A number of recent studies have been concerned with the determinants of either housing cost differentials or overall living cost differentials among SMSAs. Given the obvious significance of such differentials, the purpose of this research note is to develop a geographically comparable...

This paper uses street-level data on house sales and crime rates for England and Wales to look at the existence of compensating differentials for crime risk. In terms of identification my strategy relies on the use of non-parametric regional time trends as well as various fixed effects to...

Implicit values of amenities and the quality of life in an area can be measured by differences in “real wages” across areas, where real wages are computed as nominal wages adjusted for the cost of living. Computing cost of living differences involves several important issues, most important...

This paper attempts to examine the impacts of neighborhood types, as defined by a gated-guarded neighborhood with landscape compound and a freehold tenure neighborhood on residential property values in Klang Valley, Malaysia. A weighted least squares method together with a heteroscedasticity...

Do homeowners prefer living in an area with a more equal distribution of income? We answer this question by estimating a semi-parametric hedonic pricing model for about 90,000 housing units transacted in Hong Kong between 2005 and 2006. We first identify a hedonic price function by locally...

The influence of the housing market bubble on U.S. business cycle dynamics during the previous decade has been well-documented. Yet, little if anything is known about how nonmetropolitan areas fared during the period. This study examines the association of regional housing market bubbles with...

Oswald's thesis posits that workers who own their own home should have longer unemployment spells due to restricted mobility, but repeatedly the reverse is found. We contribute to shed light on this puzzle in two key ways. First, we show that the thesis holds when stated in terms of search...

This empirical study investigates determinants of interstate living-cost differentials for the year 2005. It seeks to supplement existing related studies, most of which have investigated such differentials at the metropolitan area or county levels and for earlier time periods. OLS and two-stage...

This paper investigates the determinants of interregional migration in Italy for the period 1985-2006, during which different migration trends took place. In so doing, in addition to the traditional variables of Harris and Todaro model, the impact of housing prices and externalities variables...

Natural disasters can conceivably have significant impacts on the “neighborhood sorting” of different racial or economic groups across intrametropolitan space. Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data we examine mortgage-financed homebuying activity within the New Orleans MSA before and after...