Ethics and Lobbying: The Case of Real Estate Brokerage

Members of licensed occupations benefit from legal standards that limit entry into their professions. Is it ethical for these professionals to give political support to these standards? I examined the case of real estate brokers and found that their educational requirements raise average commissions by one quarter of a percentage point, costing consumers $5.4 billion per year without improving the quality of brokerage services. The case raises interesting ethical issues which are difficult to resolve.     

Planning policy, planning practice, and housing supply

This paper outlines a brief history of planning policy in Englandas it relates to housing. It discusses briefly the issues raisedby a plan-led system, and the uncertainties of household projections.Evidence on the relationship between house prices and housingsupply, and on house-builders’ landbanks, suggests thatplanning constraints are a key factor behind the long-term upwardtrend in house prices (though over shorter periods other factors,such as long-term real interest rates, will be more important).It concludes that the environmental constraints on additionalhousing supply, albeit important, can be overstated. While thereare serious adverse social consequences of the way in whichthe English housing market works today, it is not yet clearthat the (largely welcome) policy steps taken over the past3 years will prove sufficient to resolve this problem.     

Management of collaboration in ectrem projects

This paper describes findings on the management of collaboration arising from an evaluation of the participation of the UK in the EUREKA programme. The principle issues addressed in the paper are the origins and motivations for collabration, the roles played by participants of different types and the significance of collaboration for project outcomes. The paper concludes that complementarity between partners in the key motivation for collabration. Complementarity may lie in different dimensions, matching different types of technical expertise or technical and market expertise. Vertical relationships, between users and suppliers, energed as being particularly important in EUREKA projects and frequently formed the initial basis for the collaborative application. The most important overall finding was that partnerships were genuinely interpendent, in part because of their foundation in complementarity. Successful collaborative structures were those which were sufficiently robust to accommodate the inevitable changes which arise in the turbulence of market conditions. This paper finishes with some conclusions concerning the appropriate role for government agencies in supporting participants in the management of collaboration.     

CONFLICT APPROACHES OF EFFECTIVE AND INEFFECTIVE PROJECT MANAGERS: A FIELD STUDY IN A MATRIX ORGANIZATION[1]

The conflict approaches used by project managers in a matrix organization were described by 135 project team engineers. In project teams where the managers used a combination of co-operative and confirming approaches to conflict, conflicts were judged to have a constructive impact and management was judged to be effective. Conflicts were seen as counterproductive and management was seen as ineffective when the project manager relied upon a combination of competitive and avoiding approaches to conflict. These results provided field data support for a theory of conflict management which has been tested and refined through extensive laboratory research.     

Subprime Mortgage Tremors: An International Issue

The subprime mortgage crisis has negatively affected individuals, investors, lenders, and economies worldwide. This paper first examines contributing factors of the crisis: predatory lending, predatory borrowing and mortgage fraud, unethical practices, unregulated mortgage brokers, off-balance-sheet activity, and the infusion of capital from Asia that provided the fuel for subprime mortgage activity to continue. International markets have both suffered from and contributed to the crisis. Legislation that has been enacted or recommended in the U.S. and the European Union is reviewed. We then make recommendations which could begin to restore confidence of consumers and investors worldwide; however, it is clear that laws and regulations must be enacted quickly to correct the situation and bring stability to investment markets.      

Reshaping European metrology research – the role of national research managers

This paper deals with the role of research and development (R&D) managers in shaping the landscape of public research in Europe. These R&D managers work in the sphere of public research within national government laboratory services. The case we present is of the reconfiguration of metrology research. Metrology is the science of measurement. We examine why scientists and research managers in nationally embedded institutes, which are performing R&D in support of national policy and local industry needs, have chosen to co‐operate in a shared research programme. This means giving up, in part, their national sovereignty over funds and decision making. Furthermore, we examine how they have achieved the shared programme, which was launched as a European Commission (EC) programme through the Article 185 ¹ initiative, which allows the European Union to participate in research programmes undertaken jointly by several Member States.     

Sources of Structural Change for the UK Service Industries 1979–84

Over the period 1979 to 1984 the UK economy experienced severe structural change in that the oil and services sectors increased their share of employment and output, whilst the share of manufacturing fell by about 5 percentage points. This paper uses input–output tables for 1979 and 1984 to decompose the changes in output of total marketed services and the component industries into the changes due to price changes and those due to volume changes. The volume changes are, in turn, decomposed into those internal to the service industries, e.g. changes in demand for business services by communication, and those external to the industries, e.g. changes in demand for services by manufacturing. The analysis is done at a 101-industry level with results presented in the paper for the five service industries, Distribution and Catering, Transport, Communications, Business Services and Other Market Services. The paper is intended to give insight into the answers to the following questions: How much of the increase in service output has been due to the reallocation of activities previously done within manufacturing? In what respects were services insulated from the effects of the general recession 1979-812? Has the recent growth in services output been due to more consumers' expenditure and other. final demand or to other factors? The main conclusion is that changes in Input–Output coefficients were very important for structure change in UK services, almost entirely because they dominated the fastest-growing sector, business services.     

Sustainability and the multifunctional landscape: An assessment of approaches to planning and management in the Cairngorms National Park

Upland Scotland contains some of Britain's most prized areas of natural heritage value. However, although such areas may appear both ‘wild’ and ‘remote’, these are typically working landscapes which symbolise the interdependence of nature and society. The complexity of this relationship means that management responses will need to address a multitude of potentially conflicting priorities whilst at the same time ensuring that sufficient social and institutional capital exists to allow for the promotion of landscape integrity. The introduction of national parks to Scotland in the form of the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 allows for a high-level of protection for designated areas in upland Scotland. Yet, whilst the recent Act outlines the statutory purpose and direction national parks should take, it allows a significant degree of flexibility in the way in which the Act may be implemented. This level of discretion allows for significant local distinctiveness within the model but also raises questions about the potential effectiveness of chosen responses. In order to assess the potential implications of a model rooted in self-determination, we provide a case study review of the institutional basis of the Cairngorms National Park along with an assessment of the strategic character of the first National Park Plan. It is argued that whilst the Cairngorms National Park Authority has developed a significant level of stakeholder engagement, the authority may struggle to bridge the policy-implementation gap. Although a number of shortcomings are identified, particular concerns relate to the potential mismatch between strategic ambition and local level capacity.     

Is Real Estate Becoming Important Again? A Neo‐Ricardian Model of Land Rent

Classical economists believed that land rent as a share of total income would increase with economic growth. This belief was important to many 19th and 20th century critiques of capitalism. Land rents as a share of national income apparently declined for most of the 20th century, but increased during the 1990s. In this paper, we develop a model of the classical theory of land rent that allows rent to increase or decrease as a share of national income, depending on several parameters. It seems likely that the long decline in land rent is over and that land rent in the future will slowly increase as a share of national income.