Haydar Kurban

Do federal spending and tax policies build cities or promote sprawl

Abstract Scholars have long debated the impact of federal spending on metropolitan form. This paper presents a broad study of the extent and influence of recent federal subsidies on suburban land absorption in one major urbanized area, Chicago. The federal government spends considerably more per capita on city residents than on suburbanites. However, the centripetal force generated by this spending pattern is far outweighed by the centrifugal forces resulting from federal housing subsidies. Although much smaller than transfers, federal housing subsidies substantially reduce the price of land in the outer suburbs and hence play a major role in encouraging land absorption.

A Permanent Jobs Program for the U.S.: Economic Restructuring to Meet Human Needs

This paper proposes a jobs program to address both the chronic problems of unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. economy and the debilitating economic and political impacts of growing inequality in the U.S. The jobs program consists of three parts. First, the reduction of unemployment and underemployment by stimulating output, either under public or private auspices, of infrastructure, or social investment, in areas such as: transportation, education, health care, human services, and parks. Second, to recognize and respond to the failure of the private market to provide needed current public services, which will include a massive upgrading of pay and working conditions of these “human service” jobs by expanding public employment, sharing the costs of an enhanced and expanded social safety net. Third, to, explicitly and as a matter of industrial policy, target government investment and overall job growth towards the industries of the future, particularly in the areas of energy, agriculture, and other broadly defined “green” technologies.

Social impact based contingency screening and ranking

This paper develops a new index to rank the contingencies in different partitioned areas of networks. The new index considers the social and economic impacts of the contingencies and ranks them by using an overall index that combines these effects with technical factors. This overall index is implemented in the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC) system. Load flow is run in different scenarios; and real power losses, Available Transmission Capability (ATC), and Expected Socially Unserved Energy (ESUE) are compared.

Do Metropolitan Areas With Rich Central Cities Experience Less Sprawl

This study explores the extent to which richer central cities are associated with slower suburban sprawl. The authors use a unique approach to categorizing municipalities in urbanized areas based on their relative densities. Richness is measured in terms of the central citys relative share of high-income households. The central finding (both for the decade from 1990 to 2000 and for 2000 to 2004) is that although metropolitan areas with rich central cities sprawl somewhat less, the pace of suburban sprawl is primarily driven by metropolitan growth.

The Growth of Local Education Transfers: Explaining How Older Households Have Supported Schools

We argue that previous research studying the relationship between a growing elderly population and local support for public education has overlooked a key component to public education finance: redistribution payments made by older households. A fuller accounting of these payments indicates that a growing elderly population might very well prove to be a boon to local public school students not a burden as has been previously suggested. Beginning with a national sample of suburban school districts, this article shows that a higher elderly to student ratio within a district actually increases per-student revenues, even after accounting for the downward pressure that older households place on tax rates. We then explore a specific channel through which elderly households redistribute resources to school-age children: local property taxes. Focusing on Chicago-area suburban school districts, we show that a rise in a community’s elderly to student ratio actually increases the level of per-student property tax redistribution that occurs.