Neandertal man the hunter: A history of Neandertal subsistence

The history of Neandertals has been examined by a number of researchers who highlight how historical biases have impacted popular and scientific perceptions of Neandertals. Consequently, the history of Neandertals is relevant to current debates about their relationship to modern humans. However, histories of Neandertal research to date have focused on changes in beliefs regarding the Neandertals’ relationship to modern humans and correlated shifts in perceptions of their intelligence and anatomy. The development of ideas about Neandertal subsistence has generally not been discussed. This paper intends to correct this oversight. Through an historical overview of Neandertal subsistence research, this paper suggests that ideas about Neandertal subsistence have been affected by historical trends not only within archaeology, but also in anthropological and evolutionary theory

Do Landfills Always Depress Nearby Property Values?

All available hedonic pricing estimates of the impact of landfills on nearby property values are assembled, including original estimates for three landfills in Pennsylvania. A meta-analysis shows landfills that accept high volumes of waste (500 tons per day or more) decrease adjacent residential property values by 13.7%, on average. This impact diminishes with distance at a gradient of 5.9% per mile. Lower-volume landfills decrease adjacent property values by 2.7%, on average, with a gradient of 1.3% per mile. While essentially all high-volume landfills negatively impact nearby property values, 20-26% of low-volume landfills do not impact nearby property values.

Surface profilometer for examining grain-boundary grooves

Surface profilometer, consisting primarily of commercially available components, measures surface topographical features accurately and precisely. It shows improvement over the interferometric technique in measurement of grain-boundary grooves formed during annealing on nickel-oxide bicrystals

Spatial Econometric Approaches to Estimating Hedonic Property Value Models

The inclusion of spatial correlation of house price in hedonic pricing model may produce better marginal implicit price estimate(s) of the environmental variable(s) of interest. Most applications where a spatial econometric model is applied to the estimation of a hedonic property value model have used either a spatial lag model or a spatial autoregressive (SAR) error model. Incorrect spatial specification may produce even worse estimate outcome than OLS. Three issues regarding the specification of a spatial hedonic pricing model are considered. First, we question the "convention" of row-standardizing the spatial weights matrix. Second, we argue that the spatial error component (SEC) model is more theoretically intuitive and appealing for modeling house price. Third, we explore whether the choice of spatial model is important, empirically, using a large house sale dataset that includes measures of proximity to landfills. With one exception, estimated marginal implicit prices are fairly robust across all models.row-standardization, spatial econometrics, SEC model, SAR error model, spatial lag model, hedonic pricing, landfill, house price, Public Economics,

The Impact of Agricultural Conservation Easement on House Prices: A New Hedonic Price Model That Incorporates Spatial Autocorrelation and Spatial Heterogeneity

Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Benefit Transfer – The Quick, the Dirty, and the Ugly?

Environmental Economics and Policy,

Using Frontier Models to Mitigate Omitted Variable Bias in Hedonic Pricing Models: A Case Study for Air Quality in Bogotá, Colombia

Hedonic pricing models use property value differentials to value changes in environmental quality. If unmeasured quality attributes of residential properties are correlated with an environmental quality measure of interest, conventional methods for estimating implicit prices will be biased. Because many unmeasured quality measures tend to be asymmetrically distributed across properties, it may be possible to mitigate this bias by estimating a heteroskedastic frontier regression model. This approach is demonstrated for a hedonic price function that values air quality in Bogotá, Colombia.hedonic pricing model, omitted variables, air quality, frontier model

MODELING ECONOMIC GROWTH WITH UNPREDICTABLE SHOCKS: A STATE-LEVEL APPLICATION FOR 1960-90

A Barro-type economic growth model is estimated for the 50 states in the U.S. using data for three decades beginning in 1960. Frontier estimation techniques are used to test for the presence of state-specific shocks to economic growth that are independent of the usual, normally-distributed random errors. We find that large, positive shocks to growth occur during the period 1960-90. Our results indicate that the error term structure assumed each other OLS may not be appropriate for modeling economic growth.Economic growth, Frontier estimation, Shocks, U.S. states, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Studies on the biology of Phlebotomid sandflies

Imperial Users onl