Nonlinear Effects in Easement Valuation

Rules of thumb have been developed to assist appraisers in dealing with the uncertainties that abound when easement values must be estimated. An economic analysis of one popular rule-of-thumb technique, based on a fixed percentage of the value of a hypothetical fee simple interest in the affected land, reveals that such methodology could not generally be expected to yield meaningful results. If a rule of thumb were to be employed, its use would be more supportable if the underlying assumptions reflected the nonlinear structure of land values.

Percentage Leases and the Advantages of Regional Malls

The differences in the ownership structures of downtown retail districts and shopping centers may give rise to varying space allocations and rental contracts found in these markets. This article specifically examines the value-enhancing aspects of percentage leases and explores the mechanisms of tenant mix, risk sharing and rent discrimination through which this value is created. The use of percentage leases may lead to superior returns by allowing a rent structure that approaches perfect price discrimination. Risk sharing through the use of percentage leases may also create value for the property owner and lead to lower rents for tenants.

The LHCb upgrade I

The LHCb upgrade represents a major change of the experiment. The detectors have been almost completely renewed to allow running at an instantaneous luminosity five times larger than that of the previous running periods. Readout of all detectors into an all-software trigger is central to the new design, facilitating the reconstruction of events at the maximum LHC interaction rate, and their selection in real time. The experiment's tracking system has been completely upgraded with a new pixel vertex detector, a silicon tracker upstream of the dipole magnet and three scintillating fibre tracking stations downstream of the magnet. The whole photon detection system of the RICH detectors has been renewed and the readout electronics of the calorimeter and muon systems have been fully overhauled. The first stage of the all-software trigger is implemented on a GPU farm. The output of the trigger provides a combination of totally reconstructed physics objects, such as tracks and vertices, ready for final analysis, and of entire events which need further offline reprocessing. This scheme required a complete revision of the computing model and rewriting of the experiment's software

Estimating a Price Surface for Vacant Land in an Urban Area

TThis paper examines urban land prices within a non-parametric framework with specific interest in the land price gradient with respect to distance from the city center. The land price surface is estimated over a 900-square mile portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is based on transaction level data of vacant land parcels. The price surface is estimated using piecewise parabolic multiple regression, proposed by Colwell 1998. Given the flexibility of this approach, a rather complex price surface is revealed. The estimated price surface provides some support for the standard urban economic doctrine of falling land prices with distance.

A Question of Title: Property Rights and Asset Values

This paper examines the impact of land title systems on property values. The predominant system in the U.S., the recording system, awards title to claimants over current possessors, whereas the Torrens registration system awards title to the current owner. In theory, the registration system maximizes property value, all else equal, but in practice, the systems differ depending on the risk of a claim and administrative costs. A natural experiment in Cook County, Illinois, where both systems have existed since 1897, allows a test of the theory. The results, based on commercial and industrial properties, reveal that parcels tend to self-select into the two systems based on the predictions of the theory