does tax increment financing raise urban industrial property values the paper examines the impact of tax increment financing tif on the value of industrial properties in chicago because tif designation may be self selected a two stage procedure is used to estimate the influence of tif the authors find that the value of industrial parcels located in mixed use tif districts i e those that also contain commercial or residential properties is higher than that of similar parcels that are not located in a tif district however the value of industrial parcels that are located in homogeneous industrial use tif districts is no higher and in some specifications is lower than that of similar parcels not located in a tif district these divergent results may be best explained by industrial parcel owners desire to convert their properties to non industrial uses

urban spatial structure urban structure is increasingly characterized by decentralization dispersion and multiple employment centers much is known empirically about such patterns and about how the interplay between agglomerative and dispersive forces generates spatial structures that are complex and prone to multiple equilibria and dynamic path dependence these forces operate at different spatial scales many entail unpriced interaction and external scale economies deriving from product differentiation and endogenous technical change appear particularly important because these forces interact in complex ways inefficiencies in urban structure are resistant to simple policy interventions

the impact of highway proximity on distribution centres rents access to a highway is an important issue for distribution centres in the netherlands distribution centres are located at only two kilometres from a highway on average this paper estimates the impact of highway proximity on distribution centres rents by using hedonic pricing techniques we show that a one kilometre increase to the nearest highway decreases rents of an average sized distribution centre by about 11 000 euro per year the distance to the geographic centre of the whole country is also shown to affect rents for other types of industrial real estate similar results are found based on our results policymakers responsible for spatial planning or economic development may be able to make better decisions when developing new distribution centres

estimating market prices and assessed values for income properties assessors perform property valuations for the purpose of tax assessment buyers and sellers make investment decisions culminating in a market price the valuation by assessors is supposed to be fair and equitable and to amount to a prescribed proportion of market value we investigate the property features considered by assessors in arriving at the assessed value and by buyers and sellers in arriving at the market price we also explore what factors appear to be considered differently by the assessors and the market thus contributing to overassessment or underassessment of property taxes the analysis deals with income properties centrally located in stockholm sweden

estimating distance gradients for apartment properties the effect of distance from the city centre on selling price tax assessment and gross income is investigated for income property in proximity to the city centre hedonic estimation with a multiplicative model specification is used to estimate the relationship between property characteristics on the one hand and price assessment and income on the other the sample consists of centrally located apartment buildings in downtown stockholm sold during a recent three year period the application is specific to stockholm but the methodology and the insights gained are general the results include the estimation of price gradients for the dependent variables the models are used for estimating the implicit capitalisation rates in the property market as a function of the distance to the centre we also estimated where the market appears to place the city centre as implied by the observations although no rent gradient was found we were able to detect a significant negative price gradient the former is reasonab

exploring spatial dynamics with land price indexes the purpose of this study is to explore the within region spatial dynamics of appreciation and depreciation rates using three different representations of geographical space mean value indexing methods are used to construct global land price indexes sub market land price indexes and local land price indexes using transaction price data for vacant residential land within the city of hamilton ontario between 1995 and 2003 the results are validated against statistics canada s series of new housing price indexes followed by a comparison of the relative performance of the three geographical representations of land price indexes the results indicate that the mean value indexing methods are robust although subject to outliers and sample selection bias and clearly illustrate the spatial dynamics of annual appreciation and depreciation rates across the study area the results also underscore the need for regular surveillance of the spatial dynamics of urban land markets

explaining the spatial variation in housing prices an economic geography approach housing prices vary geographically even between neighbouring municipalities local differences can be attributed to differences in socio economic variables and real estate characteristics this article argues that one should additionally take into account the geographical location of municipalities in particular housing prices are affected by distance and travel time to important economic centres offering jobs and extensive services following the economic geography literature we develop a model showing the explicit impact of geographical barriers on housing prices as such we distinguish ourselves from the existing literature on the dynamics of housing prices since geographical elements are fairly constant over time we estimate our model on municipality level housing prices for all 589 belgian municipalities in 2001 we also differentiate between the two main regions of belgium flanders and wallonia our empirical results confirm expectations geographical barriers have significantly negative eff

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

urban spatial variations in office commercial rents the role of spatial amenities and commercial zoning abstract the paper argues that traditional bid rent modeling is inadequate in providing the framework for empirically analyzing the whole array of location demand and most importantly supply side influences on office commercial rents within multinodal metropolises the analysis then proceeds with an alternative modeling scheme setting the stage for specifying long run reduced form office commercial rent functions differing from traditional hedonic formulations both within competitive and constrained land market settings using recent data on office commercial rents across nodes in greater los angeles the empirical analysis lends considerable support to those alternative model specifications accounting not only for firm amenities but also for worker amenities and local institutional controls

a constant quality price index for resale public housing flats in singapore largely because of the significant societal and economic aspects of public housing in singapore the current resale price index is published regularly by the housing and development board hdb based on average transaction prices this hdb index does not control for a shift in the mix of public housing resale flats transacted this paper looks into the usefulness of the current hdb resale price index that is reflective of pure price appreciation across time adopting the varying parameter technique a constant quality hdb resale price index is constructed instead for the period between january 1997 and june 2000 the usefulness of a constant quality resale price index is evaluated using three assessment criteria first through a series of comparative studies between a constant quality hdb resale price index and other resale price indices it is found that the constant quality resale price index provides a better indication of pure price appreciation secondly the parameters of price determinants are fo

testing for the existence of office sub markets a comparison of evidence from two cities most conceptual and applied economic models of the structure of urban office markets have been developed from traditional location theory in their basic form these models tend to posit a trade of

wage gradients rent gradients and the price elasticity of demand for housing an empirical investigation abstract as developed in muth s cities and housing attainment of locational equilibrium within an urban area implies a necessary functional correspondence between wage and price gradients and the compensated price elasticity of demand for housing in this paper estimates of the rent and wage gradients are utilized to generate price elasticity estimates via this equilibrium correspondence the box cox transformation technique is used with data from the metropolitan chicago area to test for the functional forms of the wage and rent gradients the optimal maximum likelihood functional forms for both gradients yield a price elasticity estimate of 0 40

testing a model of intraurban firm relocation abstract a neoclassical model of firm behavior analogous to muth s household analysis in a monocentric urban environment yields comparative static predictions concerning radial direction of relocation knowledge of plant production and demand conditions and economic characteristics of the urban environment is needed to make relocation predictions expected and unexpected relations between the technology economic environment and comparative static results on input demands and location are derived a small detailed data set from cincinnati is used to test a probit model of the relocation decision the results are consistent with theoretical expectations demand changes initial plant size and the relative magnitude of transport costs are the most important determinants of the propensity to decentralize traditional measures of agglomeration economies lack explanatory power

market power in a gis based hedonic price model of local farmland markets buyers of farmland are usually interested in parcels for sale that are close to their own farms with a limited number of parcels for sale this may lead to market power in local farmland markets the objective of this paper is to investigate whether market power affects farmland prices hedonic price models are adapted to allow for local market power of either sellers or buyers a distinction is made between rural and urban farmland markets the results provide evidence of market power effects in rural farmland markets however for farmland in urban areas market prices are dominated by speculation effects

residential hedonic models a rational expectations approach to age effects abstract this paper develops a rational expectations framework for interpreting the coefficient on age in a standard hedonic model the model demonstrates that there are two components to the age coefficient a pure cross sectional depreciation component and a demand side component that changes over time we also show that a constant quality price index with age constant can be estimated by using any repeat sales database that contains the year of construction or property age when fairfax county data are fitted to the model the time series of age coefficients is non stationary they change from negative in the early 1980s to positive in the late 1980s we infer that the demand side component dominated in the latter period

land values and housing rents in urban japan abstract this paper describes and systematically explains observed variation in land values and housing rents in urban japan it fits a structural model s reduced form equations to intertemporal data over 35 years intercity data across 27 major cities and intracity data in the three largest metropolitan areas explanatory variables are population income their growth rates the interest rate the inflation rate urban land supply and distance from the city center

how strategic are children and adolescents experimental evidence from normal form games abstract we examine the strategic sophistication of 196 children and adolescents aged 10 17 years in experimental normal form games besides choices we also elicit first and second order beliefs the share of subjects playing nash or expecting opponents to play nash is fairly stable across all age groups the likelihood of playing best response to own beliefs increases in math skills using a mixture model about 40 of subjects are classified as a strategic type while the others are non strategic the distribution of types is somewhat changing with age the estimated error rates also show some dependency on age and gender

money burning and rank egalitarianism with random dictators abstract this paper presents the results of an experiment in oxford where relative standing can be improved by randomly chosen dictators only by reducing burning the money of the coplayers at a cost to themselves almost 50 of the subjects engage in money burning and 75 of burners appear rank egalitarian

separating urban agglomeration economies in consumption and production abstract in this paper we estimate the net agglomeration economies on the consumption side as well as the production side using japanese city based data from 1992 when interregional net migration nearly ceased we show that doubling city size increases the nominal wage by approximately 10 but decreases the real wage by approximately 7 12 the 10 increase of the nominal wage is attributed to the productivity increase in production activities while the 7 12 decrease of the real wage is a compensation for the net agglomeration economies which are the benefits from product variety minus the costs of congestion in other words city bigness not only enhances the productivity of firms but also brings net agglomeration economies to households in this way we separate the net agglomeration economies on the production side from those on the consumption side

intra metropolitan productivity variations of selected manufacturing and business service sectors what can we learn from los angeles this paper explores an empirical issue the extent to which access to various labour skills and other economic activity in los angeles can explain observed intra urban variations in productivity of selected manufacturing and business service sectors in addressing this issue an empirical model is developed based on traditional location theory and productivity methodologies the empirical results indicate that the influence of skilled labour access on firm productivity is stronger than the influence of access to other firms in the metropolitan area thus employment decentralisation is the rational response of firms to the residential choices of a skilled labour force the findings raise questions about the mobility of labour within metropolitan areas and the impact of policies that would improve the mobility of less skilled labour between central cities and the suburban employment centres

the importance of lender heterogeneity in mortgage lending abstract previous studies of the mortgage lending process which fail to adequately account for inter lender differences suffer from a potentially serious omitted variables bias using a sample of 23 094 home purchase mortgage applications from pinellas county st petersburg florida over the 1993 1995 interval i demonstrate that the inclusion of lender characteristics enhances the predictive power of accept reject decision models of mortgage origination in addition the inclusion of lender attributes is shown to substantially influence the coefficient estimates of additional model parameters of interest such as the applicant race and neighborhood racial composition variables finally this study provides unique and supportive evidence regarding the existence and persistence of information externalities in home purchase mortgage markets

valuing rail access using transport innovations this paper uses a powerful empirical method to evaluate the benefits of rail access to consumers we study the effects on house prices of a transport innovation that altered the distance to the nearest station for some households but left others unaffected the transport innovation we study is the construction of new stations in london in the late 1990s using this innovation we implement a quasi experimental approach that allows us to avoid the biases inherent in cross sectional valuation work our evidence on distance station effects on local prices identified through distance changes induced by the transport innovation suggests that households value rail access and that these valuations are large compared to the valuations of other local amenities

economic behavior of children and adolescents a first survey of experimental economics results abstract about 15 years ago economic experiments with children and adolescents were considered as an extravagant niche of economic research since then this type of research has exploded in scope and depth it has become clear that studying the development of economic behavior and its determinants is important to understand economic behavior of adults and to provide a basis for potential policy interventions with respect to economic behavior in childhood and adolescence given the huge increase of papers we provide the first overview of economic experiments with children and adolescents we focus on the following aspects rationality of choices risk preferences time preferences social preferences cooperation and competitiveness all of these aspects are analyzed with respect to the influence of age and gender and we also consider the role of socio economic status or interventions

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

the effects of expected transport improvements on housing prices improvements in transport were commonly found to have a positive effect on the price of housing as the construction of infrastructure often lasts for years it is plausible to assume that investors will take expected improvements into consideration when pricing and trading neighbourhood properties however there have been few investigations of such effects this paper is an empirical study of whether premiums were paid for the expected benefits offered by a new tunnel before its completion the results showed that there were positive price expectation effects well before the completion of the tunnel the expectation effects allow the government to finance infrastructure projects by selling land in the affected districts in advance

the possibility of positive rent gradients reconsidered abstract despite empirical evidence to the contrary most residential location models are consistent only with a negative rent gradient richardson has suggested including average neighborhood plot size as an argument of the utility function a positive rent gradient is not then a priori inconsistent with equilibrium however richardson does not define the concept of equilibrium and the purpose of this paper is to suggest a reasonable definition and to show that the rent gradient is negative if the utility function is strictly quasi concave and if individual and average neighborhood plot size are substitutes

step level reasoning and bidding in auctions step level models of reasoning slr proved to be very successful in predicting behavior in the beauty contest game recently a quantified version of the model was suggested as a more general model of thinking in particular it was found that the distribution of choices could be represented by a poisson distribution i test the model in stylized first and second price common value sealed bid auctions equilibrium for both auction types prescribes that players undercut each other and profits are small the slr prediction on the other hand is different for the two auctions nash equilibrium predicts the outcomes poorly the slr model predicts the outcomes well in the second price auction however while bids in the first price auction could be represented by a poisson distribution this could not be attributed to step level reasoning

optimal land development with endogenous environmental amenities a spatially explicit model of the optimal timing and location of land development is presented that incorporates dynamic interactions between land development and water quality ignoring two way interactions leads to a lower level of water quality more development and lower social welfare the optimal pace and pattern of development can be achieved through the assessment of an impact fee that internalizes pollution damages and irreversibility costs our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for the spatial dimension of land use the interdependence between land use and environmental quality and development irreversibility in models of urbanization and amenity driven growth copyright 2008 oxford university press

doing well by doing good green office buildings this paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of green buildings in the commercial sector value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates we match publicly available information on the addresses of energy star and leed rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of u s office buildings and their rental rates we analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings we find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby effective rents i e rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby at prevailing capitalization rates conversion of the average non green building to an equivalent green building would add more than 5 million in market value these results are robust to the statistical models employed

the rent gradient for manufacturing abstract rent gradients for manufacturing are estimated using actual rent and value figures for cincinnati distance to the city center is found to be of no importance in explaining rent or value variations

spatial dynamics of the housing market an interurban perspective a major unproven hypothesis in housing economics is that regional ripple effects are caused by household migration between regions this paper examines household migration and price ripples at the level of local housing markets driven partly by the fact that such migration linkages are likely to be more pronounced between local rather than regional housing markets following a review of regional housing market studies several hypotheses linking the existence of lead lag relationships and cointegration with the scale of migratory linkages between local housing market areas lhmas are proposed using private housing transactions data for strathclyde a sub region of scotland the paper identifies two clusters of lhmas that differ in terms of their migratory linkages with glasgow the hypothesised leading housing market of the sub region tests for lead lag relationships and cointegration confirm the link between migration and house price changes

interurban house price gradient effect of urban hierarchy distance on house prices this paper applies a general spatial equilibrium model to investigate the effect that distance within the urban hierarchy can have on interurban house prices our spatial model predicts a negative

sample selection and biases in local house value indices abstract analysis of cross sectional or intertemporal variations in house values among localities requires reliable house value indices however prior studies applying the hedonic method to transaction data have reported price series that may be biased our paper investigates a possible cause of bias and uses a censored regression technique extended to an intertemporal model to derive an unbiased index we apply our method to 1971 1991 data from the miami florida msa and find evidence in time varying amounts of bias our results suggest that prior studies using the hedonic method and samples consisting only of sold houses have understated the intertemporal variability of house prices

local governments indebtedness and its impact on real estate prices this paper estimates the causal effect of public debt on real estate prices and rental prices we identify shocks to debt of self governed cities in germany and control for potential benefits such

on the choice of functional form for hedonic price functions the empirical results presented in this paper demonstrate the usefulness of quadriatic models in the estimation of hedonic price functions we propose a quadriatic semi log model a restricted case of the quadriatic box cox model whose standardized marginal attribute prices are linear functions of the attribute vector this specification outperforms the linear box cox specification in terms of explanatory power and captures much of the increase in explanatory power provided by the quadriatic box cox model without the corresponding loss in the ability to interpret the coefficient estimates for policy applications the quadriatic semi log model provides a useful alternative to linear specification

valuing school quality better transport and lower crime evidence from house prices housing prices within urban areas exhibit highly localized variation that cannot be explained solely by differences in the physical attributes of dwellings we consider the role of local amenities and disamenities in generating price variation within urban areas focusing on three highly policy relevant urban issues transport accessibility school quality and crime our survey of the recent empirical literature highlights what is known and what is not known on these issues and considers the relevance and reliability of this evidence for policy design and evaluation although there are serious empirical challenges we argue that research on housing values based on careful research designs can offer credible estimates of the social value of place specific attributes and amenities

hedonic housing price indices and secondary employment centers the monocentric model of the city concludes that the price of housing services varies inversely with travel time to the central business district cbd holding location specific amenities constant because households lower their bid prices for housing as commutation cost increases indeed residential locational equilibrium in the monocentric city requires a negative price gradient however empirical testing has revealed at best lukewarm support for the negative price gradient 2 for example estimates of hedonic housing price indices by berry 3 and daniels 4 yield statistically significant positive relationships between price and distance or travel time to the cbd while kain and quigley 6 lapham 7 and thaler 14 find no statistically significant relationship the lack of consistent empirical support for a monotonically negative price gradient need not be disturbing if the city violates the assumptions of the monocentric city model specifically secondary employment centers could cause the price gradient from the cbd eventually to become positive and achieve a local maximum in the neighborhood of the secondary center failure to control for distance or travel time to secondary centers may explain positive and statistically insignificant negative price gradients that

hedonic prices demands for urban housing amenities and benefit estimates abstract this paper uses a rosen two step hedonic price trait demand approach to estimate demand functions for a vector of urban amenities to ascertain whether this theoretically preferred approach yields benefit estimates which differ from the oft used ridker henning one step hedonic approach we conduct a sensitivity analysis we find that the two step approach does yield different benefit estimates and that the differences are large for some amenities the estimates are sensitive to the functional form of the hedonic equation when the forms are significantly different according to modified box cox results but are not particularly sensitive to specification of the amenity demand equation

strategic thinking in public goods games with teams abstract we experimentally investigate team behavior in repeated public goods games and use team chat logs to study motives for contribution subjects are matched into two person teams and each team makes a joint decision in each period we compare teams with individuals and find similar overall contributions however initial contribution is higher and endgame effects are more pronounced for teams we examine strategic discussions within teams and find strong evidence of concern for repeated game effects and limited backward induction we also find evidence of confusion and explore its potential sources

the determinants of nonresidential urban land values abstract this paper presents the results of an empirical study of nonresidential urban land values in the dallas metropolitan area the data base consists of 467 vacant land transactions from 1978 to 1982 by concentrating on sales prices of vacant land rather than improved property problems normally encountered from use of appraised values or improved properties are eliminated separate models are developed for industrial commercial and office land the study focuses on the tendency toward agglomeration for consumers of each land use as measured by the impact on land values in the central business district suburban nodes and other employment concentrations the results provide insight into a number of influences on urban land value and offer evidence that office land derives greater benefit from agglomeration than does commercial or industrial land

the structure of urban land prices abstract recognition of the existence of nonlinear land prices has an impact on the measurement of the rate at which land price declines with distance from the urban center it is hypothesized that concave parcel prices have given rise to overly large estimates of the rate of price decline with distance because parcel sizes increase with distance and increased parcel sizes would be associated with lower unit prices as a result of the concavity of the land price function this hypothesis is empirically tested using vacant residential commercial and industrial land sales from within cook county illinois an important finding is that allowing for concavity greatly reduces although it does not eliminate measured rates of price decline with distance

the impact of rental properties on the value of single family residences abstract this study examines the effects that single family rental properties in a residential neighborhood have on the value of single family residences in that area the analysis blends real estate valuation concepts with evidence found in the housing maintenance literature and urban succession theory to develop testable hypotheses regarding the property specific proximity related and neighborhood wide impacts of rental properties on property values the data used to test the hypotheses include the tenure status of 23 119 single family residences and 1 162 single family sales regression results support all three hypotheses although numerous studies on the value impacts of other externalities have been published this is the first study to examine the separation of property rights the results of this study provide additional insights into housing maintenance and also have implications for neighborhood zoning regulations

a comment on zoning returns to scale and the value of undeveloped land this paper revisits the relationship between land value and parcel size the authors demonstrate that using a simple arbitrage equilibrium argument the value size relationship is convex concave whenever land assembly subdivision is possible they also explore further the impact of zoning on market outcomes copyright 1993 by mit press

spatial variation in office rents within the atlanta region hedonic office rent models are estimated using data for atlanta that span the years 1990 96 controlling for typical building characteristics and lease terms we find that variables measuring locational differences in wage rates transport rates and proximity to concentrations of support services and office workers play an important role in explaining spatial variation in office rents no evidence is found in support of the hypothesis that technological advances in telecommunications have diminished the role played by face to face agglomeration economies in determining the intra metropolitan location of office firms

the importance of being marginal gender differences in generosity do men and women have different social preferences previous findings are contradictory we provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment in a door to door solicitation men and women are equally generous but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation women are more likely to be on the margin of giving partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism we find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey women are more likely to be on the margin of participation

strategic sophistication of individuals and teams experimental evidence many important decisions require strategic sophistication we examine experimentally whether teams act more strategically than individuals we let individuals and teams make choices in simple games and also elicit first and second order beliefs we find that teams play the nash equilibrium strategy significantly more often and their choices are more often a best response to stated first order beliefs distributional preferences make equilibrium play less likely using a mixture model the estimated probability to play strategically is 62 for teams but only 40 for individuals a model of noisy introspection reveals that teams differ from individuals in higher order beliefs

the choice of functional forms for hedonic price equations comment abstract rosen 13 freeman 4 halvorsen and pollakowski 6 and others have stressed that economic theory does not suggest an appropriate functional form for hedonic price functions 1 it consequently is reasonable to try several functional forms and utilize the multiple regression equation with the best performance in this spirit halvorsen and pollakowski 6 recommend using the box cox flexible functional form for hedonic analysis and measuring best performance with a goodness of fit test the box cox methodology has also been adapted in hedonic studies by goodman 5 linneman 10 blomquist and worley 1 and eberts and gronberg 3 2 the box cox is particularly suited for testing functional forms because many familiar forms such as semilog log linear and translog are subsets of the flexible box cox permitting nested hypothesis testing in this note we illustrate that the formal hypothesis testing advantage of the box cox functional form is purchased at the expense of other important goals the goal of most hedonic studies is to estimate the prices of the characteristics to measure the response to changes in the prices and or to predict future expenditures using a best fit criterion to choose functional forms does not necessarily lead to more accurate estimates of characteristic prices in fact the large number of coefficients estimated with the box cox functional form reduces the accuracy of any single coefficient which could lead to poorer estimates of specific prices second because any negative number raised to a noninteger real power is imaginary the traditional box cox functional form is not suited to any data set containing negative numbers third the box cox functional form may be inappropriate for prediction since the mean predicted value of the untransformed dependent variable need not equal the mean of the sample upon which it is estimated the predicted untransformed variable housing value will be biased the predicted untransformed dependent variable may also be imaginary fourth the nonlinear transformation results in complex estimates of slopes and elasticities which are often too cumbersome to use properly we discuss each of these drawbacks and quantify them when possible in the remainder of this note

factor costs and factor use substitution among urban land and capital inputs in the production of single family housing this paper uses cost functions to test the hypothesis of constancy of the elasticity of substitution among land and capital inputs in the production of single family housing the findings suggest that the substitution parameter varies over the range of the sample the hypothesis of homotheticity in the production is also rejected this implies that the ces and cobb douglas production functions are not suitable for urban housing production modelling the analysis has been carried out by imposing much weaker restrictions as a part of the maintained hypotheses than has been the case in the recent literature

measuring changes in local house prices an empirical investigation of alternative methodologies abstract this paper investigates whether reliable house price indices can be constructed using a limited set of descriptive variables on a large number of observations four primary index methods are compared 1 median sale price 2 restricted hedonic 3 repeat sales and 4 the assessed value technique the paper examines the precision and accuracy of each of the alternative indices

an analysis of the demand for housing attributes this paper uses a two step approach to estimate a system of structural demand equations for housing attributes estimation of a hedonic price regression in the first step yields implicit prices for housing attributes for the toronto metropolitan area in 1978 which are then used to estimate the expenditure share equations derived from the indirect translog utility function empirical results indicate that the composite housing attributes used in the second stage model are own price elastic while an examination of cross price relationships reveals that these attributes are reasonably substitutable

zoning returns to scale and the value of undeveloped land when land markets are incomplete parcels can be scaled to make control compatible with use and to internalize externalities the authors show that an arbitrage proof equilibrium implies an increasing and strictly concave relationship between the value and size of land parcels undeveloped land sales in southern california strongly confirm the theoretical relationship the authors find that zoning primarily restricts the conversion of land from agriculture to residential and industrial uses relative to the competitive equilibrium the scale of land units is an effective private instrument for providing compatible land use even in the presence of strong zoning copyright 1991 by mit press

the structure of production in urban housing a multi input cost function approach this paper uses a two stage cost function model to analyse substitution possibilities among inputs in the production of urban housing aggregate price indexes for groups of inputs are generated in the first stage and then used in the estimation of the aggregate cost function in the second stage the procedure is valid under the assumption of weak separability the use of flexible functional forms at both stages allowed the analysis to be carried out by imposing fewer restrictions as a part of the maintained hypothesis than has been the case in the previous literature the findings are consistent with the postulates of cost minimising factor demand theory

the effects of a new subway line on housing prices in metropolitan toronto an analysis by means of using the estimation results of a modal choice model and the hedonic price regressions model is conducted in order to identify the effects of a subway line in toronto on the values of housing units the modal choice model is used for the estimation of the direct benefits from the improvement in transportation and the hedonic price equations for the identification of subway effects on housing prices empirical results indicate that the direct savings in commuting costs have been capitalized into housing values

destructive behavior in a fragile public good game a b s t r a c t socially destructive behavior in a public good environment like damaging public goods is an under exposed phenomenon in economics in an experiment we investigate whether such behavior can be in fluenced by the very nature of an environment to that purpose we use a fragile public good fpg game which puts the opportunity for destructive behavior taking on a level playing field with constructive behavior contributing we find substantial evidence of destructive decisions sometimes leading to sour relationships characterized by persistent hurtful behavior while positive framing induces fewer destruc tive decisions shifting the selfish nash towards minimal taking doubles its share to more than 20