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Land-use regulations and property values in Portland, Oregon: A regression discontinuity design approach
Abstract
Over the past two decades, the tension between public and private interests in the use of land has given rise to state-level legislation seeking to limit government controls on private property. In 2004, voters in Oregon approved Measure 37, which required payments to private landowners for reductions in the value of their property resulting from land-use regulations. The central economic question behind Measure 37 and compensation statutes adopted in other states is, what is the effect of land-use regulations on property values? Economists investigating this question have typically estimated hedonic property value models with regulations included as exogenous regressors. This approach is likely to be invalid if the parcel characteristics that determine property values also influence the government's decision about how to implement regulations. We use Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to study the effect of the Portland, Oregon, Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) on property values. RDD provides an unbiased estimate of the treatment effect under relatively mild conditions and is well-suited to our application because the UGB defines a sharp treatment threshold. We find a price differential on the western and southern sides of the Portland metropolitan area ranging from $30,000 to at least $140,000, but no price differential on the eastern side. Support for Measure 37 was fueled by price differences such as these among parcels subject to different regulations, but one must be careful not to view current price differentials as evidence that regulations have reduced property values.
... Some authors nd no effects of UGBs on housing market outcomes (Pendall 1999(Pendall , 2000Jun 2004;Cho, Chen, Yen, and Eastwood 2006;Cho, Omitaomu, Poudyal, and Eastwood 2007), consistent with the idea that regulation follows the market (Quigley and Rosenthal 2005). Other authors have found signi cant effects of UGBs on land prices (Knaap 1985;Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga 2011), housing prices (Phillips and Goodstein 2000;Cho, Chen, and Yen 2008), urban area size (Wassmer 2006), rates of land conversion to urban uses (Kline and Alig 1999;Cunningham 2007;Dempsey and Plantinga 2013), residential construction (Jackson 2016), and relative prices for urban and exurban lands (Bigelow and Plantinga 2017). Newburn and Berck (2006) study how access to municipal services, which in their study region is closely related to UGB designations, affects the density of development. ...
... 16 SOAR has two unique characteristics compared to growth restrictions imposed elsewhere. First, it does not provide a mechanism for automatically expanding UGBs to accommodate future growth, as is the case with UGBs in Oregon (Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga 2011). In addition, any zoning change permitting future development outside the UGBs must be approved by a majority vote of the county elec- 14 The city of Ventura adopted growth controls earlier, as explained below. ...
... 39 We select a sample of parcels that fall within one-eighth-mile buffers on both sides of UGBs in Ventura County and SOI lines in Santa Barbara County. For each county, we estimate the following local linear regression model, as in Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga (2011): ...
... The economic effects of UGMPs show several tensions and complexities. For example, 60 % of studies report that UGMPs have to some degree increased house and/or land values (Ball, Cigdem, Taylor, & Wood, 2014;Bigelow & Plantinga, 2017;Cho, Chen, & Yen, 2008;Downs, 2002;Grout, Jaeger, & Plantinga, 2011;Hascic & Wu, 2012;Ma & Jin, 2019;Mace, 2018;Mathur, 2014;Nelson, 1985Nelson, , 1986Nelson, , 1988Phillips & Goodstein, 2000;Woo & Guldmann, 2014;P. Zhao, 2011). ...
... At the inter-regional scale, economic effects of UGMPs were found to differ. For example, multiple studies, in multiple states showed that different housing types were affected differently by UGBs (Mathur, 2019;McMillan & Lee, 2017) as well as where they were located regionally (Grout et al., 2011). Further research found that UGB effected house prices depending on residents preferred amenities; benefiting those who preferred urban amenities (Bigelow & Plantinga, 2017). ...
Urban growth management policies (UGMPs), which include green belts and urban growth boundaries seek to prevent urban sprawl in neighbouring peri-urban and rural landscapes. However, the wider social, environmental, and economic impacts these policies have on the landscapes they govern is unclear and contested. This paper undertakes a structured review of academic literature in Scopus investigating these wider UGMPs functions, impacts and effects beyond urban sprawl. A systematic key word search and a two-stage sieving process of the global literature identified 115 relevant academic publications across disciplines. This review found a diverse range of social and environmental functions of UGMPs zones, including as ecological corridors, sinks for climate regulation and recreational landscapes. Mixed methods and interdisciplinary studies are lacking, but multiple ecosystem services provided by UGMP zones were found in limited examples. However, cultural ecosystem services were rarely assessed alongside regulating and provisioning services and multiple ecosystem services have not been explicitly studied in US and English UGMP zones. Conversely, UGMPs are shown to have complex economic effects on land and housing markets, as well as creating contentious spaces. Currently, these findings are largely location based, making it hard to distinguish between site-specific and cross-cutting effects and functions, presenting a potential challenge for policy makers. To better understand the value of these zones to society and unlock their potential as multifunctional opportunity spaces in addressing climate, biodiversity and health challenges, more holistic and interdisciplinary research is needed into UGMP zones.
... We develop a new dataset by linking agricultural variables, current land ownership, and historic land allocation to compare fee-simple and tribal trust lands in the neighborhood of the 1905 allotment boundary using a spatial regression discontinuity (RD) design. A similar empirical strategy has been widely applied in the literature to identify the effect of a variety of institutional settings (see, for instance, Bayer et al. 2007;Dell 2010;Grout et al. 2011;Dachiset al. 2011;Dell 2015;Card and Giuliano 2016;Pan et al. 2018). ...
... years to study intervention or treatment effects(Bayer et al 2007;Dell 2010;Grout et al. 2011;Dachis et al. 2011;Dell 2015; Card and Giuliano 2016;Pan et al. 2018). Because the ownership status of parcels in 2017 may be determined in part by characteristics which also determine suitability for irrigated agriculture, we exploit the 1905 land allotment to explore the impacts of tribal trust ownership on current agricultural outcomes. ...
American Indian reservations have low incomes and high rates of poverty relative to adjacent communities, and the income gap appears to be even larger for Indian farmers. We examine the extent to which a lack of access to capital might explain these differences using irrigation systems as a proxy for on‐farm investment around the Uintah‐Ouray Indian Reservation in eastern Utah. Uintah land is held in trust by the US government, and farmers on this land face significant barriers to acquiring capital to invest in irrigation equipment and infrastructure. We use the boundaries from a 1905 land allotment as a natural experiment, employing both sharp and fuzzy regression discontinuity designs to explore whether agricultural land use, irrigation levels, irrigation investment, and crop choice differ across the boundary. The original allocation provided similar land in the immediate neighborhood around its borders, and our results suggest that today tribal trust land is farmed and irrigated at rates similar to adjacent land. However, conditional on being irrigated, tribal trust land is around thirty‐two percentage points less likely to utilize capital‐intensive sprinkler irrigation, and up to ten percentage points less likely to grow high‐value crops. Trust ownership, which is characterized by cumbersome bureaucratic processes, limits on agricultural lease flexibility, and the inability to use land as collateral to acquire loans, is a likely explanation for the observed differences.
... Although such restrictions can provide benefits to a city's residents by separating incompatible land uses and preserving open space amenities, land-use regulations may also come at the cost of higher land and housing costs (Quigley and Rosenthhal, 2005). There is a large literature in economics examining the effects of land-use regulations on housing and land prices (e.g., Ihlanfeldt, 2007, Zhou et al., 2008, Kahn et al., 2010, Grout et al., 2011, Kok et al., 2014, rates of land development (Cunningham, 2007, Dempsey andPlantinga, 2013), and housing starts (Mayer and Somerville, 2000). The price analyses typically measure the net effects of regulation by estimating the combined effect of demand and supply shifts on equilibrium prices. ...
... 18 In cross-sectional analyses, Ma and Swinton (2012) suggest that farmland RMVs may be less reliable in identifying the marginal implicit price of dynamically evolving environmental goods, while Grout et al. (2011) find a close correspondence between sales transaction prices and RMVs in Portland, OR. 19 In each of the four counties, the 2000 database of parcel RMVs is available in digital format. Collecting data for earlier panel years (1973, 1980, 1986, and 1992), however, required manual searches of paper and microfiche records. ...
Urban growth controls can preserve open space and other amenities, but may come at the expense of higher land and housing prices. Previous studies quantify the benefits and costs of land-use regulations by comparing properties subject to differing degrees of regulatory intensity. A separate, but related, issue is how housing and land markets will evolve over time when a set of regulations remains in place. We examine how the value of developed land changes over time in cities that have adopted urban growth boundaries (UGBs). We present a theoretical model that combines equilibrium sorting, spatially-varying amenities, and urban growth controls. The model is used to examine how prices for developed lands inside and outside the UGB change with growth in the city's population. The UGB is shown to increase relative prices of exurban lands outside the UGB if new residents prefer the amenities in this area. The UGB also affects relative prices by influencing the quality of developed lands. We use a parcel-level panel data set on developed land values to quantify the scarcity and quality effects of UGBs in Oregon. Our results suggest that, overall, UGBs have prevented the development of exurban lands that residents would have preferred over lands closer to the urban center.
... Examples include breaks in soil types, administrative borders, protected areas borders, fishing zones and land use zones, species ranges. Chay and Greenstone (2004), Grout et al. (2011), Imbens and Lemieux (2008), Lee and Card (2008), and Lee and Lemieux (2009) Difference-in-differences Where there are observations before and after a treatment. Examples include population dynamics before and after the introduction of a pathogen or the extirpation of a top predator, protected areas if pre-treatment data is available, wars, socioeconomic shocks. ...
... Regression discontinuity design (RDD) accounts for omitted variable bias by exploiting a discontinuity in either space, time, or policy to separate observations into treatment and control groups (Imbens & Lemieux 2008;Lee & Lemieux 2009;Grout, Jaeger, & Plantinga 2011). The key assumption is that at the discontinuity, unobservables are equal between treated and control observations. ...
Many systems and processes in ecology cannot be experimentally controlled, either because the temporal and spatial scales are too broad, or because it would be unethical. Examples include large wildfires, alternative conservation strategies, removal of top predators, or the introduction of invasive species. Unfortunately, many of these phenomena also do not occur randomly in time or space, and this can lead to different biases (selection bias, unobserved variable bias) in statistical analyses. Economics has evolved largely without experiments, and developed statistical approaches to study "quasi-experiments", i.e., situations were changes in time or space reveal relationships even in the absence of a controlled experiment. The goal of our paper was to compare and evaluate four quasi-experimental statistical approaches commonly used in economics, (1) matching, (2) regression discontinuity design, (3) difference-in-differences models, and (4) instrumental variables, in terms of their relevance for ecological research. We contrast the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and provide a detailed tutorial to demonstrate these approaches. We suggest that quasi-experimental methods offer great potential for investigating many phenomena and processes in ecological and coupled human-natural systems. Furthermore, quasi-experimental methods are common in environmental policy research and policy recommendations by ecologists may be more valuable when based on these methods.
... Most of them relied on the hedonic pricing approaches (Grout et al., 2011), where the regulatory variables are considered as explanatory variables of land prices. Le Goffe and Salanié (2005) have for example used this approach to investigate the influence of livestock manure limits in France. ...
... Therefore, they specified two equations, one for the PVM and one where the dependent variable was the government subsidies and land returns are within the determinants. In the case of land-use restrictions, Grout et al. (2011) underline that zoning may be decided based upon land characteristics (e.g. soil quality) and therefore specific econometric methods must be used, such as instrumental approaches or matching techniques. ...
After reviewing the Present Value Model (PVM), in its basic form and with its major extensions, the authors carried out a literature review on the instrumental uses of farm land prices; namely what land prices may reveal in the framework of the PVM. Urban influence, non-market goods and climate change are topics where the PVM used with applied data may reveal farmers’ or landowners’ beliefs or subjective values, which are discussed in this paper. There is also extensive discussion of the topic of public regulations, and how they may affect land price directly, or through its present value.
... 3 These statutes require governments to consider the impact of land-use regulations on private property values but do not restrict a government's authority to impose and enforce such regulations. This ambiguity is reflected in the empirical literature, which has quantified restriction effects (Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga 2011;Ihlanfeldt 2007;Nickerson and Lynch 2001), amenity effects (Mahan, Polasky, and Adams 2000;Netusil 2005), and scarcity effects (Phillips and Goodstein 2000;Quigley and Raphael 2005). In a literature survey, Pogodzinski and Sass (1991) found little agreement on the net effect of municipal zoning. ...
... This approach assumes that the unregulated property's value provides a valid counterfactual for the regulated property's value. This method, which often identifies substantial differences in value (Grout et al. 2011), became the standard practice under Oregon's Measure 37 (see, e.g., Martin and Shriver 2006). However, this approach ignores the fact that when land-use regulations are introduced, there is a shift in the supply and demand for property. ...
Land-use regulations are contentious everywhere because of their potential negative effects on private property values. In
recent years, so-called pay or waive compensation legislation was passed in a number of US states, requiring governments to
compensate property owners for losses due to land-use regulations or grant exemptions from the regulations in lieu of compensation.
We provide an overview of the compensation statutes in six US states, discuss the economic issues raised by the statutes,
and examine the effects of the statutes in practice. Although these laws require that “just compensation” be estimated accurately
and consistently, measuring the effects of land-use regulations on property values is extremely challenging in practice. We
find that rather than providing relief to property owners unfairly burdened by land-use regulations, the compensation statutes
appear primarily to discourage local governments from developing and implementing land-use regulations. (JEL: Q24, R52)
... The Yellow River basin in terms of the policy is a natural test site for quasi-random experiments. In reference to relevant studies [40][41][42], firstly, PSM was used to match the treatment group and control group, and the control group that was most similar to the treatment group was selected to increase the comparability of the samples. Secondly, DID was used to analyze the driving effect of the policy implementation on the near and distant neighbors along the Yellow River basin. ...
As an important way to innovate the pattern of land reform, the land system pilots serve as the crucial driving force in promoting rural economic development under the background of rural revitalization. Based on the panel data of 10 pilots along the Yellow River basin, this paper chose 111 near and distant neighboring regions from 2009 to 2018. This paper tested the spillover effects and regional heterogeneity characteristics of the land system pilots using the propensity score matching-difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) method and regression discontinuity design (RDD). The results are as follows: first, the land system pilots have a significant and general impact on regional economic development; second, the establishment of the land system pilots has different impacts on the economic development of near and distant neighboring regions, which shows obvious policy-effect spillovers; and third, the land system pilots have the strongest stimulating effect on the economic development of the middle reaches of the Yellow River basin, as well as the weakest stimulating effect on upstream regional economic development, which shows the significant spatial heterogeneity of policy effects. The results of the research study are of great significance for the exploration of regionally differentiated system-supply pilots under the background of rural revitalization. Additionally, this study has important implications for further land system improvements and rural economic developments.
... Studies have included: walkability using walk score (Pivo and Fisher 2011, Rauterkus and Miller 2011, Li et al. 2015; urban design features using space syntax (Matthews andTurnbull 2007, Xiao et al. 2016); new urbanism principles (Tu and Eppli 1999, Plaut and Boarnet 2003, Song and Knaap 2003, 2004, Krause and Bitter 2012, Sohn et al. 2012; transit accessibility and transit orientated design (McDonald and Osuji 1995, Ryan 1999, Cervero and Duncan 2002, McMillen and McDonald 2004, Hess and Almeida 2007, Duncan 2011, Chatman et al. 2012, Kay et al. 2014, Bohman and Nilsson 2016, Higgins and Kanaroglou 2016, Forouhar and Hasankhani 2018, Filippova and Sheng 2020, Bohman 2021 and parks, open spaces and trees (Luttik 2000, Payton et al. 2008, Sander et al. 2010, McCord et al. 2014, Pandit et al. 2014, Tapsuwan and Polyakov 2016, Donovan et al. 2019. Hedonic modelling has also been used to value broad urban planning issues including relationships with landfills and toxic waste sites (Michaels and Smith 1990, Kohlhase 1991, Thayer et al. 1992, Arimah and Adinnu 1995; road and aircraft noise (Nelson 1982, Cohen and Coughlin 2008, Wen et al. 2020) and the urban growth boundary (Knaap 1985, Phillips and Goodstein 2000, Jun 2006, Cho et al. 2008, Grout et al. 2011, Mathur 2019. However, none of these studies consider area-level socio-economic disadvantage explicitly. ...
Cities are socio-spatially patterned, yet few researchers have explored the association between walkability and house prices by neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage, highlighting issues about housing affordability, equity, and liveability. We aimed to determine whether walkability and house prices differed by neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage. To test this, we used linear regression models of house prices stratified by quintiles of neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage at the suburb level in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia on walkability and its components (street connectivity, dwelling density, and destination access), and public transit access. Walkability was positively associated with house prices. In the stratified regressions, destination accessibility was associated with higher house prices whilst having poor access to transit was negatively associated with house prices. The association between walkability and house prices was weakest for the most disadvantaged areas, suggesting that houses in these areas were more affordable due, in part, to a lack of amenity. Future planning could redress the relationship between walkability and house prices by making new areas walkable. Increasing densities in outer suburban areas would improve destination and transit access, and in established areas, inclusionary zoning policies could help ensure accessibility to social and affordable housing in amenity-rich areas redressing built environment inequities.
... To estimate the causal effects of fare-free transit on travel behavior among older adults, this study employs the RD method. Frequently used in quasi-experimental research, the RD method is intended to measure the causal impact of a policy intervention whose treatment assignment is determined by a threshold rule (e.g., Crost and Guerrero, 2012;Grout et al., 2011). The RD analysis is premised on the basic assumption that the distribution of observable and unobservable characteristics of individuals close to the age-65 threshold are distributed smoothly across the policy threshold (Giuntella and Mazzonna, 2019). ...
This study examines how a transportation policy enabling free subway travel for older adults affects their travel behavior. It improves upon previous research by identifying the causal effects of a fare-free transit policy for older adults on a wider range of travel behavior. Using a regression discontinuity research design, this study investigates how eligibility for fare-free subway rides (the age-65 threshold) influences travel behavior among older adults in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea. The results show that the fare-free subway policy for older adults increases the number of subway trips, which partly replaces trips by other transportation modes. Specifically, a discrete jump in the number of subway trips at age 65 replaces some auto trips and contributes to a significant reduction in household vehicle ownership. However, eligibility for the subway fare exemption has no statistically significant effects on outcomes related to social/leisure trips, although it does have varying impact on active travel by the level of household income. In addition to offering valuable lessons for cities with a similar policy, the findings of this study inform current debates on the fare-free subway policy in South Korea.
... These policies may have adverse side effects (Koster et al., 2012). Land use regulations may also reduce property value (Grout et al., 2011). Since 2004, the new land grant institution in China has resulted in low efficiency due to the housing and land market information asymmetry imbalance (Du et al., 2010). ...
Land value appreciation in the urbanization process has triggered market speculation. The Land Bank System strengthens local governments’ ability to control land supply and distribution rights. Local governments are considered close stakeholders. Under the pressure of guaranteeing economic growth and promotion, local governments have increased their dependence on land finances. It is important for investors to understand the local governments’ behaviors, and draw up business strategies. This study aims to examine the influencing factors and formation mechanism of local government land hoarding. The research hypothesis was tested by collating provincial-level panel data of China from 2004 to 2015 and using dynamic panel data estimated by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). A significant positive correlation was found between residential land price and land hoarding area by local governments. Land speculation in the eastern region is also more pronounced than that in central and western regions. In addition, empirical studies have found a correlation between the degree of government intervention and local government land hoarding behavior. The higher the degree of government intervention, the less land sold through bid invitation, auction, and listing, which are linked to the corresponding hoarding land area.
... Land value does not follow any strict geographic or administrative boundary, and it varies regionally than based on administrative boundaries (Grout et al., 2011). Some of the factors influencing land value are found to be shared across different urban centers, while certain others are unique to specific areas. ...
Purpose
Land value is a measure of the specific features of a property, excluding buildings and other developments. Land value varies depending on the economic, geographic and political aspects of a particular location. The primary purpose of the paper is to identify the general and location-specific attributes impacting property prices in urban Kerala.
Design/methodology/approach
The objective of the current study was achieved through a three-cycle Delphi survey and relative importance index (RII) approach. The experts who aided in the survey had a mutual interest in the subject but came from different backgrounds like property valuation, real estate, urban and environmental planning. The initial group of variables identified from the literature was expanded and scrutinized in the first cycle of the Delphi survey. The variables were grouped into five major categories and 13 subcategories based on the literature and expert opinion. In the subsequent stages, the short-listed variables were rated on a seven-point Likert scale until a consensus was attained. The top-ranked variables were identified through the RII method as the critical factors influencing land value in urban Kerala.
Findings
The results indicate that road accessibility and proximity to nuisance sources are the most crucial parameters. The outcome of the study will provide a better understanding of the dynamics of land value and the influencing factors in urban areas.
Originality/value
Previous studies do not give much consideration for the location-specific variability on the influencing parameters. Property management research has not considered the usage of expert opinion and RII for variable selection.
... Previous work has used RMVs to investigate the effects of urban growth boundaries in Oregon(Grout et al. 2011;Bigelow and Plantinga 2017).12 In addition, information about eligibility by parcel is available on a website maintained by the State of Oregon: https://www.coastalatlas.net/index.php/tools/planners/67-ocean-shores-viewer ...
Estimating non-market benefits for erosion protection can help inform better decision-making and policies for communities to adapt to climate change. We estimate private values for a coastal protection option in an empirical setting subject to irreversible loss from coastal erosion and a land-use policy that provides identifying variation in the parcel-level option to invest in protection. Using post-matching regressions and accounting for potential spillovers, we find evidence that the value of the erosion protection option is between 13 to 22 percent of land price for parcels vulnerable to coastal hazards, implying that owners of oceanfront parcels have a subjective annual probability that they will experience an irreversible loss absent the option to protect between 0.7-1.3 percent. We also find that, because of altered shoreline wave dynamics, a parcel with a private protection option generates a spillover effect on protection-ineligible neighbors, lowering the value of neighboring land by 8 percent.
... To cope with traffic congestion in a denser urban space, road infrastructure might need to be improved ( Çolak, Lima, & González, 2016 ). In addition, realizing a more compact urban form via land use restrictions can come at a cost to residents due to higher housing prices ( Grout, Jaeger, & Plantinga, 2011;Leibowicz, 2017 ). Urban space is a complex system that involves tradeoffs among myriad conflicting objectives, and the literature largely lacks a theoretical framework for guiding urban land use and transportation planning strategies to reduce GHG emissions while limiting adverse impacts. ...
Cities account for 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, and their share is increasing due to rapid urbanization. While compact urban forms with public transit are viewed as important strategies for reducing emissions, environmental benefits must be weighed against the costs of public transit infrastructure, road improvements to alleviate congestion in dense urban space, and more expensive housing resulting from land use restrictions. The literature largely lacks a theoretical framework for assessing these tradeoffs. This paper derives analytical insights into urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation by formulating a social planner’s utility maximization problem. The planner chooses the residential densities of urban zones as well as investments in road and public transit infrastructures that link these zones to the city center. Road travel is subject to congestion. Any feasible solution must accommodate a fixed total population and ensure that residents of all zones have the same maximum utility. GHG emissions associated with housing, road travel, and public transit generate damages. Analytical results show that incorporating GHG damages into urban planning always leads to an optimal solution with a more compact urban form, and reduces automobile travel in each zone if a specific condition involving the marginal congestion cost and the marginal effectiveness of road investment is satisfied. Numerical examples demonstrate that near-optimal emissions reductions and utility improvements can be achieved via public transit investment and mode shifting even if the planner inherits and cannot modify a suboptimal land use and road configuration.
... To cope with traffic congestion in a denser urban space, road infrastructure might need to be improved (Ç olak et al., 2016). In addition, realizing a more compact urban form via land use restrictions can come at a cost to residents due to higher housing prices (Grout et al., 2011;Leibowicz, 2017). Urban space is a complex system that involves tradeoffs among myriad conflicting objectives, and the literature largely lacks a theoretical framework for guiding urban land use and transportation planning strategies to reduce GHG emissions while limiting adverse impacts. ...
Cities account for 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, and their share is increasing due to rapid urbanization. While compact urban forms with public transit are viewed as important strategies for reducing emissions, environmental benefits must be weighed against the costs of public transit infrastructure, road improvements to alleviate congestion in dense urban space, and more expensive housing resulting from land use restrictions. The literature largely lacks a theoretical framework for assessing these tradeoffs. This paper derives generalizable, analytical insights into urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation by formulating a social planner's utility maximization problem. The planner chooses the residential densities of urban zones as well as investments in road and public transit infrastructures that link these zones to the city center. Road travel is subject to congestion. Any feasible solution must accommodate a fixed total population and ensure that residents of all zones have the same maximum utility. GHG emissions associated with housing, road travel, and public transit generate damages. Analytical results show that incorporating GHG damages into urban planning always leads to an optimal solution with a more compact urban form and greater overall public transit use. Even though central zones absorb more households, the optimal absolute level of road travel declines in every zone. Numerical examples demonstrate that near-optimal emissions reductions and utility improvements can be achieved via public transit investment and mode shifting even if the planner inherits and cannot modify a suboptimal land use and road configuration.
... Finally, the authors include an indicator variable Coast i in order to account for the housing market characteristics unique to coastal cities. Model 5: VAAPs and housing equity. Various studies suggest that the housing market may be markedly differentiated with respect to the property value (Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga 2012). Highvalue properties and low-value properties can be treated differently in the housing market. ...
Oregon is known for its strict Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) policies. While UGBs are designed to accommodate land supply for 20 years of growth, land within UGBs must be annexed into city limits before it can be developed at urban densities and serviced. In Oregon, cities use a variety of municipal annexation and voter-approved annexation policies (VAAPs), providing an opportunity to study how different annexation policies affect land and housing markets, and affect urban density. Previous research on annexation has not considered how annexation policy influences housing values. This paper examines how VAAPs impact land growth, housing development, and density at the city level. It also examines how VAAPs impact housing values. Based on city-level and tax-lot-level statistical analyses from 107 cities outside Portland Metro area, the results suggest that VAAPs negatively impact the availability of developable land within city limits. VAAPs also positively impact residential density and housing value. Lastly, VAAPs inequitably affect housing value between relatively high-value housing and relatively low-value housing, posing economic equity impacts for lower value housing. These findings provide important lessons for Oregon and other states. While VAAPs may increase residential density in cities, the policies may exacerbate affordability problems.
... Although population-land conflicts involve both social and physical contexts, unfortunately existing research measures either social or physical contexts rather than both. The social context of population-land conflicts is determined by multiple social or socioeconomic subcomponents, such as legal regulation (Grout et al., 2011;Lestrelin et al., 2012), social/environmental policy (Lambin et al., 2014), economic values of lands (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010), and social networks (Barton, 2009;Marull et al., 2010). These subcomponents under the social context are, however, more ontological and theoretical and cannot be directly measured by the sizes of lands. ...
Abstract The past century has witnessed rapidly increasing population-land conflicts due to exponential population growth and its many consequences. Although the measures of population-land conflicts are many, there lacks a model that appropriately considers both the social and physical contexts of population-land conflicts. In this study we introduce the concept of population stress, which identifies areas with populations growing faster than the lands available for sustainable development. Specifically, population stress areas are identified by comparing population growth and land development as measured by land developability in the contiguous United States from 2001 to 2011. Our approach is based on a combination of spatial multicriteria analysis, zonal statistics, and spatiotemporal modelling. We found that the population growth of a county is associated with the decrease of land developability, along with the spatial influences of surrounding counties. The Midwest and the traditional “Deep South” counties would have less population stress with future land development, whereas the Southeast Coast, Washington State, Northern Texas, and the Southwest would face more stress due to population growth that is faster than the loss of suitable lands for development. The factors contributing to population stress may differ from place to place. Our "population stress" concept is useful and innovative for understanding population stress due to land development and can be applied to other regions as well as global research. It can act as a basis towards developing coherent sustainable land use policies. Coordination among local governments and across different levels of governments in the twenty-first century is a must for effective land use planning.
... Jun (2004) finds evidence that the UGB has not successfully contained urban sprawl or reduced automobile use, partly due to spillover effects to nearby counties not covered by the UGB. However, several empirical studies confirm that the UGB causes property values within the boundary to exceed those outside it, indicating that the regulation is a binding constraint on development (Grout, Jaeger, & Plantinga, 2011;Mildner, Dueker, & Rufolo, 1996). While they attest to the influence of the UGB, higher housing prices can be problematic. ...
... By the year 2000, the UGB premium is roughly 60%, which, on average, equates to a per-acre gain in land values of $46,000. This effect is at the lower end of the range of estimates produced by Grout et al. (2011), which should be expected, given that the Grout et al. study focuses on the high-priced Portland Metro area. ...
Effects on water resources are an understudied aspect of the environmental consequences of urbanization. We study how urban land development affects water withdrawals on a regional scale to account for market adjustments, human behavioral responses, and government institutions. Fine-scale econometric and simulation methods are used to represent the spatial heterogeneity associated with determinants of water withdrawals. Our analysis reveals a complicated relationship between future water withdrawals and changes in socioeconomic drivers. Despite population growth of approximately 85% and a doubling of income, water withdrawals in two urban areas increase by at most 12% and in another area, decrease slightly. © 2017 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
... Portland presents a notable contrast to Charlotte, with much higher walkability overall and less concentrated SV. Despite rising property values driven in part by the region's UGB (Grout et al. 2011), high SV/disadvantaged groups appear to have much better access to high walkability neighbourhoods in Portland than in Charlotte. High SV BGs also tended to be less clustered in Portland than in Charlotte, with better access to rail/BRT systems potentially offsetting the lower mobility imposed by low walkable environments. ...
This study examines the spatial and statistical relationships between social vulnerability (SV) and neighbourhood walkability across three large U.S. cities with different urban typologies and development patterns: Charlotte, NC (a low-density, fast-growing “Sunbelt” city); Pittsburgh, PA (a moderate density, shrinking “Rust Belt” city); and Portland, OR (a progressive West Coast city known for its sprawl-containment policies). Binary logistic regression, independent-samples t-tests, and mapping techniques are employed to determine whether neighbourhoods with high SV (i.e. older populations, higher poverty rates, more service occupations, lower educational attainment, and a higher proportion of minorities) are as likely as those with low SV to exhibit a high degree of walkability. The publically available Walk Score® metric, based on proximity to amenities, street network connectivity, and density, was used as a proxy for neighbourhood walkability. The results indicate significant variability among cities, with Charlotte exhibiting the greatest potential for inequitable access to walkable urban environments and the most prominent concentration of “walk-vulnerable” block groups (BGs) with high SV and low walkability. Both Portland and Pittsburgh exhibited more equitable access when comparing BGs with high and low SV; however, they each presented unique spatial patterns, visualised using a series of maps.
... SeePinkse and Slade (2010),McMillen (2010McMillen ( , 2012,Gibbons and Overman (2012),and Brady and Irwin (2012) for further discussions of the criticisms of standard spatial econometrics models.4 We also note that the increasing influence of urban demands on farmland raises questions about whether time series properties differ between farmland subject to urban influence and farmland that is not.The reader is referred to van der Klaauw (2008),Imbens and Lemieux (2008), andLee and Lemieux (2010) for excellent reviews of RDD, and toBlack (1999),Chay and Greenstone (2005),Greenstone and Gallagher (2008), andGrout et al. (2011) for applications of RDD in urban housing market studies. ...
Farmland has long represented a significant component of both farm sector and farm household assets. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of significant developments in modeling farmland values, with attention to methodological challenges and recent modeling innovations. After outlining the capitalization model that provides the theoretical underpinnings for most farmland value studies, the merits and efficacy of dynamic models using aggregate data, as well as increasingly popular cross-sectional hedonic models that use spatially disaggregate data are presented. Estimation issues in hedonic models are reviewed, with a focus on those deserving special consideration in the context of farmland values such as spatial dependence and heterogeneity and sample selection bias. Promising future research directions include greater use of nonparametric approaches, quasi-experimental designs, panel data analyses, and structural econometric models, which take advantage of spatially explicit farmland values data but avoid the restrictive assumptions of standard spatial lag and spatial error models.
... The variable that underscores the threshold is referred to as the running variable. A wide range of running variables have been used in the literature, including: class size limits (Angrist & Lavy 1999); election vote shares in the public sphere (Lee (2008), Caughey & Sekhon (2011), Eggers et al. (2015)); election vote shares in the private sector (Flammer forthcoming); student performance (van der Klaauw (2002), Ou (2010); the duration of benefits (Caliendo, Tatsiramos & Uhlendorff 2013); geographic location (Grout, Jaeger & Plantinga 2011) and age (Carpenter & Dobkin (2009), Deza (2015). In this paper, the intervention is the abolishment of health care user fees, and the intervention is in place only for children below the age threshold of six years, and only if those children seek treatment at public health care facilities in South Africa; the change was introduced by Nelson Mandela, when he assumed the Presidency in 1994. ...
We apply parametric and non-parametric regression discontinuity methodology within a multinomial choice setting to examine the effect of public healthcare user fee abolition on health facility choice by using data from South Africa. The non-parametric model is found to outperform the parametric model both in and out of sample, while also delivering more plausible estimates of the effect of user fee abolition (i.e. the 'treatment effect'). In the parametric framework, treatment effects were relatively constant-around 10%-and that increase was drawn equally from home care and private care. In contrast, in the non-parametric framework treatment effects were largest for large (and poor) families located further from health facilities-approximately 5%. More plausibly, the positive treatment effect was drawn primarily from home care, suggesting that the policy favoured children living in poorer conditions, as those children received at least some minimum level of professional healthcare after the policy was implemented.
... In the arguments of urban land use and land expansion, different driving forces underlying the urban land expansion are identified. These include (i) demography or demands for space by people and employment [25,26], (ii) the changing industrial landscape, with the growth of manufacturing and production facilities and associated working-class housing, services, and commerce to cater to those facilities [27,28], (iii) improvements in transportation networks (roads, public transport, etc.), changes in mobility patterns and transit-oriented development [29,30], and (iv) institutional factors, such as fragmentation in municipal jurisdictions and planning, and variations in tax structures [20,31]. ...
Urban development in China has attracted considerable scholarly attention. However, more work is still needed to examine and understand the mechanisms of urban land expansion, especially within the context of globalization/marketization, decentralization and urbanization. This paper analyzes urban land expansion and structural changes in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). We find that cities in the YRD are experiencing urban land expansion mainly characterized by the growth of residential and industrial land. The dominant characteristics of urban land expansion in cities have also varied within different development and administrative levels. Based on our conceptual framework, we have used multi-models to investigate the driving forces of urban land expansion and structural changes in the YRD. The results reveal that six influencing factors—foreign direct investment (FDI), labor, government competition, institution, population, and job-housing relations—facilitate land use change in the economic transition process. However, their impacts differ in cities in different geographical locations, as well as with different administrative levels. Finally, this paper discusses policies to promote sustainable urban land use in the YRD.
... : Revue RERU) -2015/1/6 -14:54 -page 10 -#6 ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ Ghislain GENIAUX, Claude NAPOLÉONE, Bertrand LEROUX des effets « restrictions » négatifs ; JAEGER, PLANTINGA, 2007) dont l'expression sur les prix dépend du contexte de marché (PHILLIPS et GOODSTEIN, 2007). Ainsi GROUT et al. (2011), montrent qu'en ce qui concerne l'Oregon et l'État de Washington, il n'existe pas de différence observable sur les valeurs immobilières, entre les localités ayant adopté une politique de contrôle de la croissance urbaine et celles n'en ayant pas adopté. ...
Does land use zoning policy increases land prices by reducing developable land supply? To answer this question, we propose an evaluation of the relationship between land supply and land prices in the French region Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur. The developable land supply is identified through geomatics analyzes using new generation of spatial land use micro-data (digitalized cadastral map, land and owner characteristics, land use zoning policies). We use two alternative econometric evaluation methods to estimate the price effects of land supply : spatial hedonic model and quasi-natural experiments. We show that with both methodologies the estimated relationship is positive, Municipalities with higher corrected developable land supply exhibit higher land prices. The disequilibrium between supply and demand for developable land is so high in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur that municipalities who
increase the supply of land through new developable zones (without coordination with neighboring municipalities) face an increase of land prices.
... Economics analyses both empirical and analytical suggest that the effects of land use regulations may be positive, negative or neutral in a given setting. There is much theoretical work on this question (see, for example, Wu, 2006;Wu and Plantinga, 2003), as well as recent conceptual contributions and empirical work (see, for example, Jaeger, 2006;Runge et al., 1996;Jaeger and Plantinga, 2007;Grout et al., 2011). The overall effects of land use regulations have been extremely difficult to estimate for several reasons. ...
Our understanding of the effects of land use regulations and other aspects of urban form has been hindered by limited aggregate data and gradual temporal changes in policies. More widely available GIS data on land use and land economics presents opportunities to overcome these obstacles. This study was undertaken to explore the potential for land economics research that draws on parcel level spatial data for urban land markets, and uses differences across a sample of cities as the source of variation. Policy obstacles such as protected open spaces and other land use regulations, like the limitations caused by land forms such as water bodies and mountains, can be expected to alter the supply of land in ways that will be reflected in land market outcomes across cities. Based on a sample of data for 46 California cities, this exploratory analysis analyzed land market outcomes as a function of population, income and other factors in a closed-economy model, including a ratio that measures the concentration of developed lands within a city's radius or perimeter. The approach produced robust relationships consistent with other studies, and results consistent with expectations not just in terms of the signs of the estimated coefficients but in terms of their magnitudes as well. Indeed, the elasticity of land development with respect to population has been estimated to be 0.79-0.82 based on open city models. The evidence suggests that both land forms and land use regulations have a positive effect on land prices; however, it was not possible with the current data to distinguish the amenity effects of proximity to oceans and mountains from the supply constraints on radial city expansion. The analysis, nevertheless, provides encouraging evidence for future research of this kind.
... Rural LULC change research has important and direct linkages to natural resource health issues such as forestland conversion [2][3][4][5][6]; crop land abandonment and afforestation [7][8][9]; agricultural crop support programs [10][11][12][13]; and land fragmentation effects on timber base [14]; water quality; and wildlife habitat degradation. Urban LULC change studies explore sprawl and quality of life by modeling growth patterns that reflect zoning, land use regulation policy, urban amenities, and land value [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Recent studies measure and forecast direct and indirect effects on LULC change through climate change models [10,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. ...
We conducted a meta-analysis on 64 econometric models from 47 studies predicting forestland conversion to agriculture (F2A), forestland to development (F2D), forestland to non-forested (F2NF) and undeveloped (including forestland) to developed (U2D) land. Over 250 independent econometric variables were identified from 21 F2A models, 21 F2D models, 12 F2NF models, and 10 U2D models. These variables were organized into a hierarchy of 119 independent variable groups, 15 categories, and 4 econometric drivers suitable for conducting simple vote count statistics. Vote counts were summarized at the independent variable group level and formed into ratios estimating the predictive success of each variable group. Two ratios estimates were developed based on (1) proportion of times the independent variables had statistical significance and (2) proportion of times independent variables met the original study authors' expectations. In F2D models, we confirmed the success of popular independent variables such as population, income, and urban proximity estimates but found timber rents and site productivity variables less successful. In F2A models, we confirmed success of popular explanatory variables such as forest and agricultural rents and costs, governmental programs, and site quality, but we found population, income, and urban proximity estimates less successful. In U2D models, successful independent variables found were urban rents and costs, zoning issues concerning forestland loss, site quality, urban proximity, population, and income. In F2NF models, we found poor success using timber rents but high success using agricultural rents, site quality, population, and income. Success ratios and discussion of new or less popular, but promising, variables was also included. This meta-analysis provided insight into the general success of econometric independent variables for future forest-use or -cover change research.
... Ces travaux empiriques disposant d'informations fines sur l'offre foncière et les prix tendent à montrer que les effets d'une politique d'urbanisme sont un ensemble complexe d'influences contradictoires (d'effets "aménités" positifs à des effets "restrictions" négatifs ; JAEGER, PLANTINGA, 2007) dont l'expression sur les prix dépend du contexte de marché (PHILLIPS, GOODSTEIN, 2007). Ainsi GROUT et al (2011), montrent qu'en ce qui concerne l'Oregon et l'état de Washington, il n'existe pas de différence observable sur les valeurs immobilières, entre les localités ayant adopté une politique de contrôle de la croissance urbaine et celles n'en ayant pas adopté. ...
Does land use zoning policy increases land prices by reducing developable land supply? To answer this question, we propose an evaluation of the relationship between land supply and land prices in the French region Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur. The developable land supply is identified through geomatics analyzes using new generation of spatial land use micro-data (digitalized cadastral map, land and owner characteristics, land use zoning policies). We use two alternative econometric evaluation methods to estimate the price effects of land supply: spatial hedonic model and quasi-natural experiments. We show that with both methodologies the estimated relationship is positive, Municipalities with higher corrected developable land supply exhibit higher land prices. The disequilibrium between supply and demand for developable land is so high in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur that municipalities who increase the supply of land through new developable zones (without coordination with neighboring municipalities) face an increase of land prices.
La politique d’urbanisme fait-elle croître les prix fonciers par raréfaction de l’offre de terrains constructibles ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous proposons une évaluation des relations entre l’offre foncière et les prix fonciers sur 306 communes de la région Provence-Alpes- Côtes-d’Azur. L’offre foncière est estimée à partir de traitements géomatiques s’appuyant.sur la nouvelle génération de données spatiales issues du cadastre, de la propriété foncière et des zonages d’urbanisme. Pour évaluer les effets prix de l’offre foncière, nous utilisons deux méthodes d’évaluation économétrique alternatives: une approche hédonique à partir de modèles économétriques spatiaux et une approche causale à partir d’expériences quasi- naturelles. Nous montrons que dans les deux cas la relation est positive, c’est-à-dire que ce sont les communes avec les offres foncières les plus importantes, ou ayant le plus cru, qui voient les prix fonciers augmenter. Les résultats conduisent à montrer que le déséquilibre offre/demande en matière de foncier est tel en région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur que des politiques municipales visant à accroître simplement les offres foncières par l’ouverture de zonage constructible de façon non coordonnée avec les autres communes conduit à l’inverse de l’objectif affiché de réduction des tensions foncières et de baisse des prix.
... In landscapes dominated by private ownership, landowners lack the incentive to coordinate decisions in order to influence the spatial land-use pattern and the environmental outcomes that depend on it. Econometric-based landscape simulation models have been developed to understand the nature and extent of this market failure zoning restrictions, can also have important effects on economic returns (Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga 2011). ...
Econometric-based landscape simulation models help to identify the nature and extent of market failure problems associated with terrestrial biodiversity and to quantify the effects of corrective land use policies. This article reviews the literature on econometric-based landscape simulation models and describes four important methodological challenges that analysts face with these models: (1) representing variation in private economic returns to land at the same scale at which land use varies, (2) modeling the private information that landowners possess about the returns to their land, (3) accounting for land use intensity, and (4) recognizing the probabilistic nature of the land use transition rules derived from econometric analysis. Ways to overcome these challenges are proposed, and directions for future research are explored.
... Our model has a similar structure to Cho et al. (2006), however our DID estimator explicitly accounts for trends across time and treatment group. Another related paper is Grout et al. (2011), which uses a regression discontinuity design to analyze the effects of Portland"s UGB on land prices. ...
... Some changes already have occurred. For example, land owners are seeking compensation through Measure 37 because the value of their land has plummeted because it lies outside the UGB, making it worthless for development (seeGrout, Jaeger, & Plantinga, 2010).Clearly there can be unintended consequences and future research should examine both the benefits and harms associated with UGBs, along with which UGB components appear effective and which are superfluous. This research offered very limited understanding about Portland's UGB as it related to crime reduction, but offered a starting point for future research designed to evaluate why violent crime was reduced in the collar cities and collar city property crime was held constant, although both violent crime and property crime in Portland increased significantly. ...
... On the other hand, we expect lower-valued land to be more likely developed during recessionary market conditions because people tend to save more and incomes stagnate, further slowing spending. Lower-valued land is typically more abundant outside than inside UGBs (e.g., Cox 2010; Grout, Jaeger, and Plantinga 2011;Jaeger, Plantinga, and Grout 2012). Hence, we hypothesize the land outside the UGB will be more likely developed during the recession period than during the boom period. ...
Our research evaluates and compares the effects of three land-related policies on land development in a sprawling metropolitan area during a real estate boom and a recession. Our findings suggest that during a real estate boom 1) the urban growth boundary (UGB) serves its purpose of attracting urban development inside the given boundary during a boom while its effectiveness diminishes with increased development pressure from lower-valued land outside of the UGB during a recession period, 2) the agricultural zone works well for restraining new development during a boom period while agriculture zoned parcels are more likely developed during a recession period, and 3) an increase in the land-value tax bill increases the incentive for development during a recession period while higher tax bills do not affect development during a boom period. In anticipation of a re-emergence of urban sprawl with the recovery of the real estate market, our findings imply that land planners and others concerned with sprawling development should pay more attention to development in sprawl-prone areas during recession periods.
The effect of planning regulations on housing and land markets has been a long-lasting concern. The inherent complexities of incorporating regulations into models, including the heterogeneity of regulations and their temporal effect, have resulted in different approaches, and consensus has been elusive. Few studies have addressed the effect of regulations in a dynamic framework of the housing and land markets. In these studies, different regulations or the indices capturing their restrictiveness are assumed to have a linear additive effect along with the other factors. The results have been contradictory. This paper aims to model the dynamic effect of regulations by incorporating them in a causal rather than correlational form of relationships. To this end, we adopted the system dynamics approach to model the individual effect of three important types of regulation widely used in urban planning systems: maximum building density, minimum lot size, and urban growth boundary. We use the concept of optimum building density to integrate the housing market and the land market through the construction sector, providing clearer causal links among the related markets. To our knowledge this is the first use of this concept in a dynamic model. We ran the simulations (using hypothetical parameters) to analyze the effect of each regulation on housing and land price changes. The simulation results show that by imposing more restrictive UGBs, housing and land prices increase. A more restrictive MBD first results in a decrease in the land price and, then, due to its effect on the whole housing market, increases both housing and land prices. A more restrictive MLS has a short-term impact on land and housing prices, but it does not change long-run price levels. The common feature of the market under more restrictive forms of all three regulations is lower volatility.
Data sets providing repeated observations of land use at fine spatial scales have enabled a new generation of land-use studies. In the past decade, these analyses have put increasing emphasis on empirical research designs that provide more convincing causal estimates. I review the use of instrumental variables, matching, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity design, and randomized controlled trials in the recent land-use economics literature, exploring how new data have made possible the use of these research designs. I show that these estimators have produced different results than were obtained with traditional approaches and have provided new insights into important land-use policy issues such as additionality and spillover effects.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 13 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Residential treatment centers offer the most intense form of treatment for substance abuse and are often embedded in residential neighborhoods. As a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the number of treatment centers has been forecasted to burgeon. We examine the external effect of residential rehab centers on nearby real estate. As addiction treatment centers are planned, a common response of nearby property owners is ‘‘not in my backyard’’ (NIMBY). Using a large MLS dataset from central Virginia, we estimate the impact of substance abuse treatment centers on nearby home prices and liquidity (as measured by time on market). We find that a neighboring treatment center is associated with an 8% reduction in nearby home prices, and that this discount is magnified for treatment centers that specifically treat opiate addiction (as much as 17%).
This paper explores the causes and economic consequences of recent increases and divergences in regional house prices in New Zealand. It identifies large and increasing ‘wedges’ between house prices and underlying supply costs. These house price distortions arise from the collision of rising demand for housing with housing supply constraints, including zoning rules that limit new subdivision and redevelopment of existing sites. Regions with larger starting price distortions appear to have experienced larger increases in house prices and rents in response to migration shocks. This results in large economic costs due to misallocation of labour away from high-productivity regions in New Zealand and increased net migration to Australia. A calibrated spatial equilibrium model is used to investigate what would have happened if house price distortions had increased at a slower rate in recent decades due to relaxation of supply constraints. This model implies that comprehensively removing constraints to housing supply would have increased New Zealand’s total economic output by up to 8.4%, increased per-worker output by 0.9%, and eliminated recent net migration outflows to Australia. More plausible counterfactual scenarios would result in smaller, but still economically meaningful, gains on the order of one to five percent of gross domestic product.
The conformance approach is frequently used to evaluate the effectiveness of spatial plans in containing urban sprawl. However, non-conformances are widely considered inevitable. Prior conformance-based evaluations fail to answer the essential question of whether plans influence non-conforming situations. To address this gap, we built a framework for conformance measurement to reveal how plans affect non-conforming urban development. The multi-indicator framework includes quantitative indicators, the spatial distribution relationship between new non-conforming urban land and zoning maps, and the location and original land use of new non-conforming urban land. When applied to a case study, this framework reveals that most new non-conforming urban land was adjacent to conforming urban land and located in zones without strict restrictions on urban development. Moreover, the type of land use that the zoning map aimed to conserve was rarely converted, suggesting attempts by decision-makers to control the severity of conflicts between non-conforming development and the zoning map. A logistic regression also evidences the significant influence of zoning on non-conforming urban development. These findings, in turn, verify the operability and theoretical value of the proposed framework.
Urban design qualities have the potential to contribute to the sense of safety, comfort, engagement, and overall neighborhood satisfaction perceived by residents, thus can be related to higher property values. Yet, many of these urban design qualities are highly conceptual, require extensive data collection and are subject to various interpretations. As a result, there is little empirical evidence on how street-level urban design qualities are related to property values. Drawing on Multi-level Modeling, this article employs a highly cited dataset on urban design qualities in New York City to provide a statistical analysis of the direct relationship between these qualities and property values. Controlling for confounding factors, this article identifies “imageability” in the street-level environment as a featured urban design quality with the most statistically significant association with property values. In addition, research findings suggest that “transparency” of building facades are positive predictors of property values, whereas the complexity of the built environment exhibits a negative correlation with property values. Policy implications for planners, urban designers, and developers include designing guidelines and street layouts that encourage memorable civic image and identity. While investing in building facades with greater transparency would yield higher property values, complexity in the urban environment, particularly in neighborhoods seeking investment and attracting capital should be treated with care by all parties involved
Markets, especially land markets, can facilitate climate change adaptation through price signals. A review of research reveals that urban, coastal, and agricultural land markets provide effective signals of the emerging costs of climate change. These signals encourage adjustments by both private owners and policy officials in taking preemptive action to reduce costs. In agriculture, they promote consideration of new cropping and tillage practices, seed types, timing, and location of production. They also stimulate use of new irrigation technologies. In urban areas, they motivate new housing construction, elevation, and location away from harm. They channel more efficient use of water and its application to parks and other green areas to make urban settings more desirable with higher temperatures. Related water markets play a similar role in adjusting water use and reallocation. To be effective, however, markets must reflect multiple traders and prices must be free to adjust. Where these conditions are not met, market signals will be inhibited and market-driven adaptation will be reduced. Because public policy is driven by constituent demands, it may not be a remedy. The evidence of the National Flood Insurance Program and federal wildfire response illustrates how politically difficult it may be to adjust programs to be more adaptive.
Land-use regulations can lower real estate prices by imposing costs on property owners, but may raise prices by restricting supply and generating amenities. We study the effects of the California Coastal Act, one of the nation's most stringent land-use regulations, on the price and rental income of multifamily housing. The Coastal Act applies to a narrow section of the California coast, allowing us to compare properties just on either side of the jurisdictional boundary. The setting is advantageous for the study of land-use regulation: boundary location is plausibly exogenous, which we confirm with historical data on boundary placement, and orthogonal to other jurisdictional divisions. We decompose the effects of the regulation into (i) a neighbor effect, the value of restrictions on adjacent properties, (ii) a local effect, which reflects the net effect of own-lot restrictions and the neighbor effect, and (iii) an external effect, the value of amenities generated by restrictions on all properties within the regulated area. Our analysis of multifamily housing prices reveals local and external effects of approximately +6% and +13%, respectively. We use data on rental income to estimate a zero neighbor effect. Together with evidence on building ages and assessed building and land values, this suggests that property owners anticipate that the Coastal Act will provide protection from undesirable development on adjacent properties, even though material differences have not yet appeared.
This article reviews the methods and results of empirical studies analyzing the impact of land
property rights on the performance of smallholder farmers in developing countries. The results
of previous empirical studies are mixed about the real effects of land property rights. The
heterogeneity of the results is related to both the evaluation techniques used and the local
context of the tenure system’s management. However, the results converge toward an
endogenous relationship between land property rights and smallholder farmers’ performance
in contexts where customary land management is predominant.
Land-use change can significantly affect the provision of ecosystem services. On a local scale, zoning laws and other land-use regulations are commonly used to influence land-use change, but their effectiveness is often unclear. We evaluate the effectiveness of local land-use planning in concentrating development and minimizing impacts in riparian areas. We use spatially-explicit land cover data from the USGS Land Cover Trends project to measure development and disturbance rates before and after implementation of Oregon’s land-use planning system. We apply a difference-in-difference estimator to address the problem of non-random assignment of regulations on the landscape. We find that land-use laws in Oregon have concentrated development inside of UGBs and lowered development rates in riparian areas. However, disturbance in riparian areas has increased inside of UGBs. Overall, our findings suggest that local land-use planning can be an effective tool for promoting the provision of non-market ecosystem services.
The paper summarizes the traditional method to delimit the urban land development boundary which aims to make a good balance of urban sprawl and ecology protection in a “industrial” model, while under the new type urbanization policy, a “urbanization” mode seems to be more appropriate with China’s development. In the paper, on the basis of traditional methods to delimit urban land development boundary under the background of the new urbanization policy, we try to explore a delimitation method which is more closer to the “urbanization” mode. We take the downtown of Yiwu for an example and obtain results of the urban land development boundary of Yiwu in the year of 2020 in both of the two modes, one of them is in the “industrial” model and guided with the “sector theory”, and the other is in the “urbanization” mode and guided with the “multiple nuclei theory”, and then we compare the thoughts and the results. The paper chooses the second method, namely the method which is under the new urbanization background and is close to the “urbanization” mode as the better. At last, we propose the requirements and methods to apply the method, following with some recommendations and opinions.
This chapter presents a review of the existing research and various opinions on the impact of the growth controls of green belts and growth boundaries on affordability of housing. Second, an examination of two case studies, Portland, Oregon and Seoul, Korea, with a growth boundary and a green belt, respectively, highlights policies that seem to both help and hinder the coexistence of growth control with affordable housing prices. Finally, a review of possible housing affordability policies gives some idea on how these policies might be used in tandem with a growth control tool in order to ameliorate any effects. It is concluded that there is a great deal of complexity involved in comparing various cities and regions to one another because of different housing markets and regulations. It is also quite difficult to isolate the effects of planning policy on housing prices from the impact of local and regional housing market trends. Though there is a great deal of evidence that these two forms of growth control do have a negative impact on housing affordability, there is still some disagreement. Efforts may be better redirected at this stage from the difficult task of isolating the effects of the growth controls and certain policies on housing prices, into an effort to further develop policies that will automatically and seamlessly integrate protections of affordable housing with effective growth control.
This paper examines the local impacts of shale gas development (SGD). We use a hedonic framework and exploit a discrete change in expectations about SGD caused by the New York State moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. Our research design combines difference-in-differences and border discontinuity, as well as underlying shale geology, on properties in Pennsylvania and New York. Results suggest that New York properties that were most likely to experience both the financial benefits and environmental consequences of SGD dropped in value 23% as a result of the moratorium, which under certain assumptions indicates a large and positive net valuation of SGD.
This study empirically assesses the causal effect of the minimum lot size program on farmland values in Taiwan. A unique dataset
of 4,032 parcels of farmland drawn from administrative foreclosure auction profiles between 2000 and 2008 and regression discontinuity
design were applied to cope with the endogeneity issue of land use regulations. The results of the parametric and nonparametric
estimations indicate that the minimum lot size program significantly increases farmland value by approximately 18% and 15%,
respectively. Moreover, the program effect is more pronounced for farmland located in urban/suburban areas. In the absence
of a tax effect and externality resulting from non-agricultural activities, the significant program effect on farmland values
is likely to result from the effect of the program on farmland's option value for future development.
In this paper, we utilize a spatial two-dimensional regression discontinuity (RD) design to study how Tokyo’s property market evaluates information on seismic hazard risk. This approach is superior to the conventional one-dimensional RD design as it is able to account for spatially heterogeneous treatment effects and reduce small-sample biases. Our data consists of residential property transactions from the 23-wards area of Tokyo. Our results show that the unit prices of residential properties in low-risk zones were between 13,970–17,380 JPY higher than those in high-risk zones depending on the type of seismic hazard risk. In addition, we find that information on seismic hazard risk does not significantly affect the prices of newly constructed apartments, which are more resistant to earthquake damage than older residences.
Land use controls may have positive, negative or neutral impact on urban land values. The Offinso South Municipality (OSM) employs conventional zoning in its land management practices. This article investigates the land use control regime in and its impact on land values and the living standards of residents of the municipality. Empirical data were obtained from physical developers in the municipality via self-administered questionnaire. It also collected data from occupiers of amenity lands via guided interviews. It finds that there exist large scale violations of planning controls in the municipality. It also finds that amenity lands are generally encroached upon sometimes with connivance of officials from the planning outfit. It suggests that the planning authority should dialogue with developers to ensure voluntary compliance. The planning authority should also build its capacity to enforce its land use plan.
Land-use regulations can affect property values in a variety of complex ways. In the context of laws like Oregon's Measure 37, requiring that landowners be compensated if regulations reduce property values, the economic effects of land use regulations on property values have been widely misinterpreted because two very different economic concepts are being confused and used interchangeably. The first concept is "the effect of a land use regulation on property values" which measures the change in value when a regulation is added to many parcels. The second concept is "the effect of an individual exemption, or variance, to an existing land use regulation," which measures the change in value when a regulation is removed from only one parcel. The effect of a land-use regulation on property values can be positive or negative, whereas removing a land-use regulation from one property can be expected to have a positive effect. Indeed, many land-use regulations actually increase property values by creating positive "amenity effects" and "scarcity effects." As a result of these differences, a positive estimate for removing a land-use regulation cannot be interpreted as proof that the other concept was negative. Despite this, a positive value for an individual exemption to a land-use regulation continues to be interpreted as proof that compensation is due under Oregon's Measure 37. Indeed, this mistaken interpretation may be partly responsible for public sentiment that land-use regulations tend to reduce property values.
Hedonic price models are used to explore the degree to which land-use and racial composition, used as outcome proxies for local zoning practices, influence residential land values in Santa Clara County, California. Fiscal pressures have prompted many California communities to zone on the basis of tax-yield potential, especially in fast-growing settings like Santa Clara County. Controlling for variables related to job accessibility as well as proximity to regional transport infrastructure, the analysis shows that indicators of land-use diversity and jobs-housing balance generally correlate with high residential land prices. While the fiscal instincts of Californian municipalities is to shun housing in favour of commercial development and thus to create imbalanced land development patterns, this research suggests these fiscal advantages are partly offset by lower land values and thus lower property tax intake. Racial diversity, on the other hand, lowered residential property values, even when controlling for neighbourhood factors like average household income. This finding suggests that, to the degree that local zoning responds to land-market forces, exclusion in residential settings is more a product of racial than land-use composition. As long as land markets attach either values or disbenefits to land-use mix and racial diversity, market-sensitive zoning policies that reinforce these outcomes will be likely to prevail, particularly in buoyant real-estate markets like Santa Clara County.
Housing quality has improved dramatically for most low-income households, but they are paying much larger shares of their income for it. Many discussions of the bottom of the market focus on either the rising costs (thebad' news) or the rising quality (thegood' news). Both points of view have some merit. This paper takes a positivist approach to the question: what's happening to the bottom of the housing market. We use a variety of indicators to look at whether the supply of low-cost units has fallen. We then focus on whether this dwindling supply reects a market failure. If the market for low-income housing is indeed failing, we would observe: relatively high prices per unit of housing services provided by low-quality housing; obstructions to the supply of low-cost housing, which arises largely from ® ltering; and high vacancy rates. We ® nd evidence of market failure in some markets but not in others. Finally, we focus on one possible source of market failure- excessive regulation- to see whether it is a common thread across those markets that have dif® culty producing low-cost housing. Two central facts about the bottom of the US housing market are easy to characterise: housing quality has improved dramatically for most low-income households, but they are paying much larger shares of their in- come for it. John Weicher (1991) performed calculations that show that from 1974 to 1987, the number of very low-income famil- ies living in severely inadequate housing dropped from more than 10 to less than 2 per cent of such families; and that the number of such families paying more than half their money income for rent rose from 24 per cent to 36 per cent. More recent data from HUD show the latter ® gure to be over 40 per cent. In short, America' s poorest are spending more to get better housing. Unfortunately, many discussions of the bottom of the market focus on either the rising costs (thebad' news) or the rising quality (thegood' news).
The State of North Carolina's Water Supply Watershed Protection Act of 1989 required local governments to adopt land use measures in watersheds to protect the water supply emanating from the watersheds. We examine vacant land prices in the Ivy River watershed of Buncombe County, NC, at the time such regulation took effect. Our results suggest that costs of watershed development restrictions are borne primarily by those vacant land owners in the watershed for whom the development restrictions make land subdivision infeasible. We find benefits accruing to land owners on the public water supply or who are adjacent to creeks.
Problems with inferring causal relationships from nonexperimental data are briefly reviewed, and four broad classes of methods designed to allow estimation of and inference about causal parameters are described: panel regression, matching or reweighting, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity. Practical examples are offered, and discussion focuses on checking required assumptions to the extent possible. Copyright 2007 by StataCorp LP.
The private property rights movement was one of the most consequential land use and environmental movements of the 1990s. It first emerged on the national sphere in the latter years of the Reagan administration. Advocates shifted their focus to the state level during the Bush and Clinton presidencies. In 2000 they provided strong support for George W. Bush's candidacy, with high expectations from his administration. This commentary examines the national-level property rights activity of the Bush administration in 2001 and 2002 and speculates on the prominence and success of this policy sphere in this administration's future.
In 1957 Chicago enacted a Comprehensive Amendment to the Chicago Zoning Ordiance of 1923. In contrast to the hierarchical zoning of the 1923 ordinance, the 1957 ordinance made each zoning category exclusive and mandated the removal of non-conforming uses. This study examines land parcels at the borders between residential and non-residential (commercial or manufacturing) zones, and finds that land values in non-residential zones enjoyed a one-time jump in growth over the time-period 1955—58 during which the 1957 ordinance was adopted. No significant change is detected in land value growth in residential zones. These results suggest that non-residential landowners valued the insurance that the 1957 ordinance provided against mixed land uses more than the value of the option to change land use that was terminated.
Portland, Oregon, is well known for its relatively unique urban growth boundary (UGB), a very tight form of zoning designed to control sprawl. The UGB has recently been criticized for raising housing prices. From a theoretical perspective, the UGB will put upward pressure on land and thus housing prices, but the magnitude of this effect is uncertain. Increasing density should substitute for higher land prices, partially offsetting any reduction in the supply of housing. In addition, at any given moment, speculative factors influence housing price levels in bull markets such as the one Portland has been experiencing. This article presents an econometric analysis assessing these conflicting effects. We find the UGB has created upward pressure on housing prices, but the effect is relatively small in magnitude.
Locally weighted regression, or loess, is a way of estimating a regression surface through a multivariate smoothing procedure, fitting a function of the independent variables locally and in a moving fashion analogous to how a moving average is computed for a time series. With local fitting we can estimate a much wider class of regression surfaces than with the usual classes of parametric functions, such as polynomials. The goal of this article is to show, through applications, how loess can be used for three purposes: data exploration, diagnostic checking of parametric models, and providing a nonparametric regression surface. Along the way, the following methodology is introduced: (a) a multivariate smoothing procedure that is an extension of univariate locally weighted regression; (b) statistical procedures that are analogous to those used in the least-squares fitting of parametric functions; (c) several graphical methods that are useful tools for understanding loess estimates and checking the assumptions on which the estimation procedure is based; and (d) the M plot, an adaptation of Mallow's Csubp/sub procedure, which provides a graphical portrayal of the trade-off between variance and bias, and which can be used to choose the amount of smoothing.
The development of lakefront property in northern Wisconsin has prompted, in several towns, minimum frontage zoning stricter than the state standard. Such zoning generates an economic loss by constraining development (development effect), and an economic gain by preserving environmental amenities (amenity effect). Estimation of a hedonic price function for lakefront property in northern Wisconsin quantifies these competing effects. The estimation indicates that at the current margin the economic loss from the development effect is negligible, and the economic gain from the amenity effect may be considerable, raising frontage prices by an average of 21.5%.
Several states, and many countries, have adopted exclusive agricultural zoning to control the location or amount of non-farm development in agricultural areas. This exclusive agricultural zoning differs from traditional rural zoning in that it limits development and is often strictly enforced. Economists have argued that conceptually, agricultural zoning lowers land values by restricting non-farm development. Economic theory predicts both positive and negative price effects, distributed differentially among farmland parcels depending on parcel characteristics. The purpose of this research is to test the hypothesis that the price effect of exclusive agricultural zoning varies with the characteristics of parcel subject to the regulations. -from Authors
In regression discontinuity (RD) designs for evaluating causal effects of interventions, assignment to a treatment is determined at least partly by the value of an observed covariate lying on either side of a fixed threshold. These designs were first introduced in the evaluation literature by Thistlewaite and Campbell [1960. Regression-discontinuity analysis: an alternative to the ex-post Facto experiment. Journal of Educational Psychology 51, 309–317] With the exception of a few unpublished theoretical papers, these methods did not attract much attention in the economics literature until recently. Starting in the late 1990s, there has been a large number of studies in economics applying and extending RD methods. In this paper we review some of the practical and theoretical issues in implementation of RD methods.
According to conventional economic theory, land-use policies that influence the allocation of land must affect land values. A test for price effects of UGBs, then, determines if UGBs influence land allocation or whether UGBs are currently redundant instruments to existing land-use controls. The test cannot determine welfare effects. Significant price effects might indicate inefficient market intervention; on the other hand, significant price effects may be necessary to correct existing market, or nonmarket, imperfections.-from Author
This study uses the hedonic-pricemethod to examine how environmental zoning and amenities are related to the price of single-family residential properties sold between 1999 and 2001 in Portland, Oregon. The impact of environmental zoning is found to vary with the type of environmental zoning and the property’s location. Amenities are found to influence a property’s sale price with the effect varying by amenity type and proximity. The net effect on a property’s sales price is dependent on the type of environmental zoning, location in the study area, amenities on the property, and amenities in the surrounding neighborhood.
Impacts of Fish and Wildlife Service wetland easements on agricultural land values in North Dakota were estimated by regressing sale prices on physical and institutional characteristics of sold parcels. While easements on temporary wetlands did not influence prices, each additional acre of permanent wetland under easement decreased average prices by $321 (–79%). Because non-eased permanent wetlands were shown to reduce land prices by $161/acre, we can estimate the implicit price of a wetland easement per se to be $160/ acre—6% below historical easement payment levels in the study area.
This study examines the ways in which land-use regulations in general and Oregon’s land-use planning system in particular may affect property values. The study is focused on Oregon, but it is framed within the broader context of research in economics. Our analysis of Oregon land value data finds no evidence of a generalized reduction in value caused by Oregon’s land-use regulations, a result that is consistent with economic theory and with other research in the economics field. Executive Summary..................................................................................................................................i I. Introduction........................................................................................................................................1 A. Potential effects of land-use regulations.........................................................................................1 Restriction effects..........................................................................................................................1 Amenity effects..............................................................................................................................2 Scarcity effects...............................................................................................................................2 Net effects .....................................................................................................................................3 B. Methodology.................................................................................................................................3 C. Summary of findings......................................................................................................................3 D. Review of economic studies............................................................................................................4 II. Analysis of Land Value Data in Oregon and Washington.....................................................................6 A. Results from data analysis..............................................................................................................8 Lane County, Oregon......................................................................................................................8 Jackson County, Oregon...............................................................................................................14 Lewis County, Washington...........................................................................................................16 Kittitas County, Washington..........................................................................................................18 Comparison of Lane and Jackson counties with Lewis and Kittitas counties................................22 Baker County, Oregon...................................................................................................................23 Comparison of Kittitas and Baker counties...................................................................................24 B. Effects of property tax reductions on land values..........................................................................26 C. Interpretation of the data analysis.................................................................................................28 III. Review of Economic Studies: Effects of Land-use Regulations on Property Values...........................31 A. Effects of land-use restrictions......................................................................................................31 B. Oregon studies............................................................................................................................32 C. Effects of restrictions on neighboring properties...........................................................................33 D. Tax abatement and agricultural subsidy programs........................................................................34 IV. Conclusions.....................................................................................................................................35 V. References.........................................................................................................................................37 Appendix A: Data and Data Collection Methods ....................................................................................40 Appendix B: Maps.................................................................................................................................44 Appendix C: Review of Relevant Economic Literature.............................................................................49 no
Many urban growth controls attempt to check sprawl by restricting allowable new housing densities. However, land may be undeveloped to preserve its real-option value. Real options in land markets arise from uncertainty as to the optimum use of a site. By limiting allowable development choices, growth controls can narrow real options and potentially accelerate investment. This paper examines the effect of price volatility, a generator of option value, on the timing of development after the imposition of an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) around Seattle. While the net effect of the UGB is to lower the likelihood of new housing outside the boundary by between 28% and 39%, price volatility is no longer a deterrent to development. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The introduction of a new zoning ordinance to Chicago in 1923 offers a natural experiment that allows us to determine the effects of zoning on relative land-value growth rates. Policymakers claimed at the time that land-use zoning would raise aggregate land values by reducing negative externalities associated with mixed land use. After controlling for initial land use and the endogeneity of zoning decisions, we find that residential zoning led to higher land value growth rates than commercial zoning. © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog
Portland, Oregon, is well known for its relatively unique urban growth boundary (UGB), a very tight form of zoning designed to control sprawl. The UGB has recently been criticized for raising housing prices. From a theoretical perspective, the UGB will put upward pressure on land and thus housing prices, but the magnitude of this effect is uncertain. Increasing density should substitute for higher land prices, partially offsetting any reduction in the supply of housing. In addition, at any given moment, speculative factors influence housing price levels in bull markets such as the one Portland has been experiencing. This article presents an econometric analysis assessing these conflicting effects. We find the UGB has created upward pressure on housing prices, but the effect is relatively small in magnitude. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.
We use a semiparametric estimator to analyze the relationship between land values and parcel size in a sample of 158 undeveloped parcels in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. The semiparametric estimator combines the benefits of parametric and nonparametric estimation. The value-size relationship is estimated nonparametrically, which permits the function to be linear, convex, and concave in different regions. A simple log-linear parametric relationship is assumed for the rest of the model, which conserves degrees of freedom and simplifies hypothesis testing. Our semiparametric estimates do not reject log-linearity for the value-size relationship. Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Ž. THE REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY RD data design is a quasi-experimental design with the defining characteristic that the probability of receiving treatment changes discontinuously as a function of one or more underlying variables. This data design arises frequently in economic and other applications but is only infrequently exploited as a source of identifying information in evaluating effects of a treatment. In the first application and discussion of the RD method, Thistlethwaite and Campbell Ž. 1960 study the effect of student scholarships on career aspirations, using the fact that awards are only made if a test score exceeds a threshold. More recently, Van der Klaauw Ž. 1997 estimates the effect of financial aid offers on students’ decisions to attend a particular college, taking into account administrative rules that set the aid amount partly on the basis of a discontinuous function of the students’ grade point average and SAT Ž. score. Angrist and Lavy 1999 estimate the effect of class size on student test scores, taking advantage of a rule stipulating that another classroom be added when the average Ž. class size exceeds a threshold level. Finally, Black 1999 uses an RD approach to estimate parents’ willingness to pay for higher quality schools by comparing housing prices near geographic school attendance boundaries. Regression discontinuity methods have potentially broad applicability in economic research, because geographic boundaries or rules governing programs often create discontinuities in the treatment assignment mechanism that can be exploited under the method. Although there have been several discussions and applications of RD methods in the literature, important questions still remain concerning sources of identification and ways of estimating treatment effects under minimal parametric restrictions. Here, we show that identifying conditions invoked in previous applications of RD methods are often overly strong and that treatment effects can be nonparametrically identified under an RD design by a weak functional form restriction. The restriction is unusual in that it requires imposing continuity assumptions in order to take advantage of the known discontinuity in the treatment assignment mechanism. We also propose a way of nonparametrically estimating treatment effects and offer an interpretation of the Wald estimator as an RD estimator.
Standard sufficient conditions for identification in the regression discontinuity design are continuity of the conditional expectation of counterfactual outcomes in the running variable. These continuity assumptions may not be plausible if agents are able to manipulate the running variable. This paper develops a test of manipulation related to continuity of the running variable density function. The methodology is applied to popular elections to the House of Representatives, where sorting is neither expected nor found, and to roll-call voting in the House, where sorting is both expected and found.
This paper establishes the relatively weak conditions under which causal inferences from a regression–discontinuity (RD) analysis can be as credible as those from a randomized experiment, and hence under which the validity of the RD design can be tested by examining whether or not there is a discontinuity in any pre-determined (or “baseline”) variables at the RD threshold. Specifically, consider a standard treatment evaluation problem in which treatment is assigned to an individual if and only if V>v0, but where v0 is a known threshold, and V is observable. V can depend on the individual's characteristics and choices, but there is also a random chance element: for each individual, there exists a well-defined probability distribution for V. The density function—allowed to differ arbitrarily across the population—is assumed to be continuous. It is formally established that treatment status here is as good as randomized in a local neighborhood of V=v0. These ideas are illustrated in an analysis of U.S. House elections, where the inherent uncertainty in the final vote count is plausible, which would imply that the party that wins is essentially randomized among elections decided by a narrow margin. The evidence is consistent with this prediction, which is then used to generate “near-experimental” causal estimates of the electoral advantage to incumbency.
This paper considers a class of simultaneous equation models with both discrete and continuous random variables based on normally distributed latent random variables. The model set forth here contains the classical simultaneous equation model for continuous endogenous variables and more recent models for discrete endogenous variables as special cases of a more general model. Conditions for the existence of the model are developed. Identification criteria are provided and consistent estimators are proposed. The model set forth here is contrasted with the models of Goodman and Nerlove and Press.
Government agencies in urbanizing areas are increasingly utilizing purchase and transfer of development rights programs to
preserve farmland and protect local farm economies. This article tests the effect of development restrictions imposed by permanent
easement sales on farmland sales prices, using Maryland data. We correct for selectivity bias due to the voluntary nature
of these programs in estimating hedonic sales equations. Although preserved parcels' actual land values are lower, the effect
of the restrictions is not statistically significant. These findings may encourage additional participation in preservation
programs or justify reductions in the easement prices paid by agencies.
Capitalization of exclusive agricultural zoning into farmland prices Regression discontinuity designs: a guide to practice The politics of property rights at the national level The effects of land use regulations on property values
- D M Henneberry
- R L Barrows
- G W Imbens
- T Lemieux
Econometrica 46, 931–959. Henneberry, D.M., Barrows, R.L., 1990. Capitalization of exclusive agricultural zoning into farmland prices. Land Economics 66, 249–258. Imbens, G.W., Lemieux, T., 2008. Regression discontinuity designs: a guide to practice. Journal of Econometrics 142, 615–635. Jacobs, H.M., 2003. The politics of property rights at the national level. Journal of the American Planning Association 69, 181–189. Jaeger, W.K., 2006. The effects of land use regulations on property values
Growth controls, real options, and land development Identification and estimation of treatment effects with a regression-discontinuity design Dummy endogenous variables in a simultaneous equation system
- L Q Ecology
- J Hahn
- P Todd
- W V D Klaauw
Ecology L.Q. 24, 187–242. Cunningham, C.R., 2007. Growth controls, real options, and land development. Review of Economics and Statistics 89, 343–358. Hahn, J., Todd, P., Klaauw, W.V.D., 2001. Identification and estimation of treatment effects with a regression-discontinuity design. Econometrica 69, 201–209. Heckman, J., 1978. Dummy endogenous variables in a simultaneous equation system
The economics behind Measure 37
- W K Jaeger
- A J Plantinga
Jaeger, W. K., and A. J. Plantinga, 2007b. The economics behind Measure 37. Oregon
State University Extension Publication EM 8925.