A Field Theory Of House Prices

This book presents the essential ideas of the field theory of house prices. This theory combines some fundamental concepts of classical physics and standard economics, providing a new, alternative way of thinking about house prices. In the field theory of house prices a new concept of analysis is defined: house prices by distance from the CBD (Central Business District). In traditional neoclassical economics, house prices are analysed directly without including the location element of a house. The field theory, however, takes location explicitly into account by analysing house prices divided by the distance from the CBD. The main ideas of the field theory are also applicable to the land markets and facilities markets, where location plays a significant role in the analysis of property prices. The author is a Doctor of Science (Technology), whose research interest focuses on applied mathematics and economics.

This is an e-book about a dynamic field theory of house prices, which simplifies the ideas in the author’s previous work, A Field Theory of House Prices (ISBN 978-952-6613-36-9). The text provides new, highly workable ideas based on the major ideas of classical physics combined with the major ideas of classical economics. This synthesis is known as a dynamic field theory of house prices. This is a novel theory that provides a unified, general framework for decision-making that can be applied to any macro-level question about house prices. In order to understand the ideas of this e-book, it is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of mathematics, which is the language of exact science. The workability of the ideas presented in this e-book are demonstrated using some real, large data sets. These empirical results are documented in the presented material. The local disposable income and the interest variable typically applied in Finland are the ”pushing forces” that generate the demand field. The supply side is the ”attracting force” that does not influence the house prices in the samples investigated, but is still a force that exists. What is a house price? What are the demand field and supply field of housing? This book explains these issues.

This booklet discusses some major methodological issues relating to the construction of house price models on a macro level. There is no single method that always produces the optimal results; the choice of a particular approach, method, theory, model and technique is context-dependent. This is especially true in housing markets, where a multitude of different submarkets exist. The methodology chosen should be based on sound theory, from which the basic concepts of analysis can be derived. This booklet discusses the use of potential models, which can be constructed using a general field theory, and which act as a theoretical foundation for further analysis. If we use potential models for house price analysis we can discover additional features from the data set that other approaches would simply miss. This e-book presents a pragmatic overview of key methodological concerns with the emphasis on the use of potential models. Theoretical methodological questions are left unanswered, and are not even presented in this text, since they have little relevancy to real-world modelling questions.

This booklet is a final complement to the series of investigations (”A Field Theory of House Prices”, ISBN 978-952-6613-36-9 and ”Nonstandard House Price Theory”, ISBN 978-952-6613-66-6) on the fundamental nature of house prices, which is, strictly speaking, a mathematical question. As in the earlier e-books on the scientific essence of house prices by the author, this booklet analyses house prices using the concept of a vector field. The fundamental idea underlying this e-book is that housing demand, housing supply and house prices can be investigated not as scalar functions but as genuine vector fields.

Why are house prices in many advanced economies rising faster than incomes? Why isn’t land and location taught or seen as important in modern economics? What is the relationship between the financial system and land? In this accessible but provocative guide to the economics of land and housing, the authors reveal how many of the key challenges facing modern economies - including housing crises, financial instability and growing inequalities - are intimately tied to the land economy. Looking at the ways in which discussions of land have been routinely excluded from both housing policy and economic theory, the authors show that in order to tackle these increasingly pressing issues a major rethink by both politicians and economists is required.

Highlighting the conceptual work at the heart of Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, this cutting edge collection operationalizes Bourdieusian concepts in field analysis. Offering a unique range of explorations and reflections utilizing field analysis, the eighteen chapters by prominent Bourdieusian scholars and early career scholars synthesize key insights and challenges scholars face when going ‘beyond the fields we know’. The chapters offer examples from discipline contexts as diverse as cultural studies, poetry, welfare systems, water management, education, journalism and surfing and provide demonstrations of theorizing within practical examples of field analysis. One of the foremost social philosophers and sociologists of the twentieth century, Bourdieu is widely known in cultural studies and education and his approaches are increasingly being taken up in health, social work, anthropology, family studies, journalism, communication studies and other disciplines where an analysis of the interplay between individuals and social structures is relevant. With its unique interdisciplinary focus, this book provides a useful guide to doing field analysis and working with Bourdieusian methods research, as well as key reading for methodology courses at post-graduate level.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 32nd Australasian Database Conference, ADC 2021, held in Dunedin, New Zealand, in January/February 2021. The 17 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The Australasian Database Conference is an annual international forum for sharing the latest research advancements and novel applications of database systems, data-driven applications, and data analytics between researchers and practitioners from around the globe, particularly Australia and New Zealand. ADC shares novel research solutions to problems of todays information society that fullfil the needs of heterogeneous applications and environments and to identify new issues and directions for future research and development work.

This book offers practical instruction on the use of audit studies in the social sciences. It features essays from sociologists, economists, and other experts who have employed this powerful and flexible tool. Readers will learn how to implement an audit study to examine a variety of questions in their own research. The essays first discuss situations where audit studies are the most effective. These tools allow researchers to make strong causal claims and explore questions that are often difficult to answer with observational data. Audit studies also stand as the single best way to conduct research on discrimination. The authors highlight what these studies have uncovered about labor market processes in the past decade. The next section gives some guidance on how to design an audit study. The essays cover the difficult task of getting a study through an institutional review board, the technical setup of matching procedures, and statistical power and analysis techniques. The last part focuses on more advanced aspects. Coverage includes understanding context, what variables may signal, and the use of technology. The book concludes with a discussion of challenges and limitations with an eye towards the future of audit studies. “Field experiments studying and testing for housing and labor market discrimination have, rightly, become the dominant mode of discrimination-related research in economics and sociology. This book brings together a number of interesting and useful perspectives on these field experiments. Many different kinds of readers will find it valuable, ranging from those interested in getting an overview of the evidence, to researchers looking for guidance on the nuts and bolts of conducting these complex experiments.” David Neumark, Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California – Irvine “For decades, researchers have used experimental audit studies to uncover discrimination in a variety of markets. Although this approach has become more popular in recent years, few publications provide detailed information on the design and implementation of the method. This volume provides the first deep examination of the audit method, with details on the practical, political, analytical, and theoretical considerations of this research. Social scientists interested in consuming or contributing to this literature will find this volume immensely useful.” Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Harvard University

In recent years there has been an outpouring of work at the intersection of social movement thoery, organizational theory, economic, and political sociology. The problems at the core of these areas, Fligstein and McAdam argue, have a similar analytic and theoretical structure. Synthesizing much of this work, A Theory of Fields offers a general perspective on how to understand the problems related to understanding change and instability in modern, complex societies through a theory of strategic action fields.

Real Estate Valuation Theory is organized around five categories of intellectual contribution to the whole-appraiser decision making and valuation accuracy, application of nontraditional appraisal techniques such as regression and the minimum-variance grid method, appraising contaminated property, ad valorem tax assessment, and new perspectives on traditional appraisal methods. One common thread is that all of the papers are exceptionally well written and thought provoking.