The relationship between commuting costs and housing prices is a key determinant of urban residential structure. This paper provides the first estimates of both housing/commuting bid functions of heterogeneous households and the associated bid-function envelope. This approach clarifies the distinction between movement along a household's bid function and a change in the slope of the envelope caused by household sorting. It also leads to tests of the hypotheses that households sort according to the slopes of their bid functions and that higher-income households tend to live farther from worksites. Estimates based on house sales in the Cleveland area in 2000 largely support these two hypotheses and indicate that the price of housing may be as much as one-third lower at a location that is 34 minutes from a worksite than it is at a location that requires a minimal commute, all else equal.

通勤成本与房价之间的关系是决定城市住宅结构的关键因素。本文提供了对异类家庭住房/通勤出价功能以及相关出价功能范围的初步估计。这种方法阐明了沿住户出价函数的移动与由住户分类引起的信封斜率变化之间的区别。它还导致对以下假设的检验：家庭根据其出价函数的斜率进行排序，而高收入家庭往往远离工作场所。