FUNCTION AND COMPETITION AMONG URBAN CENTERS*

ABSTRACT This paper uses a logit model of consumer choice to examine how changes in the spatial behavior of rural consumers will affect the commercial base of smaller urban places. Various socio-economic changes in a region can be expected to cause a number of behavioral changes, including changes in where people work and shop. The analysis presented in the paper emphasizes the importance of location to the commercial prospects of small trade centers as consumers become more spatially mobile and engage in more multipurpose shopping. Places that are centrally located have the best prospects for ensuring that functions are either maintained or suffer the least decline as a result of competition from higher-order centers. Remoter locations will be adversely affected by these competitive pressures.     

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.     

THE NET FISCAL IMPACT OF SELECTED FEDERAL BLOCK GRANT PROGRAMS*

This paper examines the net fiscal benefits of various federal grants and taxes paid to finance them. Net, effective tax rates are calculated for all county areas in the U.S. for seven measured grant programs, and the distributions of such tax rates are examined in conjunction with the median family incomes of the county areas. Inferences about the progressivity (or regressivity) of the grant programs are made, as well as inferences about the horizontal equity of the grant programs through the use of a new class of index numbers. It was found that more progressive grant formulas, which provide greater rates of subsidy to areas with lower median family incomes, also tend to be less horizontally equitable.     

ROMAN KNOWLEDGE OF SCANDINAVIA IN THE IMPERIAL PERIOD*

Summary. This paper aims to provide a framework of literary evidence as a basis for study of the relations between the Roman Empire and Scandinavia from an archaeological point of view. It covers the period from Augustus to the end of the fourth century.     

IMPACT OF RIGIONAL FACTORS ON PRODUCTIVITY IN CHINA*

ABSTRACT. The regional production environment in China is decomposed into five regional factors: education endowment, foreign direct investment, agglomeration, producer's market accessibility, and consumer's market accessibility. The impacts of these regional factors on the Chinese machinery building industry and food manufacture industry are estimated across 30 regions. The estimates are highly significant and show that these regional factors substantially affect regional productivity. Across regions and over time, the capital return rate is positively related to the ratio of the total regional factor impact to the wage rate.     

KNOWLEDGE IMPACTS OF UNIVERSITIES ON INDUSTRY AN AGGREGATE SIMULTANEOUS INVESTMENT MODEL*

ABSTRACT. This paper is concerned with the impacts of academic knowledge production (human capital, research, and consultancy) on the investment behavior of the manufacturing industry. Beginning with the neoclassical theory of capital accumulation, a multiregional investment model for non-residential structures and equipment is developed. Within this model, the knowledge impacts of universities are represented by a diffusion function, which takes into account the possibilities of contagious and hierarchical diffusion of knowledge. Special attention has been given to the development of a theoretically sound and empirically operational investment model, and to the identification of spatio-temporal correlation. The latter has been approached by means of the use of an EGLS estimator, based on a stationary spatio-temporal Markov scheme for the residual. The main result of the case study relating to the Netherlands is that academic knowledge production has a significant positive impact on investments in equipment which is strongest in the neighborhood of central places (i.e., following a hierarchical diffusion pattern).     

THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ON THE INCIDENCE OF LUNG CANCER AMONG RURAL RESIDENTS

Lung cancer mortality in the rural areas of Moscow Oblast is found to be virtually identical with data for urban areas. In an effort to establish a set of potential causative factors in rural areas, selected factors are correlated with lung cancer mortality by Moscow Oblast rayons. The highest positive correlation is found for the use of farm pesticides from the carcinogenic dithiocarbamate group, followed by the percentage of workers employed in agriculture, the amount of smoking per capita, the amount of dust-causing plowing, the use of farm machinery (producing exhaust gases) and the use of kerosene (producing household soot). A negative correlation is found between lung cancer and the percentage of white-collar workers employed in rural areas. The selected set of factors accounts for 45 percent of the variance in lung-cancer incidence, but no single specific factor can be isolated to explain the high mortality in rural areas, which evidently stems from a combination of causes.