Abstract: Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs presents new research on urban economics to a broad audience of interested policy analysts and researchers. The papers and comments contained in this volume, the tenth in the series, were presented at a conference on November 13–14, 2008, at the Brookings Institution. The papers examine a range of issues that are relevant to urban economics, including the effects of job location in an urban area on residential choice patterns, racial bias in mortgage lending, and the effects of urban characteristics on the development of new patents. The volume also contains three papers on urban developments outside of the United States. The topics treated include urban sprawl in Europe ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This paper addresses an old and central question in urban economics: how does the spatial distribution of employment opportunities influence residential location? Over the past fifty years, both employment and population left central cities for the suburban ring. Between 1960 and 2000, the share of metropolitan Americans who lived in the suburban ring increased from 48 to 68 percent. Over the same period, the share of metropolitan residents who worked outside the city rose from 41 percent to 58 percent. The decentralization of employment and population has led economists to ask whether workers followed jobs out to the suburbs or jobs followed workers. Answering this question is complicated by the fundamental ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The subprime lending boom increased the ability of many Americans to get credit to purchase a house. Yet concerns persist that not all borrowers have been treated equally. Previous research suggests that subprime loans were particularly concentrated in neighborhoods with a high concentration of black and Hispanic residents (Mayer and Pence 2007). Some commentators have been concerned that minority borrowers were steered into subprime loans in some cases when they might have qualified for cheaper conforming loans or that minority borrowers were given subprime loans that had fees or rates that were too high.Previous research on housing markets suggests that such concerns might be warranted. Beginning in the early ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In models of endogenous growth, knowledge, rather than tangible assets, plays a central role in the economic growth of nations. The model of Romer (1990) assumes that economic agents everywhere have free access to the stock of knowledge. Agrawal, Kapur, and McHale (2008), among many others, point out that immediate accessibility to knowledge is likely to depend on the geographic proximity of agents. This intuition has been verified in empirical studies of patterns of patent citations (Jaffe, Trajtenberg, and Henderson 1993) and in studies of knowledge spillovers among advertising agencies in New York City (Arzaghi and Henderson 2005) and, more generally, in manufacturing (Rosenthal and Strange 2001).In earlier ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Changes in urban forms and development patterns are crucial to understanding the role of cities as engines of growth. Urban sprawl is usually defined as the spreading of a city and its suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area. Urban planners emphasize the qualitative aspects of sprawl such as the lack of transportation options and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. Conservationists tend to focus on the actual amount of land that has been urbanized by sprawl.Although urban sprawl has been extensively studied in the United States (see, for example, Brueckner 2000, 2001; Glaeser and Kahn 2001, 2004; Nechyba and Walsh 2004), very few empirical studies have been undertaken in Europe. Basic reasons for this ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: How can policies improve welfare of people in economically lagging regions of countries? The answer to this question is not straightforward, and policymakers in developed as well as developing countries struggle in making choices between the market solution of promoting out-migration and the intervention option of promoting economic growth in specific regions. In most countries, policy discussions of improving welfare in lagging regions often focus on targeted interventions or incentives for moving production to these places. While these efforts are likely to be politically attractive, there is considerable evidence highlighting the limited effectiveness of targeted incentives. And when incentives go against the ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Japan experienced rapid urbanization after the World War II as indicated, for example, by the fact that the population share of Densely Inhabited Districts (DID), nearly doubled between 1950 and 2000, from 34.9 percent to 65.2 percent, while accounting for only 3.3 percent of the national land.1 Moreover, this rapid urbanization does not appear to be a simple proportional increase of economic activities in all urban areas. Rather, the spatial distributions of industries and population within the 258 metro areas (cities) of Japan are quite skewed. The population of the largest city, Tokyo, exceeded 30 million in 2000 and accounted for more than a quarter of the national population. The ten largest cities together ... Read More PubDate: 2016-04-14T00:00:00-05:00
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