Valuing Urban Neighbourhood Amenities: Evidence from New York City’s Foot Traffic

Since after the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been changes in urban amenities use, with working from home becoming an increasing part of working life. This seminar will present a novel measure to value urban amenities, using cell-phone-based foot traffic data from 2018 to 2022 to construct an intuitive measure of people’s valuations of various amenities in New York City.

This measure provides a consistent way to value different amenities and to analyse preference change for urban neighbourhood characteristics, especially after COVID and the work-from-home trend. It would have important implications for economists and policy makers to assess demand for urban space, the (future) function of cities, and the provision of local public goods.

Speaker

Assistant Professor Betty Wang, The University of Hong Kong

Betty Wang is an applied microeconomist. She currently works as an Assistant Professor in Economics at HKU Business School as well as Research Affiliate of New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Her research interests include urban and real estate economics, housing economics, and Chinese economy. She received her PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Moderator

Associate Professor LI Jing, Singapore Management University

Jing LI is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Singapore Management University. She leads the Urban Growth Pillar at the SMU Urban Institute. She is a co-editor at Regional Science and Urban Economics. She also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Economics and the Journal of Housing Economics. Her primary research interests are in urban economics, real estate economics and finance, and health economics. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Syracuse University.