{"title":"JUE Insight: The labor market effects of place-based policies: Evidence from England’s Neighbourhood Renewal Fund","authors":"Robert Calvert Jump , Adam Scavette","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103690","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103690","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Neighbourhood renewal programs are a type of place-based policy that aim to revive underperforming localities. The literature on place-based policies has found mixed results regarding their effects on local labor market outcomes, but there are relatively few studies of policies that aim to improve local labor supply. In this paper we examine the labor market effects of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, which targeted 88 of the most deprived areas in England during the early 2000s as part of the Labour government’s National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. The fund disbursed almost £3 billion for spending on community safety, education, healthcare and worklessness, with supply-side interventions making up the bulk of the program’s spending on worklessness. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find statistically significant impacts on local employment. Our results suggest that policy interventions to improve local labor supply can be a successful strategy for neighborhood renewal.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"144 ","pages":"Article 103690"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142324027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can real estate booms hurt firms? Evidence on investment substitution","authors":"Harald Hau , Difei Ouyang","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103695","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103695","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In geographically segmented credit markets, local real estate booms can deteriorate the funding conditions for small manufacturing firms and undermine their growth and competitiveness. Based on exogenous variations in the administrative land supply for residential housing across Chinese cities, we show that real estate price hikes caused by a restrictive land supply reduce bank credit to manufacturing firms, raise their borrowing costs, diminish their investment rate, compromise their output and productivity growth, and increase their exit rates. Such harmful effects are more pronounced among small firms and those located in more bank-dependent regions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"144 ","pages":"Article 103695"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142312285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Matching, centrality and the urban network","authors":"Benoît Schmutz-Bloch , Modibo Sidibé","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103706","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103706","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We propose a search and matching model of the urban network. When geography is fixed and the job finding rate decreases with distance, the interplay between firm entry and worker migration generates an equilibrium allocation in which productive agents cluster in a few large central cities where matching is more assorted and profitable, while many small peripheral cities retain low-skilled workers. Counterfactual experiments suggest that (i) small transfers to the periphery hurt everyone, while large transfers can achieve a more efficient, decentralized organization; (ii) lower frictions deconcentrate the network and benefit everyone.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"144 ","pages":"Article 103706"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142241414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bottleneck congestion and urban spatial structure with heterogeneous households: Equilibrium, capacity expansion and congestion tolling","authors":"Zhi-Chun Li , De-Ping Yu , André de Palma","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103693","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103693","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We propose an analytical solvable model for household residential location choice in a linear monocentric city corridor with bottleneck congestion. Households are heterogeneous in terms of their income. The bottleneck is located between central downtown and adjacent suburb. The urban equilibrium is formulated as the solution of differential equations. We analytically explore the distributional effects of bottleneck capacity expansion on households and the bottleneck capacity investment issues under no toll and first-best and second-best tolls. The results show that the benefits of different-income households from bottleneck capacity expansion change with toll schemes. Specifically, under the no toll and first-best toll, those who gain most are the mid-income households residing at the bottleneck and in a suburban location (close to the bottleneck) respectively, whereas those who gain least are the poorest or richest households. Under the second-best toll, there are two possible cases: the poorest households gain most while the richest households gain least, or the mid-income households residing at the bottleneck gain most while the richest or poorest households gain least. With constant return to scale for capacity investment, self-financing principle still holds for the first-best and second-best tolling in the urban spatial context. Ignoring the changes in urban spatial structure due to household relocation may cause overinvestment or underinvestment in optimal bottleneck capacity under the no toll, but definitely underinvestment under the first-best and second-best tolls.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"144 ","pages":"Article 103693"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142232672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do property rehabs affect neighboring property prices?","authors":"Rohan Ganduri, Gonzalo Maturana","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103694","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103694","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We examine the effect of real estate owned property rehabilitations on neighboring property prices. We find that house prices around a rehabilitated property increase 2.3 percentage points following the rehabilitation. Moreover, the average rehabilitation generates aggregate welfare benefits 3.8 times greater than the amount invested. Rehabilitation externalities are stronger for longer rehabilitations and greater rehabilitation investments, and they are prevalent even in areas with high rates of foreclosures. The spillover effect of rehabilitations operates through their salience rather than through a reduction in the supply of distressed properties, through property appraisals, or through homebuyers with higher income moving into the neighborhood.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103694"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142128866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neighboring capital imports and non-importer productivity: Evidence from geocoded manufacturing firms in China","authors":"Jiawei Mo, Zhe Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103692","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103692","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article examines the spillover effects of neighboring firms’ imports on the productivity of non-importers. By analyzing geocoded manufacturing firms in China, we find that capital goods imports by neighboring firms within 10 km positively impact non-importer productivity; intermediate goods imports show no clear spillover. These results hold when using imports from distant firms as instruments. Spillovers from capital imports mainly come from neighbors in upstream and downstream industries, which indicate potential supply chain effects. Learning effects from neighboring imported products are not significant. Quantitatively, neighboring capital imports raised non-importers’ average productivity by 0.99% from 2000 to 2006, surpassing gains from their own R&D participation by more than sixfold. Overall, our findings demonstrate substantial societal benefits of capital imports for non-importers connected spatially.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103692"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142047973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making housing affordable? The local effects of relaxing land-use regulation","authors":"Simon Büchler , Elena Lutz","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103689","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103689","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines the effects of relaxing land-use regulations on housing supply and rents at the local intra-city level. We apply a staggered difference-in-difference model, exploiting exogenous differences in the treatment timing of zoning plan reforms as identifying variation. Increasing the allowable floor-to-area ratio (FAR), i.e., upzoning, significantly increases the living space and housing units by approximately 9% in the subsequent five to ten years. This effect is stronger for larger upzonings, for rasters where zoning is binding, and where rents are high. Furthermore, upzoning leads to no difference in hedonic rents between upzoned and later-upzoned rasters. These results show that upzoning is a viable policy for increasing housing affordability. However, the effects depend on the upzoning policy design and take several years to materialize.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103689"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000597/pdfft?md5=588f58692c30ac97043affa3456db316&pid=1-s2.0-S0094119024000597-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142039946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stephen Gibbons , Stephan Heblich , Edward W. Pinchbeck
{"title":"The spatial impacts of a massive rail disinvestment program: The Beeching Axe","authors":"Stephen Gibbons , Stephan Heblich , Edward W. Pinchbeck","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103691","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103691","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper investigates the reversibility of the effects of transport infrastructure investments, based on a programme that removed much of the rail network in Britain during the mid-20th century. We find that a 10% loss in rail access between 1950 and 1980 caused a persistent 3% decline in local population relative to unaffected areas, implying that the 1 in 5 places most exposed to the cuts saw 24 percentage points less population growth than the 1 in 5 places that were least exposed. The cuts reduced local jobs and shares of skilled workers and young people.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103691"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000615/pdfft?md5=d3dddbd4f0ec205e4f8adb059336dba8&pid=1-s2.0-S0094119024000615-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141998393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"JUE insight: The impact of school spending on civic engagement: Evidence from school finance reforms","authors":"Erdal Asker , Eric Brunner , Steve Ross","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103688","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103688","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A primary rationale for public financing of schools is that education fosters civic engagement. However, existing studies examining the relationship between schooling and civic engagement have focused exclusively on how educational attainment affects political activity. We provide evidence on how school spending affects volunteerism and voting. Exploiting variation in U.S. court-ordered and legislative school finance reforms and using survey data from the NCES Secondary Longitudinal Studies Program, we find that exogenous increases in school spending led to increases in the probability that young adults volunteer, the amount of time they spend volunteering, and the probability of being registered to vote.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103688"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141990670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jacques-François Thisse , Matthew A. Turner , Philip Ushchev
{"title":"Foundations of cities","authors":"Jacques-François Thisse , Matthew A. Turner , Philip Ushchev","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103684","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103684","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>How do people choose work and residence locations when commuting is costly and productivity spillovers, increasing returns to scale, or first nature advantage, reward the concentration of employment. We describe such an equilibrium city in a simple geography populated by agents with heterogenous preferences over workplace–residence pairs. The behavior of equilibrium cities is more complex than previously understood. Heterogeneous location preferences are sufficient for equilibrium centralization of employment and residence. Increasing returns and productivity spillovers can disperse employment. An increase in commuting costs may decentralize residence and employment. Our results shed new light on classical urban economics and are important for our understanding of quantitative spatial models.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103684"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141963148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}