MONOPSONY AND PLANT LOCATION IN A THÜNEN LAND USE MODEL*

ABSTRACT. Previous work has developed a method for studying noninfinitesimal operational units, called “plantations,” with the Thüen model. In that model, increasing returns to scale generate large operational units, but the potential market power conferred by the scale economies is sidestepped as an issue. The present work introduces finite supply elasticities and examines their locational impacts. The profit-maximizing monopsonistic plantation is smaller, and the shipment distance for its processed output is shorter, than for a comparable competitive plantation. The present approach does not involve spatial competition strategies.     

PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY UNCERTAINTY AND THE OPTIMAL LOCATION OF THE FIRM*

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the implication of production-technology uncertainty for the exclusion theorem. The paper presents the result that the risk-averse firm facing production technology uncertainty prefers an intermediate location to avoid risk under certain conditions. The firm chooses an intermediate location (over a corner location) particularly if its degree of risk aversion overwhelms the inherent convexity of profit with respect to location. The latter depends, in turn, on the structure of production technology characterized by the elasticity of substitution and returns to scale parameters.     

LOCATION,THEORY OF PRODUCTION,AND VARIABLE TRANSPORTATION RATES*

ABSTRACT. The question of what conditions insure independence between location and output decisions is investigated within the context of triangle space. Assuming that transportation rates vary with quantity and distance, it is shown that this independence is insured if the production function generates a linear expansion path and the following are all constant: transportation rate elasticities with respect to distance and quantity, and the price elasticity of demand for inputs.     

LEONTIEF TECHNOLOGY AND THE LOCATION OF THE FIRM IN A WEBER TRIANGLE–SPECIFIC LOCALIZATION THEOREMS*

In special cases of the Leontief technology's constant input-output coefficients, the general localization theorem that an interior location is a global optimum if every input or market vertex is not a local optimum [Kusumoto (1984)] is confirmed and strengthened. Sufficient conditions are proposed for the portion of a triangular space in which the firm will locate. Finally, it is shown that, if input substitution is permitted and its effects dominate spatial effects, the firm's total cost function will be monotone, as well as concave, hence the vertex is a global optimum if it is a local optimum.     

THE MAXIMUM CAPTURE OR “SPHERE OF INFLUENCE” LOCATION PROBLEM: HOTELLING REVISITED ON A NETWORK*

ABSTRACT. The problem of the ice cream vendor on the beach is extended to the siting of multiple entering servers into the midst of existing servers which are already in place at multiple sites on a network. The network of population nodes, joining arcs, and eligible sites for servers provides the underlying matrix of the problem. The goal of the single firm which is siting the multiple entering servers is the capture of the maximum population from existing servers. This combinatorial problem can be described as a linear integer program for which solutions can easily be derived. Computational experience and insights derived therefrom are reported.     

BAKKE, WEBER, AND RACE IN EMPLOYMENT: ANALYSIS OF INFORMED OPINION

The article reports research on informed opinion as to linkage between Bakke and the discretionary use of race in private employment practice. Of particular concern is the legal parallel between the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title 6 as applied in Bakke and Title 7 as it relates to Kaiser Aluminum v. Weber and to other employment cases. The principal research entailed Q-methodology, a technique allowing respondents to produce and present a structured attitude (mind set) with regard to an issue or controversy. Focus of the study was upon 1) respondent values or norms as to race in employment; 2) opinions as to the impact of Bakke upon race in employment; and 3) perceptions of Bakke as portent of things to come. Responses were made in the Fall of 1978. Respondents were from groups indicating interest in Bakke, together with university teachers in relevant fields. Factor analysis of responses revealed three principal attitudes. One attitude (Factor I) strongly affirms race-conscious affirmative action, including quotas, sharply condemned the Supreme Court for abrogating (in Bakke) its responsibility for protecting minority rights, and saw Bakke as a portent of unwelcome things. Factor II condemns any consideration of race in programs of admission or employment, predicted some beneficial legacy of Bakke, but was most critical of its deference to racial considerations. Factor III is pragmatic and was supportive of the Supreme Court Bakke decision, from which it projected beneficial consequences. Factor III accepts the discretionary use of race while rejecting quotas. Survey research conducted by others reveals that a public majority holds opinions most congruent with Factor III. In the employment area specifically, a majority rejects quotas but endorses minority training programs. The 1979 Weber decision gives a limited sanction to voluntary quotas, but does not exceed the range of tolerance set by a public permissive in this particular policy area.     

UNDERSTANDING SPATIAL INERTIA: CENTER OF GRAVITY,POPULATION DENSITIES,THE WEBER PROBLEM,AND GRAVITY POTENTIAL*

ABSTRACT. In this paper we attempt to clarify the theoretical links between the concepts of “center of gravity” and “point of maximum population density” which describe the present, and the concepts of “minimum of the comprehensive Weber problem” and “maximum comprehensive gravity potential” which guide the future. Critical values of the characteristic parameters of the relevant functions are estimated. Implications for the understanding of spatial inertia are discussed.     

COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE USSR: AN INITIAL INVESTIGATION

Several aspects of the distribution of institutions of higher education and their graduates are compared for the Soviet Union and the United States. The concentration of institutions and students is found to be greater in the USSR. Differences in regional enrollment rates relative to the location of institutions and students may be partly explained by differences in the curriculum structure of American and Soviet institutions of higher education and the greater degree of local control over higher education in the United States. A direct relationship exists in both countries between the percentage of graduates in a region and percentage urban and per capita income. Regional inequality in the percentage of graduates in urban versus rural areas is much greater in the USSR while regional inequality in the percentage of male and female graduates was only somewhat greater in the United States. Level of urbanization, migration of students and graduates, economic opportunity and economic structure are seen as important factors helping explain regional variation in the distribution of graduates.     

A NOTE ON TRANSPORTATION RATES AND LOCATION OF THE FIRM IN A TWO-DIMENSION,n-INPUT SPACE*

This paper examines the theoretical implications of quantity-discounted transportation rates on the optimum location decision of the firm. It shows that the linearly homogeneous or homothetic production function is not a sufficient condition for the independence between the optimum location and the output level, unless (i) the elasticities of transportation rates with respect to quantity shipped are constant and identical, and (ii) the ratios of marginal products 60 the marginal transportation costs are equal for each input.     

NOT QUITE AN UROBOROS: THEORY,POWER, AND POPULAR CULTURE IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN

Katsuya Hirano's The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan offers an Althusser‐inflected analysis of the relationship between power structures and the economy of cultural production, with a focus on late eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Edo. Hirano spells out his cultural assumptions, and then examines the cultures of parody, comic realism, the grotesque, and the changing relationship between the Meiji state and the body. This theoretical tour de force, however, raises many questions regarding its assumptions about the structure of the early modern Japanese polity, elided evidence, and interpretation. As such, it will stimulate ongoing discussion regarding the place of theory, and in particular of neo‐Marxism, in contemporary historiography.     

LAND USE IN THE PRESENCE OF AN ATMOSPHERE EXTERNALITY,WITH AND WITHOUT CORRECTIVE TAXES*

ABSTRACT. Total cleared area in a von Thünen land-use model drives an atmosphere externality which depresses agricultural productivity uniformly throughout the region. Exogenous events that encourage clearance and use of a larger cultivated area (output price or population increase) exacerbate the externality. Imposition of a simple, corrective tax on land rents does not reverse these patterns but does mitigate the increase in the externality and leaves cultivators with higher incomes than they would obtain without the tax. We examine an optimal tax on land rents, designed to maximize the social value of land rents in the region, and an output tax.     

CAVES AND GEOPHYSICS: AN APPROXIMATION TO THE UNDERWORLD OF TEOTIHUACAN,MEXICO*

This article describes the result of a geophysical survey in the vicinity of the most important construction of the ancient Prehispanic urban centre of Teotihuacan, Mexico. The survey was intended to locate a system of tunnels under the city. It is proposed that the system was originally dug to obtain construction materials, but afterwards it was used for ideological needs.     

FROM THE FIRM GROUND OF RESULT AND FACT TO THE TOSSING SEA OF CAUSE AND THEORY: THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT*

Are government policies of any real significance in shaping the pattern of development in metropolitan regions? This essay summarizes the widely-held view that ‘economic forces’ determine the distribution of jobs and residences in urban areas, and argues that this conclusion involves serious conceptual difficulties. The essay then shows how the theory of political influence and related concepts can be used to clarify the issue of causation in urban development, and summarizes the authors' own substantive conclusions—that under certain specifiable conditions government activities do have a highly significant role in shaping metropolitan growth.