measuring and improving the performance of customs valuation controls an illustration with gabon modern customs administrations aim to both facilitate legal trade and combat fraud to meet this dual objective many customs administrations in developing countries must give risk management a highly prominent role in this context of modernisation this paper first provides stylised facts on the performance of the customs controls carried out at the gabon border then we compare gabon s granular import customs data with international trade statistics based on this comparison we identify undetected fraud and present a methodology to target ex post audits finally we define indicators to monitor the performance of customs valuation controls

canadian city housing prices and urban market segmentation the authors provide a detailed empirical analysis of canadian city housing prices they examine the long run relationship between city house prices in canada from 1981 to 2005 as well as idiosyncratic relations between city prices and city specific variables

armington models and terms of trade effects some econometric evidence for north america elasticities of substitution among u s imports from mexico canada the rest of the world and competing domestic production are estimated for twenty two mining and manufacturing sectors based on quarterly data for 1980 88 these elasticities will provide a benchmark for computable general equilibrium models of north american trade liberalization the authors also find that estimated armington elasticities are low and therefore researchers may want to reconsider the device of using high values of armington elasticities in multicountry computable general equilibrium models to avoid large terms of trade losses associated with preferential trade liberalization

optimal nonparametric estimation of first price auctions this paper proposes a general approach and a computationally convenient estimation procedure for the structural analysis of auctioni data considering first price sealed bid auction models within the independent private value paradigm we show that the underlying distribution of bidders private values is identified from observed bids and the number of actual bidders without any parametric assumptions using the theoiy of minimax we establish the best rate of uniform convergence at which the latent density of private values can be estimated nonparametrically from available data we then propose a two step kernel based estimator that converges at the optimal rate

no price like home global house prices 1870 2012 how have house prices evolved in the long run this paper presents annual house price indices for 14 advanced economies since 1870 based on extensive data collection we are able to show for the first time that house prices in most industrial economies stayed constant in real terms from the 19th to the mid 20th century but rose sharply in recent decades land prices not construction costs hold the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices in the long run residential land prices have surged in the second half of the 20th century but did not increase meaningfully before we argue that before world war ii dramatic reductions in transport costs expanded the supply of land and suppressed land prices since the mid 20th century comparably large land augmenting reductions in transport costs no longer occurred increased regulations on land use further inhibited the utilization of additional land while rising expenditure shares for housing services increased demand

land development and preservation over time and under uncertainty a review and a research agenda abstract the combination of a rising interest in sustainable natural resource use and the increasingly fractious nature of the interactions between developers and preservationists has led to renewed interest in the question of appropriate natural resource management in this paper i consider the question of land development and preservation over time and under uncertainty i first review the extant literature and then i discuss its shortcomings next i propose a research agenda which will enable us to shed light on some important management questions faced by land developers

measuring positive externalities from unobservable victim precaution an empirical analysis of lojack lojack is a hidden radio transmitter device used for retrieving stolen vehicles because there is no external indication that lojack has been installed it does not directly affect the likelihood that a protected car will be stolen there may however be positive externalities due to general deterrence we find that the availability of lojack is associated with a sharp fall in auto theft rates of other crime do not change appreciably at least historically the marginal social benefit of an additional unit of lojack has been fifteen times greater than the marginal social cost in high crime areas those who install lojack however obtain less than 10 percent of the total social benefits leading to underprovision by the market

structural estimation of the affiliated private value auction model we consider the structural estimation of the affiliated private value apv model in first price sealed bid auctions the model allows for bidders individual efficiencies and opportunity costs while permitting dependence among bidders private values through affiliation we establish the nonparametric identification of the apv model characterize its theoretical restrictions and propose a computationally convenient and consistent two step nonparametric estimation procedure for estimating the joint private value distribution from observed bids using simulated bid data we provide a step by step guide on how to implement our procedure and show the good behavior of our estimator in small samples

residential construction using the urban growth model to estimate housing supply abstract this article presents an empirical model of housing supply derived from urban growth theory this approach describes new housing construction as a function of changes in house prices and costs rather than as a function of the levels of those variables which previous studies have used empirical tests support this specification over the leading alternative models our estimates show that a 10 rise in real prices leads to an 0 8 increase in the housing stock which is accomplished by a temporary 60 increase in the annual number of starts spread over four quarters

heterogeneous impact of soil contamination on farmland prices in the belgian campine region evidence from unconditional quantile regressions we estimate a hedonic pricing model using geo coded farmland transaction data from the campine region situated in the north east of belgium unlike previous hedonic studies we use the method of unconditional quantile regression firpo et al in econometrica 77 3 953 973 2009 an important advantage of this new method over the traditional conditional quantile regression koenker and bassett in econometrica 46 1 33 50 1978 is that it allows for the estimation of potentially heterogeneous effects of cadmium pollution along the entire unconditional distribution of farmland prices using a threshold specification of the hedonic pricing model we find evidence of a u shaped valuation pattern where cadmium pollution of the soil has a negative and significant impact on prices only in the middle range of the distribution insofar as cadmium concentrations are above the regulatory standard of 2 parts per million for agricultural land results obtained from a probit model to classify land plots into different price segments further suggest that the heterogeneous impact of soil pollution on price can be directly related to the variety of amenities that farmland provides

residential spatial growth with perfect foresight and multiple income groups abstract this paper presents explicit solutions for expanding monocentric cities with two or more income groups housing is durable but deteriorates over time and redevelopment cannot take place landlords have perfect foresight the utility function and housing technology are cobb douglas population per capita income and transportation costs per mile change at constant percentage rates the model is solved analytically using an infinite time horizon as development proceeds outward a constant fraction of land is developed with high income housing and the remaining land is reserved for future low income development at any time housing is constructed at one distance for high income consumers and at a lesser distance for low income consumers high income housing is first occupied by high income consumers then filters to low income consumers and is ultimately abandoned low income housing is first occupied by low income households and ultimately abandoned

corruption and firm behavior evidence from african ports this paper investigates how corruption affects firm behavior using an original and unusually rich dataset on bribe payments at ports matched to firm level data we observe how firms adapt to different types of corruption by adjusting their transport strategies our results suggest that firms respond to the price effects of corruption organizing production in a way that increases or decreases demand for the public service

confronting price endogeneity in a duration model of residential subdivision development summary spatial equilibrium implies that distant factors are correlated with local prices through market mechanisms using this logic we develop a novel approach for handling price endogeneity in land use models we combine a control function approach with a duration model to identify the impact of prices in influencing land conversion we find that failure to control for endogeneity results in large differences in elasticities specifically we find an elasticity of 2 06 compared to 0 67 in a model without instrumentation this difference is significant as it suggests that price based policies such as green taxes are likely more effective in altering development patterns than would be expected from a naive estimation that ignores price endogeneity copyright 2016 john wiley sons ltd

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

corruption trade costs and gains from tariff liberalization evidence from southern africa this paper exploits quasi experimental variation in tariffs in southern africa to estimate trade elasticities traded quantities respond only weakly to a 30 percent reduction in the average nominal tariff rate trade flow data combined with primary data on firm behavior and bribe payments suggest that corruption is a potential explanation for the observed low elasticities in contexts of pervasive corruption even small bribes can significantly reduce tariffs making tariff liberalization schemes less likely to affect the extensive and the intensive margins of firms import behavior the tariff liberalization scheme is however still associated with improved incentives to accurately report quantities of imported goods and with a significant reduction in bribe transfers from importers to public officials

an economic analysis of real estate swaps a real estate swap is an agreement between two parties to exchange a series of payments without exchanging the underlying real estate the standard rationale for swaps hinges on the principle of comparative advantage since the patterns of real estate returns and interest rates are quite different one party may have a comparative advantage over another in generating a particular stream of returns further savings may result from the enhanced liquidity of the market 1 also swaps provide a vehicle for diversification real estate swaps may entail hidden costs however real estate owners have an option to develop or sell whenever it is optimal see titrnan 1985 capozza and helsley 1989 a property with such development put option features should be more valuable than a claim to the cash flows from the property for a fixed period of time 2 the default risk of swaps depends on the difference between the cash flows at each payment period rather than on the level of cash flows for the principals are not exchanged a real estate owner may have an incentive to default if the owner perceives the future returns on real estate to be higher than the floating interest rate to be received otherwise the institutional investor may have an incentive to default however use of collaterals and the reputation effects associated with default should limit its occurrence actual default requires that both the contract value be negative and the contract owner be in bankruptcy 3 finally the use of real estate indices in determining the swap payments may result in basis risk when the underlying property s value does not move coherently with the indices 4 the returns from an appraisal based index tend to lag behind the current market values it is a general presumption that the closer the property s return follows the index return the more beneficial the swap is to the real estate owner however as the next section shows the benefits from the swap also depend on the property return s volatility and its correlation with the interest rate

agri environmental policy and urban development patterns a general equilibrium analysis this paper investigates the spatial effects that the provision of environmental public goods have on residential location choices in a suburban context specifically a spatial general equilibrium framework is developed to analyze the consequences of adopting an agri environmental policy promoting the provision of positive farming externalities we use a static monocentric model of an open city where agricultural bid rents and agricultural amenities vary endogenously in space and where the positive externalities associated with agricultural production are valued by households consistent with empirical evidence of the potential side effects that conservation policies may have in terms of urbanization patterns and land price changes we show that under certain conditions implementing an agri environmental policy may promote additional suburban development moreover we demonstrate that the emergence of disconnected suburban areas may be significantly influenced by the location of land regulated by an agri environmental policy finally we discuss distributional aspects and show that while introducing an agri environmental policy has a negative impact on most residential land value it can have positive effects on farmland and residential land located within the regulated areas suggesting the non neutrality of such policies regarding the agents assets

an econometric analysis of income tax evasion and its detection this article presents an econometric analysis of income tax evasion and its detection based on individual level data drawn from the internal revenue service 1982 and 1985 taxpayer compliance measurement programs i specify a model consisting of two equations the first measures the extent of evasion the second the fraction of evasion detected the empirical analysis explores the effects of income the marginal tax rate and various socioeconomic characteristics on filer evasion behavior and it assesses the variability in detection rates among irs examiners finally i use the empirical estimates to construct new estimates of the income tax gap the new estimates are very close to the previous irs estimates

tariffs enforcement and customs evasion evidence from india we examine the effect of tariff policies on evasion of customs duties in the context of the trade reform in india of the 1990s by exploiting the variation in tariff rates across time and products we identify a robust positive elasticity of evasion with respect to tariffs a second contribution of the paper is to provide some evidence on the impact of enforcement while we cannot identify the direct impact of enforcement on evasion we can establish the extent to which enforcement related factors such as product characteristics that determine the ease of detection of evasion affect the evasion elasticity the results render support to the hypothesis that improvements in enforcement can reduce the responsiveness of evasion to tariffs

an empirical estimation of the price effects of development impact fees empirical analysis of the price of vacant lots sold in three toronto suburban municipalities during the 1977 86 period shows that development impact fees directly increased lot prices by approximately 1 2 times the size of the fee the extent of the increase was related to city growth rates in general the faster the rate of growth the lower was the price effect of development impact fees the effects of growth however were not consistent across the three municipalities as one municipality appeared to be lowering its fees in response to reductions in growth rates the policy environment within which fees are implemented and the way fees are adjusted appear to influence their effect on lot prices the estimated model also suggests that increases in expected future construction costs reduce current lot prices general increases in the consumers shelter costs tend to inflate the price of vacant lots the expectation of future increases in the cost of land development whether it is due to increases in ma

identification and estimation of discriminatory auctions when bidders have private values and singleton demand this note shows how to identify and estimate the distribution of valuations of bidders participating in discriminatory auctions when valuations are private and bidders have singleton demand

when are urban growth boundaries not second best policies to congestion tolls pines and sadka proved that a not too stringent urban growth boundary is a second best policy to congestion tolls when traffic congestion is unpriced by assuming that all jobs are exogenously located at one urban center monocentric city d pines e sadka zoning first best second best and third best criteria for allocating land to roads journal of urban economics 17 1985 167 183 the result is also implied by kanemoto y kanemoto cost benefit analysis and the second best land use for transportation journal of urban economics 4 1977 483 503 and arnott r arnott unpriced transport congestion journal of economic theory 21 1979 294 316 brueckner extrapolated this narrow theoretical result to real cities j brueckner urban sprawl diagnosis and remedies international regional science review 23 2000 160 179 we show that if there is no cross commuting between city and suburb first best efficient tolls on traffic can reduce congestion and total travel cost by shifting worker residents from the city to the suburbs causing urban expansion then planned urban boundaries of any stringency are not a second best policy because they induce people to relocate to more congested areas with cross commuting boundaries of any stringency can be inefficient even when tolls shrink cities as boundaries do little but tolls do a lot to reduce inefficient suburb to city commuting we also show that when the urban radius is limited by a natural boundary then growth boundaries of any stringency are inefficient

effects of urban transportation system change on land prices in the setting of owner occupied residence abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of transportation improvement on the land development process and land price structure in an owner occupied residence setting a dynamic model of household and landowner in which the role of land as an asset is explicitly considered is presented and the process of land development and land price change after the announcement of transportation improvement is investigated during the period between the announcement and the completion of urban transportation improvement it is observed that the price of the land that is presently used for agriculture but will be developed in the future is higher than the agricultural land price

differentiated products and evasion of import tariffs emerging literature has demonstrated some unique characteristics of trade in differentiated products this paper contributes to the literature by postulating that differentiated products may be subject to greater tariff evasion due to the difficulties associated with assessing their quality and price using product level data on trade between germany and 10 eastern european countries during 1992 2003 the authors find empirical support for this hypothesis they show that the trade gap defined as the discrepancy between the value of exports reported by germany and the value of imports from germany reported by the importing country is positively related to the level of tariff in 8 out of 10 countries further the authors show that the responsiveness of the trade gap to the tariff level is greater for differentiated products than for homogeneous goods a one percentage point increase in the tariff rate is associated with a 0 6 percent increase in the trade gap in the case of homogeneous products and a 2 1 percent increase in the case of differentiated products finally the data indicate that greater tariff evasion observed for differentiated products tends to take place through misrepresentation of the import prices

effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values this article seeks to more accurately estimate the size and distance of the effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values the econometric model lets the size and distance of the effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values vary by population real income and time the changes in the effect of urban proximity over time can be largely explained by population and income thus there does not appear to be a shift in preferences toward living further from the city center

residential buildings and the cost of construction new evidence on the efficiency of the housing market present value studies of asset market efficiency are controversial because they compare asset prices to unobserved discounted streams of future rents as an alternative if housing markets are efficient then the price of residential capital or buildings should satisfy the following two conditions i deviations between new building prices and construction costs should disappear faster than construction lags and have no effect on construction and ii temporary building price shocks should dissipate at a similar rate for different vintage buildings results from an error correction model support both hypotheses for single family housing in vancouver british columbia this implies that the implicit market for residential buildings is efficient and that any inefficiencies in the housing market must lie in the market for land itself

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

urban spatial development with durable but replaceable capital the theory of urban spatial development until recently has been primarily a static theory of economic equilibrium the models of alonso l mills 6 and muth 7 determine a complete spatial equilibrium between the supply and demand for urban land the study of growth or change in such models therefore has been limited exclusively to comparative statics wheaton 8 it should be clear that the central and in many respects unrealistic assumption of such models is that housing capital is neither physically nor economically durable without durability there is no opportunity cost to old capital no barrier to change and no history to an urban area within such a framework a common set of conclusions emerges regarding urban spatial structure residential density and the price per unit of land decline monotonically from the location of employment a greater population results in higher density at all locations while increases in income or decreases in the cost of travel create a more steeply sloped density and price gradient in the last few years there has been a growing awareness that the equilibrium portrayed by such models does not correctly reflect the process of urban development theoretical papers by anas 2 31 and brueckner 4 and an empirical model by harrison and kain 5 develop an alternative theory of urban spatial development in which the process of growth is explicitly modeled and in which capital is completely durable in their models the spatial development of cities occurs incrementally over time in successive rings from the center of employment outwards the development of each ring is done with myopic foresight and is therefore determined exclusively by market conditions at the time of development once built

mechanism choice and strategic bidding in divisible good auctions an empirical analysis of the turkish treasury auction market we propose an estimation method to bound bidders marginal valuations in discriminatory auctions using individual bid level data and apply the method to data from the turkish treasury auction market using estimated bounds on marginal values we compute an upper bound on the inefficiency of realized allocations as well as bounds on how much additional revenue could have been realized in a counterfactual uniform price or vickrey auction we conclude that switching from a discriminatory auction to a uniform price or vickrey auction would not significantly increase revenue moreover such a switch would increase bidder expected surplus by at most 0 02 percent

tax evasion and capital gains taxation this paper uses time series data to investigate how changes in capital gains tax rates affect taxpayer compliance it finds that a one percent increase in the marginal tax rate reduces voluntary compliance by between one half and one percent these results confirm the findings of previous studies based on individual household data they also suggest that at least one quarter of the observed capital gain realization response to changes in marginal tax rates is due to changes in reporting behavior rather than portfolio behavior this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

examining for evidence of the leapfrog effect in the context of strict agricultural zoning while strict agricultural zoning policies or greenbelts are implemented to reduce urban sprawl such policies may result in the leapfrog effect which could cause sprawl to extend further this paper outlines a theoretical explanation for the occurrence of the leapfrog effect due to developent restrictions imposed by agricultural zoning this theory is then applied empirically to a setting where agricultural zoning has been implemented ontario s greenbelt the results provide evidence that the leapfrog effect has occurred around the greenbelt as farmland values just beyond the outer boundary have increased extensive sensitivity analysis supports this result jel q15 r52

the stochastic city abstract this paper analyzes a simple model of an urban area with growth and uncertainty household income rents and prices for land follow stochastic processes even though investors are risk neutral uncertainty affects both land rents and land prices in equilibrium because the conversion of land from agricultural to urban use is irreversible growth on the other hand affects urban and agricultural land prices but not the level of rents we show that uncertainty i delays the conversion of land from agricultural to urban use ii imparts an option value to agricultural land iii causes land at the boundary to sell for more than its opportunity cost in other uses and iv reduces equilibrium city size

asymmetry in first price auctions with affiliated private values collusion and heterogeneity across firms may introduce asymmetry in bidding games a major difficulty in asymmetric auctions is that the bayesian nash equilibrium strategies are solutions of an intractable system of differential equations we propose a simple method for estimating asymmetric first price auctions with affiliated private values considering two types of bidders we show that these differential equations can be rewritten using the observed bid distribution we establish the identification of the model characterize its theoretical restrictions and propose a two step non parametric estimation procedure for estimating the private value distributions an empirical analysis of joint bidding in ocs auctions is provided copyright 2003 john wiley sons ltd

spatial patterns of residential development abstract a simple dynamic model of residential development with durable housing where all households are identical and all developers have perfect foresight is studied it is shown that unlike the case of static models it is quite possible that house size decreases and thus population density increases with distance from the city center and that the house rent curve has positive gradient in certain area

government intervention land market and urban development evidence from chinese cities this article investigates how government intervention in land market affects china s urban development using data from prefecture level cities between 2000 and 2010 we find that government intervention enlarges the impact of positive productivity shocks on housing price appreciation through mainly the government control over residential land supply however we find no significant evidence that high government intervention constrains population growth and leads to wage increase such patterns of urban dynamics can be explained by the fact that migrant workers are the driving force behind china s urbanization but they have limited housing demand and are not well compensated jel p52 r12 h11

the dynamic effects of open space conservation policies on residential development density abstract recent economic analyses emphasize that designated open space increases the rents on neighboring residential land and likewise the probability of undeveloped land converting to residential uses this paper addresses a different question what is the effect of local open space conservation on the rate of growth in the density of residential land a discrete choice econometric model of lakeshore development is estimated with a unique parcel level spatial temporal dataset using maximum simulated likelihood to account for i the panel structure of the data ii unobserved spatial heterogeneity and iii sample selection resulting from correlated unobservables results indicate that contrary to the intuition derived from the current literature local open space conservation policies do not increase the rate of growth in residential density and some open space conservation policies may reduce the rate of growth in residential development density this is consistent with land value complementarity between local open space and parcel size

rural land use traditional agriculture or forestry the signing of the kyoto protocol and the official recognition of forestry s capacity to sequester carbon has prompted considerable interest within the european union in forestry as a competing land use application however despite large increases in grants to forestry afforestation rates in certain eu countries are below national targets in this paper we employ a real options model to theoretically explain why farmers may be slow to switch land from traditional agriculture to forestry the theoretical model is then used to motivate an empirical dynamic panel data model and both models are applied to irish data

the fundamentals of land prices and urban growth abstract in a very simple model in which capital is durable and landowners have perfect foresight the price of urban land has four additive components the value of agricultural land rent the cost of conversion the value of accessibility and the value of expected future rent increases a growth premium in rapidly growing cities the growth premium may easily account for half of the average price of land and may create a large gap between the price of land at the boundary minus conversion cost and the value of agricultural land rent

integrity for hire an analysis of a widespread customs reform abstract can governments improve bureaucratic performance by hiring integrity from the private sector in the past 2 decades a number of developing countries have hired private firms to conduct preshipment inspections of imports generating independent data on the value and tariff classification of incoming shipments i find that countries implementing such inspection programs subsequently experience large increases in import duty collections by contrast the growth rate of other tax revenues does not change appreciably additional evidence suggests that declines in falsification of import documentation are behind the import duty improvements the programs also lead to declines in undervaluation and misreporting of goods classifications historically this hired integrity appears to have been cost effective with improvements in import duty collections in the first 5 years of a typical inspection program amounting to 2 6 times the program s costs

growth speculation and sprawl in a monocentric city abstract an economic theory of sprawl in a growing monocentric city is presented where decision makers have perfect foresight leapfrog development and discontinuous land rent functions may occur and be efficient in both an ex post and ex ante sense where the extent of future growth is uncertain decision makers become speculators and the spatial pattern of development is more complicated ex post inefficiency generally occurs

why do increased arrest rates appear to reduce crime deterrence incapacitation or measurement error this paper attempts to discriminate between deterrence incapacitation and measurement error as explanations for the negative empirical relationship between arrest rates and crime measurement error cannot explain the observed patterns in the data incapacitation suggests that an increase in the arrest rate for one crime will reduces all crime rates deterrence predicts that an increase in the arrest rate for one crime will lead to a rise in other crimes as criminals substitute away from the first crime empirically deterrence appears to be the more important factor particularly for property crimes jel k42