Hans R.A. Koster

The Location and Global Network Structure of Maritime Advanced Producer Services

Within research on world cities, much attention has been paid to advanced producer services (APS) and their role within both global urban hierarchies and network formation between cities. What is largely ignored is that these APS provide services to firms operating in a range of different sectors. Does sector-specific specialisation of advanced producer services influence the economic geography of corporate networks between cities? If so, what factors might explain this geographical pattern? This paper investigates these theoretical questions by empirically focusing on those advanced producer services related to the port and maritime sector. The empirical results show that the location of AMPS is correlated with maritime localisation economies, expressed in the presence of shipowners and port-related industry as well as APS in general, but not by throughput flows of ports. Based upon the findings, policy recommendations are addressed.

The Impact of Mixed Land Use on Residential Property Values

This discussion paper led to a publication in the Journal of Regional Science (2012). Vol. 52(5), pages 733-761. Contemporary European urban planning policies aim to mix land uses in compact neighbourhoods. It is presumed that mixing land uses yields socio-economic benefits and therefore has a positive effect on housing values. In this paper, we investigate the impact of mixed land use on housing values using semiparametric estimation techniques. We demonstrate that a diverse neighbourhood is positively valued by households. There are various land use types which positively affect house prices, e.g. business services and leisure. Land uses that are incompatible with residential land use are, among others, manufacturing and wholesale. It appears that households are willing to pay up to 6 percent more for a house in a mixed neighbourhood than for an otherwise comparable house in a monofunctional area. We also show that there is substantial heterogeneity in willingness to pay for mixed land use. For example, apartment occupiers are willing to pay almost 25 percent more for diversity than households living in detached housing.

Historic Amenities and Housing Externalities: Evidence from the Netherlands

It has been argued that the growth of cities is increasingly determined by the presence of amenities. We study the economic effects of large scale subsidised investments in historic amenities, by looking at their impact on house prices. We aim to distinguish between the direct and indirect effect of investments. The latter implies a change in the behaviour of neighbours via changes in the level of maintenance of the house. We use a large nationwide dataset with housing transactions from 1985-2011 and data on investments in cultural heritage. To control for the fact that these investments are non-randomly distributed over space we use repeat sales. Furthermore, we construct an instrument based on yearly fluctuations in the size of national subsidy programmes to maintain cultural heritage. We show that a one million euro per square kilometre increase in investments in cultural heritage leads to a price increase of 1.5-3.0 percent of non-targeted buildings. We do not find evidence that the maintenance state of properties that are not eligible for subsidies are improved, suggesting that any price effect due to investments in cultural heritage is a direct effect of investments.

Car Ownership and Residential Parking Subsidies: Evidence from Amsterdam

Many cities around the world have introduced paid parking but implicitly subsidize parking for example by providing residential parking permits for street parking. We study the welfare effects of residential parking subsidies through changes in car ownership for Amsterdam. We employ a boundary-discontinuity design that exploits spatial variation in the length of waiting lists for permits and therefore in the size of the parking subsidy. In the city center, the waiting time for a permit is up to four years. Our results indicate that one additional year of waiting for a parking permit reduces car ownership with 2 percentage points corresponding to a price elasticity of car demand of −0.8. We demonstrate that subsidizing residential parking induces a substantial welfare loss. On average, a parking permit induces an annual deadweight loss of €270. Furthermore, we show that the provision of parking permits is an income-regressive policy: rich households are five times more likely than poor households to receive these (implicit) parking subsidies.

Congestible Goods and Hoarding: A Test Based on Students' Use of University Computers

For certain goods, higher levels of congestion imply higher levels of expected future entry costs. This provides current users of the good with an incentive to hoard, that is, to lengthen their duration of good use, in order avoid entry costs later on. We test for hoarding of university computers by students. Endogeneity of congestion is acknowledged by using an instrumental variable approach. Our results indicate that congestion has a strong effect on hoarding behaviour. More specifically, it is shown that the congestion elasticity of computer duration is about 0.57.

The Impact of Parking Policy on House Prices

Paid parking is the recommended policy tool by economists to deal with excess demand for street parking. However, we know very little about the effects of this policy on residents. This is particularly important in the context that residents have political power and usually vote against paid parking when it is detrimental to residents. Hence, in our analysis, we take into account that residents receive residential parking permits which provides political support for paid parking. We estimate the combined effect of a paid-parking parking policy – i.e. the introduction of paid parking and residential parking permits on residents – by examining its effect on house prices. We focus on Amsterdam and Utrecht using data over a period of 30 years. We do not find any effect of this paid-parking policy on house prices. This finding is consistent with the idea that residents only vote in favor of a local policy when it has no negative impact on their house prices.

Place-based policies and the housing market

We study the economic effects of place-based policies in the housing market, by investigating the effects of a place-based programme on prices of surrounding owner-occupied properties. The programme improved the quality of public housing in 83 impoverished neighbourhoods throughout the Netherlands We combine a first-difference approach with a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design to address the fundamental issue that these neighbourhoods are endogenously treated. Improvements in public housing induced surrounding housing prices to increase by 3.5 percent. The programme’s external benefits are sizeable and at least half of the value of investments in public housing.

Place-Based Policies, Firm Productivity and Displacement Effects: Evidence from Shenzhen, China

We analyse the economic impacts of place-based policies that aim to enhance economic development by stimulating growth and productivity of firms in designated areas. We use unique panel data from China with information on manufacturing firms’ production factors, productivity and location, and we exploit temporal and spatial variation in place-based interventions due to the opening of science parks in the metropolitan area of Shenzhen. The identification strategy enables us to address the issues that (i) science parks are located in favourable locations and that (ii) high-productivity firms sort themselves in science parks. We find that productivity is approximately 15-25 per cent higher due to the policies. The results also show that local wages have increased in science parks. Weaker evidence suggests that displacement effects are sizeable.

Geographic Concentration of Business Services Firms: A Poisson Sorting Model

This paper examines the effects of specialisation (within-sector clustering) and diversity (between-sector clustering) on business services profitability and location choice. We apply a semiparametric Poisson sorting model allowing for firm-specific effects. We find that for most firms, profitability of business services firms is substantially higher close to specialised clusters of business services firms. A standard deviation increase in business services specialisation leads to on average a 40 percent increase in the probability that a business services firm locates there, supporting theories of Marshall, Arrow and Romer. It is also profitable for most business services firms to locate near a group of firms that belong to the same sector, not necessarily business services firms, so diversity is negatively related to location decisions. Almost all firms either benefit from within-sector clustering or between-sector clustering. Within-sector clusters are particularly profitable for large mature firms, whereas between-sector clusters are relatively more profitable for smaller innovative firms.