THE EXCHANGEABILITY OF HEDONIC PROPERTY PRICE STUDIES*

ABSTRACT. Observations drawn from multiple markets are essential to the construction of indices of housing costs and to measures of demand for housing attributes. It is not evident when multiple markets exist or whether such markets exist for some attributes but not for others. We test for multiple markets by using Bayesian methods to assess the transferability (random exchangeability) of entire hedonic price expressions from one site and time to another, the transferability of hedonic price functions for particular attributes, and the degrees of similarity that hedonic price functions must have in order to be transferable. In our illustrations, price functions for structural housing attributes are generally transferable; prices for neighborhood attributes are not. Therefore, in our illustrations, the desired price indices and demand functions should be estimable for neighborhood attributes, but not for structural ones.     

The Little Revolution in New South Wales, 1808

In this article, ‘Development’ and developmentist ideas, two increasingly fashionable areas of historical inquiry, are explored in the context of relations between the United States and Brazil through the middle decades of the twentieth century, with three arguments made along the way. First, and in contrast to much academic and extra-academic received wisdom (as well as the official pronouncements of US diplomats), the United States government offered no singular or consistent approach to ‘development’ in its dealings with Brazil. Second, an unofficial vision of development (here termed ‘market developmentalism’) that has so far eluded the attention of historians of developmentalist ideas emerged earlier than the official developmentalisms that have been the main object of historiographic interest to date. Third, this unofficial, largely private, consumption-oriented developmentalism is shown to have enjoyed an outsized influence in Brazil, dwarfing the influence enjoyed by those inconsistent varieties of developmentalism espoused by US diplomats between the 1940s and the 1960s.     

Feud and Fable: The Sherrington-Horsley Polemic and the Delayed Publication

In the February and March 1894 pages of The Lancet and in private letters, Charles Sherrington and Victor Horsley exchanged angry accusations pertaining to primacy of research on the course of the pyramidal fiber tract as determined from studies in monkeys. The polemics appear not to have ended in a manner satisfactory to either one. Moreover, the dispute allegedly led to a remarkable delay in publication of one of Sherrington’s major contributions, which pertained to the localization of the motor cortex in apes that was published in 1917. Here we examine the argument in detail including the comments of an intermediary, Professor Rubert Boyce. We also examine the evidence for the supposed delay in publication, and conclude that the account of the delay originated in John Fulton’s 1952 obituary of Sherrington, and is not true. We suggest it has become a fable that should no longer be repeated.     

IMPRESSIONS:HOW SPECIAL IS THE TIBET'S CHANGTANG?

<正>The group,numbering 30 or 35,all moved in unison,dressed in thick bluish-gray coats,they descended the steep rocky slopes.Their goal was obvious.These blue sheep were looking for water.They dropped lower.My colleague and friend,Dr.Aili Kang,and I used our binoculars for a better look.Suddenly, the animals bolted,fleeing in different directions and all moving upslope away from snowfields.We saw why.A wolf appeared,its tail hanging low and curved.We waited and watched,getting a better look.It     

The boat grave studies of Sutton Hoo and Vendel ‐ A Palaeoenvironmental study

This study is part of the project ‘Vegetational development and land use during the pre‐Viking period. A comparative study of environmental history in northern Uppland, Sweden, and East Anglia, England’. The main aim of the project is to reconstruct the palaeoenvironments within the catchment areas of Lake Vendelsjön, northern Uppland, and the river Deben, East Anglia. The project employs a variety of palaeoecological methods such as sedimentation processes and rates, erosion levels, changes in sea level and climatic influences, the effects of land uplift and changes in land use. The time period covered by the project is the last 3000 years.