Instructions
You must write on each of the following questions. You may use up to two (2) blue books. You have been required to bring two (2) blue books to class on exam day without any markings, including your name, on them. The blue books will be collected at the start of the exam period, mixed up, and then redistributed.
Each question has equal weight.
1) What is the Henry George Property Tax Theorem? Demonstrate, derive and prove the effects upon the open city if there is an increase in property tax. Is this consistent with the Henry George Theorem? Is the Henry George Theorem a special case of the open city; why?
2) What is the assessed value to market value ratio? Explain why knowing this ratio is important to the local government, and to the household. How have those in public financed evaluated the quality of local property tax assessment? Beginning with Thrall's work in the 1970s, and republished in part in your Land Use and Urban Form text, how do geographers analyse the ratio? Can the criteria in public finance of good property tax assessment be inconsistent with the geographer's criteria? What would be an appropriate design of a GIS experiment for the evaluation of local property tax assessment?
3) Discuss the effects upon the closed city if there is a decrease in transportation cost. Use in your discussion the graph of direct effect upon utility from a decrease in transportation cost.
4) The city builds a park in downtown Gainesville. Describe and explain what type of public good the park is. Describe and explain what the effect will be upon property values and population density for an open city, downtown. Will the new park create an equal amount of excitement between the inner city and the suburbs? Why?
5) Say that density is set by zoning action to be less than the market. Demonstrate what the effect will be upon land prices if welfare is unchanging.
6) In the former Soviet Union, rent was effectively zero. Most everyone lived in the same footprint of highrise building. Demonstrate and derive the resulting household welfare surface. Would households be better or worse off in such a setting? Why? Where?