scholarly journals Urban Accounting and Welfare

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (6) ◽  
pp. 2296-2327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Desmet ◽  
Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

We use a simple theory of a system of cities to decompose the determinants of the city size distribution into three main components: efficiency, amenities, and frictions. Higher efficiency and better amenities lead to larger cities but also to greater frictions through congestion and other negative effects of agglomeration. Using data on MSAs in the United States, we estimate these city characteristics. Eliminating variation in any of them leads to large population reallocations, but modest welfare effects. We apply the same methodology to Chinese cities and find welfare effects that are many times larger than those in the US. (JEL H71, O18, P25, R11, R23, R41)

2021 ◽  
pp. 014544552098613
Author(s):  
Bailee B. Schuhmann ◽  
Sarah N. Henderson ◽  
Ryan A. Black ◽  
Vincent B. Van Hasselt ◽  
Kristin Klimley Margres ◽  
...  

Research has documented a number of acute and chronic stressors unique to the fire service. Due to the rise in mental health concerns in firefighters, there has been increased awareness of the negative effects of unmanaged stress. The present study employed a behavioral-analytic model to construct a brief screening measure of stress for this population: the Firefighter Assessment of Stress Test (FAST). Psychometric properties of the FAST were evaluated using data from active-duty firefighters throughout the United States. Results indicated the FAST has good internal reliability ( α = 0.89), as well as good convergent and discriminant validity. Also, the factor structure of the FAST revealed three significant subscales reflective of stress associated with responding to calls, administrative difficulties, and being overworked. Scoring and interpretation guidelines were established to suggest when further assessment is warranted. The FAST offers a brief and valid method of self-assessment of current stress levels in firefighters. Information obtained from the FAST (i.e., overall stress level and domains) has the potential to facilitate more immediate identification and recognition of stress in firefighters than what has been possible to date. Moreover, heightened awareness of stress and its effects will hopefully culminate in expanded efforts directed toward stress reduction and intervention for firefighters and their families.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Sonia Paone

The article analyses the transformations of the use of eminent domain in the United States in the context of urban redevelopment programs. In the past the private property has been expropriated for public use only. Recently it is possible to forcibly transfer property, from a private subject to private developers, on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates that the new use is more efficient than the previous one. This profound change has been possible thanks to a progressive modification of the concept of public use. Traditionally, public use coincided with the construction of infrastructures and public utility, such as highways and railroads. Over the time, it has come to include other aims: firstly, projects of urban renewal and economic development carried forth by private developers. Essentially, it has resulted in the use of expropriation to assemble lands which are then granted to subjects who intervene in the reconfiguration of the city for private purposes. Starting from some important examples of urban development, the main phases of this process are reconstructed, also taking into account the most important decisions of the US Supreme Court that contributed to the change of doctrine, invalidating the postulate of public use as justification for expropriation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-238
Author(s):  
Malika S. Tovsultanova ◽  
Rustam A. Tovsultanov ◽  
Lilia N. Galimova

In the 1970s, Turkey was in a state of political turbulence. Weak coalition governments changed frequently and could not bring order to the country. The city streets turned into an arena of battles for various armed radical groups of nationalist, communist, Islamist and separatist persuasions. For 9 years from 1971 to 1980, 10 governments changed in Turkey. The political crisis was accompanied by an economic downturn, expressed in hyperinflation and an increase in external debt. Chaos and anarchy caused discontent among Turkish financial circles and generals with the situation in the country and led to the idea of a military coup, already the third in the republican history of Turkey. The US State Department was extremely concerned about the situation in Turkey, hoping to find a reliable cover against further exports of communism and Islamism to the Middle East, approving the possibility of a coup. The coup was led by the chief of the General Staff K. Evren. Political events of the second half of the 1970s allow us to conclude that, despite the interest of the financial and military circles of the United States in it, the military coup on September 12, 1980 had mainly domestic political reasons.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 1074-1101
Author(s):  
Alessandro Barattieri ◽  
Maya Eden ◽  
Dalibor Stevanovic

We present a stylized model that illustrates how interbank trading can reduce the sensitivity of lending to entrepreneurs' net worth, thus affecting the transmission mechanism of monetary policy through the credit channel. We build a model-consistent measure of interconnectedness and document that, in the United States, this measure has increased substantially during the period 1952–2016. Finally, interacting the measure of interconnectedness in a structural vector autoregression and a factor-augmented vector autoregression for the US economy, we find that the impulse responses of several real and financial variables to monetary policy shocks are dampened as interconnectedness increases. We confirm the same result using data from 10 Euro area countries for the period 1999–2016.


Author(s):  
Ali Al-Ramini ◽  
Mohammad A Takallou ◽  
Daniel P Piatkowski ◽  
Fadi Alsaleem

Most cities in the United States lack comprehensive or connected bicycle infrastructure; therefore, inexpensive and easy-to-implement solutions for connecting existing bicycle infrastructure are increasingly being employed. Signage is one of the promising solutions. However, the necessary data for evaluating its effect on cycling ridership is lacking. To overcome this challenge, this study tests the potential of using readily-available crowdsourced data in concert with machine-learning methods to provide insight into signage intervention effectiveness. We do this by assessing a natural experiment to identify the potential effects of adding or replacing signage within existing bicycle infrastructure in 2019 in the city of Omaha, Nebraska. Specifically, we first visually compare cycling traffic changes in 2019 to those from the previous two years (2017–2018) using data extracted from the Strava fitness app. Then, we use a new three-step machine-learning approach to quantify the impact of signage while controlling for weather, demographics, and street characteristics. The steps are as follows: Step 1 (modeling and validation) build and train a model from the available 2017 crowdsourced data (i.e., Strava, Census, and weather) that accurately predicts the cycling traffic data for any street within the study area in 2018; Step 2 (prediction) use the model from Step 1 to predict bicycle traffic in 2019 while assuming new signage was not added; Step 3 (impact evaluation) use the difference in prediction from actual traffic in 2019 as evidence of the likely impact of signage. While our work does not demonstrate causality, it does demonstrate an inexpensive method, using readily-available data, to identify changing trends in bicycling over the same time that new infrastructure investments are being added.


Author(s):  
Neilan S. Chaturvedi

For almost thirty years, political scientists have believed that the US Senate would be less affected by partisan polarization due to the existence of a handful of moderate senators who would act as power brokers between the two sides, yet year after year we see partisan gridlock. Life in the Middle argues that the belief in the powerful, pivotal moderate neglects their electoral circumstances and overestimates their legislative power. Indeed, not all senators are elected under equal circumstances where the modern centrist has to balance between two conflicting constituencies like Susan Collins in Maine, or represents a state where the opposition outnumbers their base like Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Using data compiled from the Congressional Record, the book examines the legislative behavior of moderates and finds that they seldom amend legislation to their preferences, rarely speak on the record, and often lose on final votes. Using unique interview data with nineteen legislative directors and six retired centrist senators, it also finds that the behind-the-scenes conversations mirror the on-stage behavior where centrists are not influential or viewed as pivotal by party leaders. Furthermore, moderates reported less satisfaction with legislative outcomes than their peers. Life in the Middle suggests that lawmaking needs to be re-evaluated as being much more variable and less reliant on the work of moderates and more on party leaders. Indeed, the mainstream concerns about polarization and its negative effects of increased gridlock and ideological legislation may be true.


2020 ◽  
pp. 183-194
Author(s):  
Charles D. Ross

This chapter narrates how Nassau resumed its normal state as a forgotten and destitute outpost. It outlines the effects of the Civil War in the United States, the cessation of blockade running, and the financial windfall of 1862–1864. The chapter then looks at the powerful hurricane that hit the city, in which hundreds of homes and businesses were completely destroyed. It recounts the center of opposition to blockade-running efforts during the war — the US consulate, and the four men who occupied that office to stop the shipping of contraband: Sam Whiting, Seth Hawley, and Vice-consul William Thompson. It also discusses the significance of Charles Jackson, John Howell, and Epes Sargent in providing aid to the consul's office during the war. The chapter argues that former US consul Timothy Darling was the only prominent merchant to be an ardent supporter of the Union cause, adding he was a true New Englander living in the tropics and was in strong opposition to the slave-holding Confederacy. The chapter also notes the contributions of Lewis Heyliger in Confederate departments, the cotton brokers, and the shipments coming in from Europe. Ultimately, it highlights how Henry Adderley, his son Augustus, and their business partner and Henry's son-in-law George David Harris epitomized the success of the opportunism surrounding the Great Carnival.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Frederick Appiah Afriyie ◽  
Jisong Jian

Economic sanctions are not only applied to countries in Africa by the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) but also by the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as well. The African continent is considered to be the most affected in terms of the influences of more economic sanctions from the UN, EU, and the U.S than any other continent across the globe and these sanctions normally comes into force as a result of conflicts, civil wars and also unconstitutional overthrow of a constitutionally elected government. Also these sanctions come to serve as a punishment and a deterrent to those who deviate from or go against internationally agreed laws.Undeniably, in recent years economic sanctions have become more effective and an efficient known foreign policy tool used as the number one alternative to halt wars or military takeovers.Despite economic sanctions being widely accepted by the international community as the most effective panacea and also a preferred choice, when it is imposed on a state, it has serious repercussions on the innocent citizens while the initiators or the main officials in various positions for whom these sanctions were intended for are always left off the hook.This paper therefore investigates the merits and the demerits that are associated with economic sanctions both within some countries on the African continent and the non-African continent. In addition, we will elaborate on the implications of such sanctions relative to the Africa Continent. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section of this paper elaborates on the introduction, the importance of economic sanctions and the types of sanctions. The second section deals with the definition of economic sanction, explains the sanction process at EU, AU, UN and the US and the final part looks at both the positive and negative effects of economic sanctions.


Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-685
Author(s):  
DAVID JOHNSON LEE

ABSTRACT:The reconstruction of Managua following the 1972 earthquake laid bare the contradictions of modernization theory that justified the US alliance with Latin American dictators in the name of democracy in the Cold War. Based on an idealized model of urban development, US planners developed a plan to ‘decentralize’ both the city of Managua and the power of the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. In the process, they helped augment the power of the dictator and create a city its inhabitants found intolerable. The collective rejection of the city, the dictator and his alliance with the United States, helped propel Nicaragua toward its 1979 revolution and turned the country into a Cold War battleground.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Fang ◽  
Cara McDaniel

AbstractUsing data from the Multinational Time Use Study, this paper documents the trend and level of time allocation, with a focus on home hours, for the US and European countries. Three patterns emerge. First, home hours per person have declined in both the US and European countries over the past 50 years. Second, female time allocation contributes more to the difference in time allocation per person between the US and European countries than does male time allocation. Third, the time allocation between the US and European countries is more similar for prime-age individuals than for young and old individuals.


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