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This note offers new archival insight into a 1925 polemical exchange between Frank Knight and John Maurice Clark that was hosted in the pages of Journal of Political Economy. Although the exchange centered on the effects of overhead costs on marginal productivity theory and the so-called adding-up theorem, it also provided significant elements to assess the methodological differences between two of the most representative American economists of the interwar years.

Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students. They include Bertil Ohlin, Nicholas Kaldor, James Angell, Lauchlin Currie, Colin Clark, Howard Ellis, Frank Fetter, Earl Hamilton, and Melvin Knight (brother of Frank Knight who, with Edward Chamberlin, was perhaps Young’s most famous PhD student). There has recently been a revival of interest in Young’s influence on US monetary thought and in his theory of economic growth based on endogenous increasing returns. These recollections of his students (addressed to Young’s biographer, Charles Blitch) shed light on why Young has, at least until recently, been renowned more for his massive erudition than for his published writings.

As population grows, industries blossom and demand for space increases, cities become the centre point for myriads of challenges for urban administrators. This chapter investigated challenges of urban development, land use changes and environmental impacts resulting from pressure on urban land. The study was primarily qualitative in nature and adopted a case study approach. The city of Ndola was selected for this purpose. Four institutions, namely, Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA), Water Resources Management Agency (WARMA), Kafubu Water and Sewerage Company (KWSC) and Ndola City Council (NCC), were used for data collection. At each institution, one official was purposively selected by management based on their knowledge and experience on the subject. The primary data were collected mainly through semi-structured questionnaires in face-to-face interviews. The chapter concludes that pressure for development land has resulted in increased demand for change of use, allocation and construction in environmentally vulnerable areas such as the Kafubu and Itawa River basins and their tributaries. This has further resulted in serious threats to the environment due to pollution of water sources from domestic and industrial waste. The chapter though argues that tools for overcoming these challenges are already provided for in the legislation, it is the implementation and effective coordination among agencies charged with planning, land allocation, water distribution and protection of the environment, such as ZEMA, WARMA, KWSC and NCC, which is lacking. Considering the foregoing, it is recommended that land and water administrative systems should be improved through among other things, effective consultation between various agencies involved in environmental management, zero tolerance to illegal land allocation and effective implementation of statutes.

Although the modern portfolio theory (MPT) asset allocation framework can be adopted to enable decision making for international and direct real estate investing, and that many institutional investors adopt it to support their decision making, this framework can be enhanced to capture the multi‐causal factors influencing international and direct real estate investing. The purpose of this paper is to explain how a fuzzy decision‐making approach is a more intuitive, yet rigorous alternative in this regard.

This paper is concerned with the model formation and estimation of a unique fuzzy tactical asset allocation (FTAA), which in turn comprises the FTAA flexible programming model and the FTAA robust programming model.

Both these FTAA models enhance the classical, Markowitz MPT portfolio theory on asset allocation through making it more intuitively appropriate for decision making in international and direct real estate investing.

These two FTAA models achieve the benefits of intuitively greater risk diversification by city or real estate sector and enable effective risk management. These two short‐run fuzzy models would be accepted and more such models would emerge as an effective extension of quadratic programming optimization, as more computable software programs of this kind are widespread.

Fuzzy approaches to asset allocation in the short run, are limited by some drawbacks. Fuzzy models possess the common feature of converting the equality function under quadratic programming optimization into inequality functions. Such inequality optimization replaces the point solution of the MPT TAA optimization problem, obtained through the rigid intersection of all functions, via a generalized or intuitive answer over a defined space of alternatives. The product of the fuzzy process with fuzzy inputs, in the form of fuzzy outcome is in actual fact a more natural and intuitive approach to asset optimization.

Sale-and-leaseback has become an increasingly common approach during the last two decades in the investment of high street banks (banking-halls) in the UK. One measure commonly used in making property investment decisions is the all risks yield (ARY) which is associated with the level of rental income. Investors and their advisors need to know which factors are likely to result in the highest ARY when assembling investment portfolios of such properties. The purpose of this paper is to identify those yield influences.

A qualitative multiple-case study was adopted. A literature review generated a hypothesis which was tested by a qualitative study, based upon semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire, to establish the influencing factors. Expert interviews were held with the heads of those three major auction-houses dealing with auctions of all retail bank premises in the Great Britain market, whilst the questionnaire survey involved investment professionals from within the auction-houses.

The study confirmed that the four factors influencing yields and investors’ decision-making when purchasing retail banking premises were tenant banking company (brand names), regional location (north and south super-regions), lot size (hammer price), and tenure (freehold or leasehold).

This investigation focuses on Great Britain’s geographical and political area which includes England, Scotland and Wales, but excludes Northern Ireland. This research focuses on banking-halls as a sub-class of retail property investment. The findings form a baseline upon which further research can be conducted on other sub-types of retail property such as high street shops and retail parks. The results will also underpin the development of a quantitative yield predictive model based on regression analysis.

To maximize the returns on property investments, investors and their professional advisors can use those factors having the greatest influence on yields to make informed investment decisions for the building of property portfolios.

As a sub-sector, bank premises do not necessarily correlate to the generic retail sector. This research consolidates the broad systematic drivers of retail yields into specific factors influencing the ARY of banking-halls. The findings provide better understanding of an active but sparsely analysed sub-market of banking hall investments, and by so-doing help investors to maximize their investment returns.