What Price Water Marketing?: California’s New Frontier
Abstract supplied by Wiley Publishing: We can multiply the value of output from limited natural water supplies by allocating them to higher uses. To this end we need a market in raw water, but existing markets work badly, for several reasons. Sellers are undermotivated, absent taxes or debt. Free groundwater subverts the pricing of surface water. Loss of elevation, and damage from effluents, and instream uses are not charged for. Obsolete subsidies abound; obsolete entitlements dominate allocation. Some trades extinguish public rights. Rent-seeking distorts allocation. Needed public agencies have been subverted by organized land speculators. Recommendations are given.
DetailsA Real-Assets Model of Economic Crises: Will China Crash in 2015?
Abstract supplied by Wiley Publishing: Loosely derived from Henry George's theory that land speculation creates boom-bust cycles, a real-assets model of economic crises is developed. In this model, land prices play a central role, and three hypothesized mechanisms are proposed by which swings of land prices affect the entire economy: construction on marginal sites, partial displacement of circulating capital by fixed capital investment, and the over-leveraging of bank assets. The crisis of 2008 is analyzed in these terms along with other examples of sudden economic contractions in U.S. history, recent European experience, and global examples over the past 20 years. Conditions in China in 2014 are examined and shown to indicate a likely recession in that country in 2015 because its banks are over-leveraged with large-scale, under-performing real estate loans. Finally, alternative methods of preventing similar crises in the future are explored.
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