Long-term Tenure Research Articles

Growing the new forest – The evolution of applied silviculture in Alberta

Hinton, Alberta, was the birthplace of the province’s modern forest industry, and it became the proving ground for sustainable forest management in Alberta. The lease agreement establishing the province’s first pulp mill there in 1954 granted long-term tenure on a forestland in return for the company accepting all the costs of inventory, planning, harvest, and reforestation. Des Crossley, a former CFS research scientist, was the company’s first Chief Forester. He and his team pioneered many new approaches to sustained yield forest management. These included silvicultural techniques to encourage natural regeneration and, when these were inappropriate, the development of Alberta’s first containerized seedling system. Silviculture systems continued to evolve and improve through a combination of research, data collection, analysis, innovation, and adaptation in each aspect of silviculture at Hinton.

Caught in the adjunct trap

Based on personal experiences garnered through years of adjunct instruction, the authors explore the challenges associated with working in academia without the guarantees of a long-term contract or tenure. Further, adjuncts are desperate to accept any position that is remunerative and this willingness undermines contract negotiation leverage of every member of the academic teaching community.

Landless Homeowners in Forgotten America: Identifying the Nexus Between Long-Term Poverty, Homeownership, and Land Tenure

Several predominately rural regions and communities in the United States have experienced high poverty rates for long periods of time. Often forgotten or hidden from mainstream America, these areas are almost exclusively rural, isolated geographically, lack economic opportunities, and suffer from decades of disinvestment and double-digit poverty rates. Persistent poverty regions have many shared indices of economic distress; yet they also differ in terms of demographic and cultural composition, geography, and underlying economies. Another “shared difference, “ is the prevalence of unique land tenure issues such as contract for deeds, absentee ownership, mineral rights, heirs’ property, and tribal trust lands. Such land-home arrangements often complicate homeownership, wealth accumulation, and the provision of affordable housing. This research note introduces the nexus between land tenure, low-income homeownership, and persistent poverty communities from a comprehensive perspective with the goal of beginning a discussion on how to inform policies and strategies that assist low- and poverty-income homeowners realize their full asset and wealth accumulation potential.

Migration, Informal Urban Settlements and Non-market Land Transactions: a case study of Wewak, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea

This paper examines the various ways in which migrant settlers have gained and maintained access to land in the informal urban settlements of Wewak, the provincial capital of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Urban population growth in PNG and in Pacific Island states more generally is predicted to grow rapidly over the next two decades. Given the limited availability of formal housing for lower income people, it is likely that many will live in informal urban settlements on land owned by customary landowners. To date, there is very little information on how migrants living in informal settlements obtain and maintain access to land to erect dwellings and pursue livelihoods. Drawing on field research carried out in seven informal settlements in Wewak, the paper describes the historical, trading and/or marital ties between landowners and the original settler community. The discussion focuses on how access rights are maintained and have changed over time as the social and exchange relationships deteriorate between second-generation urban migrants and younger-generation landowners. The weakening of the social relationships between these two groups undermines the long-term use rights of migrants. By examining the changing tenure security of second-generation migrants the paper shows that whilst informal land markets perform an important role in housing provision for the urban poor they often fail to deliver long-term tenure security. The paper finishes with a brief consideration of the implications of the research findings for guiding policies on urban land reform and planning on customary land in PNG.

Managerial power, perquisite consumption and the efficiency of property right system: Evidence from Chinese listed companies

This research uses data of Chinese listed companies during 2001–2004 to test the effects of managerial power on perquisite consumption and firm performance from the perspectives of CEO duality, ownership dispersion and long-term tenure of top executives. Results show that companies with higher managerial power tend to incur higher perquisite consumption, while their performance does not improve accordingly. Moreover, perquisite consumption fails to offer effective incentives to managers, and non-state-controlled listed companies have greater managerial power, higher perquisite consumption, and worse performance than that of their state-controlled peers. Results also show that managerial power is an important factor influencing compensation incentive.

Early Attempts at Establishing Exclusive Rights in the British Columbia Salmon Fishery

<i>Resource managers struggled to discharge their responsibilities as the British Columbia salmon fishery expanded. With limited management and regulatory capacity and facing increasing fishing effort, exclusive rights appeared to be viable management tools. Exclusive area fishing privileges and limitations on the numbers of fishermen and processing plants were used. But, despite the potential for efficient harvesting and other benefits, the exclusive rights did not last. Established to meet short-term needs, not for long-term benefits, the rights allocations were flawed and opposed by many. With little assurance of exclusivity, no secure long-term tenure, and little transferability, the rights were incomplete.</i> (JEL Q22)

Strength in Numbers? the Experiences and Attitudes of Women in Sports Media Careers

This survey of women who work in sports media explored their everyday work experiences and factors that may discourage them from staying in sports media careers. It also explored the liberal feminist assertion that more women working in sports media would lead to better coverage of female sports by probing the values and commitment of respondents in relationship to female sports coverage. Although sports departments may have become more tolerant during the past decade, women who enter sports media careers still face a patriarchal environment that discourages them from pursuing long-term tenure. Further, many survey respondents seem to have adopted hegemonic values, making them more willing to accept their marginal status in the field and less likely to facilitate any change for the marginalized status of women's sports coverage.

Political Economy and Population Growth in Early Modern Japan

During the feudal Edo period (1603-1868) in Japan, the shogunate government relied for regional control on hereditary feudal barons as well as its own bakufu bureaucracy. Compared with hereditary lords, bakufu officials had shorter and uncertain tenure. Examining easily available historical data, the paper finds that regions ruled by bakufu bureaucrats are associated with (a) slower population growth, (b) slower growth in productive capacity, and (c) higher incidences of civil unrest. The evidence supports Mancur Olson's thesis that those with coercive power will be lead by their encompassing interest to provide growth-friendly environment when they are assured of a stable, long-term tenure.

Policies and incentives for the adoption of improved fallows

Policies play a strong role in providing incentives and disincentives for farmers to invest in improved fallow systems along with other agroforestry systems. The aim of this paper is to raise a number of policy issues relevant to the adoption and impact of improved fallow systems and then to identify several options for policy makers to create a policy environment, which addresses market failures and alleviates disincentives for adoption of improved fallow systems. Policy issues are organized around six key criteria for adoption of any natural resource management practice by decision makers: (i) awareness of a natural resource problem, (ii) importance of the resource, (iii) willingness to invest (e.g., long-term tenure rights), (iv) capacity to invest (e.g., labor or land), (v) economic incentives (e.g., technical performance and attractive prices), and (vi) support services (e.g., extension or germplasm availability). The analysis across these themes is multi-scale, addressing issues at the plot, farm, community, and regional/national levels. Key areas for getting policies right with respect to improved fallows are mineral fertilizer policy, planting material production and distribution, and property rights to ensure that farmers can invest in fallows and reap the benefits.

An examination of variation in long-term community tenure after psychiatric hospitalization in eight states.

The influence of seven personal and clinical characteristics on the community tenure of discharged state hospital patients in eight states is analyzed and discussed. Previous admission to a state hospital and a diagnosis of schizophrenia were associated with shorter community tenure. Older patients had longer community tenure than younger. These findings were consistent across the states and are consistent with previous work that focused on much narrower populations. The relationship of these risk factors to community tenure are discussed from an individualistic perspective, a treatment oriented perspective, and a community integrationist perspective, and implications for further research are explored.

The Relationship Between Work Values and Normative and Instrumental Commitment

ABSTRACT This study was an examination of the relationships among intrinsic and extrinsic work values and normative (norm-based/internal) and instrumental (reward-based/external) organizational commitment. Responses from 97 clerical workers indicated that employees with high scores for intrinsic work values had significantly higher normative (norm-based) commitment scores than those with low scores for intrinsic work values. Employees with high scores for extrinsic work values had significantly higher instrumental (reward-based) commitment scores than those with low scores for extrinsic work values. Also, employees with short-term tenure had significantly higher instrumental commitment scores than those with long-term tenure, whereas those with long-term tenure had higher normative commitment scores. The results stress the need to measure the reward-based nature of commitment and its correlates.

Encouraging Long-Term Tenure: Wage Tilt or Pensions?

Encouraging Long-Term Tenure: Wage Tilt or Pensions?

Encouraging Long-Term Tenure: Wage Tilt or Pensions?

The author analyzes data on 6,416 persons in 109 firms to determine whether the length of these workers' tenure was positively related either to wage tilt—the payment of below-market wages in the early years of the worker's employment with a firm and above-market wages in the later years—or to the presence of defined benefit pension plans. Contrary to the popular (but little-tested) hypothesis that wage tilt is important in inducing workers to make long-term commitments to the firm, the results show that wage tilt had no significant effect on tenure, except indirectly through its effect on pension quit costs. In contrast, pensions increased tenure in the firm, on average, by more than 20%.

Institutional and Environmental Constraints to Agricultural Intensification

ESTER BOSERUP HAS ARGUED THAT SOCIETIES across the world have responded to increasing land scarcity in a strikingly similar and predictable manner. These societies have moved from shifting cultivation (land-extensive) systems to sedentary (land-intensive) cultivation systems. This process of agricultural intensification is usually associated with the adoption of technologies for soil fertility maintenance, labor savings, and land investments. During the early stages of intensification these technologies, such as manure use, animal draft power, and the like, are usually farmer generated. Scienceand industry-based technical change becomes important only under higher farming intensities and where populations are growing extremely rapidly. While examples abound of the population and market demand-induced productivity growth through intensification, there are other examples where intensification has led to reduced labor productivity. Declining productivity has sometimes been accompanied by soil depletion, exhaustion, and even abandonment (National Research Council, 1986). The magnitude and severity of the problem depend on the rate of population growth, the extent of institutional rigidities, and the nature of the agroclimatic environment (climate, soil type, and slope characteristics of the region). This essay reviews and synthesizes case study evidence from Africa and Asia on the institutional and environmental constraints to successful intensification. The following are identified as the major causes of the unsuccessful transition to sustainable pennanent cultivation systems: (1) Institutional innovations, especially the evolution of long-term rights to land, although induced by population growth, often tend to occur at a slower pace. (2) Despite secure longterm tenure to land, free rider problems may prevent collective action for making watershed-level investments to prevent land degradation. (3) In marginal environments, the returns to preventive land investments may be low. And (4)

New Hope in Italy: Land of the Noonday Sun

STRONG feelings of sectionalism exist between North and South Italy, and the Italian people have begun only recently to realize that the prosperity and progress of one region is limited by the degree of prosperity and progress in the other. Central to the problem of aiding the depressed agrarian South is the question of land reform, which the Italian government has moved energetically to meet. A new series of laws and policies have evolved since World War II, in an attempt to narrow the economic and social schism between the regions. The departure from a prewar emphasis on local initiative and expenditure, the work of the land reform authorities, the accelerated provision of agricultural credit, and especially, the comprehensive nature and long-term tenure of these programs signifies a maximum effort by the Italian government.' The Italian peninsula had no unity nor real independence from the time of the fall of Rome to the unification under