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on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Hyung Joon Chung (George Washington University); Nathaniel Harris (George Washington University) |
| Abstract: | Intercity housing price indexes that rely on median house price or pooled hedonic regressions adjust imperfectly for differences in housing characteristics. In addition, intercity house price indexes that rely on asset value are a biased measure of differences in the rental price of housing, because capitalization rates vary dramatically across cities. To mitigate these shortcomings, we create Fisher Ideal intercity housing price indexes for both rental and asset prices using a two-way Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. Our method improves upon current house price indexes by using rental rather than asset prices, controlling for location and housing characteristics, and allowing implicit prices to vary across locations. |
| Keywords: | intercity house price indices, blinder-oaxaca decomposition, Fisher Ideal index, interarea cost of living differences |
| JEL: | C1 R1 R3 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2021-17&r= |
| By: | Hybel, Jesper (Aalborg University, Department of the Built Environment); Mulalic, Ismir (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the importance of transportation for quality of life in Denmark. We first calibrate a simple general equilibrium model to analyse how local wage levels, housing costs, and commuting costs vary across urban areas as well as to construct a quality of life index that measures a representative household's willingness to pay for local amenities. We find that the quality of life is high in large cities. Wages and rents are also substantially higher in the urban areas that are dense. We then regress the quality of life index on observed amenities to infer how much quality of life is associated with transportation. Our empirical results suggest that the quality of the public transport system is particularly important for the quality of life. |
| Keywords: | Quality of life; Rent gradients; Wage gradients; Commuting costs; Amenities; Transportation |
| JEL: | H40 J30 O52 R10 R40 |
| Date: | 2021–09–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2021_014&r= |
| By: | Mahdieh Yazdani |
| Abstract: | In recent years several complaints about racial discrimination in appraising home values have been accumulating. For several decades, to estimate the sale price of the residential properties, appraisers have been walking through the properties, observing the property, collecting data, and making use of the hedonic pricing models. However, this method bears some costs and by nature is subjective and biased. To minimize human involvement and the biases in the real estate appraisals and boost the accuracy of the real estate market price prediction models, in this research we design data-efficient learning machines capable of learning and extracting the relation or patterns between the inputs (features for the house) and output (value of the houses). We compare the performance of some machine learning and deep learning algorithms, specifically artificial neural networks, random forest, and k nearest neighbor approaches to that of hedonic method on house price prediction in the city of Boulder, Colorado. Even though this study has been done over the houses in the city of Boulder it can be generalized to the housing market in any cities. The results indicate non-linear association between the dwelling features and dwelling prices. In light of these findings, this study demonstrates that random forest and artificial neural networks algorithms can be better alternatives over the hedonic regression analysis for prediction of the house prices in the city of Boulder, Colorado. |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2110.07151&r= |
| By: | Linares Sanchez, Jose |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the wage premium of being located inside the Central Business Centre (CBD) or employment sub-centres in the metropolitan area of Bogota. Then, following literature on spatial mismatching, analyses potential impacts of agglomerations on social and productive exclusion. The core argument is that socially or productively excluded groups in Bogota do not benefit from positive externalities arising from agglomerations because they face multiple spatial barriers that prevent their effective access. Based on spatial statistics and estimations, I find an elasticity or ‘wage premium’ close to 6% and huge disparities between UPZs and municipalities in the metropolitan area of Bogota. This means, CBD and employment sub-centres in Bogota work as exclusive locations. Consequently, policies should be focused on increasing strategic accessibility through housing, transport, economic development through land-use regulations and institutional arrangements. |
| Keywords: | Strategic Accessibility, Central Business District, CBD, employment sub-centres, wage premium, agglomerations economies, Bogota, Spatial Mismatching. |
| JEL: | R1 R12 R2 R23 |
| Date: | 2020–04–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:106699&r= |
| By: | Remi Jedwab (George Washington University); Jason Barr (Rutgers University); Jan Brueckner (University of California) |
| Abstract: | There is a large literature on U.S. cities measuring the extent and stringency of land-use regulations and how regulatory and geographical constraints affect important outcomes such as housing prices and economic growth. This paper is the first to study the global extent and impact of regulatory and other constraints by estimating what we call building-height gaps. Using a novel data set on the year of construction and heights of tall buildings around the world, we compare the total height of a country's stock of tall buildings to what the total height would have been if supply was more elastic, based on parameters from a benchmark set of countries. These gaps are larger for richer countries and for residential buildings than for commercial buildings in such countries. The gaps are driven by under-building in central areas of larger cities. These gaps are not compensated by tall building construction in peripheral areas of cities or less stringent limits on outward expansion beyond the existing boundaries of the cities. Countries with older, historic structures have larger gaps, likely due to more stringent height regulations and dispersed ownership that inhibits land assembly. Lastly, the gaps correlate strongly with international measures of housing prices, sprawl, congestion, and pollution. |
| Keywords: | International Buildings Heights; Land Use Regulations; Geographical Constraints; Housing Supply; Housing Prices; Sprawl; Congestion; Pollution |
| JEL: | R3 R5 O18 O50 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2021-15&r= |
| By: | Vítor Martins; Alessandro Turrini; Bořek Vašíček; Madalina Zamfir |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses the relevance of housing markets for macroeconomic developments from a euro area perspective, reviews trends in house prices and mortgage credit, and discusses policy approaches to prevent housing booms and deal with busts. After years of unsustainably strong house price growth in several Member States in a context of easing credit conditions, downward house price corrections took place after the 2008 financial crisis. A recovery in house prices started after 2013 under different conditions compared with the pre-financial crisis context. The house price recovery appeared to be driven to a greater extent by structural factors and to a lesser extent by buoyant household loans, as credit growth has been lagging behind house price growth in most countries. Prospects for house price growth after the COVID-19 outburst are clouded by uncertainty in light of the changing outlook when economic fundamentals and policy responses play in opposite directions. The current context is also diffeent compared with the period before the global financial crisis because macro-prudential frameworks have been strengthened and macroprudential tools are increasingly used across the euro area. The effectiveness of policy tools needed to address risks linked to boom-bust dynamics in the real estate sector depends on their interaction, design and timely implementation. Policy composition and policy design also appear crucial in dealing with possible trade-offs among policy objectives, including between macro-financial stability and housing affordability. |
| JEL: | R21 R31 C32 E37 E58 |
| Date: | 2021–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:euf:dispap:147&r= |
| By: | Robert J. Hill (University of Graz, Austria); Norbert Pfeifer (University of Graz, Austria); Miriam Steurer (University of Graz, Austria); Radoslaw Trojanek (Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland) |
| Abstract: | There is a broad consensus in international statistical organizations such as Eurostat, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund that price indices should be constructed using transaction data. However, transaction data often lag behind actual market developments in the primary housing market (i.e., the market for new-builds) as prices are typically set months or years before the transactions are finalized. We find that for two large Polish cities (Warsaw and Poznan), secondary market house price indices (HPIs) (for existing properties) lead primary indices (for new builds) by, on average, eight quarters. In Poland and other countries with large primary-markets, this lag can dramatically distort National HPIs. The lag also affects the European Union’s flagship measure of inflation, the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). This is because the HICP includes owner-occupied housing (on an experimental basis) using exclusively primary market transaction data. We illustrate here that replacing final transactions in the primary market with preliminary agreements would resolve these timeliness issues. |
| Keywords: | hedonic quality adjustment; dissimilarity metric; HICP; macroprudential supervision; timeliness; primary and secondary housing markets |
| JEL: | C43 E01 E31 R31 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2021-11&r= |
| By: | Dominik Blatt (Statistics Netherlands, Netherlands); Kausik Chaudhuri (Leeds University Business School, UK); Hans Manner (University of Graz, Austria) |
| Abstract: | We study spillovers between regional housing markets in the UK in the period 1973 to 2020. The analysis is based on a vector autoregressive model that allows for structural breaks in its parameters at unknown times. In particular, we allow for distinct breakpoints in the conditional mean, variance and correlation parameters, which enables us to distinguish different spillover channels. Based on the resulting piecewise constant model we compute the spillover index by Diebold and Yilmaz. We find significant time variation of the spillover index that indicates a decreasing role of London for the rest of the country, but that also indicates reduced contagion risk and the existence of the North-South divide that declined later in the sample. Furthermore, a central role of the Midlands is demonstrated. |
| Keywords: | vector autoregression; structural breaks; contagion; spillovers; regional housing markets. |
| JEL: | C32 G01 R10 R31 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2021-13&r= |
| By: | Tatyana Deryugina; David Molitor |
| Abstract: | Life expectancy varies substantially across local regions within a country, raising conjectures that place of residence affects health. However, population sorting and other confounders make it difficult to disentangle the effects of place on health from other geographic differences in life expectancy. Recent studies have overcome such challenges to demonstrate that place of residence substantially influences health and mortality. Whether policies that encourage people to move to places that are better for their health or that improve areas that are detrimental to health are desirable depends on the mechanisms behind place effects, yet these mechanisms remain poorly understood. |
| Keywords: | life expectancy, regional variation, place effects |
| JEL: | I10 R10 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9327&r= |
| By: | Eileen van Straelen |
| Abstract: | Using granular data on home builder housing developments from the 2006-09 housing crisis, I show that builders spread house price shocks across geographically distinct projects via their internal capital markets. Builders who experience losses in one area subsequently sell homes in unaffected areas at a discount to raise cash quickly. Financially constrained firms are more likely to cut prices of homes in healthy areas in response to losses in unhealthy ones. Firms also smooth shocks across projects only during the crisis and not during the boom. These results together suggest firm internal capital markets spread negative economic shocks across space. |
| Keywords: | Internal capital markets; Financial crises; Financial constraints; Housing markets; Product pricing |
| JEL: | R30 G30 G31 G01 E30 |
| Date: | 2021–10–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2021-65&r= |
| By: | Ottavia Brussino (OECD) |
| Abstract: | Classrooms have become increasingly diverse places where students from various backgrounds share their learning experiences. To promote inclusive school settings for all, building teacher capacity for inclusive teaching represents a key policy area. Education systems need to ensure that teachers are adequately prepared for inclusive teaching and supported throughout their career. Mechanisms to attract and retain a more diverse teaching body as well as to monitor and evaluate teacher preparation and work with respect to diversity and inclusion should also be developed. While teacher policies have increasingly addressed some of these areas, most education systems lack comprehensive capacity-building frameworks for inclusive teaching. This paper maps policies and practices to build teacher capacity for inclusive teaching across OECD countries. It then presents core elements and competences to design and implement inclusive teaching strategies. Finally, the paper reviews some of the evidence available on teacher diversity and interventions for inclusive teaching. |
| Date: | 2021–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:eduaab:256-en&r= |
| By: | Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés |
| Abstract: | Europe has witnessed a considerable labour productivity slowdown in recent decades. Many potential explanations have been proposed to address this productivity ‘puzzle’. However, how the quality of local institutions influences labour productivity has been overlooked by the literature. This article addresses this gap by evaluating how institutional quality affects labour productivity growth and, particularly, its determinants at the regional level during the period 2003–2015. The results indicate that institutional quality influences regions’ labour productivity growth both directly—as improvements in institutional quality drive productivity growth—and indirectly—as the short- and long-run returns of human capital and innovation on labour productivity growth are affected by regional variations in institutional quality. |
| Keywords: | Labour productivity; institutional quality; physical capital; human capital; innovation; regions; Europe; OUP deal |
| JEL: | R14 J01 N0 |
| Date: | 2021–06–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:108915&r= |
| By: | Carolini, Gabriella Y.; Gelaye, Fitsum; Khan, Kadeem |
| Abstract: | Efforts to reform property tax systems in African cities tend to focus more on how to value properties for purposes of tax assessment than on how to better collect taxes due. The same is true of the literature on property tax reform. There is however reason to believe that a greater initial focus on improving collection would be more productive. In this paper, we explore how this might be done in Addis Ababa. This would involve adopting a principle already employed in several African cities: area-based property valuation. This involves linking the tax assessments of individual properties closely to assessments, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, of the quality and density of the available basic public infrastructure and the quality of the built environment. We demonstrate how to identify and map neighbourhoods for this purpose. |
| Keywords: | Economic Development, Governance, |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idq:ictduk:14988&r= |
| By: | William D. Larson (Federal Housing Finance Agency); Christos Makridis (Stanford University); Chad Redmer (United States Naval Academy - Economics Department) |
| Abstract: | We assess issues related to borrower beliefs and mortgage performance using new individual panel data that simultaneously cover borrower expectations, forbearance status during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a wide array of demographic characteristics. First, we establish the determinants of borrower expectations, with local experiences and those of social networks playing important roles. We then show that households who, at origination, were optimistic about future house price appreciation or pessimistic about the possibility of future unemployment were more likely to enter forbearance in 2020. However, by early-2021, appreciation-optimistic borrowers who were in forbearance were likely to have cured or prepaid their loan, while those who expected unemployment were likely to still be in forbearance. We offer three channels by which expectations affect forbearance behavior: choices of initial loan terms, associations with actual future events, and factors related to belief formation that are also plausibly associated with forbearance. Our findings highlight the crucial role borrower expectations play in both leverage choices and mortgage performance. |
| Keywords: | Behavioral Economics, Employment, Forbearance, Expectations |
| JEL: | E21 E32 G41 G51 R31 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hfa:wpaper:21-02&r= |
| By: | Gunduz, Lokman; Genc, Ismail H.; Aysan, Ahmet Faruk |
| Abstract: | Citizenship by investment (CBI) programs have recently garnered significant academic and media attention. Turkey introduced such a program in 2017 that offers citizenship in exchange for investment in residential property. Eventually, thousands of foreigners, mainly from the Middle East and Asia have purchased houses, particularly in Istanbul. Foreigners’ share in total houses sold in Istanbul almost sextupled and exceeded 10 percent of total sales. This study estimates the short-run impact of relatively wealthy foreigners on the residential property prices in Istanbul to buy a Turkish passport. It finds that the Turkish CBI program positively impacts house prices by two percent in the districts, which are likely to be favored most by immigrant investors. |
| Keywords: | Citizenship by investment program; house prices; immigration; Istanbul |
| JEL: | A1 O1 O15 |
| Date: | 2021–05–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110028&r= |
| By: | Postlep, Rolf-Dieter; Ritzinger, Anne; Spellerberg, Annette |
| Abstract: | The high influx of refugees confronts Germany with a variety of tasks and problems. In addition to short-term challenges such as geographically allocating and accommodating refugees, longer-term tasks involving housing, regional and integration policy also need to be addressed. Notwithstanding heavy financial burdens, claims that capacity limits will be exceeded, and growing problems with acceptance, refugees are people with a right to protection and to an individual review of their wish to stay. Many of the refugees already in Germany will not be able to return to their home countries in the foreseeable future due to the precarious situation there, so integration strategies with at least a medium-term focus need to be developed. The extent to which it is currently appropriate for migration policy to also support long-term settlement strategies is a matter for separate discussion. |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:arlpos:124&r= |
| By: | Sheila Campbell and Chad Shirley |
| Abstract: | In this working paper, the Congressional Budget Office provides estimates of how much state and local governments that receive federal grants for highway capital projects substitute that funding for their own spending on highway capital. We find that state and local governments reduce their own per capita spending on highway capital by 26 cents for an additional dollar of annual federal formula grants; that finding is toward the lower end of a broad range of estimates in the existing literature. The rate of substitution decreases as state and local governments run larger |
| JEL: | E22 E62 H54 H72 H76 H77 R42 R53 |
| Date: | 2021–10–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:wpaper:57430&r= |
| By: | ITF |
| Abstract: | This report examines the potential of data-driven approaches to improving transport infrastructure maintenance. It assesses trends in maintenance strategies, explores how the targeted use of data could make them more effective for different types of transport infrastructure, and looks into implications for policy. |
| Date: | 2021–09–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:itfaac:95-en&r= |
| By: | Gunadi, Christian |
| Abstract: | Recent years have seen a rise in mass shooting incidents in the United States. While direct victims and their families undoubtedly suffer the most serious consequence of mass shootings, little is known on whether mass shootings have negative impacts beyond those immediately exposed to the incidents. In this paper, I examine the crime consequences of mass shootings. I hypothesize that mass shootings can increase crimes through its adverse effects on local labor market conditions. Utilizing difference-in-differences strategy that exploits geographic and temporal variation in mass shooting incidents across U.S. counties, the results of the analysis suggest that mass shooting incident is associated with a rise in crimes, especially those carried out for monetary gains. The most conservative estimate indicates that mass shooting incident increases the overall property crime rate by about 4%. |
| Keywords: | Mass Shootings,Violence,Crime,Economic Outlooks |
| JEL: | K42 H23 D84 J18 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:951&r= |
| By: | Leonid V. Azarnert |
| Abstract: | This article analyzes the effect of population sorting on economic growth. The analysis is performed in a two-region growth model with endogenous fertility, in which public knowledge spillovers from the more advanced core into children’s human capital accumulation function in the periphery are incorporated. I show how migration affects the inter-temporal evolution of human capital in each of the regions and the economy as a whole. I also discuss how public policy interventions can help increase the per-capita human capital levels, if free uncontrolled migration leads to a reduction in human capital accumulation. |
| Keywords: | migration, population sorting, knowledge spillovers, fertility, human capital, economic growth |
| JEL: | D30 J10 O15 O18 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9338&r= |
| By: | Díaz, Carlos (Universidad Católica del Uruguay); Fossati, Sebastian (University of Alberta, Department of Economics); Trajtenberg, Nicolás (University of Manchester) |
| Abstract: | Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic had an unprecedented impact on mobility patterns with implications for public safety and crime dynamics in countries across the planet. This paper explores the effect of stay-at-home guidelines on thefts and robberies at the neighborhood level in a Latin American city. We exploit neighborhood heterogeneity in the ability of working adults to comply with stay-at-home recommendations and use difference-in differences and event study designs to identify the causal effect of COVID-19 mobility restrictions on the monthly number of thefts and robberies reported to police across neighborhoods in Montevideo (Uruguay) in 2020. Our results show that neighborhoods with a higher share of residents with work-from-home jobs experienced a larger reduction in reported thefts in relation to neighborhoods with a lower share of residents with work-from-home jobs. In contrast, both groups of neighborhoods experienced a similar reduction in the number of reported robberies. These findings cast light on opportunity structures for crime but also on how crime during the pandemic is disproportionately affecting more vulnerable areas and households. |
| Keywords: | crime; rational choice; COVID-19; lockdown; crime opportunities |
| JEL: | H76 K42 R23 |
| Date: | 2021–10–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:2021_008&r= |
| By: | Danielzyk, Rainer; Dittrich-Wesbuer, Andrea; Duchêne-Lacroix, Cédric; Fischer, Tatjana; Hilti, Nicola; Perlik, Manfred; Petzold, Knut; Ritzinger, Anne; Scheiner, Joachim; Sturm, Gabriele; Tippel, Cornelia; Weiske, Christine |
| Abstract: | This position paper was compiled by the members of the Working Group on "Multilocal living and spatial development" at the Academy for Territorial Development (ARL). In this position paper, the "Multilocal living and spatial development" Working Group at the Academy for Territorial Development (ARL) discusses a current social phenomenon that has spatial implications at various levels: multilocal living arrangements, i.e. the practice of living alternately at different locations. Increasing numbers of people live at more than one location and establish spaces for their everyday activities at each location (residential multilocality). |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:arlpos:123&r= |
| By: | Scott Callahan; David M. Bruner; Chris Giguere |
| Abstract: | U.S. drug policy presumes prohibition reduces crime. Recently states have enacted medical marijuana laws creating a natural experiment to test this hypothesis but is impeded by severe measurement error with available data. We develop a novel imputation procedure to reduce measurement error bias and estimate significantreductionsin violent and property crime rates, with heterogeneous effects across and within states and types of crime, contradicting drug prohibitionpolicy. Wedemonstrateuncorrected measurementerrororassuminghomogeneouspolicy effects leads to underestimation of crime reduction from ending marijuana prohibition. Key Words: Prohibition, Medical Marijuana Laws, Uniform Crime Report, Multiple Imputation |
| JEL: | K42 C81 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apl:wpaper:21-12&r= |
| By: | Ekbote, Dr. Deepak; Laferriere, Dr. Richard |
| Keywords: | Demand and Price Analysis |
| Date: | 2021–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ctrf31:314690&r= |
| By: | Hintermann, Beat (University of Basel); Schoeman, Beaumont (University of Basel); Molloy, Joseph; Götschli, Thomas; Castro, Alberto; Tchervenkov, Christopher; Tomic, Uros; Axhausen, Kay W. |
| Abstract: | Pigovian transport pricing was implemented in a large-scale field experiment in urban areas of Switzerland. The pricing varied across time, space and mode of transport. One third of the participants were given a financial incentive to reduce their external costs of transport, whereas others were provided information only or served as a control group. The pricing treatment caused a significant reduction in the external costs of transport. This reduction is a consequence of mode substitution and a shift of departure times. The effect of providing information in the absence of pricing was statistically significant only for subgroups of the sample. |
| Keywords: | Transport pricing; pigovian taxation; mobility; external costs; congestion; tracking. |
| JEL: | H23 H31 I18 Q52 Q54 R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2021–09–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2021/11&r= |
| By: | Erik Hornung (University of Cologne, CMR, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne); Guido Schwerdt (University of Konstanz, Department of Economics, 78457 Konstanz); Maurizio Strazzeri (University of Bern, Department of Economics, Schanzeneckstrasse 1, CH-3001 Bern) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how the intensity of Ramadan affects educational outcomes by exploiting spatio-temporal variation in annual fasting hours. Longer fasting hours are related to increases in student performance in a panel of TIMMS test scores (1995--2019) across Muslim countries but not other countries. Results are confirmed in a panel of PISA test scores (2003--2018) allowing within country-wave comparisons of Muslim to non-Muslim students across Europe. We provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that a demanding Ramadan during adolescence affects educational performance by facilitating formation of social capital and social identity via increased religious participation and shared experiences among students. |
| Keywords: | Education, Religion, Religious Participation, Ramadan, Social Identity, Social Capital, PISA, TIMMS |
| JEL: | I21 Z12 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:117&r= |
| By: | Radost Holler (Bonn Graduate School of Economics); Paul Ivo Schäfer (Bonn Graduate School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We use large-scale survey data of German speaking villages from the 1930's to investigate drivers of cooperation, gender, and religious norms. Through geographic cluster analysis, we show that inter-regional variation explains only little heterogeneity in norms. Villages in the same physical and institutional environment still maintain different norms. We argue that local differences in the structure of social relationships can explain intra-regional heterogeneity in norms. We focus on a community's ability to transmit and enforce norms to derive theoretical links between correlates of community social relationships and the number of norms it maintains (norm prevalence). Empirically we find that: (1) norm prevalence is positively related to three correlates of community social relationships: religiously homogeneous villages, villages that border on other villages with a different majority religion, and villages with more within-village social gatherings; (2) villages with stronger community-level social relationships are also less likely to segment their reference group for the cooperation norm to smaller social units; (3) cooperation norms make other norms more likely. |
| Keywords: | social norms; gender; religion; cooperation; culture; geography; communities |
| JEL: | Z10 N94 J16 D03 Z12 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:118&r= |
| By: | Carro, Jesús M.; Gallardo Valtierra, Pedro |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic implied measures, such as school closures at the outbreak of the pandemic, that negatively affected children's human capital. However, in some places, the situation later brought a reduction in class sizes, in order to avoid the spread of SARS-Cov-2 at schools. We exploit this unexpected event to evaluate the effect on school performance of a sizable class size reduction implemented in Spain, when schools were reopened. We find a positive and significant effect of the class size reduction of 0.11 standard deviations on overall students performance. Given the situation and nature of our data, we interpret our estimates as a lower bound for the true effect of the reduction in class size. Our conclusion is that the reduction in class size served, on average, to at least compensate the other negative effects for learning. Our findings also point out at the importance of evaluating the quality of the new and unexperienced additional teachers that need to be hired when implementing a general reduction of class size. |
| Keywords: | Class Size; Sars-Cov-2; Covid-19; Student Achievement; Students/Teacher Ratio |
| JEL: | I2 H4 |
| Date: | 2021–10–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:33445&r= |
| By: | Catalina Anampa Castro; Katherine Curtis; Jack DeWaard; Elizabeth Fussell; Kathryn McConnell; Kobie Price; Michael Soto; Stephan Whitaker |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we infuse consideration of migration into research on economic losses from extreme weather disasters. Taking a comparative case study approach and using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we document the size of economic losses via migration from 23 disaster-affected areas in the United States after the most damaging hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on record. We then employ demographic standardization and decomposition to determine if these losses primarily reflect changes in out-migration or changes in the economic resources that migrants take with them (greater economic losses per migrant). Finally, we consider the implications of these losses for changing spatial inequality in the United States. While disaster-affected areas and those living in them differ in their experiences of and responses to extreme weather disasters, we generally find that, relative to the year before an extreme weather disaster, economic losses via migration from disaster-affected areas increase the year of and after the disaster, that these changes primarily reflect changes in out-migration (vs. the economic resources that migrants take with them), and that these losses briefly disrupt the status quo by temporarily reducing spatial inequality. |
| Keywords: | Natural Disaster; Migration; Consumer Credit; Decomposition; Spatial Inequality |
| JEL: | R23 Q54 D12 J60 |
| Date: | 2021–10–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:93161&r= |
| By: | Sanquinetti, Angela PhD; DePew, Ashley; Hirschfelt, Kate; Ross, Cindy; Khoe, Ethan; Ferguson, Beth PhD |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has had dramatic impacts on transportation globally, reducing travel and deterring travelers from using shared and pooled modes such as public transit, carpooling, car-sharing, pooled ride-hailing, and micromobility. These modes are critical components of a decarbonized and equitable mobility future, but already comprised a small fraction of pre-pandemic travel in the U.S., and will likely remain further suppressed in the wake of the pandemic if people continue new mode choice habits. Those who do continue to rely on public transportation are disproportionately at risk due the degree that these modes leave them susceptible to disease transmission. For pooled and shared travel to return to and ideally surpass pre-pandemic levels, it is important to implement solutions to reduce the real and perceived risks of infectious disease transmission. This white paper presents an inventory and typology of vehicle design strategies that have been proposed or implemented with the aim of mitigating the risk of COVID-19 transmission in pooled and shared travel modes. Researchers organized these strategies into a COVID-19 Risk-mitigating Vehicle Design Typology and identified the mechanisms by which they may help diminish the risk of COVID-19 transmission. It is intended as a resource for policy-makers, transportation service operators, vehicle manufacturers, and scientists who are tasked with evaluating strategies to mitigate disease transmission risk in shared and pooled transportation services |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Medicine and Health Sciences, The COVID-19 pandemic has had dramatic impacts on transportation globally, reducing travel and deterring travelers from using shared and pooled modes such as public transit, carpooling, car-sharing, pooled ride-hailing, and micromobility. These modes are critical components of a decarbonized and equitable mobility future, but already comprised a small fraction of pre-pandemic travel in the U.S., and will likely remain further suppressed in the wake of the pandemic if people continue new mode choice habits. Those who do continue to rely on public transportation are disproportionately at risk due the degree that these modes leave them susceptible to disease transmission. For pooled and shared travel to return to and ideally surpass pre-pandemic levels, it is important to implement solutions to reduce the real and perceived risks of infectious disease transmission. This white paper presents an inventory and typology of vehicle design strategies that have been proposed or implemented with the aim of mitigating the risk of COVID-19 transmission in pooled and shared travel modes. Researchers organized these strategies into a COVID-19 Risk-mitigating Vehicle Design Typology and identified the mechanisms by which they may help diminish the risk of COVID-19 transmission. It is intended as a resource for policy-makers, transportation service operators, vehicle manufacturers, and scientists who are tasked with evaluating strategies to mitigate disease transmission risk in shared and pooled transportation services |
| Date: | 2021–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt0w34725q&r= |
| By: | Heller-Sahlgren, Gabriel (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Jordahl, Henrik (Örebro University School of Business) |
| Abstract: | Research indicates that education quality – measured by test scores in international student surveys – predicts economic growth. In this paper, we extend previous findings up to 2016 and analyse test scores of upper-secondary school students only. We find that the positive relationship between growth and test scores holds in both cases. The share of top-performing students exhibits a stronger correlation with economic growth than does the share of students who meet basic requirements. |
| Keywords: | Education; Economic growth; PISA; TIMSS; Top-performing students |
| JEL: | I25 O15 O57 |
| Date: | 2021–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1408&r= |
| By: | Bunn, Philip (Bank of England); Chadha, Jagjit (National Institute of Economic and Social Research); Lazarowicz, Thomas (University College London); Millard, Stephen (Bank of England); Rockall, Emma (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we first develop a theoretical framework with three types of household: outright homeowners, mortgagors and renters. We then examine empirically how household debt affects the response of labour supply to shocks to income, mortgage interest rates and house prices for each type of household. In line with our framework, we find that negative income shocks lead to lower participation among outright homeowners while increasing mortgagors’ desired hours; surprise rises in interest rates lead to increases in desired hours that are larger the higher is the household’s debt level; and falls in house prices increase mortgagors’ desired hours. |
| Keywords: | Household debt; housing; labour supply; participation; hours worked |
| JEL: | E21 J22 |
| Date: | 2021–09–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boe:boeewp:0941&r= |
| By: | Basco, Sergi; Domenech, Jordi; Roses, Joan R. |
| Abstract: | The outburst of deaths and cases of Covid-19 around the world has renewed the interest to understand the mortality effects of pandemics across regions, occupations, age and gender. The Spanish Flu is the closest pandemic to Covid-19. Mortality rates in Spain were among the largest in today’s developed countries. Our research documents a substantial heterogeneity on mortality rates across occupations. The highest mortality was on low-income workers. We also record a rural mortality penalty that reversed the historical urban penalty temporally. The higher capacity of certain social groups to isolate themselves from social contact could explain these mortality differentials. However, adjusting mortality evidence by these two factors, there were still large mortality inter-provincial differences for the same occupation and location, suggesting the existence of a regional component in rates of flu contagion possibly related to climatic differences. |
| Keywords: | pandemics; health inequality; socio-economic mortality differences; urban penalty |
| JEL: | D6 I18 J15 N0 |
| Date: | 2021–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:108853&r= |
| By: | Gathmann, Christina; Vonnahme, Christina; Busse, Anna; Kim, Jongoh |
| Abstract: | Citizenship is the most important right a host country can bestow on its immigrant population. Yet, little is known which citizenship policies work and who actually benefits from them. To answer these questions, we estimate the marginal returns to citizenship on children's school performance and skill development. For identification, we use two national reforms, which facilitated naturalization for first-generation immigrants and introduced birthright citizenship. We find substantial unobserved heterogeneity in returns with reverse selection on gains, i.e., the returns are highest for those with the lowest propensity of take-up. Citizenship significantly improves the school performance of immigrant children but has only modest effects on test scores. Policy simulations indicate that raising citizenship take-up would generate sizable benefits overall. Based on marginal treatment response functions, we also show that expanding birthright citizenship carries higher returns than facilitating naturalization. |
| Keywords: | Citizenship,migration,policy evaluation,marginal treatment effects,marginal treatment response functions |
| JEL: | I21 J15 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:920&r= |
| By: | Dejene Mamo, Bekana |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of intergovernmental fiscal transfers on the fiscal behaviour of local governments in Ethiopia for the period 2004-2018. The empirical findings suggest that central government grants bolster state-level employment and expenditure. However, grants from the central government to states do not crowd out state-level revenue collection. Hence, this paper argues that fiscal decentralisation in Ethiopia has mostly, at least in theory, taken the form of devolution of the power to tax and spend public money. However, on average state-level revenue can only finance up to 26 per cent of their annual expenditure. As a result, fiscal federalism in Ethiopia appears to be a form of delegation of spending responsibilities. It has to be considered in the context of a decentralised tax system, but with a transfer scheme and political hierarchy. The results are found to be robust to alternative econometric estimation techniques. |
| Keywords: | Economic Development, Finance, Governance, |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idq:ictduk:15770&r= |
| By: | Ogundari, Kolawole |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks forced families to decide the safest and most effective learning environments for their children because of the virus's threat to health and life. Hence, because of the nationwide school closure, policymakers have raised concerns about the missing children cases-those who have not enrolled in school at all because of the pandemic. The present study investigates whether there is a difference in the school enrollment during the pre-COVID-19 period, COVID-19 period, and vaccine rollout period. We employed the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), covering January 2020 to May 2021, while we use both the logistic and multinomial regression models for the empirical analysis. Our results showed that school enrollment is lower during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the Pre-COVID-19 period. Other results showed that school enrollment is higher since vaccine rollout compared to the COVID-19 period. A possible explanation for this could be that families consider the vaccine the safe path to enrolling their children in school. We also found that school enrollment varies significantly across race and ethnic groups. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, Enrollment, High School, College, USA |
| JEL: | C5 C54 I21 I25 |
| Date: | 2021–10–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110156&r= |
| By: | André de Palma; Nathalie Picard; Robin Lindsey (CY Cergy Paris Université, THEMA) |
| Abstract: | Households are often responsible for labour supply, time allocation, transportation and many other decisions. Yet, research in both economics and transportation was traditionally dominated by so-called unitary models that treat households as single decision-making units with a representative individual. This began to change with the development, in the field of Economics of the Family, of non-unitary models that recognize differences in household members preferences, and attempt to describe the joint decision making processes within households. Application of non-unitary models took off in the transportation literature with the special issues on modelling intra-household interactions edited by Bhat and Pendyala, 2005 [24] and Timmermans and Zhang, 2009 [113]. This chapter reviews the development of integrated models of household activity and transportation from the perspective of the Economics of the Family. These models have been applied to long-run decisions such as residential and workplace location and vehicle ownership, as well as short-run decisions including activity schedules, transport mode, and departure time. Non-unitary models go well beyond conventional discrete choice models by accounting for individual family members preferences, and within-family decision- making processes. The models feature new concepts specific to within-family interactions, including repeated interaction, bargaining, altruism, and Pareto optimality. |
| Keywords: | Economics of the family, mobility, residential location, bargaining power, decisions, households, policy analysis |
| JEL: | H31 P25 R41 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2021-18&r= |
| By: | Maximilian Benner |
| Abstract: | Institutional change in regional economies is affected by macro-level developments such as alignment with the EU and its markets. Countries in Europe’s Eastern and Southern neighborhood provide a case for gradual economic integration into the EU’s economic space. Processes of alignment and mutual market liberalization shape the macro-level conditions for regional development in neighborhood countries but do so in variegated ways as they are translated into the regional institutional context. Building on literature on institutional entrepreneurship, cultural political economy, and actor-network theory, this article argues that EU alignment opens a transnational window of institutional opportunity for agents to shape regional development through translation. In this often contested translation process, institutional entrepreneurs draw on imaginaries, narratives, and visions and shape them. The paper argues that imaginaries are a useful analytical device to understand the interaction between agency and structure in institutional change. The empirical case of tourism in Israel's Southern Negev illustrates the impact of the country's integration into the EU's external aviation policy at the regional tourism sector as well as the strategies of institutional entrepreneurs to use this transnational window of institutional opportunity to promote diverse patterns of institutional change based on multiple imaginaries. |
| Keywords: | institutional change, institutional entrepreneurship, imaginaries, European neighborhood, EU alignment, Israel, tourism |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwpeg:geo-disc-2021_08&r= |
| By: | Steven Ongena (University of Zurich - Department of Banking and Finance; Swiss Finance Institute; KU Leuven; NTNU Business School; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)); Florentina Paraschiv (Zeppelin University, Chair of Finance; Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Economics and Management, NTNU Business School; University of St. Gallen, Institute for Operations Research and Computational Finance); Endre J Reite (NTNU Department of International Business) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyse the price discrimination and household switching in the residential mortgage market. Accessing a unique proprietary micro-data set from Norway, we examine the difference between the loan rate paid by current clients when receiving a competing offer from another bank and the best rate simultaneously being offered to new customers by the current bank. The results show that current clients pay around 20 basis points more than new customers are offered; however, this rate differential is kept in check by client switching. New regulations and digitalization that enhance transparency could reduce the rate differential, but the introduction of new banking products as well as the change in timing of the rate differentiation - from immediate upfront to gradually over time - may be used to preserve it. |
| Keywords: | Mortgage lending, Financial regulation, Consumer protection, digitalization, Price discrimination |
| JEL: | D12 D14 G21 C41 |
| Date: | 2021–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp2167&r= |
| By: | Knauer, Heather A.; Balasanyan, Sona; Bakhshinyan, Elmira; Alderman, Harold |
| Abstract: | Many school feeding programs target child hunger, nutritional deficiencies, attendance, and education outcomes but often do not examine their effects on cognitive development. In this cluster-randomized controlled trial, we tested the effects of adding a morning snack to a school lunch program on the fluid intelligence of 951 children ages 4 to 6 years. While there were no significant effects on development overall, the morning snack improved short-term memory (STM) and total score on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV) among children from the lowest quartile of household expenditures (STM: 0.35SD, p = 0.020; WPPSI-IV: 0.65SD, p = 0.087), and those whose mothers completed secondary school or less (STM: 0.35SD, p = 0.002; total WPPSI-IV: 0.81SD, p = 0.011). For at risk preschoolers, school snack programs may help meet their developmental needs. |
| Keywords: | ARMENIA; ASIA; school feeding; school meals; children; cognitive development; preschool children; nutrition; WPPSI |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:2046&r= |
| By: | Dessy, Sylvain; Gninafon, Horace; Tiberti, Luca; Tiberti, Marco |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on children's school resilience. Using an individual fixed-effect linear probability model on Nigeria data, it exploits the quasi-randomness of these measures to estimate their effect on school attendance after the lockdown was lifted. The results show that COVID-19 lockdown measures reduced children's probability of attending school after the school system reopened. This negative impact increased with children's age, reaching a peak among those whose education was no longer compulsory. For schoolchildren in that age group, the negative effect of COVID-19 lockdown measures is likely to be permanent, which, if not reversed, will undermine the quality of the economy-wide future labor force. The paper also finds evidence that, in the child marriageprone North-West part of Nigeria, these measures increased gender inequality in education among children aged 12 to 18. This result suggests that COVID-19 lockdown measures may exacerbate harmful traditional practices such as child marriage. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19's lockdown measures,School attendance,Schools' disruptions,Gender inequality in education,Nigeria |
| JEL: | C13 H52 I21 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:952&r= |
| By: | Casilda Lasso de la Vega (University of the Basque Country); Oscar Volij (BGU); Federico Weinschelbaum (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and CONICET) |
| JEL: | D72 D74 H23 K42 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bgu:wpaper:2107&r= |
| By: | Jourquin, Bart; Demilie, Laurent; Beuthe, Michel |
| Keywords: | Industrial Organization |
| Date: | 2021–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ctrf31:314680&r= |
| By: | Gustavo Leyva; Israel Mora |
| Abstract: | We estimate that about 10.6 percent of jobs could be done from home in Mexico, using 468 4-digit SINCO occupations and employment data in 2019. This is roughly half the estimate reported by Dingel and Neiman (2020) using teleworking criteria devised for the U.S. labor market. Owing to the peculiarities of the Mexican labor market, we report results by type of contract (formal and informal), geographical area, and gender. We validate our teleworking measure by exploiting the cross-state variation of real GDP per worker, the share of services in employment, and internet and computer access within the household. We find that the gap in teleworking possibilities favorable to females has its root in the disparate occupation structures across gender. During the pandemic, the decline in the share of non-telework jobs in females has been thrice as much as that in males. |
| JEL: | J16 J46 J81 |
| Date: | 2021–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdm:wpaper:2021-15&r= |
| By: | Ishizu, Mina |
| Keywords: | financial agents; inter-regional financial relationships; provincial towns; early industrialisation |
| JEL: | N20 N23 N25 N83 N85 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:110963&r= |
| By: | Diogo Britto (Diogo Britto); Paolo Pinotti (Paolo Pinotti); Breno Sampaio (Breno Sampaio) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effect of job loss and unemployment benefits on crime, exploiting unique individual-level data on the universe of workers and criminal cases in Brazil over the 2009-2017 period. We find that the probability of criminal prosecution increases on average by 23% for workers displaced upon mass layoffs, and by slightly less for their cohabiting sons. Using causal forests, we show that the effect is driven entirely by young and low tenure workers, while there is no heterogeneity by education and income. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate that unemployment benefit eligibility completely offsets potential crime increases upon job loss, but this effect completely vanishes immediately after benefit expiration. Our findings point at liquidity constraints and psychological stress as main drivers of criminal behavior upon job loss, while substitution between time on the job and leisure does not seem to play an important role. |
| Keywords: | unemployment, crime, unemployment insurance, registry data |
| JEL: | K42 J63 J65 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2128&r= |
| By: | Schneider, Kate R.; Oslund, Jennifer; Liu, Tiffany |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, Consumer/Household Economics |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea21:313938&r= |