The restructuring of the institutional real estate portfolio in the UK

Real estate investment portfolios of financial institutions have seen dramatic changes over the last three decades or more. Historically such property investment decisions have been seen within a portfolio diversification paradigm that has sought to balance risk and return. This paper considers the role of the supply of assets in the determining and constraining the UK institutional portfolio. The supply of real estate assets not only expands during property booms but has also been transformed by a long term urban development cycle as cities adapt to cars and the ICT revolution that has brought new property forms. The research examines long term trends in investment change by disaggregating into ten property forms rather than the usual three land use sectors. It then assesses to what extent investment patterns can be explained in terms of portfolio theory, short term net returns of individual sectors or driven by the supply of real estate assets. It concludes that the supply of real assets is an overlooked explanation.     

Gentrification in Hong Kong? Epistemology vs. Ontology

This article examines the transferability of the concept of gentrification away from its Anglo‐American heartland to the cities of Asia Pacific and specifically Hong Kong. An epistemological argument challenges such theoretical licence, claiming that conceptual overreach represents another example of Anglo‐American hegemony asserting the primacy of its concepts in other societies and cultures. Past research suggests that if gentrification exists in Asia Pacific cities it bears some definite regional specificities of urban form, state direction and, most surprising from a Western perspective, a potentially progressive dimension for some impacted residents. Closer examination of urban discourse in Hong Kong is conducted through analysis of English and Chinese language newspapers. In both instances, gentrification is barely used to describe the pervasive processes of urban redevelopment, which otherwise receive abundant coverage. Interviews with local housing experts confirm the marginality of gentrification in academic and public discourse, and the power of a local ideology that sees urban (re)development unproblematically as a means of upward social mobility. However, in the decade‐long housing bust after 1997, growing inequality has encouraged a nascent class analysis of the property market, an ontological awakening that may prove more favourable to the identification of gentrification in an Asia Pacific idiom.     

Property rights and groundwater management in the High Plains Aquifer

Groundwater is an important natural resource that needs to be managed dynamically. Ideally, institutions governing property rights to the groundwater of low-recharge aquifers should not discourage or disincentivize groundwater users from dynamic management. We develop an empirical model to examine whether agricultural groundwater users faced with prior appropriation property rights to groundwater in western Kansas exhibit dynamic, forward-looking behavior consistent with dynamic management. We find that although farmers are allotted a time-invariant maximum amount of groundwater that they can extract each year, they still behave in a manner consistent with dynamic management. Their groundwater extraction decisions are not significantly affected by the quantity they are authorized to extract, but are instead affected by expected future crop prices, expected future energy prices, and groundwater extraction by neighbors. Our results provide evidence that farmers manage their groundwater resource dynamically, even if their property rights do not necessarily encourage or incentivize them to do so.     

集体林权配套改革非农就业地理距离与农户林业投入行为——基于9省18县面板数据的验证

基于9省18县市2009~2013年1452户农户数据,运用面板数据随机效应模型,论证了非农就业地理距离,集体林权配套改革对于农户林业投入行为会产生的影响。基于研究得出结论:非农就业的地理距离越远,家庭外出务工指数越高,对家庭林业投入产生的负向作用越大;集体林权配套改革中,林权贷款以及林地流转对农户林业投入有显著正向影响;此外,农户林地面积、所在村到县城距离、是否为山区、是否获得林权贷款以及是否参与林地流转都对农户林业投入有显著影响。因此,提出充分利用当地林业资源推动农户本地非农就业以及推动林地流转与林权贷款等配套改革措施的政策建议。     

Forecasting development outcomes under alternative surplus labour assumptions

Economic forecasts are useful to policymakers both as aids to planning, and as baselines against which counterfactual scenarios can be compared. However, policy makers should be aware that assumptions relating to model structure can influence forecast results. We explore the sensitivity of forecasts to one aspect of model structure important in modelling developing economies: surplus agricultural labour. We outline a framework for modelling surplus agricultural labour that relies on average product remuneration. We embed this within a model of a developing economy (the Philippines) characterized by surplus agricultural labour. We compare the results of two forecasts that differ in their treatment of the agricultural labour market. In the first, the surplus labour theory is activated, establishing average product remuneration in agriculture. In the second, the surplus labour theory is not activated, creating a failure to recognize average product remuneration in agriculture. By comparing the two simulations, we show that failure to model the presence of average product remuneration, when it would be appropriate to do so, has an impact that would be material to economic planners, leading them to: under-estimate agricultural employment; over-estimate GDP growth; and, over-estimate important policy variables (like tax revenue) that are related to GDP growth.     

不同农地经营权流转方式的空间依赖性分析

研究目的:探究不同农地经营权流转方式的空间依赖性。研究方法:基于2015年省级截面数据,对转包、出租和入股三种农地经营权流转方式进行全局与局部空间自相关检验,结合空间计量模型进一步探讨不同流转方式下空间依赖的机制及强度。研究结果:(1)全局层面,经营权流转空间收敛特征显著,转包和出租方式表现为空间正自相关,入股方式则呈现随机分布特征;(2)局部层面,"高—高"聚集和"低—低"聚集为各省区主要空间聚集模式,热点区域主要分布在中部和东部地区,冷点区域主要分布于中部、东部和西部地区;同一省区、不同流转方式下,空间聚集模式存在显著差异;(3)针对不同流转方式,基于传统最小二乘法回归的残差项检验均拒绝无空间依赖关系的原假设;进一步使用SLM和SARAR空间计量模型展开分析,结果表明,整体层面的经营权流转、转包以及出租等流转方式均存在显著的空间依赖性。研究结论:不同农地流转方式具有经济行为上的空间规律,不应简单地视流转为一个抽象概念,应将具体的流转行为从空间依赖和空间异质层面纳入政策制定过程,更为精准地制定具有区域化与省域化特征的农地流转政策。     

Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing

Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across firms, with the largest differences found in low-union-density cigar firms where indirect costs (that is, uncertainty and risk) accrued in particular to women workers. The lack of gender differences in mutual aid membership indicates that women were not hard to organize but avoided organizations associated with greater risk for employer retaliation and uncertain returns according to a cost–benefit analysis.     

Sponsorship programmes and corruption in sport: management responses to a growing threat

Abstract

Sponsorship programmes are increasingly being exposed to the threat of corruption in sport. Several recent notable cases of corruption have exposed sponsors and their investments to significant perceived pressures including negative consumer associations with athletes, teams and officials that have been found guilty of engaging in corrupt activity. How sponsors respond to such instances of corruption in sport forms the basis of this paper. Drawing from an analysis of corruption cases (n = 2089), the paper initially examines the nature of corruption in sport. Through interview data (n = 21), it subsequently identifies key factors that sponsors should take into consideration when deciding upon a course of action to mitigate any potential effects of corrupt activity by a sporting property they are associated with. Finally, the paper discusses those courses of action.     

Understanding the denial of abuses of human rights connected to sports mega-events*

Abstract

Academics debate the positive and negative consequences of hosting sports mega-events, and although there is a general recognition that doing so cannot be a panacea for solving other social issues, who wins and who loses tends to be the same. This article considers why mega-events are not more regularly resisted given the routinization of harm to local populations that they tend to invoke. It develops ideas derived from the late sociologist and criminologist Stanley Cohen concerning the relationships between, and the politics of, denial and acknowledgement, with specific attention to the role of academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. The article illustrates the difficulties in exposing, contesting and transforming these human rights abuses, but suggests that there are grounds for optimism as new strategies for communicating human rights abuses in connection with sports mega-events are developed.     

集体建设用地市场化进程：现实选择与理论思考

研究目的:现有文献对集体建设用地市场化改革的现实模式选择和路径演化归纳还相对薄弱。本文旨在基于观察不同类型集体建设用地(包括宅基地、经营性建设用地、公共基础设施用地以及征地)的市场化改革典型路径的基础上,探索不同模式在提升建设用地经济效率上殊途同归的共性规律,为城乡统一建设用地市场提供理论支撑。研究方法:案例分析与比较研究。研究结果:总结了本轮集体建用地市场化改革起点,刻画了宅基地、征地、统筹和入市4类市场化的典型模式或特殊现象,并对集体建设用地市场化规律做了初步探索。研究结论:集体建设用地市场化的现实路径是渐进式的"由点及面"的改革,现阶段改革创新需要关注三类收益分配问题,政府的规划和收益调节政策是地方探索市场化亟需的基础性规则,政府还应尽快对市场化中的各项权利开展立法工作。