Syllabus

 

Economics 8300 Professor: Ben Scafidi
Urban Economics Office: 1202D Urban Life
Fall 1998 651-2977
M/W 8:45-10:00pm 101 Kell Hall

Office Hours: TU/W 3:00-4:30pm and by appointment

 

 Course Description: In the first part of the course, we consider economic theories of location of firms and households. Using these theories, we will attempt to understand why cities exist, why they are located where they are, the distribution of city sizes, the causes of regional and metropolitan growth and decline, and the spatial distribution of alternative activities within cities. In part two of the course, we draw upon our knowledge of spatial economics to analyze problems and policies of urban poverty, housing, transportation, intergovernmental relations, education, and crime.

 

Course Materials:

O’Sullivan, Urban Economics, 3rd edition, Irwin                     Supplemental Readings

 

Course Requirements: There will be a midterm and a final exam. The midterm will count 30% of the final grade, and the final will count 40%. The final exam is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday December 16 at 8:30pm. The remaining 30% will come from a term paper. Your paper should be 10-15 pages of text and contain footnotes and a bibliography. The topic should be an important urban problem. The beginning of the paper should be a description of the problem. The next part should present some economics of the problem: Why does the problem exist? What could be done or has been done to alleviate the problem? Why have these policies worked/ not worked? Do you think things that have never been tried would work/not work? Why? You must make economic arguments. i.e. I don’t want you to make a constitutional argument about why school vouchers would work/not work. I don’t care if it is constitutional. I want some economic reasoning about why you think this proposal would help/hurt urban education. Your reasoning in this section should be based on economic theory.

The final part of the paper will be a case study of a specific urban area. I prefer that you pick Atlanta, but any urban area is ok. Document the magnitude of the problem in that urban area (empirical) and analyze any tried or proposed solutions critically (empirical for tried solutions and theoretical for proposed solutions).

All topics must be approved by the instructor on or before October 19. Some suggested urban problems are: crime, transportation, poor quality of urban schools relative to suburban schools, the working or underclass poor, racial segregation and discrimination in housing markets, homelessness, fiscal problems of local governments, and the affordability of housing. The term paper is due December 2.

Course Outline:

Part I

History of Western Urbanization

Firm Location

System of Cities and Urban Hierarchy

Central Place Theory

Monocentric City Model

Suburbanization

Zoning and Land Use Controls

Part II

Poverty and Cities

Redistribution and Poverty Policies

Housing and Filtering

Residential Segregation

Housing Policies

Autos and Highways

Mass Transit

Local Government

Exit and Voice; Tiebout and the Ballot

Local Taxes and Intergovernmental Grants

Education Policy

Crime and Punishment