calculated inequality portfolio benchmarking and regional office property investment in the uk the paper explores the reasons for the persistence in the uk of significant relative interregional variations in office property investment in the face of economic theory and empirical evidence that would support its more even spatial distribution the argument is made from a cultural economy perspective and involves the application to property of a concept drawn from the accountancy literature calculative practice uk investment decision making is distinguished by the primacy attributed to portfolio benchmarking as an influence on investment strategy the wider logic underpinning property benchmarking is subjected to critical appraisal then evidence is presented that suggests that benchmarking is a self referential practice which results in convergence and rigidity in fund structures and in the concentration of performance around a bounded range of sub optimal returns it is a barrier to the greater geographical diversification of office property investment

financialisation and justice in the city a commentary intensification of the transformation of real property into financial instruments has worsened urban inequality in the past several decades increased financialisation in itself does not create uneven development and property investment cycles since these phenomena have always been hallmarks of real estate development under capitalism rather it is the combination of financialisation with neoliberal ideology globalisation and the constriction of state sponsored social welfare and housing affordability programs that underlies the inequities produced by property investment progressive policy makers can potentially utilise financial instruments in order to achieve greater justice if they are able to challenge neoliberal hegemony

reconstituting the state city powers and exposures in chicago s infrastructure leases in the 2000s cities across north america began leasing existing infrastructure to global investment consortia previous evaluations of infrastructure leases focus on the lack of transparency of th

the financialisation of rental housing a comparative analysis of new york city and berlin this paper compares how recent waves of private equity real estate investment have reshaped the rental housing markets in new york and berlin through secondary analysis of separate primary research projects we explore financialisation s impact on tenants neighbourhoods and urban space despite their contrasting market contexts and investor strategies financialisation heightened existing inequalities in housing affordability and stability and rearranged spaces of abandonment and gentrification in both cities conversely cities themselves also shaped the process of financialisation with weakened rental protections providing an opening to transform affordable housing into a new global asset class we also show how financialisation s adaptability in the face of changing market conditions entails ongoing but shifting processes of uneven development comparative studies of financialisation can help highlight geographically disparate but similar exposures to this global process thus contributing to a critical urban politics of finance that crosses boundaries of space sector and scale

on the aggregation problem in international comparisons of agricultural production aggregates abstract the major aim of this short paper is to provide an original systematic statement of the index number problem involved in obtaining internationally comparable agricultural production aggregates alternative output repricing and implicit exchange rates methods are expounded the standard method of comparison based on wheat relatives as used in the work of hayami and associates is critically reviewed and a case is made for the use of alternative procedures

financialisation the valuation of investment property and the urban built environment in the uk the financialisation literature has been criticised for its limited empirical base and its failure adequately to link the everyday world with that of high finance the paper addresses these shortcomings by examining the calculative practice of property valuation the way that valuations are performed affects their results and therefore the operation of the property market the paper traces the evolving influence of finance capital on the valuation of commercial property in the uk by constructing a historiography of investment valuation since 1960 traditional approaches to valuation have been increasingly challenged by those derived from financial economics however the former remains the dominant method for undertaking market valuation its grounding in comparison a centring and standardising process offers an explanation for some of the changes in the urban built environment that are ascribed to financialisation this suggests that a more detailed and historically sensitive interpretation of financialisation is required

energy in the development strategy of indian households the missing half there is a growing consensus that universalization of modern energy services is central to reducing major elements of poverty and hunger to increase literacy and education and to improve health care employment opportunities and lives of women and children in india as per 2011 census over 700 million people lack access to modern energy services for lighting cooking water pumping and other productive purposes devoid of these services people mostly women are forced to spend significant amounts of their time and effort on subsistence activities like firewood collection carrying these head load for miles and then burning these hard earned fuels inefficiently in traditional chullas these adversely affect the health and standard of living for women and act as a barrier to gender development here gender means women unless otherwise specified although the links between gender inequity poverty and energy deprivation have been studied by many not many practical solutions to the above problems have emerged the present paper explores the nexus among gender energy poverty highlights areas of gender concern and suggests actions we analyze how women from rural areas and low income households are at the receiving ends of energy poverty we then analyze the roles women as an important stakeholders in universalizing modern energy services we show how women self help groups can be a vital link in large scale diffusion of energy efficient and renewable technologies the paper concludes with policy pointers for sustainable development and gender empowerment through energy solutions

on measuring energy poverty in indian households summary the relationship between energy and poverty is obvious and goes both ways recognizing this this paper provides a short overview of different approaches to measuring energy poverty it then presents a novel two dimensional measure of energy poverty and energy distribution that combines the elements of access to different energy types and quantity of energy consumed an assessment of the extent of energy poverty and changes in energy distribution pattern are analyzed by applying this measure to indian household survey data for 1983 2000 the analysis shows a significant reduction in the level of energy poverty and a rapidly developing subcontinent the new measure is a good complement to conventional monetary measures and is general enough to be applied to other developing countries

are the energy poor also income poor evidence from india abstract the energy poverty line is defined as the threshold point at which energy consumption begins to rise with increases in household income this approach is applied to cross sectional data from a comprehensive 2005 household survey representative of both urban and rural india the objective is to determine if the energy poor are also income poor and whether and how energy policies help reduce energy poverty independent of income the findings suggest that in rural areas some 57 of households are energy poor versus 22 that are income poor but in urban areas the energy poverty rate is 28 compared to 20 that are income poor that is energy policies are expected to play some roles in mitigating energy poverty we find that reducing energy poverty requires not only support for rural electrification but also more use of modern cooking fuels such as lpg while income growth matters a combination of energy related programs can play an independent and substantial role in reducing energy poverty

convergence and difference in regional office development cycles in this paper data and analytical techniques not hitherto employed for the purpose have been used to explore the particularities of the role played by finance capital in influencing the spatio tem

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

sustainability and the anchoring of capital negotiations surrounding two major urban projects in switzerland theurillat t and crevoisier o sustainability and the anchoring of capital negotiations surrounding two major urban projects in switzerland regional studies this article deals with the anchoring of mobile financial capital in the city and urban sustainability illustrated by a case study in the swiss context it develops the theory that new forms of negotiation are appearing around urban projects development construction firms are playing a central role they are capable of evaluating and translating the multiple dimensions of a project and certain sustainability challenges into financial terms in a way that permits the anchoring of capital in the city in parallel the issue of sustainability depends greatly on the capacity of the local actors to negotiate with the promoters of urban projects

cultural explanation of regional property markets a critique in a recent paper in this journal simon guy and john henneberry 2000 proposed an institutional approach to property markets that emphasises exceptional behaviour on the part of particular market agents using this cultural approach they claimed to have evidence that london based property investors deliberately underinvest in british property outside southern england this paper criticises their dismissal of pre existing economic and institutional property market analysis and questions the validity of their empirical conclusions

productivity of agricultural labour and land an international comparison abstract this paper examines partial agricultural land and labour productivity in 1975 and 1980 for different world regions the results suggest that land and labour productivity are higher in developed countries relative to developing countries however agricultural labour productivity differences are more marked than those for agricultural land productivity the productivity values for 1975 and 1980 indicate a widening of productivity differences more so in the case of agricultural labour than land the paper also proposes an alternative approach to estimating agricultural land and labour productivity this approach which regresses agricultural labour productivity on a given level of agricultural land productivity suggests a narrowing of agricultural land productivity differences relative to the initial approach across africa asia and europe during the 1975 1980 period a brief discussion of the agricultural development policy implications of the results concludes the paper

finance capital actor network theory and the struggle over calculative agencies in the business property markets of mexico city metropolitan region david l and halbert l finance capital actor network theory and the struggle over calculative agencies in the business property markets of mexico city metropolitan region regional studies the selective spatialities of business property in the mexico city metropolitan region are explained with reference to actor network theory building on a conception of markets as the outcomes of the confrontation between different calculative agencies the paper discusses how investment managers have to negotiate the integration of new buildings and spaces into their portfolios alongside pre existing actor networks whose power and autonomy differ across the metropolitan area in a fragmented city region the longstanding urban coalition in the central part of the area may lock out the business property development market to finance capital while some peripheral areas may be more opened up

filtering risk away global finance capital transcalar territorial networks and the un making of city regions an analysis of business property development in bangalore india halbert l and rouanet h filtering risk away global finance capital transcalar territorial networks and the un making of city regions an analysis of business property development in bangalore india regional studies this paper contributes to ongoing debates on the landing or anchoring of global finance capital into the urban built environment inspired by recent advances from the school of territorial economics it develops the concept of transcalar territorial networks ttns to explain the processes that result in fixing foreign financial capital into business properties the paper demonstrates that ttns contribute to filter away the risks that foreign investors associate with the complexity of local regional property markets it also highlights the potential consequences on the spatial economic and social dynamics of city regions

financial markets developers and the geographies of housing in brazil a supply side account financialisation and housing are predominantly associated to mortgages for homeownership and securitisation techniques this paper looks at how financial markets influence the development industry

assessing the extent and intensity of energy poverty using multidimensional energy poverty index empirical evidence from households in india abstract in this paper we have made a comprehensive assessment of the extent and various socio economic implications of energy poverty in india amartya sens s capability approach to development underpins the analysis of household level data taken from the india human development survey ii ihds ii 2011 12 using the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi the overall results show that energy poverty is widespread in india and the existence of energy poverty also coincides with the other forms of deprivations such as income poverty and social backwardness for example dalits lower caste and adivasis tribal are found to be extremely energy poor compared to the other social groups in india the results also reveal that it is the responsibility of women to manage the domestic chores such as collection of firewood and making of dung cake in traditional indian households inefficient use of such biomass fuels is found to cause health hazards

energy poverty an overview abstract in the coming decades the energy sector will have to face three major transformations concerned with climate change security of supply and energy poverty the first two have been extensively analysed but less attention has been paid to the third even though it has a great influence on the lives of millions of people this paper presents an overview on energy poverty different ways of measuring it and its implications according to the who indoor pollution causes an estimated 1 3 million deaths per annum in low income countries associated with the use of biomass in inadequate cookstoves although energy poverty cannot be delinked from the broader more complex problem of poverty in general access to energy infrastructures would avoid its most serious consequences and would help to encourage autonomous development according to the iea the cost of providing universal access to energy by 2030 would require annual investment of 35 billion i e much less than the amount provided annually in subsidies to fossil fuels finally the paper argues that energy and energy poverty need to be incorporated into the design of development strategies

performing housing markets this paper offers an interpretation of how housing markets work which complements more traditional economic approaches building on a wider movement within cultural economy and economic sociology it considers how housing markets are variously performed in the power filled negotiations of buyers sellers and market professionals this is part of a larger undertaking but here the focus is particularly on the role of legal financial and information intermediaries in shaping local cultures of property exchange this is a social rather than economic analysis of housing markets it is a qualitative rather than a quantitative study it is designed to shed light on how markets are made though it might in the end change the way they are modelled

leveraging finance capital urban change and self empowerment of real estate developers in india this paper questions the effects of the financialisation of indian real estate markets with a focus on the bangalore city region research on southern cities has concluded that globally connected but locally embedded real estate developers contribute to anchoring transnational investment yet the acknowledged dearth of studies on the real estate industry in post liberalisation india limits our understanding of the ongoing empowerment of local urban actors including developers adopting a cultural political economy perspective the paper analyses how developers leverage finance capital to achieve greater economic and political agency and thus contribute to the material symbolic and political transformations of cities it first demonstrates that finance capital has sustained bangalore based developers growth strategies throughout southern india subsequently developers shape the materialities of metropolises via a piecemeal juxtaposition of medium sized developments although this may occasionally meet government strategies for modernising their cities it more often than not constitutes an understudied obstacle to states mega projects that are outdone by developers ability to work through the intricacies of local land markets and bureaucracies furthermore having become dominant city builders developers are in a situation to circulate representations concerning what the desirable city should be such narratives aim at inserting local real estate markets into globalising financial commodity chains while also legitimating developers own role consequently developers attempt to promote with some success prescriptions in favour of state reforms and the adoption of pro urban growth policies the ongoing financialisation of urban production thus participates in the self empowerment of developers in india s cities

introduction the financialisation of urban production conditions mediations and transformations a distinctive feature of urban spaces lies in their high infrastructural density because buildings roads stadiums airports are all capital intensive they rely in turn on financial infrastructures that circulate not passengers power or data but capital more or less temporarily fixed in the urban built environment harvey 2001 like many infrastructures edwards 2003 financial ones remain invisible to most but for cases of major disruptions think for instance of how the subprime crisis revealed the interconnection between households mortgages and capital markets this relative invisibility should however not obfuscate the importance of financial circuits in the design construction exploitation and ownership of the urban built environment urban production from here on researchers in urban studies unevenly pay attention to financial circuits understood here as the sociotechnical systems that channel investments in the forms of equity and debt into urban production major accounts of city making under neoliberalisation from the 1990s and 2000s are a case in point such studies mainly focus on evolving rationales for public intervention and the resulting changes in public actors modes of operation where welfare provision gives way to entrepreneurial policies harvey 1989 moulaert et al 2003 tasan kok and baeten 2012 the growing importance of private investments and the concomitant reconfiguration of public spending is mostly acknowledged as a contextual factor while the private investors and international finance capital targeted by public authorities remain in the background of analyses there is thus a dearth of conceptualisation and of evidence on how private financiers and investors collectively or individually shape or adjust to this new context and on the role played by those acting at the interface between public and private bodies it is thus important to go beyond simplistic analytical distinctions such as public subsidies versus private investments and to scrutinise financial circuits as relevant

undermining the financial basis of regions the spatial structure and implications of the uk pension fund system martin r and minns r 1995 undermining the financial basis of regions the spatial structure and implications of the uk pension fund system reg studies 29 125 144 regional growth theory and regional policy traditionally focus on the process of industrial development relatively little is known about the flows of money and financial capital that shape that development this paper examines the spatial organization and implications of the uk pension fund system one of the principal circuits of financial capital in the national economy it is shown how the great bulk of pension fund contributions that originate right across the various regions of the uk are channelled into and controlled by financial institutions in the south east of the country moreover those funds are then invested primarily back into companies and organizations located or headquartered in the south east this spatially centralized system pursues liquidity rather than productive investment and little of the money trickles down to

towards a new approach in measuring energy poverty household level analysis of urban india abstract measurement of energy poverty has been a missing priority in energy research there is hardly any consensus regarding whether to consider energy as a resource or capacity output or outcome and quantity or service in this paper we revisit major approaches in literature to assess energy poverty economic engineering and access based including others we critique the economic and engineering approaches for the arbitrariness of cut offs and the misplaced emphasis on less meaningful energy quantity finding the access based approach most suitable we propose a method of assessing energy poverty based on deprivation in modern cooking and lighting fuels we divide the energy poor into three groups transitional moderate and extreme energy poor we apply the method to india s urban areas of different states and union territories using the national sample survey data the results reveal energy poverty to be primarily dictated by deprivation in cooking and a greater incidence of energy poverty in larger states in contrast to conventional measures we compute the depth and severity of energy poverty only for energy poor as opposed to for the entire population these complementary measures depict energy poverty of energy poor more accurately and therefore will direct the attention of pro poor energy policies and programmes appropriately

definitions of fuel poverty implications for policy abstract this paper outlines why the definition of fuel poverty is important in policy formulation and describes how the government s current definitions evolved from the original concept it discusses the determination of income and fuel costs and the possibilities for a relative and common european measure it examines problems inherent in assessing fuel costs as a percentage of income and puts forward the arguments for a budget standard approach the paper illustrates how the size of the problem depends on the definition and chosen threshold and suggests advantages for a rating scale it illustrates how the income composition and thresholds also govern the distribution of the target populations and the relative importance of the main causal factors and examines the consequent policy implications it explores the definition of vulnerable households and the importance of severity and questions whether the uk fuel poverty strategy is targeted at households least able to afford their fuel costs as the name implies or primarily those at risk from excess winter and summer mortality and morbidity finally after examining the role of supplementary indicators it looks at the opportunities for changing the definition and comments on the government review of the definition and targets

finance business property and urban and regional development halbert l henneberry j and mouzakis f finance business property and urban and regional development regional studies compared with other factors of production the supply of business property and its role in urban and regional development has received comparatively little attention traditional analyses assume that the supply of such property responds to demand in a relatively unproblematic way however there is evidence that institutional structures and processes in the property and capital markets have produced regional imbalances in the quantity quality and price of business accommodation benefiting some places and handicapping others such imbalances are present to different degrees internationally and their characteristics and causes are similarly varied the special issue addresses this gap in knowledge

building cities on financial assets the financialisation of property markets and its implications for city governments in the paris city region the 2008 global financial meltdown has redirected attention to the entwinement of financial markets and the urban built environment against that background recent works in urban political economy have focused on how city governments support the rent maximisation strategies of landowners thereby reinforcing the increasing tendency to treat land as a financial asset harvey 1982 2006 however this perspective paradoxically understates the importance of market finance actors neglecting to demonstrate how in practice such financial investors who have been shown to adopt selective investment practices shape urban redevelopment projects in this article the role of financial investors is analysed through a case study of a large scale redevelopment project on the outskirts of the paris city region city of saint ouen the analysis of negotiations over urban design and economic development issues raised by property developers seeking to fashion commercial properties as investment assets reveals the unevenness of a local authority s ability to implement an agenda that potentially diverges from the expectations of financial investors accordingly given the growing importance of investors in the ownership of the built environment the article considers urban redevelopment as the outcome of power relations that originate in the circulation of investors expectations these expectations are met through translating market finance categories risk return and liquidity into elements of the urban fabric this bears substantial consequences for policy making given the current context of austerity as municipal authorities are increasingly constrained to rely on property markets urban redevelopment projects are thereby increasingly shaped to provide investment assets for financial investors

the impact of prices and macroeconomic policies on agricultural supply a synthesis of available results abstract this paper reviews the literature dealing with the link of agricultural prices and macroeconomic policies to agricultural supply with particular emphasis on sub saharan africa although the study echoes the stylized facts on price elasticities underlined in previous literature reviews the paper points out that our understanding of the quantitative dimensions of agricultural supply response is weak given the importance of this assumed response for growth poverty alleviation and the environment indeed issues such as simultaneity of variables data pooling omission of variables and asymmetry in supply responses to price changes have not been adequately addressed in many instances

the intercountry agricultural production function and productivity differences among countries abstract the sources of differences in labor productivity in agriculture between developed countries dc s and less developed countries ldc s are identified by estimating an aggregate agricultural production function based on cross county data for 1960 1970 and 1980 the production function was found to be stable over the entire period agriculture in the dc s was characterized by increasing returns and in the ldc s by constant returns to scale the results imply that unfavorable man land ratios do not represent an immediate barrier to rapid agricultural development in the low income ldc s but they may create a serious agricultural adjustment problem as those countries advance into the middle income range

the secondary circuit of capital reconsidered globalization and the u s real estate sector1 the author examines the u s real estate sector to show how the state shapes global real estate flows and networks of activity through the creation and control of liquid resources the analysis focuses on the role of state laws and regulations in the expansion of the mortgage backed securities markets and the development of real estate investment trusts reits these institutional developments represent a series of ad hoc state efforts to delocalize residential and commercial property and embed real estate financing within global capital markets rather than viewing globalization as weakening the state the author argues that the u s state s capacity to influence the degree and development of liquidity is a powerful mechanism of globalization

melbourne s vertical expansion and the political economies of high rise residential development this article advances understandings of melbourne s dramatic vertical expansion over the last decade by attending to the political economies of its high rise housing development melbourne s major

measuring literacy some extensions of the basu foster framework abstract this note builds further on the ideas of basu and foster 1998 and is concerned to advance the measurement of literacy taking due note of its positive external effects in a simple economical and interpretation friendly fashion

commentary from capital landing to urban anchoring the negotiated city this commentary article proposes three ideal types of anchoring of finance capital into the city i e the way in which capital as it is valued in financial markets is transformed into real cap

an intercountry comparison of agricultural production efficiency intercountry cross section comparison of total productivity in agriculture showed that differences in production efficiency were small relative to differences in labor productivity among countries at a same stage of economic development but very large among different stages of development moreover the large differences in total productivity between the developed and the less developed countries widened further during the past two decades the results suggest a hypothesis that agriculture in the less developed countries as a whole has not yet entered the phase of modern economic growth a la kuznets

aggregate poverty measures the way poverty is measured is important for an understanding of what has happened to poverty as well as for anti poverty policy evaluation sen s 1976 pathfinding work has motivated many researchers to focus on the way poverty should be measured a poverty measure argued by sen should satisfy certain properties or axioms and the desirability of a poverty measure should be evaluated by these axioms during the last two decades many researchers have adopted the axiomatic approach pioneered by sen to propose additional axioms and develop alternative poverty measures the objective of this survey is to provide a clarification on the extensive literature of aggregate poverty measures in this survey we first examine the desirability of each axiom the properties of each poverty measure and the interrelationships among axioms the desirability of an axiom cannot be evaluated in isolation and some combination of axioms may make it impossible to devise a satisfactory poverty measure some axioms can be implied by other axioms combined and so are not independent some others are ad hoc and are disqualified as axioms for poverty measurement based on the interactions among axioms we identify the core axioms which together have a strong implication on the functional form of a poverty measure we then review poverty measures that have appeared in the literature evaluating the interrelationships among different measures and examining the properties of each measure the axioms each measure satisfies violates are also summarized in a tabular form several good poverty measures which have not been documented by previous surveys are also included

institutions in economics the old and the new institutionalism 1 definitions and issues 2 formalism and anti formalism 3 individualism and holism 4 rationality and rule following 5 evolution and design 6 efficiency and reform 7 conflicts and complementarities

measuring energy poverty focusing on what matters abstract the provision of modern energy services is recognised as a critical foundation for sustainable development and is central to the everyday lives of people effective policies to dramatically expand modern energy access need to be grounded in a robust information base metrics that can be used for comparative purposes and to track progress towards targets therefore represent an essential support tool this paper reviews the relevant literature and discusses the adequacy and applicability of existing instruments to measure energy poverty drawing on those insights it proposes a new composite index to measure energy poverty both the associated methodology and initial results for several african countries are discussed whereas most existing indicators and composite indices focus on assessing the access to energy or the degree of development related to energy our new index the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi focuses on the deprivation of access to modern energy services it captures both the incidence and intensity of energy poverty and provides a new tool to support policy making