THE INFLUENCE OF THE THREAT OF FLOODING ON HOUSING VALUES IN FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA AND MOORHEAD, MINNESOTA

The hedonic valuation method (HVM) was used to quantify the impact of the threat of flooding on housing values in Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota (Fargo-Moorhead). Prices of 3,783 Fargo-Moorhead homes sold between 1995 and 1998 were regressed against structural housing characteristics, neighborhood and environmental indicators, and three flood risk variables. Being located in the 100-year floodplain lowered the sale price of an average home by $8,990 and approximately 81 percent of the price depreciation was associated with required flood insurance premiums. After the extensive 1997 flood, homes in the 100-year floodplain were on average priced$10,241 less than similar homes located outside the floodplain and before the 1997 flood event. The aftermath of publicity of the 1997 flood was specifically responsible for average 100-year floodplain homes being reduced by an additional $1,350. In contrast, homes in the 500-year floodplain on average sold for$3,100 more than similar homes not in the floodplain. It was concluded that homebuyers in Fargo-Moorhead place a value on flooding risk, that more disclosure is needed regarding the location of the 500-year floodplain, and that substantial housing value related benefits are likely to be generated by various flood mitigation projects in the area that result in a re-designation and reduction of the 100-year floodplain.Hedonic valuation method, flooding, floodplain, Fargo, Moorhead, Red River of the North, housing values, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

FARGO: a fast eulerian transport algorithm for differentially rotating disks

We present an efficient and simple modification of the standard transport algorithm used in explicit eulerian fixed polar grid codes, aimed at getting rid of the average azimuthal velocity when applying the Courant condition. This results in a much larger timestep then the usual procedure, and it is particularly well-suited to the description of a Keplerian disk where one is traditionally limited by the very demanding Courant condition on the fast orbital motion at the inner boundary. In this modified algorithm, the timestep is limited by the perturbed velocity and by the shear arising from the differential rotation. FARGO stands for ``Fast Advection in Rotating Gaseous Objects''. The speed-up resulting from the use of the FARGO algorithm is problem dependent. In the example presented here, which shows the evolution of a Jupiter sized protoplanet embedded in a minimum mass protoplanetary nebula, the FARGO algorithm is about an order of magnitude faster than a traditional transport scheme, with a much smaller numerical diffusivity.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Astron. Astrophys. Supp. Serie

Assessing bank antitrust standards

Bank mergers ; Antitrust law ; Bank competition ; Crocker National Corporation ; Wells Fargo Bank

The Wells Fargo-Crocker acquisition

Bank mergers ; Wells Fargo Bank ; Crocker National Corporation ; Banks and banking - California

RESULTS OF THE RURAL CASS COUNTY BUSINESS AND SERVICES PREFERENCE SURVEY

Changing demographics in rural and urban North Dakota have provided both opportunities and challenges for rural communities. Cass County boasts the state's largest and fastest growing urban center, but the impact of the county's growth extends beyond the Fargo-West Fargo city limits. Towns like Casselton, Horace, and Kindred have experienced substantial changes not only in the number of residents, but also in the composition of households and their business and service needs and preferences. To address these questions, the Rural Cass County Business and Services Preference Survey was designed to identify and quantify residents' perceptions on a variety of issues. This report details respondents' perceptions on quality of life issues, business and service patronization, as well as describes some basic demographic characteristics of rural Cass County residents.rural development, rural Cass County, population growth, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Low-mass planets in nearly inviscid disks: Numerical treatment

Embedded planets disturb the density structure of the ambient disk and gravitational back-reaction will induce possibly a change in the planet's orbital elements. The accurate determination of the forces acting on the planet requires careful numerical analysis. Recently, the validity of the often used fast orbital advection algorithm (FARGO) has been put into question, and special numerical resolution and stability requirements have been suggested. In this paper we study the process of planet-disk interaction for small mass planets of a few Earth masses, and reanalyze the numerical requirements to obtain converged and stable results. One focus lies on the applicability of the FARGO-algorithm. Additionally, we study the difference of two and three-dimensional simulations, compare global with local setups, as well as isothermal and adiabatic conditions. We study the influence of the planet on the disk through two- and three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations. To strengthen our conclusions we perform a detailed numerical comparison where several upwind and Riemann-solver based codes are used with and without the FARGO-algorithm. With respect to the wake structure and the torque density acting on the planet we demonstrate that the FARGO-algorithm yields correct results, and that at a fraction of the regular cpu-time. We find that the resolution requirements for achieving convergent results in unshocked regions are rather modest and depend on the pressure scale height of the disk. By comparing the torque densities of 2D and 3D simulations we show that a suitable vertical averaging procedure for the force gives an excellent agreement between the two. We show that isothermal and adiabatic runs can differ considerably, even for adiabatic indices very close to unity.Comment: accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysic

On the convergence of the critical cooling timescale for the fragmentation of self-gravitating discs

We carry out simulations of gravitationally unstable discs using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code and a grid-based hydrodynamics code, FARGO, to understand the previous non-convergent results reported by Meru & Bate (2011a). We obtain evidence that convergence with increasing resolution occurs with both SPH and FARGO and in both cases we find that the critical cooling timescale is larger than previously thought. We show that SPH has a first-order convergence rate while FARGO converges with a second-order rate. We show that the convergence of the critical cooling timescale for fragmentation depends largely on the numerical viscosity employed in both SPH and FARGO. With SPH, particle velocity dispersion may also play a role. We show that reducing the dissipation from the numerical viscosity leads to larger values of the critical cooling time at a given resolution. For SPH, we find that the effect of the dissipation due to the numerical viscosity is somewhat larger than had previously been appreciated. In particular, we show that using a quadratic term in the SPH artificial viscosity (beta_{SPH}) that is too low appears to lead to excess dissipation in gravitationally unstable discs, which may affect any results that sensitively depend on the thermodynamics, such as disc fragmentation. We show that the two codes converge to values of the critical cooling timescale, beta_{crit} > 20 (for a ratio of specific heats of gamma=5/3), and perhaps even as large as beta_{crit} \approx 30. These are approximately 3-5 times larger than has been found by most previous studies. This is equivalent to a maximum gravitational stress that a disc can withstand without fragmenting of alpha_{GI,crit} \approx 0.013-0.02, which is much smaller than the values typically used in the literature. It is therefore easier for self-gravitating discs to fragment than has been concluded from most past studies.Comment: Accepted for publication by MNRAS. 26 pages, 17 figure

The Corporate Purpose of Social License

This Article deploys the sociological theory of social license, or the acceptance of a business or organization by the relevant communities and stakeholders, in the context of the board of directors and corporate governance. Corporations are generally treated as “private” actors and thus are regulated by “private” corporate law. This construct allows for considerable latitude. Corporate actors are not, however, solely “private.” They are the beneficiaries of economic and political power, and the decisions they make have impacts that extend well beyond the boundaries of the entities they represent. Using Wells Fargo and Uber as case studies, this Article explores how the failure to account for the public nature of corporate actions, regardless of whether a “legal” license exists, can result in the loss of “social” license. This loss occurs through publicness, which is the interplay between inside corporate governance players and outside actors who report on, recapitulate, reframe and, in some cases, control the company’s information and public perception. The theory of social license is that businesses and other entities exist with permission from the communities in which they are located, as well as permission from the greater community and outside stakeholders. In this sense, businesses are social, not just economic, institutions and, thus, they are subject to public accountability and, at times, public control. Social license derives not from legally granted permission, but instead from the development of legitimacy, credibility, and trust within the relevant communities and stakeholders. It can prevent demonstrations, boycotts, shutdowns, negative publicity, and the increases in regulation that are a hallmark of publicness — but social license must be earned with consistent trustworthy behavior. Thus, social license is bilateral, not unilateral, and should be part of corporate strategy and a tool for risk management and managing publicness more generally. By focusing on and deploying social license and publicness in the context of board decision-making, this Article adds to the discussions in the literature from other disciplines, such as the economic theory on reputational capital, and provides boards with a set of standards with which to engage and address the publicness of the companies they represent. Discussing, weighing, and developing social license is not just in the zone of what boards can do, but is something they should do, making it a part of strategic, proactive cost-benefit decision-making. Indeed, the failure to do so can have dramatic business consequences

Holding U.S. Bank Home Offices Liable for Deposits in Their Foreign Branches

Part I of this Note examines the case law that addresses the issue of U.S. bank home office liability. Part II analyzes U.S. monetary policy provisions that affect deposits held in foreign branches of U.S. banks and the conditions under which a U.S. bank may become a guarantor. Part III argues that the case law holding the U.S. bank home office liable implies a guaranty term into the deposit account contract and frustrates efforts to regulate U.S. monetary policy. This Note concludes that unless appropriate arragements are made between the foreign depositor and the U.S. bank home office, the home office should not be liable for the return of deposits held in its foreign branches

Organizational Culture and Ethical Decision-Making During Major Crises

By integrating various behavioral and ethical theories, such as Organizational Culture and the Social Construction of Knowledge, this research argues that emergency micro-cultures often emerge in times of crisis. Smaller, localized environments, permeated by this crisis culture, often produce an ethical myopia that corrupts wise decision-making. Unless insiders, either leaders or followers within a local setting, are able to meaningfully access ethical frames of reference existing outside the immediate context of the crisis culture, choices remain highly influenced by misaligned values distorted by proximate and introspective survival priorities with minimal regard for external or long-term ethical consequences. In this regard, Follett’s (1949) concept of “the invisible leader,” in which transcendent values for the “common purpose” of leadership are embodied, provides a potentially meaningful way forward in addressing this dilemma. Since social constructs significantly drive the values that influence decision-making (McLeod and Chaffee, 2017), respected, culturally rich, moral frames of reference that transcend the boundaries of the room emerge as important values clarifiers during important organizational decision-making, particularly in the midst of organizational crises