Gershon Alperovich

The economics of choice in the allocation of intergovernmental grants to local authories

Summary and conclusionsThe empirical study and modelling of processes and motivations behind government behavior has been relatively meager. This paper has formulated and estimated a model designed to explain the allocation of intergovernmental grants to local authorities. The model takes into consideration the fact that this process is governed by mixed motivations associated with both the desire to adopt policies and actions based on the concept of public interest and with the desire for re-election. The model was applied to data pertaining to 52 local authorities in Israel under two governments. The principal findings of the foregoing analysis can be summarized as follows. First, the behavioral mechanism operating beyond intergovernmental grants allocation is inherent in the political system and equally applies to the two governments. Second, this mechanism is governed both by factors representing objective criteria describing the needs of the populations and by political factors representing the desire for re-election. Differences in the behavior of the two governments seem to be significant as far as some objective variables are concerned, but are almost insignificant as far as the political variable is concerned. Third, as in other studies conducted in the U.S., our findings support the hypothesis that in their attempt to maximize the prospects for re-election, governments find it preferable to pursue policies which reward their supporters rather than ‘buy-off’ their opponents. Lastly, by allowing per-capita grants to be a non-monotonous function of the political variable, it was found that indeed both governments have increased per-capita grants as a function of POL up to a certain level and decreased it thereafter.

An Explanatory Model of City-size Distribution: Evidence from Cross-country Data:

This paper utilises data from files of the World Bank to investigate the relevancy of a wide set of variables in explaining systematic variations of city-size distribution across countries. The Pareto exponent is employed as a measure of population concentration among cities of different sizes. The empirical results allow us to confirm a number of hypotheses. High degrees of economic development as measured by per capita GNP foster urban dispersal. Conversely, high degrees of government involvement in the economy and prevalence of significant scale and agglomeration economies promote urban concentration. Like most other cross-sectional studies, this study does not provide support to a dominating view in the economic development literature that at low levels of development the relation between economic development and population concentration is negative while at high levels the relation reverses and becomes positive.

An Econometric Model of Migration Between US Metropolitan Areas

We test a model of inter-metropolitan migration using 1965-70 data for 284 metropolitan areas from the 1970 Census of Population. Innovations in model specification permit us to derive estimatable equations for gross in- and out-migration from a point-to-point hypothesis. Measures of economic conditions (the unemployment rate, the growth rate in employment, and the wage rate) are shown to affect migration behaviour both at origins and destinations, as economic theory predicts. Expected effects of past migration on both subsequent in-migration and out-migration are confirmed. In addition, migrants are shown to prefer destination cities that have moderate climates, that are relatively small in size, and that are close to larger cities. The research reported in this paper is part of a larger study of the joint determination of growth in employment in US metropolitan areas and of migration flows between them.

An application of a switching regimes regression to the study of urban structure

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to propose and highlight a statistical estimation procedure for joint identification of irregularities in population distribution in urban areas having a directional dimension, and the estimation of the parameters of the models separate regimes. The method we propose here is an application of the switching regimes regression technique developed by Quandt (1958, 1960) for identifying the most likely allocation of n observations into two separate regimes, each associated with a different mechanism that generates its own set of observations. A subsequent purpose is to apply empirically the switching regimes method to the city of Tel-Aviv – Yafo, and discern possible regimes where population densities are generated by different processes.

Economic Development and Population Concentration

Many scholars support the hypothesis that a U-shaped pattern best describes the relationship between economic development and population concentration. At first economic growth leads to population concentration in a few core cities then economic growth leads to population dispersal. Most studies employing international cross-sectional data however fail to confirm this relationship. The author uses time series data from Israel over the period 1922-83 to see if this relationship does exist and whether economic development is the fundamental factor which determines the pattern. A 1-stage cross-sectional time series estimate of population distribution is made in which population concentration is determined by variables such as per capita GNP population density per capita vehicles and total population. These variables with the exception of population density perform well in explaining population concentration through time. This study effectively confirms the U-shaped relationship. Results from additional analyses of other nations may however provide more support.

The Effectiveness of Spline Urban Density Functions: An Empirical Investigation

Recent studies of population distribution in urban settings suggest that cubic-spline functions may be preferable to the conventional exponential form. It is contemplated that this specification is more suitable for untangling, discovering and depicting the complex density patterns of todays relatively dispersed urban areas. This paper examines the usefulness as well as the amenability of the cubic-spline function for describing and testing hypotheses on the processes underlying the determination of population densities in Tel Aviv-Yafo. The principal findings of the analysis are threefold. First, from the theoretical and empirical points of view the cubic-spline function is unlikely to be useful for testing hypotheses. Multicollinearity among distance variables renders the cubic-spline function without much practical merit for this purpose. Secondly, an exponential spline form which does not utilise high-order terms of distance is better suited for this purpose and should therefore be preferred to the cubic-spline. Thirdly, an alternative approach which employs an improved exponential form obtained by incorporating pertinent information on actual patterns of land-use development into the theoretically derived exponential form was highly supported by the data. Utilisation of the latter approach led to an increase in the explanatory power of the model from a mere 0.24 to a respectable 0.83. Indeed, the general lesson to be learned from the analysis is that utilisation of general functional forms cannot by itself correct for possible biases in sample selection, model specification or, for that matter, replace thorough understanding of the processes one is trying to model.

Urban structure with two coexisting and almost completely segregated populations: The case of East and West Jerusalem

Abstract Polycentric population density functions are becoming increasingly popular among urban economists who claim that monocentric functions are inadequate for analyzing population distribution of contemporary, relatively dispersed urban areas. Unfortunately, none of the studies which appeared has been successful in generating a theoretical model amenable to straightforward empirical application. It is even unclear what the relationship is between a polycentric function and the individual functions derived for each center. In this paper we estimate monocentric and duocentric density functions using census tract data for Jerusalem. The somewhat simplified urban structure of this city, which contains two almost completely economically and politically segregated populations, each interacting with its separate central business district (CBD), appears to be advantageous in uncovering the relationships between the monocentric and duocentric functions. The findings of the analysis provide support for the duocentric formulation employed. Whereas the qualitative and quantitative results of the duocentric estimates are similar to those derived with the monocentric model, the best statistical fit of the data is obtained with the duocentric model. These findings enhance the credibility of the duocentric model, because compatibility is expected when dealing with two almost completely segregated populations. Further support is obtained when the model is estimated jointly with the location of the two CBDs. The estimates of the locations of the two CBDs are found to be extremely accurate. This is true for both the monocentric and duocentric regressions.

Determinants of Population Density Gradient in Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area

Urban population density gradients have been traditionally estimated from cross-sectional data. The estimates obtained show a flattening of the gradients through time. Few works have attempted to empirically investigate the determinants of the parameters of the function. In this paper we have specified and estimated a simple model of density gradient which uses pooled cross-sectional and time-series data. The results show that income, size of metropolitan area and a time variable explain well the flattening through time of the density gradient in Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

Population Density Gradients and Urbanisation Measurement

The exponential density function has been used widely to describe and compare the patterning of urban population. In this article it is argued that the exponent within the function can be biassed by the misidentification of the CBD and of the centroids of census tracts. Using a least-squares method it is shown that such misspecification (of the location of the CBD) leads to an underestimation of the gradient, and shows that the magnitude of the bias is itself related to the extent of the distance error by which the CBD is misidentified.

Inter-regional input–output model - the Israeli case

Inter-regional I-O models are particularly useful for analysis of regional development planning aiming at the restructure of the spatial distribution of population and production. In spite of this, implementation of such models is restricted by many data difficulties. This paper reports on some efforts to implement such a model to three regions making up the Israeli economy. The specific application presented focuses on the calculation of various regional output multipliers. The results obtained show that, as far as the relative magnitudes are concerned, the multipliers derived seem reasonable. Furthermore, the general pattern of these multipliers resembles the pattern reported by Rowan for US data.