Raymond E. Owens

Identifying credit crunches

This article emphasizes the role of nonprice rationing in credit crunches. It proposes a process for identifying credit crunches centered on the political economy of the period under study. The process is applied to the U.S. for the 1960-92 period, and a variable is constructed that indicates when credit crunches occurred. In addition, the article questions the conventional wisdom that Regulation Q was the primary cause of the 1960s credit crunches.

Firm fragmentation and urban patterns

We document several empirical regularities regarding the evolution of urban structure in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas over the period 1980-1990. These regularities relate to changes in resident population, employment, occupations, as well as the number and size of establishments in different sections of the metropolitan area. We then propose a theory of urban structure that emphasizes the location and internal structure decisions of firms. In particular, firms can decide to locate their headquarters and operation plants in different regions of the city. Given that cities experienced positive population growth throughout the 1980s, we show that firm fragmentation produces the diverse set of facts documented in the paper.

Housing Externalities: Evidence from Spatially Concentrated Urban Revitalization Programs

Using data compiled from concentrated residential urban revitalization programs implemented in Richmond, VA, between 1999 and 2004, we study residential externalities. Specifically, we provide evidence that in neighborhoods targeted by the programs, sites that did not directly benefit from capital improvements nevertheless experienced considerable increases in land value relative to similar sites in a control neighborhood. Within the targeted neighborhoods, increases in land value are consistent with externalities that fall exponentially with distance. In particular, we estimate that housing externalities decrease by half approximately every 990 feet. On average, land prices in neighborhoods targeted for revitalization rose by 2 to 5 percent at an annual rate above those in the control neighborhood. These increases translate into land value gains of between

Survey evidence of tighter credit conditions: what does it mean?

2 and

Using the Federal Funds Futures Market to Predict Monetary Policy Actions

6 per dollar invested in the program over a six-year period. We provide a simple theory that helps us interpret and estimate these effects.