Urban
Economics
Economics 4621H
Spring 2004
COURSE SYLLABUS
Thomas
Holmes
945
Mgmt & Econ
Office
Hours: Tues, 1:00-3:00
Email:
holmes@econ.umn.edu
Home
Page: www.econ.umn.edu/~holmes
http://www.econ.umn.edu/~holmes/class/2004s4621/econ4621.html
The prerequisites for this class are intermediate
microeconomic theory (Econ 3101) and one semester of calculus. Some familiarity with statistics is helpful
but not required. This class is an
honors class.
The course requirements include two midterms (each
counts 20% towards final grade), a final (30%), and homework (30 percent). The homework assignments will take several
forms, including problem sets, brief data analyses with Excel, and short
written assignments. Written assignments
must be typed. Problem sets can be typed
or handwritten.
If a student has an excused absence for one of the
midterms, the other midterm and the final exam will be reweighted to determine
the final grade.
The additional readings include some that are
required (marked with a “*”) and others that supplementary. Some of the readings are technical pieces
from leading economics journals. In
general, students will not be tested on the technical material in the
articles. Rather, students should
carefully read the introduction and skim the rest of the paper to get the main
idea. The degree to which a student
needs to be familiar with the details of a paper will be clear from the
emphasis given to the paper in lecture.
Look to the course home page on the web to
keep track of the required readings. The
course outline given below is only tentative.
The reading list will evolve over time.
Key
Dates
Thursday, Feb. 19.
First Midterm
Tuesday, March 30.
Second Midterm
Wed. May 12.
Final Exam (8:00-10:00 a.m.)
Tentative
Course Outline (Note some of the links require access to a
I. Introduction
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 1
II. The Internal Structure of Cities
·
The monocentric model of the city
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 7-9
·
Sprawl
o
*Edward L.
Glaeser and Matthew E. Kahn , “Sprawl and Urban Growth,” Harvard Institute of
Economic Research, Discussion Paper # 2004 (Forthcoming Handbook of
Urban and Regaional Economics)
·
Land Use Controls
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 10
o
Metropolitan
Council, “Regional Development Framework,” Adopted January 14, 2004
o
Center
of the American Experiment, “Task Force on Metropolitan Governance,” Dec. 2003.
III.
Sorting by Income and Race; the Tiebout Model, Local Government
·
Sorting by income
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 13, 14, 17
·
Sorting by race
·
Education
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 15
o
Background only: Hanushek, Eric,
Publicly Provided Education,” in Handbook of Public Economics (
o
Background only: Strom, Tim, “Minnesota
School Finance: A Guide For Legislators,” January 2004
·
Local Government
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 19, 20
IV. Transportation
·
Autos
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 11
·
Mass Transit
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 12
V.
·
Scale Economies and Zipf’s Law
o
O’Sullivan, Ch 2, 3
o
·
Firm Location and
o
O’Sullivan, 4, 5
o
Thomas
J. Holmes and John J. Stevens, “Spatial Distribution of Economic Activities in
North America," January 2003, (Forthcoming Handbook of Urban and
Regional Economics)
o
*Thomas
J. Holmes, The Journal of Political Economy,
Vol. 106, No. 4. (Aug., 1998), pp. 667-705.
o
Background
information on Tax Increment Financing
·
Economic development policy
o
O’Sullivan, 6