City Economics
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: October 30, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 608
ISBN-13: 9780674019188
Subjects: Economics; Urban communities; Urban & Regional; Economics - General; Business & Economics; Business / Economics / Finance; Business/Economics; Urban economics; Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.; Business & Economics / Urban & Regional; Sociology, Urban; Urban policy
Description: "This introductory but innovative textbook on the economics of cities is aimed at students of urban and regional policy as well as of undergraduate economics. It deals with standard topics, including automobiles, mass transit, pollution, housing, and education, but it also discusses nonstandard topics such as segregation, water supply, sewers, garbage, fire prevention, housing codes, homelessness, crime, illicit drugs, and economic development." "Its methods of analysis are primarily verbal, geometric, and arithmetic. The author achieves coherence by showing how the analyses of various topics reinforce one another. Thus buses can tell us something about schools and optimal tolls about land prices. Brendan O'Flaherty looks at almost everything through the lens of Pareto optimality and potential Pareto optimality - how policies affect people and their well-being, not abstract entities such as cities or the economy or growth or the environment. Such traditionalism leads to radical questions, however: Should cities have police and fire departments? Should tax preferences for home ownership be repealed? Should public schools charge for their services? O'Flaherty also gives serious consideration to such heterodox policies as pay-at-the-pump auto insurance, curb rights for buses, land taxes, marginal cost water pricing, and sidewalk zoning."--Jacket.
Table of contents: label: 1
title: Introduction
pagenum: 1; label: 2
title: Why Proximity is Good
pagenum: 12; label: 3
title: Cars, Pollution and Accidents
pagenum: 36; label: 4
title: Congestion
pagenum: 52; label: 5
title: Mass Transit
pagenum: 86; label: 6
title: Land
pagenum: 116; label: 7
title: Too many Cars? Too much Lawn? Too much Blight?
pagenum: 145; label: 8
title: Rules
pagenum: 159; label: 9
title: Water, Sewer, Fire and Garbage
pagenum: 209; label: 10
title: Education
pagenum: 247; label: 11
title: Race and Space
pagenum: 286; label: 12
title: Race and Policy
pagenum: 316; label: 13
title: Housing: The Big Picture
pagenum: 348; label: 14
title: Housing and Poor People
pagenum: 390; label: 15
title: Homelessness
pagenum: 423; label: 16
title: Crime
pagenum: 441; label: 17
title: Drugs, Guns, and Alcohol
pagenum: 483; label: 18
title: Urban Economic Development
pagenum: 517; title: Epilogue
pagenum: 569; title: Glossary
pagenum: 571; title: Index
pagenum: 577