virtual special issue editorial essay the shitty rent business what s the point of land rent theory in this introduction to a virtual special issue on land rent we sketch out the history of land rent theory encompassing classical political economy marx s political economy the marginalist turn and subsequent foundations for urban economics and the marxist consensus around rent theory during geography s spatial turn we then overview some of the contemporary strands of literature that have developed since the break down of this consensus namely political economy approaches centred on capital switching institutionalism of various stripes and the rent gap theory we offer a critical urban political economy perspective and a particular set of arguments run through the review first land is not the same as capital but has unique attributes as a factor of production which require a separate theorisation second since the 1970s consensus around land rent and the city dissipated the critical literature has tended to take the question of why how the payment exists at all for granted and so has ignored the particular dynamics of rent arising from the idiosyncrasies of land amongst the talk of an anthropocene and planetary urbanisation it is surprising that the economic fulcrum of the capitalist remaking of geography has fallen so completely off the agenda it is time to bring rent back into the analysis of land cities and capitalism

towards a science of sustainability improving the way ecological economics understands human well being abstract ecological economics seeks to recognize what traditional economics often ignores that the economy is embedded in wider social and biophysical systems to date ecological economics has focused on the biophysical dimensions of these interactions yet achieving sustainable development will require difficult decisions regarding which environmental and other assets should be preserved and in what form this emphasizes the importance of understanding why particular environmental resources and services are important to human well being and how social and economic institutions may be structured to make the best use of these and other forms of capital the paper thus examines a variety of approaches to well being characterizing these as interpreting well being as a state of mind as a state of the world as human capability or as the satisfaction of underlying needs the literature surveyed is drawn largely from political philosophy and psychology and includes classical utilitarianism and self evaluative approaches descriptive utilitarianism and preference based approaches the basic needs approach functional approaches and underlying needs based and virtue based approaches particular authors include michalos scitovsky easterlin hirsch galbraith rawls sen maslow boyden and max neef the ideas examined are found to have significant implications for economic theory and policy especially regarding the social construction of preferences the treatment of distributional issues the identification of universal underlying needs and the relationship between the satisfaction of these needs and perceived well being these insights suggest that rising real incomes are unlikely to result in improved community well being calling into question the traditional economic view of progress they also offer a new path to sustainable development in which the primary focus is on the cultivation of appropriate institutions and attitudes rather than on the better management of resources the paper concludes that important aspects of social economic and environmental systems are codetermined and thus that achieving sustainable development will require an expansion of the scope of analysis to encompass a wider system dynamic the most promising approaches to well being in this context are those that identify universal underlying human needs thus avoiding the commodity fetishism of mainstream economics

strong sustainability critical natural capital and the capability approach this article is an attempt to conceptually improve the notion of strong sustainability by creating a rapprochement between its core concept critical natural capital and the capability approach we first demonstrate that the capability approach constitutes a relevant framework for analysing the multiple links between human well being and critical natural capital second we demonstrate that the rapprochement between critical natural capital and the capability approach can form both the normative basis and the informational basis for a deliberative approach to human development which embraces a strong sustainability perspective this conceptual rapprochement as illustrated in our case study opens up avenues of research towards the practical implementation of human development projects from a strong sustainability perspective

market entry waves and volatility outbursts in stock markets abstract we develop a simple agent based financial market model in which speculators market entry decisions are subject to herding behavior and market risk in addition speculators orders depend on price trends market misalignments and fundamental news using a mix of analytical and numerical tools we show that a herding induced market entry wave may amplify excess demand triggering lasting volatility outbursts eventually however higher stock market risk reduces stock market participation and volatility decreases again simulations furthermore reveal that our approach is also able to produce bubbles and crashes excess volatility fat tailed return distributions and serially uncorrelated price changes moreover trading volume is persistent and correlated with volatility

the place of the capability approach within sustainability economics the connections between the capability approach and sustainability economics have been explored recently i argue here that for engaging in a more substantive study of those connections we must first understand the place of the capability approach within the history of economic thought as a second stage of the revival of classical surplus theory once this is clear we can then use the capability approach in order to specify concepts such as well being surplus scarcity and sustainable reproduction which are essential for the development of sustainability economics

interactions between stock bond and housing markets abstract we develop a model in which investors can participate in stock bond and housing markets investors market entry decisions are subject to herding effects and depend on the markets price trends and on their mispricings the dynamics of our model is governed by a four dimensional nonlinear map and its unique inner steady state is characterized by standard present value relations between dividends rents and the bond rate amongst other things we show that endogenous stock and housing market dynamics emerge countercyclical to each other if investors react strongly to the markets price trends such a cross feedback reflects investors tendency to transfer their enthusiasm from one speculative market to another

the demand for industrial sites in a metropolitan area theory empirical evidence and policy implications abstract a model of urban manufacturing location is developed in order to explain the demand for industrial sites in a metropolitan area within the theory of qualitative choice behavior firms identified by a set of eight characteristics are viewed as selecting sites possessing two attributes of varying degrees of importance to different kinds of firms using a multinomial logit specification the model is estimated for the cincinnati smsa the results lend support to the firm specific nature of the site selection process information concerning the determination of the spatial distribution of the firm types in cincinnati is derived from the analysis implications for the possible effectiveness of a policy initiative designed to alter existing patterns of urban industrial location conclude the paper

employment opportunities earnings and the journey to work of minority workers in great britain the cost to minority workers of employer discrimination is generally measured in a competitive framework which focuses upon differences in on the job benefits usually wage rates between racial groups after training and experience are allowed for with other potential costs of employer discrimination given at best more subsidiary attention chiswick i 98 i dex i 984 mcnabb and psacharopoulos i982 mccormick i986 and stewart i983 have recently provided analyses of asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom this paper explores the consequences of employer discrimination if firms cannot discriminate by offering different wages for the same job but may set higher job rejection rates perhaps costlessly because markets do not clear our primary focus is upon comparative journey to work patterns and expenditures for asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom and whether these workers accept jobs at locations that would be unacceptable to whites in order to avoid either a longer spell of unemployment or an inferior occupation with commensurate lower earnings thus within a given residential area minority workers may experience greater commuting expenditures ceteris paribus which are overlooked when comparing earnings or occupational status unlike previous models of search and discrimination in labour markets the focus is placed upon employee response to discrimination rather than the search behaviour of discriminating employers see lippman and mccall i 976 the possibility that the costs of reaching suitable work sites should be incorporated into our understanding of the problems faced by minority workers has been investigated in the united states although in a different context by kain i 964 i 968 i 980 and various other authors including recently ellwood i983 kain considers that the cost of housing market discrimination is understated by focusing upon the relative price of housing for blacks because this overlooks how obstacles to black workers obtaining suburban accommodation concentrates the supply of black labour into comparatively declining inner city areas whereas kain argues that housing market discrimination reduces earnings net of travel costs by creating a spatial mismatch of workers and jobs the concern in this paper is that earnings net of travel costs are reduced because job market discrimination may increase average journey to work distance

urban land prices and housing distribution monopolistic competition and the myth of the law of differential rent the currently dominant neoclassical models of urban ground rents and housing distribution as well as recent alternatives along neoricardian or ricardian marxian lines display major weaknesses which

obsolescence and the process of creative reconstruction what is built and where it is built is largely determined by the activities and perceptions of global investment capital comparatively limited work has been undertaken into the property markets of

the relevance of epistemic analysis to sustainability economics and the capability approach abstract this paper considers how epistemic analyses birkin and polesie 2011 foucault 1970 foucault 1990a foucault 1990b may assist with the development of sustainability economics bartelmus 2010 baumgartner and quaas 2010a baumgartner and quaas 2010b and soderbaum 2011 and the capability approach ballet et al 2011 martins 2011 rauschmayer and lesmann 2011 scerri 2012 it was the french social theorist michel foucault 1926 1984 who coined the term episteme to refer to the possibility of knowledge that determines the development of thought and knowledge in a given period for foucault epistemes were the buried foundations of knowledge that his epistemic archaeology could unearth in 2007 foucault was identified as the most cited author of books in the humanities by thomson reuters isi web of science this paper begins with a brief definition and description of epistemic analyses a summary analysis of the modern episteme and neoclassical economics is then provided and this is followed by outline evidence for the emerging episteme finally the opportunity is considered for the emerging episteme to reinforce and enhance sustainability economics and the capability approach

the contributions of amartya sen to welfare economics agencies the ilo and the world bank at the same time he takes a broad view of the subject and has done much to enlarge the perspective of economists he is as much at home writing for the journal of philosophy as for the economic journal at harvard he was both professor of economics and professor of philosophy the unusually wide range of sen s research means that it is impossible to do justice to his contributions in the space available the nobel citation refers specifically to social choice welfare distributions and poverty but this is still a vast domain even leaving aside social choice and other areas covered by kenneth arrow in his article i have had to be highly selective section ii deals with welfare economics and sen s critique of welfarism section iii with the measurement of economic inequality and poverty section iv with sen s contributions to development economics and the implementation of his concept of capabilities this division into sections is inevitably somewhat artificial and in the final section x i seek to bring together the different fields of research and some others not covered in detail in an attempt to identify the key qualities of sen s contribution in choosing these areas of sen s work i am leaving out in addition to social choice and rationality much of his writing on social political and legal philosophy and i scarcely refer to his articles and books on the indian economy and society but then sen is prolific to a degree which is remarkable even for winners of the nobel memorial prize the biblio

industrial districts old wine in new bottles harrison b 1992 industrial districts old wine in new bottles reg studies 26 469 483 according to the theory of industrial districts a new wave of economic growth is being led in a number of regions in europe north america and east asia by spatially concentrated networks of mostly small and medium sized enterprises often using flexible production technology and characterized by extensive local interfirm linkages does this amount to a re emergence of the dominance of what urban and regional economists call agglomeration economies over the well known pressures on business to spatially disperse its operations neoclassical economic theorizing from marshall to perroux provides one perspective on the contemporary industrial district phenomenon another is afforded by granovetter s more recent elaboration of the ideas of embedding under and over socialization confronting each of these theoretical approaches with the other leads me to conclude that the industrial district prototypes involv

the effect of residential location on retirement age theory and some evidence on male behaviour in the us retirement age choice is introduced into a conventional model of residential location to show that the retirement age of workers who do not move after retirement can be influenced by the urban variation of leisure and housing prices a retirement demand equation that incorporates commuting characteristics is estimated on a sample of us urban male owners interviewed by the panel study of income dynamics it is found that commuters retire around two years earlier than comparable home based workers although the evidence provides no support for this gap to be the result of differences in leisure or housing prices across both groups

locational patterns and dynamics of industrial activity in the modern metropolis this paper attempts to review and re structure a mass of published ideas on the geography of industrial activity in the modern metropolis the argument proceeds in a series of stages first some basic locational factors in the city are examined second a critical discussion of the literature on economies of agglomeration and scale in cities is undertaken third a brief description of manufacturing activity in nineteenth century cities is provided by way of motivating and orientating the succeeding discussion fourth the phenomenon of industrial decentralisation in twentieth century cities is described fifth an attempt is made to construct a composite theory of intra metropolitan industrial location on the basis of the historical process of the substitution of capital for labour in capitalist commodity production sixth a schematic re statement of the theory is presented and its implications for the spatial cum organisational evolution of modern industry are elucidated seventh some of the main po

the economics of commuting and the urban labour market the spatial distribution of households and firms or urban spatial structure is a core element of the study of urban economics and the crucial determinant of commuting patterns this paper examines developments in the analysis of urban spatial structure and commuting are related to the urban labour market that is the analysis of labour supply and labour demand in a spatial context these developments have been overlooked in the traditional approach to urban structure and commuting where most attention has been devoted to the markets for land and housing rather than the market for labour yet a little reflection suggests that the labour market might have a great deal to do with the location decisions of households and firms and hence with commuting patterns we argue that much criticism of the economic analysis of urban structure and commuting can be addressed by explicit incorporation of the labour market into the conventional model of urban location this criticism includes findings that the theory cannot explain the tendency for richer households to live farther from the central business district and commute farther to work wheaton 1977 and findings of substantial unexplained or wasteful commuting according to conventional theory hamilton 1982 the paper begins by outlining the basic model of residential location and commuting section 2 we then consider extensions that involve the introduction of labour supply decisions and which determine the value of commuting time section 3 more recent extensions involve the introduction of decentralized workplaces section 4 and logically the issues of job search and migration section 5 we conclude with a summary of the progress in incorporating labour market behaviour into the analysis of urban structure and commuting and our suggestions for further research in this area

the origins and dynamics of production networks in silicon valley abstract computer systems firms in silicon valley are responding to rising costs of product development shorter product cycles and rapid technological change by focusing and building partnerships with suppliers both within and outside of the region well known firms like hewlett packard and apple computers and lesser known ones like silicon graphics and pyramid technology are organized to combine the components and sub systems made by specialist suppliers into new computer systems as these firms collaborate to both define and manufacture new systems they are institutionalizing their capacity to learn from one another three cases a contract manufacturer a silicon foundry and the joint development of a microprocessor illustrate how inter firm networks help account for the sustained technological dynamism of the regional economy

institutions in british property research a review this paper surveys approaches to the study of institutions as used in recent commercial property research in britain institutional analysis can be approached from mainstream economics power str

re establishing the rent gap an alternative view of capitalised land rent summary the debate between the proponents of the rent gap hypothesis and steven bourassa concerning its internal consistency centres on the role of land use in capitalised land rent bourassa argues that capitalised land rent is nonsensical because it is determined in part by land

urban rural variations in the structure of manufacturing production this paper demonstrates that recent attempts to explain manufacturing shifts to nonmetropolitan areas can be synthesised into a capital vintage model of production the result is a set of systematic differences between urban and rural production methods which are consistent with the locational implications of the manufacturing process cycle theory the model is supported by the first comprehensive estimation of separate production functions for smsas and nonmetropolitan areas using census data for the us from 1977 only smsas are shown to possess the significant agglomeration economies needed for product development and process innovation cost competitive nonmetropolitan areas show much greater variation in input proportions due to spatial factor price differentials

rethinking the economics of location and agglomeration fundamental problems exist with the classical characterisation of agglomeration economies since such definitions do not reflect the various cost issues on which firms may wish to economise a lack of understanding of the relationship between the notions of market hierarchies and locational behaviour leads to confusion not only in applied economic interpretation but more fundamentally in the construction of theoretical location models in particular neo classical location theory can be shown to be crucially flawed as a basis for spatial analysis this paper therefore attempts to provide an alternative definition of the various types of agglomeration economies such that the various strands of economic theory might be used in a more rigorous manner in the discussion of spatial increasing returns

the inflow effect trader inflow and price efficiency abstract we investigate the impact of cash and trader inflow on price efficiency in multi period experimental asset markets implementing eight treatments with 672 subjects we find that i the joint inflow of cash and traders triggers strong overvaluation and massive price run ups inflow effect remarkably the effect occurs in almost all of the 30 markets with joint cash and trader inflow and is very robust the effect even prevails in markets with complete and symmetric fundamental information we further show that ii in treatments with the joint inflow of cash and traders prices crash to fundamentals towards maturity of the asset the analysis of traders beliefs reveals that iii despite fundamental values staying constant beliefs about fundamentals co move with upwardly trending prices finally we report a speculative motive only among the optimists in treatments where we observe the inflow effect

ecosystems strong sustainability and the classical circular economy abstract in this article i argue that notions such as ecosystem services and strong sustainability can be best understood and developed within the theoretical framework advanced by the classical political economists in which a circular conception of the economy is provided i also argue that the development of notions such as ecosystem services and strong sustainability has been constrained by the dominance of neoclassical economics which provides a linear conception of the economy and leads to an emphasis on weak sustainability which in turn springs from an emphasis on substitutability and aggregate capital when assessing the relevance of classical political economy for studying ecosystem services and strong sustainability i consider not only the contributions of the classical political economists but also more recent contributions which draw upon the classical perspective such as piero sraffa s and amartya sen s

cultural explanation of regional property markets a critique in a recent paper in this journal simon guy and john henneberry 2000 proposed an institutional approach to property markets that emphasises exceptional behaviour on the part of particular market agents using this cultural approach they claimed to have evidence that london based property investors deliberately underinvest in british property outside southern england this paper criticises their dismissal of pre existing economic and institutional property market analysis and questions the validity of their empirical conclusions

a missing touch of adam smith in amartya sen s account of public reasoning the man within for the man without sen claims that his 2009 theory of justice is based in part upon smith s idea of the impartial spectator his claim has received criticism some authors have responded that his interpretation of smith s concept is unfaithful to the original e g ege igersheim and le chapelain 2012 others focusing on internal features of sen s analysis critique his use of the smithian impartial spectator arguing that it is a weak point in his comparative theory of justice e g shapiro 2011 in this paper we address both sets of criticisms while agreeing with commentators that sen s reading of smith is somewhat unfaithful we reiterate that his aim in the idea of justice is not to provide an exegesis of smith but rather to build his own comparative theory of justice by extending adam smith s idea of the impartial spectator ij 134 to his own project after clarifying their distinct approaches to the concept of the impartial spectator we draw upon our account of these differences to evaluate sen s own use of the concept despite significant divergences we show that sen s version of the impartial spectator is not inconsistent with smith s analysis though it does not correspond to smith s concept i e to what the scottish philosopher sometimes calls the man within it is reminiscent of another figure from smith s moral philosophy the man without beyond this analogy there are further connections between smith s imaginary figure of the man within and sen s account of common beliefs both notions are ways of representing our beliefs regarding what is moral or just but whereas smith s moral philosophy offers an analysis of the process by which the man without influences the man within nothing of that kind is to be found in sen s conception of public reasoning and it is here that smith s famous concept of sympathy can supplement sen s theory in a way which furnishes an answer to shapiro s 2011 criticism regarding the possibility of the spontaneous change of beliefs toward greater impartiality

boom bust dynamics in a stock market participation model with heterogeneous traders abstract the boundedly rational heterogeneous agent literature can be considered to have properly started with a number of contributions in the early 90s with the impressive contribution by carl chiarella who amongst his huge field of research developed several milestone models of heterogeneous interacting agents that are able to generate a number of dynamic outcomes compatible with the empirical evidence in this paper we propose a stock market model in which participation depends upon an attractiveness measure related to the market activity and the fundamental value of the market a market maker adjusts the stock price with respect to the current endogenous excess market demand which in turn depends on the demands of the different types of agents populating the economy market participants are also allowed to switch between different strategies analytical and numerical results confirm how the participation mechanism amplifies the occurrence of endogenous booms and busts in line with empirical and experimental evidence

the mills muth model of urban spatial structure surviving the test of time this paper examines the viability of some basic predictions of the mills muth model of city structure for modern cities using us data for the year 2000 the estimation strategy used to test the predictions is very similar to that of jan brueckner and david fansler who use 1970 data to find support for the model s basic comparative statics predictions namely that city area is increasing in population and income but decreasing in agricultural land value and commuting costs this paper uses different measures for land values and commuting costs where possible and a measure of polycentricity to estimate a slightly modified empirical model despite the changing structure of cities there is evidence that the mills muth comparative statics predictions hold for modern us cities that densely populated cities are more likely to have sub centres and that market forces drive urban spatial structure

institutions in theories of land markets illustrated by the dutch market for agricultural land theories of land markets should be intellectually sound and should be able to explain and predict market outcomes such as price and volume of transactions changes in these and locations of different land uses theories based on neo classical economics which largely ignore the role of institutions are not intellectually sound because it is known that markets cannot work without institutions nor do these theories predict outcomes satisfactorily moreover they assume market mechanisms and do not investigate them critically this paper explores how institutions may be taken into account in theories of land markets and whether that leads to better theories both of market outcomes and of market processes new institutional economics provides the tools to investigate how the interactions between market actors are influenced by institutions and the old institutional economics emphasises how institutions influence the motivations and preferences of those actors the conclusion is that there cannot be a general theory of land markets only theories with a limited applicability and scope such theories can be used to explain the effects of small changes and to predict the effects of marginal changes in institutions in that latter use these theories can be used for designing land policy how institutions can be incorporated into theory is illustrated by analysing the dutch market for agricultural land this shows how institutions affect the outcomes in that market and the consequences for the transformation of land from agriculture to urban use

on the causality of intraurban location abstract the patterns of decentralization of employment and population in american metropolitan areas are now well known to most urban economists while much time and space has been devoted to the economic and social causes of suburbanization understanding the nature of the process of decentralization is a prerequisite for the implementation of any government policy directed at the reversal or a slowing of the process as mills and price j urban econom 12 1 17 1984 suggest an uncertainty about the root causes of decentralization prevents an enlightened discussion of the appropriateness or desirability of various types of government intervention simple facts and causal models may have profound effects on the directions policy makers look for in government intervention the issue of causality lies at the heart of the process of decentralization and causality conclusions must be scrutinized before being accepted

measuring resource inequalities the concepts and methodology for an area based gini coefficient abstract although inequalities in income and expenditure are relatively well researched comparatively little attention has been paid to date to inequalities in resource use this is clearly a shortcoming when it comes to developing informed policies for sustainable consumption and social justice this paper describes an indicator of inequality in resource use called the ar gini the ar gini is an area based measure of resource inequality that estimates inequalities between neighbourhoods with regard to the consumption of specific consumer goods it is also capable of estimating inequalities in the emissions resulting from resource use such as carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and solid waste arisings from material resource use the indicator is designed to be used as a basis for broadening the discussion concerning food deserts to inequalities in other types of resource use by estimating the ar gini for a wide range of goods and services we aim to enhance our understanding of resource inequalities and their drivers identify which resources have highest inequalities and to explore trends in inequalities the paper describes the concepts underlying the construction of the ar gini and its methodology its use is illustrated by pilot applications specifically men s and boys clothing carpets refrigerators freezers and clothes washer driers the results illustrate that different levels of inequality are associated with different commodities the paper concludes with a brief discussion of some possible policy implications of the ar gini

new trends of suburbanization in beijing since 1990 from government led to market oriented feng j zhou y and wu f new trends of suburbanization in beijing since 1990 from government led to market oriented regional studies since the 1990s suburbanization has been continuing in china along with the deepening of market transition the process of suburbanization has gone beyond purely government initiated relocation of households and polluting industries based on the newest population census this paper identifies some major new trends of suburbanization in beijing the new round of suburbanization has been driven by the construction of suburban villas and affordable housing rising private car ownership the decentralization of industry and the development of large suburban shopping malls and retail parks passively relocated households are no longer the dominant source of suburbanization suburbanization in beijing has evolved into a new stage of more market oriented development in the suburbs feng j zhou y et wu f nouvelles tendances de la suburbanisation a beijing pekin depuis 1

some evidence of regional variations in the introduction and diffusion of industrial products and processes within british manufacturing industry thwaites a t 1982 some evidence of regional variations in the introduction and diffusion of industrial products and processes within british manufacturing industry reg studies 16 371 81 in the present economic circumstances the traditional instruments of regional aid public expenditure job transfer and mobile industry are greatly constrained which thrusts greater responsibility upon industry indigenous to each area to preserve and to create employment self sustained economic growth any concept of the mobilization of this regional potential must incorporate a technological dimension if any region lags in the production or adoption of new technology within its manufacturing industries then in the longer term it must face industrial decline evidence of regional performance in the production and adoption of new products and processes together with research and development effort is provided from two establishment based surveys of manufacturing industry in great britain the conclusion is reached

a note on sustainability economics and the capability approach sustainability economics attempts to reconcile efficiency criteria with those of social justice in a context of environmental concern this article aims at highlighting the fact that the capability approach offers an interesting perspective for the foundation of sustainability in economics it primarily focuses on the major role that freedom brings as a normative basis for well being and adds new insights for our understanding of human and environment relationship through the study of the constraints and opportunities that affect the individual the final section of this article asks us to reconsider our nature conservation choices by acknowledging the restrictive impact that they have on individual freedoms

environment justice and the capability approach in recent years several studies have attempted to combine the capabilities approach with sustainable development however critics have pointed out that although the capability approach takes the environment into account it has its shortcomings for not being a complete ethical theory our article attempts to go beyond these criticisms and show that the capabilities approach provides a good analytical framework for an environmental justice approach

beyond the post industrial city valuing and planning for industry in london this paper examines the challenges that planners face if industry is to survive and thrive in a growing post industrial city it examines london where the difference between the value of land for residential and industrial use and the pressure to address the housing crisis is leading to the rapid loss of industrial land and premises the paper first explores the role of industry in a high value city such as london arguing that trends in manufacturing in advanced economies are increasing the benefit for firms of an urban location whilst at the same time cities continue to need industry if they are to be economically and socially resilient sustainable and vibrant the paper then explores current approaches to planning for industry in london identifying impacts of a policy framework that anticipates and plans for its decline finally it focuses on the question of how to plan for a productive and inclusive city we explore the arguments in favour of integrating industry into the urban fabric as wel

a new look at the determinants of the intrametropolitan distribution of population and employment in this paper we develop an econometric model that relates intra urban employment and population distributions to a variety of explanatory factors the geographical focus is on the united states the results suggest that housing costs and quality are the most important determinants of the population distribution which is the most important determinant of the employment distribution however causation between population and employment runs both ways excerpt

a basis for sraffian ecological economics a comment on martins ecosystems strong sustainability and the classical circular economy martins 2016 recently emphasized the role that classical economics can play in building sustainability economics in this respect he uses sraffa s theory of value and sen and nussbaum s capability theory to support his argument my comment focuses on the part of his article concerning sraffa s theory and aims to refine some of martins claims in order to avoid misunderstandings about the possibilities offered by sraffa s theory

reasons for the development of islands of innovation evidence from hertfordshire this paper analyses why innovations often cluster in a few metropolitan islands of innovation the reason for this interest is that a growing body of neo schumpeterian economic theory argues that economic recovery after periods of economic recession and depression such as we have seen during the 1980s and early 1990s is driven by innovations these do not spring up all over the country but are spatially concentrated in a small number of metropolitan regions it is therefore important to know why this is so in order to evaluate the effectiveness of various uk and eu public policies whose specific objectives are to stimulate local and regional economic development agglomeration theory is used in order to understand the driving forces behind the spatial clustering of new innovations this leads to four explanatory hypotheses these are that innovation is facilitated by agglomeration in order to reduce distance transaction costs between firms in different spaces or by local factor conditions which provide

toward an evaluative framework for land use policy in industrial districts of the urban core a qualitative analysis of the exclusionary zoning approach this paper provides a preliminary analysis of costs and benefits associated with exclusionary zoning a policy vehicle which seeks to preserve or promote industry in the urban core especially where competition for land resources is typically the greatest by prohibiting the incursion or encroachment of higher uses the paper examines arguments commonly advanced pertaining both to alleged costs of exclusionary zoning e g relating to efficiency arguments impacts on urban economic adaptability and municipal revenues and also to perceived benefits diversification of the economic base and urban employment structure efficiency of public service provision the restriction of negative externalities etc it is observed that for both costs and benefits basic underlying arguments have in some cases been over stated or have failed to critically examine all relevant factors it is suggested that in general exclusionary zoning may be appropriate if applied in a selective manner but that expectati

labor supply and housing demand for one and two earner households the jointness of labor and housing decisions is explicitly modelled in a consumer demand framework behavior of seven demographic groups differentiated by marital status employment status and the presence of children is estimated from a micro data set results indicate that 1 decisions regarding work hours and housing consumption are interdependent choices and 2 responses to market signals differ significantly by demographic group results are likely to be superior to single equation studies or studies based on aggregate data

house and land prices in sydney from 1931 to 1989 this paper describes and explains house and land prices in sydney from 1931 to 1989 throughout this period house and land prices fell generally exponentially with distance to the cbd however the price gradients were not constant between 1931 and 1968 the gradients flattened on the other hand between the mid 1970s and 1989 they became steeper again the changes in the gradients were caused mainly by changes in travel times and costs by road and rail real travel costs fell in the early period and rose later on other factors that affected the price gradients were changes in car ownership and the supply of urban services in the early period and gentrification of inner city areas and the greater increase in housing supply on the urban fringe in the later period the paper also shows how house size and environmental factors influenced house prices in the 1970s and 1980s

cash inflows and bubbles in asset markets with constant fundamental values previous experimental research on asset markets has reported that the level of cash available to traders does not affect asset prices when fundamentals follow a time trajectory that is constant over time this contrasts with other research indicating that greater cash levels increase prices when fundamental values are decreasing over time we report a new experiment in which we show that greater initial cash levels are indeed associated with higher prices when fundamental values are constant over time thus high cash levels will lead to bubbles if the cash is introduced before the market opens our results reconcile the two previous sets of findings jel c90 d03 g02 g12 i introduction smith suchanek and williams 1988 initiated the experimental study of markets for multiperiod finitely lived assets a considerable subsequent literature has consistently observed price bubbles in such markets this consistency makes the smith et al paradigm a popular one for identifying and studying the factors that promote or dampen bubbles see palan 2013 for a survey of this literature it is known that some key market parameters influence prices and the tendency for bubbles to form two of these parameters are 1 the time trajectory of fundamental values and 2 the quantity of cash available for purchases compared to the quantity of assets available for sale a number of studies in this literature have contrasted the behavior of different fundamental value time paths the speed and effectiveness of price discovery the tendency of market prices to track fundamentals depend on the time path of the fundamental value trajectory breaban and noussair 2015 giusti jiang and xu 2012 noussair and powell 2010 stockl huber and kirchler 2014 a trajectory that is constant over time generates closer adherence to fundamental values than a time path that is monotonically decreasing kirchler huber and stockl 2012 noussair robin and ruffieux 2001 smith van boening and wellford 2000 1 another variable influencing market prices is the amount of liquidity traders have available for purchases it is well established that in the case of decreasing fundamentals the price level is affected by liquidity as measured by cash endowment levels greater cash endowments lead to higher prices caginalp and ilieva 2008 caginalp porter and smith 1998 2000 2001 haruvy and noussair 2006 cash and asset endowment levels are typically normalized into a measure of liquidity called the cash to asset c a ratio caginalp porter and smith 2001 this is the ratio of cash in the economy the total amount available for purchases of assets to the value of all of the units of asset in the economy evaluated at the fundamental value in period t the c a ratio is given by c a sub t summation over i c sub it summation over i q sub it f sub t where c a sub t is the c a ratio in period t c sub it is the cash available to trader i in period t q sub it is the quantity of units that trader i holds in period t and f sub t is the period t fundamental value the ratio can be interpreted as the ratio of the largest long position to the largest short position an average trader can take assuming that the market price is equal to the fundamental to date it has been shown that the cash asset ratio affects prices only for the case when fundamental values are decreasing to our knowledge only two studies have explored the effect of cash on prices when fundamentals are constant over time kirchler huber and stockl 2012 hereafter khs and kirchler et al 2015 in both of these studies the additional cash is introduced after one or more periods of trading have elapsed rather than before the market opens khs report that increases in cash endowments do not affect prices in the case of constant fundamental values because the authors interpret bubbles as a consequence of subject confusion about the experimental environment they conclude that the constant fundamental value setting leads to less confusion on the part of subjects

firm innovation the influence of r d cooperation and the geography of human capital inputs abstract this paper investigates the role played by the geography of labor inputs in the promotion of innovation knowledge can be transferred between firms by inter firm interactions and inter firm cooperation in addition knowledge can also be transferred between firms by human capital mobility in order to examine these issues we employ a unique innovation dataset from finland this dataset provides information about a firm s innovation performance along with information regarding the origins of a firm s recent labor acquisitions the origins of the labor are defined according to both the industry and the region analyzing these data allows us to identify the different roles which the geography of knowledge exchanges and the geography of labor markets play in the innovation process

ends in view the capabilities approach in ecological sustainability economics while traditional scientific endeavor seeks to avoid the problem ecological economics and the broader emergent field of sustainability economics e se are explicitly grounded in a particular ethico moral assertion one that defines sustainability as a normative notion about the way how humans should act towards nature and how they are responsible towards one another and future generations baumgartner and quaas 2010 p 445 thus e se is neither a purely positive science nor is it a purely normative endeavor but it is what has been called relevant science baumgartner and quaas 2010 p 447 a key objective of e se is therefore said to be to study how ecosystems and human activity interrelate in terms that extend beyond functional and descriptive analysis of this interrelationship and towards explicitly incorporating this normative vision the result that is aimed for is a discipline that is constituted as the best possible approach to the science and management of sustainability

the classical circular economy sraffian ecological economics and the capabilities approach abstract here i provide some further elaborations on the idea of a classical circular economy and its articulation with the capabilities approach this enables addressing some important questions raised by yoann verger 2017 when commenting on the idea of a classical circular economy as outlined in martins 2016 while advancing the basis for a sraffian ecological economics to understand the connections between sraffa s economic theory and the classical circular economy discussed by verger 2017 an essential aspect to be addressed here is sraffa s interpretation of the classical conception of the wage which can be fruitfully addressed in terms of the capabilities approach as suggested by vivian walsh 2000

stock market participation and endogenous boom bust dynamics abstract we develop a model in which stock market participation depends on current market movements and on the fundamental state of the market our model explains empirical and experimental evidence according to which increasing decreasing stock market participation amplifies bubbles crashes

markets and the structure of the housebuilding industry an international perspective this paper sets out to examine why the modern housebuilding industry is organised in the ways it is and to identify some implications for the wider operation of housing markets it concentrates on advanced economies and the impacts of market conditions regulatory constraints production characteristics institutional structures and land supply widespread differences occur across countries in the ways in which housebuilding is institutionally structured it is argued that these differences are generally explicable in economic terms and that regulatory practices determine much of the variation

on minimum rents part 2 a modern interpretation summary the idea that there might be some minimum rent below which a land owner would not let to any tenant was put forward by marx but with little supporting argument in this paper it is shown that the modern concepts and analysis of transaction costs and monitoring costs can explain why such a minimum rent might exist further that risk and uncertainty coupled with the fact that tenancies are usually for some years also provide an explanation for the reluctance of land and property owners to let at minimal rents some empirical evidence is cited particularly the substantial rents which have to be paid to lay telecommunication cables across private land