The impact of bargaining delays under the threat of eminent domain

Developers seeking to assemble complementary parcels of land will likely encounter strategic behavior by landowners. Using a property‐level data set from Florida's Department of Transportation covering the period January 2000 to July 2014, I test whether bargaining delays lead to higher final transaction prices. Given the nature of the data, I can compare properties within the same roadway project to estimate the effect of delayed negotiations. My empirical estimates indicate that bargaining delays lead to increased final transaction prices. The magnitude of this effect is approximately 7 percent for the average holdout, however, the effect is nonlinear and diminishes over time.     

Green cities? Urbanization,trade, and the environment

Is urbanization good for the environment? This paper establishes a simple core–periphery model with monocentric cities, which comprises key forces that shape the structure and interrelation of cities to study the impact of the urban evolution on the environment. We focus on global warming and the potential of unfettered market forces to economize on emissions. The model parameters are chosen to match the dichotomy between average “large” and “small” cities in the urban geography of the United States, and the sectoral greenhouse gas emissions recorded for the United States. Based on numerical analyzes we find that a forced switch to a system with equally sized cities reduces total emissions. Second, any city driver which pronounces the asymmetry between the core and the periphery drives up emissions in the total city system, too, and the endogenous adjustment of the urban system accounts for the bulk of the change in emissions. Third, none of the city drivers gives rise to an urban environmental Kuznets curve according to our numerical simulations. Finally, the welfare‐maximizing allocation tends to involve dispersion of cities and the more so the higher is the marginal damage from pollution.     

The Genesis of Economic Cooperation in the Stories of Joseph: A Constitutional and Institutional Economic Reconstruction

Abstract

The paper analyzes in constitutional and institutional economic terms Joseph’s economic policies, such as changes to property rights arrangements for farming, the introduction of a barter tax on crop production, and the multi-layered bureaucratic hierarchies of Egypt. Utilizing Buchanan’s approach to constitutional economics, I argue that these policies lowered attack/defense costs as they arise, when a group attempts to escape from the natural distribution state (the “war of all”, as Hobbes called it). A key thesis is that this encouraged interacting parties, already on the grounds of selfinterested choice, to engage in societal contracting out of the “war of all,” thereby reaping mutual gains.

Complementary to this strand of analysis, I have drawn on other institutional economic concepts, particularly those that were introduced by Williamson, and by North and Weingast. The paper argues in this respect that Joseph’s policies credibly and more reliably guaranteed property rights, which in turn lowered transaction costs of the interacting parties, i.e. Egypt and Israel. This ultimately yielded mutual gains and high economic performance for the society depicted in Genesis. In this way, cooperation was generated in economic terms.     

Costs and benefits of environmental change: tourism industry's responses in Arctic Finland

ABSTRACT

Recent research has focused on the impacts of environmental change to tourism. In particular, the perceived costs of climate change have been increasingly studied. However, the relationship between costs and benefits resulting from the changing environmental conditions for the industry has been less examined. This paper identifies the locally observed changes in the natural and socio-economic environments and aims to analyse the financial costs and benefits to tourism businesses in two tourism-dependent communities in northern Finland. The specific focus is on adaptation and adaptive management in a tourist destination scale. Adaption is understood as an investment creating not only implementation costs, but potentially also benefits for tourism operations. Research materials were collected among tourism and tourism-related businesses through 41 semi-structured thematic interviews. Results indicate that the evaluated benefits of environmental change seem to exceed those of costs. This conforms to the on-going discourse of climate change–tourism relations associated with the Arctic region where both awareness and vulnerability to change are considered relatively high but the level of responses, i.e. adaptation, low. These results can help to further identify the most vulnerable sectors in tourism and assist entrepreneurs preparing for environmental and climate change. However, the paper concludes that while global environmental change, with specific adaptive management strategies, may create local short-term direct benefits for the industry, a long-term sustainability of tourism in the Arctic calls for mitigation responses to climate change.     

What Explains the Carcass Field Processing and Transport Decisions of Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers? Measures of Economic Anatomy and Zooarchaeological Skeletal Part Representation

This paper uses rationale derived from central place foraging models to explore the factors that guide the carcass processing and transport decisions of modern hunters. Using data derived from butchering experiments, I test different economic indices that purportedly reflect the field processing and transport decisions of contemporary African Hadza hunter-gatherers. The results show that no single index predicts part processing and transport for the species examined in this analysis. Processing and transport decisions are, however, patterned in ways that are consistent with theoretical predictions. While similar processes likely guide carcass treatment and transport decisions among all hunter-gatherers, different ecological, social, and historical constraints define the range of solutions to problems involving carcass treatment. In this specific example, intertaxonomic differences in carcass size and bone properties constrain how the trade-offs between field processing and transport costs are resolved. I conclude by suggesting ways in which analysts might make use of central place foraging rationale and models to explain variation in skeletal representation and abundances across time and space.

浙江农民的流动交易方式与其经济现代化——以浙江省义乌市后乐村为个案

通常的现代化命题对中国农村现代化的定位是外生现代化类型,因此外来模式和制度的引进、外部资金和技术的输入是至关重要的。但是后乐村的经济发展实践却展示了另外一种图景:后乐村的经济现代化是在流动交易的不断转换中实现的,流动的交易方式与后乐村的经济现代化之间存在紧密的逻辑关系。这种关系表明,流动的交易方式是一种现代化的内生因素,后乐村的经济发展是流动的交易方式作为一种特殊的文化资本进行双重再生产的结果。     

Estimating Antebellum Passenger Costs: A Hub-and-Spoke Approach

Abstract

Over 30,000 miles of railroad and 4,000 miles of canals were constructed in the United States between 1815 and 1861. However, the lack of data has prevented the study of this “transportation revolution” for most cities. This article thus enables a closer study of antebellum travel improvements by constructing a hub-and-spoke network that is capable of estimating the cost of passenger travel from New York City and Philadelphia to any U.S. city in 1836, 1850, 1856, 1859, and 1867. The semi-parametric approach provides an accurate cost estimate by using available historical information to determine the travel cost to all other cities.     

Exchange Rate Policy and Economic Growth after the Financial Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe

In a paper on the effects of the global financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), a European Union economist reacts to a companion paper (Åslund, 2001) published in the same issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics on the influence of exchange rate policies on the region's recovery. The author argues that post-crisis corrections in current account deficits in CEE countries do not in themselves signal a return to steady economic growth. Disagreeing with Åslund over the role of loose monetary policy in fostering the region's economic problems, he outlines a number of competitiveness problems that remain to be addressed in the 10 new EU member states of CEE, along with improvements in framework conditions supporting future macroeconomic growth.     

清代地权交易形式的多样化发展

There were three kinds of financial transactions involving rights of land during the Qing Dynasty: debt financing through rights of land, the direct transferring of the rights of land, and the transaction of shares. This article attempts to clarify the confusion between several types of debt financing through rights of land. Ya 押 was loan through land as guaranty and repaying the interest and capital by the rent of land or harvest. Dian 典 was loan through temporary transferring of usage rights and harvest in a certain period of time. Dang 当 referred to various types of loans which involved the rights of land. Di 抵 meant using a certain portion of land right as repayment of debt. Similar with modern financial methods, these financial transactions in the Qing Dynasty allowed peasants to preserve their possessive rights over the land and also satisfied their financial needs. The direct transactions of rights of land and repayment of debt by harvest included juemai 绝卖 (finalized sale of land), huomai 活卖 (not finalized sale of land), dianquan dingtui 佃权顶退 (sell or purchase tenancy), zhaojia 找价 (price add-on after transaction), and huishu 回赎 (redemption). The main purpose of these transactions was to protect the land proprietors as far as possible. Share transaction and co-tenancy of land also appeared in the Qing Dynasty. Such diverse financial transactions not only were substitutes of modern financing tools which allowed peasants to weather financial hardship, but also promoted the changing ownership of land which further encouraged the combination of different production elements and reallocation of resources in the land market. This paper is the research result of the National Philosophy and Social Science Fund Project “Market of land rights and the evolution of its system, 1650–1950.”     

陕西省农村土地流转迟缓的供求影响因素与机制探析

农村土地流转长期受到决策者的鼓励,但我国农村土地使用权流转率一直偏低,西部地区尤其如此。本文试图以陕西省为例,通过问卷调查和访谈,分析农地社会保障功能等因素影响农地使用权流转率的作用机制;并从供给和需求两个方面,分析了经济落后地区农村土地使用权流转率偏低的原因。研究结果表明,农地流转受到现行的以提供社会保障为基本目的的农地制度的约束,任何旨在提高农地流转率的改革措施,都必须考虑现行农地制度的社会保障功能和地区差异,实行因地制宜的农地流转制度。