estimating a price surface for vacant land in an urban area tthis paper examines urban land prices within a non parametric framework with specific interest in the land price gradient with respect to distance from the city center the land price surface is estimated over a 900 square mile portion of the chicago metropolitan area and is based on transaction level data of vacant land parcels the price surface is estimated using piecewise parabolic multiple regression proposed by colwell 1998 given the flexibility of this approach a rather complex price surface is revealed the estimated price surface provides some support for the standard urban economic doctrine of falling land prices with distance

does tax increment financing raise urban industrial property values the paper examines the impact of tax increment financing tif on the value of industrial properties in chicago because tif designation may be self selected a two stage procedure is used to estimate the influence of tif the authors find that the value of industrial parcels located in mixed use tif districts i e those that also contain commercial or residential properties is higher than that of similar parcels that are not located in a tif district however the value of industrial parcels that are located in homogeneous industrial use tif districts is no higher and in some specifications is lower than that of similar parcels not located in a tif district these divergent results may be best explained by industrial parcel owners desire to convert their properties to non industrial uses

measuring interactions among urbanization land use regulations and public finance this article presents a polychotomous choice selectivity model to estimate the interactions among urbanization land use regulations and public finance in five western states california idaho nevada oregon and washington land use regulations in these five states reduced the total developed area by an estimated 12 2 from 1982 to 1992 but increased housing prices between 1 3 and 4 7 depending on the intensity of land use regulations in a county land use regulations also reduced public expenditure and property tax in the long run by 5 6 and 8 4 respectively but increased public expenditure and property tax in the short run by 9 8 and 12 6 local land use policies have been examined in a number of studies e g epple romer and filmore henderson levine mcdonald and mcmillen phillips and goodstein however little empirical evidence is available on which factors motivate adoption of land use regulations nor has there been much systematic analysis of the impact of land use regulations on land development and public finance in this article we present an empirical model to evaluate quantitatively the interactions among urbanization land use regulations and public finance in five western states of the united states oregon california idaho nevada and washington we provide estimates of both the extent to which the rate of development affects the demand for more restrictive land use regulations as well as the subsequent impact of those regulations on land development housing prices public expenditure and property tax because local political processes determine land use regulations treating regulations as exogenous may cause a selection bias when analyzing their effect on development pogodzinski and sass the endogenous nature of zoning regulation was first raised by

internalizing neighborhood externalities the effect of subdivision size and zoning on residential lot prices abstract though land development regulations potentially control neighborhood externalities the developer of a residential subdivision contributes to that control by developing a larger parcel of land this paper reports estimates of the effect of parcel size on the sale price of developed building lots the results indicate that adding an acre to the median development increases lot prices by about 3 amenities appear to be income normal and the return to parcel size is greater in unincorporated areas perhaps due to less intensive governmental control over externalities

exploring spatial dynamics with land price indexes the purpose of this study is to explore the within region spatial dynamics of appreciation and depreciation rates using three different representations of geographical space mean value indexing methods are used to construct global land price indexes sub market land price indexes and local land price indexes using transaction price data for vacant residential land within the city of hamilton ontario between 1995 and 2003 the results are validated against statistics canada s series of new housing price indexes followed by a comparison of the relative performance of the three geographical representations of land price indexes the results indicate that the mean value indexing methods are robust although subject to outliers and sample selection bias and clearly illustrate the spatial dynamics of annual appreciation and depreciation rates across the study area the results also underscore the need for regular surveillance of the spatial dynamics of urban land markets

the market effects of zoning undeveloped land does zoning follow the market through restricting the uses of land zoning gives local governments the power to modify the dictates of unconstrained land markets many believe however that the regulations tend to coincide with or anticipate the market solution rather than modify it the validity of this assertion is an empirical question and has not yet been adequately addressed the purpose of this paper is to develop and apply an empirical test of the null hypothesis that zoning follows the market the null hypothesis can be rejected only if land uses under zoning differ from what they would be without zoning the first task in deriving the test is to differentiate between constrained and unconstrained land market allocations it is shown that parameter estimates for hedonic price functions when markets are zoned cannot be interpreted to imply that the regulations constrain market prices it is also shown that sample selection bias is a likely source of specification error in estimating hedonic price functions for zoned land markets since the sample selection of parcels to zone designations is unlikely to be random the selection process must be accounted for in ordinary least squares ols estimation of zone constrained hedonic price functions fortunately the correction for the specification error also provides a test for the market effects of zoning a bid price interpretation of hedonic price functions for land is presented in section ii the sample selection bias issues are also discussed in that section and a formal test for the market effects of zoning is introduced

a study of the impacts of zoning on housing values over time abstract using a virtually unique data base for vancouver canada this study examines the ways in which various zoning classifications and land uses affect the sale prices of single family residences over a 24 year period the overwhelming conclusion is that while there are impacts they are consistent in neither direction nor magnitude the results suggest that the negative externalities that are generally assumed to exist may in fact not exist as a result the use of zoning to control the effects of such presumed externalities may not be justified

analysis of urban land shortages the case of korean cities both natural constraints and government regulations on urban land use can cause urban land shortages and hence higher prices of urban land and housing than otherwise there have been attempts to investigate the differential effects of natural and contrived restrictions on land price for w x example rose 10 found that natural constraints have a significant positive impact on land value while monopoly zoning power makes a smaller contribution in explaining inter city variations in urban land price w x on the other hand pollakowski and wachter 8 analyzed the impact of land use controls measured by an index of restrictiveness of zoning and confirmed that land use regulations raise the prices of housing and developed land to the best knowledge of the authors however none of the published empirical studies including the two cited above actually measure the amount of shortage of urban land at the city level instead land supply variables are employed together with demand variables such as income and population size to determine their impact on land or housing prices this study seeks to fill the gap in the literature first by developing a measure of the urban land shortagersurplus from an analysis of land price

the identification of urban employment subcenters abstract the purpose of this paper is to propose empirical criteria for the identification of urban employment subcenters it is suggested that gross employment density employment divided by total land area and the employment population ratio are the best measures to identify an urban zone as an employment subcenter these measures are used to identify employment subcenters in the chicago smsa in 1970 and previous studies of housing and land prices in chicago are reviewed

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

factors affecting commercial land values an empirical study of milwaukee wisconsint this paper uses an implicit market approach to model the highest and best use concept when applied to single family residential development formulated from the landowner s perspective this persistence forecasting model relies on the theory that the

selection bias and land development in the monocentric city model the land development process implied by the monocentric city model is extremely simple the model as set forth by muth 13 and mills 12 contains no error terms and the city lies on a featureless plain land is converted to urban use whenever urban land values rise relative to agricutural land values the assumptions of the model assure that land development in any period takes place in a ring at the edge of the city in this paper we relax the assumption that the city is a featureless plain by introducing error terms to the urban and non urban land value functions this simple addition a necessity for empirical work produces a much richer land development process than is imbedded in the simple muth mills model the error terms in the land value functions which represent the effects of missing variables such as the fertility of the soil influence the selection of land for urban and non urban use this selection process in turn causes a bias in ols estimates of land value functions the form of the selection bias implies three possible land development patterns first if traits that produce high urban land values cause low non urban values relatively low value non urban land is developed first and has above average value in urban use however if unusually productive agricultural land is also highly valued in urban use then the development process depends on the relative magnitudes of the variances of the two land value distributions for example if the variance of the urban distribution is the larger then relatively high value non urban land is developed first and has above average land value in urban use the greater variance in the urban distribution implies that unusually good farmland can earn more in urban use thus the expanded muth mills model incorporates urban expansion at the expense of high quality agriculture and a more benign land market in which only comparatively low quality agricultural land is taken by cities the expanded muth mills model implies the existence of selection bias in land value equations selection bias has only recently been recognized

multiple regime bid rent function estimation abstract this paper reviews estimators for multiple regime selection models which include the standard urban bid rent model as a special case 4 probabilistic bid rent model imposes a restrictive selection process while existing two stage multiple regime estimators assume an error structure that is inconsistent with bid rent theory monte carlo experiments demonstrate that two stage estimators are accurate and robust to distributional misspecification the practical usefulness of the estimators is illustrated using data on 1920s chicago land values

the determinants of nonresidential urban land values abstract this paper presents the results of an empirical study of nonresidential urban land values in the dallas metropolitan area the data base consists of 467 vacant land transactions from 1978 to 1982 by concentrating on sales prices of vacant land rather than improved property problems normally encountered from use of appraised values or improved properties are eliminated separate models are developed for industrial commercial and office land the study focuses on the tendency toward agglomeration for consumers of each land use as measured by the impact on land values in the central business district suburban nodes and other employment concentrations the results provide insight into a number of influences on urban land value and offer evidence that office land derives greater benefit from agglomeration than does commercial or industrial land

policy measures to promote the widespread utilization of renewable energy technologies for electricity generation in the maldives abstract this study adopts a stakeholder based approach to understand the size and nature of the market and financial barriers to the widespread utilization of renewable energy technologies rets in the maldives in light of these barriers and the interests of relevant stakeholders this study evaluates different policy options in terms of their suitability to develop a domestic market for rets in the maldives evaluating the different policy instruments it was found that pricing laws that regulate market access are more suitable than quota systems provided that the current subsidies for conventional energy are removed or shifted towards rets as for the other financial incentives rebates on investments and low interest loans should be provided to ret project developers to overcome the high initial project costs in addition to these measures the limited institutional capacity suggests that policy support should also focus on enabling the steady development of regional institutions rather than on supporting individual ret projects these institutions should enable islands in each atoll to take advantage of efficient management and access to financial capital this will allow the development of sustained renewable energy projects that in turn will result in increased renewable capacity and decreased costs

the structure of urban land prices abstract recognition of the existence of nonlinear land prices has an impact on the measurement of the rate at which land price declines with distance from the urban center it is hypothesized that concave parcel prices have given rise to overly large estimates of the rate of price decline with distance because parcel sizes increase with distance and increased parcel sizes would be associated with lower unit prices as a result of the concavity of the land price function this hypothesis is empirically tested using vacant residential commercial and industrial land sales from within cook county illinois an important finding is that allowing for concavity greatly reduces although it does not eliminate measured rates of price decline with distance

a comment on zoning returns to scale and the value of undeveloped land this paper revisits the relationship between land value and parcel size the authors demonstrate that using a simple arbitrage equilibrium argument the value size relationship is convex concave whenever land assembly subdivision is possible they also explore further the impact of zoning on market outcomes copyright 1993 by mit press

land use regulations and regional economic development this paper uses a data intensive computable general equilibrium cge model of a medium sized city with integrated commercial and residential land data to analyze changes to local land use regulations via changes in land supply elasticities on economic development measures employment household income housing prices and tax revenue under various types of regional growth that originate from different local sectors the cge framework overcomes difficulties of econometric modeling in this area namely measurement consistency impact isolation and endogeneity issues the results both link the sparse work in this area and provide a systematic analysis including marginal and total impacts

title systems and land values abstract the torrens or registration and the recording title systems apply different principles to resolve conflicting claims to land title this paper develops a theoretical model of how expected title risk and transactions costs affect land value across the two systems and ultimately concludes that the torrens system leads to higher property values ceteris paribus it also suggests that empirical studies of the title system land value nexus need to control for self selection effects in the data we use the simultaneous existence of two alternative title systems in cook county illinois as a natural experiment for comparing land values under each system the estimates indicate that the torrens system increases land value relative to the recording system when controlling for self selection effects

determinants of local public policies for farmland preservation and urban expansion a french illustration we outline the determinants of local public policies for farmland preservation and urban expansion we first rely on the literature and on a purposely designed field study of municipalities in southern france to propose a theoretical framework better suited to the french situation the model considers aspects of land consumption includes two interest groups as well as the median voter and is then econometrically tested we confirm the expected effects of certain sociodemographic determinants and highlight the impact of municipal budgetary considerations and the role of the agricultural sector we also find more counterintuitive determinants like local political regime or unbalanced neighboring relationships