Regulating Land Development: Local Market Structures and Structured Markets

Current rounds of economic restructuring together with the changing priorities accorded to agricultural production are leading to significant shifts in rural property and tenure relations. This paper analyzes these processes with reference to rural Britain; it reports on empirical evidence collected in the county of Buckinghamshire in southeast England. Two significant types of new rural land development are considered—small-scale industrial units arising out of the conversion of agricultural buildings and golf course developments and their ancillary leisure-based activities. Post-war productionist forms of regulation and particularly established types of agricultural tenure are now being modified by farmers and nonagricultural interests committed to the development of rural land. New demands and market structures are requiring more diversity and flexibility by which land is owned, occupied, and used. These emergent, more flexible macro tenures are based on new sets of social and political alliances between farmers, developers, and local planning systems. Agricultural land is increasingly being viewed as a capital rather than as a productive asset associated with more volatile and regionally defined markets whose regulation is formative.     

Cancer Risk Assessment with Intermittent Exposure

Applications of methods for carcinogenic risk assessment often focus on estimating lifetime cancer risk. With intermittent or time-dependent exposures, lifetime risk is often approximated on the basis of a lifetime average daily dose (LADD). In this article, we show that there exists a lifetime equivalent constant dose (LECD) which leads to the same lifetime risk as the actual time-dependent exposure pattern. The ratio C = LECD/LADD then provides a measure of accuracy of risk estimates based on the LADD, as well as a basis for correcting such estimates. Theoretical results derived under the classical multistage model and the two-stage birth-death-mutation model suggest that the maximum value of C, which represents the factor by which the LADD may lead to underestimates of risk, will often lie in the range of 2- to 5-fold. The practical application of these results is illustrated in the case of astronauts subjected to relatively short-term exposure to volatile organics in a closed space station environment, and in the case of the ingestion of pesticide residues in food where consumption patterns vary with age.     

ALTERNATIVE COLLECTIVE-GOODS MODELS OF MILITARY ALLIANCES: THEORY AND EMPIRICS

How should the defense activities of allies be aggregated to determine the alliance-wide level of defense? Two alternative models–best shot and weakest link–are contrasted with simple summation of defense spending or manpower for aggregating allies' defense efforts. We extend the joint product model to include these methods of aggregation, and devise an empirical procedure to test between best-shot and weakest -link models. We apply this test to four alliances: Triple Alliance (1880–1914), Triple Entente (1880–1914), Warsaw Pact (1963–1987), and NATO (1961–1987). The testing procedure can be applied to other collective choice situations.     

Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahl's critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.     

The probability of degenerate maximum-likelihood estimates with randomly truncated survival data

We study the nonparametric maximum-likelihood estimator of the marginal distribution function in bivariate data with truncated sum (Woodroofe 1985), and calculate the probability that it will assign zero probability to a range of observed values. We show that in a simple artificial model with uniform intensity in both variables the probability may be expressed using recursive formulae, and that large-sample approximations valid under weak regularity conditions show good agreement with as few as 20 observations. In the uniform-intensity model, the probability of degenerate estimates is rather small, being just over 5% with a dataset of 20 observations and falling below 1% with 125 observations. However, in a model of transfusion-associated AIDS in 125 children and adults (Kalbfleisch and Lawless 1989), the probability of degenerate estimates is much larger—about 30% with 20 observations and 3% with the actual 125 observations. This is largely because both the infection and incubation density are increasing over time. Such a pattern makes the condition for degeneracy, i.e., relatively high observed intensity at extreme values of each variable, much more likely.     

A robust test for asymptotic independence of bivariate extremes

We show that the existing tests for asymptotic independence are sensitive to outliers. A robust test is proposed. The new test is made stable under contamination through a shrinkage scheme. Simulations show that the new test performs well in the presence of contaminated data while maintaining good properties when there is no contamination. An application to real data shows the added value of our new robust approach.     

A Graphical Display of Large Correlation Matrices

This department includes the two sections New Development in Statistical Computing and Statistical Computing Software Reviews; suitable contents for each of these sections are described under the respective section heading. Articles submitted for the department, outside the two sections, should not be highly technical and should be relevant to the teaching or practice of statistical computing.

Large correlation matrices are hard to look at. In this article we present correlations as elliptical glyphs for a simple intuitive display of large matrices.     

Exact Sampling from a Continuous State Space

Propp & Wilson (1996) described a protocol, called coupling from the past, for exact sampling from a target distribution using a coupled Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. In this paper we extend coupling from the past to various MCMC samplers on a continuous state space; rather than following the monotone sampling device of Propp & Wilson, our approach uses methods related to gamma-coupling and rejection sampling to simulate the chain, and direct accounting of sample paths.     

Locality and community: coming to terms with place

The paper seeks to examine how social science has attempted to combine the uniqueness of place with general social processes. Two concepts which have traditionally been used to this end are examined; these are ‘locality’ and ‘community’. It is argued that although community has fallen out of favour, problems associated with the use of ‘locality’ could lead to a revival in the use of the former concept. Case study material from rural Wales is presented to show how the two approaches might usefully be combined.     

A Passion for Prevention: An Interview with Anne Sved‐Williams

Anne Sved Williams is a perinatal and infant psychiatrist, who was trained in family therapy at the Ackerman Family Institute in New York, in 1976–77. In 1979, she was one of two women (the late Eleanor Wertheim being the other) invited to join the original Editorial Board of this journal. She is Director of Helen Mayo House and Psychiatric Services to the Women's and Babies Division, Women's and Children's Hospital Adelaide. She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide. In speaking with Colin MacKenzie, she recalls her introduction to family therapy, her training, her decision to move away from repair work with parents needing help in parenting adolescent children, in order to start ‘at the beginning’ with the parents of infants. She speaks of her pride in the ANZJFT's continuing tradition of Education Update, originally Anne's own initiative.