Residential Building Codes,Affordability, and Health Protection: A Risk-Tradeoff Approach

Residential building codes intended to promote health and safety may produce unintended countervailing risks by adding to the cost of construction. Higher construction costs increase the price of new homes and may increase health and safety risks through income and stock effects. The income effect arises because households that purchase a new home have less income remaining for spending on other goods that contribute to health and safety. The stock effect arises because suppression of new-home construction leads to slower replacement of less safe housing units. These countervailing risks are not presently considered in code debates. We demonstrate the feasibility of estimating the approximate magnitude of countervailing risks by combining the income effect with three relatively well understood and significant home-health risks. We estimate that a code change that increases the nationwide cost of constructing and maintaining homes by $150 (0.1% of the average cost to build a single-family home) would induce offsetting risks yielding between 2 and 60 premature fatalities or, including morbidity effects, between 20 and 800 lost quality-adjusted life years (both discounted at 3%) each year the code provision remains in effect. To provide a net health benefit, the code change would need to reduce risk by at least this amount. Future research should refine these estimates, incorporate quantitative uncertainty analysis, and apply a full risk-tradeoff approach to real-world case studies of proposed code changes.     

Optimal and Acceptable Technical Facilities Involving Risks

Economic cost-benefit optimization of technical facility requires suitable "life saving cost" and/or an appropriate acceptance criterion if human life and limb are at risk. Traditionally, acceptance criteria implicit in codes of practice, standards, or regulations for well-defined fields of application are calibrated against past and present practice. This is all but satisfying. It is unclear whether present rules are already optimal. Extrapolations into new fields of application are extremely difficult. Direct cost-benefit analysis is proposed as an alternative. Based on the recently proposed "life quality index" (LQI), a rational acceptance criterion and so-called life saving cost are derived. The classical life quality index is reviewed, modified, and imbedded in modern economics theory. The results are then applied to technical facilities. The relation between optimization and the LQI-based acceptance criterion is discussed. The relevant economics literature is reviewed with respect to discount rates applicable for long-term investments into risk reduction. They should be as low as possible according to a recent mathematical result. Modern economic growth theory decomposes the output growth rate into the rate of time preference of consumption and the rate of economical growth multiplied by the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption. It is found that the rate of time preference of consumption should be a little larger than the long-term population growth rate. The public benefit rate (output growth rate) on the other hand should be smaller than the sum of the population growth rate and the long-term growth rate of a national economy, which is around 2% for most industrial countries. Accordingly, the rate of time preference of consumption is about 1%, which is also intergenerationally acceptable from an ethical point of view. Given a certain output growth rate there is a corresponding maximum financial interest rate in order to maintain nonnegativity of the objective function at the optimum. Finally, a simple demonstration example is added.     

城市单位职工位置能力与获取住房利益关系的实证研究

我国城市现阶段单位职工获取住房利益的大小依赖于职工自身具备的位置能力高低.在影响职工位置能力的因素中,职工所在的"单位"起着至关重要的作用.在此基础上,职工的职务、政治面貌、收入和职业也对住房利益获得起着重要作用.     

老年人居住问题研究

在世纪之交 ,我国正快速进入人口老年化社会。本文试图通过分析我国人口老龄化的现状及问题 ,探讨解决我国人口老龄化下老年人居住问题的多方案途径。     

汕头市货币分房政策分析

汕头市货币分房方案符合国家和广东省房改政策要求，在住房补贴的领取条件、补贴标准、方式、资金来源、管理办法等方面都具有自身的特色。其优点很明显，也存在不少缺陷。     

Counter-geographies: The campaign against rationalisation of agricultural research stations in New South Wales, Australia

This paper discusses an example of community action mounted in a rural region of New South Wales, Australia, in response to proposals by the State Government to rationalise agricultural research stations operated by the Department of Primary Industries. Informed by a Foucaultian understanding of power and the concept of governmentality, neoliberalism is theorised as being the broad governmental context in which rationalisation proposals were put forward. Recent literature drawing on this theoretical perspective has emphasised that neoliberalism is enacted through a relationship of power, and is not monolithic or inevitable. Neoliberalism is always negotiated by those seeking to govern and those who are the object of such governmental actions. This paper analyses how plans to rationalise publicly funded agricultural research stations were opposed by those seeking to keep research facilities open in the case study area. The paper discusses the methods and scope of community action and, drawing on interviews, identifies a series of discourses articulated by campaigners. Non-local actors were depicted as uncaring and insensitive. In contrast, campaigners discussed the emergence of a ‘city-country divide’ in domestic politics; the need for specialist agricultural knowledge given the region's unique geographical location; and local impacts of an economic, social and emotional nature. Central were discourses of maintaining community, tradition, and continuity in unique local places defined by their climate, biophysical environment and economy. These were ‘counter-geographies’ that sought (successfully, it would transpire) to disrupt the state's imagined geography of a homogenous and flexible administrative space in which research services could be relocated wherever most efficient. Important too were embodied resistances to the way rural industries and people were subjected. Campaigners refused to accept preferred codes of neoliberal behaviour (particularly mobility and rationality) and instead demanded respect for their careers, families and communities. Important considerations are suggested for further research on impacts and negotiations of neoliberalism. This study particularly highlights the successes—as well as contradictions and limitations—of arguments that construct rural places as socialised, unique and unfairly treated (by governments), in opposition to metropolitan dominance and ‘placeless’ neoliberalism.     

轻钢与秸秆复合板结构的住宅经济性分析

以中国建设社会主义新农村及全面建设小康社会的国家政策导向为背景,结合西部地区村镇住宅的实际情况,分析村镇住宅的现状,提出基于轻钢与秸秆复合板结构的村镇小康住宅体系,并从定性及定量两个方面进行分析,尤其从结构自重、建筑使用面积、施工周期及建筑节能四个方面与传统村镇住宅体系进行经济性比较,分析认为:轻钢与秸秆复合板结构的小康村镇住宅的综合经济性有较大优势。     

关于发展我国个人住房贷款业务的思考

随着经济的发展和人民生活水平的提高 ,住房消费成为城市居民的消费热点 ,为抓住这一契机 ,各家商业银行相继推出了个人住房贷款业务 ,但这一业务从推出到现在却发展缓慢。本文从居民个人和银行两个方面分析了我国个人住房贷款业务发展缓慢的原因 ,提出了发展我国个人住房贷款业务的一系列措施     

美国次贷危机的形成机理及其启示

从探究美国次贷危机的源头入手分析其形成原因,理清次贷危机被过度放大的环节所在,进而认为近期金融市场的动荡和流动性不足主要是市场的恐慌情绪和投资者避险行为的结果,最后指出次贷危机对我国房贷市场的启示。     

市场的制度性分割:经济适用房制度的博弈分析

为低收入者提供基本住房保障是政府的基本职责,经济适用房是实现该职责的一个制度体现.但是中国的经济适用房制度并没有实现其设计目标.那么是什么原因导致了这个结果,如何实现为低收入者提供基本住房保障的目标?从政府、开发商、购买者三方博弈的角度,可以发现经济适用房制度失败的关键在于它造成了市场的制度性分割,由此产生的市场套利行为瓦解了经济适用房的制度基础.改革方向在于撤销经济适用房制度,实施住房补贴制度,重新建立统一的住房市场.