The Relevance to HUD of Recent Scholarly Research in Urban Economics

Constitutes a frankly experimental attempt to assess the recent scholarly literature in urban economics for its relevance to the policy problems of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It covers books by economists on urban subjects and articles which have appeared in the professional journals since 1974. The literature was divided into the major topics that seemed to interest researchers; for each topic, the authors tried to evaluate the depth of coverage, quality of analysis, and policy relevance. The categorization and evaluation were based on judgment, but such objective indicators as the number of items on a particular topic and the eminence of the journal in which an item was published were also used. The literature categories were compared to informational needs recognized as central to HUD policymaking concerns. Four kinds of deficiencies in the extant literature are identified: paucity of coverage, low quality of items, lack of policy relevance, and insufficient syntheses of existing knowledge.