Assessing the market for institutions: The case of homeowner associations (Ontario, Colorado)

This dissertation is three works focused on the use of spatial analysis in urban research. It is broken into three separate works which all use a common topic: covenants and community associations. The aim of the dissertation is to demonstrate how the use of space can change the application of established economic theory and practice and to investigate the impact that covenants are having on the housing market.; The first work provides evidence from three hedonic models that community associations provide value for the homeowners who use them. This is true despite the fact that the community associations studied exist within a city and county that does zone. The dataset used is of micro-level housing data for the cities of Windsor and Greeley, Colorado.; The second work uses the same dataset as noted above but the focus changes to spatial econometrics. Techniques have been developed to identify and correct for spatial dependence in the variables of the specified model. These techniques are heavily dependent on the creation of a spatial weight that models the nature of that spatial dependence. Chapter 3 compares the use of two strategies to generate the spatial weighting matrix. The results are found to be very sensitive to the specification of the spatial weights. Some variables change economic and statistical significance enough to ignore the variables with one weight but warrant serious consideration in using another weight.; The third and final work explores the community association using a Coasean approach and examines some details of the voting process. The Coasean approach is argued to hold important consideration when examining the housing market; while the voting decision made by the creators of a covenant are argued to follow the basic cost minimization outlined in Buchanan and Tullock (1962). A dataset for all homeowner associations in Greeley and Windsor is used to further the argument.