Creating data bases on housing markets and improving our understanding about the relationships among apartment rents, house prices, neighborhood characteristics and public services are prerequisites for much of our research on the impact of state and local regulations. Among the important issues being investigated include the theory and measurement of housing affordability, policy alternatives to alleviate problems associated with excessive housing costs among low income households, neighborhood effects in housing markets, and the impact of growth management regulations and exclusionary zoning practices on apartment rents and house prices.

The Center's research on local housing markets received support from a generous gift from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. Current work at the Center includes investigating how neighborhood conditions affect homeownership as a wealth-building opportunity for poorer households. Research is also underway on how to reliably measure the effects of neighborhood characteristics and other locational factors on housing prices.

The myriad of state and local rules and regulations that might affect local housing markets and economies, coupled with the fact that the enforcement and implementation of specific rules can vary among jurisdictions and over time, greatly complicates this research agenda. Our research includes developing data bases for each county's rules and regulations and exploring alternative ways to measure the stringency of various combinations of these potential constraints on development. Current work at the Center includes studying the impact of local land use regulations on the affordability of starter homes and on the construction of multifamily housing, particularly within suburban communities where there is a scarcity of low income housing. This work is being supported by a gift from the Atlanta Federal Home Loan Bank and a grant from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Neighborhood associations represent a relatively recent form of governing organization, the effects of which are not fully understood and which is particularly prominent in Florida. This research project focuses on a number of important questions about governance and political behavior that are brought to bear by the presence of neighborhood associations.

Center Professors Richard Feiock and Charles Barrilleaux direct this research project. Feiock's work examines collective action problems in the formation of neighborhood and homeowner associations, the constitutional rules of their charters, and the regulations they impose on residents. Professor Barrilleaux's research focuses on why people join voluntary associations and how neighborhood associations affect individual political behavior and attitudes towards politics.

To what extent do city governments engage in policy actions to restrict development and manage growth? How do local political institutions shape the restrictiveness of local growth management? While these two questions are central to debates regarding local land use regulation and growth management, they have not been adequately addressed in the literature. This project investigates the adoption of various policy instruments for the regulation land use and how they are implemented by local governments in Florida.

The project was initiated through a survey of county government land-use policy in 2001-2002 supported by a DeVoe Moore Center dissertation fellowship. Over the last year, Center Professor Richard Feiock has advanced this work by extending the survey to municipal governments. With continued fellowship support from the Center in the next year, Professor Feiock and his students will investigate the roles of political institutions and the roles of environmental and development interests on local growth management policy choices.

One of the central roles of economic institutions is to define property rights for how people use land. In the United States, local governments are primarily responsible for defining these property rights through zoning and other planning activities. However, local governments do not simply create a static system of property rights that never changes. Rather, the property rights defined by local governments are constantly changing in response to changes in the overall local political economy. Frequently, changes in property rights are embodied in local growth management decisions and land use rules which define the required, prohibited, and permitted uses of local land resources.

This project investigates the role of local government institutions, community preferences, and political interests in influencing the quantity and direction of local land-use changes in Florida. For the first stage of the project, all amendments to county comprehensive plans that involve changes in land use designations are being collected and coded. Amendments from 1998-2000 have been collected in the last year, and amendments from 1993-1997 will be collected in the next year. Professor Feiock has submitted an NSF proposal to extend this work to examine city land use plans as well.

Land use policy can range from the encouragement of growth, with programs such as tax abatements, to efforts to slow its pace, through growth management programs. These policies are at two ends on a continuum of prices that cities can charge firms to locate within their boundaries. Despite this underlying connection, research in economic development and growth management have used different approaches and basically evolved into two separate literatures. This study develops and tests a bargaining model that explicitly incorporates the differences in city characteristics, voter needs, and politician's motivations that lead to outcomes anywhere on this price continuum.

A survey of city economic development directors is being conducted for all incorporated places over 10,000 within 12 selected metropolitan areas. The surveys collect data from development directors about the two most recent negotiated location incentives deals and the specific form involved. Information on the bargaining position of specific firms will be gathered from micro data available from the Census Research Data Center. Fieldwork in the 12 metropolitan areas will be used to increase the response rate to the survey, as well as add details about the negotiation process in practice. This study is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

James D. Gwartney, Professor of Economics, leads a research team that evaluates economic freedom in 123 countries in an ongoing effort to examine the link between economic and social progress and freedom. The sixth annual report, written by Gwartney and Center affiliate Robert Lawson, was recently published by the Cato Institute, Canada's Fraser Institute, and Institutes from 57 other countries. The index uses 38 different components designed to measure the consistency of a nation's policies and institutions with personal choice, voluntary exchange, open markets, and protection of property rights. They find that more economic freedom translates into less poverty, faster growth, and higher scores on the United Nations Human Development Index. These data are being used by scholars throughout the world who are working on issues related to the impact of institutions on a variety of social and economic outcomes. As of mid-year 2003, these data had been used and cited in approximately 100 articles in scholarly journals. Recent reports have been reviewed in several publications including Business Week and The Economist.