capitalization of government support in agricultural land prices what do we know abstract the objective of this paper is to provide an overview of existing literature both theoretically and empirically on the extent to which agricultural subsidies do translate into higher land values and rents and finally benefit landowners instead of agricultural producers our review shows that agricultural support policy instruments contribute to increasing the rental price of farmland and that the extent of this increase closely depends on the level of the supply price elasticity of farmland relative to those of other factors inputs on the one hand and on the range of the possibilities of factor input substitution in agricultural production on the other hand the empirical literature shows that land prices and rents have in general a significant positive and inelastic response to government support such inelastic response is thought to reflect the uncertain future of the farm programmes and in general studies have indicated that land prices are more responsive to government based returns than to market based returns

a comprehensive analysis of farmland value determination a county level analysis this study develops a comprehensive model of farmland value determination to analyze the effects of various economic variables such as net farm income government payments macroeconomic factors and demographic conditions on farmland values for the counties along the snake river valley in idaho land values net farm income and population show considerable variation among the counties therefore use of county level cross sectional and time series data helps to assess the impacts of various factors on land values more accurately the empirical results show that net farm income wheat yield population and credit availability have positive effects and property tax rates interest rates and debt to asset ratio have negative effects on farmland values

measuring interactions among urbanization land use regulations and public finance this article presents a polychotomous choice selectivity model to estimate the interactions among urbanization land use regulations and public finance in five western states california idaho nevada oregon and washington land use regulations in these five states reduced the total developed area by an estimated 12 2 from 1982 to 1992 but increased housing prices between 1 3 and 4 7 depending on the intensity of land use regulations in a county land use regulations also reduced public expenditure and property tax in the long run by 5 6 and 8 4 respectively but increased public expenditure and property tax in the short run by 9 8 and 12 6 local land use policies have been examined in a number of studies e g epple romer and filmore henderson levine mcdonald and mcmillen phillips and goodstein however little empirical evidence is available on which factors motivate adoption of land use regulations nor has there been much systematic analysis of the impact of land use regulations on land development and public finance in this article we present an empirical model to evaluate quantitatively the interactions among urbanization land use regulations and public finance in five western states of the united states oregon california idaho nevada and washington we provide estimates of both the extent to which the rate of development affects the demand for more restrictive land use regulations as well as the subsequent impact of those regulations on land development housing prices public expenditure and property tax because local political processes determine land use regulations treating regulations as exogenous may cause a selection bias when analyzing their effect on development pogodzinski and sass the endogenous nature of zoning regulation was first raised by

urban influence on costs of production in the corn belt this article determines the relative technical efficiency of rural and urban influenced crop livestock enterprises in the corn belt farmers in urban influenced locations are less technically efficient than farmers in rural locations during 1998 2000 stochastic production frontier procedures indicate that a 10 increase in urban influence leads to a close to 4 decrease in technical efficiency the most successful urban influenced farms have controlled costs as effectively as rural farms they have tended to de emphasize that nondairy livestock activities particularly beef and hogs do not rely extensively on off farm income and have relatively large less residential lifestyle operations compared to less successful urban influenced farmers however our statistical analysis clearly bears out the refrain in popular literature that urban proximity raises the cost for and decreases the viability of traditional farms

business ethics in china first i briefly review the emergence and development of business ethics following three stages 1978 1984 1984 1994 1994 to the present and driven by four factors the inheritance of chinese traditional ethics the influence of marxist philosophy and ethics the reflections on the economic reform and the influence of business ethics from abroad then from a practical and a theoretical perspective i discuss the main challenges for business ethics in china issues of the economic system of corporate ethics and of management after commenting on the role of business ethics for the social development in china i offer some reflections about what china can contribute to and learn from other peoples

a balanced concept of the firm and the measurement of its long term planning and performance this paper offers a new concept of the firm that aims at balancing the corporate economic social and environmental responsibilities and goes beyond the stakeholder approach it intends to provide a conceptual and operationalizable basis to fairly assess corporate conduct from both inside and outside the companies to a large extent these different responsibilities may overlap and reinforce each other however if they conflict they should be clearly evaluated for their own sake and in terms of wealth creation only then can a balanced approach be realized section 1 briefly discusses some general aspects of the relationship between concepts and measurement in section 2 a concept of the firm is developed that is based on the notion of responsibility and balances economic social and environmental responsibilities according to these concepts different ways of measuring corporate planning and performance are examined in section 3 followed up by a summary and conclusions

the fischler reform of the common agricultural policy and agricultural land prices based on 7 300 agricultural land sales transactions we estimate the effect of the 2003 reform of the e u common agricultural policy on land prices as opposed to the main body of the literature on agricultural land values we do not start from a demand oriented net present value approach or hedonic pricing method but derive our reduced form pricing equation from a spatial land sales market model our empirical model accounts for spatial dependence and endogeneity of explanatory variables a reduction of payments by 50 ha would decrease land sales prices by 445 ha before and by 984 ha after the reform jel q15 q18

the capitalization of coupled and decoupled cap payments into land rental rates this article explores the extent to which payments under the common agricultural policy cap are capitalized into land rents in ireland with implications for the transfer efficiency of such payments since subsidies may not benefit targeted recipients if they are capitalized into input prices capitalization in the years preceding and following the decoupling of agricultural support payments from agricultural production is explored in the period prior to decoupling direct support pillar 1 payments were highly capitalized into irish agricultural rents 67 90 cents per euro of subsidies while in the post decoupling period capitalization appears to have declined somewhat

an analysis of growth of u s farmland prices 1963 82 increases in expected inflation or real growth in net rental income to land have been proposed as alternative explanations of the dramatic real growth in u s farmland prices in the 1970s in this paper the effect of inflation is shown to be theoretically ambiguous an empirical analysis using u s and international farmland prices suggests that most of the real land price growth can be explained by real growth in net rental income to land increases in expected inflation have had a negative effect on real land prices but the effect of inflation has been comparatively small

technical allocative and economic efficiencies in swine production in hawaii a comparison of parametric and nonparametric approaches abstract technical allocative and economic efficiency measures are derived for a sample of swine producers in hawaii using the parametric stochastic efficiency decomposition technique and nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea efficiency measures obtained from the two frontier approaches are compared firm specific factors affecting productive efficiencies are also analyzed finally swine producers potential for reducing cost through improved efficiency is also examined under the specification of variable returns to scale vrs the mean technical allocative and economic efficiency indices are 75 9 75 8 and 57 1 respectively for the parametric approach and 75 9 80 3 and 60 3 for dea while for the constant returns to scale crs they are 74 5 73 9 and 54 7 respectively for the parametric approach and 64 3 71 4 and 45 7 for dea thus the results from both approaches reveal considerable inefficiencies in swine production in hawaii the removal of potential outliers increases the technical efficiencies in the parametric approach and allocative efficiencies in dea but overall contrary to popular belief the results obtained from dea are found to be more robust than those from the parametric approach the estimated mean technical and economic efficiencies obtained from the parametric technique are higher than those from dea for crs models but quite similar for vrs models while allocative efficiencies are generally higher in dea however the efficiency rankings of the sample producers based on the two approaches are highly correlated with the highest correlation being achieved for the technical efficiency rankings under crs based on mean comparison and rank correlation analyses the return to scale assumption is found to be crucial in assessing the similarities or differences in efficiency measures obtained from the two approaches analysis of the role of various firm specific factors on productive efficiency shows that farm size has strong positive effects on efficiency levels similarly farms producing market hogs are more efficient than those producing feeder pigs based on these results by operating at the efficient frontier the sample swine producers would be able to reduce their production costs by 38 46 depending upon the method and returns to scale considered

the impacts of different farm programs on cash rents county level annual observations for iowa from 1996 through 2000 were used to measure the impacts of farm program payments on cash rental rates the econometric analysis explicitly incorporates spatial autocorrelation cash rental rates were found to increase by almost one dollar per acre for each additional dollar per acre paid for market loss assistance and production flexibility contracts whereas conservation reserve program payments appear to exert no effect on cash rental rates a counterintuitive finding that warrants further examination is the small but negative impact of deficiency payments on cash rental rates

constitutional rules and fiscal policy outcomes we investigate the effect of electoral rules and forms of government on fiscal policy outcomes in a large sample of democracies we rely on different estimation methods to address prospective problems of statistical inference due to non random selection of these constitutional rules the findings are consistent with our theoretical priors presidential regimes induce smaller governments than parliamentary democracies while majoritarian elections lead to smaller governments and smaller welfare programs than proportional elections

farmland accumulation and prices a model of farmland accumulation is developed to study factors influencing u s farmland values this model stresses the manner in which credit is allocated for land purchases to secure necessary loans for additional land to expand farm size the farmer provides as collateral his net accumulated wealth thus land acquisitions are made to increase profits and to provide leverage for further land expansion besides income and consumption the level of accumulated debt is one of the main determinants of farmland prices derived demand for farmland is developed and the pricing equation for farmland is estimated as part of a structural equation model

agricultural productivity revisited this paper describes production accounts for agriculture output is defined as gross production leaving the farm as opposed to real value added inputs are not limited to capital and labor but include intermediate inputs as well we derive index numbers of gross output capital labor and intermediate inputs these data are used to construct indexes of total factor productivity we then compare the contributions of input growth and productivity growth to economic growth the important role of productivity growth in agriculture becomes immediately apparent

linking the price of agricultural land to use values and amenities the recent appreciation in agricultural land values across the united states has raised a number of important questions for farmers farmland owners lenders and policy makers while traditional economic theory suggests that farmland values are determined by the discounted stream of expected returns previous research has shown that agricultural land values are actually driven by a complex set of factors this study leverages the unique characteristics of a national land based usda survey on farmland values and cash rents to estimate broad national level determinants of the market value of cropland and pastureland our results support past research findings that indicate farmland values are only partially explained by agricultural returns we find that multiple nonagricultural attributes of farmland also contribute to the market value

a study of the link between a corporation s financial performance and its commitment to ethics a number of studies have tested the relationship between a corporation s social and ethical performance and its financial performance in contrast this is the first study to demonstrate a link between overall financial performance and an emphasis on ethics as an aspect of corporate governance it identifies the 26 8 percent of the 500 largest u s public corporations that in their annual report to shareholders commit to ethical behavior toward their stakeholders or emphasize compliance with their code of conduct the financial performance of these corporations ranks higher than that of those who do not at a significance level of p 0 005 using the 1997 business week ranking which averages eight publicly reported measures of historical financial performance these findings should motivate more corporations to utilize the principles of social and ethical accounting auditing and reporting seaar

the effects of suburbanization on agriculture this article conceptualizes the effects of suburban population density and land speculation on agricultural production choices prices and profits a dual profit function model and a system of reduced form price equations are used to estimate these effects for new jersey results show that vegetable production is the only subsector to benefit from suburbanization while livestock is the most adversely affected suburbanization reduces responsiveness to agricultural prices and discourages capital and land use the overall impact on profits is positive when capital gains on land are included policy implications for farmland preservation and right to farm legislation are discussed

vegetable spirits and energy policy this study investigates the extent to which the 2005 energy policy act specifically the ethanol mandate contributed to the rise in farmland values we use the location of new ethanol plants to identify the capitalization effect of the mandate by these spatially advantaged operations we use a difference in difference propensity score matching estimator to control for the non random selection of ethanol production facilities the empirical strategy uses farmland parcel values from the 2001 7 june agriculture survey we find that new ethanol facilities had no effect on nearby farmland values prior to the mandate but had statistically significant effects after the policy copyright 2013 oxford university press

credit constraints their existence determinants and implications for u s farm and nonfarm sole proprietorships the objective of this study is to determine the effect of credit constraints on production for farm and nonfarm sole proprietorships a propensity score matching estimator is employed to provide unbiased estimates of the production impacts of being denied credit the empirical results demonstrate that the value of production is significantly lower for credit constrained sole proprietorships if this drop in the value of production is aggregated to a national level it constitutes only 3 and 13 of total value of production for farm and nonfarm sole proprietorships respectively copyright 2009 oxford university press

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

examining the use of national databases in a hedonic analysis of regional farmland values hedonic techniques have attracted the interest of economists as a means of measuring values of nonmarket goods by studying the market transactions of differentiated products such as automobiles and houses implied values and corresponding demand schedules can be estimated for underlying characteristics such as automobile safety features two car garages and air quality of residential neighborhoods the subject of this paper is farmland and estimating the values of characteristics such as soil productivity and erodibility in 1974 rosen and freeman independently developed theoretical models for differentiated consumer products that now serve as the basis for empirical estimates of marginal prices of product characteristics procedures to estimate demand schedules of underlying characteristics were outlined in palmquist 1984 palmquist 1989 further extended rosen s theoretical model to consider land as a differentiated factor

using cross section data to adjust technical efficiency indexes estimated with panel data this article proposes a procedure to incorporate cross sectional information in the estimation of technical efficiency indexes obtained from panel data a conventional index of technical efficiency is estimated in a first stage using panel data on inputs and outputs the individual effects from the first stage are then adjusted using cross sectional information obtaining a corrected technical efficiency index the model is applied to a panel of eighty two spanish dairy farms where only cross sectional information about input quality is available an analysis of variance is performed between some variables and both the corrected and the uncorrected indexes finding that the conclusions derived from the two analyses are different

the effect of power plants on local housing values and rents abstract this paper uses restricted census microdata to examine housing values and rents for neighborhoods in the united states where power plants were opened during the 1990s compared to neighborhoods with similar housing and demographic characteristics neighborhoods within 2 miles of plants experienced 3 7 decreases in housing values and rents with some evidence of larger decreases within 1 mile and for large capacity plants in addition there is evidence of taste based sorting with neighborhoods near plants associated with modest but statistically significant decreases in mean household income educational attainment and the proportion owner occupied

environmental policies and agricultural land values evidence from the dutch nutrient quota system the paper analyzes the impact of the phosphate based animal production rights on agricultural land values in the netherlands we claim that the existence of mandatory production control program with regional restriction on trading causes a disproportional increase in land prices in the surplus region where the quota is binding relative to the deficit region where the quota is not binding and that the increase in the cost of environmental compliance should generate an eroding effect on the existing gap in land prices the parameters of an inverse land demand model estimated with panel data support both hypotheses

the changing roles of urban influence and agricultural productivity in farmland price determination between 2000 and 2010 inflation adjusted u s farmland values increased by over 80 this period of rapid price appreciation coincided with both the agricultural commodity price boom and the broader financial crisis this paper examines the degree to which the determinants of farmland prices changed over this period using a panel of farmland transfer declarations from 98 illinois counties hedonic price analysis demonstrates that the relative importance of urban influence decreased over this period while the relative importance of agricultural productivity increased the study carries important implications for farmers farmland owners and policy makers

the implications of the us renewable fuel standard programme for farm structure abstractwe investigate the impact of the 2005 renewable fuel standard rfs on farm structure particularly farm size we rely on the salience of a new ethanol plant in a farmers local neighbourhood to identify the impact of the rfs mandate on these spatially advantaged farms to control for the nonrandom selection of ethanol production facilities we utilize a propensity score matching estimator and to remove impact of farm level or market shifting unobservables resulting from shifts in commodity prices we employ a difference in difference dd matching approach we estimate the treatment effect of an ethanol production facility on farm size prior to the rfs mandate and after the rfs programme the effect of the rfs policy on farm size is obtained as the difference between these two dd matching estimators overall our results suggest that the rfs programme raised the probability of farm size increase by roughly 12 18 on average for farms located within a 30 mile radius of new ethanol plants in add

the impact of decoupled payments on u s cropland values an extensive literature has shown that various farm programs may influence the value of farmland but other studies have not examined the cropland price effects of direct or decoupled payments separate from countercyclical payments this study uses nationally representative confidential field level panel data with farmer reported per acre land values we analyze the impact of decoupled and other farm program payments on farmland values using a fixed effects model and controlling for various factors that influence farmland values we find that an additional dollar of decoupled payments has a large and statistically significant impact on farmland values of about 18 per acre these results are comparable with similar studies undertaken in europe

insolvency in agriculture bad managers or the common agricultural policy bad management is often blamed for the failure of firms yet an empirical investigation of the annual rate of insolvency in agriculture and horticulture in england and wales revealed a relationship with the price of land the rate of insolvency was negatively related to the current price of land but the lag structure estimated suggests that the rate of insolvency could be positively related to the land price two years previously this result is in accordance with a theoretical model which shows that the optimal gearing strategy under rising land prices induces farmers to increase their indebtedness since common agricultural policy price support has become capitalized into land prices this suggests that some of the insolvency in agriculture and horticulture was the result of previous agricultural policy the results do however underline farm management advice that farmers should beware of relying on capital gains to remain in business

the joint influence of agricultural and nonfarm factors on real estate values an application to the mid atlantic region county level farmland and residential housing values are estimated for the mid atlantic region as a function of farm returns developed land values household incomes population densities and location results are based on the hypothesis that farmland owners anticipate land development and that nonfarm factors are important determinants of farmland prices response of farmland prices to change in farm returns is found to be inelastic and relatively uniform in rural and urban counties response to nonfarm factors is found to be more elastic and substantially greater in rural counties copyright 2001 oxford university press

integrating the ethical dimension into the analytical framework for the reform of state owned enterprises in china s socialist market economy a proposal the discussions about the reform of state owned enterprises are so far dominated by economic and legal considerations while the ethical dimension of this highly complex problem is being barely addressed explicitly much less developed systematically and integrated into a broader analytical framework for companies in china this paper is a proposal to introduce this kind of ethical considerations first the main features of the reform of state owned enterprises are briefly summarized and a number of critical issues are identified second the balanced concept of the firm is presented and compared with other approaches to corporate ethics in chiefly western literature discussions on corporate social responsibility the stakeholder approach and social contract theories finally the relevance of this balanced concept of the firm for the reform of state owned enterprises is briefly discussed

capitalization of the single payment scheme into land value generalized propensity score evidence from the eu this paper estimates the capitalization of the single payment scheme sps into land values the theory suggests a nonlinear and discontinuous relationship between the sps and land rents in empirical analysis we employ unique farm level panel data and apply the generalized propensity score matching approach our estimates suggest a 6 to 10 sps capitalization rate on average in the european union the nonfarming landowners gains from the sps are only 4 however there is a large variation in the capitalization rate for different sps levels and between different member states 3 to 94

the effect of agricultural policy on farmland values the extent to which agricultural support programs have been capitalized into farmland prices has been examined in this study a present value land price model was developed which decomposes returns to the land base into its two possible sources farm production and government subsidies and allows the discount rates associated with these two income sources to vary the empirical results indicate that government payments are discounted less than marketbased returns in ontario thus government payments have been viewed as a more stable source of income to ontario farm operators during the last half century than market based returns

impacts of trade liberalizations under the uruguay round on the world sugar market the impacts of the uruguay round policy provisions on the world sugar market show that these policies will stabilize the world sugar price at slightly higher levels than in the baseline global sugar consumption will increase as a result of the income growth caused by the uruguay round economic resources will be allocated more efficiently among the sugar industries of the various countries however the impacts on the sugar industries in countries with strong producer supports will be rather small because the negotiation process of the uruguay round has accommodated the changes in sugar policies already implemented by individual countries in the past few years low cost sugar producing countries will benefit from the higher world sugar price and consumers in countries with protected markets will benefit from lower domestic prices

agri environmental policies in the eu and united states a comparison abstract agri environmental policies aeps in the united states and the european union are examples of payments for environmental services that pay farmers to reduce the negative externalities of agricultural production while serving as a means to transfer public funds to farmers we show that despite similar origins aeps in the two regions differ both in their specific objectives and in their implementation for example aeps in most member states of the eu 15 have the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development this objective is achieved by compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods such as attractive landscapes produced by agriculture the rationale is market failure and there is empirical evidence that europeans are willing to pay for such positive externalities no comparable provision exists in u s policy by contrast u s aeps focus almost entirely on reducing agriculture s negative externalities such as soil erosion second we find that u s programs are more targeted than their eu counterparts and take opportunity cost into account the eu programs on the other hand address a wider range of externalities and are focused more on the paying for a particular farming process than reducing specific negative externalities the eu takes a broader view of aeps than does the united states both in terms of type of activity that can be funded and by using less targeting by land characteristics and so the european program could be more easily used as a mechanism for transferring income to producers despite this we find evidence that many of the amenities targeted by the programs are demanded by the population