Lecture Notes in Urban Economics and Urban Policy

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John Yinger

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9789813222212
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Public Finance
• Index: Economics

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Lecture Notes in Urban Economics and Urban Policy provides a wide-ranging introduction to urban economics and urban policy by Professor John Yinger, one of the world's leading scholars in urban economics. It draws on his extensive teaching and publication record to provide detailed lecture notes for both a PhD level course in urban economics and a master's level course in urban policy. Both the US and the world populations are becoming more and more urbanized, and these notes are designed to help scholars learn and teach about the factors that determine urban residential structure and that lead to urban problems such as inadequate housing, concentrated poverty, an inequitable distribution of local public services, racial and ethnic discrimination in housing, and traffic congestion. Although these notes focus on the US, many of the lessons in the notes apply to other countries as well. They also draw on Professor Yinger's extensive teaching experience and publication record in urban economics and should prove useful to many scholars who want to teach about or study urban areas.

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--> Contents:

• Urban Economics:
  • The Basic Urban Model 1: Assumptions
  • The Basic Urban Model 2: Solutions
  • The Basic Urban Model 3: Comparative Statics
  • More General Treatment of Housing Demand
  • Estimating Housing Demand
  • The Urban Transportation System
  • Multiple Worksites and Full Labor Markets
  • Household Heterogeneity
  • Testing Urban Models
  • Neighborhood Amenities
  • Bidding and Sorting: The Theory of Local Public Finance
  • Property Tax Capitalization
  • Hedonic Regressions
  • School-Quality Capitalization
  • Housing Discrimination
  • Notes Based on: "Now You See It, Now You Don't: Why Do Real Estate Agents Withhold Available Houses from Black Customers?"
  • Homeownership Gaps Between Ethnic Groups
  • Residential Segregation: Measurement, Causes, Consequences
  • Mortgage Markets and Predatory Lending
  • Mortgage Discrimination
• Urban Policy:
  • Introduction
  • Evaluating Social Programs
  • Housing Concepts, Household Bids
  • Household Sorting and Neighborhood Amenities
  • Neighborhood Change
  • Overview of Housing Markets
  • Housing Problems and Federal Housing Programs
  • Homelessness
  • Race and Ethnicity, Prejudice and Discrimination
  • Housing Discrimination and Its Causes
  • Residential Segregation: Measurement, Causes, Consequences
  • Mortgage Markets and Predatory Lending
  • Discrimination in Mortgage Lending
  • Poverty: Concepts and Evidence
  • Concentrated Poverty
  • Welfare Programs and Principles of Welfare Policy
  • The New World of Welfare Policy
  • Urban Labor Markets
  • Human Capital Programs to Promote Community Development
  • Financial Capital Programs to Promote Community Development
  • Key Issues in Studying Urban Crime

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--> Readership: Students and academics interested in urban economics and urban policy. -->
Keywords:Urban Economics;Urban Policy;Local Public Finance;Racial and Discrimination in HousingReview: Key Features:

• The lecture notes in this book cover an extremely wide range of topics in urban economics and urban policy, from mathematical models of urban spatial structure urban problems, such as poverty and discrimination
• These notes draw on the extensive teaching and research record of Professor John Yinger, one of the world's leading urban economists
• These notes are a wide-ranging resource for teachers and scholars in the fields of urban economics and urban policy

Part 1

Urban Economics

Lecture 1

The Basic Urban Model 1: Assumptions

•Class Outline

1.Origins of Urban Economics

2.Key Assumptions of a Basic Urban Model

3.The Basic Household Maximization Problem with Residential Location Choice

4.The Urban Model Twist

1.Origins of Urban Economics

1.1.von Thünen

•Urban economics was invented (sort of) by a German agricultural economist, Johann Heinrich von Thünen, who lived from 1783 to 1850.

•More specifically, von Thünen invented the concepts of bidding and sorting, which form the basis for urban economics.

•He also, by the way, invented general equilibrium analysis! (Samuelson, 1983).

1.2.von Thünen’s Model

•von Thünen modeled the location of agricultural activities around a central market place.

•Each activity had a maximum amount it was willing to pay for land at each location — its land bid.

•The winning activity at a given location was the one that bid the most there. This leads to the sorting of activities across locations.

•The key to the model is transportation costs, based on straight-line travel to the market.

•Some firms produced heavy or perishable products, so they would not pay much for land far from the center; transportation costs would eat up all their profits at distant locations.

•But some other factors, based on von Thünen’s practical knowledge of agriculture, also came into the model.

von Thünen’s Model of Rents and Locations

1.3.Alonso

•In 1964, William Alonso published Location and Land Use, based on his dissertation in regional planning.

•This amazing book applied the von Thünen logic to the location of households in an urban area.

People all work in a central work site.

Each type of household bids on land in every location.

Household types sorted into different locations based on their bids, and types with steeper bid functions locate nearer to the center.

1.4.Mills and Muth

•Edwin Mills (at Princeton and my thesis adviser) and Richard Muth (at Chicago) extended Alonso to consider housing at about the same time.

Mills: A 1967 publication (May, American Economical Review), which cites a Muth working paper; a 1972 book (Studies in the Structure of the Urban Economy).

Muth: A 1969 book (Cities and Housing).

2.Key Assumptions of a Basic Urban Model

2.1.Urban Models

•Urban models are designed to explain why urban areas look the way they do, with a focus on housing.

•Where do people live? How far do they commute?

•How much housing do they consume?

•What is the price of housing?

2.2.Key Assumptions

•We now turn to the key assumptions of a basic urban model.

•These assumption...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Part 1 Urban Economics
• Part 2 Urban Policy
• References
• Index