Chris Leishman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1521592 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Leishman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Leishman |
| SIGNATURE | LEISHMAN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Heriot-Watt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7853-5035 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The CBD will survive
Agglomeration is typically used to explain the benefits of central business districts (CBDs) in large urban areas, but the pandemic has called into question the primacy of CBDs. Previous studies have relied on observational data that uses past behaviour as a predictor of future behaviour. Instead, we conducted a stated preference experiment with 789 businesses to generate robust predictions about the likely future behaviour of firms. Controlling …
Valuing the ‘new normal’? Housing markets under Covid-19
This study considers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sub-national housing markets in Wales, focusing on the contribution of environmental and productivity attributes on house price change. Using a hybrid hedonic/repeat sales framework, we examine trends before, during, and after the pandemic. Initially, higher-quality environmental and productivity attributes were associated with a positive premium in price growth, while lower quality attr…
The willingness to pay and the willingness to stay in privately rented housing
Amenities and housing market dynamics
This introductory essay aims to provide a comprehensive overview of a collection of 17 articles, previously published in the Urban Studies journal, now consolidated as a ‘virtual special issue’. The articles contribute to numerous strands of what has, over the decades, become an extremely voluminous literature concerning the interplay between population change and productivity within cities. It is important to acknowledge that the volume of this …
Predicting the long-term impacts of Covid-19 on household location preferences
We used stated preference experiments with 2970 Australian households to predict the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on household location preferences. Within metropolitan areas, we find an increase in the popularity of low-density middle- and outer-city neighbourhoods. Between regional cities, we find that population, proximity to the coast and proximity to a major capital city increase attractiveness. Together, these preferences are …
Threshold regressions for more objective urban and regional policies
Housing preferences for owner-occupied versus investment properties in Sydney, Australia
An alternative approach to estimating agglomeration and productivity using geography, demography and evidence from satellite imagery
In this article we combine novel geographical, demographic and satellite data with an instrumental variables (IVs) estimation approach to tackle a thorny set of data and econometric issues. Studies of agglomeration effects on economic productivity at the city scale have been growing in popularity in both the literature and the interests of urban policymakers in recent years. Despite growing sophistication in econometric approaches, underlying wea…
Urban Social Housing Pathways
This paper presents a national analysis of urban housing pathways. Focussing on the social housing sector, we follow social housing tenants as they move into, out of, and remain in, the sector over 15 years. Utilising a linked actuarial dataset, the paper reveals a typology of pathways, and examines the relationship between housing pathways and the receipt of broader government welfare. We find that not only is there no one social housing pathway…
Neighbourhood Effects, Social Capital and Young Adults’ Homeownership Outcomes in the United Kingdom
Many housing researchers and policymakers assume that homeownership remains the tenure of choice for many individuals and their households in the UK and internationally. Housing affordability concerns and access to mortgage finance have taken centre stage in the debate about the declining prospects for young adults to enter homeownership. Yet, some recent studies have questioned how well we understand other factors that combine to shape housing a…
Drivers of spatial change in urban housing submarkets
Spatial urban housing submarkets are now widely used constructs. Recent housing market modelling strategies have emphasised the need for flexibility in modelling approaches in order to best accommodate submarkets which account for spatial variations in hedonic prices. But this raises important unanswered questions concerning the stability of submarket structures over time, and the role of housing market dynamics in breaking down or shifting subma…
Housing and poverty
Cross-sectional research suggests that the British housing system weakens the link between income poverty and housing outcomes, but this reveals little about the long-term relationships. We examine the relationship between income poverty and housing pathways over an 18-year period to 2008, and develop consensual approaches to poverty estimation, housing deprivation, and the prevalence of under and over-consumption. We find that chronic poverty is…
Assessing the spatial impact of policy interventions on real-estate values
This paper sets out to make a contribution to the extensive literature that seeks to develop methods that allow rigorous and robust analysis of the spatial and temporal impacts of public policy interventions on property (real-estate) values. It argues that the hybrid repeat-sales/hedonic method developed in realestate studies over the last 30 years has considerable, but as yet under-developed, potential as a policy analysis tool. Using data from …
Introducing Methodological papers
The article offers information on the journal's Methodological papers article format which aims to encourage innovation in social science research
Housing Supply and Suppliers
In this paper, I review the US, UK and international literature on the responsiveness of housing supply to demand. This is a well-developed area of the literature, but I put forward two new arguments: that developers face downward sloping demand curves in the housing market, and that housing developers as firms are sufficiently heterogenous that their output decisions cannot be generalised. I draw on the international literature but use the recen…
The Predictive Performance of Multilevel Models of Housing Sub-markets
Much of the housing sub-market literature has focused on establishing methods that allow the partitioning of data into distinct market segments. This paper seeks to move the focus on to the question of how best to model sub-markets once they have been identified. It focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel models as a technique for modelling sub-markets. The paper uses data on housing transactions from Perth, Western Australia, to de…
Housebuilder Networks and Residential Land Markets
The commercial prospects of speculative housebuilders depend crucially on successful land acquisitions. This paper presents new evidence revealing the importance housebuilders attach to networks with other important actors in securing future land supplies. Since networks depend on trust, reputation and voluntary collaboration, they indicate the importance of social relations within the industry. The paper argues that UK speculative housebuilders …
The Impact of Population Ageing on House Prices
This study attempts to estimate the impact of population ageing on house prices. There is considerable debate about whether population ageing puts downwards or upwards pressure on house prices. The empirical approach differs from earlier studies of this relationship, which are mainly regression analyses of macro time‐series data. A micro‐simulation methodology is adopted that combines a macro‐level house price model with a micro‐level household f…
Spatial Change and the Structure of Urban Housing Sub-markets
Many applied studies of the structure of urban housing systems involve considerable imprecision in terms of the identification of sub-market boundaries. This is often a function of reliance on prior knowledge, particularly of the potential spatial divisions within urban housing systems. This paper introduces an application of the multi-level hedonic model as a tool to identify housing sub-markets, and as a method of identifying temporal change wi…
Sustainable Urban Form and Residential Development Viability
Arguments about sustainable urban form have generally been in normative terms without recourse to its practicality. The paper shows that the essential elements of urban form are outcomes of real estate markets. The focus of the research is to examine the economic sustainability constraints to the adaptation of the existing urban form via housing market development viability. To address the task a number of econometric models are linked together t…
Understanding Neighbourhood Housing Markets
Neighbourhood housing markets play a pivotal role in the evolution of the demographic, social and economic functioning of neighbourhoods, and hence are necessarily a key concern for national and local policy makers. This paper examines propositions about the determinants of neighbourhood housing market outcomes in England, particularly price changes over the last 10-20 years. These concern the influence of (sub-)regional economic and demographic …
Spatial Dynamics of the Housing Market
A major unproven hypothesis in housing economics is that regional ripple effects are caused by household migration between regions. This paper examines household migration and price ripples at the level of local housing markets driven partly by the fact that such migration linkages are likely to be more pronounced between local, rather than regional, housing markets. Following a review of regional housing market studies, several hypotheses linkin…
The revaluation of council tax bands
English The article contributes to debate on the future of the council tax by focusing on the revaluation of council tax bands. Originally, no revaluations were foreseen and as yet none has occurred in Britain. The article argues there is a strong equity argument for frequent revaluations. An assessment of the potential impact of a revaluation is undertaken for a sample area of 11 local authority areas in Scotland. This research finds that, while…
Planning and Housing Supply in Two-speed Britain
Economic research on UK housing markets has only recently got to grips with measuring and modelling the impact of planning and other public interventions, although their importance has long been recognised in theory. The interurban panel dataset utilised in this study does represent a step forward, by permitting more robust econometric estimation and by incorporating a wider, more balanced range of determinant factors. A coherent set of relations…
A Local Housing Market Model with Spatial Interaction and Land-Use Planning Controls
There have been relatively few attempts to construct local housing market models in the United Kingdom-particularly models with an explicit treatment of land supply. In this paper we report the results of a pilot study designed to test the practicability of estimating a system of equations which describe housing market dynamics at the local level. Former district council areas in Central Scotland are used as a proxy for local housing markets with…
Intra‐Urban migration and housing submarkets
In the 1950s and 1960s a group of housing economists at Columbia University developed a framework for the analyses of urban housing markets which was based around the concept of housing submarkets and household migration. There is now widespread agreement amongst housing economists that submarkets should be adopted as a working hypothesis but the concept has been reformulated in terms of intra‐urban relative house price differentials. The accepte…
Spatial Change and the Structure of Urban Housing Sub-markets
Many applied studies of the structure of urban housing systems involve considerable imprecision in terms of the identification of sub-market boundaries. This is often a function of reliance on prior knowledge, particularly of the potential spatial divisions within urban housing systems. This paper introduces an application of the multi-level hedonic model as a tool to identify housing sub-markets, and as a method of identifying temporal change wi…
Structural Change in a Local Urban Housing Market
This paper addresses the structural change in a local urban housing market within a submarket framework. There is a voluminous literature examining the economic structure and operation of urban housing submarkets, with much of the associated empirical work based on static cross-sectional studies. Analysis of the temporal dynamics of local markets has tended to be perfunctory. As such, our understanding of structural change over time remains under…
Spatial Dynamics of the Housing Market
A major unproven hypothesis in housing economics is that regional ripple effects are caused by household migration between regions. This paper examines household migration and price ripples at the level of local housing markets driven partly by the fact that such migration linkages are likely to be more pronounced between local, rather than regional, housing markets. Following a review of regional housing market studies, several hypotheses linkin…
The Predictive Performance of Multilevel Models of Housing Sub-markets
Much of the housing sub-market literature has focused on establishing methods that allow the partitioning of data into distinct market segments. This paper seeks to move the focus on to the question of how best to model sub-markets once they have been identified. It focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel models as a technique for modelling sub-markets. The paper uses data on housing transactions from Perth, Western Australia, to de…
Planning and Housing Supply in Two-speed Britain
Economic research on UK housing markets has only recently got to grips with measuring and modelling the impact of planning and other public interventions, although their importance has long been recognised in theory. The interurban panel dataset utilised in this study does represent a step forward, by permitting more robust econometric estimation and by incorporating a wider, more balanced range of determinant factors. A coherent set of relations…
House building and product differentiation
Understanding Neighbourhood Housing Markets
Neighbourhood housing markets play a pivotal role in the evolution of the demographic, social and economic functioning of neighbourhoods, and hence are necessarily a key concern for national and local policy makers. This paper examines propositions about the determinants of neighbourhood housing market outcomes in England, particularly price changes over the last 10-20 years. These concern the influence of (sub-)regional economic and demographic …
Drivers of spatial change in urban housing submarkets
Spatial urban housing submarkets are now widely used constructs. Recent housing market modelling strategies have emphasised the need for flexibility in modelling approaches in order to best accommodate submarkets which account for spatial variations in hedonic prices. But this raises important unanswered questions concerning the stability of submarket structures over time, and the role of housing market dynamics in breaking down or shifting subma…
A Local Housing Market Model with Spatial Interaction and Land-Use Planning Controls
There have been relatively few attempts to construct local housing market models in the United Kingdom-particularly models with an explicit treatment of land supply. In this paper we report the results of a pilot study designed to test the practicability of estimating a system of equations which describe housing market dynamics at the local level. Former district council areas in Central Scotland are used as a proxy for local housing markets with…
Housing and poverty
Cross-sectional research suggests that the British housing system weakens the link between income poverty and housing outcomes, but this reveals little about the long-term relationships. We examine the relationship between income poverty and housing pathways over an 18-year period to 2008, and develop consensual approaches to poverty estimation, housing deprivation, and the prevalence of under and over-consumption. We find that chronic poverty is…
Housebuilder Networks and Residential Land Markets
The commercial prospects of speculative housebuilders depend crucially on successful land acquisitions. This paper presents new evidence revealing the importance housebuilders attach to networks with other important actors in securing future land supplies. Since networks depend on trust, reputation and voluntary collaboration, they indicate the importance of social relations within the industry. The paper argues that UK speculative housebuilders …
Testing for the Existence of Office Sub-markets
Most conceptual and applied economic models of the structure of urban office markets have been developed from traditional location theory. In their basic form, these models tend to posit a trade-off between accessibility and space. In the light of changing business practices and decentralisation, however, some authors have noted that the influence of agglomeration economies on the locational dynamics of commercial property markets may be declinin…
Sustainable Urban Form and Residential Development Viability
Arguments about sustainable urban form have generally been in normative terms without recourse to its practicality. The paper shows that the essential elements of urban form are outcomes of real estate markets. The focus of the research is to examine the economic sustainability constraints to the adaptation of the existing urban form via housing market development viability. To address the task a number of econometric models are linked together t…
Assessing the spatial impact of policy interventions on real-estate values
This paper sets out to make a contribution to the extensive literature that seeks to develop methods that allow rigorous and robust analysis of the spatial and temporal impacts of public policy interventions on property (real-estate) values. It argues that the hybrid repeat-sales/hedonic method developed in realestate studies over the last 30 years has considerable, but as yet under-developed, potential as a policy analysis tool. Using data from …
Housing Supply and Suppliers
In this paper, I review the US, UK and international literature on the responsiveness of housing supply to demand. This is a well-developed area of the literature, but I put forward two new arguments: that developers face downward sloping demand curves in the housing market, and that housing developers as firms are sufficiently heterogenous that their output decisions cannot be generalised. I draw on the international literature but use the recen…
The Impact of Population Ageing on House Prices
This study attempts to estimate the impact of population ageing on house prices. There is considerable debate about whether population ageing puts downwards or upwards pressure on house prices. The empirical approach differs from earlier studies of this relationship, which are mainly regression analyses of macro time‐series data. A micro‐simulation methodology is adopted that combines a macro‐level house price model with a micro‐level household f…
The revaluation of council tax bands
English The article contributes to debate on the future of the council tax by focusing on the revaluation of council tax bands. Originally, no revaluations were foreseen and as yet none has occurred in Britain. The article argues there is a strong equity argument for frequent revaluations. An assessment of the potential impact of a revaluation is undertaken for a sample area of 11 local authority areas in Scotland. This research finds that, while…
Neighbourhood Effects, Social Capital and Young Adults’ Homeownership Outcomes in the United Kingdom
Many housing researchers and policymakers assume that homeownership remains the tenure of choice for many individuals and their households in the UK and internationally. Housing affordability concerns and access to mortgage finance have taken centre stage in the debate about the declining prospects for young adults to enter homeownership. Yet, some recent studies have questioned how well we understand other factors that combine to shape housing a…
House building and product differentiation
Testing for the Existence of Office Sub-markets
Most conceptual and applied economic models of the structure of urban office markets have been developed from traditional location theory. In their basic form, these models tend to posit a trade-off between accessibility and space. In the light of changing business practices and decentralisation, however, some authors have noted that the influence of agglomeration economies on the locational dynamics of commercial property markets may be declinin…
Structural Change in a Local Urban Housing Market
This paper addresses the structural change in a local urban housing market within a submarket framework. There is a voluminous literature examining the economic structure and operation of urban housing submarkets, with much of the associated empirical work based on static cross-sectional studies. Analysis of the temporal dynamics of local markets has tended to be perfunctory. As such, our understanding of structural change over time remains under…
Intra‐Urban migration and housing submarkets
In the 1950s and 1960s a group of housing economists at Columbia University developed a framework for the analyses of urban housing markets which was based around the concept of housing submarkets and household migration. There is now widespread agreement amongst housing economists that submarkets should be adopted as a working hypothesis but the concept has been reformulated in terms of intra‐urban relative house price differentials. The accepte…
Planning and Housing Supply in Two-speed Britain
Economic research on UK housing markets has only recently got to grips with measuring and modelling the impact of planning and other public interventions, although their importance has long been recognised in theory. The interurban panel dataset utilised in this study does represent a step forward, by permitting more robust econometric estimation and by incorporating a wider, more balanced range of determinant factors. A coherent set of relations…
A Local Housing Market Model with Spatial Interaction and Land-Use Planning Controls
There have been relatively few attempts to construct local housing market models in the United Kingdom-particularly models with an explicit treatment of land supply. In this paper we report the results of a pilot study designed to test the practicability of estimating a system of equations which describe housing market dynamics at the local level. Former district council areas in Central Scotland are used as a proxy for local housing markets with…
Spatial Dynamics of the Housing Market
A major unproven hypothesis in housing economics is that regional ripple effects are caused by household migration between regions. This paper examines household migration and price ripples at the level of local housing markets driven partly by the fact that such migration linkages are likely to be more pronounced between local, rather than regional, housing markets. Following a review of regional housing market studies, several hypotheses linkin…
The revaluation of council tax bands
English The article contributes to debate on the future of the council tax by focusing on the revaluation of council tax bands. Originally, no revaluations were foreseen and as yet none has occurred in Britain. The article argues there is a strong equity argument for frequent revaluations. An assessment of the potential impact of a revaluation is undertaken for a sample area of 11 local authority areas in Scotland. This research finds that, while…
Understanding Neighbourhood Housing Markets
Neighbourhood housing markets play a pivotal role in the evolution of the demographic, social and economic functioning of neighbourhoods, and hence are necessarily a key concern for national and local policy makers. This paper examines propositions about the determinants of neighbourhood housing market outcomes in England, particularly price changes over the last 10-20 years. These concern the influence of (sub-)regional economic and demographic …
Spatial Change and the Structure of Urban Housing Sub-markets
Many applied studies of the structure of urban housing systems involve considerable imprecision in terms of the identification of sub-market boundaries. This is often a function of reliance on prior knowledge, particularly of the potential spatial divisions within urban housing systems. This paper introduces an application of the multi-level hedonic model as a tool to identify housing sub-markets, and as a method of identifying temporal change wi…
Sustainable Urban Form and Residential Development Viability
Arguments about sustainable urban form have generally been in normative terms without recourse to its practicality. The paper shows that the essential elements of urban form are outcomes of real estate markets. The focus of the research is to examine the economic sustainability constraints to the adaptation of the existing urban form via housing market development viability. To address the task a number of econometric models are linked together t…
Housebuilder Networks and Residential Land Markets
The commercial prospects of speculative housebuilders depend crucially on successful land acquisitions. This paper presents new evidence revealing the importance housebuilders attach to networks with other important actors in securing future land supplies. Since networks depend on trust, reputation and voluntary collaboration, they indicate the importance of social relations within the industry. The paper argues that UK speculative housebuilders …
The Impact of Population Ageing on House Prices
This study attempts to estimate the impact of population ageing on house prices. There is considerable debate about whether population ageing puts downwards or upwards pressure on house prices. The empirical approach differs from earlier studies of this relationship, which are mainly regression analyses of macro time‐series data. A micro‐simulation methodology is adopted that combines a macro‐level house price model with a micro‐level household f…
The Predictive Performance of Multilevel Models of Housing Sub-markets
Much of the housing sub-market literature has focused on establishing methods that allow the partitioning of data into distinct market segments. This paper seeks to move the focus on to the question of how best to model sub-markets once they have been identified. It focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel models as a technique for modelling sub-markets. The paper uses data on housing transactions from Perth, Western Australia, to de…
Housing Supply and Suppliers
In this paper, I review the US, UK and international literature on the responsiveness of housing supply to demand. This is a well-developed area of the literature, but I put forward two new arguments: that developers face downward sloping demand curves in the housing market, and that housing developers as firms are sufficiently heterogenous that their output decisions cannot be generalised. I draw on the international literature but use the recen…
Introducing Methodological papers
The article offers information on the journal's Methodological papers article format which aims to encourage innovation in social science research
Housing and poverty
Cross-sectional research suggests that the British housing system weakens the link between income poverty and housing outcomes, but this reveals little about the long-term relationships. We examine the relationship between income poverty and housing pathways over an 18-year period to 2008, and develop consensual approaches to poverty estimation, housing deprivation, and the prevalence of under and over-consumption. We find that chronic poverty is…
Assessing the spatial impact of policy interventions on real-estate values
This paper sets out to make a contribution to the extensive literature that seeks to develop methods that allow rigorous and robust analysis of the spatial and temporal impacts of public policy interventions on property (real-estate) values. It argues that the hybrid repeat-sales/hedonic method developed in realestate studies over the last 30 years has considerable, but as yet under-developed, potential as a policy analysis tool. Using data from …
Drivers of spatial change in urban housing submarkets
Spatial urban housing submarkets are now widely used constructs. Recent housing market modelling strategies have emphasised the need for flexibility in modelling approaches in order to best accommodate submarkets which account for spatial variations in hedonic prices. But this raises important unanswered questions concerning the stability of submarket structures over time, and the role of housing market dynamics in breaking down or shifting subma…
Neighbourhood Effects, Social Capital and Young Adults’ Homeownership Outcomes in the United Kingdom
Many housing researchers and policymakers assume that homeownership remains the tenure of choice for many individuals and their households in the UK and internationally. Housing affordability concerns and access to mortgage finance have taken centre stage in the debate about the declining prospects for young adults to enter homeownership. Yet, some recent studies have questioned how well we understand other factors that combine to shape housing a…
Urban Social Housing Pathways
This paper presents a national analysis of urban housing pathways. Focussing on the social housing sector, we follow social housing tenants as they move into, out of, and remain in, the sector over 15 years. Utilising a linked actuarial dataset, the paper reveals a typology of pathways, and examines the relationship between housing pathways and the receipt of broader government welfare. We find that not only is there no one social housing pathway…
An alternative approach to estimating agglomeration and productivity using geography, demography and evidence from satellite imagery
In this article we combine novel geographical, demographic and satellite data with an instrumental variables (IVs) estimation approach to tackle a thorny set of data and econometric issues. Studies of agglomeration effects on economic productivity at the city scale have been growing in popularity in both the literature and the interests of urban policymakers in recent years. Despite growing sophistication in econometric approaches, underlying wea…
Threshold regressions for more objective urban and regional policies
Housing preferences for owner-occupied versus investment properties in Sydney, Australia
Valuing the ‘new normal’? Housing markets under Covid-19
This study considers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sub-national housing markets in Wales, focusing on the contribution of environmental and productivity attributes on house price change. Using a hybrid hedonic/repeat sales framework, we examine trends before, during, and after the pandemic. Initially, higher-quality environmental and productivity attributes were associated with a positive premium in price growth, while lower quality attr…
Economics (27 works) · Housing Market and Economics (24 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (17 works) · Econometrics (12 works) · Economic geography (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (11 works) · Geography (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis (8 works)