Matthew Edel

Taxes, Spending, and Property Values: Supply Adjustment in a Tiebout-Oates Model

This paper extends the capitalization approach of Wallace E. Oates to consider supply adjustment in a local public goods market of the sort hypothesized by Charles M. Tiebout. It is shown that Oatess singleperiod cross-section analysis-demonstrated demand conditions approximated Tiebouts hypotheses in a situation in which supply was not in long-run equilibrium. Analysis of capitalization of taxes, school expenditures, and road maintenance expenditures over five successive census periods in the Boston area indicates a move toward equilibrium in the market for schooling, but not in all other markets for local public goods.

The distribution of real estate value changes: Metropolitan Boston, 1870–1970

Abstract This paper presents estimates of land value change and other measures of real estate value change for the Boston areas 78 towns and cities over the past 100 years. A flattening of the real estate value gradient over time is demonstrated. Given the pattern of land ownership in the Boston area, a higher rate of value increases at greater distances from the center is shown to imply a regressive distribution of capital gains with respect to wealth among the homeowner population. Returns to homeowning are compared with returns to alternative business assets indicating some possible factors in the persistence of wealth inequality.

Uneven Regional Development: An Introduction to This Issue

areas. Rapid and disruptive resource or industrial development elsewhere induces opposition from local economic interests. People in depressed areas such as Atlantic Canada, the Italian Mezzogiorno and Appalachia grow restive as program after program fail to alleviate their plight. The left has generally welcomed regionally-based militancy, but the fear persists that regional issues may divide the working class. As radical political economists, we wish to respond to these situations, but our analyses are themselves underdeveloped. There are few applicable discussions of uneven spatial development, or of class formation and conflict within a spatial dimension. Those that exist have been focused on cases

Urban Renewal and Land Use Conflicts

Economic critiques of urban renewal have used two lines of argument. In most cases, the replacement of old neighborhoods by new buildings for business, institutional or higher-value residential use is accepted as a proper function of government, but the failure of the authorities to provide new low-income housing or adequate monetary compensation for those evicted is condemned. (1) Conservatives like Martin Anderson have attacked government land-taking as an interference with the market for the benefit of special interests, implying that blocking urban renewal would strengthen capitalism. (2) Neither critique, however, places urban renewal within an overall description of land use changes in a metropolitan area or within

Economic Costs of Aneuploidy: Some Problems of Measurement and Conceptualization

This chapter analyzes some problems in measuring economic burdens of aneuploidy. Examining the costs of aneuploidy requires an appropriate means of measurement or estimation. We reviewed studies in the light of debates over cost-benefit analysis, and suggest that some burdens have been misspecified or omitted (e.g., Ref. 32 and 36). We then suggest that if they are properly accounted for, reduction of aneuploidy risks can be shown to have major economic benefits. This suggests the importance of research directed toward reduction of such risks.

Land Policy, Economic Cycles, and Social Conflict

Christine Boyer’s analysis of the historical relation of land policy to long waves is here placed in the context of wider debates on the long wave theory. This chapter discusses technological and conflict approaches to the explanation of long waves. Differences between these approaches in their explanations of both downswings and upswings are examined. The two approaches are applied to urban and suburban growth and land use policies, and to rural land use and resources policies over the past century.

Property values and city size in Colombia

It is often argued that many Third World cities have become “too large,” on various criteria, for national well-being. In some countries serious-even heated -debate has begun over whether urban growth should be encouraged or discouraged. The debate over “urban policy” has been particularly intense in Colombia. Colombia’s largest city, Bogota, has still not reached the size of the largest Latin American capitals, and a relatively large number of cities in intermediate size ranges has kept varied policy options open. Nevertheless, Colombian policy-makers have been openly concerned that the country’s urban growth might be distorted. Recent Colombian administrations have differed over whether development investments should be centred in the largest cities, or in smaller regional centres. The rival positions have been stated articulately by Gilbert (1976) and Currie (1975), respectively.