the determinants of housing tenure choice in ibadan nigeria this paper estimates housing tenure choice models for the ibadan housing market in nigeria the empirical analysis based on a logit regression model reveals that the key determi i nants of the probability of home ownership are income the investment motive for home ownership number of children in the house gender of the head of household stage in family life cycle length of stay in the city and access to land on the basis of ethnic qualification access to institutional sources of housing finance is selective and as such has not been effective in enhancing home ownership across the city

estimating willingness to pay for housing characteristics an application of the ellickson bid rent model abstract the purpose of this paper is to estimate willingness to pay for housing characteristics using the discrete choice bid rent framework developed by b ellickson j urban econom 9 56 79 1981 and modified by s r lerman and c r kern j urban econom 13 358 363 1983 the paper provides an initial empirical test of the lerman and kern modifications using household level data from bogota colombia the results of the model are evaluated by comparing forecasted bid rents to actual rents and forecasted dwelling occupants to actual occupants by examining the demand prices which emerge from the analysis and by comparing the results to previous housing demand research which uses a hedonic type approach to analyze identical data the findings of the study show that the bid rent model works reasonably well in its predictions and in its estimates of the demand for attributes and in some ways it may perform better than a hedonic type model in forecasting the demand for housing attributes

a bid rent analysis of housing market discrimination the elimination of racial discrimination has long been a dominant american social concern laudably economists have contributed many studies which have attempted to identify and quantify such discrimination particularly in the area of the housing market the research reported here while following in this tradition employs a new approach in attempting to discover not only the magnitude of housing price discrimination but how its burden is incident upon different types of nonwhite households a model of urban housing markets will be developed from the bid rent theory which allows one to isolate empirically the distinct contributions to interracial housing price differentials made by variations in households preferences incomes and housing packages versus those made by discriminatory actions bid rent functions will be econometrically estimated for individual household observations stratified into groups of comparable age family size education socioeconomic class and race these functions will be used to estimate what the various nonwhite strata would be willing to bid for typical white occupied units the divergencies between such bids and prices actually paid by whites will provide a measure of the existence and magnitude of discrimination confronting nonwhite groups

economics of residential crowding in developing countries residential crowding is one of the most noticeable problems of housing in developing countries crowding in these countries is characterized by two important phenomena first a room is usually shared by more than two persons second a single dwelling unit is occupied by more than one household in developed countries residential crowding was widely observed in their early industrial cities but is no longer common yet it constitutes a housing problem for their low income groups a typical policy objective addressed to residential crowding in both developed and developing countries is the provision of a single dwelling unit for every household for instance in the united kingdom the 1945 housing white paper stated that the government s first objective is to afford a this analysis is part of a study of the korean housing market sponsored by the world bank primary credit is due to gill chin lim and james follain in this paper helpful comments have been received from david bradford james trussel and bryan brown an earlier version of this paper was presented at the second conference on major international economic issues university of southern california los angeles and february 1979

production function regressions returns to scale and externalities a number of recent papers have used simple linear regressions in an attempt to identify market structure the extent of returns to scale and possible external effects in u s manufacturing industries the results obtained from these regressions have important implications for several branches of modern macroeconomics as a result the macro literature frequently cites specific numerical evidence from caballero and lyons 1992 and hall 1990 which suggests that there are quantitatively significant increasing returns to scale or external effects in u s manufacturing in contrast it is the argument of this paper that this evidence is not convincing the most robust evidence suggests that the typical u s manufacturing industry displays constant returns with no external effects on the other hand there is significant heterogeneity across industries

a model of rental housing choices in the korean market the main purpose of this study is to propose and estimate a model of korean rental housing choice using hierarchical logit analysis the study focuses on the examination of how households choose their dwelling units in a complex rental housing market the decision is viewed as a partial sequence process beginning with the choice of rental housing tenure and finishing with a decision on the type of occupation to examine an additional step in the urban spatial structure hedonic price technique is incorporated into a hierarchical logit model in addition the separate effects of permanent and transitory components of measured income are examined through the instrumental variables method based on human capital theory it is shown that the proposed model provides a potentially more useful method than another model the multinomial logit in analysing the korean rental housing market

multiple equilibria and persistence in aggregate fluctuations this paper explores the impact of incomplete markets and strong complementarities on the time series properties of aggregate activity we consider an economy which consists of a large number of industries whose production functions both are nonconvex and exhibit localized technological complementarities the productivity of each industry at t is determined by the production decisions of technologically similar industries at t 1 no markets exist to coordinate production decisions this feature implies that aggregate output dynamics for the model are quite different from those predicted by the associated arrow debreu economy first multiple stochastic equilibria exist in aggregate activity these equilibria are distinguished by differences in the mean and the variance of output second output movements are persistent as aggregate productivity shocks indefinitely affect real activity by shifting the economy across equilibria as a result the model can exhibit periods of boom and depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

decomposing learning by doing in new plants the paper examines learning by doing in the context of a production function in which the other arguments are labor human capital physical capital and vintage as a proxy for embodied technical c

delay and cycles when the profitability of investment depends on the general level of economic activity entrepreneurs have an incentive to delay investments during a recession endogenous delay thus prolongs the recovery from a recession and heightens the effect of the boom this paper describes a dynamic model that exhibits both delay and cycles and develops methods for analysing the role of delay in propogating business cycles a number of interesting characteristics of the cycle are revealed first the effect of delay is asymmetric it lengthens the recovery but not the downturn second delay can increase the amplitude and typically reduces the frequency of the cycle third it can reduce the average level of activity but it achieves this effect by prolonging the recession rather than by reducing the amplitude of the cycle the welfare effects of delay are ambiguous however

the liquidity effect and money demand abstract i suggest a liquidity effect model in which financial intermediation costs are determined by aggregate economic activity an expansionary monetary shock leads to a persistent contraction in the loan deposit rate spread a persistent liquidity effect and a persistent real expansion a feature of this expansion is that nominal prices respond sluggishly to monetary shocks as an equilibrium outcome

how does motherhood affect self employment performance this paper analyzes the timing between self employment entry and first child birth among swedish women using register data for the cohort of women born between 1970 and 1975 we use longitudinal d

strategic complementarity in business formation aggregate fluctuations and sunspot equilibria the extent to which changes in beliefs can be important factors in initiating economic fluctuations has been a prominent area of investigation for macroeconomists the notion that beliefs about the future influence current decisions is a property of almost all dynamic economic systems the more challenging task is identifying economic environments in which changes in beliefs alone influence current choices in such a way that the variations in beliefs are self fulfilling because the resulting fluctuations arise in the absence of variations in fundamental variables such as preferences and technology they are often termed sunspot equilibria apart from suggesting that instability of expectations may be a distinct source of cyclical volatility sunspot equilibria may also explain why apparently small disturbances in fundamentals lead to large change in macroeconomic aggregates in this study we demonstrate the possibility of sunspot equilibria in an overlappinggenerations economy characterized by a plausible form of strategic complementarity as more agents enter as producers in any particular sector of the economy they create an incentive for agents to enter as producers into other sectors as well 2 the basis for this

total work time in spain evidence from time diary data using detailed time use data from 2002 03 and 2009 10 for spain we analyse changes in the time allocation decisions of the spanish population with a focus on the time devoted to total work consistent with prior literature we document that the concept of iso work e g the time devoted to total work by gender is equal does not hold in societies with stringent gender roles such as spain women devote more time to total work than men and this difference has increased throughout the period studied by 2 hours per week the relative increase in total work for women compared to men can be explained by a relative increase in market work of 8 hours per week coupled with a relative decrease in nonmarket work of 6 hours per week which have led spanish women to devote relatively 2 fewer hours to leisure per week in 2009 10 compared to 2002 03 we propose social norms as a potential explanation of these empirical findings by uncovering how individuals allocate their time inside and outside the market ov

on real and sticky price theories of the business cycle after presenting some facts about the growth of government in western industrialized countries possible causes of this development are analyzed from a public choice perspective next some empirically tested theories which seek to explain this growth are discussed finally possible consequences for efficiency and individual liberty are examined it is shown that both the number and size of interest groups age of democracy as stated by mancur olson 1982 and the increasing share of government expenditure in gdp seem to exert a negative influence on the growth rate of gdp copyright 1986 by ohio state university press

the hump shaped behavior of inflation and a dynamic externality we propose a general equilibrium model that explains the empirical evidence of the hump shaped response of inflation to a monetary policy shock the model replaces backward looking indexation a la christiano et al 2005 nominal rigidities and the dynamic effect of a shock to monetary policy journal of political economy 113 1 1 45 with a dynamic externality into the production function of firms the model armed with sticky wages and variable capital utilization has two offsetting effects on real marginal cost over the business cycle first increasing factor prices raise real marginal cost in response to an expansionary monetary policy shock in the intermediate run second a dynamic externality reduces real marginal cost in the short run because it raises productivity in response to an increase in output following the shock overall the resulting short run decrease and intermediate run increase in marginal cost replicate the hump shaped behavior of inflation under purely forward looking price and wage phillips curves

housing crowding in developing countries and willingness to pay for additional space the case of korea the very rapid rate of urban population growth in developing countries is placing great strain on their housing stock housing policies which aim at reducing or eliminating crowding are generally based on notions of needs and standards of adequacy which are more often based on arbitrarily selected criteria than on domestic economic conditions this paper attempts to evaluate the willingness to pay for additional housing space by households and the validity of target housing standards the paper uses three different estimation procedures each with its own strengths and conceptual limitations to determine whether they yield consistent estimates of household willingness to pay for space they show consistently that the willingness to pay for additional space is less than 25 percent of the value of an extra unit of space everything else being equal

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

sleep and the allocation of time using aggregated data for 12 countries a cross section of microeconomic data and a panel of households we demonstrate that increases in time in the labor market reduce sleep our theory of the demand for sleep differs from standard models of time use by assuming that sleep affects wages by affecting labor market productivity estimates of a system of demand equations demonstrate that higher wage rates reduce sleep time among men but increase their waking nonmarket time by an equal amount among women the wage effect on sleep is negative but very small

risk aversion learning spillovers and path dependent economic growth abstract each agent j 1 n receives an independent shock influencing her degree of risk aversion then undertakes a risky or safe investment prior investment in related industries reduces the uncertainty the shock history and this intertemporal interaction determine the long run growth rate

dynamic complementarities a quantitative analysis abstract this paper considers the importance of dynamic complementarities as an endogenous source of propagation in a dynamic stochastic economy dynamic complementarities link the stocks of human and organizational capital which are influenced by past levels of economic activity to current levels of productivity we supplement an otherwise standard dynamic business cycle model with both contemporaneous and dynamic complementarities the model is calibrated using estimates of these effects from both micro and aggregate data our quantitative analysis identifies empirically relevant dynamic complementarities as a source of propagation for both technology and taste shocks

demand for housing attributes in developing countries a study of pakistan the paper has applied a conventional framework of analysis of implicit markets to determine the characteristics of demand for housing attributes of quantity and quality in the urban areas of a larg

a hedonic index model the housing market of jos nigeria this paper demonstrates the usefulness of the hedonic index approach to the study of housing markets in developing countries the study broadens the geographical scope of the various economic studi

complementarity growth and trade we consider an endogenous growth model with international trade in complemen tary capital goods the model possesses several distinct balanced growth solutions which we classify using stability under adaptive learning some of the equilibria can involve growth rates much higher than others we show that in addition to a small usually positive effect on a given equilibrium an expansion in trade may sometimes yield a much larger sudden jump in growth the small effect on the initial equilibrium may reduce growth if the oppor tunity cost of capital rises very fast as growth accelerates jel classification f12 f1 5 041 complementarit croissance et commerce international les auteurs utilisent un modele de croissance endogene en presence de commerce international de biens capitaux complemen taires le modele possede plusieurs solutions de croissance equilibree distinctes que les auteurs classifient en utilisant des mesures de stabilite avec apprentissage adaptatif certains de ces equilibres peuvent impliquer des taux de croissance plus eleves que d autres ii appert qu une expansion du commerce international en plus d avoir un petit effet habituellement positif sur un equilibre donne peut parfois engendrer une augmentation plus forte et sou daine de la croissance le petit effet sur l equilibre initial peut reduire la croissance si le couit d opportunite du capital augmente rapidement a proportion que la croissance accelere

self employed mothers and the work family conflict we analyse how self employed and employed mothers allocate their time throughout the day in order to balance their work and family responsibilities to that end we use time diary information from spain a country with a low level of women s participation in the labour market spanish time use survey stus 2002 2003 we find that self employed mothers devote less time to market work and more time to tertiary e g sleeping eating and leisure activities than employed mothers in a working day we also find differences between employed and self employed mothers in the timing of market work child care and housework throughout the day and we find complementarities between the timing of market work of working mothers and the timing of child care of their male partners our results on timing are consistent with the hypothesis that self employment stands as a possible way for mothers to have greater control over the timing of work flexible hours and that they may therefore be able to work odd shifts

business cycle models with endogenous technology this paper compares real and monetary business cycle models with and without endogenous technical change if technology is endogenous the properties of these models change significantly in particular both real and monetary models yield very similar output processes if growth is endogenous and changes in aggregate demand can result in permanent changes in productivity employment and output the effect of depreciation of technology is examined and the pattern of real wage movements over the cycle when money wages are fixed but technology is changing is briefly considered copyright 1990 by american economic association

external effects in u s procyclical productivity abstract in this paper we highlight a new dimension of the aggregate procyclical productivity phenomenon we show that estimates of the degree of returns to scale are larger for manufacturing as a whole than for two digit industries since this difference must be due to factors that are only internalized at the most aggregate level we term it an external effect this result rules out explanations based on own input variation such as true increasing returns and unmeasured factor utilization tied to own activity as the sole explanations for aggregate procyclical productivity we explore several potential explanations of this external effect

real versus monetary business cycle theory and the statistical characteristics of output fluctuations abstract doubt has been cast on the ability of monetary models to explain output fluctuations adequately for conventional monetary models cannot account for non stationarity or the permanence of output innovations this note shows that purely monetary models can account for these characteristics once we allow technology to be endogenous so that recent statistical work does not constitute a refutation of monetary models of the business cycle

urban squatting and community organization in developing countries abstract it is estimated that up to 30 35 percent of the total urban population of the third world about 185 million people live in squatter settlements this paper presents from an economic perspective of tenure choice under uncertainty a unified and consistent theoretical framework of this phenomenon which has heretofore been studied mainly by other social scientists the model is able to explain why land invasions occur furthermore it provides some insights as to why the number of squatters in an urban area depends on a squatter community s ability to form coalitions to fully protect its members rights it is shown in the paper that if a community is successful in controlling its size government efforts which are meant to reduce the number of squatters may lead to the opposite results in particular the imposition of heavier fines or the increase of government expenditures on eviction activity threat campaigns eviction in other jurisdictions etc will likely lead to an increase in the optimal number of squatters unless the decline in expected utility caused by these efforts is so great that squatting no longer becomes viable at any community size

endogenous business cycle propagation and the persistence problem the role of labor market frictions contrasting sharply with a recent trend in dsge modeling we propose a business cycle model where frictions and shocks are chosen with parsimony the model emphasizes a few labor market frictions and shocks to monetary policy and technology the model estimated from u s quarterly postwar data accounts well for important differences in the serial correlation of the growth rates of aggregate quantities the size of aggregate fluctuations and key comovements including the correlation between hours and labor productivity despite its simplicity the model offers an answer to the persistence problem chari et al 2000 that does not rely on multiple frictions and adjustment lags or ad hoc backward looking components we conclude modern dsge models need not embed large batteries of frictions and shocks to account for the salient features of postwar business cycles

indeterminacy and increasing returns abstract we investigate properties of the one sector growth model with increasing returns under two organizational structures capable of reconciling the existence of aggregate increasing returns with competitive behavior by firms the first involves input externalities the second involves monopolistic competition we show for parameters in close accord with recent literature on real business cycles that the model displays an indeterminate steady state that can be exploited to generate a model of business fluctuations driven by self fulfilling beliefs in our first class of models growth is generated by exogenous increases in factor productivity in the second class the marginal product of capital is large enough for endogenous growth journal of economic literature classification numbers e00 e3 o40

interest rate management in ldc s the mckinnon argument that higher time deposit rates raise output and lower inflation in the short run and increase medium term growth by raising the savings rate are shown to depend crucially on the assumption that portfolio shifts into td s come out of an asset providing less intermediation than the banking system we show that if instead the shift is out of an asset providing more intermediation e g loans on a curbmarket raising td rates is contractionary in the short run may have negative impacts on growth and can lead to more rather than less inflation in the short run

the demand for housing characteristics in developing countries this paper develops and estimates an econometric model of the household demand for housing characteristics the model is estimated using data from five cities and three developing countries overall the procedures employed work well in a wide variety of circumstances more specifically it is found that 1 household willingness to pay for living space increases with income but at a less than proportionate rate 2 willlingness to pay for living space declines as household size increases 3 willingness to pay for several quality measures structural quality wall roof and floor quality is quite responsive to income

production growth and business cycles ii new directions abstract this paper outlines new directions for investigations of real business cycle models consideration of stochastic growth of exogenous and endogenous forms analysis of suboptimal outcomes arising due to externalities of distorting taxes and implications of labor market heterogeneity

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

monopolistic competition and the effects of aggregate demand how important is monopolistic competition to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output we ask the question at three levels can monopolistic competition by itself explain why aggregate demand movements affect output can it together with other imperfections generate effects of aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot if so can it give an accurate account of the response of the economy to aggregate demand movements the answers are no yes and yes

shadow prices for project evaluation under alternative macroeconomic specifications for purposes of social cost benefit analysis a project may be viewed as a disturbance to the economy displacing it from some initial equilibrium to a new one but the new configuration will depend on which particular variables adjust to restore equilibrium this paper examines the shadow prices for project evaluation under alternative assumptions about how equilibrium is restored when the government reacts by altering its foreign exchange reserves the shadow prices coincide with those advocated in the manuals on social cost benefit analysis however if the government adjusts its domestic expenditures or tariff rates the shadow prices will differ from those of the manuals except insofar as the relative shadow prices of tradeables remain their relative border prices the paper first presents the model followed by two cases in which domestic prices and wage rates do not vary because ad valorem tariffs are fixed and one case in which they are endogenous

evidence on macroeconomic complementarities this paper provides empirical evidence on macroeconomic complementarities a restriction on the nature of interaction between individuals in a multiagent setting these models imply that activities across agents will be positively correlated that discrete decisions will be synchronized and that disturbances will be magnified and propagated the paper shows that these implications are consistent with aggregate observations as well as some microeconomic evidence further looking at certain historical episodes such as the national industrial recovery act as well as seasonal fluctuations provides additional support for models with macroeconomic complementarities copyright 1996 by mit press

on measuring the welfare cost of business cycles lucas 1987 argues that the gain from eliminating aggregate fluctuations is trivial following lucas a number of researchers have altered assumptions on preferences and found that the gain from eliminating business cycles are potentially very large however in these exercises little discipline is placed on preference parameters this paper estimates the welfare cost of business cycles allowing for potential time non separabilities in preferences where discipline is placed on the choice of preference parameters by requiring that the preferences be consistent with observed fluctuations in a model of business cycles that is a theoretical real business cycle world is constructed and the representative agent is then placed in this world the agent responds optimally to exogenous shocks given the frictions in the economy the agent s preference parameters along with other structural parameters are estimated using a bayesian procedure involving markov chain monte carlo methods two main results emerge from the paper first the form for the time non separability estimated in this paper is very different than the forms suggested and used elsewhere in the literature second the welfare cost of business cycles is close to lucas s estimate

is rising rts a figment of poor data abstract while using detailed firm level data from the private business sector this study identifies two empirical puzzles i returns to scale rts parameter estimates rise at higher levels of data aggregation and ii estimates from the firm level suggest decreasing returns to scale the analysis shows that although consistent with rising estimates neither entry exit nor the basu fernald returns to scale in u s production estimates and implications journal of political economy 105 249 283 aggregation bias effect drives this result rather rising and too low rts estimates seem to reflect a mixture of random errors in factor inputs at the firm level it turns out in fact that a 7 5 10 percent error in labor hours worked can explain both puzzles

what do residuals from first order conditions reveal about dge models the first order condition foc associated with labour in many dynamic general equilibrium models involves only current period variables residuals constructed from this foc are inconsistent with aggregate us data in that they are very large and highly persistent the persistence suggests that models which introduce dynamic terms in the labour foc may be more consistent with the data three such models one with learning by doing one with habit formation and one with labour adjustment costs confirm that they can reduce the persistence in the residuals making the models more consistent with the joint dynamics of consumption output and hours

learning by doing and aggregate fluctuations abstract an unresolved issue in business cycle theory is the endogenous propagation of shocks yielding allocations that exhibit the persistence displayed in the data this paper explores the quantitative implications of one propagation mechanism learning by doing whose parameters are estimated using sectoral and plant level observations in the u s which are then integrated into a stochastic growth model with technology shocks we conclude that learning by doing can be a powerful mechanism for generating endogenous persistence moreover learning by doing implies that the employment decision of the representative agent is dynamic which allows a re interpretation of taste shocks or cyclical labor utilization as endogenous labor supply shifts

multiple expectational equilibria under monopolistic competition this paper shows that a monopolistically competitive economy with real investment can have multiple rational expectations equilibria one is associated with entrepreneurs optimistic expectations about future demand another with entrepreneurs pessimism it also shows that an optimistic expectational equilibrium pareto dominates a pessimistic equilibrium an investment subsidy can be beneficial both by reducing the original underinvestment distortion and by changing firms expectations from pessimistic to optimistic the most important assumption is increasing returns to scale and monopolistic competition makes increasing returns consistent with each producer s optimization

parental child care in single parent cohabiting and married couple families time diary evidence from the united kingdom the time that parents spend caring for their children is a topic of intense interest among researchers policymakers and parents themselves parental inputs of time are enormously valuable investments in children s well being and development however the declining prevalence of two parent married couple families and the steady influx of mothers into the labor market are generally believed to have placed these investments at risk we use time diary data from the united kingdom 2000 time use study uktus to investigate how parents time spent in child care differs with their marital status and other characteristics unlike previous economic studies which have analyzed alternative child care activities but only among two parent families e g peter kooreman and arie kapteyn 1987 daniel hallberg and anders klevmarken 2003 we examine differences among married cohabiting and single parent families the household production model indicates that single parent households may differ from married and cohabiting households either because there are fewer time resources or because there are fewer opportunities for economies of scale or specialization in household activities gary becker 1985 if marital relationships are more stable than cohabiting relationships the type of union may matter

a joint model of tenure choice and demand for housing in the city of karachi the paper estimates a joint model of tenure choice and demand for housing for the city of karachi pakistan using a two stage estimation procedure permanent income and demographic variables are included in the analysis the study uses data collected at the household level in the city in 1987 88 results show that ownership rates are high in karachi ownership is more likely with increases in permanent income age household size and residence in the unauthorised areas permanent income transitory income age and education of the head significantly affect the consumption of housing both for renter and owner households results of the analysis and the estimated income elasticities of demand are comparable and consistent with those reported for other developing countries

real business cycles and the animal spirits hypothesis abstract we calibrate a quantitative equilibrium macroeconomic model with an aggregate technology that is subject to increasing returns and show that this model may display fluctuations at business cycle frequencies even when there are no shocks to the fundamentals of the economy these fluctuations are due to the self fulfilling beliefs of investors which we call animal spirits we compare the impulse response functions predicted by our model and by two other more standard models with a four variable vector autoregression on u s data our animal spirits economy is the most successful of the three at matching broad features of the dynamic responses in the data journal of economic literature classification numbers e00 e3 e32

real business cycles in this paper we demonstrate how certain very ordinary economic principles lead maximizing individuals to choose consumption production plans that display many of the characteristics commonly associated with business cycles our explanation is entirely consistent with i rational expectations ii complete current information iii stable preferences iv no technological change v no long lived commodities vi no frictions or adjustment costs vii no government viii no money and ix no serial dependence in the stochastic elements of the environment we also provide a completely worked out example of the type of artificial economy we have in mind the time series properties of the example exhibit some major features of observed business cycles although this type of model may not be capable of explaining all of the regularities in actual business cycles we believe that it provides a useful well defined benchmark for assessing the relative importance of factors e g monetary disturbances

hedonic prices and the demand for housing attributes in a third world city the case of ibadan nigeria this paper estimates the demand functions for a set of housing attributes for the city of ibadan nigeria using rosen s two step estimation procedure the empirical results reveal that the most im