Lessons From Las Vegas: Housing Markets,Neighborhoods, and Distressed Single-Family Property Investors

The collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing wave of foreclosures have led to a dramatic increase in investor activity in distressed single-family markets, particularly in high-foreclosure areas such as Las Vegas, Nevada. Using a case study of investors in the Las Vegas market as the starting point, supplemented by research in the Detroit, Michigan, area and elsewhere, this article analyzes the strategies being followed by investors and the relationship between investor behavior and market conditions, presenting a market-based typology of single-family property investors and assessing the effects of investors on markets and neighborhood conditions.     

Retaining the Quota System in the South Korean Rice Market

On 30 December 2004, the Korean government reached an agreement to postpone tariffs on the rice market until 2014 in exchange for a gradual increase in the minimum market access quota (the access to the Korean market by others based on a percentage of Korea's total consumption of rice). However, economic reasoning shows that if the Korean government had decided to introduce the tariff system instead, the social welfare from the rice market would have increased considerably over the next ten years, even after taking into account the loss in the external value of rice farming. Thus, the 2004 choice of the quota in the rice market by the Korean government was a political decision. This article measures the social welfare in the rice market under the two alternative systems – tariff and quota – for the period 2005–15. It then explores the explanation for the 2004 decision by investigating three key variables: the characteristics of farmers' groups, their interaction with government executives and the legislature, and the trend in public opinion on rice market issues. In light of the organisational weakness of Korean agricultural interest groups, the focus is on farmers' tactics for achieving their goal, i.e. retaining the quota instead of introducing the tariff.     

Merging legality with illegality in Paraguay: the cluster of order in Pedro Juan Caballero

Paraguay is often described as a territory of drug trafficking, smuggling and commercial piracy. However, the country remains understudied by academics researching criminality and illegal markets. Pedro Juan Caballero, a city located on the northern border with Brazil, is an interesting case study to illustrate how legality and illegality merge in Paraguay to create hybrid social orders. The daily life in the city, one of the best places in the world for cultivating marijuana, unfolds between the higher homicides rates and some of the lowest levels of common criminality in Paraguay. Far from being a matter of state weakness, the expansion and tolerance of illegal activities is framed within a cluster of order that combines both rational legal practices and neo-­patrimonial norms. The presence and roles of state institutions are re-signified, generating alternative hierarchies, practices and values to supply social, political and economic outcomes. Through in-depth interviews with key informants, ethnography visits and analyses of aggregated data, this paper describes the hybrid order of Pedro Juan Caballero by tallying the incentives that encourage social and institutional tolerance of illegality and describes how illegal practices create access to goods, services, protection and expectations not provided by the legal framework.     

On a Sociology of the Media

This article presents a detailed examination of the mass media's influence on candidate visibility and candidate awareness in House elections, using media markets as the vehicle for analysis. Simple comparisons reveal striking media market effects on both visibility and awareness: Voters are much more likely to report contact with the candidates in “media market districts"—House districts where there is a close fit between the local television market and the district's boundaries. Candidate recognition figures are also markedly higher in the media market setting. These findings indicate that the mass media have the potential to strongly influence competition in House races: Challengers are able to use the media advantages in media market districts to overcome the exposure gap associated with the incumbency advantage. Closer inspection reveals that these effects hold true even after controlling for other factors, most notably the spending activities of the candidates. These results suggest a substantial media influence on candidate awareness and thus on competition in House races.     

Refugee Camp Economies

This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortionsto the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda arenoted and the findings are used to construct a generic modelof a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced byhost country policies, such as restrictions on refugees’movement and work, as well as by the physical and economic isolationof the site. Moreover, market outcomes interact with the natureof humanitarian assistance and the special demographic compositionof the refugees to determine the prices and quantities thatcharacterize the market. An awareness of the dynamics of therefugee camp economy has important implications for practitionersand scholars alike.     

Correctly Understanding “School Choice”

Despite ample debates over the efficacy of school choice, theorizing has lagged behind and this hinders progress. Milton Friedman, the choice movement founder, never claimed that choice would improve academics; choice was inherently valuable and parents might demand anything. Choice advocates also exaggerate the remedial power of markets and proliferating academic options seldom brings academic diligence. Given free tutoring opportunities, those lagging behind reject them, and costs will usually be too high for most low achievers. Extensive schooling options already exist, so waging political battles to add more is unnecessary. Moreover, today’s supposed “school choice” is not genuine consumer choice no matter how educationally worthwhile; it is imposed from above san consumer input. Even when choice schools shine, it is unclear why. If free to chose, consumes may prefer non-academics. Finally, if choice qua choice is the standard, focusing on academic achievement is misdirected.

First to third nature: the rise of capitalist conservation on Palawan Island,the Philippines

The social relations and agricultural lands that rural peoples in Southeast Asia hold in common are being commodified through the converging pressures of agrarian change, conservation and capitalist development. This paper examines how broader and local processes driving agrarian differentiation have been accelerated through the revaluing of people and nature in market terms to ostensibly finance conservation through development at the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park – the flagship protected area of Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on the notions of ‘first’ and ‘third nature’, I show how the pace and scale of agrarian change between rural peoples has gone ‘fast forward’ with the onset of resource partitioning, objectification, commodification and, ultimately, revaluing through translocal ‘capitalist conservation’, the rise of conservation as capitalist production. I examine how the national park's valuing as a ‘common’ World Heritage has drawn major private sector investments that objectify, commodify and rearticulate the value of nature as capital that finances and merges conservation and development according to the images and ideals of the modern Philippines. The conclusion asserts that while the processes of differentiation and capitalist conservation facilitate the revaluing of nature in market terms, the overall process remains recursive, partial and context dependent.     

Natural capital must be defended: green growth as neoliberal biopolitics

ABSTRACT

This contribution addresses the growing global trend to promote ‘natural capital accounting’ (NCA) in support of environmental conservation. NCA seeks to harness the economic value of conserved nature to incentivize local resource users to forgo the opportunity costs of extractive activities. We suggest that this represents a form of neoliberal biopower/biopolitics seeking to defend life by demonstrating its ‘profitability’ and hence right to exist. While little finance actually reaches communities through this strategy, substantial funding still flows into the idea of ‘natural capital’ as the basis of improving rural livelihoods. Drawing on two cases in Southeast Asia, we show that NCA initiatives may compel some local people to value ecosystem services in financial terms, yet in most cases this perspective remains partial and fragmented in communities where such initiatives produce a range of unintended outcomes. When the envisioned environmental markets fail to develop and benefits remain largely intangible, NCA fails to meet the growing material aspirations of farmers while also offering little if any bulwark against their using forests more intensively and/or enrolling in lucrative extractive enterprise. We thus conclude that NCA in practice may become the antithesis of conservation by actually encouraging the resource extraction it intends to combat.     

水牛肝片吸虫病间接ELISA诊断方法的建立及应用

以肝片吸虫的分泌-排泄物作为抗原(ES抗原),建立水牛肝片吸虫病间接ELISA诊断方法,并用此方法与粪便检查法检测江苏和安徽2省10县(市)302户的307头水牛的血清和粪便;间接ELISA诊断法的最佳工作条件,每孔包被0.2 μg抗原,血清稀释度为1960,二抗稀释度为1600.结果粪便检查出虫卵的阳性水牛43头,阳性率为14.01%,其中安徽省为11.61%(18/155),江苏省为16.45%(25/152);用间接ELISA法检测299头水牛血清,阳性87头,阳性率为29.19%,其中安徽省为23.53%,江苏省为34.92%,两种方法的符合率为86.05%.     

茯苓不同部位水提物对脾虚模型小鼠健脾作用的研究

目的 观察茯苓不同部位水提物对脾虚模型小鼠的健脾作用。方法 将72只小鼠随机分为对照组,模型组,白茯苓低、高剂量组,赤茯苓低、高剂量组,茯苓皮低、高剂量组,阳性药组,每组8只。采用番泻叶水煎液加饥饱失常的复合因素法复制脾虚模型。比较各组小鼠体质量及肛温并对小鼠一般行为学进行观察,观察其脏器指数、粪便含水率、小肠推进率、外周血白细胞计数、血清D-木糖含量及白细胞介素-2(interleukin-2,IL-2)、肿瘤坏死因子-α(tumor necrosis factor α,TNF-α)、分泌型免疫球蛋白(secretory immunoglobulin A, sIgA)水平的变化,并测定其结肠组织中密封蛋白(Claudin)、闭合蛋白(Occludin)的表达水平。结果 与对照组比较,模型组小鼠体质量下降、粪便含水量上升(P<0.05);小鼠的脏器指数、D-木糖、sIgA含量及结肠组织中Claudin、Occludin蛋白表达水平均显著降低(P<0.05);小鼠小肠推进率、外周血白细胞计数及IL-2、TNF-α水平显著上升(P<0.05)。与模型组比较,各给药组上述指...