Repost from spatialeconomics.nl What would you do? Say you’re about to move, but your current home hasn’t sold yet. Do you opt for a low asking price, which means a quick sale at a low(er) but acceptable price? Or do you opt for a higher asking price and wait for higher bids? Hans Koster and Jan Rouwendal investigated the behavior of home sellers in this specific situation. The study, titled “Housing Market Discount Rates: Evidence from Bargaining and Bidding Wars”, is forthcoming in the International Economic Review. Housing prices in the Netherlands are surging again and the housing market ..read more

Repost from Economicpolicy.org Laws that ban unemployed people from moving to certain parts of a city are ineffective, according to research published in Economic Policy by Hans Koster and Jos van Ommeren. First, they do not materially change the demographic composition of targeted neighbourhoods by attracting households with higher income levels. What’s more, the laws have significant adverse side effects, because a negative stigma is created, as evidenced by lower house prices in targeted neighbourhoods. The study analyses the effects of the Dutch Act on Extraordinary Measures for Urban Pro ..read more

Repost from spatialeconomics.nl Should we build in the city or open land outside the city? Are restrictions on urban expansion a good idea or not? Green areas around cities where construction is forbidden – called ‘greenbelts’ in England – serve to curtail the growth of cities. London, for instance, established its Greenbelt following World War II, effectively maintaining the city’s size at 1950s levels despite population growth. So the question is: What are the advantages and disadvantages of these greenbelts? I study this question in a recent article published in Economic Journal. Costs and ..read more

Repost from vu.nl.   With the pressing shortage of affordable housing and rising home prices, housing is a top priority in the upcoming Dutch parliamentary elections. According to Hans Koster, Professor of Urban Economics and Real Estate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the housing crisis is complex due to a lack of clear short-term solutions. “Many policy measures do not address the core issue, namely the housing shortage.”   Measures like tax benefits and easier loan rules haven’t worked very well in the Netherlands. Koster emphasizes that the crucial way forward is to build more ..read more

Repost from VoxEU.org. Theory suggests that ‘directly affected’ workers who perform substitutable tasks, such as those employed in blue-collar, routine occupations, are more likely to be losers from robot adoption, while the productivity gains these machines bring could benefit workers performing complementary tasks. But there is surprisingly little evidence on this first-order protection. This column uses data from the Netherlands to show that directly affected workers face lower earnings and employment rates, while other workers indirectly gain from robot adoption. This is true both for wor ..read more

Repost from Vuurwerk. The Climate Agreement states that at least 35 terawatt hours of sustainable electricity must be produced on land by 2030. The plan is to generate about fifty percent of this sustainable energy by means of solar panels (of which a small part in solar parks) and the other fifty percent by wind turbines. This means that in the coming years many turbines and solar parks must appear in the Dutch landscape. In recent years, however, the Netherlands seems to be lagging behind. We are at the bottom of European lists and are not on track for the 2030 goal. It is all the more surp ..read more

Repost from spatialeconomics.nl Cities are a very old phenomenon and, argued by many, one of the greatest human inventions. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in cities. The future of mankind is thus an urban one. With these words brand-new professor Hans Koster opened his inaugural lecture ‘Reinventing cities: Evaluating effective urban policies’. The ceremony took place on 23 September 2021 in the Aula of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. More specifically, Hans Koster spoke about the importance of urban policies, enabling cities to reinvent and develop themse ..read more

Repost from VoxEU.org Modern transportation infrastructure is characterized by what transportation economists call long-haul economies. This implies that it becomes relatively cheaper to travel an additional km once the trip length increases. Long-haul economies arise because of fast trains, dedicated expressways, and airplanes. Using a simple model, we show that improvements in transportation infrastructure have non-trivial impacts on the location choices of firms. While these investments are often beneficial to large regions, they may be detrimental to small intermediate regions through job ..read more

Repost from spatialeconomics.nl. Covid-19 brings about unprecedented economic change. What exactly are the consequences of the policies pursued during the pandemic for retail and, in particular, for shopping streets? That is the question that economists Hans Koster, Jos van Ommeren, Cheng Keat Tang and Nander Bras answer in a recent study. Their research is based on rental income data in combination with unique real-time Wi-Fi data on footfall – i.e., the number of shoppers passing by on a number of locations in the Netherlands. Among other things, they conclude that policies requiring to wea ..read more

Repost from Voxeu.org. The economic and social consequences of investments in transport infrastructure generate heated academic and policy debates because they typically involve costly investments that are supposed to yield high payoffs. Investments in high-speed rail (HSR) are particularly telling examples of large transport infrastructure investments. High-speed trains usually run at speeds exceeding 250km/h and could be competitors to the airplane for medium-distance travel. Within the last ten years, China has developed the most extensive HSR network in the world, which is now about 35 th ..read more