IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v35y2003i2p191-198.html

Nonoptimal Levels of Suburbanization

Author

Listed:
  • Philip E Graves

    (Department of Economics UCB 256, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0256, USA)

Abstract

Suburbanization has many causes, among which is the attempt to relocate to acquire a more desirable vector of local public goods. The traditional economists' procedure for valuing public goods involves vertical aggregation of marginal willingness to pay, at a given income level. This approach is flawed by failing to recognize that individuals will not work for goods that cannot be acquired individually with higher incomes. There will be a parallel input market failure any time there is a public good output market failure, thus the ‘given income’ of the traditional valuation method is too low. Hence, traditional valuation methods result in underprovision of local public goods (for example, parks, safety, education, and environmental quality) at the urban centers. As a consequence, there will be nonoptimally large levels of suburban sprawl with substantial resulting welfare loss.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip E Graves, 2003. "Nonoptimal Levels of Suburbanization," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 35(2), pages 191-198, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:35:y:2003:i:2:p:191-198
    DOI: 10.1068/a3577
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a3577
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a3577?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Groves, Theodore & Ledyard, John O, 1977. "Optimal Allocation of Public Goods: A Solution to the "Free Rider" Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 783-809, May.
    2. Fujita,Masahisa, 1991. "Urban Economic Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521396455, Enero-Abr.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cheshire, Paul & Sheppard, Stephen, 2004. "Land markets and land market regulation: progress towards understanding," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 619-637, November.
    2. Graves, Philip E., 2017. "Global Climate Policy Will Have Net Benefits Larger Than Anyone Thinks (and Welfare Gains, Strangely, Are Likely To Be Much Larger Yet)," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 73-76.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wei-Bin Zhang, 2009. "Agglomeration and Returns to Scale with Capital and Public Goods in a Multi-Regional Economy," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 81-109.
    2. Renaud Crassous & Jean Charles Hourcade & Olivier Sassi, 2006. "Endogenous structural change and climate targets," Post-Print halshs-00009335, HAL.
    3. Letrouit,Lucie Michele Maya & Selod,Harris, 2020. "Trust or Property Rights ? Can Trusted Relationships Substitute for Costly Land Registration in West African Cities ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9310, The World Bank.
    4. Paulo Reis Mourão & Júlio Miguel Coelho Barbosa, 2009. "La competitividad de las ciudades portuguesas. El caso de las capitales de distrito," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 11(21), pages 205-223, July-Dece.
    5. Céline Grislain-Letrémy & Bertrand Villeneuve, 2019. "Natural disasters, land-use, and insurance," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, Springer;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 44(1), pages 54-86, March.
    6. Kalai, Ehud & Postlewaite, Andrew & Roberts, John, 1979. "A group incentive compatible mechanism yielding core allocations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 13-22, February.
    7. Wouter Vermeulen & J. van Ommeren, 2006. "Compensation of regional unemployment in housing markets," CPB Discussion Paper 57, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    8. Fabien Candau, 2011. "Heterogeneous Immigration, Segregation and Trade," Review of Economics & Finance, Better Advances Press, Canada, vol. 1, pages 73-86, February.
    9. Deb, Rajat & Razzolini, Laura & Seo, Tae Kun, 2003. "Strategy-proof cost sharing, ability to pay and free provision of an indivisible public good," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 205-227, April.
    10. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    11. Robert Dekle & Jonathan Eaton, 1994. "Agglomertion and the Price of Land: Evidence from the Prefectures," Boston University - Institute for Economic Development 47, Boston University, Institute for Economic Development.
    12. JOHN McMILLAN, 1979. "The Free‐Rider Problem: A Survey," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(2), pages 95-107, June.
    13. Tian, Guoqiang, 1991. "Implementation of the Walrasian Correspondence without Continuous, Convex, and Ordered Preferences," MPRA Paper 41298, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Anya Savikhin & Roman Sheremeta, 2010. "Visibility of Contributions and Cost of Information: An Experiment on Public Goods," Working Papers 10-22, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    15. Ryusuke Shinohara, 2014. "Participation and demand levels for a joint project," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(4), pages 925-952, December.
    16. Berliant, Marcus & Wang, Ping, 2008. "Urban growth and subcenter formation: A trolley ride from the Staples Center to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 679-693, March.
    17. Mun, Se-il & Konishi, Ko-ji & Yoshikawa, Kazuhiro, 2005. "Optimal cordon pricing in a non-monocentric city," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(7-9), pages 723-736.
    18. Gregory Verdugo & Malak Kandoussi, 2025. "Will you follow your job to the suburbs? Commuting, locational amenities and wages in a large metro area," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-05447239, HAL.
    19. Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2012. "Urban Growth and Transportation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(4), pages 1407-1440.
    20. Brueckner, Jan K., 2005. "Transport subsidies, system choice, and urban sprawl," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 715-733, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:35:y:2003:i:2:p:191-198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.