| This dissertation is comprised of three chapters. Chapter 1 and 2 investigate the interactions between land-use patterns and household travel and vehicle-choice patterns, both empirically and theoretically. Chapter 3 explores institutional aspects of the housing and the rental markets in Korea.;Chapter 1, which is coauthored with David Brownstone, estimates the influence of residential density on vehicle usage and fuel consumption. The empirical model accounts for both residential self-selection effects and non-random missing data problems. While most previous studies focus on a specific region, this paper uses national samples from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey. The estimation results indicate that the joint effect of the contextual density measure (density in the context of its surrounding area) and residential density on vehicle usage is quantitatively larger than the sole effect of residential density. We also find that a lower neighborhood residential density induces consumer choices toward less fuel-efficient vehicles, which confirms the finding in Brownstone and Golob (2009).;Motivated by a finding in Chapter 1 of this dissertation, Chapter 2 presents a modified monocentric city model, which incorporates the consumer's optimal vehicle-type choice problem. Consumers are assumed to explicitly consider driving inconvenience in the choice of vehicle sizes, and the resulting commuting cost is a function of residential density. This vehicle-type choice problem is embedded in an otherwise standard monocentric city model. Comparative static analyses suggest that an increase in commuting cost per mile, especially from increased unit cost of driving inconvenience, may induce spatial expansion of the city. Part of comparative static analysis shows how the city's vehicle fuel efficiency depends on the city characteristics such as population and agricultural rent.;Chapter 3 explores a unique kind of rental contract to Korea, called chonsei. The tenant pays an upfront deposit, typically from 40% to 70% of the property value, to the landlord, and the landlord repays the deposit to the tenant upon contract termination. The main goal of this paper is to show why such a unique rental contract exists and has been popular in Korea. The model shows that chonsei is an ingenious market response in the era of "financial repression" in Korea (Renaud (1989)), allowing landlords to accumulate sufficient funds for housing investment without major reliance on a mortgage and providing renters with cheap rental housing. The model implies that the chonsei renter may save while the landlord and the owner-occupier put all their assets into housing and thus have no financial savings, the hypothesis that is empirically tested and confirmed. |
