http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/6834604

The rate of commercial construction in a crosssection of american cities 1957-1958

This memorandum describes an econometric crosssection study of investment in commercial construction in the United States during 1957 and 1958. It develops a structural model of the two principal sectors of the commercial-construction industry -- office buildings and retail stores -and fits the model to cross-section data describing office construction in 13 standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSA's) and store construction in 18 SMSA's. The model used expresses the rate of investment in commercial construction as a function of revenue and cost conditions. Because measures of revenue are not always available, proxies for demand are substituted in some cases. Least-squares regression analysis confirms the model's usefulness in explaining city-to-city variations in commercial construction. Several problems with the data preclude a fully successful conclusion in any statistical sense, however. The most serious are the traditional cross-section size problem, and a lack of measures over certain important but largely qualitative aspects of the market. These problems are discussed and suggestions made on how they might be resolved in future work. To the extent that they are important problems, the fitted models remain a preliminary effort. (Author).

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