Reducing vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) has become an important goal for improving environmental outcomes and reducing the costs of travel and infrastructure. One way to accomplish such reductions could be to enact policies that foster more compact development. However, while it is accepted that compact development is associated with lower VMT, there remain disagreements about the efficacy of this policy lever. One issue casting doubt on the power of compact development relates to travelers' exposure to density. A conventional view holds that many travelers' neighborhoods are "locked in place" because change in established neighborhoods is slow. Additionally, conventional explanations of the effect of denser development focus on travelers' own neighborhoods, or on the metro area as a whole, failing to isolate the effect of densifying nodes near, but outside of, the travelers' neighborhoods. This study employs housing and travel data from the Seattle-Tacoma, Wash., where policies aimed at encouraging compact development have been in place since the mid-1990s. Findings suggest that 1) in established neighborhood, incremental change often results in exposure to substantially higher density, and 2) that even where localized density is constant, increases in density at intentional nodes or other areas near, but outside of, a traveler's own neighborhood, has a strong effect on VMT. The findings tend to undermine some of the key doubts about using land use as a policy lever for VMT reduction.

The chapters of this dissertation examine efficiency failures in three areas of applied microeconomics: experimental economics, public finance, and game theory. In each case, we look at ways to resolve these failures to promote the public good. The first chapter, “An Experimental Test of the Pigovian Hypothesis,” looks at two different policies designed to reduce congestion in a common-pool resource (CPR). We present an experiment with training and a simplified decision task and find that subject behavior converges to the Nash prediction over a number of periods. A Pigovian subsidy effectively moves subject behavior to the pre-subsidy social optimum. Finally, we find a significant but non-persistent effect of information provision in moving subjects toward the social optimum. The second chapter, “Apples to Apples to Oranges,” looks at efficiency and equity failures across states resulting from public expenditure. This chapter introduces an extension of the Representative Expenditure System that uses regression methods and both state and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level data, allowing for comparability of input costs, service requirements, and levels of need. The regression-based results are robust across state- and MSA-level formulations, although state-level approaches overestimate need for larger, less populous states. All regression-based results diverge from previous workload-based approaches. The third chapter, “Evading Nash Traps in Two-Player Simultaneous Games,” looks at efficiency failures in two-player simultaneous games. This chapter presents two new concepts: “détente” and “no-initiative,” in which players consider their own strategies and other-best-responses. We discuss their efficiency and descriptive properties across a set of simultaneous games.

The empirical literature in economic geography has recently dealt with two fundamental questions, whether growth or innovation is spatially bounded or not and how far the economic growth is determined by knowledge. In this thesis, relations between economic growth and knowledge relation is discussed from spatial spillovers perspective with the help of spatial econometric techniques. Adding city-region discussion to the existing literature, the thesis aims to evaluate the economic growth and knowledge spillovers from a broader perspective. The selected cases are two dynamic and rapidly transforming centers, namely izmir and Antalya City-regions and the results suggest the strong relevance of proximity effects and spillovers in both of the cases. Moreover, the analyses show that growth and knowledge spillovers operate in opposite directions rather than a parallel pattern as expected in Knowledge Based Economy discussions.

The success of the local development experiences after the 1980s is associated with the non-economic components as well as the economic ones in the contemporary development literature. Most apparently, the literature seems to be intensified on the local institutions and on the local social interaction which creates reciprocal cooperative trust relations. These socially constructed local institutions refer to the local rules, routines and patterns having been directly influencing the relation among the local actors of development. They are also seen to be the organizational actors of development being responsible for the social inheritance of traditional and even tacit local knowledge and facilitating the adaptation of other local actors to the changing supra local networks. In many cases, however, the age groups dominating these successful development experiences have come to the edge of or already exceeded the age limits of active workforce cohorts currently. The coming decade, therefore, indicates a succession period from these generations leading to the emergence of successful development experiences to their successors. This period is identified in this study as the generational transition. This concept represents a newly emerging field of contradiction and this study analyses and conceptualizes the influences of generational transition on the local pathways of development both in terms of the tensions between diverse generations, and in context of tensions between the institutions and successor generations and among the institutions being socially constructed by diverse generations. These tensions are analyzed in this study through the Kayseri experience which has created a successful local development practice after the 1980s by focusing the generational transformation of both the local development path and the socio-spatial patterns of the town. This analysis indicates three vitally important outcomes of generational transition. Firstly, the local socio-spatial institutions have a crucial importance in the social inheritance of the traditional local knowledge and they have been transformed by the influences of generational transition. Secondly, it is found that the economic organizations have been transformed generationally in tune with the generational transition. And finally it is found that the generational transition has directly been influencing the local development path by destroying or changing some institutions and by creating some new ones.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, regional development has become one of the most vital economic issues in China. Both central and local governments in the nation have implemented policies to reduce regional economic disparities and promote regional integration. On the one hand, the central government has exercised policy and political control to promote regional development. On the other hand, local governments have sought opportunities to foster local economic prosperity by forming more competitive economic blocks with neighboring jurisdictions. In particular, growth poles like the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) have been very active in promoting regional integration and cooperation as they need the support of other hinterlands for further development. Literature review indicates that regional cooperation in China is subjected to the influence of both economic and political factors. Although it seems that there is interaction between such economic and political factors. However, there is a general lack of a comprehensive framework to examine regional cooperation in China from a political and economic dynamic perspective. In order to fill the gap, two game theory models are developed to analyze economic and political incentives for government officials in the context of regional cooperation. The first model attempts to determine the important economic factors that may affect the feasibility of a cooperative project, assuming local government officials are maximizing the absolute economic performance of their jurisdictions. The second model focuses on understanding how the political relationship between provincial leaders may affect regional cooperation between them, assuming local government officials are maximizing the relative economic performance of their jurisdictions. A game theory framework to examine the economic political dynamics of regional in China is developed based on these two models. The game theory analysis reveals that incentives for provincial government leaders to implement cooperation are decided by the consideration of their political career, which is driven by three major forces: central-local government relationship, inter-local government relationship and the potential economic benefit from regional cooperation. Pan-Pearl River Delta (Pan-PRD) Cooperation, a typical inter-provincial cooperative project established in the 21st century, is used as a case study to theory framework. The empirical study indicates that the emergence of Pan-PRD Cooperation benefited from three perspectives: (1) policy support from the central government, (2) uneven political relationship between provincial leaders in Guangdong and other eight provinces, and (3) strengthened economic interaction between Guangdong and other eight provinces. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

With the significant rise in immigration to the U.S. over the last few decades, fully understanding the economic impact of immigration is paramount for policy makers. As such, this dissertation consists of three empirical essays contributing to the literature on the impact of immigration. In my first essay, I re-examine the impact of immigration on housing rents and completely controlling for endogenous location choices of immigrants. I model rents as a function of both contemporaneous and initial economic and housing market conditions. I show that existing estimates of the impact of immigration on rents are biased and the source of the bias is the instrumental variable strategy common in much of the immigration literature. In my second essay, I present a new approach to estimating the effect of immigration on native wages. Noting the imperfect substitutability of immigrants and natives within education groups, I posit an empirical framework where labor markets are stratified by occupations. Using occupation-specific skill to define homogeneous skill groups, I estimate the partial equilibrium (within skill group) effect of immigration. The results suggest that when one defines labor market cohorts that directly compete in the labor market, the effect of immigration on native wages is roughly twice as large as previous estimates in the literature. In my third essay, I return to the housing market and examine the effects of immigration within metropolitan areas. Specifically, I investigate the relationship between immigrant inflows, native outflows, and rents. Taking advantage of the unique settlement patterns of immigrants, I show that the effect of immigration on rents is lower in both high-immigrant neighborhoods and portions of the rent distribution where immigrants cluster. Contrary to the existing belief in the literature, the results suggest that the preferences of natives, not immigrants, bid up rents in response to an immigrant inflow.

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Regional Development is a potentially powerful approach to help lower the inequality among Indian states. This study uses a robust control model for residuals analysis of infrastructure levels (rate of rural electrification and provision of all-weathered roads) to identify states that are over-performing and under-performing. The results show that a large disparity exists in providing adequate infrastructure among Indian states. While states such as, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are outdoing expectations, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are under-performing. A closer look at state policies adopted after the economic reforms, helped shed light on possible measures that under-performing states could adopt in order to improve standards of infrastructural development. Since infrastructure is closely related to overall economic development, adopting policies that are conducive to investments can help improve per capita income as well as the output of a state.

This thesis seeks to understand the relationship between county level economic voting and county level economic voting by demographic group on county level vote shares for U.S. presidential elections. Using an entity and time fixed effects regression model, I study the effects that county level growth in real per capita personal income and unemployment rate change have on county level two-party vote share for the Democratic Party. Additionally, I observe the responsiveness of a county’s voting behavior due to the demographic makeup of that specific county. I then compare my initial results to those of Eisenberg and Ketcham (2004) for the 1992-2000 presidential elections. I utilize the same models for the 2004-2012 elections to compare these results to those from the 1992-2000 elections. Additionally, I rerun my model for the 1992-2000 presidential elections, after restricting my economic data to non-outliers, to study the effects that outliers in economic conditions have on my original results.

Whilst reading for my first degree at the University of Bristol I became particularly interested in two diverse fields of study. An interest in Regional Economics was motivated by the sparse coverage given to the consideration of the spatial organisation of the economy in most standard works. The other interest was in British Economic History of the inter-war years. I am indebted to Dr, B.W.E. Alford for inspiring and developing my curiosity for this subject. In choosing a subject for research, I endeavoured to combine these two interests. Virtually no work has been done on the formative years of British regional policy. I thought this to be a particularly important gap to fill in that I could closely document regional policy in these years and give some insight into the processes of government policy formulation. In addition, the inter-war years is a unique period in the history of British regional policy. It is the only period when the objective of policy was to move 'workers-to-the-work', rather than 'work-to-the-workers'. Even less information is readily available on policies encouraging labour migration, than on the better known Special Areas policy. Consequently, my own interests and the gap in interpretation suggested the examination of the role of labour migration policies in the inter-war period as the subject for my research. The thesis is set out in three sections. The first section is an introduction. The regional problem is described, the pattern of labour flows documented and the factors influencing these flows is shown. The second section is concerned with regional policies. These are traced from the introduction of transference policy until, and including, the introduction and development of Special Areas policy. The effects of these policies are judged at a regional level and, in Chapter 8, at the micro-economic level. The final section describes the culmination of the inter-war year's experience of regional policies with the appearance of the Barlow Report and the discrediting of transference. The conclusion shows the importance of transference in the inter-war years and the paradox of the post- World War II situation where labour migration has been ignored as a policy tool.