to build above the limit implementation of land use regulations in urban china abstract this paper studies the implementation of land use regulations in urban china in particular we investigate land developers compliance with floor to area ratio far regulations using a unique set of residential land parcel data from 30 major chinese cities matched with the corresponding residential development projects built on those parcels in our sample in more than 20 of the cases developers built above the regulatory far limits in the ex post land development and the total floor area built in those cases increased 21 5 over the regulatory limit our analysis finds that attractive land location attributes tend to induce developers to pursue upward adjustments of far moreover developers who are more likely to have special relationships with government officials tend to make larger upward adjustments our estimates suggest that there exists a significant gap between the privately optimal far that maximizes land value and the regulatory far this gap is only modestly reduced by corrupt ties with government officials implying that far regulations have imposed a highly restrictive constraint on china s urban land development even given imperfect compliance

the low pay commission and the national minimum wage great britain has had statutory regulation of minimum pay for most of this century but never previously had a national minimum wage nmw this paper outlines the history of minimum wage regulation culminating in 1997 with the establishment of the low pay commission lpc the three key debates within the lpc are analysed namely the definition of the wage what to do about youngsters and the level to set the nmw the impact of the nmw on the pay distribution employment family incomes and exchequer finances is set out the paper concludes that the lpc is a fine example of successful social partnership

urban land supply natural and contrived restrictions abstract both large bodies of water and local governments restrict the supply of urban land in this paper we measure water s restriction on supply and test its effect on land price we then extend hamilton s and fischel s pioneering work on governmental restriction providing an improved test of the monopoly zoning hypothesis that such restriction further affects land price regression analysis of data from 45 urban areas suggests that the two restrictions combine to explain 40 of typical interurban price differentials

labor contracts and business cycles this paper investigates the claim often put forth by real business cycle proponents that the poor performance of their models in matching real world aggregate labor market behavior is due to the fact that observed real wage payments do not correspond to the actual marginal productivity of labor but contain an insurance component that cannot be accounted for by the walrasian pricing mechanism to test this idea we dispense with the walrasian description of the labor market and introduce contractual arrangements between employees and employers assuming that employees are prevented from accessing capital markets and are more risk averse than employers we use the theory of optimal contracts to derive an equilibrium relation between aggregate states of the economy and wage labor outcomes this contractual arrangement is then embedded into a standard one sector stochastic neoclassical growth model in order to look at the business cycle implications of the contractual hypothesis the resulting dynamic equi

wage vacancy contracts and coordination frictions abstract we consider a directed search model with risk averse workers and risk neutral entrepreneurs who can set up firms that post wage vacancy contracts i e contracts where firms can make payments to more than one applicant and where the payments can be different for each applicant and be contingent on the number of applicants we establish that the type of contracts the literature focuses on are not offered if firms can post wage vacancy contracts we show that there exists an equilibrium satisfying a monotonic expected utility property which is efficient furthermore we investigate the role of wage vacancy contracts on welfare and competition

is unemployment really scarring effects of unemployment experiences on wages joblessness leaves permanent scars on individuals they not only lose income during periods of joblessness they are also further scarred by these experiences when they find employment a spell of unemployment is found to carry a wage penalty of about 6 on re entry in britain and after three years they are earning 14 less compared to what they would have received in the absence of unemployment the scars are also carried into their second employment spell the first spell of joblessness is found to cause the most damage redundancy seems to be less stigmatising

innovation and bureaucracy under soft and hard budget constraints because of the inherent uncertainty promotion of innovation critically depends on screening mechanisms to select projects this paper studies the relationship between bureaucracy and financial constraints as two such mechanisms the lack of commitment to hard financial constraints interferes with its ex post screening capability ex ante bureaucratic screening is optimally chosen as a substitute however bureaucracy makes mistakes by rejecting promising projects and delays innovation and the efficiency loss due to soft financial constraints increases as prior knowledge becomes worse and as research stage investment requirements become lower in a centralized economy bureaucracy may reduce the number of parallel projects particularly for projects with higher uncertainties and less research stage requirements this theory fits much of the evidence and in particular it explains why the computer industry but not the nuclear or aerospace industries has fared so poorly in centralized economies the fundamental importance of innovation to the survival and evolution of economic systems and organizations has long been recognized marx 1978 schumpeter 1950 innovation is characterized by its inherent uncertainty because it is a process whose every element takes considerable time in revealing its true features and ultimate effects schumpeter 1950 p 83 and people are unable to anticipate the future impact of successful innovations even after their technical feasibility has been established rosenberg 1994 an understanding of how different systems and organizations deal with the uncertainties associated with innovation and the resultant consequences is crucial for understanding alternative economic systems and organizations in this paper we provide a theory to analyse how different systems screen uncertain innovative projects and the impact of the various screening mechanisms on those systems we distinguish two alternative screening mechanisms the bureaucratic screening mechanism vs the market screening mechanism the latter is directly linked to financial constraints with this perspective our theory explains why centralized economies did well in certain areas of innovation but fared poorly in others for instance in the early 1960s the west was frightened by the ussr s great success in launching the first unmanned satellite and the first manned space capsule while in the 1980s in contrast the centralized system

disability and self employment evidence for the uk this article examines the self employment decision for disabled and nondisabled workers in the uk using labour force survey lfs data it is found that self employment may provide an important means by which those with work limiting disabilities can accommodate their impairment

inequality and inefficiency in a model of occupational choice with asymmetric information abstract this paper presents a model of an economy with two occupations in which one occupation has access to some private information it is shown that even if all individuals are identical equality of ability and there is free entry into occupations equality of opportunity this may not be sufficient to equalize the rewards to occupations in equilibrium the only equilibrium may be one where one occupation earns more than the other and entry to the lucrative occupation is rationed we extend the analysis to the case of heterogenous individuals where we show that under reasonable assumptions asymmetric information worsens the distribution of income we also look at inefficiencies and show that with asymmetric information it may be the least productive individuals who become managers

the impact of housing assistance on the employment outcomes of labour market programme participants in australia this paper examines whether the employment outcomes of australian labour market programme participants vary according to whether they receive housing assistance this issue attracted attention when a series of us studies showed that clients of welfare to work programmes are more likely to achieve positive employment outcomes if housing assistance is also received this paper tracks the employment outcomes of labour market programme participants utilising six waves of data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda database findings from a random effects model suggest that housing assistance status has little impact either negative or positive on employment outcomes differences in the institutional arrangements governing access to housing assistance could be responsible for the absence of any effect in australia

resistance to reform status quo bias in the presence of individual specific uncertainty comment why do governments so often fail to adopt policies which economists consider to be efficiency enhancing our answer to this question relies on uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses from reform we show that there is a bias towards the status quo and hence against efficiency enhancing reforms whenever some of the individual gainers and losers from reform cannot be identified beforehand there are reforms which once adopted will receive adequate political support but would have failed to carry the day ex ante the argument does not rely on risk aversion irrationality or hysteresis due to sunk costs jel d72 f13 why do governments so often fail to adopt policies that economists consider to be efficiency enhancing this is one of the fundamental questions of political economy the answer usually relies on what may be

privatization in eastern europe irreversibility and critical mass effects abstract this paper proposes a model to shed light on two important policy features of privatization in central and eastern europe the idea of a necessary critical mass of privatization on one hand and the great difficulties encountered in the actual privatization process on the other the model incorporates a positive externality related to the size of the private sector multiple equilibria may arise for political and economic reasons policies of free distribution are analysed with the model they may eliminate the danger of policy reversals due to excess unemployment but may at the same time increase the relative cost of restructuring leading in some cases to pareto inferior outcomes

caught in a trap wage mobility in great britain 1975 1994 in this paper i study wage mobility in great britain using the new earnings surveys of 1975 94 and the british household panel surveys of 1991 94 measuring mobility in terms of decile transition matrices i find a considerable degree of immobility within the wage distribution from one year to the next mobility is higher when measured over longer time periods those in lower deciles in the wage distribution are much more likely to exit into unemployment and non employment measuring mobility by studying changes in individuals actual percentile rankings in the wage distribution i find evidence that short run mobility rates have fallen since the late 1970s this has potentially important welfare implications given the rise in cross section earnings inequality observed over the last two decades copyright 2000 by the london school of economics and political science

site density restrictions measurement and empirical analysis abstract restrictions on the density at which development can occur are a central tool of land use regulation yet they are understudied in the empirical literature in this paper we present a methodology to identify how much restrictions on the ratio of building space to lot area constrain developers our approach generates a measure of the distortion from the private optimum caused by restrictions as a function of land prices and the maximum allowed ratio of floor space to lot area we use this methodology to examine how the set of incentives facing different levels of local government in shanghai china affects density constraints on redevelopment sites in the city s emerging real estate market

decentralization duplication and delay we argue that although decentralization has advantages in finding low cost solutions these advantages are accompanied by coordination problems which lead to delay or duplication of effort or both consequently decentralization is desirable when there is little urgency or a great deal of private information but it is strictly undesirable in urgent problems when private information is less important we also examine the effect of large numbers and find that coordination problems disappear in the limit if distributions are common knowledge

the impact of youth unemployment on adult unemployment in the ncds using the national child development survey this paper looks at cumulated experience of unemployment highlighting how unemployment experience is concentrated on a minority of the workforce over extended periods low educational attainment ability not captured by education financial deprivation and behavioural problems in childhood raise a person s susceptibility to unemployment there is strong evidence of structural dependence induced by early unemployment experience for men but only minor persistence for women attacking low educational achievement and preventing the build up of substantial periods in unemployment as youths may reduce the extent to which a minority of men spend a large part of their working lives unemployed

china s land market auctions evidence of corruption this paper studies the urban land market in china in 2003 2007 in china all urban land is owned by the state leasehold use rights for land for re development are sold by city governments and are a key source of city revenue leasehold sales are viewed as a major venue for corruption prompting a number of reforms over the years reforms now require all leasehold rights be sold at public auction there are two main types of auction regular english auction and an unusual type which we call a two stage auction the latter type of auction seems more subject to corruption and to side deals between potential bidders and the auctioneer absent corruption theory suggests that two stage auctions would most likely maximize sales revenue for properties which are likely to have relatively few bidders or are cold which would suggest negative selection on property unobservables into such auctions however if such auctions are more corruptible that could involve positive selection as city officials divert hotter properties to a more corruptible auction form the paper finds that overall sales prices are lower for two stage auctions and there is strong evidence of positive selection the price difference is explained primarily by the fact that two stage auctions typically have just one bidder or no competition despite the vibrant land market in chinese cities

a comparison between economic systems with an application to transition abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium theory of endogenous firm and class formation under non contractibility with heterogeneous individuals a collectivist economy a private ownership economy and a mixed economy are compared on the basis of identical economic fundamentals methodological symmetry each economic system generates specific inefficiencies so that none dominates the others in general the main trade off is between the welfare loss associated with risk taking in the private ownership economy and the informational problems in the collectivist economy we then use this framework to study the political economy of transition between economic systems and provide detailed welfare results

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

who marries whom in a surging housing market abstract this paper investigates the impact of a surging housing market on marital sorting our empirical analysis shows that there is increasing assortativeness on original family background in response to housing price appreciation that is for husbands when the down payment doubles one more year of paternal schooling predicts a marriage in which the father in law s schooling is 0 057 year greater than in a scenario in which the down payment does not increase the rising assortativeness could exacerbate the already expanding inequality caused by the booming housing market in addition to the benchmark analysis we find that a divorce reform which awards assets proportionate to the shares the spouses paid for the initial down payment rather than awarding equal shares upon divorce alleviates assortativeness the evidence suggests that joint investment in housing is likely to be a significant consideration in marital sorting

political support for reforms economics of voting in transition countries i analyze the relationship between economics and politics across eight parliamentary elections in four transition countries the czech republic hungary poland and slovakia i argue that support for reform reflects the balance between positive and negative effects of the reform accordingly i identify economic groups that support or oppose the reform the former are private entrepreneurs white collar workers and university educated voters the latter are the unemployed retirees and blue collar and agricultural workers this general pattern holds both within countries and across countries and across tenures of different governments in contrast with the responsibility hypothesis voters in the transition countries are found to be forward looking not retrospective

disability gender and the labour market in wales jones m k latreille p l and sloane p j 2006 disability gender and the labour market in wales regional studies 40 823 845 wales exhibits high rates of disability and inactivity and a higher incidence of mental health problems than other parts of britain using data from the welsh local labour force survey 2001 the results indicate that the low participation rate of the disabled in wales is partly attributable to their having fewer qualifications marginal effects suggest education could be a potent remedy for improving their labour market status in terms of the pay differential between disabled and non disabled individuals it would appear that disabled women in wales suffer disproportionately to disabled men only in the case of women is there evidence consistent with the presence of discrimination but this estimate is relatively small jones m k latreille p l et sloane p j 2006 l invalidite le genre et le marche du travail au pays de galles regional studies 40 823 845 le pa

active labour market policies a case of evidence based policy making the 1990s was a decade of renewed enthusiasm for active labour market policies however it is not clear that this was the result of an appreciation of the evidence on the effectiveness of different policies relatively simple and cost effective initiatives to improve matching and to enhance job search appear to have a significant impact on employment training programmes generally do not produce better outcomes there is no convincing evidence that work programmes improve employment and recruitment subsidies often suffer from low take up however a strategy appears to be emerging in the uk and the usa by design or by accident of trying to use job search focused programmes to move people into regular employment and then to subsidize households especially with children so that their net incomes can come above the poverty line most of this expenditure could be classified as good old fashioned fiscal redistribution to the poor copyright 2000 by oxford university press

land use regulation and the intensive margin of housing supply abstract this paper proposes a method for estimating the extent to which density regulation causes the actual housing supply per land unit to deviate from the unconstrained amount i e the impact of density regulation on the intensive margin of housing supply to overcome the challenges that both the housing supply per land unit which is a combination of quantity and quality measures and its unconstrained amount are unobserved to the researchers we extend the framework of epple gordon and sieg 2010 by explicitly allowing substitution between the quantity and quality inputs in the housing production function and by imposing a regulatory upper limit on the use of the quantity input we show theoretically that the land share of the housing value can be used as a proxy for the stringency of the density regulation we apply this method in our investigation of the stringency of floor to area ratio far regulation in urban china at the land parcel level and find that the regulation imposes a significant binding constraint on the housing supply per land unit we then explore the spatial and temporal variations of far regulation stringency we also find that the far regulation stringency intensified the housing price appreciation that occurred during the economic stimulus period after 2008

new labour and the labour market the recent run of good macroeconomic news masks mounting evidence that worklessness is increasingly concentrated on selected individuals households and socio economic groups and in geographical areas these distributional aspects have been overlooked or ignored over the last 20 years but we believe they now form the most pressing labour market and social problems facing this administration we focus on what we view as the government s selected priorities the concentration of unemployment on certain individuals groups and areas increasing inactivity especially marked among less educated older men low pay persistence of low wages and its relationship with job loss and the distribution of work across households and child poverty many of these problems leave lasting scars on individuals so that successful intervention may beneficially change an individual s life chances we examine the evidence on each of these issues and the current state of policy aimed to reduce their scale or intensity copyright 2000 by oxford university press

implicit labor contracts and free entry the model investigated here is an adaptation of the free entry model introduced in kihlstrom laffont 1979 in that model the only labor market is one in which employers pay workers an ex ante guaranteed wage in the model of this paper there is also a spot market for labor in the earlier sections of the paper the existence of the equilibrium is established and its efficiency is investigated in this analysis it is assumed that all individuals are identical in the later sections we drop this assumption and investigate conditions under which employers are more risk averse than workers

the nature of local area social exclusion in england and the role of the labour market the creation of the social exclusion unit by the present government in 1997 is just one example of the increased desire by both academics and policy makers to understand more about the factors that lead to individuals and communities becoming excluded from mainstream society of the many aspects of social exclusion which have featured in recent debate this article focuses on two the first is to describe the nature and the extent of social exclusion in the areas in which it is concentrated in the united kingdom the second is to examine the role that labour market factors play in creating reducing or sustaining geographical concentrations of social exclusion the article draws upon the results of social surveys conducted in deprived areas and discusses the arguments for tackling local concentrations of social exclusion through area based initiatives

measuring the stringency of land use regulation the case of china s building height limits this paper develops a new approach for measuring the stringency of a major form of land use regulation building height restrictions and applies it to an extraordinary data set of land lease transactions from china our theory shows that the elasticity of land price with respect to the floor area ratio far a building height indicator is a measure of the regulation s stringency the extent to which far is kept below the free market level using a national sample estimation allowing this elasticity to be city specific shows variation in the stringency of far regulation across chinese cities single city estimation for beijing shows that stringency varies with site characteristics

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

the interjurisdictional effects of growth controls on housing prices institute of university of i 39 business and california at i economic research berkeley fisher center for real estate and urban economics working paper series working paper no 84 83 the interjurisdictional effects of growth controls on housing prices l by these papers are preliminary in nature their purpose is to stimulate discussion and lawrence katz comment therefore they kenneth t rosen are not to be cited or quoted in any publication without the ex press permission of the author walter a haas school of business