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510 JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, VOL. 52, NO. 3, 2012

Lectures on Urban Economics, by Jan K. Brueckner. 2011. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT

Press. 285 + vii. ISBN 978-0-262-01636-0, $35 (paper).

Jan Brueckner's slim new book is a welcome addition to a fairly thin market in urban economics

textbooks. In only 245 modestly sized pages, the book's concise prose zeros in on the core topics of the

field, making it possible to digest in a single semester, although the topics could be explored over a

lifetime. As it happens, the author has almost a lifetime of teaching and influential research to draw

on, as well as years of editing the Journal of Urban Economics, and this is reflected in the book's

sage and perspicacious writing. Few competitors can offer the depth and breadth that Brueckner

provides in surveying the field, which makes his book an excellent read for teachers and researchers,

as well as students. It stands out for being exceptionally smart, as well as cheap, and small enough

to read while standing on the bus.

In harmony with Brueckner's research, the book's primary thrust is theoretical, although

he does cite empirical studies to motivate and discipline his theoretical derivations. Unlike most

theoretical books, this one does not burden the reader with heaps of mathematics and cascading

rows of equations. Instead, Brueckner explains the logic of urban economics using tight sentences

and crisp diagrams, giving the book a clean and satisfying aesthetic. Nevertheless, it does require

some background in microeconomics at the intermediate level, including familiarity with utility

theory. Brueckner is also fond of using mathematical notation, including Greek letters, and fairly

sophisticated mathematical concepts, such as multivariable functions. While in most cases this is

called for, in others he could reduce the notation to a barer minimum, without much loss of generality,

to draw in a broader readership.

Extra mathematical notation appears as early as the opening chapter, which contains the

requisite and important explanations of why cities exist. In an otherwise crystal-clear explanation

of returns to scale (p. 4), average output of a small firm is denoted "␣ ," and output of a larger

firm is "␤, "where␣< ␤ , although a "1" and "b," or just a "1" and "2," would suffice. Despite the

notation, Brueckner does an excellent job explaining how cities may spring up from agglomeration

economies in production and in transportation costs. Here he displays a knack for using the simplest

model needed to demonstrate concepts. He is also quite adept at explaining and justifying standard

assumptions in urban economics that may make the newcomer uncomfortable, such as perfect

mobility, but that are particularly valuable because of their power and ability to predict long-run

phenomena.

The book really takes shape in chapter 2, which covers the economics of urban spatial structure.

Brueckner explains how households decide where to locate, making trade-offs between their desires

to be close to work and to consume more space. The explanation dovetails nicely into one explaining

how profit-maximizing firms decide to build housing on land that has ever-increasing value towards

the urban center. The firms heap capital in ever-increasing concentrations towards the central busi-

ness district, giving cities their shape from central skyscrapers to low-density suburbs. I especially

appreciated chapter 3, which modifies this core model with freeways, multiple job sites, durable

housing, and households of different incomes, providing essential insights without getting bogged

down in unnecessary details. The chapter concludes with a neat explanation of the Harris-Todaro

model of urban overmigration in developing countries, complete with Brueckner's integration of a

land market. Although the book is meant to be an introductory textbook, it nevertheless contains

material that almost all economists would learn from.

The next chapter covers the complex issues around land-use controls, mustering arguments in

their favor while also explaining how they can backfire and reduce welfare by raising housing costs.

This analysis is important for all those interested in urban policy and planning, as it questions some

conventional wisdoms, while refining others, and calls for policy to be directed most effectively at

helping cities benefit their residents. But unlike the work of Ed Glaeser, this section may have a

hard time converting the unwashed masses not steeped in economic wisdom, as some of its more

subtle arguments rest on allusions to "mathematical analysis" (p. 85), rather than relying on colorful

anecdotes and forceful intuitive ideas. As he must, Brueckner presents the standard logic for why

cities may become overcrowded and underprovide open space, but he is good to mention that social

interaction is actually higher in denser areas, which means that too much open space can be a bad

thing. It would have been worth adding that density in production may be underprovided, as nearly

a third of the productivity gains from density are taxed away by federal and state governments.

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BOOK REVIEWS 511

Brueckner is less shy with equations in his chapter on freeway congestion, where he explains

the virtues of congestion tolling. Although the book might benefit from omitting a potentially confus-

ing section on subsidies, the contrast he draws between road and air congestion illustrates well how

atomistic, relative to coordinated, behavior leads to inefficient behavior through negative externali-

ties. Particularly noteworthy is Brueckner's presentation and derivation of the user-cost of housing

model in chapter 6. He does an excellent job clarifying how favorable tax treatment typically benefits

owner-occupiers, with the exception of accelerated depreciation allowances, which instead benefits

renters: together with the progressivity of income taxes, this provides a tax incentive for tenure

choice. A page later, he explains intuitively how housing inflation can feed a housing bubble, as cap-

ital gains lower the user-cost of housing, leading to higher bids for housing and a self-perpetuating

cycle. He might do more to clarify how this bubbling ends, but for the most part readers should find

this explanation helpful and exciting.

A chapter on housing policy does a nice job of comparing the relative advantages of different

housing policies, using broader economic principles. Brueckner proceeds to rank income grants,

housing vouchers, proportional rent subsidies, and public housing according to how they improve

household welfare and reduce slums. He also bravely discusses homelessness and how regulations

against single-room occupancy housing may make it too expensive for some individuals to avoid

living on the streets.

In only 25 pages, Brueckner covers tremendous ground in his chapter on the economics of local

public goods and services. Here he explains the level at which local governments provide public

goods efficiently, and how in a majoritarian democracy a public good may be under- or overprovided.

This leads into a discussion of how residents may vote with their feet and how that love-it-or-leave-it

principle may lead to surprising efficiency gains. Of course, the analysis comes with complicated

problems related to property taxation and urban sprawl, as well as inequities and peer-group effects,

which Brueckner discusses with sensitivity and grace.

It is a little surprising that the book contains a chapter on pollution, which seems to belong

more in an environmental economics textbook. Nevertheless, the chapter contains important lessons

about negative externalities, and how they may be corrected by Coasian bargaining, Pigouvian tax-

ation, or a cap-and-trade system, depending on the circumstances. Amid discussion of whether

price or quantity regulation is optimal under uncertainty, Brueckner offers the following: "the rel-

evant analysis, first offered by Martin Weitzman (1974) isn't really illustrated in simple diagrams"

(p. 196). That may be somewhat misleading, as I have seen the Weitzman analysis explained in

arguably simple diagrams in other undergraduate textbooks. That this statement is the closest to

an inaccuracy that I could find in this book, a first edition with 245 pages, is testament to the care

and thoroughness of its composition.

The penultimate chapter on crime contains an interesting and contemporary take on the topic.

Brueckner provides a deep and fairly novel discussion of how dividing crime-prevention resources

between rich and poor communities could involve trade-offs between equity and efficiency. Personally,

I most enjoyed Brueckner's last chapter, on urban quality-of-life measurement. It's an important

topic that many books do not cover, as it points out the important fact that housing may be most

unaffordable in areas that are the most desirable to live in, such as on the California coast. Brueckner

does a nice job contrasting economic quality-of-life measurements, based on willingness to pay, with

those based on ad hoc opinions seen in the popular magazine articles. He also provides lists of

the most desirable cities (table 11.1, p. 243), although alternatives that don't elevate Albany and

Binghamton to unbelievably high levels might be more compelling.

In case there was ever any doubt that this is a textbook, there are also many exercises at the

end. I particularly enjoyed the one that analogizes the optimal number of residents in a city to the

number of bathers in a hot tub (p. 257). Even in a serious and concise textbook, Brueckner's good

sense, wit, and humor come through.

Overall, this book does an excellent job of surveying the theory of urban economics. It does so

cleanly, neatly, concisely, and about as simply as is possible, making it accessible to a wide audience.

The diagrams and tables help the book illustrate many concepts without resorting to mathematics.

In its brevity, the book is rather Spartan in its empirical content, and the allusions to empirical

evidence in the literature are generally impressionistic. Given its sophistication, the book can be

used effectively as a textbook for advanced undergraduates or master's students, although I would

expect more empirically minded teachers to want to complement the readings with more maps,

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2012, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

512 JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, VOL. 52, NO. 3, 2012

illustrations, and other empirical nuggets. Although the book does not seem to be marketed to

Ph.D. students, its scholarly qualities and up-to-date reference list make it an excellent introduction

to many urban economic topics for even the most sophisticated readers. I would recommend that

anyone teaching urban economics have a look at it.

David Albouy

Department of Economics

University of Michigan

REFERENCE

Weitzman, Martin. 1974. "Prices vs. Quantities," Review of Economic Studies , 41, 477–491.

Statistics for Spatio-Temporal Data, by Noel Cressie and Christopher K. Wikle. 2011. Series:

Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. 588 + xxii. ISBN

978-0-471-69274-4, $84.95.

If you want to know where empirical research in regional science is heading over the next

few decades, then start here. Noel Cressie and Christopher Wikle make a cogent argument that

Hierarchical Models (HMs), and especially Bayesian HMs (BHMs), represent "the final frontier" of

spatiotemporal data analysis in the twenty-first century. They want to change the way scientists

and engineers practice statistics, particularly for spatiotemporal data, and so have provided an

encyclopedic reference to lead practitioners to this frontier.

Given its aim and scope, naturally this is a difficult book in that it requires a fairly advanced

level of mathematical maturity and understanding of statistical inference to get through, and it is

probably most useful for a graduate class, or as a reference book for a researcher aiming to apply the

methods covered. However, I think there is something to be gained for almost anyone who analyzes

data that has a space or time dimension, particularly from the first chapter or two and the extensive

bibliographical notes at the end of each chapter. There are many nuggets of wisdom throughout, and

the authors' extensive experience applying the methods covered shows.

Don't be misled by the notion that an advanced statistics book is too technical and so inappro-

priate for many regional scientists. This is the information age; regional science, along with many

other fields, is in a tooling-up phase as researchers seek out appropriate methods to analyze increas-

ingly rich and complex data. To shy away from the appropriate methods because they are technically

demanding is to be unscientific. While the book does not lead you by the hand, it does clearly point

the way, with plenty of signposts of where to go next on your journey to statistical enlightenment.

Cressie and Wikle adopt the notation [X| Y ] to represent the probability distribution for X

conditional on Y . With this notation, the BHM is specified by three equations: (1) the data model

[Z |Y, ␪ ], (2) the process model [Y |␪ ], and (3) the parameter model (aka the prior distribution) [␪ ],

where Z are the observed data, Yis the actual process we are attempting to model or analyze

(typically unobserved or observed with error), and ␪ are the parameters relating the distribution of

the unobserved Yto the observed Z . In contrast, the standard model for analysis in the twentieth

century, for both frequentists and Bayesians, has been to consider only [Z|␪ ] as the data/process

model, so that "both approaches miss the fundamental importance of modeling the process Y ,where

the Physics/Chemistry/Biology/Economics/etc. typically resides" (p. 27) and ignore the difference

between a theoretical variable Y and its observed empirical counterpart Z .

Cressie and Wikle's goal is "to take science on a path where original observations Z are used as

much as possible ... where uncertainties are captured in a HM using conditional probabilities, and

where inference is based on the posterior distribution ... . This is the sharp statistical tool needed for

scientists to ascend the knowledge pyramid" (p. 28). After this rousing manifesto, they largely deliver

on outlining this path in the first couple of chapters, with some very nice examples to illustrate.

The first two chapters are exceptionally good, and I would recommend them to anyone.

Chapters 3 through 6 consist largely of review material, covering "twentieth-century" time series,

spatial and spatiotemporal methods, with only a few pages at the end of each chapter on BHMs

(though, again, the bibliographical notes alone are worth the price of admission). Chapters 7 and

8 provide a more thorough exposition of the main tool for the "final frontier," BHMs, and their

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2012, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

Studies have shown that displaced workers' can experience substantial long-term earnings losses. As these losses have become increasingly apparent, and the incidence of displacement has become more widely spread among industrial sectors, policy makers have significantly expanded resources for retraining programs. Much of this retraining takes place in community or junior colleges. This paper adds to the relatively sparse literature on the impacts of such retraining efforts by analyzing the impact of community college schooling on displaced workers' earnings. Using administrative data from two states, we find that the equivalent of a year of schooling raised long-term earnings of displaced male and female workers by about 5 percent. Although these gains are significant, they also are somewhat smaller than conventional estimates of the returns to schooling and insufficient to offset the lower earnings associated with workers' job losses. Further, we show that more than one-half of this gain results from the impact of schooling on hours worked. On average a year of community college schooling received by prime-aged workers was associated with less than a 2 percent increase in hourly wages. However, these average returns mask substantial variation in the returns associated with different types of courses. Skills acquired from more technically oriented vocational and academic math and science courses have very large returns, whereas most other types of courses are associated with zero or sometimes negative returns.

  • Robert J. Lalonde Robert J. Lalonde

This paper takes the results of an employment and training program thatwas run as a field experiment, in which the participants were randomlyassigned into a treatment or a control group, and compares these results to the estimates that might have been produced by an econometrician who evaluated the program using the same econometric procedures that have been used in the program evaluation literature. This comparison shows that many of these econometric procedures fail toreplicate the experimentally determined results, and suggests that researchers should be aware of the potential for specification errorsin other nonexperimental evaluations. Copyright 1986 by American Economic Association.

  • Arthur Koestler

1. THE HOLON 11. The organism in its structural aspect is not an aggregation of elementary parts, and in its functional aspects not a chain of elementary units of behaviour. 12. The organism is to be regarded as a multi-levelled hierarchy of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, branching into sub-wholes of a lower order, and so on. Sub-wholes on any level of the hierarchy are referred to as holons. 13. Parts and wholes in an absolute sense do not exist in the domains of life. The concept of the holon is intended to reconcile the atomistic and holistic approaches. 14. Biological holons are self-regulating open systems which display both the autonomous properties of wholes and the dependent properties of parts. This dichotomy is present on every level of every type of hierarchic organization, and is referred to as the "Janus phenomenon." 15. More generally, the term "holon" may be applied to any stable biological or social sub-whole which displays rule-governed behaviour and/or structural Gestalt-constancy. Thus organelles and homologous organs are evolutionary holons; morphogenetic fields are ontogenetic holons; the ediologist's "fixed action-patterns" and die sub-routines of acquired skills are behavioural holons; phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases are linguistic holons; individuals, families, tribes, nations are social holons. 2. DISSECTIBITJTY 21. Hierarchies are "dissectible" into their constituent branches, on which the holons form the nodes; the branching lines represent the channels of communication and control. 22. The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises is a measure of its "depth," and the number of holons on any given level is called its "span" [9]. 3. RULES AND STRATEGIES 31. Functional holons are governed by fixed sets of rules and display more or less flexible strategies. 32. The rules—referred to as the system's canon—determine its invariant properties, its structural configuration and/or functional pattern. 33. While the canon defines the permissible steps in the holon's activity, the strategic selection of the actual step among permissible choices is guided by the contingencies of the environment. 34. The canon determines the rules of the game, strategy decides the course of the game. 35. Evolution plays variations on a limited number of canonical themes. The constraints imposed by the evolutionary canon are illustrated by the phenomena of homology, homeoplasy, parallelism, convergence and the loi du balancement. 36. In ontogeny, the holons at successive levels represent successive stages in the development of tissues. At each step in the process of differentiation, the genetic canon imposes further constraints on the holon's developmental potentials, but it retains sufficient flexibility to follow one or another alternative developmental pathway, within the range of its competence, guided by the contingencies of the environment. 37. Structurally, the mature organism is a hierarchy of parts within parts. Its "dissectibility" and the relative autonomy of its constituent holons are demonstrated by transplant surgery. 38. Functionally, the behaviour of organisms is governed by "rules of the game" which account for its coherence, stability and specific pattern. 39. Skills, whether inborn or acquired, are functional hierarchies, with sub-skills as holons, governed by sub-rules. 4. INTEGRATION AND SELF-ASSERTION 41. Every holon has the dual tendency to preserve and assert its individuality as a quasi-autonomous whole; and to function as an integrated part of an (existing or evolving) larger whole. This polarity between the Self-Assertive (S-A) and Integrative (INT) tendencies is inherent in the concept of hierarchic order; and a universal characteristic of life. The S-A tendencies are the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the INT tendencies of its partness. 42. An analogous polarity is found in the interplay of cohesive and separative forces in stable inorganic systems, from atoms to galaxies. 43. The most general manifestation of the INT tendencies is the reversal of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in open systems feeding on negative entropy [24], and the evolutionary trend towards "spontaneously developing states of greater heterogeneity and complexity" [25]. 44. Its specific manifestations on different levels range from the symbiosis of organelles and colonial animals, through the cohesive forces in herds and flocks...

How Creative Programs are Promoting Prosperity and Saving the Environment 1922. An Introduction to Economic History

  • Regional Planning
  • America

Regional Planning for a Sustainable America: How Creative Programs are Promoting Prosperity and Saving the Environment, edited by Carleton K. Montgomery. 2011. New REFERENCES Gras, N. S. B. (Norman Scott Brien). 1922. An Introduction to Economic History. New York: Harper (reprinted, 1969: Augustus M. Kelley, New York).