It is widely recognised that the quantity and sustainability of new homes in the UK need to increase. However, it is important that sustainable housing is regarded holistically, and not merely in environmental terms, and incorporates elements that enhance the quality of life, health and well-being of its users. This paper focuses on the "soft" features of sustainable housing, that is, the non-t...

The housing and business cycles are clearly tied together and this has been documented in the recent literature. Our analysis of the housing and labor markets is based on a DMP model for interdependent housing and labor markets that gives rise naturally to vacancy rates in housing and labor markets. We estimate the model using data at the MSA level on housing vacancies from the US Census Bureau...

This article examines the institution of retirement on some estates in Scania, the southernmost part of Sweden, in the nineteenth century. It is obvious that tenant farmers on the estates were practising the same retirement system as was customary among freeholders, that is they were entering into retirement contracts with their offspring or with a non-relative, making over the farm in exchange...

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Paul Saylor, for his generous financial support while I have been at the University of Illinois, and for his personal guidance and friendship during the last three years. His wonderful family has also provided emotional support, cheesecake, and lodging when I needed it most. I would like to thank Steve Ashby for all the time and effort he has p...

The urban geography of thirteenthand fourteenth-century Paris suggests that propertied Parisians placed poor young men who needed help in crossing the threshold to adulthood near the top of their list of poor people who were in need of charitable assistance. Indeed, only widows and other elderly unattached women outranked such boys. By 1342 Paris had ten shelters for poor unattached women and a...

Given that the stated purpose of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is to create value for the newly merged firm, the M&A offer premium ought to be positively related to the realized benefits or realized synergies that result from combining the target and the acquirer. Not all empirical evidence supports this notion, however. Because some M&A activities have not been found to be consistently value ...

BACKGROUND Myopia has become a significant global public health concern, and is highly prevalent worldwide especially in Asian countries. It is associated with genetic factors as well as socioeconomic status; however, the underlying cause for school myopia has not been established. This study evaluates the impact of living environment on school myopia in Chinese school-aged children. METHODS ...

We analyze whether firms prefer collocating with incumbent firms when choosing among markets to enter, highlighting the role of resource-seeking as a motivation for collocation. We propose that entrants will locate near others possessing resources that can spill over, but will avoid locations where existing firms will exploit spillovers without contributing. To test these propositions, we analy...

This paper aims to understand how renters make their housing decisions in urban China, where market mechanisms are being introduced into a previously welfareoriented housing system. It is argued that while renters now enjoy more housing options, their choices are constrained not only by socio-economic factors as is the case in the West, but also by persisting socialist institutions such as the ...

In this paper, we examine the importance of year, industry, corporate-parent, and businessspecific effects on the profitability of U.S. public corporations within specific 4-digit SIC categories. Our results indicate that year, industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific effects account for 2 percent, 19 percent, 4 percent, and 32 percent, respectively, of the aggregate variance in profit...