The Capitalization of Public Services and Amenities into Land Prices — Empirical Evidence from German Communities

Applying the hedonic approach to land prices, this article investigates the capitalization of public services and pure amenities in a cross section of German communities. Possible spillover effects from neighboring municipalities are explicitly included in the analysis and prove to be of considerable importance. Estimates of the impacts of local attributes on land prices are obtained taking into account the spatial structure among unobserved variables. The results confirm that differences in land prices are largely attributable to local conditions and policies. This implies a significant degree of mobility as well as high estimation of local attributes on the part of German households.     

The ownership of vacant land by public agencies

Summary

This paper considers in detail the government's Land Register Scheme. Land Registers were established under the Local Government Planning and Land Act 1980 and aim to bring unused and underused public land holdings into use. The background of the initiative, its method of operation and the nature of the information it provides is outlined. In particular, this paper looks at the unique information on public sector land holdings that has been provided as a result of the Land Register Scheme.     

Land rental market, off-farm employment and agricultural production in Southeast China: A plot-level case study

This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment, input use, and rice yields for 215 plots cultivated by 52 households in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province. Our findings show that households that rent extra land are relatively more productive, but contradict results of earlier studies which found that tenure status of plots affects the level of land investments. We further find that off-farm employment does not significantly affect rice yields. This result contradicts those of earlier studies which found that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment dominates the positive income effect. Another novel finding is that people working locally off-farm tend to switch from green manure planting towards the use of organic manure on their rice plots. We conclude that policies that will further stimulate the development of land rental markets, which is still in its infancy, can contribute significantly to higher rice production in Southeast China. Another implication of our results is that worries about the negative impact that the continuously growing off-farm employment may have on China's goal to remain self-sufficient in grain production are less relevant at the moment for the region examined in our study.     

A generalized method for valuing agricultural farms under uncertainty

The opacity of the farm market means that valuations are based primarily on expert estimates rather than on actual transaction prices. The valuation method based on the two cumulative distribution functions (VMTCDF), created by Ballestero (1971), improves the synthetic method based on estimating the market value of an asset by establishing a proportional relation between the asset and one external variable. However, in most cases the expert must consider multiple external variables. This paper proposes a definitive extension to k indexes with a methodology particularly applicable to the field of valuation of non-market goods or markets where little information is available as may be the case with the valuation of agricultural land. The contribution is illustrated with an empirical example.     

Sustainability and forest transitions in the southern Yucatán: The land architecture approach

Consistent with the challenges of sustainability science, land architecture offers a comprehensive approach to land system dynamics useful for numerous types of assessments, ranging from the vulnerability of coupled human–environment systems to forest transitions. With antecedents in several research communities, land architecture addresses the tradeoffs within and between the human and environmental subsystems of land systems in terms of the kind, magnitude, and pattern of land uses and covers. This approach is especially cogent for changes in tropical forests, given the broad-ranging forces acting on them and the equally broad-ranging consequences of their loss. The rudiments of the land architecture approach are illustrated for changes in seasonal tropical forests in the southern Yucatán of Mexico, the pivot of which is the Calakmul biosphere reserve. Simplifying the dynamics involved, the region-wide land architecture is the collective design of stakeholders with different land-use goals that favor tradeoffs in subsystem outcomes serving better either the reserve and related programs or the smallholder farmers that populate the region. A major tradeoff involves forest cover per se, which holds implications for forest transition theory. Evidence for an incipient transition involves the scale of analysis taken. The dynamics involved hold too much uncertainty to forecast a permanent transition to more forest cover and imply that more complex but robust versions of the theory are required.     

论“原乡规划”及其乡村规划思想

原乡规划借鉴老庄哲学顺应自然的无为自化思想,强调在规划过程中以无为作为最高境界,尊重自然,以实现自然境域下人们生活与生产的原真性,规划理念和方法强调人与自然的和谐,主张以自然为本,以居民为本,主张保持好原住民的生活方式,主张为人们提供本色的自然体验和生活体验。原乡规划运用于乡村规划的思想,是拒绝乡村的城市化,使乡村保持好乡村景观和乡村意象,是拒绝让城市病蔓延到乡村。     

The influence of land-use change paradigm on Romania’s agro-food trade competitiveness—An overview

The current transformations of the Romanian agricultural sector have imposed new paradigms in using the land resources. The objective of this study is to assess Romanian agro-food products competitiveness on world market, in terms of land use changing paradigms. The research question is whether the land is cultivated with crops which are competitive on world market. For assessing agro-food competitiveness, Balassa index is calculated. The findings show relative performance for barley, maize, triticale, wheat, poultry meat, oilseeds, and tobacco. But the areas cultivated with barley and wheat decreased in the period under analysis, although these products have highest relative performance of exports. The paper also proposes structural changes of land use needed for encouraging those crops and products which have high revealed comparative advantages on world markets.     

化学法二氧化氯发生器转化率测定方法的研究

为衡量化学法二氧化氯发生器运行费用,分析发生器产物的成分、计算产率、二氧化氯转化率等性能指标,本文设计研究了化学法二氧化氯发生器的二氧化氯转化率、氯酸钠耗率等的测定方法.采取恒定进口原料溶液的流量,时监测出口吸收水溶液流量和取样分析各组分浓度,以抵消原料在反应器停留时间的影响,对商品化学法复合型二氧化氯发生器在应用现场进行了实际测定.结果显示出口溶液流量波动也会影响个别结果.选择的两个分析方法测定有效氯结果无显著性差异.整体试验结果在可接受范围     

国外农村土地信托:研究现状及借鉴

国外关于农村土地信托的研究主要涉及土地信托的产权基础、土地信托的目的和作用、土地信托中的公私关系、组织形式和运作模式几个方面,主要以土地所有权私有化为前提,但已将研究重点从所有权转移到使用权和控制权,且成果主要集中在农村土地改革和土地资源保护方面.因此,通过对国外上述研究成果综述和简要评论,可以为我国在该领域的研究提供借鉴.