GOVERNMENT PAYMENTS TO FARMERS AND REAL AGRICULTURAL ASSET VALUES IN THE 1980S

This study determines the effect of government payments on real agricultural asset values using Bayesian vector autoregression. In developing the empirical model, special attention is focused on the informational content of government payments. The results indicate that government payments to farmers have little effect on real asset values in the long run. In the short run, an increase in government payments to farmers may be associated with decline in asset values.Agricultural Finance,

Enforcing Promises: An Examination of the Basis of Contract

The obligation to keep promises is a commonly acknowledged moral duty. Yet not all promises – however solemnly vowed – are enforceable at law. Why are some promises legally binding and others not? Orthodox doctrinal categories provide only modest assistance in answering this persistent question. Conventional analysis, for example, has distinguished promises made in exchange for a return promise or performance from nonreciprocal promises. Indeed, common law bargain theory is classically simple: bargained-for promises are presumptively enforceable; nonreciprocal promises are presumptively unenforceable. But this disarmingly simple theory has never mirrored reality. Contract law has ventured far beyond such narrow limitations, embracing reliance and unjust enrichment as additional principles of promissory obligation. Thus, a promise may be enforceable to the extent that the promisee has incurred substantial costs, or conferred benefits, in reasonable reliance on the promise. Promissory estoppel under Section 90 of the Restatement of Contracts is the primary enforcement mechanism when action in reliance follows the promise. If the change of position by the promisee precedes the promise, its nexus with the promise is more subtle. For example, a promise is enforceable when it follows a non-donative material benefit conferred by the promisee. Unjust enrichment principles are typically invoked to enforce such past consideration promises. Despite this expansion of liability, gratuitous promises of gifts or unilateral pledges to confer benefits remain legally unenforceable

A Cultural Resources Survey Of Texas Eastern Transmission LPS Phase 1 Pipeline Anomaly Repairs On The PETR To Tivo Segment Of Line 16 In Refugio And Aransas Counties, Texas

On behalf of Texas Eastern Transmission, LP and Edge Engineering and Science, LLC., HRA Gray & Pape, LLC, of Houston, Texas, has completed a 100% pedestrian cultural resources survey and limited shovel testing of an estimated 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) of linear area in Refugio and Aransas Counties, Texas. Texas Eastern has identified several locations along the PETR to TIVO Segment of Line 16 that require replacement of aging pipe. One of the areas requiring maintenance work is identified as “Phase 1”, for which the archaeological survey was completed in May of 2015. The Lead Federal Agency has been identified as the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District. Thus the goals of the survey were to determine if land altering activities required to complete this project would affect any previously identified historic properties as defined by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (36 CFR 800), and to establish whether or not previously unidentified cultural resources were located within the project’s Area of Potential Effects (Advisory Council for Historic Preservation 2004). Initial investigation consisted of a background literature and site files search to identify the presence of recorded sites in close proximity to the project area. No previous archaeological linear or area surveys have taken place within the project area. No previously recorded archaeological sites were identified within the project area. The project is located on private property, thus an Antiquities Code of Texas Permit was not required prior to performing fieldwork. All work was conducted following accepted standards set forth by the Texas Historical Commission and the Council of Texas Archeologists. All 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) of the proposed “Phase 1” pipeline replacement area have been investigated. Fieldwork for the Phase I workspaces was completed in a single mobilization that took place from May 18 to May 22, 2015, and required 96 person hours to complete. Field investigation was conducted entirely on privately owned properties and consisted of walkover and shovel testing within the project area. During this investigation no cultural resources were identified or confirmed within the project’s Area of Potential Effects. Based on the negative findings of the survey, HRA Gray & Pape, LLC. recommends that no further cultural resources work be required for the “Phase 1” portion of the project and that the project be allowed to proceed as planned within the surveyed areas. Additional project phases are in the process of being surveyed. Results of those efforts will be submitted when completed

Enforcing Promises: An Examination of the Basis of Contract

The obligation to keep promises is a commonly acknowledged moral duty. Yet not all promises – however solemnly vowed – are enforceable at law. Why are some promises legally binding and others not? Orthodox doctrinal categories provide only modest assistance in answering this persistent question. Conventional analysis, for example, has distinguished promises made in exchange for a return promise or performance from nonreciprocal promises. Indeed, common law bargain theory is classically simple: bargained-for promises are presumptively enforceable; nonreciprocal promises are presumptively unenforceable. But this disarmingly simple theory has never mirrored reality. Contract law has ventured far beyond such narrow limitations, embracing reliance and unjust enrichment as additional principles of promissory obligation. Thus, a promise may be enforceable to the extent that the promisee has incurred substantial costs, or conferred benefits, in reasonable reliance on the promise. Promissory estoppel under Section 90 of the Restatement of Contracts is the primary enforcement mechanism when action in reliance follows the promise. If the change of position by the promisee precedes the promise, its nexus with the promise is more subtle. For example, a promise is enforceable when it follows a non-donative material benefit conferred by the promisee. Unjust enrichment principles are typically invoked to enforce such past consideration promises. Despite this expansion of liability, gratuitous promises of gifts or unilateral pledges to confer benefits remain legally unenforceable

Liquidated Damages, Penalties and the Just Compensation Principle: Some Notes on an Enforcement Model and a Theory of Efficient Breach

Part I of this Article examines the role of liquidated damage provisions and penalties in the context of a general theory of efficient breach of contract. The proof problems inherent in fully recovering idiosyncratic values within the context of operationally practical damage sanctions may prevent the non-breaching party from recovering his subjective expectations if recovery is limited to legally determined remedies. The expected cost of establishing true losses under conventional damage measures will thus induce parties who face uncertain or nonprovable anticipated losses to negotiate stipulated damage agreements. The current penalty rule subjects these agreements to costly review, based not on the fairness of the process, but on whether the initial estimate sufficiently mirrors the anticipated provable loss. Part II examines the hypothesis that, absent evidence of process unfairness in bargaining, efficiency will be enhanced by the enforcement of an agreed allocation of risks embodied in a liquidated damage clause. We argue that agreed damage measures and in terrorem provisions represent, under many circumstances, the most efficient means by which parties can insure against the otherwise non-compensable consequences of breach. Our hypothesis is then also tested against a series of conditions in order to identify alternative legal principles that may provide less costly means of avoiding the harmful effects whose perception apparently prompted the current penalty rule

Measuring Sellers\u27 Damages: The Lost-Profits Puzzle

A buyer repudiates a fixed-price contract to purchase goods, and the seller sues for damages. How should a court measure the seller\u27s loss? The answer seems simple: The seller should be awarded damages sufficient to place it in the same economic position it would have enjoyed had the buyer performed the contract. But the seductive conceptual simplicity of the compensation principle disguises substantial practical problems in measuring seller\u27s damages. Contract law has traditionally minimized measurement difficulties by basing damages in most cases on the difference between the contract price and market value of the repudiated goods. The common law courts generally limited the seller to such market damages whenever the seller had a resale market for the contract goods. These courts assumed that combining this damage award with proceeds from a resale would give the seller the profits that performance would have earned it

The Mitigation Principle: Toward a General Theory of Contractual Obligation

The duty to mitigate is a universally accepted principle of contract law requiring that each party exert reasonable efforts to minimize losses whenever intervening events impede contractual objectives. Although applications of the mitigation principle pervade the specific rules of contract, it is startling how many questions remain unanswered as to precisely what efforts the mitigation duty requires and what point in time the obligation arises. For example, under what circumstances does mitigation require an injured party to deal with the contract breacher? Why does the duty to minimize losses mature only after the breach, even if the injured party became aware much earlier of a significant danger of breach and had a cost-effective opportunity to mitigate the prospective loss? Is the duty to communicate special or unforeseeable circumstances confined to the time of contracting, even where the communication of post-contract but pre-performance information might reduce costs? These and many similar questions remain unresolved because the relationship among the diverse rules of mitigation has not been systematically articulated. Recognizing that each party\u27s mitigation responsibility is inextricably linked to the performance obligation of his contracting partner is the key step in fitting the mitigation principle into a general theory of contractual obligation. In recent years, a maturing theoretical scholarship has furthered understanding of the performance and remedial obligations of contracting parties. By focusing on particular performance problems, this scholarship has not only uncovered further questions but also heightened interest in a theoretical formulation that weaves the performance and remedial rules of contract into a single fabric

The Limits of Expanded Choice: An Analysis of the Interactions between Express and Implied Contract Terms

Although trade and its defining terms lie at the very core of contract law, perceptions of the state\u27s involvement in the exchange process remain peculiarly incomplete. Everyone understands that the state supplies the fundamental property-defining rules for pre-trade endowments. For instance, governmentally provided rules of tort, nuisance, and civil rights establish basic boundaries of what initially belongs to an individual and, hence, what he has to offer in exchange. When an exchange subsequently takes place, however, the parties themselves assume an important part of the burden of communicating what rights are being given and received. Although the state\u27s general rules of contract provide a set of standard gap-filling assumptions or implied terms, almost every agreement requires the parties to provide some additional individualized content. At one level, the private and state-supplied terms of an executory contract represent an attempted interparty communication of the substantive entitlements intended to be exchanged. Since, however; the terms communicate evidence of the exchange\u27s content to the state as well, they also constitute the principal legal definition of the rights reallocation. Unfortunately, this definitional process requires parties to employ inherently error-prone signals – the formulations of their agreement. If the chosen combination of privately and publicly supplied terms results in an inappropriate formulation, a party may suffer a costly surprise when the contract is legally enforced. The disappointed party will frequently contend that the content of the contract, as ultimately interpreted, does not accurately describe the original intent or expectation. Many such complaints about the misformulation or misinterpretation of an agreement are rooted in tensions between implied and express terms and between standard and unconventional forms of expression. To the extent that these tensions have been understood at all, the major attempt to harmonize them relies on what we term the Expanded Choice postulate. The postulate maintains that implied terms expand contractors\u27 choices by providing standardized and widely suitable preformulations, thus eliminating the cost of negotiating every detail of the proposed arrangement. This Expanded Choice thesis implicitly presumes a neutral policy toward individualized agreements: atypical parties lose nothing, since they remain unrestrained from designing customized provisions to replace the state-supplied terms

Dynamic Shape Synthesis in Posterior Inferotemporal Cortex

SummaryHow does the brain synthesize low-level neural signals for simple shape parts into coherent representations of complete objects? Here, we present evidence for a dynamic process of object part integration in macaque posterior inferotemporal cortex (IT). Immediately after stimulus onset, neural responses carried information about individual object parts (simple contour fragments) only. Subsequently, information about specific multipart configurations emerged, building gradually over the course of ∼60 ms, producing a sparser and more explicit representation of object shape. We show that this gradual transformation can be explained by a recurrent network process that effectively compares parts signals across neurons to generate inferences about multipart shape configurations