distinctively different a new approach to valuing architectural amenities we propose a method to estimate the capitalized value of the architectural design quality of a neighbourhood our economic design premium is identified by spatially differentiating property prices and design quality within neighbourhoods and comparing the differences across neighbourhoods we apply our method to 47 conservation area neighbourhoods in england in which we analyse around 7900 property transactions and interview more than 500 residents we find a capitalization effect of about 25 4 38 7k associated with a one step increase on a five step scale ranging from not at all distinctive to very distinctive our results suggest that this effect is at least partially driven by an architectural externality

interdependence issue importance and the 2009 russia ukraine gas conflict the primary aim of this paper is to explain the 2009 russia ukraine gas conflict in particular it attempts to identify the causal mechanisms between their interdependence in the gas sphere and the gas conflict the paper first shows that existing theories in the study of international relations have limitations in accounting for that conflict therefore a theoretical framework drawing insights from armstrong s model on dependence political compliance and crescenzi s exit model is proposed to explain it relying on this framework this paper demonstrates that the 2009 russia ukraine gas conflict took place through two critical causal mechanisms in the contexts of the 2008 global financial crisis and ukraine s anti russian policy russia and ukraine both considered issues involved in the gas trade such as debts prices transit tariffs and ukraine s pipeline system to be very important therefore when russia issued demands with economic threats ukraine refused to comply

the unequal geographic burden of federal taxation in the united states workers in cities offering above average wages cities with high productivity low quality of life or inefficient housing sectors pay 27 percent more in federal taxes than otherwise identical workers in cities offering below average wages according to simulation results taxes lower long run employment levels in high wage areas by 13 percent and land and housing prices by 21 and 5 percent causing locational inefficiencies costing 0 23 percent of income or 28 billion in 2008 employment is shifted from north to south and from urban to rural areas tax deductions index taxes partially to local cost of living improving locational efficiency

the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on international conflict across levels of analysis this study develops a social network analytic approach to conceptualize and measure interdependence across levels of analysis this framework contains several innovations first it integrates sensitivity interdependence the effects of changes in one state on other states with vulnerability interdependence the opportunity costs of breaking a relationship second it measures interdependence at different levels of analysis and across multiple relationships third it integrates multiple dimensions of interdependence into a single measure i derive hypotheses from the realist and liberal paradigms regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on monadic dyadic and systemic conflict these hypotheses are tested via data on alliances military capability and trade the findings provide robust support to the expectations of the liberal paradigm regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on conflict on the other hand the expectations of the realist paradigm are not supported i discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of this approach

quality of life firm productivity and the value of amenities across canadian cities we estimate quality of life and productivity differences across canada s metropolitan areas in a hedonic general equilibrium framework these are based on the estimated willingness to pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities which differ in their wage levels housing costs and land values using 2006 canadian census data our metropolitan quality of life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings yet find canadians care more about climate and culture quality of life is highest in victoria for anglophones montreal for francophones and vancouver for allophones and lowest in more remote cities toronto is canada s most productive city vancouver is the overall most valuable city qualite de vie productivite des entreprises et la valeur des avantages dans les diverses villes canadiennes on evalue les differences entre la qualite de vie et la productivite des entreprises entre les zones metropolitaines au canada a l aide d un cadre d analyse d equilibre general hedonique ces metriques sont basees sur l estimation de la volonte de payer de menages et d entreprises heterogenes pour se localiser dans diverses villes qui different tant pour ce qui est des niveaux de salaires des couts de l habitation et des prix des terrains a l aide des donnees du recensement canadien de 2006 on construit des evaluations de la qualite de vie des diverses zones metropolitaines qui s arriment convenablement aux ordonnancements en vogue mais on decouvre que les canadiens portent une attention particuliere au climat et a la culture la qualite de vie est la plus elevee a victoria pour les anglophones a montreal pour les francophones et a vancouver pour les allophones et la plus faible pour les villes eloignees des grands centres toronto est la ville la plus productive vancouver est generalement la plus appreciee

productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital evidence from the cities abstract based on recent theoretical developments the argument is made that the average level of human capital is a local public good cities with higher average levels of human capital should therefore have higher wages and higher land rents after conditioning on the characteristics of individual workers and dwellings this prediction is supported by data for standard metropolitan statistical areas smsas in the united states where the smsa average levels of formal education and work experience are used as proxies for the average level of human capital the alternative explanations of omitted smsa variables and self selection are evaluated an estimate of the effect of an additional year of average education on total factor productivity is computed

a productivity model of city crowdedness abstract population density varies widely across us cities a simple static general equilibrium model suggests that moderate sized differences in cities total factor productivity can account for such variation nevertheless the productivity required to sustain above average population densities considerably exceeds estimates of the increase in productivity caused by such high density in contrast increasing returns to scale may be able to sustain multiple equilibria at below average population densities

what are cities worth land rents local productivity and the total value of amenities abstract this paper models how to use widely available data on wages and housing costs to infer land rents local productivity and the total value of local amenities in the presence of federal taxes and locally produced nontraded goods i apply the model to u s metropolitan areas with the aid of visually intuitive graphs the results improve measures of productivity and feature large differences in land rents wage and housing cost differences across metropolitan areas are accounted for more by productivity than quality of life differences regressions using individual amenities reveal that the most productive and valuable cities are typically coastal sunny mild educated and large

the value of air quality in chinese cities evidence from labor and property market outcomes using a dual market sorting model of workers location decisions this paper studies the capitalization of air pollution in wages and property prices across chinese cities to account for endogeneity of air pollution in the determination of wages and property prices we exploit quasi experimental variation in air quality induced by a policy subsidizing coal based winter heating in northern china and document a discontinuity in average air quality for cities located north and south of the policy boundary using data for all 288 chinese cities in 2011 we estimate an equilibrium relationship between wages and house prices for the entire system of chinese cities and specify a regression discontinuity design to quantify how variation in air quality induced by the policy affects this relationship locally our preferred estimates of the elasticity of wages and house prices with respect to text pm 10 concentration are 0 53 and 0 71 respectively at the average of our sample the willingness to pay for a unit reduction in text pm 10 concentration is cny 261 28 simeq usd 40 50 with a significant share reflected in labor market outcomes

the costs of agglomeration house and land prices in french cities we develop a new methodology to estimate the elasticity of urban costs with respect to city population using french house and land price data after handling a number of estimation concerns we find that the elasticity of urban costs increases with city population with an estimate of about 0 03 for an urban area with 100 000 inhabitants to 0 08 for an urban area of the size of paris our approach also yields a number of intermediate outputs of independent interest such as the share of housing in expenditure the elasticity of unit house and land prices with respect to city population and within city distance gradients for house and land prices

the importance of local fiscal conditions in analyzing local labor markets a new test of the compensating wage differential model is proposed the logic behind roback s model which shows how differences in nonproduced amenities may be reflected in intercity wage differentials is extended to the case of differences in local fiscal conditions represented by tax rates and publicly produced services results show that differences in local tax rates and services provisions do generate compensating wage differentials across cities the effects of a particularly large set of taxes and effective services output measures are examined differences in local fiscal conditions are shown to play important roles in explaining the variance in intermetropolitan wages

are stated preferences convergent with revealed preferences empirical evidence from nigeria abstract the debate on the relevance of monetary valuation of environmental goods has often hinged around the convergence of stated and revealed preferences and in turn the actual money choices of respondents in this paper we report two separate experiments conducted in southeastern nigeria to compare irrigators stated willingness to pay for a river basin restoration scheme designed to mitigate soil and water pollution problems in their farms with their actual expenditures to mitigate the same pollution problems we found that the farmers stated and revealed preferences were significantly correlated but yielded significantly different means at 5 level while econometric analysis reveals a systematic association between key socioeconomic variables and farmers stated wtp lending credence to the cvm within its theoretical framework analysis of the qualitative follow ups reveals inconsistencies in some farmers stated and revealed preferences that cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of economic theory alone while individual utility maximisation was a dominant driver of both stated and revealed preferences for most farmers lack of environmental awareness information complexity risk aversion and peer pressure were seen to limit the ability and willingness of the least educated segment of the sample to make apparently rational economic decisions in both markets overall the results question the use of convergent and or theoretical validity arguments for justifying and or criticising the use of stated preference experiments in environmental policy

hypothetical versus real willingness to pay in the health care sector results from a field experiment abstract we conducted a field experiment comparing hypothetical and real purchase decisions for a pharmacist provided asthma management program among 172 subjects with asthma subjects received either a dichotomous choice contingent valuation question or were given the opportunity to actually enroll in the program three different prices were used us 15 40 and 80 in the hypothetical group 38 of subjects said that they would purchase the good at the stated price but only 12 of subjects in the real group purchased the good p 0 000 we cannot however reject the null hypothesis that definitely sure hypothetical yes responses as identified in a follow up question correspond to real yes responses we conclude that the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method overestimates willingness to pay but that it may be possible to correct for this overestimation by sorting out definitely sure yes responses

does climate change affect real estate prices only if you believe in it this paper studies whether house prices reflect belief differences about climate change we show that in an equilibrium model of housing choice in which agents derive utility from ownership in a neighborhood of similar agents prices exhibit different elasticities to climate risk we use comprehensive transaction data to relate prices to inundation projections of individual homes and measures of beliefs about climate change we find that houses projected to be underwater in believer neighborhoods sell at a discount compared to houses in denier neighborhoods our results suggest that house prices reflect heterogeneity in beliefs about long run climate change risks

separating urban agglomeration economies in consumption and production abstract in this paper we estimate the net agglomeration economies on the consumption side as well as the production side using japanese city based data from 1992 when interregional net migration nearly ceased we show that doubling city size increases the nominal wage by approximately 10 but decreases the real wage by approximately 7 12 the 10 increase of the nominal wage is attributed to the productivity increase in production activities while the 7 12 decrease of the real wage is a compensation for the net agglomeration economies which are the benefits from product variety minus the costs of congestion in other words city bigness not only enhances the productivity of firms but also brings net agglomeration economies to households in this way we separate the net agglomeration economies on the production side from those on the consumption side

choosing your pond location choices and relative income do individuals care about their relative income while this is a long standing hypothesis revealed preference evidence remains elusive we provide a unique test by studying residential choices in

peace and economic interdependence in the middle east he relationship between interdependence and con ict has in recent years emerged as a popular and important subject in international relations startingwith polachek 1980 a large number of studies have attempted to scrutinise the linksbetween economic interdependence and political con ict today researchers tend toagree that economic relations between two countries reduce the likelihood of thosecountries engaging in armed con ict with one another russett and oneal 2001 we see a need to move from the general insight offered by past studies to moreregion speci c models and analyses at lower levels of aggregation dorussen 2006 we aim to do precisely that in this study by testing the relationshipbetween economic interdependence and peace between four middle easterncountries egypt israel jordan and turkey indeed a growing body of evidencedemonstrates important regional differences around the world that are largelyignored by traditional research lemke 2002 it may be then that certain inter national relations theories such as the liberal notion of peace through trade arenot as general as their authors intended or believed them to be the contribution of this article is twofold rst we evaluate the relationshipbetween interdependence and peace in the context of the aforementioned middleeastern countries if the liberal notion is as universal as it is often claimed to be wewould expect the theory to hold even in the most contentious of areas in this casethe middle east second in evaluating the relationship between interdependence andpeace we relate the liberal notion of peace through trade to the selectorate theoryof political survival ultimately we demonstrate empirically that economicallyinterdependent middle eastern countries cooperate more and ght less with one

consequences of the clean water act and the demand for water quality since the 1972 u s clean water act government and industry have invested over 1 trillion to abate water pollution or 100 per person year over half of u s stream and river miles however still violate pollution standards we use the most comprehensive set of files ever compiled on water pollution and its determinants including 50 million pollution readings from 240 000 monitoring sites and a network model of all u s rivers to study water pollution s trends causes and welfare consequences we have three main findings first water pollution concentrations have fallen substantially between 1972 and 2001 for example the share of waters safe for fishing grew by 12 percentage points second the clean water act s grants to municipal wastewater treatment plants which account for 650 billion in expenditure caused some of these declines through these grants it cost around 1 5 million 2014 dollars to make one river mile fishable for a year we find little displacement of municipal expenditure due to a federal grant third the grants estimated effects on housing values are smaller than the grants costs we carefully discuss welfare implications

urban population and amenities the neoclassical model of location we develop a neoclassical general equilibrium model to explain cross metro variation in population and density we provide new methods to estimate traded and non traded productivities and elasticities of housing and land supply using density and land area data from wage and housing cost indices the model explains half of u s density and population variation and finds that quality of life determines location choices more than trade productivity productivity and factor substitution in housing matter most but are weak in nicer areas relaxing land use regulations would increase population in the west raising both quality of life and productivity experienced by residents

neomercantilism and international economic stability in a recent paper barry buzan disputes the widespread theory that associates a liberal international economic structure positively and a mercantilist structure negatively with international security we do not take issue with buzan s arguments on this point rather we disagree with some of his assumptions concerning the relationship between mercantilistic policies and the international economic order those of buzan s points that we question represent generally accepted views in the literature on mercantilism buzan s definition of mercantilism focuses essentially if not exclusively on protectionist trade policies we prefer a more general definition based on keynesian and post keynesian literature by including the macroeconomic goals of neomercantilism this definition accounts for a country s foreign economic policy

agglomeration and land rents evidence from the prefectures abstract we use japanese prefectural wage and land rent data to estimate the magnitude of agglomeration effects in manufacturing and financial services we also examine the geographical range of agglomeration effects by estimating the extent to which they diminish with distance using a specification that encompasses the polar cases of purely local agglomeration economies on the one hand and national increasing returns on the other we find that the extent of agglomeration economies in both industries is significant but that their effect decays much faster with distance in financial services than in manufacturing that is the geographical reach of spillovers in financial services appears to be much lower than in manufacturing

chain gangs and passed bucks predicting alliance patterns in multipolarity contemporary balance of power theory has become too parsimonious to yield determinate predictions about state alliance strategies in multipolarity kenneth waltz s theory predicts only that multipolarity predisposes states to either of two opposite errors which this article characterizes as chain ganging and buck passing to predict which of these two policies will prevail it is necessary to complicate waltz s theory by adding a variable from robert jervis s theory of the security dilemma the variable of whether offense or defense is perceived to have the advantage at least under the checkerboard geographical conditions in europe before world wars i and ii perceived offensive advantage bred unconditional alliances whereas perceived defensive advantage bred free riding on the balancing efforts of others

congestion agglomeration and the structure of cities abstract congestion costs in urban areas are significant and clearly represent a negative externality nonetheless economists also recognize the production advantages of urban density in the form of positive agglomeration externalities the long run equilibrium outcomes in economies with multiple correlated but offsetting externalities have yet to be fully explored in the literature therefore i develop a spatial equilibrium model of urban structure that includes both congestion costs and agglomeration externalities i then estimate the structural parameters of the model using a computational algorithm to match the spatial distribution of employment population land use land rents and commute times in the data policy simulations based on the estimates suggest that congestion pricing may have ambiguous consequences for economic welfare

links between rural poverty and the environment in developing countries asset categories and investment poverty abstract this paper presents a framework for analyzing the links between poverty and the environment in rural areas of developing countries it introduces the concept of investment poverty and relates it to other measures of poverty in analysis of these links the notion of poverty is examined in the context of categories of assets and categories of environment change with particular focus on farm household income generation and investment strategies as determinants of the links the strength and direction of the poverty environment links are shown to differ even invert depending on the composition of the assets held by the rural poor and the types of environmental problems they face policy strategies need to focus on conditioning variables that affect market development community wealth infrastructure household asset distribution and the affordability and appropriateness of natural resource conservation technologies

functional form sample selection and housing demand abstract this paper addresses issues of functional form and sample selection in estimating housing demand urban economic theory suggests that income and price elasticities be allowed to vary with reference incomes and housing prices a generalized box cox estimator rejects linear and log log forms semi log forms are accepted in some cases sample truncation leads to downward biases in permanent income regressions but to slightly upward biased income elasticities price elasticities are generally unchanged

an econometric model of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand abstract this paper addresses the determination of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand full housing demand elasticities incorporate the interactive effects among the four stages of the model price and income have major effects in the tenure choice equation sociodemographic variables such as age have complex effects that may be lost in simpler forms of estimation

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

new estimates of quality of life in urban areas implicit markets capture compensation for intraurban and interregional differe nces in amenities and yield differences in housing prices and wages these pecuniary differences become preference based weights in a qual ity of life index hedonic equations are estimated using microdata fr om the 1980 census and assembled county based amenity data on climati c environmental and urban conditions ranking of 253 urban counties reveals substantial variation within as well as among the 185 urba n areas the quality of life differences across counties within one s msa is almost one half of the difference between the top and bottom ranked counties in the nation copyright 1988 by american economic association

actual averting expenditure versus stated willingness to pay the purpose of this study is to perform a complete comparison of actual averting expenditure and stated willingness to pay measures and to determine if the averting expenditure is a lower bound of the willingness to pay measured from contingent valuation experiment as suggested by literature in addition to the single value comparison bootstrap krinsky and robb jackknife and cameron are four simulation methods used to calculate confidence intervals for response function sample sizes of 100 200 and 1000 are simulated 100 and 200 times respectively a set of data with 540 households from a contingent policy referendum survey is employed for our purpose under a specific level of bod improvement a one to one single mean value comparison of the actual averting expenditure is greater than the mean willingness to pay from utility difference model the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical expectation for expenditure difference that averting expenditure is a lower bound of willingness to

too poor to be green consumers a field experiment on revealed preferences for firewood in rural guatemala the paper reports on a field experiment that investigates whether households in guatemala are willing to surrender a small material gain in order to buy legal rather than illegal firewood given the ineffectiveness of command and control policies to curb the problem of illegal logging in guatemala the experiment assesses the potential viability of market oriented solutions local consumers in developing countries are generally believed to be too poor to pay a premium for green ethical products therefore little information has been gathered on willingness to pay wtp for such products and its determinants in non affluent consumer markets while our experiment on firewood consumption in central guatemala only implies a weak and indirect test of wtp for green products the results indicate that it is premature if not unwarranted to assume that the poor are not ready to make pro ethical choices in the marketplace moreover we find that information on the legal procedures for firewood extraction significantly affects consumer choice between legal and illegal firewood

identifying productivity and amenity effects in interurban wage differentials this study focuses on the relative importance of amenity and productivity differences in determining wage differentials across urban areas the approach developed takes advantage of the connection between land and labor market clearing conditions required for locational equilibrium of households and firms data on recent movers are used to estimate equilibrium wages and rents for a sample of metropolitan areas this information is then used to identify amenity and productivity components of wages for each city in the sample using national estimates of the relative share of land in consumption and production differences in productivity and amenities are found to be roughly equal sources of wage variation across the sample

opportunities and risks in turkmenistan s quest for diversification of its gas export routes abstract this paper applies two hypotheses regarding weak state foreign policy to analyze the opportunities and risks in turkmenistan s quest to diversify its gas export routes especially since 2006 the first hypothesis related to opportunities is that competition among major powers over the allegiance of weak states strengthens their bargaining power the second hypothesis related to risks is that the diversification policies of weak states in times of decreasing competition among great powers incur the danger of simply replacing an old master with a new one i argue that while the first hypothesis is useful in explaining the opportunities of turkmenistan s diversification policies especially before early 2009 the second hypothesis is helpful in accounting for the risks of these policies after early 2009 in other words competition among four major powers russia china the eu and india over turkmenistan s gas pipeline system before early 2009 strengthened the country s bargaining power in contrast turkmenistan s diversification policies in times of fading competition after early 2009 have left it increasingly exposed to the potential risk of replacing its old master russia with a new one china

temperature and income reconciling new cross sectional and panel estimates this paper presents novel evidence and analysis of the relationship between temperature and income first using sub national data from 12 countries in the americas we provide new evidence that the negative cross country relationship between temperature and income also exists within countries and even within states second we provide a theoretical framework for reconciling the substantial negative association between temperature and income in the cross section with the even stronger short run effects of temperature estimated by panel models the theoretical framework suggests that half of the negative short term effects of temperature may be offset in the long run through adaptation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

investing in the peace economic interdependence and international conflict research appears to substantiate the liberal conviction that trade fosters global peace still existing understanding of linkages between cone ict and international economics is limited in at least two ways first cross border economic relationships are far broader than just trade global capital markets dwarf the exchange of goods and services and states engage in varying degrees of monetary policy coordination second the manner in which economics is said to inhibit cone ict behavior is implausible in light of new analytical insights about the causes of war we discuss and then demonstrate formally how interdependence can ine uence states recourse to military violence the risk of disrupting economic linkages particularly access to capital may occasionally deter minor contests between interdependent states but such opportunity costs will typically fail to preclude militarized disputes instead interdependence offers nonmilitarized avenues for communicating resolve through costly signaling our quantitative results show that capital interdependence contributes to peace independent of the effects of trade democracy interest and other variables students of world politics have long argued that peace is a positive externality of global commerce theorists like montesquieu and kant and practitioners like woodrow wilson asserted that economic relations between states pacify political interaction mounting evidence in recent years appears to substantiate these claims multiple studies many identie ed with the democratic peace link interstate trade with reductions in militarized disputes or wars 1 while we concur with the evolving

housing productivity and the social cost of land use restrictions abstract we use metro level variation in land and structural input prices to test and estimate a housing cost function with differences in local housing productivity both ols and iv estimates imply that stringent regulatory and geographic restrictions substantially increase housing prices relative to land and construction input costs the typical cost share of land is one third and substitution between inputs is inelastic a disaggregated analysis of regulations finds state level restrictions are costlier than local ones and provides a regulatory cost index rci housing productivity falls with city population typical land use restrictions impose costs that appear to exceed quality of life benefits reducing welfare on net

the hidden hand of economic coercion why do policymakers consistently employ economic sanctions even though scholars consider them an ineffective tool of statecraft game theoretic models of economic coercion suggest the success rate may be understated because of selection effects when the targeted country prefers conceding to incurring the cost of sanctions it has an incentive to acquiesce before the imposition of sanctions the bulk of successful coercion episodes should therefore end with sanctions threatened but not imposed this contradicts the recent literature on sanctions which assumes that sanctions rarely if ever work at generating significant concessions from the targeted country and are imposed for domestic or symbolic political reasons if the game theoretic argument is correct the crucial cases to study are those in which coercion is threatened but not implemented a statistical analysis of data on sanctions in pursuit of economic or regulatory goals strongly supports the gametheoretic argument these results suggest that the significance of economic coercion has been undervalued in the study of statecraft and international relations more generally

bilateral trade elasticities this paper estimates income and price elasticities for bilateral world trade in addition to testing the properties of the error terms the dynamic specification and the assumption of parameter constancy the analysis presents the first application of the bank spectrum estimator to bilateral trade flows for all countries the paper finds that bilateral trade elasticities exhibit enough of a dispersion to suggest that the direction of trade is sensitive to changes in income and prices using the bilateral elasticities as raw data the analysis obtains the associated multilateral estimates and finds that they are both consistent with the literature and suitable to addressing questions involving multilateral trade but the evidence also reveals that sole reliance on multilateral elasticities conceals valuable information for both policy applications and empirical analyses of international trade copyright 1990 by mit press

neighbourhood effects and housing demand in this paper we estimate a model of housing demand with neighborhood eects we exploit special features of the national sample of the american housing survey and properties of housing markets that allow us to create natural instruments and therefore identify the impact of social interactions we find evidence of both endogenous and contextual neighborhood eects we report two alternative sets of estimates for neighborhood eects that dier in terms of the instruments we use for estimating the model when the endogenous neighborhood eect is large the respective contextual eects are weak and vice versa the elasticity of housing demand with respect to the mean of the neighbors housing demands the endogenous eect ranges from 0 19 to 0 66 and is generally very significant the contextual eects are also very significant a key such eect the elasticity with respect to the mean of neighbors permanent incomes ranges from 0 17 to 0 54

quality of the business environment versus quality of life do firms and households like the same cities this paper develops a new measure of the quality of business environment that complements existing measures of the quality of life an annual panel of these measures is constructed and analyzed for 37 cities from 1977 to 1995 findings indicate that many cities attractive to firms are unattractive to households and vice versa in addition the size of a city s workforce increases with improvements in the quality of the business environment in contrast cities most likely to be dominated by retirees are those that are less attractive to firms additional specifications support theoretical arguments that retirees are drawn to cities in which local attributes are capitalized into lower wages rather than higher rents

regime types markets and war the importance of pervasive rents in foreign policy several possible explanations have been given for why democracies maintain peaceful relations among themselves this article examines the role of domestic political institutions in establishing market relations and the degree of interference in domestic economic relations it is argued that less representative regimes are more likely to establish pervasive policies delivering rents than more representative regimes pervasive rents in turn alter the relationship of domestic and international prices which affects how countries choose to participate in the international economy republics where rent seeking may be pervasive but rents tend not to be distorting fit into liberal international systems with greater ease than other types of regimes republics therefore find it more attractive to meet their international needs through trade than do nonrepublican regimes by exploring the importance of regime type for the formation of international preferences questions about relations between democratic st

impact of historical conflict on fdi location and performance japanese investment in china historical relations between countries bring important explanatory power for foreign direct investment fdi decisions yet little is known on whether a home host country relation exhibits heterogeneous effects on fdi across the country s subnational regions in this study we examine the long term impact of historical conflict on fdi location choices and performance using a sample of 8 646 japanese fdi in china we show that civilian casualties in different provinces of china during the second sino japanese war exert deterring effects on japanese fdi location choices furthermore we demonstrate that civilian casualties negatively affect japanese fdi performance and political capital accumulation strategies in the forms of excessive tax payment and local employment can reduce this negative effect this study contributes to the discussion on how within country differences of historical factors affect fdi location decisions and performance the findings on firms political capital accumulation strategies also provide important implications for fdi operation in an environment characterized by historical animosity

ecosystems contingent valuation and ethics the case of wetland re creation this paper addresses a current issue in environmental valuation namely the extent to which environmental preferences depart from the usual economic paradigm to incorporate some lexicographic elements after a theoretical discussion the paper reviews attempts to explore this question empirically by supplementing contingent valuation analyses with an exploration of the motives behind willingness to pay responses including zero bids and refusals to answer this is followed by the presentation of new evidence investigating respondents willingness to pay for the creation of a wetland taken from 713 personal interviews of the british public 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

what is different about urbanization in rich and poor countries cities in brazil china india and the united states abstract are the well known facts about urbanization in the united states also true for the developing world we compare american metropolitan areas with analogous geographic units in brazil china and india both gibrat s law and zipf s law seem to hold as well in brazil as in the u s but china and india look quite different in brazil and china the implications of the spatial equilibrium hypothesis the central organizing idea of urban economics are not rejected the india data however repeatedly rejects tests inspired by the spatial equilibrium assumption one hypothesis is that spatial equilibrium only emerges with economic development as markets replace social relationships and as human capital spreads more widely in all four countries there is strong evidence of agglomeration economies and human capital externalities the correlation between density and earnings is stronger in both china and india than in the u s strongest in china in india the gap between urban and rural wages is huge but the correlation between city size and earnings is more modest the cross sectional relationship between area level skills and both earnings and area level growth are also stronger in the developing world than in the u s the forces that drive urban success seem similar in the rich and poor world even if limited migration and difficult housing markets make it harder for a spatial equilibrium to develop

alliance reliability in times of war explaining state decisions to violate treaties understanding the conditions under which state leaders are willing to honor alliance commitments in war will increase knowledge about the escalation and diffusion of conflict and about the propensity of states to fulfill agreements under anarchy new data analysis provides evidence that alliance commitments are fulfilled about 75 percent of the time but how can one understand the failure of alliance partners to act as promised in the remaining 25 percent of cases formal modelers have deduced that because of the costs associated with alliances state leaders who form alliances are likely to fulfill them those alliances that are formed should be fairly reliable i argue therefore that one can best account for violations of alliance agreements either through an understanding of the factors that reduce the costs of violation or through changes that have occurred since the alliance was formed using detailed data on alliance commitments between 1816 and 1944 i find evidence commensurate with this argument changes in the power of states or in their policymaking processes are powerful predictors of the failure to honor past commitments and nondemocratic states and major powers sets of states that i argue suffer lower costs from reneging on agreements are more likely to violate treaties

cluster sample methods in applied econometrics inference methods that recognize the clustering of individual observations have been available for more than 25 years brent moulton 1990 caught the attention of economists when he demonstrated the serious biases that can result in estimating the effects of aggregate explanatory variables on individual specific response variables the source of the downward bias in the usual ordinary least squares ols standard errors is the presence of an unobserved state level effect in the error term more recently john pepper 2002 showed how accounting for multi level clustering can have dramatic effects on t statistics while adjusting for clustering is much more common than it was 10 years ago inference methods robust to cluster correlation are not used routinely across all relevant settings in this paper i provide an overview of applications of cluster sample methods both to cluster samples and to panel data sets

consequences of a coexistence policy on the adoption of gmht crops in the european union this article examines the adoption of genetically modified herbicide tolerant gmht crops in the european union eu prior to its commercial release a set of potential drivers including the implementation of coexistence measures by farmers farmers own motivational factors e g economic environmental and technical factors and perceived social pressure to accept or reject adoption may influence european union farmers willingness to adopt gmht oilseed rape and gmht maize the analysis includes economic and sociological factors results show that coexistence measures may hamper gmht adoption in the eu

is russia building too many pipelines explaining russia s oil and gas export strategy abstract the article examines russia s entire oil and gas export network and reveals that there is a considerable surplus pipeline capacity which is likely to endure in the future it brings to attention surplus capacity as a concept that could enrich discussions on what drivers russia s energy policy abroad and how moscow enhances its energy security the article provides three explanations on russia s surplus capacity for oil and gas exports first russia s institutional setting has been conducive for a surge in new pipelines as economic considerations have played a less significant role second russia s energy pivot to asia has already contributed to a widening surplus capacity in westbound oil pipelines and it is likely to have a similar impact on gas once it starts flowing to china third russia s energy security concerns namely about minimising transit risks have played a key role in its active pipeline diplomacy and new pipeline ventures the implications of russia s surplus capacity can be significant for oil the room for manoeuvring is wide enough to allow russia abandon an entire route of its choice for gas moscow is likely to enhance its bargaining position with ukraine while gazprom acquires more flexibility to deliver gas abroad

trade blocs trade flows and international conflict the relationship between foreign trade and political conflict has been a persistent source of controversy among scholars of international relations existing empirical studies of this topic have focused on the effects of trade flows on conflict but they have largely ignored the institutional context in which trade is conducted in this article we present some initial quantitative results pertaining to the influence on military disputes of preferential trading arrangements ptas a broad class of commercial institutions that includes free trade areas common markets and customs unions we argue that parties to the same pta are less prone to disputes than other states and that hostilities between pta members are less likely to occur as trade flows rise between them moreover we maintain that heightened commerce is more likely to inhibit conflict between states that belong to the same preferential grouping than between states that do not our results accord with this argument based on an analysis of the period since world war ii we find that trade flows have relatively little effect on the likelihood of disputes between states that do not participate in the same pta within ptas however there is a strong inverse relationship between commerce and conflict parties to such an arrangement are less likely to engage in hostilities than other states and the likelihood of a military dispute dips markedly as trade increases between them

business as usual economic responses to political tensions do political tensions harm economic relations theories claim that trade prevents war and political relations motivate trade but less is known about whether smaller shifts in political relations impact economic exchange looking at two major economies we show that negative events have not hurt u s or japanese trade or investment flows we then examine specific incidents of tensions in u s french and sino japanese relations over the past decade two case pairs that allow us to compare varying levels of political tension given high existing economic interdependence and different alliance relations aggregate economic flows and high salience sectors like wine and autos are unaffected by the deterioration of political relations in an era of globalization actors lack incentives to link political and economic relations we argue that sunk costs in existing trade and investment make governments firms and consumers unlikely to change their behavior in response to political disputes d o political tensions have economic consequences the relationship between economic interdependence and conflict has been a central debate in international relations leading scholars contend that states with good relations should have more trade than states with poor relations and import decisions of firms will respond to the climate of friendliness orhostilitythatexistsbetweentheimporterandexporter morrow siverson and tabares 1998 650 pollins 1989b 739 analysis of trade and conflict in a simultaneous equations model concludes that political relations are driving commerce not the other way around keshk pollins and reuveny 2004 1175 we reexamine these arguments in the current globalization era to show that sunk costs reduce incentives for state and private actors to link political and economic relations 1

economic structure and international security the limits of the liberal case the theory that a liberal international economic structure is associated positively and a mercantilist structure negatively with international security is widespread but the case in favor of liberalism and the case against mercantilism are both one sided and the whole attempt to link economic structure to international security anyway overestimates the influence that economic structure has on the use of force political and military factors provide explanations more convincing than economic ones for the propensity of states to resort to or refrain from the use of force liberal and mercantilist structures each have both positive and negative impacts on the use of force but these impacts become important only when they are complemented by noneconomic factors governing the use of force hence security grounds cannot be used convincingly either as a reason for maintaining the current liberal system or as a reason for opposing a shift toward a more mercantilist structure of international economic relations

consistent estimates of the elasticity of substitution between land and non land inputs in the production of housing abstract this paper reports new estimates of the elasticity of substitution between land and non land inputs in the production of housing errors in the measurement of land value may have biased existing estimates of the substitution elasticity downward leading to the conclusion that the substitution elasticity is less than one the data analyzed in this study consist of observations on the transaction prices of both the lot and the house obtained by tracking the development of residential subdivisions the results indicate that the substitution elasticity is higher than indicated in previous studies and may not differ significantly from one

public infrastructure investments productivity and welfare in fixed geographic areas abstract measures of the value of public investments are critical inputs into the policy process and aggregate production and cost functions have become the dominant methods of evaluating these benefits this paper examines the limitations of these approaches in light of applied production and spatial equilibrium theories a spatial equilibrium model of an economy with nontraded localized public goods like infrastructure is proposed and a method for identifying the role of public capital in firm production and household preferences is derived empirical evidence from a sample of large us cities suggests that public capital provides significant marginal benefits but the marginal productivity of public capital is low and aggregate city willingness to pay for large increases in public capital is less than their cost the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the political economy of urban infrastructure investment

local amenities and life cycle migration do people move for jobs or fun abstract do households move for jobs or fun and where do they go when they move we address these questions using the 1970 2000 us census based on a panel of quality of life and business environment measures households prefer msas in warm coastal areas and non metropolitan locations while firms prefer large growing cities in addition cities with improving business environments acquire increasing shares of workers especially workers with high levels of human capital cities with improving consumer amenities become relatively more populated by retirees further analysis of individual level migration decisions indicates that regardless of marital status young highly educated households tend to move towards places with higher quality business environments this tendency is especially pronounced among highly educated couples who are more subject to job market co location problems in contrast regardless of education couples near retirement tend to move away from places with favorable business environments and towards places with highly valued consumer amenities these patterns help explain why areas unattractive to both households and business have struggled as with upstate new york while the sun belt and other regions are thriving