owners have established business improvement districts bids to provide local public goods when a bid is approved by a majority of property owners in a neighborhood state law makes contributions to the bid budget mandatory this resolution of the neighborhood s collective action problem reduces crime bids in the city of los angeles are robustly associated with crime declines of 6 to 10 indeed crime falls regardless of estimation technique fixed effects comparing bids to neighborhoods that considered but did not adopt bids using propensity score matching and comparing bids to their neighbors strikingly these declines are purchased cheaply attributing all bid expenditure to violent crime reduction and thus ignoring the impact of bid expenditure on many quality of life crimes bids spend 21 000 to avert one violent crime this higher bound estimate is substantially lower than the 57 000 social cost of a violent crime

there is no free house abstract this paper estimates the effect of a housing relocation program on the labor supply and living conditions of low income households across major cities in south africa using panel microdata collected between 2008 and 2014 it exploits the arbitrary eligibility rules of the policy with a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to obtain reduced form estimates there are three main findings first in the short term of 2 to 4 years following relocation the labor supply of recipient households decreases driven mostly by a reduction of female hours second the large increase in distance km to economic opportunities seems to be an important factor behind the decline directly or indirectly through family shifts in earning strategies finally evidence is limited regarding improvements in housing and neighborhood quality overall there is no clear indication that the net welfare effect of relocation is positive

the concept of the agricultural surplus abstract the concept of the agricultural surplus has occupied a central place in the history of economic thought and has been used in a variety of different senses the major objective of this paper is to offer a rigorous definition of the agricultural surplus based on the social accounting matrix sam framework a sam for indonesia distinguishing between agriculture and non agriculture is used to estimate quantitatively the magnitude of the agricultural surplus and its various components finally the various meanings which have been assigned to this concept in the literature are reviewed and confronted with the definition which we derived

estimating bargaining power in the market for existing homes although bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods it has largely been ignored in the hedonic literature in a break from that tradition we establish sufficient conditions that permit one to identify the effect of buyer and seller bargaining on hedonic models our model is estimated using a previously overlooked feature of the american housing survey that permits us to observe characteristics of both buyers and sellers results suggest that household wealth gender and other demographic traits influence bargaining power in addition variation in bargaining power arising from the presence of school age children accounts for anomalous seasonal patterns reported in various widely cited indices of quality adjusted house prices

crowd out effects of place based subsidized rental housing new evidence from the lihtc program abstract since its inception in 1987 the low income housing tax credit lihtc program has ballooned into the largest ever source of subsidized construction of low income housing in the united states accounting for one third of all recent multi family rental construction this paper examines the crowd out effects of this increasingly important source of low moderate income housing to do so we analyze the impact of lihtc construction at three different levels of geography msa county and 10 mile radius circles this allows us to employ increasingly extensive geographic fixed effects that help to difference away unobserved factors political variables are also used as instruments to further facilitate identification in all of our models iv estimates yield substantially greater crowd out than ols confirming the endogenous attraction of lihtc development to areas ripe for new construction our most robust iv estimates indicate that nearly 100 of lihtc development is offset by a reduction in the number of newly built unsubsidized rental units although the confidence band around this point estimate allows for less dramatic assessments additional estimates suggest that lihtc development has a much more moderate impact on construction of owner occupied housing but these estimates are imprecise overall while lihtc development may well affect the location of low moderate income rental housing opportunities our estimates suggest that the impact of the program on the number of newly developed rental housing units appears to be small

taxes and executive stock options abstract in the sixties the qualified stock option was the predominant form of long term incentive compensation contract for major industrial firms in the u s in the early seventies these same firms replaced their tax qualified stock option plans with non qualified sttock options and later modified these plans to include a variety of new contingent compensation arrangements some of which were based on accounting numbers instead of stock prices this paper develops the hypothesis that tax considerations play an important role in explaining the form of compensation contracts the pattern and timing of changes in the compensation plans of the top 100 industrial firms provides evidence consistent with the tax hypothesis

option value and the price of teardown properties abstract the introduction of uncertainty over the future price of structural capital into a model of teardowns implies a value to delaying the demolition vs preservation decision and that the market price of a redeveloped property may increase with its quantity of structural capital using data from an active teardown market we test the model s prediction that hedonic price function coefficients depend on the expected time between sale and demolition as predicted structural variables have significant effects on the sales prices of both teardown and non teardown properties and the effects are generally much larger the lower the estimated teardown probability

housing price bubbles new supply and within city dynamics abstract although there is broad recognition that cities differ in their tendency to experience house price bubbles most studies assume away any possibility of within city heterogeneity in response to a bubble we develop a model that suggests that this assumption may be appropriate when markets are rising but can be far from reality on the bust side of a bubble during a housing boom new construction and related supply adjustments by developers ensure stable relative prices between low and high quality segments of the housing market on the bust side of a bubble however reduced housing starts allow demand side forces and mortgage default to create pressure for relative prices to diverge across market segments absent a change in technology as markets recover and new construction rebounds relative prices should revert back to pre crash levels evidence based on 2000 2013 single family home sales in phoenix arizona supports this modeling framework additional evidence also suggests that high rates of mortgage default contributed to divergence in relative prices when markets crashed

what happens when you tax the rich evidence from executive compensation this paper examines the responsiveness of taxable income to changes in marginal tax rates using detailed compensation data on several thousand corporate executives from 1991 to 1995 the data confirm that the higher marginal rates of 1993 led to a significant decline in taxable income indeed this small group of executives may account for as much as 20 percent of the aggregate change in wage and salary income for approximately the one million richest taxpayers over this time period one person alone can account for more than 2 percent the decline however is almost entirely a short run shift in the timing of compensation rather than a permanent reduction in taxable income the short run elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net of tax share exceeds one in this sample but the elasticity after one year is at most 0 4 and probably closer to zero breaking out the tax responsiveness of different types of compensation shows that the large short run responses come almost entirely from a large inc

the transition to home ownership and the black white wealth gap this paper analyzes differences in the likelihood that black and white families become homeowners by following a sample of black and white renters over time we are able to separately study racial differences in the likelihood of applying for a mortgage and in the likelihood that a mortgage application is accepted although its effect on the race gap in housing transitions is small we find strong evidence that black applicants are almost twice as likely as comparable white households to be rejected even when credit history proxies and measures of household wealth are accounted for we show that the housing transition gap exists primarily because blacks are less likely to apply for mortgages in the first place the analysis suggests that differences in income family structure and in the ability and willingness of parents to provide down payment assistance are the primary reasons for this applications gap we speculate that the portion of the gap that remains unexplained after controlling for income d

the impact of mortgage interest rate subsidies on household borrowing abstract the responsiveness of household borrowing to changes in the interest rate is a crucial parameter for assessing public policies aimed at promoting saving we estimate the effect on household borrowing of a reform of a program that subsidized interest rates on mortgages signed by medium and low income households the reform established a ceiling in the price of the house that could be financed with the program first we use triple difference estimators exploiting the fact that the reform should affect most the borrowing behavior of eligible individuals living in high price areas and estimate that the elasticity of the probability getting a loan to the interest rate lies between 2 8 and 1 3 second we document that after the reform the distribution of loan sizes became more concentrated at the discontinuity point of the budget constraint of eligible individuals both findings are consistent with a negative response of household borrowing to increases in interest rates

upgrades switching costs and the leverage theory of tying this article investigates the role of product upgrades and consumer switching costs in the tying of complementary products previous analyses have found that a monopolist of one product will not increase its profits and reduce social welfare by tying and leveraging its monopoly position into a complementary market if the initial monopolised product is essential where essential means that all uses of the complementary good require the initial monopolised product we show that this is not true in settings characterised by product upgrades and consumer switching costs we also discuss various extensions including the role of the reversibility of tying

ceo pay firm size and corporate performance evidence from canada executive compensation of 755 canadian firms is examined over the period 1991 95 and evidence is obtained consistent with previous studies ceo pay rises with firm size and compensation is tied to company performance in addition executives in utilities earn lower pay and their compensation is less responsive to performance than is true for their counterparts in other industries some novel findings are also documented first the sales elasticity of ceo compensation is greater in larger firms second while ceo turnover probability is generally negatively related to the firm s stock performance the threat of dismissal appear to be less pronounced in small firms jel classification g35 j33 salaire des pdg taille de l entreprise et performance des societes resultats pour le canada en etudiant le salaire des pdg de 755 entreprises canadiennes au cours de la periode 1991 95 l auteur confirme certains resultats d etudes anterieures le salaire du pdg croit avec la taille de l entreprise et il est liea la performance de l entreprise il appert aussi que les cadres dans les entreprises de service public gagnent moins relativement parlant et que leur salaire est moins sensible aux ecarts de performance que dans les autres secteurs on met aussi a jour certains resultats inedits d abord il semble que l elasticite du salaire du pdg par rapport au niveau des ventes est plus forte dans les plus grandes entreprises ensuite alors que la probabilite de roulement est en general co reliee negativement a la performance des actions en bourse de l entreprise la menace de renvoi semble moins prononcee dans les petites entreprises

does tax policy affect executive compensation evidence from postwar tax reforms abstract the trends in executive pay and labor income tax rates since the 1940s suggest a high elasticity of taxable income with respect to tax policy by contrast the level and structure of executive compensation have been largely unresponsive to tax incentives since the 1980s however the relative tax advantage of different forms of pay was small during this period using a sample of top executives in large firms from 1946 to 2005 we also find a small short run response of salaries qualified stock options and bonuses paid after retirement to changes in tax rates on labor income even though tax rates were significantly higher and more heterogeneous across individuals in the first several decades following wwii we explore several potential explanations for the conflicting impressions given by the long run and short run correlations between taxes and pay including changes in social norms and concerns about pay equality

the distributional dimensions of revolutionary transition ethiopia this study attempts to investigate some of the distributional costs that have attended upon the process of revolutionary transition in ethiopia focusing on the crucial role of the rural sector in this regard the central variable through which this sector influenced national economic performance was the marketed proportion of output the study deals with this linkage and with the macroeconomic distributional outcomes of the growth process for the rural and urban sectors the probable distributional implications of the ten year plan are elicited and the sobering findings provide the motivational force behind a few strategic policy considerations that are briefly outlined it is argued that the national economic growth process was seriously imbalanced and the sluggishness of agriculture meant that the growth was financed through an inflationary process which passed on the costs of accumulation substantially on to the poorer sections of the population

the effects of price risk on housing demand empirical evidence from u s markets this article examines how price risk affects housing demand it identifies two relevant channels a financial risk effect that reduces demand and a hedging effect that increases demand since current homes may hedge future housing costs the latter dominates when hedging incentives are strong namely when the likelihood of moving up the housing ladder is high and the tendency to move across markets is low for households with weak hedging incentives the article finds negative effects of price risk on the timing and size of home purchases but positive effects for households with strong hedging incentives

the market price of low income housing tax credits abstract the low income housing tax credit lihtc program awards a subsidy to private developers who construct and operate housing units with income targeted rent controls for at least 15 years the program allocated 6 6 billion to developers in 2006 and over 1 6 million units have been subsidized under the program since its inception in 1987 a historical literature suggests place based housing subsidies such as the lihtc program will be more expensive in providing the same level of housing support to the poor than tenant based strategies i e housing vouchers this paper uses an administrative data series of lihtc subsidized properties in california to show the program encourages developers to construct housing units that are an estimated 20 more expensive per square foot than average industry estimates it is additionally shown that due to liquidity constraints faced by lihtc primary developers in how the subsidy is allocated virtually all developers sell the tax credits at a substantial discount below their statutory value immediately after construction this price is estimated to be 0 73 per 1 of tax credit or 1 8 billion annually as compared to alternatively allocating a lump sum grant to developers

the elasticity of taxable income evidence and implications abstract a central tax policy parameter that has recently received much attention but about which there is substantial uncertainty is the overall elasticity of taxable income we provide new estimates of this elasticity which address identification problems with previous work by exploiting a long panel of tax returns to study a series of tax reforms throughout the 1980s this identification strategy also allows us to provide new evidence on both the income effects of tax changes on taxable income and on variation in the elasticity of taxable income by income group we find that the overall elasticity of taxable income is approximately 0 4 the elasticity of real income not including tax preferences is much lower we estimate small income effects of tax changes on reported income implying that the compensated and uncompensated elasticities of taxable income are very similar we estimate that this overall elasticity is primarily due to a very elastic response of taxable income for taxpayers who have incomes above 100 000 per year who have an elasticity of 0 57 while for those with incomes below 100 000 per year the elasticity is less than one third as large moreover high income taxpayers who itemize are particularly responsive to taxation our estimates suggest that optimal tax structures may feature tightly targeted transfers to lower income taxpayers and a flat or even declining marginal rate structure for middle and high income taxpayers