community development with endogenous land use controls abstract when competitive landowners developers control incorporation and zoning decisions efficient patterns of development emerge when by contrast early arrivals control policy they may impose zoning restrictions that force later entrants to pay via the property tax a disproportionate share of the cost of providing public services if new arrivals are sufficiently poor they may choose to reside outside the community while higher quality land within the community remains unoccupied this inefficient and exclusionary outcome can be an equilibrium if boundaries once drawn are irreversible the ex ante introduction of a seemingly natural compensation scheme may not remedy the problem

investing in farmers the impacts of farmer field schools in relation to integrated pest management public policy in developing countries has failed to invest in educating farmers on how to deal with variable agro ecosystems and a changing world here we present an assessment of a participatory training approach in changing crop protection by farmers from chemically dependent to more sustainable practices in line with the tenets of integrated pest management ipm we review the evidence from the studies on an educational investment designed to capacitate farmers to apply ipm and discuss these data in the light of an on going policy debate concerning cost effectiveness the results indicate substantial immediate and developmental benefits of participation in farmer field schools

semicollusion in the norwegian cement market abstract a model of semicollusion where firms collude on prices and compete on capacities is tailor made to the characteristics of the norwegian cement market and tested on this particular market for the period 1927 1982 the results indicate that the rapid increase in capacity and thereby in exports in the period 1956 1967 the late phase of the price cartel best can be explained by the market sharing agreement each firm overinvested in capacity to receive a large quota in the domestic market

on strategic community development this paper examines strategic behavior of developers who through offering different congested public good packages and revenue fiscal schemes compete for residents who are differentiated by income there is an endogenous determination of numbers and sizes of communities developers have an incentive to strongly differentiate their public good offerings in terms of pricing strategies developers exhibit sharply contrasting behaviors in low income communities housing consumption is subsidized once lots are priced in high income communities housing consumption is generally taxed

entry its deterrence and its accommodation a study of the u s photographic film industry this work set in the new empirical industrial organization framework bresnahan 1987 examines firm level demand based and cost based explanations for entry and accommodation strategies in the u s photographic film industry i first estimate preentry and postentry market structures then using the estimated demand cost and market conduct parameters i show how entry by fuji photo or lack thereof by others is a function of two market structures i also show how market structure and conduct and changes in them over the pre and postentry periods are in turn functions of entry its deterrence and it accommodation

on the pricing strategy of a land developer this paper examines the pricing strategy of a developer facing potential clients heterogeneous in income two part pricing and second degree discriminatory pricing strategies are characterized our results include the fact that the developer chooses either to charge a positive entry fee and a unit housing price above cost or to charge linear pricing of housing depending on the share of housing in individual consumption as well as on the quality level of public services second degree discriminatory pricing improves upon the ability of the developer to exploit high income consumers c 1999 academic press

inefficiencies from metropolitan political and fiscal decentralization failures of tiebout competition we examine the welfare effects of provision of local public goods in an empirically relevant setting using a multi community model with mobile and heterogeneous households and with flexible housing supplies we characterize the first best allocation and show efficiency can be implemented with decentralization using head taxes we calibrate the model and compare welfare in property tax equilibria both decentralized and centralized to the efficient allocation inefficiencies with decentralization and property taxation are large dissipating most if not all the potential welfare gains that efficient decentralization could achieve in property tax equilibrium centralization is frequently more efficient an externality in community choice underlies the failure to achieve efficiency with decentralization and property taxes poorer households crowd richer communities and free ride by consuming relatively little housing thereby avoiding taxes copyright oxford university press

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

income inequality size of government and tax progressivity a positive theory abstract i investigate the relationship between income inequality and the composition of public spending in redistributive policies i extend the meltzer richard model of voting over redistribution allowing voters to choose not only the amount of a uniform lump sum transfer but also the level of provision of a public good the governmental budget is balanced thus these two choices determine the tax rate on labor income the multidimensionality of the policy space implies that there is no condorcet winner i adopt a citizen candidate model of electoral competition to tackle this problem i show that the progressivity of the tax system is increasing in the mean to median income ratio while the size of the government need not be this means that higher income inequality implies a more progressive tax system but in contrast with the traditional analysis it may also result in a smaller size of government such results are consistent with the most recent findings in the empirical literature

common marketing agency as a device for facilitating collusion in a variety of markets firms voluntarily and independently delegate control over certain aspects of marketing to common agents in this article we present an explicit model of agency delegation where firms noncooperatively select agents name output prices and choose compensation schemes we exhibit an equilibrium in which all strategic variables not merely the marketing choices delegated to agents but prices as well are selected perfectly cooperatively this cooperative equilibrium is very simple and attractive each firm sets the collusive output price and employs a commission scheme to compensate the agent although each

research note additional learning and implications on the role of informative advertising observers argue that evidence for the persuasive role of advertising comes from competitive categories where increases in advertising lead to higher average prices conversely others claim that advertising serves a purely informational role here higher levels of advertising lead to better informed consumers and this should increase competition and stimulate lower prices the objective of this study is to neither confirm nor refute either of these perspectives it is rather to show that increases in informative advertisingalone can lead to both higher or lower prices i further show that the direction of this relationship depends on the level of differentiation between competing firms similar to grossman and shapiro 1984 i examine conditions where the differences between competing products are small but i also examine conditions where the differences are significant the role of advertising is to inform consumers about individual products and higher advertising for a product means that more of the potential market knows about it higher levels of advertising increase the relative importance of fully informed consumers compared to partially informed consumers this dynamic is the basis for explaining why informative advertising can push prices either up or down in a uniformly distributed spatial market

informative advertising with differentiated products in this paper we study the role of promotional expenditures by sellers in a model of product differentiation advertising conveys full and accurate information about the characteristics of products heterogeneous consumers who have no source of information other than advertisements seek to purchase the products that best fit their needs despite the roles played by advertising in improving the matching of products and consumers and in increasing the elasticity of demand faced by each firm we find that the market determined levels of advertising are excessive given the extent of diversity in the market we derive a promotional equilibrium based on a specific information transmission technology paying explicit attention to the structure of consumer information and its impact on firms demand curves this allows us to study the effects of changes in the advertising technology including an increased ability to target messages to specific groups of consumers on the equilibrium in the product market we find that decreased advertising costs may reduce profits by increasing the severity of price competition

informative advertising competition or cooperation there are two main views of advertising the informative view and the persuasive view this thesis studies aspects of the informative view one aspect of interest is whether firms can benefit from collusion on advertising even though advertising is only informative if so will this enhance or lower welfare there are several reasons why firms may want to collude on adver tising first the legal field is tilted in favour of nonprice collusion second it is not at all obvious that collusion on price is more profitable than collusion on advertising and third the analyses of grossman and shapiro 1984 and others show that profits can be increased by restricting advertising in paper 1 we examine firms incentives to collude on advertising and the implications for welfare we find that collusion on advertising and competition on price is more profitable than competition on both price and advertising we also find that semicollusion on advertising is detrimental to welfare this suggests a need for monitoring especially since it is in the interest of firms to restrict price advertising we also compare semicollusion on price to semicollusion on advertising we find that in general semicollusion on price does not lead to higher profits compared to semicollusion on advertising hence we lend theoretical support to the empirical literature that consistently find evidence of semicollusion on advertising rather than on price another important issue concerns the effect on prices and profits of ad vertising only a subset of the product range many firms in particular those in the retail sector sell a wide variety of products but only advertise a few recent empirical evidence suggests that prices of unadvertised products are higher milyo and waldfogel 1999 theoretically little is known in paper 2 we study the effects of advertising only a subset of products we allow for both low and high differentiation and at the same time we explicitly model the advertising decision we find that the extend of differentiation between competing firms plays an important role in the analysis of loss leader pricing when firms sell products with the same reservation price loss leader pric ing obtains only when differentiation is low when products are less similar however price competition is less intense and as a result firms advertise prices above marginal cost our loss leader pricing results enable us to shed some light on the seemingly paradoxical empirical findings in the marketing literature that loss leader pricing fails to increase store traffic loss leader sales and hence to increase profits we also consider a different subject price discrimination although it is well understood that movements in the exchange rate have a bearing on firm profitability and hence affect firm behaviour the role of exchange rate variability in the firm s choice of the number of varieties to produce has to my knowledge not been explored this despite the fact that the product mix is an important aspect of firm strategy by tinkering with the number of varieties a firm can bolster its ability to extract consumer surplus in paper 3 we explore this issue we show that variability in the exchange rate induces the firm to vertically segment markets i e offer two varieties in each market this happens because exchange rate variability affects income dispersion and hence the firm s incentives to extract consumer surplus to better extract surplus the firm offers two price quality menus high quality variant priced high for top end surplus extraction and a low quality variety priced low to address market coverage concerns

transboundary externalities in the environmental transition hypothesis the environmental kuznets curve ekc is a hypothesis which implies that it is possible to grow out of environmental degradation most theoretical models of the ekc relation have not accounted for transboundary and intergenerational externalities nor have empirical studies provided evidence that validates an inverted u shaped relation between environmental degradation and economic growth for pollution problems where the effects are far displaced or are long delayed

lobbying political competition and local land supply recent evidence from spain abstract we analyze whether local land supply is influenced by the degree of political competition and interpret the findings as indications of the influence wielded by land developer lobbies we use a new database including both political and land supply data for more than 2 000 spanish municipalities for the period 2003 2007 in spain land use policies are largely a local responsibility with municipalities needing periodically to pass comprehensive land use plans the main policy variable in these plans and the one analyzed here is the amount of land classified for potential development we measure local political competition as the margin of victory of the incumbent government this variable is however potentially endogenous since not only do votes affect policy but also policy is expected to affect votes to deal with this problem we instrument this variable using the votes at the first national legislative elections following the re establishment of democracy and votes actually obtained regionally at the same type of election the results indicate that stiffer political competition does indeed reduce the amount of new land designated for development this effect is found to be most marked in suburbs in towns with a high percentage of commuters and homeowners and in municipalities governed by the left

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

education finance reform and the distribution of education resources between 1971 and 1996 opponents of local funding for public schools successfully challenged the constitutionality of school finance systems in sixteen states using the variation across states in the timing of these cases the authors investigate the impact of reform on the distribution of school resources their results suggest that court ordered finance reform reduced within state inequality in spending by 19 to 34 percent successful litigation reduced inequality by raising spending in the poorest districts while leaving spending in the richest districts unchanged thereby increasing aggregate spending on education reform led states to fund additional spending through higher state taxes copyright 1998 by american economic association

on the political economy of zoning abstract households choose a community in a metropolitan area and collectively set a minimum housing quality and a property tax to finance a local public good the collective imposition of a lower bound on housing consumption induces an income stratified equilibrium in a specification where meaningful community differentiation would not arise without zoning we show computationally that zoning restrictions are likely to be stringent with a majority facing a binding constraint in communities that permit it by inducing a stratified equilibrium zoning causes tiebout welfare gains in aggregate but with large welfare transfers relative to stratified equilibrium without zoning the zoning equilibrium is significantly more efficient as it reduces housing market distortions

smart policies to reduce pesticide use and avoid income trade offs an agent based model applied to thai agriculture abstract policy makers in developing countries need better evidence of how changes in pesticide regulation would affect pesticide reduction and farm incomes but there are very few modeling tools that can provide such information the present study develops a new model based on mathematical programming based multi agent system mpmas a simulation software that allows assessing ex ante the impact of alternative pesticide use reduction strategies including combinations of pesticide taxes the introduction of integrated pest management a price premium for safe agricultural produce and subsidies for biopesticides the model is parameterized with farm and plot level data from northern of thailand where the adoption of high value cash crops has been accompanied by a rapid increase in synthetic pesticide use simulation results suggest that a pesticide tax alone has little effect on synthetic pesticide use a smart policy package combining integrated pest management a progressive pesticide tax based on toxicity and subsidies lowering the price of biopesticides can reduce average use of hazardous pesticides by 34 over current levels without adverse effects on the average farm income

coordination economies advertising and search behavior in retail markets we introduce a model of the retail firm in which consumers and active firms benefit collectively from coordination of sales at fewer firms using this model we show that ostensibly uninformative advertising plays a key role in bringing about coordination economies by directing consumer search toward firms that offer the best deals optimal consumer search takes the form of a simple rule of thumb that uses observed advertising information to guide search both industry concentration and social surplus are higher in the presence of advertising relative to a no advertising benchmark jel d83 l15 many observed advertisements seem to be at odds with rational behavior in a variety of ads mostly on tv and radio multiproduct sellers provide little hard information choosing instead to impart only vague slogans that are suggestive of good deals examples are plentiful a hardware store

mobility and redistribution the ability of individuals to move freely from one jurisdiction to another is generally seen as a constraint on the amount of redistribution that each jurisdiction within a system of governments can undertake in this paper we look at this proposition by developing a positive analysis of income redistribution by local governments in a federal system we ask how much redistribution occurs when only local governments can have tax transfer instruments individuals can move freely among jurisdictions and voters in each jurisdiction are fully aware of the migration effects of redistributive policies local redistribution is shown to induce sorting of the population with the poorest households located in the communities that provide the most redistribution while the threat of out migration affects the potential for redistribution our results suggest that significant local redistribution is nonetheless feasible numerical computations indicate that the proportion of residents who are renters is a major factor affecting the local choice of level of redistribution

are there increasing returns to pollution abatement empirical analytics of the environmental kuznets curve in pesticides abstract according to the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis economic growth and the reduction of environmental degradation are compatible goals an inverted u shaped relationship between economic performance and environmental pollution suggests that empirically an economy is associated with smaller levels of pollution after some threshold income point one potential explanation for the empirical evidence of an ekc is increasing returns to pollution abatement where the abatement efficiency rises with an increase in the scale of abatement doubling the clean up efforts more than doubles the abatement of pollution as this efficiency gain makes abatement less expensive pollution might fall as more abatement is undertaken this study tests the hypothesis that there are increasing returns to abating pollution empirical evidence on environmental risks in the us agricultural sector since 1970 support the existence of increasing returns in addition i estimate the productivity of pollution abatement using refined empirical productivity measurement methods and explicitly control the level of technology the results show the importance of including an environmental productivity variable in the ekc framework

farmer training in off season vegetables effects on income and pesticide use in bangladesh the cultivation of crops outside the regular cropping calendar when supply is low and prices are high can give farmers better profits and consumers more choice however off season production may increase pesticide risk if crops are more affected by pests and diseases and farmers do not handle pesticides correctly this study quantified the effect of training in off season tomato production on the income and pesticide use of smallholder vegetable farmers in southwestern bangladesh the study uses farm level data from 94 trained and 151 non trained farm households and applies propensity score matching and inverse probability weighting to correct for selection bias for the average smallholder vegetable farmer training increased net household income by about 48 we found that 31 of the trained farm households who had initially adopted the technology continued its use in the second year but farm households who discontinued using the technology also experienced significant income gains from the training there was a significant increase in pesticide use 56 and although there was an improvement in pesticide handling practices trained farmers may have been more exposed to pesticide health risk the policy implication is that while off season vegetable production can create dramatic income improvements it is important to emphasize safe and sustainable pest management methods as part of policies promoting it

expansionary zoning and the strategic behaviour of local governments this paper analyses the extent to which local land supply is the result of strategic interaction among nearby local governments in a setting of limited tax instruments to raise revenues and interj

agricultural pesticides and land use intensification in high middle and low income countries abstract we study levels and trends in agricultural pesticide use for a large cross section of countries using fao data for the period 1990 2009 our analysis shows that a 1 increase in crop output per hectare is associated with a 1 8 increase in pesticide use per hectare but that the growth in intensity of pesticide use levels off as countries reach a higher level of economic development however very few high income countries have managed to significantly reduce the level of intensity of their pesticide use because decreases in insecticide use at higher income levels are largely offset by increases in herbicide and fungicide use the results also show very rapid growth in the intensity of pesticide use for several middle income countries such as brazil mexico uruguay cameroon malaysia and thailand complementing our analysis with data from the rotterdam convention on prior informed consent pic we show that hazardous pesticides covered in the pic procedure are more weakly regulated in lower than in higher income countries we discuss the policy challenges facing developing countries with a rapid growth in pesticide use and recommend a four pronged strategy including an environmental tax on pesticides with revenues allocated to long term investments in awareness building the development of integrated crop management methods and the setting of food safety standards the interactions between these measures should help contribute to the effectiveness of the overall strategy package

advantageous semi collusion the textbook view that cartels increase industry profits and lower consumer welfare ignores the effects of competition in other activities a revisionist view shows that when cartel members compete in other activities i e when they semi collude the cartel members may be worse off and consumers better off using a two stage model in which the non production activity is r d and is subject to technological spillovers we show that both the traditional and revisionist views can be wrong that consumers and producers can both be made worse off or both better off by a semi collusive production cartel

valuing social sustainability in agriculture an approach based on social outputs shadow prices abstract interest in sustainability has gained ground among practitioners academics and policy makers due to growing stakeholders awareness of environmental and social concerns this is particularly true for agriculture however relatively little research has been conducted on the quantification of social sustainability and the contribution of social issues to the agricultural production efficiency this paper proposes a framework based on state contingent outputs to compute shadow prices of social outputs our methodological approach is based on the directional distance function and illustrated using a farm level dataset from a sample of catalan arable crop farms in 2015 our results indicate that in the sample of 180 farms included in the analysis efficiency scores are relatively high for the three alternative states of the nature considered in our state contingent analysis in addition our findings show that social outputs shadow prices are positive indicating that producing more social outputs is considered as great value to the farm for the efficient farms the social outputs shadow prices are contingent upon on the state of nature in a way that social outputs shadow prices increase with the improvement in crop growth conditions these results have implications in terms of eu farm payment redistribution

impact fees exclusionary zoning and the density of new development abstract the increasing use of impact fees represents a new trend in local fiscal policy which can have important effects on real estate markets the ramifications for economic efficiency as well as for the pattern of metropolitan area development are not well understood by real estate academics or practitioners current discussion focuses primarily on who bears the burden of the fees this paper shows that impact fees have interesting implications for a broader set of important issues the fees provide communities with added flexibility in pricing entry into their jurisdictions allowing existing residents to transfer to themselves the surplus associated with new development using impact fees can reduce the incentive for communities to engage in fiscally inspired exclusionary zoning the optimal density of new development can increase following the introduction of fees widespread use of impact fees ultimately may help alter the current centralization in core cities of relatively poorer people and other demanders of high density development

an empirical analysis of dynamic nonprice competition in an oligopolistic industry this article develops a dynamic model of nonprice competition in an oligopolistic industry and uses it to analyze advertising competition in the u s cigarette industry the model generalizes existing studies by allowing advertising to affect both firm market shares and the total size of the market the model also allows dynamic conjectural variations to arise from the intertemporal links created by the durability of advertising we use these dynamic conjectural variations to distinguish alternative models of competitive interaction we estimate the complete model of firm production demand and advertising choice by using data for u s cigarette producers the results indicate that firm advertising primarily affects the level of market demand with a firm s effect on rival firms market shares arising through variations in the number of brands sold empirical results on firm behavior suggest that firms act as if their advertising choices will alter the future advertising choices of rival firms in both the high tar and low tar cigarette markets

majority choice of tax systems in single and multi jurisdictional economies abstract we examine majority choice of tax instruments in an economy with heterogeneous households in our framework majority voting equilibrium exists despite the multidimensional policy choice set we examine single and multi jurisdictional economies we identify five competing incentives that influence choice of tax instruments equilibria generally entail a mixture of tax types with multiple jurisdictions strong reliance on head taxation in rich communities arises to deter poorer households from immigrating in spite of local incentives to use alternative tax instruments to redistribute wealth if relocation costs preclude inter community mobility the equilibrium tax system is fundamentally affected with redistribution incentives then dominating choice of instruments and tax rates limiting or eliminating head taxation fundamentally alters stratification public good provision levels and tax systems

supply chain differentiation contract agriculture and farmers marketing preferences the case of sweet pepper in thailand there is an emerging body of literature analyzing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can be linked to modern supply chains however most of the available studies concentrate on farm and farmer characteristics failing to capture details of institutional arrangements between farmers and traders moreover farmers preferences have rarely been considered here we address these gaps by analyzing different market channels for sweet pepper in thailand using data from a survey and choice experiment with farmers we find that there is a general preference for marketing options that do not involve a contract additional provision of inputs and credit can increase the attractiveness of contracts yet the most important factor for farmers is to personally know the buyer they deal with which may be related to issues of trust some policy implications are discussed

to spray or not to spray pesticides banana exports and food safety how governments regulate food safety and environmental protection including pesticide residue levels has important implications for trade the world trade organization wto ministerial held in doha qatar in november 2001 included statements on standards and their impact on market access for developing countries these issues will continue to be important in trade policy dialogues it is assumed and evidence from recent analysis confirms that food safety standards can affect the ability of agricultural producers to meet regulatory standards set by importing countries the authors explore a fundamental question in food safety and environmental standards do regulations on pesticide have an effect on trade they examine regulatory data from 11 oecd importing countries and trade data from 19 exporting countries the results suggest that a 10 percent increase in regulatory stringency tighter restrictions on the pesticide chlorpyrifos leads to a decrease in banana imports by 14 8 percent this represents a significant impact on trade and affect prospects of developing countries who continue to rely on exports of agricultural commodities such as bananas the findings also suggest that the lack of consensus on international standards and divergent national regulations on pesticides is costly for example the authors estimate that if the world were to adopt a standard at a level of regulatory stringency suggested by codex the body charged with setting global standards in this area in contrast with one set at the level in place in the european union there would be a u s 5 3 billion loss in world exports

cooperative advertising models in supply chain management a review this paper reviews articles on cooperative advertising a topic which has gained substantial interest in recent years thereby we first briefly distinguish five different definitions of cooperative advertising which can be found in operations research literature after that we concentrate on vertical cooperative advertising which is the most common object of investigation it is understood as a financial agreement where a manufacturer offers to pay a certain share of his retailer s advertising expenditures in total we identified 58 scientific papers considering mathematical modeling of vertical cooperative advertising these articles are then analyzed with regard to their general model setting e g the underlying supply chain structure and design of the cooperative advertising program after that we explain the different demand and cost functions that are employed whereupon we distinguish between static and dynamic models the last dimension of our review is dedicated to the game theoretic concepts which are mostly used to reflect different forms of distribution of power within the channel

clean money dirty system connected landowners capture beneficial land rezoning we use a unique regulatory event that occurred in queensland australia from 2007 to 2012 to examine the predictive power of landowner relationship networks and lobbying behaviour on successfully gaining value enhancing rezoning a state authority the urban land development authority ulda took planning control away from local councils in selected areas in order to increase the speed and scale of development in those areas in the process increasing land values using micro level relationship data from multiple sources we compare the relationship network characteristics of landowners of comparable sites inside and outside the ulda areas finding that connected landowners owned 75 of land inside the rezoned areas and only 12 outside capturing 410 million in land value gains out of the total 710 million from rezoning we also find that engaging a professional lobbyist is a substitute for having one s own connections scaling up from our sample of six rezoned areas to the hundreds of rezoning decisions across queensland and australia in the last few decades suggests that many billions of dollars of economic rent are being regularly transferred from the general population to connected landowners through political rezoning decisions

land use and zoning in an urban economy zoning statutes are a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in urban america allen manvel in his report to the national commission on urban problems p 31 estimated that 90 percent of the cities and towns in the united states with a population of over 5 000 had some kind of zoning statute in 1967 in addition 51 of the 52 largest cities possessed such ordinances in spite of this ubiquity and in spite of the recent public controversy concerning the legality of suburban exclusionary zoning the modern economics literature on the institution is amazingly sparse there have been some significant contributions in recent years notably those by otto davis martin bailey davis and andrew whinston and john crecine davis and robert jackson however i think it is fair to say that economists have barely scratched the surface of what seems to me to be a very complex subject in particular there has been very little progress made in the task of incorporating zoning or land use parameters into the kinds of micro economic models that economists are accustomed to deal with the contrast with another urban economic institution the property taxis rather striking in this respect the basic objective of this paper will be to attempt to fill this gap the first section introduces a simple model of an urban space economy with a manufacturing and residential sector having constructed this model i will show how a change in the allocation of land between the two sectors affects the spatial pattern of land rents the size of the urban labor force and the wage rate the second section of the paper will then be devoted to a discussion of the appropriateness and implications of a land allocation policy which maximizes aggregate land rent

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

supply constraints and housing market dynamics abstract although the volatility of house prices is often ascribed to demand side factors constraints on housing supply have important and little studied implications for housing dynamics i illustrate the strong relationship between the volatility of house prices and the regulation of new housing supply i then employ a dynamic structural model of housing investment to investigate the mechanisms underlying this relationship i find that supply constraints increase volatility through two channels first regulation lowers the elasticity of new housing supply by increasing lags in the permit process and adding to the cost of supplying new houses on the margin second geographic limitations on the area available for building houses such as steep slopes and water bodies lead to less investment on average relative to the size of the existing housing stock leaving less scope for the supply response to attenuate the effects of a demand shock my estimates and simulations confirm that regulation and geographic constraints play critical and complementary roles in decreasing the responsiveness of investment to demand shocks which in turn amplifies house price volatility

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning