Variation in regulatory costs over time and across different types of investment projects creates risk for developers who hold land. These so-called implicit costs, which arise as a result of regulatory delay in the land development process, are hypothesized to be potentially large, but...

This paper analyzes the interactions between labor and housing (and land) markets in a city. We develop a monocentric city model involving land development and frictional unemployment and characterize the city's spatial configurations in equilibrium. To better understand the properties of...

This paper presents a spatially explicit model to examine the importance of agricultural amenities as a determinant of the urban and suburban spatial structures. By introducing endogenous agricultural amenities into the classical monocentric model, we provide an intuitive explanation of leapfrog...

Urban areas possess complex spatial configurations. These patterns are produced by cumulative changes in land use and land cover as human and natural environments are influenced by market forces, policy, and changes in the natural landscape. To understand the mechanisms underlying these complex...

We test the hypothesis that property institutions are responsible for the persistent low levels of business and economic development on American Indian reservations. American Indian lands are held in trust by the US Federal government and may not be used as collateral. We exploit the uniform and...

This study uses a unique data set derived from parcel data and aerial photographs to estimate the effect of the introduction of light rail transit (LRT) on land use in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We measure detailed changes in land use before and after construction of the METRO Blue Line and exploit...

Surveys of artists' location choices show that they disproportionately reside in large cities. This paper introduces a model that attempts to explain this urban preference. The model includes four factors: access to other artists; access to consumer demand; access to service jobs; and housing...

An important measure of the capital–land ratio in urban areas is the Floor Area Ratio (FAR), which gives a building's total floor area divided by the plot size. Variations in the FAR across cities remain an understudied measure of urban spatial structure. We examine how the FAR varies across...

Motivated by several empirical studies showing a positive relationship between residential density and vehicle fuel efficiency chosen by the residents, this paper presents a modified monocentric city model with endogenous vehicle-typechoices. Consumers are assumed to explicitly consider driving...

This paper expands empirical testing of the predictions of the standard monocentric urban model to examine the size of urban spatial expansion for all US metropolitan regions for the years 1980, 1990 and 2000. Until recently, the lack of temporally and spatially-consistently interpreted data on...