Foreign Investment in U. S. Agricultural Land: An Overview of the National Issue and a Case Study of Vermont

A bstract . A number of issues surround the ownership of farmland by absentee owners and foreign nationals. The response to these concerns in the United States has been the promulgation of the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) which provides for a land purchase reporting system. The present investigation seeks to describe the nature of the foreign land ownership picture in the United States, the status of existing state laws which deal with the matter and. through the example of a case study on the State of Vermont , attempts to describe impacts and implications of such ownerships.     

Some remarks on the construction of independent identically distributed random variables,Markov chains and martingales

In this note, we make some remarks on the construction of sequences of independent identically distributed random variables and of Markov chains concretely on a probability space (Ω,A,P). We also show that there are non non-trivial martingales of exponential type.     

Employment predictions in social impact assessment: An analysis of some unexplored variables

Social scientists investigating the impacts of energy development are increasingly searching for predictive models of the employment benefits to locals. This issue is of extreme importance not only because of the benefits to locals but because of the issue of local benefits as well as the connection with population growth and boom town development. Unfortunately, some of the recent investigations and predictive models are of little utility as a result of certain analytical and methodological faults, including improper assumptions about local labor supply and local preferences. In addition to the assessment of previous investigations, a framework for predicting local employment impacts is suggested. This framework utilizes characteristics and preferences of the local population.     

Structural shifts in urban population density gradients: an empirical investigation

This study investigates the structural shifts in urban population density gradients by first using the shifting regression technique of Farley, Hinich, and McGuire to detect the possible change in the structure of an urban area. Secondly, a generalized random coefficient technique is used to simultaneously detect the possible structural change and stochastic behavior of density gradients. Data for 50 United States SMSA's are used to do the empirical analyses.     

Selected Elements of Henry George's Legitimacy as an Economist

A bstract . Henry George's legitimacy as an economist has been denied in much of the literature of the history of economic thought and by some economists who were his approximate contemporaries. These denials have shaped the prevailing negative view of George's economics. An examination of selected representative evidence from George's work fails to support the negative view. George's positions on "The Study of Political Economy," eloquently presented in his 1877 speech to the faculty at the University of California, ate consistent with (and predate) "accepted,""orthodox,""legitimate" views of political economy expressed a decade and more later by J. Laurence Laughlin and Charles F. Dunbar in early classic articles that signified the emergence of economics as an identifiable profession in the United States. Other evidence reveals that George avoided the Ricardian error of failing to understand the role of factor and product substitution in the process of market equilibrium adjustments.