Using a hedonic pricing model, this paper investigates the responsiveness of residential property values in a well-defined inner-city neighborhood of Kenosha, Wisconsin, to the presence of two small former industrial sites contaminated by various environmental pollutants, or brownfields, and a local neighborhood park, or greenspace. Using readily available data on sales and assessments for residential property in close proximity to the brownfields and the greenspace, we estimate well-behaved and statistically significant property value gradients with respect to the park, the environmental amenity, and the brownfields, the environmental disamenities. These functions are then used to estimate the possible impact that brownfield remediation may have on total property value. We estimate that remediation and redevelopment of the brownfields into greenspaces would increase property values for the 890 neighborhood residences between $2.40 and $7.01 million. These results suggest that small brownfields have a measurable impact on property values and that readily accessible data can be used to help local policymakers make decisions on remediation issues. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006Brownfields, Greenspace, residential property values, Hedonic pricing,

The empirical analysis in this paper explores the interurban variation in family income distribution. The results point to increasing urban development, rising female-headship, a widening educational distribution, and changes in the industrial and occupational mix as major contributing factors to rising inequality. However, the increase in the relative number of multiple worker families was a significant mitigating force to rising inequality. A decomposition of 1979 and 1989 cross-sectional models revealed that while changes in urban family and industrial characteristics have been sources of rising inequality, there has been significant structural change in the urban models acting to decrease inequality.

The distribution of above-median income groups can be described accurately by OLS regression of the Pareto distribution. The excellent fit of log-linear regression has led some researchers to conclude that extrapolated income measures in the open end of the distribution are reliable. The analysis of income distribution data for metropolitan areas reveals: (1) that OLS tends to consistently overestimate the number of families in the tail, and(2) that the overestimation can have serious implications for hypothesis testing.

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of Supplemental Instruction, a formal review/lab session program developed at the University of Missouri, designed to improve student learning in courses that have typically exhibited poor student performance. Using a two-equation model and student transcript data readily available to instructors and academic researchers, we evaluate the effectiveness of the program in economics principles. The analysis explicitly considers the confounding factor of self-selection in program participation. We find that ordinary least squares significantly underestimates the positive impact of Supplemental Instruction. The results suggest that formal programs designed to increase the intensity of instruction can have a demonstrable payoff in the form of increased student learning.

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