The use of eminent domain in land assembly: The case of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Eminent domain gives public agencies the right to acquire property from private individuals in exchange for just compensation. Following Kelo vs. New London 2005, the powers of eminent domain were extended, opening the door for potential abuses of power by government officials. In this paper, I empirically investigate the use of eminent domain using newly digitized records from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which extensively used eminent domain to construct dams in the 1930s. Using a sample of families living in one reservoir location, I find empirical evidence that land tenure, the number of property holdings, and debt levels affected the holdout decision, suggesting that holdouts are individuals with high subjective values. I then develop a screening model with asymmetric information in seller valuations to predict when eminent domain will be used and what settlement values and court awards would be. I test the model’s and find that individuals who held out increased their property value by about 5 %, and incentives to holdout existed only for individuals who received initially low settlement proposals.     

The Koreans of Japan: An Issue of Human Rights

Abstract

By 1965, Taiwan has changed from a labor surplus economy into a labor shortage economy. This article examines how rising demand for labor due to rapid economic growth in Taiwan has been met since 1965. This article attempts to answer 1) Where did the labor supply come from? 2) Has all of the potential labor supply been tapped and exhausted? 3) Is it possible for labor shortage and unutilized labor reserve to occur simultaneously? The authors hope that this study will lead to a better understanding of the limitation of the free market mechanism and help identify the proper public policies to enhance labor utilization.     

The federal republic and the future of Europe: A reassessment

Speculation concerning a dominant or hegemonic role to be played by a unified Germany in a post‐cold war Europe is misplaced. The extent to which the Federal Republic of 1949–89 has been caricatured as an economic giant but a political dwarf has undermined an appreciation of the manner in which successive Bonn governments have used multilateralism in foreign policy to further Germany's political influence in Europe long before national reunification. At the same time, it is unlikely that reunification will bring a dramatic change in German foreign policy. The nature of the Federal Republic's domestic politics, as well as the relationship with the European Community, apply substantial constraints on the ability, or the desire, to bring about a radical reorientation. The principal architect of change in Germany's relationship with its neighbours will be the country's expansive corporate sector. The gap between the restrained nature of Germany's diplomacy and the extrovert dynamism of its industry, furthermore, promises to make the Federal Republic's adjustment to a new international role awkward.     

Measuring Meritocracy in the Public Sector in Europe: a New National and Sub-National Indicator

Since the late nineteenth century, the presence of an independent and meritocratic bureaucracy has been posited as an advantage for effective bureaucratic behaviour and a means of limiting patrimonial networks and corruption, among other benefits. There is little consensus on how the features of an independent and meritocratic bureaucracy should be measured across countries, however, and broad empirical studies are therefore rare. What is more, the few such studies that exist have advanced measures which are constructed exclusively on expert surveys. Although these have indeed contributed to the knowledge in the field, the data on which they are built come with problems. This paper proposes a set of novel measures that complement existing measures and thus fill important gaps in this burgeoning literature. The measures we present are not based on expert assessments but on perceptions of public sector employees’ and citizens’. We create two measures—that can be combined into one—from a recent survey (2013) of over 85,000 citizens in 24 European countries. One is purely based on the assessments from public sector employees’ and the other is based on perceptions of citizens working outside the public sector. The paper also discusses the survey and explores the external validity of the measures provided here, showing correlations with alternative measures based on expert opinions, as well as variables from the literature that we would expect to correlate highly with a meritocratic bureaucracy.     

Appeasement and After: Towards a Re-assessment of the Lyons and Menzies Governments' Defence and Foreign Policies, 1931–41

In terms of international policies, the Lyons and Menzies Governments of 1931-41 have had a bad press for generations. They have been accused of failing to rearm in time for the Second World War, sending troops abroad who were sorely needed at home, too readily appeasing the Dictators, perversely selling pig-iron to Japan, and planning to give away half of Australia above a Vichy-like Brisbane Line. A reassessment reveals this to be leftist demonology. Rather, in very difficult circumstances they pursued carefully policies that, with benefit of hindsight, were more in the national interest than those of their Labor opponents.     

Reviews

Robert V. Daniels, Russia: The Roots of Confrontation, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1985, xiii + 411 pp. £22.75.

Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Detente. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984, 268 pp. £9.95.

Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience. Politics and History Since 1917. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, xiii + 222 pp. £15.00.

Shugo Minagawa, Supreme Soviet Organs: Functions and Institutional Development of Federal and Republican Presidia and Standing Commissions, Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press, 1985, xxi + 346 pp., 5000 yen.

Pekka Sutela, Socialism, Planning and Optimality. A study in Soviet economic thought (Helsinki, The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters). Commentationes Scientiarum Socialium vol 25. 1984, 230 pp. No price.

Christopher T. Saunders, ed., East‐West Trade and Finance in the World Economy. London: Macmillan, 1985, ix + 338 pp., £30.00.

P. T. Wanless, Taxation in Centrally Planned Economies, London & Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985, xi + 141 pp., £16.95.

Christopher Coker, NATO, the Warsaw Pact and Africa, London: Macmillan for RUSI, 1985, xii + 302 pp. £25.00.

Ellen Jones, Red Army and Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985, xviii + 230 pp. £18.00.

Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia. Ideology and Industrial Organization, 1917–1921, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984, x + 222 pp., $19.95.

Teodor Shanin, Russia as a ‘Developing Society’: The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of Century, Volume 1, Basingstoke and London, Macmillan, 1985, XVI + 268 pp., £27.50 h/c, £8.95 p/b.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Law and Soviet Reality, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985, Law in Eastern Europe series No. 30, 234 pp., Dfl. 135, U.S. $45.50, £34.50.

James M. Swanson, Scientific Discoveries and Soviet Law: A Socio‐historical Analysis. Gainesville, Florida, University of Florida Press, 1985, viii + 150 pp. $11.00.

Martin Fincke, ed. Handbuch der Sowjetverfassung, vols. I and II. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1983, XVI + 1336 pp. including index and synopsis of Constitutions. Vol. I DM 236.00. Vol. II DM 270.00.

Laszlo Antal, Gazdasagiranyitsai és pénzügyirendszerunk a reform útján (The Changes in Our Economic Policy and Monetary System in Connection With the Reform). Budapest, Kozgasdasagi es Jogi Konyvkiado, 1985, 326 pp. 72 forints.

Harold Lydall. Yugoslav Socialism: Theory and Practice. London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1984, 302 pp. £18.50.

Saul Estrin, Self‐management: economic theory and Yugoslav practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, x + 264 pp., £27.50.

Nora Beloff, Tito's Flawed Legacy, Yugoslavia and the West: 1939 to 1984. Victor Gollancz Ltd, London 1985, maps, bibliography, index; 287 pp; £12.95.

Adam Bromke, Eastern Europe in the Aftermath of Solidarity. Boulder: East European Monographs, Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York. 1985. viii + 206 pp. $29.00.

Stanley M. Max, The United States, Great Britain and the Sovietisation of Hungary, 1945–48. Colorado: Eastern European Monographs, 1985, 195 pp. $26.00.

Phillip J. Bryson, The Consumer Under Socialist Planning: The East‐German Case, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984, x + 206 pp. £33.95.

Roy Allison, Finland's Relations with the Soviet Union 1944–84. London and Basingstoke: (Macmillan in Association with St Antony's College, Oxford), 1985. ix + 211 pp. £25.

Paolo Spriano, Stalin and the European Communists, London, Verso, 1985. 315 pp. £16.95.

Gwyn Prins ed, The Choice, Nuclear Weapons versus Security. (London, Chatto and Windus, Hogarth Press, 1984, xvii + 251 pp. £12.95 hardback, £6.95 paperback.)

Anthony Arnold, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Perspective (Revised and enlarged edition). Stanford University, Stanford, Ca, Hoover Institution Press, 1985, xix + 179 pp. $10.95 (paperback).

Nish Jamgotch, Jr. ed. Sectors of Mutual Benefit in U.S. ‐ Soviet Relations. Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1985, xxii + 254 pp. £35.00 (hardback).

John Massey Stewart and Alan Wood, Siberia: Two Historical Perspectives, The Great Britain‐USSR Association and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies: London, 1984, 50 pp. £4.50 (UK), £4.95 (elsewhere in Europe), £6.25 (Rest of World [airmail]).

Tatyana Mamonova, ed. Women and Russia. Feminist Writings from the Soviet Union, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984. xxiii + 273 pp. £19.50 h/b £5.95 p/b.

D. V. Filat'ev, Katastrofa Belogo dvizheniya v Sibiri: Vpechatleniya ochevidtsa. Paris: YMCA‐Press, 1985. 142 pp.

The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences ed., Information Bulgaria, A Short Encyclopaedia of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, translated by Sofia Press Agency, Pergamon Press, Oxford 1985, 976 pp, index, bibliographies, maps, tables, £98.

Robert Weiner, Romanian Foreign Policy and the United Nations. (New York: Praeger, 1984), 206 pp. $28.95).

Zbigniew Landau and Jerzy Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy in the Twentieth Century. (Croom Helm, Beckenham, 1985). vi + 346 pp. £25.00.

John N. Stevens, Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, xiv + 349 pp., $35.00.

Karel Vítek, Problémy man?elské rovnováhy. [Problems of marital equilibrium] Prague, 1985, 284 pp. p/b K?s 26.00.