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"Maclennan, Duncan"
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Neighbourhood effects or neighbourhood based problems? : a policy context
\"This edited volume critically examines the link between area based policies, neighbourhood based problems, and neighbourhood effects: the idea that living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods has a negative effect on residents' life chances over and above the effect of their individual characteristics. Over the last few decades, Western governments have persistently pursued area based policies to fight such effects, despite a lack of evidence that they exist, or that these policies make a difference. The first part of this book presents case studies of perceived neighbourhood based problems in the domains of crime; health; educational outcomes; and employment. The second part of the book presents an international overview of the policies that different governments have implemented in response to these neighbourhood based problems, and discusses the theoretical and conceptual processes behind place based policy making. Case studies are drawn from a diverse range of countries including the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and the USA.\"--Publisher's website.
Book
The credit crunch, interrelations between (in)stability of housing markets and the general economy: setting the scene
Issue Title: Special Issue on \"Credit crunch and the resilience of housing systems\"
Journal Article
Regional house price cycles in the UK, 1978-2012: a Markov switching VAR
Purpose
– This paper aims to use Markov switching vector auto regression (MSVAR) methods to examine UK house price cycles in UK regions at NUTS1 level. There is extensive literature on UK regional house price dynamics, yet empirical work focusing on the duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles has received little attention. The research findings indicate that the regional structure of UK exhibits that UK house price changes are best described as two large groups of regions with marked differences in the amplitude and duration of the cyclical regimes between the two groups.
Design/methodology/approach
– MSVAR principal component analysis NUTS1 data are used.
Findings
– The housing cycles can be divided into two super regions based on magnitude, duration and the way they behave during recession, boom and sluggish periods. A north-south divide, a uniform housing policy and a monetary policy increase the diversion among the regions.
Research limitations/implications
– Markov switching needs high-frequency data and long time spans.
Practical implications
– Questions a uniform housing policy in a heterogeneous housing market. Questions the impact of monetary policy on a heterogeneous housing market. The way the recovery of the housing market varies among regions depends on regional economic performance, housing market structure and the labour market. House price convergence, beta-convergence.
Originality/value
– No such work has been done looking at duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles. A new econometric method was used.
Journal Article
The global financial crisis: challenges for housing research and policies
This paper explores the implications of observed national housing sector experiences across the advanced economies before, through and out of the ' Great Financial Crash' (GFC) of 2008. The evidence suggests that over-aggregative explanation of these experiences and their broader economic consequences is somewhat misleading; empirical and theoretical explanations to date have largely failed to recognise that housing sectors can play transformative rather than just passive roles in shaping national economic outcomes. In practice, housing volatility, and the implications of this volatility for macroeconomic stability and growth, reflects specific national financial, spatial and policy structures, housing system institutional structures and participant behaviour patterns. In spite of this, the housing policy paradigms that dominated in the decades prior to the GFC remain largely in place, and national housing policy frameworks continue to give insufficient attention to housing system stability and efficiency concerns. Housing research and housing policies need to be reoriented to better address the processes that contributed to the GFC and that more generally continue to shape national economic cycles and growth paths.
Journal Article
Asymmetries in housing and financial market institutions and EMU
Despite convergence pressures, differences in housing and financial market institutions across the 15 member states of the European Union are still enormous. This paper argues that they have profound effects on the responsiveness of output and inflation in the different countries to changes in short-term interest rates, as well as to asset-market shocks of external origin. The economic reasoning behind this claim is set out and the institutional differences are described. The paper assesses the sometimes conflicting empirical evidence on this issue. Barriers to convergence and implications for labour-market flexibility are discussed. The UK, Ireland, Finland and Sweden tend to cluster at one extreme of the relevant institutional characteristics. The paper concludes with a set of proposals for institutional reforms which would significantly reduce the tensions within EMU and the potential for instability in these economies entailed by EMU membership.
Journal Article
Fundamental characterisation and early functional testing of micromoulded piezocomposites
The development of high frequency ultrasound (HFUS) transducers offers new diagnostic opportunities afforded by micro-scale resolutions. 1-3 connectivity piezoceramic-polymer composites have highly advantageous properties such as high piezoelectric coupling and good acoustic matching to tissue, but the upper frequency possible with traditional fabrication techniques is limited due to the small piezoceramic structures required. Realisation of higher frequencies may be offered by new viscous polymer processing (VPP) techniques. However, characterisation of these materials by traditional methods is not possible. This thesis presents results from characterisation of high frequency VPP micromoulded composite (MC) materials, based on electrical impedance spectroscopy and data fitting to a model based on the 1-D piezoelectric wave equation and well established homogenized piezocomposite model. Results are presented from several VPP HFUS piezocomposites developed as part of a collaborative program. Effective piezoelectric properties were found to be in the following ranges c33E: 1.40 – 5.00 (x 1010 Nm2), e33: 1.80 – 8.50 (Cm-1), εRS: 81.1 – 460, d33: 8.70 – 12.5 (x 1011 mV-1), h33: 1.88 – 3.06 (x 10 Vm-1) and kT: 0.45 – 0.51. Single element transducers were fabricated with MCs, and results from basic characterisation of these are also presented. Transducers were found to have resolution and bandwidth commensurate with HFUS applications. Data generated from this work showed that VPP fabrication has good potential for production of HFUS piezocomposites.
Dissertation
Changing Social Housing: Economic System Issues
Over the last quarter century there has been a series of major shifts in policies for the organisation and ownership of social rented housing in Britain. the non-market housing sector is moving towards a more plural, decentralised and potentially contestable set of arrangements. Many of the reforms have echoes in recent changes to the housing systems of transition economies. This paper aims to set the reforms in context, explain their key economic and financial aspects and assess the likely implications of the alternative organisational models proposed. Much of the policy has been developed without recourse to systematic evidence about different systems costs and benefits. Economic analysis of non-market housing systems has focussed on questions of the legitimacy of sector existence, cost contrasts with other tenures and subsidy distribution rather than the optimal economic organisation issues that arise given the actual existence of a social housing system. the paper applies ideas drawn from the economics of industrial organisation and neo-institutional economics to the emerging models of social housing, not least to develop a series of evaluative criteria with which to analyse new policies.
Journal Article