This paper uses hedonic methods and variation in wages and housing costs to estimate households’ valuation of climate amenities. We find that, on the margin, households are willing to pay more to reduce heat than to reduce cold. The willingness to pay to avoid severe heat is not statistically different from the willingness to pay to avoid moderate heat, consistent with the fact that households ...

A revenue maximizing local government must obey a migration constraint when levying taxes. Using this insight, I develop simple theory of taxation that suggests natural amenities are key factor influencing tax rates. Natural confer rents to residents which governments and interest groups compete extract. Revenue rates increasing in the level amenities, moving costs, decreasing households’ reser...

BACKGROUND Though park presence and access disparities are well studied for their associations with physical activity (PA), disparities in the availability and quality of amenities and facilities within parks have been infrequently examined. METHODS Five hundred forty-three parks from 472 block groups in the Seattle, WA and Baltimore, MD regions were audited using the Environmental Assessment...

International Trade with Lumpy Countries by Paul N. Courant and Alan V. Deardorff The University of Michigan This paper explores the implications for the pattern of international trade of various differences among regions within countries-what we call lumpiness. It is shown first that if factors of production are immobile among regions, and if they are sufficiently unevenly distributed across t...

Diversity of neighborhood amenities may promote the mobility of older adults. A 2010 community-based sample of 510 adults aged ≥65 years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and geospatial data from the Esri Business Analyst database (Esri, Inc., Redlands, California) were used to assess associations of neighborhood amenity diversity with mobility. Neighborhoods were defined by census tract, and dive...

This paper studies optimal forest policies in an overlapping generations forest economy with one-sided altruism and public goods, where timber and monetary bequests can be made across generations. We extend the existing economics literature by demonstrating that timber bequests can dominate money bequests in many situations, and that timber bequests may even be operative in dynamically ineffici...

The present study investigated the effects of room amenities and rules addressing the physical space of the room on sense of control, sense of community, student relationships, and academic achievement. Participants in this study were 118 Connecticut College students (25 men, 92 women, and 1 not specified). The study indicates that different room amenities and rules may influence student reside...

OBJECTIVE To examine disparities in park availability, features, and characteristics by income and the percentage of foreign-born population within a predominately-Hispanic border community. METHODS This study occurred in 2010-2011 in El Paso, Texas. All census tracts (n=112) were categorized as low, medium, or high income and percent foreign-born. The number of parks intersecting each tract ...