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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Heat And Observed Economic Activity In The Rich Urban Tropics, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming. Liu, Alberto. Salvo, Rhita P B. Simorangkir Dec 2023

Heat And Observed Economic Activity In The Rich Urban Tropics, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming. Liu, Alberto. Salvo, Rhita P B. Simorangkir

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We use space-and-time resolved mobility data to assess how heat impacts Singapore, a rich city-state and arguably a harbinger of what is to come in the urbanizing tropics. Singapore’s offices, factories, malls, buses, and trains are widely air conditioned, its public schools less so. We document increased attendance and commuting to workplaces, malls, and the more air-conditioned schools on hotter relative to cooler days, particularly by low-income residents with limited use of adaptive technologies at home. Investment by rich cities may attenuate heat’s pervasive negative consequences on productive outcomes, yet this may worsen the climate emergency in the long run.


Within-Development Density And Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming Liu, Louisa Poco Nov 2023

Within-Development Density And Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Haoming Liu, Louisa Poco

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper measures how much more households pay for less density in their immediate surroundings. Using transaction and administrative data and exploiting the introduction of a regulation that restricted the number of housing units for certain land lots, we find that households discount density: a 10% increase in within-development density decreases the price per square meter by 5%. Further, the mean price per square meter of the average development increased by 1%–3% after the regulation was introduced, while the amount of built-up space remained constant. The increase in total revenue suggests developers may underestimate the externality caused by density.