We develop a diagrammatic framework that can be used to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been the primary focus of either the theoretical or empirical literatures. We use the framework to analyse the impact of shocks that occur in one region...

We consider the literatures on urban systems and New Economic Geography to examine questions concerning agglomeration and how areas respond to shocks to the economic environment. We first propose a diagrammatic framework to compare the two approaches. We then use this framework to study a number...

We analyze demand for prepaid cellular voice and short message service (SMS) in South Africa by means of a demand-and-supply structural model based on a multinomial specification fitted to a cross-sectional data set on Vodacom customers collected in 2005. We find that consumers are very...

We highlight the role of commuting cost, location and housing market in crime decision. By assuming that all crimes are committed in the central business district and that criminals create both positive and negative externalities to each other, we find that high wages or large levels of police...

Does Islamic terrorism have an effect on the general attitudes towards Muslim minorities? We use the murder of Theo van Gogh as an event study to address this question. Specifically, we use the hedonic-market model and test for an effect on listed house prices in neighbourhoods where more than...

Housing transactions by owner-occupiers take two steps, purchase of a new property and sale of the old housing unit. This paper shows how the transaction sequence decision of owner-occupiers depends on, and in turn, affects housing market conditions in an equilibrium search-and-matching model of...

Houses and apartments sold in New York and New Jersey at prices above $1 million are subject to the so-called 1% “mansion tax" imposed on the full value of the transaction. This policy generates a discontinuity (a “notch") in the overall tax liability. We rely on this and other...

Using data on house sales and inventories of unsold houses, this paper shows that changes in sales volume are largely explained by changes in the frequency at which houses are put up for sale rather than changes in the length of time taken to sell them. Thus the decision to move house is key to...

We study the joint dynamics of foreign capital flows and real activity during the recent boom-bust cycle of the Spanish economy, using a three-country New Keynesian model with credit constrained households and firms, a construction sector and a government. We estimate the model using...

This paper provides a method to single out customer-based discrimination in the housing market. We build a matching model with ethnic externalities where landlords differ in the number of housing units they own within the same building. Multiple-dwelling landlords discriminate more often than...