Journal of Regional Science最新文献

This paper investigates the influence of specialization, urbanization, and diversification externalities on the dynamics of tourism employment in Brazilian microregions. We use a dynamic panel data model for the 2006–2019 period. The location quotient, population density and the inverse of the Hirschman–Herfindahl index, proxies for specialization, urbanization, and diversification, respectively, positively affect tourism employment in the long run. Based on the estimated long-run elasticities, the specialization externality produces the strongest influence on tourism employment after a permanent increase of one standard deviation.

Fuel subsidies, intended to improve consumer affordability, can result in economic distortions through altered relative prices and negative environmental impacts. Furthermore, these subsidies can lead to unintended consequences, such as fuel smuggling, especially to neighboring countries where significant price differences exist. While previous research has extensively explored the economic dimensions of fuel subsidies, the potential interplay between fuel smuggling and its impact on regional income distribution remains understudied. This study investigates the effects of fuel smuggling, stemming from Iran's long history of significant fuel subsidies, on income distribution across all 30 provinces of the country. We employ a model to specify the demand for fuel smuggling, using fuel prices in neighboring countries and the distance to the nearest border as sources of identification. Subsequently, we estimate the monthly smuggling profit across regions and assess this profit's influence on regional income distribution. Our empirical analysis draws on monthly data on gasoline and diesel sales from 160 fuel distribution districts in Iran, spanning the period from 2005 to 2014. Our findings demonstrate specific cases of smuggling activities that account for an average of 25% of total fuel consumption and generate substantial income in economically disadvantaged border provinces. We discuss the socioeconomic implications of fuel subsidies, with a focus on smuggling activities.

In this paper, we study the impact of the New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) program in the United States on overall jobs and jobs held by minority and rural populations within the 2010–2019 period using a dynamic event-study analysis. We also investigate if the jobs that can be attributed to the program stayed in program recipient neighborhoods or whether those jobs were occupied by non-residents. The results show that there is clear evidence that the program increased overall workplace jobs and workplace jobs held by White and minority populations in the program recipient tracts. We also see that a larger share of workplace jobs due to the program went to minorities compared to the job shares held by various racial and ethnic groups at the beginning of the investment period. The results further show that even though the NMTC program increased the number of jobs available in a program recipient tract, the individuals who live outside that tract are holding many of the jobs created. The results also suggest that the program had a negative impact on jobs held by residents in nonmetropolitan tracts.

The green bond market is growing substantially, bringing with it a focus on economic and environmental performance. Yet while extensive work exists examining the former, there is little concrete evidence regarding the efficacy of green bond use-of-proceeds. Concurrently, the demand for ESG-compliant investments provides an opportunity to direct capital toward the rehabilitation of one of the most energy-intensive asset classes: real estate. One program in this space, the Fannie Mae Green Rewards green bond program, offers incentives to borrowers to increase multifamily building energy and water efficiency. Although all program participants must complete a set of preapproved projects targeting energy and water efficiency within 12 months of loan origination, there exists substantial variation in the realization of postorigination efficiency outcomes, and in the variation between projected and actual efficiency improvements. We find that fixed interest rates and supplemental financing loan structures are associated with postorigination energy efficiency improvements, as are newer, larger, and high-quality assets. However, the ex ante estimates of efficiency savings provided to prospective investors prove unrelated to the efficiency outcomes. These findings highlight opportunities to improve program transparency and calibration across the green bond universe.

I study house price dynamics following Hurricane Sandy to explain the common puzzling finding of a price drop followed by a complete price recovery. Applying a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences research design on Zillow parcel-level sales data combined with Federal Emergency Management Agency data on damaged structures, I show that the extent of direct damages drives the decline in house prices. The extent of remodeling expenditures, as estimated from building permits, is found to be responsible for causing the return of prices to pre-storm levels. Comparing flood insurance take-up rates in the affected and non-affected areas within floodplains and similarly for outside floodplains, I find no revision in perceived risk in the floodplain. In contrast, there has been an increase in flood insurance take-up rates in affected areas outside of floodplains after the hurricane.

The economic effect of climate hazard events varies by time and by location. This paper investigates how climate shocks to local property markets transmit to capital markets and provides evidence of the extent to which forward-looking climate risk is capitalized into the public valuations of those property markets. We first quantify the exposure of real estate portfolios to locations that recently experienced climate events (Event Exposure). Using an event study framework, we find that, in the post-event period, a one-standard-deviation increase in ex-ante Event Exposure is associated with a 0.2–1.4 percentage points decrease in quarterly stock returns. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that differences in return effects can be explained by variation in the extent to which the area focuses on climate change. Similarly, we find that forward-looking climate risk assessment negatively affects firm valuations only in markets with a focus on climate change. Consistent with these findings, we provide evidence that climate events (shocks) induce retail investors (noise traders) to decrease their stock holdings and that blockholders tend to take the opposite side in these transactions. We also show that conditioning on consumer sentiment helps to explain cross-sectional variation in the response of stock returns to climate events.

This study investigates the capitalization of climate shocks in commercial real estate owned and operated by professional investors. We focus on Hurricanes Harvey and Sandy to quantify the price impacts of climate shocks on commercial buildings in Texas and New York. We find clear evidence of a decline in transaction prices in hurricane-damaged areas after the hurricanes made landfall, compared to unaffected areas. We also observe that the “new news” about climate risk is significantly priced in both states—assets in locations outside the FEMA floodplain (with a lower prior perception of flood risk) that were inundated by the hurricanes experienced larger price discounts, indicating that actual flooding updates investors' perception of flood risk. Moreover, we find that the hurricane discount is more pronounced among buyers with more transaction experience. The transaction price discount also increases with higher climate change beliefs in the local market and among investors. Our findings underline the role of information provision and environmental awareness in the materialization of climate risks' impact on commercial real estate values.

The use of high-dimensional fixed-effects estimation has become customary with the estimation of gravity models of bilateral trade, migration, or commuting as outcome. However, fixed-effects methods can be used without incidental-parameter bias in a very small set of stochastic models. Alternatives to fixed-effects estimation are iterative-structural model estimation or linearizations of the structural model. Baier and Bergstrand deployed such a linearization. While easy to implement, the approach has drawbacks related to the approximation point and lack of observability of ingredients needed for the linearization. This compromises empirical work. The present paper provides a remedy to this problem by linearizing at the observed trade equilibrium.

Using individual data from the Italian Labor Force Survey, we investigate the impact of immigration on the Gini index and the percentile ratio (p90/p10) at the household level within Labor Market Areas (LMAs) in Italy from 2008 to 2018. To identify the effect of immigration we construct a composite index based on demographic and occupation-related characteristics that captures the degree of similarity between immigrants and natives across LMAs. This approach addresses the limitations of the standard cell segmentation method and allows us to estimate the impact of immigration on the entire distribution of natives' earnings. To address endogeneity concerns we use an instrument proposed by Card, which exploits the tendency of immigrants to migrate to areas with a pre-existing group of immigrants of the same ethnicity. Our findings show that immigration reduces income inequality among natives and the effect is larger in those LMAs where the degree of similarity between immigrants and natives is higher. We also find that immigration has a positive effect on natives' labor income in occupations that require language skills, while the effect is not significant in low/no skilled jobs that only require basic language skills, or highly skilled jobs where interaction between immigrants and natives is limited.

This paper investigates how institutional conditions at national and regional levels shape the decisions of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) to invest abroad by means of either acquisitions or greenfield investments. The empirical analysis covers all foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in the European Union by the largest MNEs in the world to study alternative choices by the same firm and account for firm-level characteristics in investment decisions. The empirical results show that—other things being equal—regions with stronger investment eco-systems are more likely to attract acquisitions, while greenfield investments are more likely in regions with comparatively weaker systemic conditions. Howerver, the regional quality of institutions makes a fundamental difference to the nature of the investment projects attracted by regions: those with high quality of government can attract greenfield investments undertaken by the most productive MNEs. By improving their quality of government, local, and regional policy makers can attract higher quality greenfield investment projects to their constituencies, potentially breaking the vicious circle between low productivity areas and low productivity FDI.