Three Essays In Real Estate And Urban Economy

Abstract

This dissertation aims to demonstrate applications of regional science methodologies to analyze issues in real estate and urban economics in different scales: city, region, and country. The methodologies used in this dissertation include geographic information systems (GIS), spatial econometrics, and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. There are three chapters in this dissertation. The first chapter studies the impact of the new mass transit systems on the land values of residential development in Bangkok, Thailand. GIS and spatial econometrics are used to examine the impacts. The study has found that the proximity to mass transit stations spatially correlates with an increase in the prices of residential land. The benefit of new mass transit stations, however, may not be equally distributed to the residents of Bangkok due to the lack of value capture mechanisms such as a capital gain tax or a property tax. Policy implications on property taxation are also discussed in this study. Chapter two discusses the economic impact of Cornell University on Tompkins County, New York, focusing on the impact of the investment on the new mixed-used development in Collegetown. This study is one of the first attempts to study the economic impact of a university using a CGE model. In addition, the assumption of increasing-returns-to-scale is incorporated into the framework of a small-area CGE model. This extension of the model allows for a more realistic representation of the imperfect competition in the economic simulation. In the last chapter, a financial CGE model is used to investigate the role of real estate investment in the economy of Thailand. This study discusses how the overinvested real estate market can cause the country to be vulnerable to a financial crisis. In addition, the relationship of real estate asset and property markets is incorporated into the model to captures interconnections between production sectors and financial sectors. The macroeconomic and socioeconomic indicators from the model simulation show that moderate investment in real estate sectors can lead to steady economic growth with small impact on income disparity.