community development with endogenous land use controls abstract when competitive landowners developers control incorporation and zoning decisions efficient patterns of development emerge when by contrast early arrivals control policy they may impose zoning restrictions that force later entrants to pay via the property tax a disproportionate share of the cost of providing public services if new arrivals are sufficiently poor they may choose to reside outside the community while higher quality land within the community remains unoccupied this inefficient and exclusionary outcome can be an equilibrium if boundaries once drawn are irreversible the ex ante introduction of a seemingly natural compensation scheme may not remedy the problem

the looks of a winner beauty and electoral success abstract we study the role of beauty in politics using candidate photos that figured prominently in electoral campaigns our investigation is based on visual assessments of 1929 finnish political candidates from 10 011 respondents of which 3708 were finnish as finland has a proportional electoral system we are able to compare the electoral success of non incumbent candidates representing the same party an increase in our measure of beauty by one standard deviation is associated with an increase of 20 in the number of votes for the average non incumbent parliamentary candidate the relationship is unaffected by including education and occupation as control variables and withstands several other robustness checks

a dynamic approach to estimating hedonic prices for environmental goods an application to open space purchase if housing markets exhibit slow adjustment to system shocks then hedonic estimates of the price impact from environmental amenity trends may be time variant this paper suggests an alternative to the cross sectional model for estimating hedonic prices using an error correction approach that allows for endogenous environmental quality the model is applied to data concerning an open space purchase program in boulder colorado and shows that the economic impact of an open space purchase takes several years to be fully realized this observation questions using cross sectional hedonic models for evaluating willingness to pay for time trended environmental amenities

beauty and the labor market the authors examine the impact of looks on earnings using interviewers ratings of respondents physical appearance plain people earn less than average looking people who earn less than the good looking the plainness penalty is 5 to 10 percent slightly larger than the beauty premium effects for men are at least as great as for women unattractive women have lower labor force participation rates and marry men with less human capital better looking people sort into occupations where beauty may be more productive but the impact of individuals looks is mostly independent of occupation suggesting the existence of pure employer discrimination copyright 1994 by american economic association

private demands for public capital evidence from school bond referenda abstract this paper develops a framework for estimating demand for school infrastructure investment that is financed through local bond referenda our framework takes explicit account of the irregular and discrete nature of local capital investment and the objective functions of local school boards our empirical model consists of a three equation system composed of a proposed spending equation a vote equation and a selection equation estimated income and price elasticities of demand for school infrastructure are similar to those found in studies of current school spending we also find that school boards act like risk averse budget maximizing agenda setters

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

externally validating contingent valuation an open space survey and referendum in corvallis oregon abstract we ask whether respondents report the same decisions in non binding surveys as they do in real elections we study a corvallis or referendum to raise open space funds and find survey and election compatibility pivots on the characterization of undecided responses the survey and referendum percentage of yes votes match closely only if undecided responses are treated as no we compare survey based mean willingness to pay wtp estimates with election based estimates household wtp averages us 48 89 using election results while survey based wtp averages us 75 43 excluding undecided responses us 49 67 treating undecided responses as no and between us 49 96 and 80 05

why do households without children support local public schools linking house price capitalization to school spending while residents receive similar benefits from many local government programs only about one third of all households have children in public schools we argue that capitalization of school spending into house prices can encourage even childless residents to support spending on schools we identify a proxy for the extent of capitalization the supply of land available for new development and show that towns in massachusetts with little undeveloped land have larger changes in house prices in response to a plausibly exogenous spending shock towns with little available land also spend more on schools we extend these results using data from school districts in 46 states showing that per pupil spending is positively related to the percentage of developed land this positive correlation persists only in districts where the median resident is a homeowner and is stronger in districts with more elderly residents who do not use school services and have a shorter expected duration in their home our findings support models in which capitalization encourages the provision of durable local public goods and provides an additional reason why some elderly support local school spending

the right look conservative politicians look better and voters reward it previous research has established that good looking political candidates win more votes we extend this line of research by examining differences between parties on the left and on the right of the political spectrum our study combines data on personal votes in real elections with a web survey in which 2 513 non finnish respondents evaluated the facial appearance of 1 357 finnish political candidates we find that political candidates on the right are better looking in both municipal and parliamentary elections and also have a larger beauty premium in municipal but not in parliamentary elections we discuss possible explanations for these patterns based on the fact that municipal candidates are relatively unknown jel code d72 j45 j70

marginal property tax effects of conservation easements a vermont case study conservation easements allow landowners to transfer their land s development rights to another entity usually a nontaxable conservation organization conservation reduces the town s tax base necessitating a tax rate increase to maintain service levels however conserving land also decreases the supply of developable land and provides open space amenities that may be capitalized into the value of nearby properties these effects may offset the decrease in the tax base caused by the easement using a sample of twenty nine vermont towns we show that private conservation easements increase property tax rates in the short run but are tax neutral or tax suppressing in the long run

strategic control of growth in a system of cities abstract this paper provides an analysis of the supply restriction model of growth controls growth controls in such a model harm consumers while enriching landowners and they will only be adopted if landowners have political power in the model this power is manifested in the city government s use of a social welfare that takes both landlord and consumer welfare into account since cities cannot be small if the supply restriction inherent in growth controls is to have an impact strategic interactions must be considered in the analysis of city choices a general model is presented and an extended example based on leontief preferences is then considered comparative static analysis of nash equilibria in the leontief case shows that perturbations of preferences or other characteristics of a single city can have important spillover effects that alter the choices of all cities in the region

on the theory of growth controls numerous empirical studies have examined the effect of growth controls on housing prices these studies have used many different techniques ranging from hedonic price model estimation to paired comparisons but have all come to the same conclusion growth controls raise the price of housing in theory there are both demand and supply side explanations which need not be mutually exclusive for these observed price differences on the supply side housing caps zoning restrictions limitations on the amount of developable land and other forms of growth control may reduce the supply of housing over time this in turn may produce scarcity effects which manifest as shifts or other changes in the housing supply curve and attendant price increases on the demand side to the extent that growth controls may reduce or internalize expected negative externalities and or congestion costs associated with growth controls may also produce amenity effects such amenity effects manifest as changes in the demand curve and likewise may be capitalized in land values and wages e g the price of a house rises as commute time falls

a model of political equilibrium in a representative democracy abstract this paper studies political equilibrium in a two party representative democracy in which the political parties are policy motivated and voters trade off their policy preferences against their party identity it is shown that the parties will in general adopt differing policy positions in equilibrium and that under certain qualifications the winning policy will lie between the more popular party s preferred policy and a certain utilitarian optimum the winning policy will be closer to this utilitarian optimum the less biased the electorate is in terms of party identification

farmland retention techniques property rights implications and comparative evaluation a conceptual framework distinguishes farmland retention institutions and with a survey of various literatures interviews and original policy design classifies 28 techniques in four types regulatory incentive based governmental participatory and hybrid the analysis reveals that techniques often perceived to be incentive based such as pdr pace and tdr are better understood as participatory and hybrid techniques respectively likely fiscal impacts stakeholder acceptability and implementation challenges are assessed the framework suggests that when governments select multiple techniques attention should be paid to the implied allocation of property rights to maintain coherent land use policy and minimize property rights conflicts

demand for environmental goods evidence from voting patterns on california initiatives this article studies voting behavior on 16 environmental ballot propositions in california in order to characterize the demand for environmental goods the environment is found to be a normal good for people with mean incomes but some environmental goods are inferior for those with high incomes at least when supplied collectively an important price of environmental goods is reduced income in the construction farming forestry and manufacturing industries income and price can explain most of the variation in voting there is little need to introduce preference variables such as political ideology

balanced budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition this paper models balanced budget redistribution between socio economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties equilibrium is unique in the present model and a sufficient condition for existence is given requiring that there be enough stochastic heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate the validity of hotelling s principle of minimum differentiation and of director s law are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions and voter s possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties the policy strategy of expected plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality incomes are fixed and known so lump sum taxation is feasible however constraints on tax transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis

communities competition spillovers and open space we explore the impact of the spatial distribution of developers on the private provision of open space our analysis yields three main findings first we demonstrate that the mixed public good nature of open space relative to private lot consumption can lead a single land rent maximizing developer to over supply open space relative to the utility maximizing level second by explicitly incorporating the spatial distribution of open space spillovers we show how competition can lead not only to inefficient levels of open space but also to inefficiencies in its spatial distribution finally we evaluate the impact of market based open space instruments

the public demand for open space the case of connecticut communities abstract at both the state and national levels public policies are being designed to stimulate the demand for locally owned open space yet very little is known about the factors that influence the demand for open space and the sensitivity of demand to price and income to fill the void this study uses data for connecticut cities and towns to estimate the public demand for open space the empirical results suggest that the demand for open space is relatively insensitive to changes in price but highly responsive to changes in income the findings also show that federal and state open space may tend to crowd out locally owned open space and that locally owned open space represents a highly congestable good finally the analysis indicates that privately owned open space is not a good substitute for locally owned public open space

paying politicians theory and evidence this paper looks at the theory behind the idea that paying politicians better will improve their performance the paper lays out a political agency model with adverse selection and moral hazard where politicians are subject to two period term limits this model provides a number of predictions about how the pay of politicians affects agency problems we also consider what happens when the pool of politicians is endogenous the main ideas in the model are confronted with data on u s governors jel d72 j33

using referendum data to characterize public support for purchasing development rights to farmland an econometric model that de scribes public support for farmland preservation programs as a function of local land use pat terns and socioeconomic data is developed two versions of the model are estimated using data from referenda conducted in pennsylvania and rhode island during 1982 through 1990 results suggest that support for referenda that purchase development rights is stronger in counties and towns with both rapidly increasing population and where land and house values have increased at higher rates environmental factors such as the prevalence of resource sensitive lands are also significant in describing the public s moti vation to preserve farmland jel q15

intergenerational conflict and the political economy of school spending abstract in this paper we use survey data to examine support among voters from different age cohorts for public school spending the survey asked potential voters in california how they intended to vote on two initiatives one a statewide initiative that would increase spending on public schools throughout the state and the other a local initiative that would increase spending only in the respondent s local school district we find that support for school spending generally declines with age but that older voters are more willing to support local spending on schools than state spending we examine two explanations for this voting pattern the capitalization of local spending into housing values and intergenerational altruism our results do not strongly favor one explanation over the other suggesting that both factors probably play important roles in sustaining support among older voters for local school spending

property value capitalization and municipal open space referenda this paper first develops a theory of demand for land conservation in the presence of price effects due to both amenity creation and housing supply restriction three hypotheses designed to distinguish demand for amenities from homeowner rent seeking are based upon 1 renters 2 the quality of another locally provided good schools and 3 spatial autocorrelation of funding across municipalities econometric results suggest an observable degree of demand for open space measures is nonenvironmental in motivation efficiency and policy implications are discussed along with a recommendation for benefit cost analysis capable of separating nonrival amenities from other interests to certify open space measures jel h41 q24

r d capital rate of return on r d investment and spillover of r d in japanese manufacturing industries the effect of r 50d on productivity growth in japanese manufacturing industries is examined using more accurate firm r 50d expenditure data than widely used data based on financial statements series of r 50d capital are constructed then rate of return on r 50d investment is estimated in addition the impact of other industries r 50d on the productivity growth of an industry is also estimated an attempt is made to determine the effect of electronics technology upon the productivity growth of other industries through the transaction of the intermediate electronics goods with improved quality and through the diffusion of the new technological knowledge discovered japanese technology trade 1977 1981 copyright 1989 by mit press

why beauty matters we decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where employers determine wages of workers who perform a maze solving task this task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness we find a sizable beauty premium and can identify three transmission channels a physically attractive workers are more confident and higher confidence increases wages b for a given level of confidence physically attractive workers are wrongly considered more able by employers c controlling for worker confidence physically attractive workers have oral skills such as communication and social skills that raise their wages when they interact with employers our methodology can be adopted to study the sources of discriminatory pay differentials in other settings

the age of capital the age of utilized capital tests of the embodiment hypothesis revisited early tests of the embodiment hypothesis which suggests that new capital is more productive than old may have been biased due to the incorrect use of age rather than utilized age of capital this study which attempts to correct for the potential mismeasurement bias by using the utilized age of capital in the analysis finds evidence that the embodiment hypothesis is valid

learning the preferences of governments and voters from proposed spending and aggregated votes abstract remarkably little is known about how to analyze the proposals and voting results from spending referenda when the votes are aggregated by jurisdiction and the proposals are different across jurisdictions this paper presents a framework in which we can derive the voting equation comparative statics and links between reduced form and structural parameters that are implied by different models of the proposal maker it is then possible to use interjurisdictional proposal and voting information to test hypotheses about the proposal maker and the voters our empirical work finds support for a modified budget maximization model over simpler maximization models and various non maximization models

property taxation and local public spending the renter effect the point of departure for this study is the pervasive finding that other things equal local jurisdictions tend to spend more on local services the larger the fraction of renters among their residents this paper seeks to determine the approximate magnitude of this renter effect by posing the question how much smaller would local public budgets be if all residents were home owners making use of two quite different approaches the paper finds a typical renter effect on local public expenditure on the order of ten percent this finding suggests that we might do well to reform the administration of the property tax so that changes in property tax liabilities on rental dwellings are directly and visibly transformed into changes of monthly rental payments

agglomeration economies localization or urbanization i estimate localization and urbanization economies with a methodology and data different from those of henderson and nakamura after demonstrating the problems associated with using a single agglomeration variable i present my estimates as nakamura found for japanese cities i find evidence of both localization economies and urbanization economies but i also find evidence of urbanization diseconomies in some industries as did henderson my evidence for localization and urbanization economies in american cities is stronger than henderson s evidence finally i show that the pattern of agglomeration economies by industry is consistent with observed patterns of industrial location

the scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement cost inefficiencies in public procurement tend to come from two sources corruption moral hazard and incompetence adverse selection in most countries audit authorities are responsible for monitoring costs but do not distinguish both sources of inefficiency in their audits judicial courts typically rely on these cost audits but only sanction corruption in a model of public procurement by politicians we study how the respective quality of the two courts affects corruption as well as cost efficiency we find that while better courts have the direct effect of decreasing corruption they may have a negative indirect effect on the abilities of the pool of politicians so that the net effect on cost efficiency is ambiguous

social preferences self interest and the demand for redistribution preferences for redistribution may be influenced by values and beliefs about distributive justice as well as by self interest people may prefer more redistribution to the poor if they believe that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control therefore beliefs about the causes of income may affect demand for redistribution alternatively the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences may be spurious if they are correlated with income and self interest is not properly controlled for they may also measure incentive cost concerns using social survey data i find that self interest cannot explain the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

regional and technological determinants of company productivity growth in the late 1980s ke s and bergman e m 1995 regional and technological determinants of company productivity growth in the late 1980s reg studies 29 59 71 this paper estimates the impacts on productivity growth of regional factors and technological inputs two unique data sets for us textile apparel and computer electronics companies are combined with secondary data to estimate a total factor productivity tfp growth equation a neutral technological progress ntp equation and an equation of scale economies the estimates show that regional factors and technological inputs are more significant contributors to tfp and ntp in computer electronics production than in textile apparel similarly regional factors and technological inputs have stronger influence on scale economies in computer electronics than in textile apparel scale economies as traditionally measured show a complicated pattern of empirical performance and may not be a straightforward indicator of productivity growth in an era of downsizing and flex

why have women become left wing the political gender gap and the decline in marriage the last three decades have witnessed the rise of a pohtical gender gap in the united states wherein more women than men favor the democratic party we trace this development to the decline in marriage which we posit has made men richer and women poorer data for the united states support this argument first there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap higher divorce prevalence reduces support for the democrats among men but not women second longitudinal data show that following marriage divorce women are less more likely to support the democratic party