Reviews

“Urban unemployment”

Hasluck, C., 1987: Urban Unemployment: Local labour markets and employment initiatives. London, Longman, £6.95 paper.

“Property and industrial development”

Fothergill, S., Monk, S. and Perry, M. 1387: Property and Industrial Development London: Hutchinson, £12.95 paper.

“High-tech”

Breheny, M. J. and McQuaid, R. W. 1987: The Development of High Technology Industries: An International Survey. London: Croom Helm, £35.00.

Monde, C. (ed), 1986: Science Parks -- Their Contribution to Economic Growth. Birmingham: UK Science Parks Association, £15.00 paper.

“American perspectives”

Bergman, Edward M. Editor 1986: Local Economies in Transition: Policy Realities and Development Potentials. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, $40.00 cloth, $16.95, paper.

“Marginal regions”

O'Cearbhaill, D. and Cawley, M. (editors) 1986: New approaches to the development of Marginal Regions, 8th International Seminar on Marginal Regions in association with University College Galway, 3 Vote: no price stated.

“Training without jobs”

Finn, Dan 1987: Training Without Jobs:New Deals and Broken Promises:From Raising the School Leaving Age to the Youth Training Scheme. London: Macmillan £6.95.

“The coopera tive workplace”

Rothschild, J. and Whitt, A. J. 1986: The Cooperative Workplace: potentials and dilemmas of organizational democracy and participation. USA: American Sociological Association Rose Monograph Series, Cambridge University Press. No price stated.

“Opposition to plant closures”

Maunders, A. 1986: A Process of Struggle. Aldershot: Gower £20.00 cloth.

“Property data”

Investment Property Databank, 1987: The IPD Annual Review 1987 London, £45.

“Urban economic development”

Hausner.V. A. (editor) 1987: Critical Issues in Urban Economic Development. Volume II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, £22.50 hardback.     

Statistical properties of returns: Financial assets versus commercial real estate

This study examines the distribution of commercial real estate returns by region (east, midwest, south, and west), by property type (office, retail, R&D office, and warehouse) and in the aggregate, and compares their distributions to those of financial assets. Nominal and real returns are examined for quarterly, semiannual, and annual periods. The quarterly nominal returns on the financial assets are mostly normal with very little indication of autocorrelation. In contrast, non-normality and autocorrelation are present in most of the nominal quarterly real estate series. The non-normality is greatly reduced when semiannual or annual returns are considered or when the quarterly series are corrected for autocorrelation. The non-normality is also lower for real returns than it is for nominal returns.     

Data Aggregation Issues for Crop Yield Risk Analysis

With increased emphasis on risk management in agriculture and a lack of disaggregated or farm‐level yield time series, decision makers are often faced with having to make adjustments to temporal yield risk measures obtained from readily available but aggregated yield data. This paper provides some empirical evidence on what type of aggregation bias to expect when measuring temporal yield risk using yield observations averaged across a region relative to yield risk estimated from quarter‐section yield time series in wheat. This study highlights some of the challenges faced when estimating aggregation distortions in measuring yield risk defined by temporal variance, especially given the nature of the empirical data set used. Cluster analysis, visual examination of relative frequency distributions and mapping of yield risk clusters suggest that using a readily available, aggregate temporal yield risk measure has the tendency to underestimate yield risk observed at the quarter‐section level and that clear, geographic yield risk boundaries do not exist in municipalities or across larger areas in this study. Further research on crops more risky than wheat appears promising. Avec un plus grand intéret sur la gestion du risk dans l'agriculture et un manque de données détaillees ou bien de collections de séries temporelles sur les rendements, les décideurs sont souvent tenus d'apporter des correctifs aux measures du risk obtenues a partir des données de rendements qui sont disponibles. Cet artcle apporte une preuve empirique du type de biais lie a l'agrégation qui peut être présent dans le calcul du risk de rendement temporel obtenu a partir de rendements moyens de blé observés au niveau régional en comparaison du risk de rendement qui est estimé a partir de données basées sur des quart‐de‐sections. Cette étude met en exergue quelques uns des obstacles qui se présentent dans l'estimation de distosions liées a l'aggrégation dans le calcul du risk de rendement défini par la variance temporelle, speciallement étant donne la charactère empirique des données utilisées. L'analyse de groupe, l'examen visual de la distribution des fréquences relatives, et la cartographie de classes de risk de rendement suggèrent que l'utilisation de la measure du risk de rendement basée sur des données disponibles de risk aggrège temporel a tendence a sousestimer le risk de rendement observe au niveau des quart‐de‐sections et qu'il n'y a pas de frontières de risk de rendement certaines, géographiques qui existent entre les municipalités ou bien a travers les zones plus larges examinées dans cette etude.     

On the shape of the single-country and world commodity-substitution and factor-substitution surfaces under conditions of joint production

In recent years trade theorists have completed the task of specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for the single-country and world transformation surfaces to be locally of any assigned degree of flatness. However those conditions are relevant only if the technology is of the no-joint-products type. In the present note we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the single-country and world transformation surfaces to be of any assigned degree of flatness under conditions of joint production; and we also obtain, as a by-product, necessary and sufficient conditions for the single-country and world equal-product surfaces to be of any assigned degree of flatness.     

Scale and scope economies of Australian permanent building societies in a dynamic framework

In this paper we examine the interrelationship between technological change, branching, and the multi-product cost structure of Australian Permanent Building Societies within a dynamic specification of the cost function. The results strongly support this dynamic formulation, though the speed of adjustment of costs to long-run levels is quite fast. We also find evidence of economies of scale for small societies, suggesting some potential for smaller societies to benefit from increased scale through mergers.