Arthur M. Sullivan

A general equilibrium model with agglomerative economies and decentralized employment

Abstract The standard urban general equilibrium model is extended in two ways. First, the central part of the city is occupied by the officer sector; the office sector is subject to agglomerative economies arising from the need for face-to-face contact. Second, residents choose between two employment areas: in addition to the employment opportunities in the centralized office sector, employment opportunities exist in a decentralized manufacturing sector. The model is used to explore the general equilibrium effects of zoning policies.

Urban subcenter formation

Abstract This paper presents a series of dynamic models of urban subcenter formation. The models have three common ingredients: first, a planner allocates a growing population to one of two production locations; second, public capital (infrastructure) must be installed prior to development of a production site; third, there are external scale economies in production and diseconomies of scale in transportation. The models show how, in a growing city, subcenters arise from the tradeoff between external scale economies in production and diseconomies in transportation. The models also show how the development of subcenters is affected by (1) the fixed costs of public capital, (2) differences in production technologies, and (3) interactions between production locations.

Second-best policies for congestion externalities☆

Abstract This is the third in a series of three articles on the topic of congestion externalities. We use an urban general-equilibrium model to test the efficiency of several second-best policies for congestion externalities. The most efficient second-best policy is a program of land-use controls; the program generates a welfare gain of

The general equilibrium effects of congestion externalities

3.38 per household per week. A unit tax on commuting is a less efficient policy, with a welfare gain of

A general equilibrium model with external scale economies in production

1.15.

Policy options for toxics disposal: Laissez-faire, subsidization, and enforcement

Abstract This is the second in a series of three articles on the topic of congestion externalities. We use an urban general-equilibrium model to compute two types of cities: the market-equilibrium city, in which congestion externalities occur, and the optimum city. The optimum city has a more dispersed distribution of employment, and a more concentrated distribution of residence. If the population of the city is fixed, the optimum pricing of transportation generates a per capita welfare gain of

The general-equilibrium effects of the residential property tax: Incidence and excess burden

3.78 per week. If the population of the city is endogenous, the internalization of congestion externalities causes the city to grow.

Siting noxious facilities: A siting lottery with victim compensation

Abstract A general-equilibrium model of an urban economy is described. The standard residential land use model is extended to include a well-defined production/employment sector. External scale economies occur in the production of the citys export good. The model is designed for the numerical computation of equilibria and optima.

Victim compensation revisited: Efficiency versus equity in the siting of noxious facilities

Abstract This paper evaluates three second-best policies for dealing with the problem of illegal hazardous-waste disposal. The first is a laissez-faire policy; the second is a policy under which legal disposal of hazardous waste is subsidized; the third is a policy that discourages illegal disposal by increasing the expected penalty associated with illegal disposal. Using a simple computational model, I compute the optimum subsidy and the optimum enforcement budget, and determine the conditions under which each policy option is superior to others.

The general equilibrium effects of the industrial property tax: Incidence and excess burden

Abstract An urban general-equilibrium model is used to explore the efficiency effects and distributional consequences of the residential property tax. In a model of a “small,” “open” city, the replacement of a nondistortionary land tax with the residential property tax reduces the land area, density, and population of the city. The aggregate net return on land falls by an amount equal to 164.93% of total tax revenue. In a model of a “closed” region, when city Q replaces the land tax with the residential property tax, production and employment shift to other cities in the region. The net return on land decreases in city Q, and increases in other cities in the region; in aggregate, landowners are made better off by the change in tax policy, while residents are made worse off. The excess burden of the property tax is computed as 6.5197% of tax revenue.