Mode Choice,Commuting Cost,and Urban Household Behavior*

Abstract. In this paper, we extend the partial equilibrium urban model of DeSalvo (1985) to include mode choice. DeSalvo demonstrated that the urban model of Muth (1969) was robust to the extension to leisure choice. We show that the model is robust to mode choice as well. In addition, we derive the comparative static results that commuters choose higher speed modes for longer commutes, at higher wage rates, with greater tastes for housing, and with lower housing prices. Also, for a given distance commuted, we derive the comparative static result that commuters chose shorter duration commutes at higher wage rates. Whereas it is typically assumed that marginal commuting cost is positive and non‐increasing with distance, we derive these results. Moreover, we derive the results that marginal commuting cost rises with an exogenous increase in housing price and falls with increased tastes for housing. We also explore the effects of exogenous commuting‐cost changes on the endogenous variables of the model. The remaining comparative static results on housing consumption and location are qualitatively the same as in DeSalvo.     

Strange Relatives: Mutualities and Dependencies between Aborigines and Pastoralists in the Northern Kimberley

In the northern Kimberley (WA) Aborigines and Europeans living and working on pastoral leases have improvised means of staving off, incorporating and generally managing the other's demands on their psychophysical resources. Local racial politics configure a hierarchised social field around a few central figures: founding European lease‐holders and their male children by non‐local, mixed‐descent Aboriginal women, mixed descent head‐stockmen born of a European leaseholder and a local Aboriginal woman, and then local Ngarinyin people who constitute most of the work‐force. In this paper, I analyse the inter‐cultural dynamics of this social field employing R.D. Laing's notion of the ‘family phantasy‘. The subject‐matter also entails theoretical reconsideration of questions concerning the relative openness or otherwise of Indigenous Australian socio‐cultural categories.     

Whose Burden?

Book reviewed in this article:
Allan Megill, Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and The Market)     

Raw material quality and Oldowan hominin toolstone preferences: evidence from Kanjera South,Kenya

The role of raw material quality in Oldowan technology has not been fully explored. There are numerous studies suggesting Oldowan hominins preferred certain types of stone for artifact manufacture. Previous studies of the artifact assemblage from the early Pliocene Oldowan locality of Kanjera South (South Rachuonyo District, Kenya) show that raw material selection and transport was an important aspect of Late Pliocene hominin adaptations. Yet the exact properties of stones that hominins were selecting remain enigmatic. Two potentially important features of artifact raw material are durability and fracture predictability. We investigate fracture predictability through mechanical tests of stone and investigations of the affect of stone properties on fracture patterns in archaeological collections. We investigate stone durability with actualistic studies of edge attrition combined with further mechanical tests of various lithologies. Oldowan hominins at Kanjera appear to have selected raw materials based on their durability. The ability for a stone to fracture consistently does not appear to be as important in hominin toolstone preference as previously assumed. Hominins that produced the assemblages at Kanjera South appear to have incorporated an extensive understanding of various attributes of raw material in the transport and production of stone artifacts. When combined with previous research on the transport patterns at Kanjera, the results of this study provide evidence for a more complex raw material acquisition strategy than has previously been suggested for Late Pliocene Oldowan hominins.     

Opportunities and constraints for intensive agriculture in the Hawaiian archipelago prior to European contact

Intensive agricultural systems interact strongly and reciprocally with features of the lands they occupy, and with features of the societies that they support. We modeled the distribution of two forms of pre-European contact intensive agriculture – irrigated pondfields and rain-fed dryland systems – across the Hawaiian archipelago using a GIS approach based on climate, hydrology, topography, substrate age, and soil fertility. Model results closely match the archaeological evidence in defined locations. On a broader scale, we calculate that the youngest island, Hawai'i, could have supported 572 km² of intensive agriculture, 97% as rain-fed dryland field systems, while Kaua'i, the oldest island, could have supported 58 km², all as irrigated wetland systems. Irrigated systems have higher, more reliable yields and lower labor requirements than rain-fed dryland systems, so the total potential yield from Kaua'i (49k metric tons) was almost half that of Hawai'i (97k metric tons), although Kaua'i systems required only 0.05 of the agricultural labor (8400 workers, versus 165,000 on Hawai'i) to produce the crops. We conclude that environmental constraints to intensive agriculture across the archipelago created asymmetric production efficiencies, and therefore varying potentials for agricultural surplus. The implications both for the emergence of complex sociopolitical formations and for anthropogenic transformation of Hawaiian ecosystems are substantial.     

The efficacy of violence mitigation: A second look using time-series analysis

Among peace researchers and practitioners, it is generally accepted that efforts to prevent violence can be instrumental in its mitigation. So, it was distressing to read the research findings of Meier, Bond, and Bond (2007) that mitigation was positively related to organized raids in the Horn of Africa where there is pastoralist–pastoralist and pastoralist–agriculturalist violence. This article seeks to build on their research. It uses a ‘de-trending’ approach for time-series analysis that is commonly used in economics and financial studies. It reports an opposite statistically significant finding. When the data used by Meier et al. are de-trended, violence associated with organized raids is negatively correlated with mitigation. This negative correlation is similar when data on mitigation and organized raids are de-trended with time as a predictor, on the one hand, and with seasonality over time as a predictor, on the other. Implications regarding the temporal dimension of peace research and practice are presented.     

THE EFFECT OF LAND‐USE CONTROLS ON THE SPATIAL SIZE OF U.S. URBANIZED AREAS*

ABSTRACT On a sample of U.S. urbanized areas in 2000, we test theoretical hypotheses of the effect of land‐use controls on the spatial size of urban areas. We find that minimum lot‐size zoning and maximum FAR restrictions expand the urban area, while maximum lot‐size zoning, urban growth boundaries, minimum square footage limits, maximum building permit restrictions, minimum person per room controls, and impact fees contract the urban area. All of these findings are consistent with theoretical predictions although the effect of urban growth boundaries and minimum square footage limits are not statistically significant.