I argue that the trend toward single households among retired men 65 years of age or older has been ongoing since 1880. When coresidence is measured by the percentage of elderly men living in the households of their children or other relatives, fully 57 percent of the decline in coresidence...

This paper builds on Graves' (1979) migration research on climate demand and on Rosen's (1974) research agenda of identifying structural demand parameters for capitalized non-market amenities. Graves (1972, 1982, 1985) has used aggregated migration net flow data to quantify migratory...

This paper surveys the recent literature exploring the causes of urban pollution in the developing world and the implications of such pollution for a city's competitiveness. Within a system of cities, cities compete for jobs and people. Those cities that specialize in heavy industrial activity...

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities that government officials face in designing coherent 'rules of the game' for achieving urban sustainability during times of growth. Sustainability is judged by three criteria. The first involves elements of day-to-day quality of life, such as...

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities that government officials face in designing coherent 'rules of the game' for achieving urban sustainability during times of growth. Sustainability is judged by three criteria. The first involves elements of day-to-day quality of life, such as...

Developing countries suffer from rising urban pollution levels, with associated negative effects on health and worker productivity. This paper studies how managers in developing country cities cope with the polluted environment. High-resolution pollution measurements were collected in Ugandan...

The Brookings Institution Press has just published my new book. This pdf presents the introduction of this book.Rapid urban growth and suburban sprawl have heightened concern in many quarters about sustainable development. Are economic growth and environmental health always mutually exclusive...

Hedonics is a leading revealed preference method for valuing nonmarket local public goods such as environmental quality. Using hedonic methods, numerous cross-city studies have been conducted pricing all sorts of nonmarket environmental attributes ranging from air pollution, to open space, to...

More than 17 percent of households in American central cities live in poverty; in American suburbs, just 7.4 percent of households live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to be the result of wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap...

Using a new data set on annual deaths from natural disasters in 48 nations from 1980 to 1999, this paper tests several hypotheses concerning disaster mitigation. While richer nations do not experience fewer natural disaster shocks than poorer nations, richer nations do suffer less death from...