Essays in applied spatial economics

This dissertation partly addresses problems of limited theoretical and empirical treatment of environmental issues within the intra-urban spatial economics literature. Chapter 2 addresses theoretical concerns on the issue of wage and rent formation and location-specific amenities. A new economic geography model is modified to incorporate location-specific productivity-affecting amenities. This provides a framework for the study of capitalization of locational amenity values into wages and rents. Changes in these amenities first alter the spatial structure of the urban area which is in turn responsible for the consequent rent and wage gradient formations. The theoretical framework forms the basis for empirical work on intra-urban interactions between environmental amenities and a multicentric spatial environment.; Chapter 3 addresses the valuation of land use patterns. It examines the land use-environment link through a spatially-explicit hedonic valuation framework. It simultaneously considers hedonic statistical models of housing values and wages micro-founded in the theoretical model of Chapter 2. The models test predictions of the theoretical model regarding rent and wage responses to changes of location-specific amenities. The choice of a system instrumental variables specification is founded in the simultaneous consideration of labor and housing markets acting together as a system of spatially equilibrating interdependent forces. GIS-generated variables help estimating the value of surrounding open space controlling for polycentric spatial structure.; Chapter 4 implements a balanced study approach towards job and residential sprawl motivated by the "chicken-egg" problem of urban economics (do people follow jobs or do firms follow people to urban fringes). Studies of urban sprawl, through the land use change framework, focus entirely on residential decentralization and disregard job sprawl. This potentially leads to incomplete inference if jobs indeed "come first". The chapter is a study of job sprawl through a spatially explicit framework of land use change towards industrial and commercial uses. The developed statistical models test the significance of market conditions, local government growth controls and the identified polycentric spatial structure as drivers of industrial and commercial change. Chapters 3 and 4 use data from central Maryland.