Roads, lands, markets, and deforestation : a spatial model of land use in Belize

Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. To explore the tradeoffs between development and environmental damage posed by road building, the authors develop and estimate a spatially explicit model of land use. This model takes into account location and land characteristics and predicts land use at each point on the landscape. They find that: (a) market access and distance to roads strongly affect the probability of agricultural use, especially for commercial agriculture; (b) high slopes, poor drainage, and low soil fertility discourage both commercial and semi subsistence agriculture; and (c) semi-subsistence agriculture is especially sensitive to soil acidity and lack nitrogen (confirming anthropological findings that subsistence farmers are shrewd judges of soil). Spatially explicit models are analytically powerful because they exploit rich spatial variation in causal variables, including the precise siting of roads. They are useful for policy because they can pinpoint threats to particular critical habitats and watersheds. This model is a descendant of the venerable von Thunen model. It assumes that land will tend to be devoted to its highest-value use, taking into account tenure and other constraints. The value of a plot for a particular use depends on the land's physical productivity for that use and the farmgate prices of relevant inputs and outputs. A reduced-form, multinomial logit specification of this model calculates implicit values of land in alternative uses as a function of land location and characteristics. The resulting equations can then be used for prediction or analysis. The model was applied to cross-sectional data for 1989-92 for Belize, a forested country currently experiencing rapid expansion of both subsistence and commercial agriculture. A geographic information system was used to manage the spatial data and extract variables based on the three kilometer sample grid. Three land uses were distinguished:"natural"vegetation, comprising forests, woodlands, wetlands, and savanna; semi-subsistence agriculture, comprising traditional milpa (slash-and-burn) cultivation and other nonmechanized cultivation of annual crops; and commercial agriculture, consisting mainly of sugarcane, pasture, citrus, and mechanized production of corn and kidney beans. Two dimensions of distance to market were distinguished: the distance from each sample point to the road, and on-road travel time to the nearest town. Data on a wide variety of land and soil characteristics were also used.Wetlands,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Climate Change,Land Use and Policies,Forestry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Climate Change,Energy and Environment,Wetlands

Graduates of Character - Values and Character: Higher Education and Graduate Employment

Graduates of Character is the product of an empirical enquiry into the values, virtues, dispositions and attitudes of a sample of students and employees who volunteered to be involved. The research team sought host sites which would offer a diverse set of interviewees in gender, ethnicity, religion and aspiration. In this study we discuss what character is taken to mean by students and employees in their years of higher education and employment. We examine what their values are, what they gain from the university, what they believe employers look for when recruiting, what they hope to give to an employer, and what they expect from their employer. We then explore who or what influenced their values and moral development. We also examined the role of the personal tutor or mentor, and the persons or services to which they might go for personal and/or professional support

Book Review

PATTERNS OF AMERICAN LEGAL THOUGHT. By G. Edward White. The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1978, Pp. 38

Improving U.S. army recruiting: using modern market segmentation methodology to select high-payoff target segments.

Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão.During the last few years, the United States Army has experienced great difficulties in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of quality soldiers, In 1999, the U.S. Army suffered its worst recruiting year in 20 years (Harper, 1999). The primary causes of the current recruiting crisis include the very robust U.S. economy, record-low unemployment leveis, and an ever-decreasing propensity for military service. To resolve the current recruiting crisis and remain the high-quality, allvolunteer force that it is today, the Army should abandon its traditional mass marketing methods and focus its limited resources in a more effective and economical manner. Current methods waste precious resources on segments that are extremely unlikely to serve in the Army. The Army cannot compete and win in ali segments; it must choose. It is my recommendation that, based on the analysis presented in this dissertation, that the U.S. Army, by adopting target marketing and a selective specialization marketing strategy, can identify, select, and target high-payoff segments where the Army possesses a competitive advantage. To achieve this goal, the Army must conduct a three-step process: market segmentation, market targeting, and market positioning. The Army must abandon its "shotgun approach" to recruiting American youth by developing customized marketing programs for each of its five recruiting brigades. Through target marketing, the U.S. Army can increase its recruiting effectiveness, reduce its advertising cqsts per recruit, and, ultimately, resolve the current recruiting crisis.N/

A field-deployable digital acoustic measurement system

A field deployable digital acoustic measurement system was developed to support acoustic research programs at the Langley Research Center. The system digitizes the acoustic inputs at the microphone, which can be located up to 1000 feet from the van which houses the acquisition, storage, and analysis equipment. Digitized data from up to 12 microphones is recorded on high density 8mm tape and is analyzed post-test by a microcomputer system. Synchronous and nonsynchronous sampling is available with maximum sample rates of 12,500 and 40,000 samples per second respectively. The high density tape storage system is capable of storing 5 gigabytes of data at transfer rates up to 1 megabyte per second. System overall dynamic range exceeds 83 dB

Entrepreneurship in Manufacturing in Kenya: Characteristics, Problems and Sources of Finance

This article examines entrepreneurship and small business manufacturer's characteristics in Kenya. Much literature on small business development in developing world countries assume informal sector activities as homogeneous in their characteristics (Morris and Pitt, 1995; Bewayo, 1995; Ekpenyong and Nyong, 1992). Thereby policy recommendations are blanket and not of great assistance. The article investigates a sample of 320 manufacturers, from three industries. The objectives are to evaluate characteristics of small-scale manufacturers that make it difficult to be profitable and the problems faced  which contribute to poor performanc