Land-use Forecasting - Kain Model

Kain Model

About 1960, the Ford Foundation made a grant to the RAND Corporation to support work on urban transportation problems. (Lowry’s work was supported in part by that grant) The work was housed in the logistics division of RAND, where the economists at RAND were housed. The head of that division was then Charles Zwick, who had worked on transportation topics previously.

The RAND work ranged from new technology and the cost of tunneling to urban planning models and analyses with policy implications. Some of the researchers at RAND were regular employees. Most, however, were imported for short periods of time. The work was published in several formats: first in the RAND P series and RM series and then in professional publications or in book form. Often, a single piece of work is available in differing forms at different places in the literature.

In spite of the diversity of topics and styles of work, one theme runs through the RAND work – the search for economic policy guides. We see that theme in Kain (1962), which is discussed by de Neufville and Stafford, and the figure is adapted from their book.

Kain’s model dealt with direct and indirect effects. Suppose income increases. The increase has a direct effect on travel time and indirect effects through the use of land, auto ownership, and chopice of mode. Work supported at RAND also resulted in Meyer, Kain and Wohl (1964). These parts of the work at RAND had considerable influence on subsequent analysis (but not so much on practice as on policy). John Meyer became President of the National Bureau of Economic Research and worked to refocus its lines of work. Urban analysis Kain-style formed the core of a several-year effort and yielded book length publications (see, e.g., G. Ingram, et al., The NBER Urban Simulation Model, Columbia Univ. Press, 1972). After serving in the Air Force, Kain moved to Harvard, first to redirect the Urban Planning Department. After a time, he relocated at the Kennedy School, and he, along with José A. Gómez-Ibáñez, John Meyer, and C. Ingram, lead much work in an economic-policy analysis style. Martin Wohl moved on from RAND, eventually, to Carnegie-Mellon University, where he continued his style of work (e.g. Wohl 1984).