How local leaders matter: Inter-provincial leadership transfers and land transactions in China

We study how local leaders matter for economic growth by examining the impacts of exogenous transfers of leaders across China’s provinces on land transactions in the primary market. We find that new provincial leaders attract investment in industrial land from the provinces of their previous positions. The leaders’ impacts are greater when their freedom to deploy their business connections in the land market is greater. More importantly, we find evidence of positive impacts of land transactions on economic growth, which should bode well for the careers of the local leaders, albeit there is some evidence of rent seeking among officials especially when they are too old for further promotion.     

绿色奥运中绿色营销与绿色物流发展策略的探析

从绿色奥运物质和意识两方面分析发展绿色营销,形成绿色物流管理系统是国际奥委会的政策导向和2008北京绿色奥运的需求。本文分析了绿色奥运的含义及绿色营销与绿色物流的理论基础,并提出发展绿色营销和绿色物流管理的策略。     

云财务共享服务模式设计——以费用报销流程为例探讨

在企业数量增加的同时,企业之间所具有的竞争情况也愈发激烈。其中,财务共享服务是目前企业提升运营效率、降低运营成本的一项重要方式。本文中就以企业的费用报销流程为例对云财务共享服务模式进行一定的研究与设计。     

Demand for second-stage land certification in Ethiopia: Evidence from household panel data

Ethiopia has implemented one of the largest, fastest and least expensive land registration and certification reforms in Africa. While there is evidence that this ‘first-stage’ land registration has had positive effects in terms of increased investment, land productivity and land rental market activities, the government is now piloting another round of land registration and certification that involves technically advanced land survey methods and computer registration. This ‘second-stage’ land registration differs from the registration system employed in the first round that used field markings in conjunction with neighbors’ recollections to identify plot borders. We use panel data from 600 households in southern Ethiopia to investigate household perceptions of and demand for such a new registration and certification. Our study revealed relatively low demand and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for second-stage certificates. The WTP also decreases significantly from 2007 to 2012. Our findings indicate that farmers do not believe that the second-stage certificate enhances tenure security relative to the first-stage certificate except in instances in which first-stage certification was poorly implemented. The demand for second-stage certificates appears to come primarily from governmental authorities, as it can provide a better basis for land administration and produce accessible public documentation of land-related affairs.     

The living commons of West Tyrol,Austria: Lessons for land policy and land administration

A right of commoners to pastures existed since the Early Middle Ages in Anglo-Saxon England and the European mainland, including Tyrol in Austria. Lowland commons institutions were largely dissolved by the 19th century; however, in the European Alps contiguous commons remain alive. Some two thousand alpine commons institutions are registered in the Tyrolean parcel cadaster and land registry. A specific study of West-Tyrolean commons (known as Agrargemeinschaft or AGMs), framed by Ostrom's design principles is presented. General lessons for land policy and land administration are extracted. An interview period was split between the Inn valley and the Ötztal. Roughly half are considered independent: others are regulated by the Tyrolean Agricultural Authority. Some AGMs hold the full bundle of land rights: others only hold pastoral and forestry rights. AGMs consisted either of a single cadastral parcel or several contiguous parcels. In the Inn valley villages the pastoral commons were owned by the municipalities, while in the researched Ötztal, AGMs are frequently the full owners of the commons. AGM membership ranges between 5 and 60 farm households. The number of livestock units pastured was in most cases stipulated in approved regulations. Alpine commons larger than 200 ha are also hunting-zones: revenue is collected from the lease of hunting rights. Most of the alpine commons are designated and used as ski-zones. Upper portions of two alpine commons in the Ötztal are state protected natural areas. The number of farms with pastoral rights is declining at District and State level. Key lessons for land policy and land administration include: Ostrom's design principles being a precondition rather than a panacea; commons institutions requiring one clear ownership party; both public and collective ownership producing success; publically owned commons requiring a local representative; small membership numbers being preferable; small shareholdings not being preferable; decentralized governance being beneficial; internal democratic elections being beneficial; internal boundary records being superfluous; explicit sanctions being superfluous; mixed economies being acceptable; and geography being a significant influence on the longevity of pastoral commons.     

The ‘squeezed middle’: Identifying and addressing conflicting demands on intermediate quality farmland in Scotland

The growing demand for a wide range of private and public goods and services from a finite land resource is increasingly challenging for planners at local, regional, national and international scales. The Scottish Government's development of a Land Use Strategy has given salience to resolving conflicts and enhancing synergies in land use. In Scotland, the poorest quality farmland is often designated for nature and landscape conservation and the highest quality farmland often protected for food production. This means that many of the competitive pressures on land are experienced in what we term the ‘squeezed middle’. The paper identifies the multiple (and not exclusively economic) drivers of land use choices and, through an ecosystem services lens, explores three particular areas of land use conflict. These are (i) the continued high level of public support for farming, which has done little to address the problem of low farm incomes; (ii) the pressure to increase woodland planting on farm (and other) land; and (iii) conflicts associated with intensive game management, especially on sporting estates. Using the Scottish situation as an example, the heterogeneity of land use pressures means that there is a danger of the principles of the Land Use Strategy becoming lost in translation from national policy to practical land use decision-making. The appropriate scale for delivery of integrated ecosystem services may therefore be more local than current pilot projects, and may require more active participation of land managers. It may also require policy instruments that are more flexible in adapting to the local context, including payments for ecosystem services.     

Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world

Shortfalls in global food production, coupled with the growing visibility of climate change's disruptive effects, have underlined for many observers the importance of devoting rural lands to their ‘optimal’ use, where they can make maximal contributions to the global imperatives of feeding the human population and maintaining vital environmental services. In this context observers have endorsed rural land use planning as a way to insure that, at least in theory, lands get devoted to their best uses. In practice, land use planning in the developing world has resembled ‘organized anarchy’. Small landholders with insecure land tenure, overseas investors seeking large land deals, NGOs representing indigenous peoples, government officials, and staff from international environmental NGOs and multilateral organizations have come together in strategic action fields to struggle over and sometimes negotiate land use plans for contested landscapes. These plans represent a strategic, spatially explicit response to the climate change–biodiversity–food security crisis.     

Progressive fragmentation of a traditional Mediterranean landscape by hazelnut plantations: The impact of CAP over time in the Langhe region (NW Italy)

Land use change is strongly modifying the traditional landscape of hilly productive Mediterranean sites. An example of these circumstances is the Langhe region (Piemonte, NW Italy), where woody plantations such as vineyards and orchards have been cultivated on hillslopes for centuries. In this paper we assess landscape changes occurred in the Diano study area (2651 ha) in the 1954–2000 period and we ascertain land use transition paths and rates of this rural ecosystem. Land use mapping obtained from object-oriented analysis of aerial photographs was used to quantify land use changes between 1954 and 2000. To examine the spatio-temporal patterns of land use change over time, a set of spatial statistics capturing different dimensions of landscape change was identified. An increase of landscape heterogeneity from 1954 to the present was observed due to the expansion of orchards and the fragmentation of field crops. A significant portion (55%) of current orchards surface is represented by former field crops, 24% by vineyards and 15% by forests. The strong expansion of hazelnut orchards concurred to the fragmentation of traditional rural landscape was dominated by vineyards, field crops and forests. Hazelnut orchards expansion was mainly located in places where grapes cultivation was less remunerative. A further expansion of hazelnut in the area should be planned, discussed and carefully monitored through change detection studies in order to avoid potential unsustainable use of the land.     

Impact of an urban growth boundary across the entire house price spectrum: The two-stage quantile spatial regression approach

This study provides evidence for the impact of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on house prices. The study employs a two-stage quantile spatial regression method on a dataset that inventories sales transactions of single-family houses within two miles of either side of the eastern boundary of the primary UGB in King County, Washington. The results show that while the UGB decreases house prices across the entire house price spectrum, the impact is uneven; it is most pronounced for houses in the 5th to 8th decile of prices. These findings should encourage policy makers to adopt sub-housing-market-level policy approaches to address UGB and other urban and regional development policies’ potential impacts on house prices.     

From First Canoe to Statehood: Eight Hundred Years of Economic and Political Change in Hawaii

The Hawaiian archipelago was the last major land area on the planet to be settled, with Polynesians making the long voyage just under a millennium ago. Building on new archaeological and historical research, the lecture provides an overview of the economic and political history of Hawai‘i from the first Polynesian settlements in the thirteen century through U.S. colonisation and statehood. The analysis considers how the political and economic institutions that emerged and evolved in Hawai‘i during its centuries of global isolation changed in response to Hawai‘i's post-1778 integration into a new world of global markets and colonial politics.