Statutory bodies and rural conservation: agency or instrument?

The article describes how Britain's main conservation agencies — the Countryside Commission, Nature Conservancy Council and National Park Authorities — have few powers and scant resources. To have any real impact, the authors explain that they must exploit their semi-independent status and act as forceful and persuasive advocates of conservation. Thus, their effectiveness In pursuing the statutory duties with which they are charged depends greatly on the attitudes and interests of the members appointed by ministers to run the agencies. It is shown that there have been marked shifts In the experience and interests of the members appointed since the mid-1970s. The main reasons are seen to be political and the result would appear to be a softening of official policy and practice to the detriment of conservation.     

Optimality and consistency in a differential game with non-renewable resources

Imperfect competition amongst buyers for a non-renewable resource is modeled as a Stackelberg differential game. The buyers may act as a cartel or behave non-cooperatively in setting tariffs, which the sellers take as given. The buyer's optimal policy is not consistent when extraction costs depend on the stock level. Both optimal and consistent, unit and ad valorem tariff's are analyzed. When a buyers' cartel uses a consistent tariff, the sellers may prefer to behave as perfect competitors or a monopolist, depending on the functional form of demand and cost. Non-cooperative buyers who are constrained to act consistently are unable to extract any rent from competitive sellers.     

Assessing Student Perceptions of Real Estate Careers

In selecting a career, students seek to maximize expected satisfaction. Expected satisfaction is a function of perceptions of the relative level of critical attributes possessed by a career area. This paper uses multidimensional scaling to produce a perceptual space to analyze the perceived similarities and dissimilarities of eight business career areas for a group of students and identify the attributes critical to these perceptions. With respect to those attributes most critical to perceptions, real estate careers were perceived as providing relatively high economic potential, low prestige, low entry difficulty and little career predictability. Information such as in this study provides a baseline for career counseling as well as eliminating possible distortions in perceptions of real estate careers.     

Spatial analysis of the U.S. lodging industry, 1963–1977

Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce Census of Business in 1963, 1972, and 1977 were compared on a state by state basis and by standard metropolitan statistical areas in order to analyze the spatial growth points of the U.S. lodging industry. The results point to major lodging growth areas in the Sunbelt states with central Florida, Las Vegas, Nevada and Hawaii as outstanding nodes of development. Metropolitan lodging growth has taken place in the Sunbelt cities with populations of 100,000 to one million, with above average growth in those cities located in the coastal zone.