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WILLIAM T. BOGART [*] ABSTRACT. This paper applies a consistent framework to four comparably sized metropolitan areas to identify and characterize their employment centers. Employment centers are identified as places that exceed a threshold employment density and a threshold employment level. They are also characterized as specializing on the basis of location quotient analysis. We find clear evidence of specialization in every employment center in the four metropolitan areas studied. Our interpretation is that what we are observing is a systematic change in metropolitan structure rather than a random sprawling of firms. We also find some evidence that the size distribution of employment centers follows the rank-size rule. This suggests that there is structure not only in the distribution of economic activity among the employment centers but also in their size distribution. Because less than 50 percent of metropolitan employment is within employment centers, future research should focus on understanding the more diffuse employment patterns. The rank-size rule gives some guidance as to the expected size distribution of employment throughout the metropolitan area. I Introduction The sweeping changes in metropolitan structure in the United States have led many to decry urban sprawl as a blight on the landscape. However, it is possible that much of this metropolitan decentralization has not been sprawl in the sense of random scattering of people and firms but rather a change in structure to reflect changing technology and preferences. A growing literature in urban economics looks for common features of decentralized metropolitan areas. This paper applies a consistent analytical framework to four comparably-sized metropolitan areas (Cleveland, Indianapolis, Portland, and St. Louis) to identify and characterize their employment centers. Employment centers are identified as places that exceed a threshold employment density and a threshold employment level. They are then characterized as specializing on the basis of location quotient analysis. If decentralization is occurring randomly, then we should find that some or all of the employment centers are not identified as specialized. We find, to the contrary, clear evidence of specialization in every employment center in these four metropolitan areas. There is also some evidence that the size distribution of employment centers follows the rank-size rule. Theoretical models of urban growth are now expected to generate the rank-size rule for city size distributions. Our finding that the rank-size rule holds for intrametropolitan size distributions suggests that it is possible that similar processes govern the growth and development of the parts of a metropolitan area as govern the growth and development of the metropolitan area as a whole. II Identifying Employment Centers An employment center is an area with both a high density and high quantity of employment. We use the transportation analysis zone (TAZ) as the geographical unit of analysis. A TAZ is composed of one or more census blocks, with the borders being supplied to the U.S. Census Bureau by the metropolitan planning organization in each metropolitan area. Our data are thus a snapshot of metropolitan structure in 1990. An interesting task for future research will be to link these snapshots (even at ten-year intervals) to better understand the dynamic processes driving metropolitan structure. The methodology developed by Giuliano and Small (1991) in their study of Los Angeles requires identifying TAZs with dense employment, combining adjacent employment-dense TAZs into groups, and measuring total employment in the groups. An employment center is defined as a cluster of contiguous TAZs, all with gross employment density exceeding some minimum D, and with total employment exceeding some minimum E. McMillen and McDonald (1998) and Bogart and Ferry (1999) use this methodology to study Chicago and Cleveland respectively. …

The model, a stochastic dynamic program, is used to optimize the timing and type of protective structure under a range of management goals. A wetland can either be optimal for fish or optimal for mammals and waterfowl, but not both. Because credible estimates of the economic values of wetland services do not exist, we treat those values as parameters in a multiobjective analysis and show the decisions implied by alternative valuations. The model is applied to the case of Metzger Marsh, a Lake Erie coastal wetland near Toledo, Ohio, where the decision was made in 1993 to construct an open dike. We find that the optimal decision is robust with respect to varying assumptions about the formation of barrier beaches and the probability of climate change, but that the decision is not robust to assumptions concerning the health of an unprotected Metzger Marsh. The most important source of uncertainty is the biological health of an unprotected wetland.

This paper presents evidence of the effect on house values of a school redistricting in Shaker Heights, Ohio in 1987. As a result of redistricting, neighborhood schools are disrupted, bus transportation is introduced, and school racial composition changes. The data include all arms-length sales of houses in Shaker Heights between 1983 and 1994. We find, using a difference-in-difference estimator, that disruption of neighborhood schools reduces house values by 9.9%, or $5738 at the mean house value. This result is robust to a variety of alternative specifications, including repeat-sales analysis and within-neighborhood analysis.

This paper uses US Census Bureau data from 1990 to identify employment centres in the five counties surrounding Cleveland, Ohio. The results indicate the extent to which the former dominance of downtown Cleveland has been eroded by the growth of suburban employment centres. Location quotient analysis is used to identify the specialisations of each of the employment centres. The results illustrate the extent to which the changes in urban form identified by researchers examining cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago have become the norm for cities throughout the US.

** Abstract - This paper infers the value of public schools from sale prices of houses in neighborhoods in which public services are delivered by overlapping jurisdictions to isolate the effects of the public school from other local govern- ment services. We use information about houses that sold between 1976 and 1994 to decompose the difference in mean house value into a part due to differences in observable characteristics and an unobservable part due to differences in public services. We infer differences across jurisdictions in the value of local public schools under a variety of assumptions about the degree of tax and service capitalization.

This paper presents new evidence on the effectiveness of urban enterprise zones as an economic development tool. The results reported here are from an econometric analysis of the New Jersey urban enterprise zone program using data at the municipal level from 1982 to 1990. We find no evidence that the urban enterprise zone program in New Jersey had a positive effect on total municipal employment, on employment in various sectors, or on municipal property values. We conclude that the program was ineffective in achieving its goal of improving the economic conditions in and around the zones.

A popular concern is whether the managers of nonprofit enterprise are accountable. This article considers accountability in the context of three questions. First, how do groups establish a basis on which to hold managers acountable? Second, to whom should a manager be accountable? Third, can a person or group make it important to a manager to act in the best interests of the person or group? These three questions are addressed by the fields of public choice theory, social choice theory, and principal-agent theory, respectively. A cynical way of summarizing the seminal findings in these areas of research is that public choice theory proves that groups will be unable to form, social choice theory proves that once a group forms, it will be unable to make good decisions, and principal-agent theory proves that a decision, once reached, is impossible to implement. A more optimistic view is that the problems identified by these research findings contain the seeds of their own solution, and that thereby valuable lessons for nonprofit managers can be adduced.

This paper considers whether a number of the motivations for exclusionary zoning usually examined by economists are distinguishable from one another in a general theoretical model. The four motivations identified are: fiscal zoning, public goods zoning, consumption zoning and political economic zoning. It is demonstrated in a general setting that the motivations are observationally equivalent if the only available information is community composition. The most important implication of this finding is that a policy directed at alleviating one motive for zoning inevitably affects other motives. The existence of exclusionary zoning does not constitute a prima facie case for any particular intervention. Rather, the true motivations behind the observed pattern of land use and land-use controls must be identified.

year administration of Governor Tom We calculate the incidence of the recent Kean (Republican), he confronted major changes to the New Jersey state tax system deficits and a court mandate to restrucon a sample of homeowners and conclude ture the state's assistance to local school that the policies redistribute wealth on av- systems. To deal with the first problem, erage from higher-income homeowners to- Governor Florio increased the state retail ward lower-income homeowners and from sales tax (through rate increases and base owners of suburban residential property broadening). His reaction to the second toward owners of urban and rural resi- problem was to implement a significant dential property. Even when there exist package of changes in the state's personal clear and significant general tendencies income tax, homeowner and tenant rein the effects of a policy on identifiable bate programs, grants to local governgroups, there remains considerable varz*- ments, including especially school disation among individuals within such tricts, and mandated local school groups. We distinguish between changes expenditure levels. In this paper we exdesigned to finance a given policy path and amine the incidence and some of the magenuine shifts in policy. The latter have jor allocation effects of these changes in incidence and allocation effects, the for- New Jersey's fiscal policy. mer do not. Our analysis differs from others, we think, in several respects. In the first place, in considering the incidence of the change

A group of studies, rapidly gaining popularity, promise that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with green jobs. Not only will these jobs allegedly improve the environment, but they will pay well, be very interesting, and foster unionization. These claims are built on 7 myths about economics, forecasting, and technology. Our team of researchers from universities across the nation surveyed this green jobs literature, analyzed its assumptions, and found that the special interest groups promoting the idea of green jobs have embedded dubious assumptions and techniques within their analyses. We found that the prescribed undertaking would lead to restructuring and possibly impoverishing our society. Therefore, our citizens deserve careful analysis and informed public debate about these assumptions and resulting recommendations before our nation can move forward towards a more eco-friendly nation. To do so, we need to expose these myths so that we can see the facts more clearly.

A rapidly growing literature promises that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with green jobs. Not only will these jobs improve the environment, but they will be high paying, interesting, and provide collective rights. This literature is built on mythologies about economics, forecasting, and technology. Myth: Everyone understands what a green job is. Reality: No standard definition of a green job exists. Myth: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment. Reality: Green jobs estimates include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption. Myth: Green jobs forecasts are reliable. Reality: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions. Myth: Green jobs promote employment growth. Reality: By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference - such as restricting successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation. Myth: The world economy can be remade by reducing trade and relying on local production and reduced consumption without dramatically decreasing our standard of living. Reality: History shows that nations cannot produce everything their citizens need or desire. People and firms have talents that allow specialization that make goods and services ever more efficient and lower-cost, thereby enriching society. Myth: Government mandates are a substitute for free markets. Reality: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers and markets, than to cumbersome government mandates. Myth: Imposing technological progress by regulation is desirable. Reality: Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today's demands and could be counterproductive to environmental quality. In this Article, we survey the green jobs literature, analyze its assumptions, and show how the special interest groups promoting the idea of green jobs have embedded dubious assumptions and techniques within their analyses. Before undertaking efforts to restructure and possibly impoverish our society, careful analysis and informed public debate about these assumptions and prescriptions are necessary.

Demonstrates the effect of omitting quasi-governmental expenditures when estimating the demand for local public services. Concludes that the common practice in the literature of ignoring structural aspects of intergovernmental relations is likely to lead to significant biases when estimating demand equations.

Despite numerous studies of the relation between income taxes and capital garns realizations, the revenue consequences of reducing capital gains tax rates remain unclear. However, an important source of cross-sectional variation has been neglected in this line of research: since both the tax base and the tax rate vary among states, the marginal tax rate on capital gains differs among otherwise identical individuals located in different states. The interstate variation in the tax consequences of realizing capital gains implies that the incentive to realize gains varies across states. This paper documents the interstate variation in capital gains taxation and examines the relation between capital gains taxes and aggregated state-level realizations. For each state, we construct marginal tax rates on capital gains for the highest state income tax bracket for 1982 through 1990. Using state-level aggregated data rather than data on individual taxpayers alleviates the problem that the marginal tax rate is endogenous to the amount of capital gains realized. Panel estimates indicate that capital gains realizations are negatively related to capital gains tax rates. The estimated elasticity is smaller than that found by most researchers using panel data, with a point estimate of - 0.67 in our basic specification.

We calculate the incidence of recent changes to the New Jersey state tax system on a sample of homeowners. Our analysis distinguishes between business-as-usual responses to an evolving fiscal situation and tax changes that constitute a surprise. The latter have incidence effects; the former do not. We conclude that, if the changes carried out by NJ Governor Jim Florio are regarded as permanent, they effected a one-time wealth redistribution from, on average, higher-income homeowners toward lower-income homeowners and from owners of suburban residential property toward owners of urban residential property. Although effects on the averages for identifiable groups are clear and significant there is very considerable variation in the effects on individual homeowners within groups. We also estimate the allocation effects of the tax changes using a general equilibrium model that incorporates the option of in-and out migration. The results suggest that the changes will induce a sizable migration of weal thy and high-income people out of the state.

This article demonstrates the parallels between Bellamy's fictional society in Looking Backward and Schumpeter's socialist blueprint Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The socialist system Joseph Schumpeter describes is nearly identical to that in Edward Bellamy's utopia. Because Bellamy's society is a concrete one set within the readable confines of a novel, it provides a useful benchmark for students analyzing Schumpeter.

Do the economic consequences of policies affect the political behavior of elected officials? In particular, do the costs and benefits that flow to households in legislative districts affect representatives' support of policy proposals? In recent years, scholars have investigated this question by regressing roll-call vote decisions of legislators against measures of the economic interests of constituents and the ideology of the legislators [3; 5; 8; 9; 10; 11; 13; 14]. With some exceptions, such as Peltzman [13], most scholars who perform such regressions conclude that constituents' economic interests are not the sole determinant of legislators' behavior. Representatives' own policy preferences explain some of the cross-sectional variance in their support of proposals. In the words of economists, representatives shirk from their constituents' interests. Many authors who regress roll-call vote behavior against measures of constituents' economic interests and representatives' ideology are aware that their measure of the latter (summary rollcall vote ratings by groups such as the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)) is not a pure measure of representatives' policy beliefs because it is merely a summary of previous roll-call behavior. To eliminate the contamination, scholars regress the ADA rating against numerous economic, demographic, and regional variables. The unexplained residual variance is then used to measure representatives' ideology. Those who use this technique obviously hope that these residuals represent personal ideology and not other possible causes of vote decisions. The reasonableness of this assumption depends on whether the variables regressed against the ADA rating capture all the other causes of congressional behavior. Kalt and Zupan [9, 293; 10, 112], Carson and Oppenheimer [5, 172] and Kau and Rubin [11, 64] exclude three important classes of variables: the positions of interest groups and executive-branch actors, and the likelihood of proposal passage, all of which affect the decisions of legislators. This exclusion increases the probability that the residuals in the ADA equation represent not only the personal ideology of representatives, but also the ability of executive-branch and interest-group actors to affect reelection.'

Dick Netzer, a leading public finance economist specializing in state and local issues and urban government, brings together in this comprehensive volume essays by top scholars connecting the property tax with land use. They explore the idea that the property tax is used as a partial substitute for land use regulation and other policies designed to affect how land is utilized. Like many economists, the contributors see some type of property taxation as the more efficient means of helping to shape land use. Some of the essays analyze a conventional property tax, while others consider radically different systems of property taxation.

This article considers the design of grants to offset fiscal disparities. We define afiscal disparity as a condition in which towns must levy a different tax rate in order to provide the same level of public services. We consider ways of measuring disparities, as well as ways of allocating grants to alleviate disparities. In order to focus the presentation, we concentrate on lump-sum grants for unrestricted use from a state government to general purpose local governments within that state. We conclude by presenting an example of a grants formula for the state of New Jersey which meets our specifications.