Regional Science and Urban Economics This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Tenure tipping
Publication date: Available online 18 December 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): N. Edward Coulson, Gregory WommerAbstractIn light of the increased importance of the single family rental market, local policymakers and homeowners associations have expressed concern that neighborhoods might turn over, rapidly or otherwise, from largely owner-occupied homes to rental occupied properties. We construct a theoretical model of tenure tipping and employ the methods of Card, Mas and Rothstein (2009) to understand the nature of this type of neighborhood turnover. The CMR model demonstrates that tenure tippin...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 19, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

The German real estate transfer tax: Evidence for single-family home transactions
Publication date: Available online 15 December 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Carolin Fritzsche, Lars VandreiAbstractThis paper uses recent data for single-family home purchases to study the effects of the German real estate transfer tax. We aim to separate the tax's anticipatory effects from its lock-in effects on real estate transactions. The data indicate that an increase in the transfer tax is negatively correlated with the number of transactions that take place in the market for single-family homes. We estimate that an increase in the transfer tax produces enormous anticipation effects: 41%...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 16, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

The bedroom tax
Publication date: Available online 15 December 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Stephen Gibbons, Maria Sanchez-Vidal, Olmo SilvaAbstractHousing subsidies for low income households are a central pillar of many welfare systems, but an expensive one. This paper investigates the consequences of an unusual policy aimed at reducing the cost of these subsidies by rationing tenants' use of space. Specifically, we study a policy introduced by the UK Government in 2013, which substantially cut housing benefits for tenants deemed to have a ‘spare’ bedroom – based on specific criteria related to househo...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 16, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Can public transportation reduce accidents? Evidence from the introduction of late-night buses in Israeli cities
Publication date: Available online 12 December 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Shirlee Lichtman-SadotAbstractThe notion that public transportation can mitigate accidents has been widely claimed, but to-date empirical evidence that supports this relationship in a causal manner is scarce. This paper presents results from difference-in-differences (DID) and triple differences (DDD) frameworks that exploit the introduction of late-night buses (night buses) into cities in Israel beginning in 2007. The preferred DDD specification utilizes spatial, temporal, and time-of-day variation in estimating the e...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 13, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

The effects of government spending shocks: Evidence from U.S. states
Publication date: Available online 7 December 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Bebonchu AtemsAbstractUsing panel structural VAR analyses and a recently released dataset on quarterly gross domestic product by state, this paper finds that an increase in state spending raises output, employment, and the real wage. Our baseline estimates imply that the multiplier effect of a spending increase on output is 1.3 contemporaneously and 1.2 over three years. The effects, however, vary considerably depending on the economic environment and institutional context. Specifically, we find that (i) the spending mu...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 8, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Market size, competition, and firm productivity for manufacturing in China
Publication date: Available online 6 December 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Chengri Ding, Yi NiuAbstractThis paper investigates the selection effects of market size on firm productivity by using firm-level data on Chinese manufacturing industries for the period 1998–2007. China's provinces are an appropriate proxy for market size due to local (provincial) protectionism, which creates fragmented domestic markets. The estimated results using a quantile approach show significant selection effects for 15 out of 29 sectors. We find that provinces above the median employment density weed out approx...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 7, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

House prices and marriage entry in China
This study ascribes part of this decline to a rise in house prices over the same period. Chinese social norms mandate the purchase of a home prior to marriage. We hypothesize that this custom, combined with rising house prices, has discouraged young adults from entering marriage for the first time. We test this hypothesis with an instrumental variable duration model using micro data on marriage entry and city-level data on house prices from 2000 through 2005 in urban China. Our results demonstrate that initial marriage rates declined by 0.31% for a 1% increase in house prices. This result is robust across a number of diffe...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - December 7, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Editorial Board
Publication date: November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 73Author(s): (Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics)
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 30, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Urban Inclusiveness and Income Inequality in China
Publication date: Available online 27 November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Leiju Qiu, Daxuan ZhaoAbstractThe issue of income inequality is exacerbating when China experiences rapid economic growth during the past few decades. This paper argues that urban inclusiveness is one of the determinants of income inequality in Chinese cities, because the Hukou system restricts public service to Hukou-registered workers only. The impact of urban inclusiveness on income inequality and the underlying mechanism are discovered by examining how Hukou restriction affects income gap between skilled and unskil...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 28, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Local labor market effects of public employment
Publication date: Available online 23 November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Jordi Jofre-Monseny, José I. Silva, Javier Vázquez-GrennoAbstractThis paper quantifies the impact of public employment on local labor markets in the long-run. We adopt two quantitative approaches and apply them to the case of Spanish cities. In the first, we develop a 3-sector (public, tradable and non-tradable) search and matching model embedded within a spatial equilibrium model. We characterize the steady state of the model, which we calibrate to match the labor market characteristics of the average Spanish city. ...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 23, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Reviews and price on online platforms: Evidence from sentiment analysis of Airbnb reviews in Boston
This study examines the relationship between guests' reviews, used as a proxy for quality, and the price set by hosts on the Airbnb platform in Boston. Using sentiment analysis to derive the quality from the reviews and a hedonic spatial autoregressive model applied to rental room prices on Airbnb, we find that prices are strategic complements and are influenced by the review score, the characteristics of the room, and the features of the neighborhood. The marketing implication is that consumers respond to the contents of online reviews, in addition to customer ratings. Policies that improve the quality of the room for one...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 22, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

The selection and quantile treatment effects on the economic returns of green buildings
Publication date: Available online 14 November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Wen-Chi Liao, Daxuan ZhaoAbstractThis paper adds a fresh perspective on the economic returns of green buildings using Singapore housing data. It estimates both the conditional and unconditional quantile treatment effects, by applying a recent econometric theory that explicitly recognizes and addresses the fundamental difference between the two types of quantile effects. The theory exploits selection on observables, which is widely accepted and commonly handled through one of two propensity score methods in the green bu...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 15, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Traffic calming and neighborhood livability: Evidence from housing prices in Portland
Publication date: Available online 13 November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Stefano PolloniAbstractThis paper examines the impact of traffic calming on the livability of urban residential streets. Using geo-referenced data on the installation of 1187 calming devices in Portland (OR), I test whether the interventions locally affect housing prices during succeeding years. I provide reduced-form evidence that city dwellers pay significant premiums to limit their exposure to motor vehicles, but obtain mixed results regarding the overall price impacts of calming devices. My estimates suggest that o...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 14, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

The effects of home ownership on post-unemployment wages
Publication date: Available online 12 November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Xi YangAbstractThis paper studies the effects of home ownership on job search outcomes. In contrast to previous literature focusing mainly on the impact of home ownership on unemployment rate and duration, this paper looks at the relationship between home ownership and post-unemployment wages. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation 1996–2008 panels, I find that home ownership reduces post-unemployment wages, and this negative wage effect is particularly evident when the unemployed homeowner is located i...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 12, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research

Transit access and neighborhood segregation. Evidence from the Dallas light rail system
Publication date: Available online 8 November 2018Source: Regional Science and Urban EconomicsAuthor(s): Kilian HeilmannAbstractI study the effect of transit access on neighborhood incomes by exploiting a quasi-experimental setting of an extensively planned, but only partially built urban rail system in Dallas. I show that neighborhood income in census tracts that received rail access increases compared to neighborhoods that were promised to receive access, but did not due to funding cuts. The treatment effect is positively correlated with initial neighborhood income and negative for the poorest tracts. This reconciles gen...
Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics - November 9, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research