ARBITRATION AND MEDIATION AS ALTERNATIVES TO COURT*

Advocates of mediation and arbitration claim their to adjudication in three areas: reduction of court caseloads and costs; increase in accessibility of justice; and improvement in the quality of justice. Available evidence shows that mediation and arbitration neither lower court costs (though they increase court capacity), nor substantially expand access to justice. By some measures, however, mediation provides fairer outcomes and, in civil cases, higher rates of compliance than does adjudication. Though less effective than often claimed in reducing problems of administering justice, mediation and arbitration-in their distinctive ways-do thus offer modestly effective alternatives to court.     

INTEREST GROUP LITIGATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

During the past decade federal courts have become an important forum for many environmental conflicts. In the early 1970s environmental groups initiated many of these cases, putting government agencies charged with enforcing environmental regulation on the defensive. By the beginning of the 1980s business interests had assumed the offensive, especially at the appellate levels, placing government agencies squarely in the crossfire of the two groups. Federal judges tended to treat the opposing interests even-handedly, although the plaintiff in a case tended to have an advantage. It appears that environmental groups will be pressed into assuming the offensive once more as federal agencies reduce their enforcement efforts under the Reagan Administration.     

FROM A SHEPHERD TO PRESIDENT OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION FOUNDATION

正Ludar, who was born in the Dingri County at the foot of Mt. Qomolangma, has a special affection toward this world's highest mountain. When he was a little shepherd, he felt this holy mountain was something he would never ascend but still desperately wished one day he could. Today, not only did he reach     

PURPOSEFUL WEATHER MODIFICATION ACTIVITIES IN CANADA: RESPONSES TO AN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNIQUE

T he last decade has witnessed a growing awareness and concern for man-environment interactions, particularly western man's adopted role as master over natural processes. Belief in the need to protect the sanctity of the life-support system has promoted a considerable body of legislation to that end. Not only has there been innovation in terms of the content of legislation, e.g., emission controls, but also innovation in the intent of legislation, as the traditional mode - of regulation after the fact — evolves into a new role which attempts to anticipate and control before the potentially undesirable event. In the reformulation of our attitudes to the environment, geographical knowledge has both much to offer and much to gain.     

THE MARKET VALUE OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS IN ALTERNATIVE FISCAL REGIMES*

ABSTRACT Land price differentials have long been used as a proxy for the value of environmental improvements in cost/benefit analysis. Both the empirical and theoretical literatures have largely ignored two important facts, however: Taxes financing local improvements are often distortionary, and amenities which influence property values in turn impact the fiscal budget, and hence the tax rate and final economic burden. Put another way, the economic cost of an improvement is endogenous to both the amenity level and the revenue structure. Extending the story in this direction for a system of open or closed spatial cities, the paper finds land rent measures to be a biased measure of the willingness to pay for amenities financed by either head taxes (benefit taxes), property taxes (excise taxes), or highway tolls (user fees). These results are used to correct the conventional specification of empirical property value regression models, which traditionally account for neither tax revenue effects nor the excess burden of distortionary taxation.     

3. FROM ENVIRONMENTAL CASE STUDY TO ENVIRONMENTAL KIN STUDY

This article explores the relationships among place, knowing, and being in environmental histories. Grounding ourselves in the work of Indigenous scholars from North America and the Pacific, we propose a method of listening and attuning that can attend to the dislocation and abstraction often found in work addressing ecocide and environmental violence. Against the ubiquity of the case-study approach, we propose a method we call “kin study,” which invites more embedded, expansive, material, and respectful relations to people and lands. This article frames the issues and then proposes, though a dialogue, how kin studies may be constituted and applied in studying environmental histories of the Pacific and Western Canada.     

INFERENCE BASED ON ALTERNATIVE BOOTSTRAPPING METHODS IN SPATIAL MODELS WITH AN APPLICATION TO COUNTY INCOME GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES*

ABSTRACT This study examines aggregate county income growth across the 48 contiguous states from 1990 to 2005. To control for endogeneity, we estimate a two‐stage spatial error model and implement a number of spatial bootstrap routines to infer parameter significance. Among the results, we find that outdoor recreation and natural amenities favor positive growth in rural counties and property taxes correlate negatively with rural growth. Comparing bootstrap inference with other models, including the recent General Moment heteroskedastic‐robust spatial error estimator, we find similar conclusions suggesting bootstrapping can be effective in spatial models where asymptotic results are not well established.     

COMPACTNESS AND ELECTORAL BOUNDARY ADJUSTMENT: AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES

Spatial compactness has been proposed as a suitable criterion for assessing whether electoral boundaries reflect partisan interests. Although several different measures of spatial compactness have been developed, only limited efforts have been made to compare and evaluate them in the context of electoral redistricting. This paper assesses alternative spatial compactness measures and applies conceptually appealing measures to the provincial ridings proposed by British Columbia's Royal Commission on Electoral Boundaries (1988).     

环保旅游:我们该怎样出游

旅游自从产生,迅速成为环境破坏的元老。虽然现在地球依然存在,人类也还没有消失,但人们前面心无芥蒂地四处玩乐,后面就已经品尝到了自己破坏环境的苦果。     

CANADA-JAPAN COAL TRADE: AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF THE STAPLE PRODUCTION MODEL

The Innis model of staple production has been used as the framework for evaluating many Canadian resource trades. This paper argues that Japanese resource trade differs from that with Europe or the United States and that the distinct set of institutional arrangements governing Japanese resource trade requires the modification of the Innis model to recognize this new form of Canadian staple production and trade. The one billion dollars per annum Canada-Japan coal trade provides a detailed case study of the institutional complexity of Japanese resource trade, as revealed through corporate strategies, trade intermediaries, equity investment, loan arrangements, export contracts, and public infrastructure. Minority Japanese investments in joint ventures replace the dominant role of foreign capital in earlier versions of the staples model. The role of finance capital is highlighted by Japanese loans typically exceeding equity investments in size. The high transaction cost of negotiating hundreds of contracts is reduced through the use of sogo shosha (Japanese general trading companies) as intermediaries. Unequal relations are demonstrated by the greater risk borne by local investors as private firms provide equity and public institutions invest in infrastructure. The Quintette mine in northeast British Columbia highlights these risks. Overall, the complexity of the Japanese supply system reduces the bargaining power of any single supplier. However, the stability promoted by the security objectives of the Japanese supply system leads to long-term trading relations that can provide corporate cash flows and maintain community viability during cyclical downturns in the industry. Le modele d'lnnis sur la production des matieres premiéres a servi a analyser les effets du commerce des ressources naturelles au Canada. Le texte maintient que les echanges de ressources naturelles avec lelapon different de ceux qui lient le Canada aux Etats-Unis et à l'Europe, et que la particularité des structures servant à administrer le commerce avec le Japon nécessite une modification du modele d'lnnis vouéà l'analyse des effets de ce commerce. Le texte se penche sur le commerce du charbon entre le Canada et le Japon, dont la valeuratteint 7 milliard$ parannée. Cette étude de cas va permettre de saisir la complexité institutionnelle des échanges ayant trait aux ressources naturelles avec le Japon, perceptible dans les stratégies des corporations, la présence d'intermédiaires, les investissements, les modalités de prêts, les contrats d'exportation et les infrastructures. Les investissements minoritaires des japonais dans des entreprises conjointes remplacent le rôle dominant des investisseurs étrangers caractéristique des modeles antérieurs d'extraction des matieres premieres. Le rôle accru du capital financier est souligné par les prêts des japonais qui exddent habituellement leur achat d'actions. Les hauts cocits transactionnels lie's à la négociation de centaines de contrats est réduit par l'intermédiaire de sogo shosha (compagnies japonaises se spkcialisant dans les échanges entre corporations). Nous constatons l'exis- tence de rapports inégaux olj le gros des risques est assumé par les investisseurs locaux et les agences gou- vernementales qui assurent la mise en place d'infrastructures. La mine Quintette dans le nord-est de la Colombie-Britannique illustre bien ces risques. La complexité du systeme d'approvisionnement japonais réduit les atouts dans les négociations des fournisseurs pris individuellement. It demeure que la stabilité, qui découle des objectifs d'approvisionnement a long terme des japonais, permet d'établir des rapports d'échange durables qui garantissent aux entreprises des revenus persistants ainsi que la prospérité des localites olj se trouvent les opérations d'extraction. Ces localités se trouvent alors soustraites aux effets des cycles économiques.