William M. Bowen

Theoretical and Empirical Considerations Regarding Space in Hedonic Housing Price Model Applications

Recent advances in spatial data analysis are making their way into a variety of applied research settings. Once purely the domain of specialists, increased availability of both spatial data and the software with which to handle them, spatial analysis techniques are diffusing into other areas of research. This article first details the rationale and need for spatial considerations in hedonic price models and focuses on the link between the context of the housing market and the statistical considerations necessary when dealing with spatial data. These issues are then explored via an application to the housing market of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. It was found, first, that explicit modeling of space is not always warranted. One of our two models shows no substantial signs of spatial misspecification. However, in the second model, where diagnostic tests call for the explicit modeling of space, some drastic differences were found between the space-neglected model and the more correctly specified spatial hedonic model. This highlights the need to include spatial diagnostics as part of the standard model-fitting procedure for hedonic house price applications. Copyright 2001 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky.

The Politics and Reality of Environmental Justice: A History and Considerations for Public Administrators and Policy Makers.

This article provides a short history of the environmental justice movement in the United States and discusses four dominant problems in environmental justice discourse. It also will discuss three other aspects of the environmental discourse: weak empirical research; the failure to recognize the distinction between hazard and risk; and the possibility that environmental justice is more about fear, blame, procedural inclusion, and power politics than it is about public health in minority and low–income communities. More rational mechanisms for managing the issue would better serve the ideal of democracy, giving society a better chance of solving public health problems in minority and low–income communities.

Environmental decision models : U.S. experience and a new approach to pollution management

The paper reviews the U.S. experience in using decision models to support environmental policy making. Cost benefit and cost effectiveness are examined in the context of efficiency and equity considerations. Risk assessment and risk benefit analysis is then reviewed in the same framework. A mathematical programming approach to environmental management and industrial efficiency is outlined as a possible alternative to proposed decision support procedures related to monitoring of the pollution reduction progress.

A Thurstonian view of the analytic hierarchy process

Abstract The application of deterministic decision models in situations characterized by noise and uncertainty is likely to produce results of questionable value. In this paper, some very simple probabilistic models are developed and substituted for the deterministic scales used in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). It is shown that the use of these probabilistic models can extend the domain of AHP to situations, such as consensual or group decision making, that possess significant amounts of uncertainty. In addition, explicit measures of the variation present in the evaluation of decision alternatives and attributes are obtained.

Empirical Estimates of the Influence of Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards on the Green Economies of States

The contribution of state renewable energy portfolio standards (RPS) to green business and job growth is controversial. This research estimated the contribution of RPS to state green industrial growth empirically by stipulating and econometrically controlling for a range of state economic growth variables and, having done so, adding RPS variables. Our modeling framework assumed that if RPS have any effect on the green economy in a state, the effect occurs after a period of social and economic adjustment processes that began when the RPS were enacted. Our findings indicate that the presence of RPS have no discernible effect one way or the other on green job growth, but the persistence of RPS through time does cause an increase in the number of green businesses.

Subjective judgements and data envelopment analysis in site selection

Abstract Using subjective judgements as reflected in an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) of site selection, a comparison is made to an objective Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) selection procedure. Similarity in the results are discussed and conditions for expectations of parallel and different results are explored. A two step process of integrating subjective and objective decision making in site selection is posited.

What Is “Urban Studies”? Context, Internal Structure, and Content

ABSTRACT: The record of learned concern with cities is nearly as old as the city itself. In the past several decades, however, a distinct academic field of “Urban Studies” has emerged. This article characterizes the context, internal structure, and content of the field through interviews with leading scholars, probabilistic multidimensional scaling analyses of survey data, and a content analysis of a leading journal. The article concludes that although Urban Studies is in some respects not a bounded “academic discipline,” it is an intellectually coherent, distinctively structured, and promising field of inquiry steered by complex, ever-changing, and often-large-scale realities and real-world problems of evolving human settlements.

Historic designation and the rebuilding of neighborhoods: new evidence of the value of an old policy tool

Rebuilding central cities has focused on big-ticket items such as entertainment complexes and neighborhood-based initiatives. Historic preservation as one neighborhood-based strategy seeks to capitalize on intact collections of historic architecture and the pedestrian-friendly character of these pre-automobile neighborhoods to elevate property values and enhance the tax bases of central cities. While a majority of past studies indicate historic designation does enhance property values, some found no or negative impacts. By quantitatively assessing the impact of local historic district designations on the enhancement of residential property values, this paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between historic preservation and urban revitalization. The multi-city analysis focuses on preservation’s impacts on residential property values and the resulting positive and negative outcomes from district designation.

Comments on "Every Breath You Take: Environmental Justice in Southern California"

At the heart of the research by Sadd, Pas tor, Boer, and Sny der (1999 [this issue]), as I under stand it, is the fol low ing propo si tion: Given any two dif fer ent cen sus tracts in the study region hav ing dif fer ent lev els of envi ron mental risk, yet oth er wise iden ti cal in every respect except for the race or eth nic ity of the resi dents, we expect the cen sus tract sur round ing the more envi ron men tally risky loca tion to be occu pied more by minor ity, lowincome, or oth er wise dis ad van taged resi dents. This propo si tion (or its modi fi ca tions) has become known as the prob lem of envi ron mental jus tice. These research ers con structed some mod els in an attempt to deter mine by induc tion, through sta tis ti cal test ing, whether or to what degree this propo si tion is con sis tent with data gath ered from an admin is tra tive region in south ern Cali for nia. This arti cle is among the best in the often rather bleak larger body of empiri cal research on this prob lem. Inso far as the sta tis ti cal mod els are con cerned, they appear to be rea sona bly well done, with one nota ble excep tion that I will dis cuss in some detail later. Beyond this point, how ever, the arti cle is dis heart en ingly simi lar to much of the larger body of research on the prob lem in two sali ent ways. First, it under con cep tu al izes the reali ties of envi ron mental risk. Sec ond, it fails to pro vide any insight into which of two plau si ble yet fun da men tally dif fer ent causal processes is opera tive, and it is, there fore, largely irrele vant in terms of mak ing bet ter pol icy deci sions. A basic prin ci ple in doing empiri cal research is that the use ful ness of the knowl edge pro duced by any given research proj ect is logi cally lim ited by that pro ject’s research design (Camp bell & Stan ley, 1963). The prac ti cal sig nifi cance of this prin ci ple becomes clear in light of the dis tinc tion between two fun da men tally dif fer ent uses for empiri cal research. On one hand, there is research designed pri mar ily for use in giv ing a sci en tific expla na tion or con trib ut ing to sys tem atic knowl edge within an aca demic dis ci pline. On the other hand, there is research designed for pri mar ily prac ti cal use, such as influ enc ing pub lic pol icy. Mer ton (1959) used the term basic research to label the former type and applied research for the lat ter. Accord ingly, because the knowl edge pro duced by basic research tends to be used for a dif fer ent pur pose from knowl edge pro duced by applied research, the appro pri ate research designs also tend to be dif fer ent. More spe cifi cally, basic research typi cally involves the process of estab lish ing causeandeffect rela tion ships; thus, clas si cal experi men tal designs are often needed. Accord ing to con ven tional think ing about how to estab lish these rela tion ships, there are three dis tinct opera tions required: dem on strat ing covaria tion, elimi nat ing spu ri ous rela tions, and estab lish ing the time order of occur rences. The rea son clas si cal experi men tal designs are often needed is that, of the avail able research designs, only for mal experi ments include pro ce dures for all three opera tions. In applied research, on the other hand, experi ments are far less widely used, pri mar ily because their rigid struc ture can not eas ily be adapted to the rele vant social prob lems. In pub lic pol icy set tings, for exam ple, experi ments are often imprac ti cal because of cost or ethi cal con sid era tions, and also because they tend to be con ducted in

Intelligent Transportation Systems Benefit Priorities: An Application to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge

Abstract This paper reports on an application of the probabilistic multi-dimensional scaling algorithm (PROSCAL) to assess the priority in benefits desired from various intelligent transportation system (ITS) technologies that can be used on the proposed new Woodrow Wilson bridge. A survey of transportation professionals in the Washington Metropolitan Area gathered pair-wise comparison judgment data for nine potential benefits of ITS. From these collective preference orderings were computed, reflecting a robust prioritization of the perceived benefits. Results indicated that improved safety was the highest priority benefit followed by better traffic flow. The analysis demonstrated an alternative to conventional multi-attribute utility models in evaluating transportation decision making.