The Role of Information Density in Infrastructure Investment

The twentieth century witnessed an extraordinary flow of institutional investment into urban infrastructure. Notwithstanding this, the demand for infrastructure projects exceeds supply of skills and capital. With this disconnect as a backdrop we develop a model of information flow to examine how financial assets are transacted over time and space. Specifically, we build on conceptualisations of “information content” from Clark and O'Connor ( 1997 ) to propose a way of theorising “information density”. We apply this specifically to infrastructure investment and find four ways in which infrastructure investment is highly dense. This relates to asset‐level definitions in infrastructure, opacity with respect to how products are securitised, high variance in investment performance, and high relational and investment expertise. We draw on a large qualitative sample of 53 in‐depth interviews, which we validate with quantitative data, to support our findings.     

Economic Gain and Loss from Public Infrastructure Investment

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of transportation investment on the Korean economy using the dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model. The result of the counterfactual analysis shows that infrastructure investment policy has the advantage of economic growth, but the disadvantage of price inflation. The elasticities of infrastructure investment with respect to GDP, export, private utility, and inflation depend on institutional restrictions on the domestic inflow of foreign capital and financing alternatives for infrastructure projects. The growth effect of transportation investment would be maximized if regulations on inflow of foreign capital to the private sector were lifted. On the other hand, the effect of transportation investment on inflation would be minimized if transportation investment expenditure were completely financed by tax revenues.     

Comparative Analysis of the Total Factor Productivity of Manufacturing in Northeast Asian Metropolitan Areas

We compare and analyze the total factor productivity of the manufacturing industries in the major metropolitan areas of South Korea, China, and Japan. This study can contribute to the economic cooperation among these countries by analyzing their productivity growth and evaluating their relative competitiveness. Statistical data from manufacturing industries are used to analyze five metropolitan areas. The manufacturing industries are classified into 10 sectors, and two different time periods (before and after 1997, when the foreign currency crisis began in Korea) are examined. The results in terms of the development and competitiveness of the manufacturing industries in Korea, China, and Japan will be useful in establishing promotional strategies.     

Polyamines as Modulators of Soybean Productivity

Polyamines have been shown to be involved in several aspects of plant growth and development. In soybean, increase in number of pods per plant, 100 seed weight, seed, biological and oil yield was highest with spray of spermine and lowest (but significantly higher than control) with putrescine. The soybean seed and oil yield increased by about 12.46 and 20.94% respectively with application of 10⁻³ m spermine at 50% flowering stage. Another spray of polyamines at pod initiation stage had little effect on different parameters.     

Infrastructure Investment and Rural Economic Development: An Evaluation of USDA's Broadband Loan Program

We empirically evaluate whether participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Broadband Loan Program, which began making loans in 2002, has had measurable positive impacts on zip code‐level economic outcomes. Using difference in differences and propensity score matching program evaluation techniques, we find that loans made in 2002 and 2003 under the Pilot Broadband Loan Program have had a substantial positive impact on employment, annual payroll, and the number of business establishments in recipient communities. However, a more spatially disaggregated analysis reveals that the positive economic impacts of the pilot program are driven primarily by the outcomes in communities located closest to urban areas. Finally, we find no evidence that loans received as part of the current Broadband Loan Program have had a measurable positive impact on recipient communities, possibly because not enough time has elapsed for the impacts of the current Broadband Loan Program to have emerged.     

Agglomeration of Services in American Metropolitan Areas

The growth of many service industries among American metropolitan areas stem from an eclectic set of forces. These include market penetration effects of increasing importance of services throughout the economy, agglomeration effects in immature and deregulated industries, and institutional and infrastructure constraints. These diverse forces are interpreted as urbanization and localization economies. A cycle of centralization of 27 fast growing service industries is documented for MS As in the period 1977-84. The two agglomeration effects are tested directly, using a power function model that relates employment and establishment growth to MSA size and initial level of employment in a local industry. Localization economies rather than the general advantages of metropolitan size best explain the growth patterns. This result implies that service industrial complexes are rapidly emerging in American metropolitan areas.     

施肥对两种水稻土甲烷生产力的影响

在实验室条件下,用厌气培养的方法测定了两种水稻土的甲烷生产力。青泥土的甲烷生产力明显高于褐潮土。施1％的稻草提高了两种水稻土的甲烷生产力,但是稻草对褐潮土的甲烷生产力影响更大。猪粪,鸡粪和牛粪对土壤甲烷生产力的影响顺序是:猪粪大于鸡粪,鸡粪大于牛粪。尿素和硫铵对两种土壤的甲烷生产力影响不明显。稻草和有机肥提高了褐潮土的甲烷生产力是因为它们降低了褐潮土的氧化还原电位,同时提供了易分解的碳源和能源。稻草和有机肥提高了褐潮土的甲烷生产力是因为它们提供了易分解的碳源和能源。     

The Value of Green Infrastructure in Crafting Sustainability

Sustainability is one of the most-mentioned words from the UN seminars to local community meetings, it is the issue of the world. The emerging science of landscape ecology, is learning more and more about the importance of the linkage that green infrastructure(GI) provides in maintaining and restoring ecological processes and the health of nature. The world has moved from the industrialization period to sustainability as a growing issue and answering the question of sustainability in different sectors and green infrastructure is trying to answer the request for sustainable infrastructure. Applying the concept and characteristics of green infrastructure is the infrastructural solution in design. This paper tries to see the origins and concepts of green infrastructure and the strong role of green infrastructure as a part of sustainable development.     

Private Government Formation in the DC Metropolitan Area

ABSTRACT This paper examines a variety of quasi-governmental organizations, mandatory homeowners' associations, special service districts, and transportation management associations, recently established in the urban region. Using the Washington, DC metropolitan area as a case study, this paper explores reasons for their development and implications of them for urban governance. It is argued that these organizations marry the concepts of public special districts and public-private partnerships in a process of private government formation. Private governments, it is suggested, are not wholly a private response to the shedding of services by the public sector, the dominant notion of privatization and local state restructuring, but the result of demands emerging in the private sector stimulated by social and spatial change. This signals the need to add to the concept of public-driven privatization the process of private initiated change where the resulting goods and services are more fully shaped by the needs of private interests. The evidence suggests these institutions do not represent a scaling back of the local state as privatization implies, but an extension of state structures in a fundamentally new direction, an extension which could be labeled the parallel state.     

Spatial Clusters in EU Productivity Growth

In the last year, a central issue in regional economic growth debate has been represented by the empirical analysis of Verdoorn's law related to the long‐term dynamic relationship between the rate of growth in output and the productivity growth due to increasing returns. Several papers have tested Verdoorn's law on European countries as well as many other world economies. Recently, attempts have been made to provide foundations for a spatial version of the original law specification. The main contributions were dedicated to the inclusion of spatial dependence in the economic model. Surprisingly, in the literature on Verdoom's law the analysis of the spatial heterogeneity is not often considered. The aim of this paper is the regional analysis of the spatial dependence and heterogeneity in Verdoorn's law, identifying spatial regimes that can be interpreted as clusters of productivity growth in European regions at NUTS 2 level. To pursue this objective, an optimization algorithm for the identification of groups is used. This constitutes a modified version of Simulated Annealing.     

Relationship Between Productivity and Phosphate Requirement as a Parameter of Selection in Medicago rigidula (L.) Allioni

Among one hundred lines of Medicago rigidula (L.) Allioni, fifteen (5 high-producing, HP, 5 intermediate-producing, IP, and 5 low-producing, LP) were chosen as experimental material because of their different dry-matter production when grown at 0.5 mg L^-1 of P₂O₅ in hydroponic solution (critical level). The aim of this work was to evaluate the response to selection with respect to dry-matter yield (DMY), made at 0.5 mg L^-1 of P₂O₅ and to check if superior lines could also be isolated when plants were grown at 20 and 200 mg L^-1 of P₂O₅. Results show that HP lines were also superior with respect to DMY (g/plant) at the higher phosphorus concentrations. Highly-productive line selection in M. rigidula can also be achieved when plants are grown at a critical level of phosphorus in the nutrient solution. Phosphate content in the dry matter produced and phosphatase activity were also analysed. Plants of the more-productive lines were characterized by lower phosphate content per unit dry matter and by a higher phosphatase activity.     

Unemployment Duration in Non‐Metropolitan Labor Markets

Non‐metropolitan areas of the U.S have experienced significant structural economic changes in recent decades. These changes have raised concerns that some non‐metropolitan workers may face significant costs to employment displacements associated with economic adjustments. This paper explores the roles that linkages to metropolitan labor markets, area labor market conditions, and individual attributes play in determining the rates of exit from unemployment to employment among non‐metropolitan area residents. Adjacency to a metropolitan area is found to significantly increase transition rates from unemployment to employment among displaced non‐metropolitan workers, but local economic conditions are found to have relatively weak or insignificant effects on transition rates. Also, lack of post‐high school education and minority status both significantly reduce rates of exit from unemployment in non‐metropolitan areas following employmentdisplacement.     

State Infrastructure and the Geography of Employment

ABSTRACT The effects of state public capital investment on economic growth is an important question that has been the focus of a recent substantial research effort. But the majority of this research has ignored these investments’influence on the intra-state pattern of economic activity. Yet if external agglomeration economies are important determinants of growth, then investments may indirectly affect growth by fostering or discouraging agglomeration. This paper discusses the effect of state infrastructure investments on the distribution of employment within states and the implications of these spatial effects for aggregate state employment growth. Preliminary empirical results suggest that state infrastructure investments tend to redistribute growth from areas of dense employment to other parts of the state. This redistribution may diminish agglomeration benefits offered by cities, which has the potential to reduce state growth. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the work for research and policy.     

农产品流通基础设施对农业生产影响的机理

本文分析了农产品流通基础设施对农业生产的影响机理,认为农产品流通基础设施具有克服农产品交易的空间和时间障碍,以使农产品价值顺利实现的功能;农产品流通基础设施影响着农产品交易主体的交易能力,以及农产品交易效率。文章最后给出了完善农产品流通基础设施的建议。     

丘陵山地地区耕地地力评价研究

摘要：本文以重庆市梁平县为研究区域,在GIS及计算机技术的支持下,利用土壤图、土地利用现状图及行政区划图叠置划分法确定评价单元,选取立地条件、土壤养分状况、耕层土壤理化性状、土壤管理等4个方面12个评价因子,建立耕地地力评价体系及模型,并采取专家打分和特尔斐法确定各评价因子的隶属函数,运用层次分析法和模糊数学方法对研究区的耕地地力进行综合评价。由于在丘陵山地地区,水田和旱地的种植制度和施肥模式存在显著差异性,这种差异性导致其耕地地力状况也存在显著的差异,因此本研究对水田和旱地分别进行地力评价,并对其结果进行比较分析,进一步研究其差异性。     

Senescence and its Role in Soybean Productivity

Chemical manipulation was able to induce higher productivity in soybean through improved dry matter accumulation, increased source activity, retarding leaf senescence and yield components. The senescence percentage was negatively correlated with yield (r =−0.7669**) while the source activity was positively associated (r =+0.9167**). All the yield components had significant positive correlation with yield. The low cost urea and coconut water, foliar feeding at peak flowering and late grain filling stages improved the productivity in soybean. The maximum beneficial effect of foliar feeding was noticed in the soil where the absence of native nodulation was observed.     

北京现代都市农业建设应大力发展休闲农业

休闲农业是现代都市农业的重要组成部分,在北京尤其需要大力发展。休闲农业是一种体验经济产业,是城乡融合的重要途径。北京发展休闲农业是由城市生产、生态、生活和社会发展的强烈需求决定的。当前北京也已经具备了休闲农业大发展的基本条件。应采取系列措施,逐步建成北京以农业园区和民俗旅游为主体结构的"城市-郊区-乡村-田野"休闲农业体系。