Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of The Law In The Availability Of Public Transit And Affordable Housing In Atlanta’S West End, Elliott Lipinsky

ELLIOTT LIPINSKY

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation that administers federal funds and provides technical assistance for the support of locally operated public transit systems. MARTA / Atlanta metro area are part of FTA Region IV (the Southeast). FTA would be involved, for instance, in financing the federal grant monies discussed above. But actual regulation of operations (i.e., what MARTA does each day, or what MARTA will plan to do regionally) is more closely regulated by Georgia agencies.

Until recently, the Atlanta metropolitan area had no powerful central agency to coordinate regional transit. The …

Book Review: Edward L. Glaeser, Triumph Of The City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, And Happier (The Penguin Press 2011), David J. Reiss

David J Reiss

It is always a bit unnerving to read someone else’s love letters, but even more so, when you have the same object of desire. Edward Glaeser’s TRIUMPH OF THE CITY is a love letter to cities and to New York City in particular. Glaeser provides a theoertical framework of the city, arguing that “Cities are the absence of physical space between people and companies. They are proximity, density, closeness.”

Glaeser prescribes three simple rules to protect the vitality of the urban environment: First, cities should replace the current lengthy and uncertain permitting process with a simple system of fees. Second, …

Explaining Why, Right Or Wrong, (Italian) Households Do Not Like Reverse Mortgages, Maria Cesira Urzi Brancati, Elsa Fornero, Mariacristina Rossi

Maria Cesira Urzi Brancati

According to economic theory, elderly homeowners should be much more eager than they actually are to adopt financial instruments allowing them to borrow against home equity. This paper investigates the determinants of interest in one such instrument: the reverse mortgage. Our focus is the Italian market and we draw from a unique dataset, UniCredit’s 2007 survey on household savings to perform our empirical analysis. Out of over 1,200 respondents, roughly 60% claimed to have no interest in the product, while the remaining 40% expressed various degrees of appeal, from quite low to very high. Risk/uncertainty related elements are strongly correlated …

Is There An East European Housing Bubble?, Robert C. Shelburne, Jose Palacin

Robert C. Shelburne

This study examines residential house price trends in the East European economies. The data are described and evaluated in terms of their quality and reliability; both official data from national statistical offices and that compiled by real estate companies are used. Current prices are evaluated in terms of the economic fundamentals in the region including GDP growth rates, interest rates, rental prices, alternative asset prices, and the availability of mortgages. The role of foreign currency mortgages is given special treatment given their importance in a number of countries and the vulnerabilities they introduce. For some of the markets a more …