Search

Urban blight is a complex problem that has been challenging for cities in the United States "Rust Belt" region for many decades. However, in the wake of the real estate and financial crisis, it is also a growing challenge for urban communities in many states such as California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Detroit was particularly hit hard, where more than 40,000 blighted structures were identified in 2014. To curb blight, the city mobilized the most extensive demolition program in the country. Funded through the Federal Hardest Hit Fund (HHF), the Detroit Demolition Program began in 2014 and has demolished more than 20,800 properties at the cost of over $250 million. Furthermore, during 2009–2015, the city demolished 11,400 structures with hazardous materials such as asbestos. In this article, we assess the impacts of demolitions on the value of neighboring properties using a Repeat Sales (RS) regression approach. Specifically, we use housing sales price information from 2009 through 2019 to construct real estate price indices. We also rely on information from the 2009 Detroit Residential Survey to differentiate by dilapidation and blight levels before the start of the program. On average, blight removal through the demolition program does not appear to have been capitalized into the residential property prices. However, when considering the effect of ex‐ante program property characteristics, we find a modest positive effect of demolitions on property prices in areas with a low level of blight before the demolitions. Given the magnitude of the observed effect and the high costs associated with the demolition program, our results highlight the need for further research on alternative blight removal strategies that might provide a more cost‐effective solution to this urban challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fly‐in/fly‐Out (FIFO) or, drive‐in/drive‐out (DIDO) labour system is a long‐distance commuting work arrangement to attract workers towards remote mineral or fossil fuel extraction areas, where they work in shifts and then return to their usual place of residence located in a different region. Along with more and cheaper transportation alternatives, the use of FIFO/DIDO systems have importantly increased in last decades around the world, which has translated to FIFO/DIDO systems operating even when already established cities are present in extractive regions. This paper uses the case of Chile, one of the most important mining countries in the world, to explore whether and in what extent these labor systems influence wage compensations. We find that FIFO/DIDO commuters obtain an average wage compensation of 2.4 per cent per commuted hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this paper, we estimate the size of the wage premium necessary to compensate for remoteness incurred by workers compared to the city size productivity effects. We construct five urban hierarchy tiers for cities in Chile based on their level of remoteness from the urban system. We then contrast the effect generated by these variables on worker wages. We report a positive gradient of wages the higher the size of the urban tier and a loss in wages that can reach 35 percent for more remote cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between resource extraction activity and economic growth has been widely studied in the literature, and the resource curse hypotheses emerged as a theory to explain the effects of resource windfalls on national economies. However, within countries, resource booms and busts can have distinctive effects across local economies, as extractive regions face particular economic consequences unlikely to be observed in nonresource regions. Empirically, most studies analysing the resource curse have relied on cross-country models to estimate effects and inform policy; however, the use of regional - within-country - analysis has gained attention from scholars lately, promoted by two advantages: it avoids unobserved country heterogeneities confounding economic outcomes caused by resources and exploits the subnational quasi-natural experimental conditions generated by endowments. This paper contributes to the resource curse literature by discussing its theoretical causes across scale (regional vs. national effects) and highlighting the empirical challenges involved in the analysis of mining economic impacts across regions. We complement the discussions by econometrically modelling economic growth across nonmetropolitan substate regions of Australia during a period of resource windfalls, finding that in most cases, resources have been a blessing for local economies, although negative effects have also been experienced in parts of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new economic geography ( NEG) has been tested to explain the spatial concentration of wages in developed countries, but it has not been evaluated for developing countries where the excessive spatial concentration seems to be related with negative consequences on the economic development. This paper covers this gap in the literature estimating by first time a NEG model for a developing country such as Chile, pursuing two research question: (1) Can the NEG explain the spatial distribution of wages in a developing country as Chile?; and (2) How can the NEG be used to infer information about the future level of spatial concentration of wages in Chile? The results suggest that the case of Chile is poorly explained by the NEG and even higher level of spatial concentration should be expected in the future. These results indicate that the empirical application of NEG is not trivial for developing countries, and some considerations such as inclusion of the first nature or analysis at micro data level must be incorporated by future researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to build, for the first time, a spatial housing price index for the Chilean communities. The first step is to recover hedonic prices of three housing attributes by estimating a mixed index model using a generalised method of moments ( GMM) procedure. Second, a censored almost ideal demand system is estimated to build expenditures for every community and to compare them among different spatial units, while maintaining a constant utility level. Using micro data from the 2009 CASEN survey, we show that there are important differences in the expenditure of a consumer in Santiago to access the same level of welfare in another community in the country and there are important differences in housing prices among Chilean communities [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]