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This accessibly written textbook provides a clear and systematic introduction to the fundamental principles of town planning, applied within the context of the common-law land market. Using an innovative structure of key propositions, sections cover basic definitions and concepts of urban planning, physical planning principles and applications, development control, and policy issues relating to human settlement and property values. Informed by foundational concepts of property rights and cadastral boundaries, the book also covers sustainable urban development and renewal.
New Institutional Economics (NIE) has skyrocketed in scope and influence over the last three decades. This first Handbook of NIE provides a unique and timely overview of recent developments and broad orientations. Contributions analyse the domain and perspectives of NIE; sections on legal institutions, political institutions, transaction cost economics, governance, contracting, institutional change, and more capture NIE's interdisciplinary nature. This Handbook will be of interest to economists, political scientists, legal scholars, management specialists, sociologists, and others wishing to learn more about this important subject and gain insight into progress made by institutionalists from other disciplines. This compendium of analyses by some of the foremost NIE specialists, including Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom, and Oliver Williamson, gives students and new researchers an introduction to the topic and offers established scholars a reference book for their research.
Governments and development agencies spend considerable resources building property and company registries to protect property rights. When these efforts succeed, owners feel secure enough to invest in their property and banks are able use it as collateral for credit. Similarly, firms prosper when entrepreneurs can transform their firms into legal entities and thus contract more safely. Unfortunately, developing registries is harder than it may seem to observers, especially in developed countries, where registries are often taken for granted. As a result, policies in this area usually disappoint. Benito Arruñada aims to avoid such failures by deepening our understanding of both the value of...
First Published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
In the last two centuries, agriculture has been an outstanding, if somewhat neglected, success story. Agriculture has fed an ever-growing population with an increasing variety of products at falling prices, even as it has released a growing number of workers to the rest of the economy. This book, a comprehensive history of world agriculture during this period, explains how these feats were accomplished. Feeding the World synthesizes two hundred years of agricultural development throughout the world, providing all essential data and extensive references to the literature. It covers, systematically, all the factors that have affected agricultural performance: environment, accumulation of inputs, technical progress, institutional change, commercialization, agricultural policies, and more. The last chapter discusses the contribution of agriculture to modern economic growth. The book is global in its reach and analysis, and represents a grand synthesis of an enormous topic.
Although US agriculture is the envy of the world, there is a growing gap between what is and what could be produced. The gap is due in part to a growing morass of environmental regulations, which limit US food production without necessarily improving environmental quality. In this compilation, leading experts examine a range of questions posed by these constraints and offer ideas for reform. Authors explore whether we are really running out of prime farmland; how best to preserve environmentally sensitive land, and for how long; whether controls on agricultural land use can prevent urban sprawl; whether chemicals that contribute to agricultural productivity are harmful to the environment; the connections between genetically modified crops and human health; how taxes affect land use; what role water markets play in balancing agricultural productivity and wildlife habitat; and the effects of the Endangered Species Act on land use.
The vast size of the United States and extensive variation of its climate, topography, and biota across different regions contribute to both the richness of the nation‘s natural heritage and the complexities involved in managing its resources. A follow-up to RFF‘s popular America‘s Renewable Resources (1990), Perspectives on Sustainable Resources in America updates readers about the current challenges involved in managing America‘s natural resources, especially in light of the increasing emphasis on sustainability and ecosystem approaches to management. Written to inform general audiences and students, as well as to engage the interest of experts, the book includes assessments by som...
Controversies in Environmental Policy presents comprehensive analyses of the politics surrounding decision-making on such environmental issues as land use, toxic waste management, new federalism, and economic incentive. It recognizes that environmental policy-making is a blend of politics, technology, and economics, and provides a sophisticated understanding of the interrelationship of the three. The contributors to this volume examine the underlying value systems of the proponents of government-dominated solutions and private-enterprise-dominated solutions to the questions of environmental policy. This book is unique in that it exposes the biases inherent in both sides of the debate, analyz...