Household formation and suburbanization, 1970-1980

The author attempts to establish whether the recent increases in some population subgroups in central cities in the United States is the start of a trend or a temporary phenomenon. Data are from the 1970 and 1980 censuses. The author concludes that the increase is a temporary one that is primarily due to an increase in the size of certain cohorts. The overriding trend is toward suburbanization, and the author concludes that the increase in central city populations will cease as cohorts decline in size.     

Urban spatial structure,suburbanization and transportation in Barcelona

I investigate the effect of improvements to the transportation infrastructure on changes in location patterns of population in Barcelona, Spain between 1991 and 2006. At a census tract level, I verify and extend the finding of Baum-Snow (2007a) that transportation improvements cause suburbanization: (1) improvements to the highway and railroad systems foster population growth in suburban areas; (2) the transit system also affects the location of population inside the central business district (CBD). To estimate the causal relationship between the growth of population (density) and transportation improvements, I rely on an instrumental variables estimation that uses distances to the nearest Roman road, the nearest 19th century main road, and the nearest 19th century railroad network as instruments for the 1991–2001 changes in distance to the nearest highway ramp and the distance to the nearest railroad station.     

Firm suburbanization and urban subcenters

The theory of firm location within an urban area is extended to consider a city in which firms can export their output via a suburban terminal as well as via the usual CBD terminal. Firms benefit from suburbanization since freight transport costs are reduced and since they can pay lower wages, but labor may be scarce in the suburbs. This forces suburban firms to readjust their wages, causing some workers to out-commute and giving all workers an incentive to relocate. The existence of an employment subcenter under labor scarcity conditions is shown to cause household utility levels to rise, the size of the metropolitan area to increase, and overall urban land value to change indeterminately. Finally, determination of the optimal location for a suburban terminal is considered.     

Factor substitution and taxation in a finance constrained economy

In this paper, we examine the effects of constant-rate factor taxation on macroeconomic stability in the Woodford (1986) model. Our focus is on how the degree of factor substitution, as measured by the elasticity of factor substitution (EOS) in production, affects different balanced-budget tax rules. Analytically, we show that indeterminacy can occur under capital income taxation only when the EOS is very low, whereas indeterminacy under labor income taxation is not subject to the EOS restriction. This finding is robust when we tax all of the factor incomes with equal rates. Thus, in terms of macroeconomic stability, taxing capital income is preferred to taxing labor income.     

Job suburbanization,zoning and the welfare of urban minority groups

This paper poses a model of the effects of job suburbanization and suburban exclusionary zoning on the welfare of blacks and other urban minority groups. It explores the circumstances under which blacks take suburban jobs and whether they are made better off if they do so. The possibilities that blacks outcommute from central area ghettos and that they relocate to suburban housing near the jobs are each considered. A hypothetical governmental project to subsidize the creation of 10,000 suburban jobs for blacks is explored in a cost-benefit framework, stressing the effects of suburban exclusionary zoning on the project's feasibility.     

Metropolitan suburbanization and central city problems

This paper is an empirical study of effects of central city problems on population and employment suburbanization. It is widely believed that high crime, high taxes, and large minority groups in central cities are important causes of rapid suburbanization of U.S. metropolitan areas. A large set of density functions is estimated for population and employment in U.S. metropolitan areas in 1960 and 1970. Thus, relative central city and suburban measures of crime, taxes, etc., are used in an interactive model to explain population and employment suburbanization. It is found that only racial minorities have an effect on suburbanization.     

Estimation and recent behavior of urban population and employment density gradients

The monocentric model of urban structure predicts that urban population density declines with distance from the central business district. Using the negative exponential function to approximate the decline, Mills (E. S. Mills, “Studies in the Structure of the Urban Economy,” Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Md. (1972)) estimated population and employment density gradients from 1948 to 1963 for a sample of 18 SMSAs. This paper updates Mills' estimates and examines recent patterns in population and employment suburbanization. The updated series estimated here is obtained using a “corrected” version of Mills' method. The original procedure incorporated a bias which Mills noted and later corrected (E. Mills and K. Ohta, in “Asia's New Giant” (Patrick and Rosovsky, Eds.), The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (1976)). The comparability of the series begun by Mills and extended here is not interrupted, however, because, as Mills suspected, the bias is indeed small provided SMSA data are used. On the other hand, Urbanized Area definitions of metropolitan areas cause the original and corrected versions to yield significantly different results. This finding has implications for the appropriate choice of data for urban studies.     

新都市主义与房地产郊区化——以上海市为例

从新都市主义的设计理念作为切入点,阐明了新都市主义在住区规划设计与实践中所倡导的重视生态平衡、邻里设计、构筑复合社区、文化资源保护等思想;分析了上海市房地产郊区化发展的动力作用机制;阐述了新都市主义对上海市房地产郊区化可持续发展的启示.     

美国郊区城市化及其衍生的区域问题

论述了美国郊区城市化的基本动力和表现,剖析了美国郊区城市化所衍生的区域问题.     

Maternal employment,migration, and child development

We analyze the roles of and interrelationships among school inputs and parental inputs in affecting child development through the specification and estimation of a behavioral model of household migration and maternal employment decisions. We integrate information on these decisions with observations on child outcomes over a 13-year period from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). We find that the impact of our school quality measures diminishes by factors of 2 to 4 after accounting for the fact that families may choose where to live in part based on school characteristics and labor market opportunities. The positive statistical relationship between child outcomes and maternal employment reverses sign and remains statistically significant after controlling for its possible endogeneity. Our estimates imply that when parental responses are taken into account, policy changes in school quality end up having only minor impacts on child test scores.     

Firm risk,investment, and employment growth

This paper examines the relation between firm risk and growth of Finnish firms. The results reveal a negative relation between risk (total and unsystematic risk) and firm investment. This negative relation is robust to the choice of estimation method. The results also suggest that labor-intensive firms respond to increased risk by substituting capital for labor. Discrete decision models reassure the main conclusions by showing that greater risk decreases (increases) the likelihood of simultaneous growth (decline) investment and employment.     

The psychologisation of employment relations,alternative models of the employment relationship,and the OB turn

As part of this journal's provocation series, John Godard criticised the psychologisation of human resource management and expressed concern with the psychologisation of employment relations. This article uses four explicit frames of reference on the employment relationship to further explicate Godard's concern with the distancing of the field from questions about the structural nature of the employment relationship. This discussion is then extended to consider the magnifying implications of the turn within the field toward organisational behaviour research. Ultimately, the complexity of work and employment means that the field needs to be vigilant in embracing not only multidisciplinary but also multiperspective approaches rather than letting the field become excessively unitary.     

On firm-level,industry-level,and aggregate employment fluctuations

Employment fluctuations are examined, at different levels of aggregation, in a model with firm-specific hiring decisions due to search frictions and sticky pricing. The results indicate that firm-level employment dispersion rises with higher price stickiness and higher demand elasticity, whereas it falls with more convexity of search costs and with a higher labor supply elasticity. Industry-level employment is more volatile and less procyclical than aggregate employment, and a larger industry size reduces volatility and raises co-movement with output. The calibrated model is able to match the volatility, autocorrelation and cyclical correlation of US industry-level employment when incorporating firm-specific technology shocks.     

Hiring,firing, and relocation under employment protection

We analyze how hiring and firing costs as well as firing regulatory delays affect firms’ hiring, firing, and relocation policy with a stochastic control model. These frictions are substantial; e.g. the firing delay can be almost a year. In the model hiring and firing costs depend on the firm size and the number of people hired or fired. Based on our simulations, hiring and firing elasticities without relocation are highest with respect to demand and productivity volatility and the hiring and firing variable costs. The elasticity of firing due to relocation is highest with respect to the firm-sized firing cost.     

Self-employment,educational attainment and employment protection legislation

We analyse how educational attainment and employment protection influence an individual's decision to become self-employed. By altering expected income from dependent employment, employment protection is likely to affect an individual's choice of occupation, although such a link has not been established in the literature so far. We argue that an interaction between an individual's educational attainment and the institution of employment protection exists when it comes to the decision regarding whether to become self-employed. Based on survey data from OECD countries, we find evidence for a negative interaction, and conclude that only after taking this interaction into account can the effect of employment protection and educational attainment on self-employment rates be assessed.     

A model for manpower, employment, training and education

The increasing refinement and variety of economic projections can give the educational planner an extremely useful tool, providing he can find a way to convert sectoral projections of employment into educational requirements. In this study occupational data from the Census of 1960 were converted directly into their vocational educational equivalents so that cross-classifications by (SIC) sector permitted the derivation of sectoral employment/education coefficients. These coefficients, multiplied by projected employment in each sector, give projected employment in terms of the vocational preparation which is implied.

Using this approach, vocational preparation requirements were projected to 1975 for the fifty states and 224 metropolitan areas. The results thus generated show the variety which can be anticipated among the various regions in the United States, and can provide guidance to local and state educational groups in setting up programs at state and local levels.

A similar approach which used various national projections led to two conclusions. The level of sectoral detail can have quite important impacts on the “mix” of training requirements which results, suggesting that projections of this type must be based on quite detailed sectoral employment breakdowns. Second, shifts in patterns of growth can have marked impacts on some types of vocational training requirements while needs for other types remain relatively unaffected.