PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Regional Development Planning

Public transportation infrastructure stimulates urban and regional economic development. Many studies found that transit investment promotes agglomeration economies which concentrate economic activity by businesses, employees, and institutions near transit facilities. However, there has been fewer discussions about how agglomeration economies associated with transit infrastructure improve equity in the metropolitan area or region. In the dissertation, I analyze the impacts of the transit-associated agglomeration on low-skilled employment. The dissertation is a collection of three empirical studies on relationships between transit investment, agglomeration economies, opportunities, and labor market equity. The studies recommend planning and public policies to improve economic opportunities and accessibility for low-skilled labor force through transit planning, land use planning, workforce development, and economic development.

Committee: Rainer vom Hofe Ph.D. (Committee Member); Na Chen Ph.D. (Committee Member); David Brasington Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher Auffrey Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, City and Regional Planning

This dissertation presents five essays dealing with the utilization and abandonment of a city's assets, in particular two key assets: agglomeration economies and legacy capital. The first essay traces out the causes and effects of agglomeration economies by disentangling economies of agglomeration. It disentangles amenity and productivity effects of agglomeration; it decomposes aggregate scale effects into agglomeration factors of interest to policy makers; and it estimates own effects and spillovers to neighbors. It proposes a spatial simultaneous equations model in a spatial equilibrium framework with three agents – worker consumers and producers of traded goods and housing. Results for Ohio counties estimate economies resulting from population size, agglomeration causes, and public service quality and cost on each of the three agents in own and neighboring counties. The second essay theoretically models the abandonment and reuse of legacy capital in the process of industrial restructuring. It aims to identify the conditions for abandonment and the factors that determine the length of abandonment. The model is based on investment theory and game theory. It shows that abandonment is impacted by conversion costs of legacy capital, the rate of growth of industries involved in the restructuring, and policy variables such as tax rate. The third essay empirically verifies the theoretical model developed in the second essay, using data of industrial and commercial properties (ICPs) in the Cleveland city-region in Ohio. It shows that in declining industries or regions, ICPs experience tax delinquency of longer duration and are more likely to be abandoned than elsewhere. Also, ICPs with higher conversion costs are more likely to experience longer spells of tax delinquency and are more likely to be abandoned than others. Abandoned ICPs are spatially concentrated either as a result of negative spillovers or shared history. The fourth essay theoretically models the extern (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Burkhard von Rabenau (Committee Chair); Jean-Michel Guldmann (Committee Member); Philip Viton (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics; Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

This dissertation is divided into three chapters, which can be read separately. In chapter 2, I investigate the effects of trade openness on the size of the most important cities for 84 countries after controlling for political, geographic and economic factors. I find that the impact is negative on main cities and positive on secondary cities. In chapter 3, I test the bell-shaped relationship between industrial gap and trade costs by partially following Head and Mayer's (2003) empirical strategy, who confront estimates of trade openness and the range in which agglomeration theoretically takes place. The main result is that concentration of both employment and production may arise if a pair of countries is involved in a process of trade liberalization. In chapter 4, I assess the impact of international trade openness on urban structure in the presence of taste heterogeneity and amenities. I find that taste heterogeneity implies that city size is equal or below the levels featured by Fujita et al. (1999). Furthermore, if amenity differentials exist regardless of trade openness, then a unique equilibrium can be reached.

Committee: Ian Sheldon (Advisor) Subjects: Economics, Commerce - Business