{"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}
{"title":"Cities and the sea level","authors":"Yatang Lin , Thomas K.J. McDermott , Guy Michaels","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103685","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103685","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out. To investigate this construction, we analyze spatially disaggregated data covering the entire US Atlantic and Gulf coasts. We find that the 1990 housing stock reflects historical avoidance of locations prone to sea level rise (SLR) and flooding, but net new construction from 1990–2010 was similar in SLR-prone locations and safer ones; and within densely built coastal areas, net new construction was higher in SLR-prone locations. These findings are difficult to rationalize as mere products of moral hazard or imperfect information, suggesting that people build on risky locations to benefit from nearby urban agglomerations. To explain our findings, we develop a simple model of a monocentric coastal city, which we use to explore the consequences of sea level rise. This model helps explain cities’ role in expanding flood risks, and how future sea level rise may reshape coastal cities, creating significant challenges for policymakers.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103685"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009411902400055X/pdfft?md5=d06c9d552772595c2690d4ce55009d7a&pid=1-s2.0-S009411902400055X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141950419","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}
Paul J. Gertler , Marco Gonzalez-Navarro , Tadeja Gračner , Alexander D. Rothenberg
{"title":"Road maintenance and local economic development: Evidence from Indonesia’s highways","authors":"Paul J. Gertler , Marco Gonzalez-Navarro , Tadeja Gračner , Alexander D. Rothenberg","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103687","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103687","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper estimates the local welfare impacts of highway maintenance investments. We instrument road quality exploiting Indonesia’s two-step budgeting process for allocating funding to local road authorities. Using comprehensive data on road quality from 1990–2007, we find evidence that better roads help manufacturers create new jobs, enabling worker transitions out of informal employment, and increasing labor income. Road quality also changes the cost of living, reducing perishable food prices but also raising housing prices. We estimate the elasticity of household welfare with respect to road quality to be 0.1 and the benefit/cost ratio for road maintenance investments to be 2.3.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103687"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000573/pdfft?md5=550124c9ea1be1eac081b74b7b6a5cd5&pid=1-s2.0-S0094119024000573-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141950420","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}
Neil Mehrotra , Matthew A. Turner , Juan Pablo Uribe
{"title":"Does the US have an infrastructure cost problem? Evidence from the interstate highway system","authors":"Neil Mehrotra , Matthew A. Turner , Juan Pablo Uribe","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103681","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103681","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Between 1984 and 2008, expenditure per Interstate vehicle mile traveled fell 10%, while the price of new lane miles and pavement quality more than doubled. To reconcile these trends, we describe an Interstate cost function for a planner who minimizes the cost required to deliver a given level of highway services. Using administrative data, we estimate prices for lane miles and pavement quality and evaluate the user cost of the Interstate. User cost fell by half between 1994–2008, largely due to falling interest rates. In this sense, there is no problem with the cost of the Interstate.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103681"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141959460","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":"JUE insight: Air pollution and student performance in the U.S.","authors":"Michael Gilraine , Angela Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103686","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103686","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The United States has seen a drastic shift in the fuels used for electricity production. We study the consequences of these changes on air pollution and test scores. Using data covering the near-universe of students and a shift-share instrument that interacts local fuel shares with national growth rates, we show that each one-unit increase in particulate pollution reduces test scores by 0.016 standard deviations. Our estimates indicate that pollution reductions from electricity generation raised nationwide test scores by 0.03 standard deviations. As pollution declines were largest in majority-black districts, the black–white test score gap fell by 0.01 standard deviations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103686"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000561/pdfft?md5=8c03ef7e8e64e1ff16bbbdf1c9c80060&pid=1-s2.0-S0094119024000561-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141960074","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}
Nicolas Gonzalez-Pampillon , Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim , Henry G. Overman
{"title":"The economic impacts of the UK's eat out to help out scheme","authors":"Nicolas Gonzalez-Pampillon , Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim , Henry G. Overman","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2024.103682","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We evaluate the economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO was introduced during the COVID pandemic to stimulate demand by subsidizing the cost of eating out, with a 50 % discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We exploit the spatial variation in participation using a continuous difference-in-differences approach and an instrumental variables strategy. We measure the effect on footfall using mobility data from Google and on employment using job posts from Indeed. Our estimates indicate that a one standard deviation increase in exposure to the EOTHO scheme increased footfall in retail & recreation by 2–5 %, and job posts in the food preparation & service industry by 6–8 %. These effects are transitory, and we do not find evidence of large spillover benefits to non-recreational activities or other sectors.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103682"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000524/pdfft?md5=b1700e6ebe7ebde0838a9b03df463139&pid=1-s2.0-S0094119024000524-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141594263","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}
Jan K. Brueckner , David Leather , Miguel Zerecero
{"title":"Bunching in real-estate markets: Regulated building heights in New York City","authors":"Jan K. Brueckner , David Leather , Miguel Zerecero","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2024.103683","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper presents a real-estate application of the bunching methodology widely used in other areas of applied microeconomics. The focus is on regulated building heights in New York City, where developers can exceed a parcel’s regulated height by incurring additional costs. Using the bunching methodology, we estimate the magnitude of these extra costs, with the results showing a modest increase in the marginal cost of floor space beyond the regulated building height. We use these estimates to predict the additional floor space that would be created by complete removal of building-height regulation in NYC. While this last exercise is circumscribed by our focus on a limited number of zoning categories, the results suggest that New York could secure notably more housing through lighter height regulation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103683"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119024000536/pdfft?md5=ad9cba2b530fefcf4465a07d32ae8e8a&pid=1-s2.0-S0094119024000536-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141541855","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}
Cuong Viet Nguyen , Tuyen Quang Tran , Huong Van Vu
{"title":"The long-term effects of war on foreign direct investment and economic development: evidence from Vietnam","authors":"Cuong Viet Nguyen , Tuyen Quang Tran , Huong Van Vu","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2024.103680","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this study, we find a negative effect of unexploded ordnance (UXO) on the geographical density of foreign direct investment and large firms in Vietnam. A 1 % increase in the proportion of UXO-contaminated areas leads to a 0.69 % relative decrease in the density of FDI firms within districts. Point estimates for the elasticity of the density of joint-venture FDI firms and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) due to UXO are smaller, equal to -0.56 and -0.36. Moreover, we also find that a 1 % increase in the proportion of UXO-contaminated areas leads to a 0.38 % relative decrease in the intensity of nighttime light.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103680"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141479786","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":"Mayors’ promotion incentives and subnational-level GDP manipulation","authors":"Jiangnan Zeng , Qiyao Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.jue.2024.103679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2024.103679","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>What role do local officials’ incentives play in regional economic growth? How do local officials behave under promotion pressure? This paper studies the unintended impact of mayors’ promotion incentives on regional economic growth and subnational-level GDP manipulation in China. We employ a regression discontinuity design that accounts for age restrictions in deciding promotions for mayors. We find that when GDP performance is prioritized in officials’ promotion evaluations (before 2013), mayors’ promotion incentives significantly increase the statistical GDP growth rate by 3.4 percentage points. However, their effects on nighttime light and other non-manipulable real economic growth indicators are close to zero. This gap can be attributed to GDP manipulation under our empirical framework. The above pattern no longer persists after 2013, when the role of GDP statistics in mayoral promotions was reduced. Our findings indicate that GDP manipulation makes performance-based competition between mayors devolve into a data manipulation game.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48340,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Economics","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103679"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141479785","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}