This paper compares the level and distribution of the welfare changes from restricting
land available for residential development in a city. We compare the economic costs
when residential capital is durable with the costs when capital is perfectly malleable and
those when population is also freely mobile. Our simulation, based on the stylized
specification of an urban location model, suggests that in a more realistic setting with
durable capital, the costs of regulation are substantially higher than they are when capital
is assumed to be malleable or when households are assumed to be fully mobile.
Importantly, the extent of wealth redistribution attributable to these regulations is much
larger when these more realistic factors are recognized. When capital is durable, the
results also imply that far more new development takes place on previously undeveloped
land at the urban boundary, sometimes resulting in an increase in land under
development.

This paper provides a survey of federal housing programs, establishing the
primary importance of indirect and off-budget activities in promoting housing and
providing subsidies to housing consumers. We consider the role of the Government
Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) and the Veterans’’ Administration in supplying liquidity
and credit guarantees. We then consider in more detail the role of the FHA as supplier
and guarantor of credit. We especially focus on the rationale for these activities in the
light of the rise and subsequent collapse of the subprime mortgage market. We suggest
that a reinvigorated FHA mortgage program will be highly useful in its own right and
might be the appropriate agency to assume many of the activities currently undertaken by
the GSEs.

Food prices have more than doubled between mid-2006 and mid-2008, creating major
distress among the poor across the world, but also gainers among farm producers. While
transmission was largely averted in India, increasingly open food markets indicate the
need to anticipate the welfare implications of a repetition of such events in the future.
This paper simulates the welfare effects of the rise in the international price of cereals
and edible oils on a comprehensive typology of Indian households. Results show that
large farmers(with farm size of one hectare and more) would have gained as a group, and
that the average gain is large for those who gain, but that 59% of them in fact lose. The
main category of poor households negatively affected by the rise in prices is rural
(representing 77% of all losing poor households), both farmers and non-farmers. This is
contrary to conventional wisdom that looks at the urban poor as the main category to be
sheltered from rising prices through safety net measures, and expects most farmers to
gain. These rural households account for 79% of the aggregate welfare loss among the
poor. This makes a forceful case for the need to look beyond the urban poor when food
pricesrise.

During the past two decades, Swedish government policy has decentralized post-secondary education throughout the country. We investigate the economic effects of this decentralization policy on the level of productivity and innovation and their spatial distribution in the national economy. We find important and significant effects of this investment policy upon economic output and the locus of knowledge production, suggesting that the decentralization has affected regional development through local innovation and increased creativity. Our evidence also suggests that aggregate productivity was increased by the deliberate policy of decentralization. Finally, we estimate the spillovers of university investment over space, finding that they are substantial, but that they are greatly attenuated. Agglomerative effects decline rapidly; roughly half of the productivity gains from these investments are manifest within 5–8 km of the community in which they are made.

The Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last September spells the end of an experiment in the public-private hybrid known as the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE). This paper documents the subsidies provided to the enterprises and the public and private benefits generated. The public benefits included somewhat reduced interest rates for borrowers receiving conforming mortgages. The public subsidies allowed the firms to use the implicit guarantee of their debts to borrow at attractive rates to invest in mortgage portfolios and also to provide a fee-based service in issuing mortgage-backed securities.

We suggest reforming the functions provided by the GSEs. In particular we advocate spinning off the portfolio investment activities into a fully private firm. We also advocate conducting the services necessary to issue mortgage-backed securities within a government-owned corporation responsible directly to federal authorities. These reforms would curb excess risk taking in the secondary mortgage market and would provide the liquidity necessary to support the primary mortgage market.

In many developed countries, the most significant housing subsidy programs are funded by tax
expenditures rather than direct appropriations. Beyond the subsidy to homeownership under the
personal income tax, the U.S. tax code provides additional subsidies to specific groups of
homeowners. For example, the Mortgage Revenue Bond program (MRB) permits lower levels
of government to issue tax-exempt debt, using the proceeds to supply mortgages at below-market
interest rates to deserving households. States are also permitted to issue and distribute Mortgage
Credit Certificates (MCCs) which entitle recipient homeowners to claim a tax credit for some
portion of the mortgage interest paid rather than the tax deduction claimed by other homeowners.

This paper documents the wide variations in reliance upon MCCs and MRBs across U.S. states
and the emergence of Mortgage Credit Certificates as the largest housing program administered
by California, the largest U.S. state.

The paper also provides an economic analysis of the MCC program using micro data on more
than 12 thousand program recipients in California. We estimate the extent and distribution of
MCC subsidies across income and demographic groups, measuring the dollar amount of federal
subsidies and their effects upon the user cost of residential capital and the demand price of
housing. We estimate Poisson models of the geographic incidence of MCC subsidies across
neighborhoods of varying socio-demographic composition and deprivation. Finally, we note
differences in the administrative and programmatic costs of MCCs and MRBs, suggesting that
there are clear reasons to favor Mortgage Credit Certificates as a means of subsidizing deserving
households.

Philanthropists have long funded a wide range of educational research, practice, and policy initiatives, primarily through namesake foundations. Some observers have criticized these efforts as doing little to change the status quo in education and have called for more aggressive action on the part of this sector. Out of this critique has emerged a new philanthropic form, often termed venture philanthropy. Perhaps nowhere is venture philanthropy more prevalent than in the charter school and policy and advocacy terrain. Drawing from document analysis and a review of historical literature, this article provides a sociopolitical, descriptive discussion of this “new” form of philanthropy in supporting the charter school reform network. It also examines the funding strategies of venture philanthropies and the areas of policy intersection in program initiatives. The article concludes with a discussion of some political and philosophical tensions that venture philanthropy raises and also provides suggestions for further research.