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This chapter presents projections of residential development in Wappinger Creek watershed of Dutchess County, New York in the Hudson River Valley. A spatial econometric model is developed based on data from a geographical information system (GIS) of county-level socio-economic trends, tax parcel attributes, town-level zoning restrictions, location variables, and bio-geophysical constraints including slope, soil type, riparian and agricultural zones. Monte Carlo simulation is employed to distribute spatially explicit projections of land-use change under various residential development scenarios. Scenario analysis indicates the likelihood of continued residential, decentralized development patterns in formerly agricultural and forested parcels. Policy scenarios demonstrate possible courses of action to direct development and protect watershed health.

In this research, the purpose of this paper is to assess the relative pricing behavior for land in Beijing, China. The paper sees this as important for three core reasons. First, China has a strong growth economy but is still in many ways an undeveloped country and thus the paper do not have significant data about asset pricing behavior there. Second, China has not traditionally had a market-based land and property transfer system – thus, it is interesting to assess how prices are determined relative to typical market expectations. Third, the authors have extensive evidence on pricing behavior in the USA and Europe but little such evidence on China – are the same variables important in land pricing in China and are there other unique local variables.

This paper analyzes prices of non-industrial and industrial land separately using a comprehensive data set and a semi-parametric framework. The data and flexible model specification allow the hedonic price coefficients to be estimated more accurately.

The key results are that pricing behavior in general follows the traditional expected variables as determined by size, planning use, location and other neighborhood characteristics. However, the authors also find that land prices are associated with buyer characteristics; for example, foreign investors pay less than local investors.

The study fills the gap in the literature in two ways. First, this paper analyzes prices of non-industrial and industrial land separately using a comprehensive data set and a semi-parametric framework. The data and flexible model specification allow the hedonic price coefficients to be estimated more accurately. Second, and more importantly, the authors find evidences that land prices in China are determined by both market force and “Chinese characteristics.” The land market, although established only recently, is at work. In line with the literature, determinants such as size and planning uses are found to be important in determining land prices.

In recent years, prices for prime farmland have increased substantially, begging the question is the dramatic increase the result of a speculative bubble or consistent with market fundamentals with increases driven by increased global demand, low interest rates, and recent changes to US agricultural and energy policies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of recent agricultural support policies and ethanol policies on farmland values and rental rates.

Farm-level Agricultural Resource Management Survey data collected by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) between 1998 and 2008 as well as county-level data collected by the USDA, US Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic Analysis are used to determine the impacts of recent agricultural support policies and ethanol policies on farmland values and rental rates, while controlling for parcel characteristics and urban pressure. Specifically, weighted ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares are used to investigate the impact of various governmental agricultural support policies, corn ethanol facilities location, and local corn ethanol production capacity on farmland values and rental rates.

The results indicate that government payments, urban pressure, and the proximity of the parcel to an ethanol facility have a positive impact on both farmland values and rental rates. More specifically, parcels located in the same county as at least one corn ethanol facility are more valuable and command higher rental rates. In addition, county-level ethanol production capacity is positively associated with farmland values and rental rates. An inverse relationship between distance of the parcels from an ethanol facility and farmland values is also found; a similar result is found for rental rates.

The findings suggest that agricultural support payments and ethanol policies are capitalized into farmland values. These findings have important implications for the formulation of future farm policy. A limitation of the analyses is that farmland values are estimated by landowners; future research could utilize farmland transaction data to overcome potential biases generated by using landowner estimates. In addition, while our study period covers 11 years, future research could expand the time period further to analyze the effect of more recent agricultural and ethanol policies.

This paper extends prior research pertaining to factors influencing farmland values and rental rates by also examining the proximity of the parcel to an operating ethanol facility using a unique data set.

During the past several decades, the decision-making process and the decision-makers’ role in it have changed dramatically. Because of this, the use of analytical tools, such as Excel, have become an essential component of most organizations. The analytical tools in Excel can provide today’s decision-maker with a competitive advantage. We will illustrate several powerful Excel tools that facilitate the decision support process.

This paper analyzes changes in property rights, land uses, and culturally based notions of ownership that have emerged following privatization of communal land in a Samburu pastoralist community in Northern Kenya. The research challenges the strict dichotomy between private and collective rights often found in property rights literature, which does not match empirical findings of overlapping and contested rights.

Part of a long-term ethnographic project investigating the process of land privatization and its outcomes, this paper draws on in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted by the author in Samburu County in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Interviews focused on how land is being used post-privatization as well as emerging social norms regulating its use.

Privatization privileges male household heads with powers including rental, sale, and bequeathal of land. However, informal rights to land extend to women and other household members. Exercise of legal rights is frequently limited due to knowledge and resource gaps. New rules regulating land use have emerged, some represent sharp divergences from past practice while others support shared access to land. These changes challenge Samburu cultural notions of individuality, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

This research illuminates complex changes following legal shifts in property rights and demonstrates the interactions between formal laws and informal social norms and cultural beliefs about land. The result is that privatization does not have easily predictable outcomes as some theories of property would suggest.

Empirical investigation of the effects of legal changes enables fuller understanding of the implications of policy changes that many governments are pursuing privatization with limited understanding of the likely effects.

The land sector in Ghana, particularly skin lands acquisition and title registration are fraught with several issues including unreliable record-keeping systems and land encroachments. The paper explores the potential of blockchain application in skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana with the aim of developing a blockchain-enabled framework for land acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to use the framework as a tool towards solving some of the loopholes in the process that leads to numerous issues bedeviling the current system.

The paper adopts a systematic literature review approach fused with informal discussions with key informants and leverages on the researchers’ own experiences to conceptualize blockchain application in skin lands acquisition in Ghana.

Problems bedeviling skin lands acquisition and title registration emanated from the issuance of allocation notes, payment of kola money and use of a physical ledger to document land transactions. As a result, the developed framework was designed to respond to these issues and deal with the problems. As the proposed blockchain framework would be a public register, it was argued that information on all transactions on a specific parcel of land could be available to the public in real-time. This enhances transparency and possibly resolves the issue of encroachments and indeterminate land boundaries because stakeholders can determine rightful owners of land parcels before initiating transactions.

Practically, blockchain technology has the potential to deal with the numerous issues affecting the smooth operation of skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana. Once the enumerated issues are resolved, there will be certainty of title to and ownership of land and property to drive investments because lenders could more easily ascertain owners of land parcels that could be used as collateral for securing loans. Similarly, property developers and land purchasers could easily identify rightful owners for land transactions. The government would be able to identify owners for land and property taxation.

This paper contributes to the literature on blockchain and application to land acquisition and title registration with a focus on a specific customary land ownership system.

This paper aims to quantify the impact of environmental contamination on farmland valuation. It applies data fusion and hedonic pricing approaches to quantify the contribution of nitrogen and phosphorus loading on farmland sales transactions. It further suggests approaches to improve internalization of environmental cost in valuation approaches using shadow pricing. The work informs the field of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing by fusing environmental data with financial transactions.

This paper is an empirical study implementing hedonic pricing of farmland in the Lake Huron major drainage area. Data sources and fusion were derived from AcreValue, the United States Department of Agriculture's Gridded Soil Survey Geographic database (gSSURGO) and the United States Geological Survey's Spatially Referenced Regression on Watershed Attributes database (SPARROW).

The results suggest that environmental contamination has statistically significant positive determination power on farmland prices such that prices increase with contamination. Conventional metrics such as percentage of cultivated land in the parcel, root zone depth, whether the parcel is designated by the Natural Resource Conservation Service as prime farmland, and the size of the farmland parcel contribution to farmland value as well. The results indicate that environmental impacts are not accurately accounted for in farmland transactions.

This paper points to inaccurate valuation of environmental contamination in farmland value. While geocoding allowed for positioning of farmland sales transactions relative to modeled areas of contaminant loading in the Lake Huron drainage area, the interpretation indicates that value is driven by cultivation. Hence, generalization to other areas needs a cautious approach. Empirical testing across locations and drainage areas with diverse farmland features will serve to verify the modeled data used in this study.

The lack of integration of externalities in land valuation has implications on lending and disclosure practices, as financial service providers increasingly seek to account for ESG risk on their loan books and broader investment portfolios. The impact of farmland accounting practices for contamination such as shadow pricing may impact land valuation based on future cash flows, and may serve to inform sustainability-linked lending practices to farm operations.

This is the first paper to fuse data from AcreValue, gSSURGO and SPARROW to discover the explanatory power of nutrient contamination in farmland value in the Lake Huron major drainage area.

The rapid urban population growth in Ethiopia is causing an increasing demand for urban land, which primarily tends to be supplied by expropriation of peri-urban land. The process of urban development in Ethiopia is largely criticized for forced displacement and disruption of the peri-urban local community. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to introduce how Ethiopia’s urban development system could be built on the participatory and inclusive approaches of land acquisition.

The study has employed questionnaire survey results, focus group discussion with panel of experts and previous research reports to examine the peri-urban situations and then to show why an alternative land development approach is needed to be introduced in the urban land development system of Ethiopia. Desk review on land readjustment was also made to explore best lessons from other countries applicable to the peri-urban contexts of Ethiopia.

This study has explored that land readjustment is potentially an appropriate land development tool to alleviate peri-urban land development limitations in Ethiopia.

Researchers, policy makers and government bodies that are interested in peri-urban land would appreciate and consider implementing the adapted land readjustment model as an alternative land development tool. Consequently, the local peri-urban landholders’ rights would be protected and maintained in the process of urbanization.

Although land readjustment has the potential to achieve participatory peri-urban land development, awareness of the method in the Ethiopian urban land development system is inadequate. This study contributes to fill this gap and create an insight into the basic conditions for the adaption of the tool.

In the past property research has been constrained by inadequate technology and unavailable data. In recent years, however, significant advances have been made in both of these areas. To an extent they are closely related – as technology improves the ability to collect and handle large volumes of property data becomes more achievable. This is evident as many surveying firms computerise their property files and commercial data suppliers collect, integrate and market increasing volumes of property data. Furthermore, in the public sector, the Ordnance Survey, Land Registry, Valuation Office, DETR, utilities and local authorities are custodians of substantial property data sets which are increasingly held in digital form. This paper describes the key issues that arise when property information is recorded in a database and, in particular, a geo‐referenced database. Some of the issues have been addressed in the British Standard for a National Land and Property Gazetteer but there is flexibility built into this standard which inevitably leads to disparity between gazetteers created by local authorities. There are also particular concerns when the standard is applied in a commercial rather than public sector environment. These issues are fundamental to the ability to integrate property data from disparate sources for property research purposes. The paper draws on experience of the use of the Land and Property Gazetteer in the National Land Information Service pilot in Bristol and the development of land and property gazetteers by local authorities and private practice. The impact of the National Land Use Database and the UK Standard Geographic Base initiatives are also considered.