The purpose of this thesis is two fold: first, to focus attention on the problems of urban expansion and the trend towards suburban living and secondly, to investigate a technique which could be used by semi-rural municipalities to control one of the problems of suburbanization, that of premature conversion of farm land to non-farm uses. Many techniques are presently used to control land use and urban development in municipalities in transition from a rural to an urban character, but generally, these techniques have failed to protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. The technique examined in this thesis is that of financial control as exercised through property taxation. After substantiating the increasing demand for land for urban uses, a brief examination of the forces which regulate the supply and demand of land is presented to aid the understanding of the principle of highest and best use as applied to competing land uses. This illustrates the cause for the premature conversion of farm land to non-farm uses. An examination is made of the conversion of farm land to non-farm uses with emphasis on premature conversion and the economic and social costs which arise from this conversion. In view of the increasing rate of conversion of farm land to non-farm uses and the costs which can be attributed to premature conversion of farm land, it becomes evident that a technique which will protect farm land from premature conversion should be implemented. By studying the ways and means currently available for the control of land use and land development by a public agency, it is found that the regulations do not protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. Since financial control of land use exercised through taxation is not used to any appreciable degree by municipal governments, the relationship of land use and property tax is studied. In this evaluation, particular attention is placed on the effect of property taxes on farm land. This leads to the conclusion that high property taxes can force land into a more intensive use. As a result of this conclusion, it is proposed that a reduction in farm property taxes would protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. Rather than use an arbitrary tax rate to lower farm taxes, the tax rate is related to the cost of services provided for farm property. Using 1961 data collected from The Corporation of The Township of Richmond, a 'rural-urban' municipality adjacent to the City of Vancouver in British Columbia, it is shown by apportioning the municipal revenues and expenditures to farm and non-farm property that a tax rate related to the cost of services provided for farm land would reduce the farm taxes. The reduction in taxes is then related to the farm land income, which is measured by farm land rental values, to determine the effect it would have in protecting farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. An analysis of the farm land income shows that the net return to farm land is comprised of tangible and intangible elements. The tangible or monetary return to the farm land is low when compared with the return available from other low risk investments. Thus, it appears that the intangible returns such as the value as a homesite, the possibility of a capital gain and the prestige of land ownership are greater than the economic returns. From this it is concluded that a reduction in farm taxes arising from relating the tax rate to the cost of services provided for farm property may, depending upon the taxation system, encourage farm land owners to keep their land in farm use, but would not protect farm land from premature conversion to non-farm uses. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The tax on real property continues to be a major factor in the fiscal structure of municipal governments. Therefore, justice dictates that the impact of this tax be distributed equitably, however "equitable" may be defined by the legislative authority. This is an administrative problem. In many jurisdictions the administration is directed to distribute the tax impact on an ad valorem basis of current market value. Statistical measures have been devised in order to measure the uniformity of the assessment of current market values. The random variable is defined as the ratio of assessed value to actual sale price, and the sample is the result of property sales which occur under conditions which are circumscribed by the definition of market value. The estimated parameters are then used to make direct statistical inferences regarding the level and uniformity of assessment. These parameters are then compared to pre-selected standard parameters in order to judge the relative uniformity of the assessment roll. First, market generated sales do not produce a random sample of the assessment roll. Therefore, direct statistical inferences from the sample do not apply to the assessment roll. Second, it is demonstrated that the standard parameters are implicitly based on an assumption that the universe of assessment-sale price ratios is normally distributed. The results of empirical investigation upon the Vancouver assessment roll indicate that the normality assumption cannot be justified. Therefore, the pre-selected standards are useless as measures by which to judge the relative uniformity of an assessment roll. Two alternative measures of assessment quality are proposed. First, a binomial model based on correct and incorrect valuation is examined. Though this has some practicable possibilities, it cannot, without some important value judgements, be used to measure degrees of quality or uniformity. A second alternative is proposed in order to overcome the above limitation. The alternative suggests that a good assessment roll have assessment-market value ratios which are normally distributed, and that the actual distribution of assessment-sale price ratios be tested for "goodness-of-fit" to the ideal distribution. The test parameters can be transformed to probability levels which would measure the quality or uniformity of the assessment roll. This measure may indicate that a highly uniform assessment roll on which most of the properties are under-assessed is of lower quality than an assessment roll on which more properties are correctly assessed, but less uniformly assessed. Though it is unlikely that uniformity of assessment can be achieved without correct valuation, it cannot be held that an assessment roll on which more properties are correctly assessed is of higher quality of assessments than a roll on which most properties are under-assessed, if the uniformity of assessment on the former roll is not at least as high as the uniformity of assessment on the latter roll. Since the measures of assessment quality and uniformity examined are not satisfactory, it is concluded that statistical analysis in assessment administration may be more usefully applied to the analysis of the causes of assessment errors than to the measurement of the number and size of the errors. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The reception of copyright in the English common law in the eighteenth century provides a unique opportunity to study the jurisprudential concept of property rights at a moment of change. While copyright, or to use the contemporary term, the "right of copy", had been in the process of development since the introduction of the printing press into England in 1476, it was not until 1709 that Parliament enacted the first copyright statute, the Statute of Anne 8 Anne, c. 19. Sixty years later in Millar v. Taylor 4 Burr 2303, 98 Er 202, the Court of King's Bench considered the nature and purpose of copyright for the first time. The case arose in the course of the "literary property debate", a commercial struggle between rival booksellers for predominance in the emerging book trade. This paper proceeds through a detailed study of the genesis and theoretical background of Millar v. Taylor to address two questions: (1) in what sense did copyright constitute a "new property" in the common law, and how did it contribute to a conceptual change in property rights; (2) how did English courts conceive of "authorship" during the evolution of copyright, and how, in turn, did copyright as it emerged from the literary property debate alter the role of the author ? The judgments of Justice Joseph Yates and of William Murray, Lord Mansfield, offered particular insights into each of these questions. Justice Yates, in dissent, perceived that copyright posed a challenge to traditional property theory, especially to arguments grounded in natural law. As its subject matter was the intangible of literary ideas and expression, he argued the need for limits to be imposed on copyright in the interests of the public domain. The property right could not be derived from value, as it was the right itself which created value. Lord Mansfield adopted a natural law approach, but located it largely in the personal, as opposed to proprietary, interests which copyright served. The author's interests in privacy and in controlling the product of his intellectual labour formed, for him, a principal justification for the property right. The paper explores these ideas, first, by giving a close reading to the precedent cited in Millar v. Taylor (1769), and tracing back through precedent cited therein to the roots of intellectual property in English law. Second, the insights of Justice Yates and Lord Mansfield are taken forward through subsequent developments in legal theory and copyright. In particular, the recognition, which followed Millar v. Taylor and vindicated Justice Yates' position, of copyright as a statutory property designed and limited by political choice is shown as characterising the leading theoretical approaches to property rights-- including utilitarian, Realist and critical approaches—which now predominate in jurisprudence. Further, Lord Mansfield's understanding of the dual purpose of copyright is examined in relation to a personhood justification of property, and in terms of the evolution of copyright as a property regime for protecting factual works of information, and fictional works of imagination. The paper endeavours to highlight both the concern for public domain and for personal interests of authors which had such significance in the early development of copyright. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

The trend in house prices is of importance to governments, financial institutions and households. However, currently no proven reliable indicator of house prices exists. The lack of an accurate house price series is due to two major factors. First convenient and accurate data on house prices are not readily available and data collection from the Land Registry Office is both time consuming and costly. The second factor relates to the problem of changes in the quality of the series through time. This quality problem has two basic aspects. First, the quality of the index may be influenced by shifts in the distribution of sales between different values of homes. The second problem arises from the unique nature of real estate as to its’ location, age, condition, etc. Unlike other indices, there is no standardized unit of housing to which price quotations may, be reduced, thus the quality of the housing sold in each year will be different. In this study, the problems encountered in sampling and constructing a price index for the single family housing stock are identified and analyzed both conceptually and empirically. The conceptual examination involves a review of the literature as well as an analysis of the methodologies employed in the construction of the major housing indicies in use today. The empirical analysis is done through the construction of a price series for the eight rapidly growing cities and municipalities of the Greater Vancouver Regional District for the years 1949 to 1976. The indicies are based upon data obtained from the Land Registry Offices in British Columbia and are designed to be statistically representative of all sales for those areas during the study period. The analysis forms a basis for future research into housing indicies and in particular, provides a reliable benchmark series against which alternative measures of price changes can be tested. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

M.Ing. / With the introduction of "International Financial Reporting Standards" (IFRS) through out Europe in April 2001, there is a requirement to accurately report the value of all company assets. This will include by implication all intangible assets and Intellectual Property, such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and know-how. Items that have not been recorded before are much more visible under IFRS and will need to be carefully interpreted by investors and analysts. In order to meet the future needs of their business, companies will require stringent measures to determine and report the true value of their assets, including intangible assets like patents, trademarks, copyrights, and know-how. Currently there is a lack in methodology which can accurately and reliably determine the value of Intellectual Property for the European business community. Research is being performed by the Max Planck institute in Munich (home of the European Patent Office) to develop a comprehensive model to uniformly evaluate different types of intangible assets. There are several different quantitative models which are which are being used currently to value patents. The existing methods can not be used to objectively compare patents with one another. It is necessary to build a method that can be applied systematically to different patents in various contexts to achieve symetrical evaluations. This dissertation project will be focused on building a model to produce a score for European Patents indicative of their statistical survivability. The model will predict which patents will be maintained based on objective criteria that correlate with historical maintenance of previous patents. The model will examine different factors that have a statistically significant correlation to either higher or lower survivability or abandonment rates. Examples of the factors to be considered include: prior art citations, disclosure, claims, prosecutions, forward citing, ownership and others. This project will produce a model which indicates the statistically survivability of European Patents in terms of a qualitative score which gives an indication of how valuable a patent will be in terms of it's survivability in a legal landscape. This model will then be extended by research currently underway at the Max Planck Institute, to a more comprehensive model that takes additional variables into account, but this is 2 outside the scope of this project. The extension of this system is to encompass the technological, financial and business strategic and legal landscapes. This project contributes towards a system that will help determine the value of a company's Intellectual Property, allowing these intangible assets to be disclosed to shareholders as required by the new International Financial Reporting Standards in Europe.

3 pp. / Originally published: 2011 / Zoning is the mechanism by which government protects public health, safety and welfare in addition to minimizing impacts to neighboring properties. This fact sheet informs the reader on where to go to find out about the zoning of their rural property in Arizona and what limitations and opportunities their zoning calls for. Revised 9/2016; Originally published 1/2011

Three economic issues in property/casualty insurance are examined in this thesis. Chapter 2 explores the impact of supply side heterogeneity on the market equilibrium. Multiple period contracting and informational issues are examined in Chapters 3 and 4. Property/casualty insurance is marketed in two manners: through agency writers and direct writers. Direct writers can sell insurance at a lower cost than agency writers. By exploiting demand side characteristics, Chapter 2 extends the traditional literature by examining the behaviour of heterogeneous insurers within a framework that admits both direct and agency writers in equilibrium. Heterogeneous travel costs are used to support this equilibrium. A second model is developed in which claim frequency heterogeneity is introduced on the demand side. It is assumed that agency writers can better discern a consumer's risk type. Characteristics of equilibria under which direct and agency writers exist are derived. In Chapter 3, Rothschild and Stiglitz's (1976) single period insurance model is extended to multiple periods. In a multiple period framework, insurers offer a sequence of single period contracts in which future contracts are conditioned on past contract choices. For dynamic consistency, once low risks have revealed their type, future contracts must be contingent on this event. This contract structure is compared to both a sequence of one period pooling contracts and a sequence of one period separating contracts. Numerical examples illustrate the results. In Chapter 4, learning by insurers is examined in a model in which consumers possess search costs. The presence of search costs allows inefficient insurers to remain in the market, and allows lower cost firms to earn higher profit loadings each period. Insurers, who possess differing initial valuations of a consumer's loss propensity, update the contract offered each period based on a consumer's past accident history. In a multiple period setting, consumers search for new coverage and switch insurers when the price charged by their contracting insurer exceeds the price that they are willing to pay. / Business, Sauder School of / Finance, Division of / Graduate

The objective of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the process by which residential land prices are determined and change over time. A special concern is also shown for the causal relationship between the prices of building lots and the selling prices of new single-detached housing built on those lots. In the introductory chapter, the upward climb over the years in the average price of building lots relative to the increase in new house prices is identified as a matter in need of closer study. The significance of this subject for planning practice is seen to lie in the power of planning authorities to intervene in the operation of property markets, and in the role of planning authorities implied in many proposals for solving the land price problem. In Chapter Two, numerous theoretical analyses and empirical studies of the determination and inter-temporal variation in residential land prices are surveyed. A critical assessment of the literature made in the first part of Chapter Three identifies several shortcomings. A static rather than dynamic approach, the assumption of market equilibrium and perfect competition, inadequate treatment of supply-demand interaction, and a limited behavioral content, characterize most of the works surveyed. A theoretical model is subsequently developed to explain the process by which residential lot prices are determined and change over time. Its fundamental hypothesis is that the level of new house prices and their changes over time are a prime determinant of lot prices and their intertemporal variation, while the profit-maximizing behavior of lot sellers and housebuilders generates the process by which lot prices increase over time. In Chapter Four, an empirical investigation is proposed for testing the theoretical model. Data on residential construction in Canada over the 1951-1977 period and financed under the provisions of the National Housing Act are selected for the investigation. Since the data pertain to a portion rather than the whole of the lot market, the theoretical model is reformulated in light of this and other empirical conditions. The Chapter is concluded with an outline of the statistical procedures to be used in the investigation. The results of the study are presented in Chapter Five. They are found to be generally consistent with the hypotheses of the empirical model, and the postulates of the theoretical model. It is concluded, among other things , that lot sellers and housebuilders behave in the manner proposed by the models, and that lot price increases are determined by house price increases. However, the validity of the model and wider application of the empirical findings are judged to be limited by the characteristics of the data used in the study. The concluding chapter offers several suggestions for future research on land prices and some implications for planning and public policy. The need for an improved economic understanding in urban planning is identified. A potential role is identified for planners in the provision of information in a market where imperfect information is a major source of observed market failure. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This doctoral thesis consists of five self-contained essayspresented to the Faculty Board of the Royal Institute ofTechnology. Property valuation is a central issue that forms acommon thread in the analysis in these essays. In the thesisproperty is considered in a mixed asset context in an attemptto build a bridge between valuation, property investment andfinancial theory. The object of the thesis is to value propertyfor finance, sales and purchases and investment. Theinvestigation of the thesis extends traditional valuation withan integrated approach using econometric technology. Essay I estimates the market value of townhouses underdevelopment in a North American city. The traditional hedonicregression model is used to predict the value of the complex asa whole, as well as of the individual unit. The role of theproperty tax in explaining property valuation is indicated andthe valuation errors of the predicted values estimated in theessay relative to the prices realized in the market suggest thefeasibility of regression analysis for preconstructionappraisal. Essay II investigates the implicit prices of property valuesin the Beijing residential market. An uncertainattribute—"perceived construction risk" enters the modelas a proxy for a consumer's subjective probability ofconstruction quality. Public facilities are found to reduce thevalue of residences and consumers would be willing to pay ahighly substantial amount of money to protect themselves fromthe risk of poor construction quality. Essay III studies the long-term relationship between housingprices and property stock prices under the Swedish rent controlsystem from 1980 to 1998. The Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modelwith a subsystem approach is used to test cointegration and theError Correction Model (ECM) and Granger Causality are alsotested. The tests provide evidence of co-movement between thehousing market and property stock market and suggest the roleof rentals in raising the speed of movement towards thelong-term equilibrium of asset prices. Essay IV models the volatility of property stock returns inthe Swedish market from 1990 to 1999. The GeneralAutoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model isapplied to capture time-varying volatility and the GARCH-Mmodel is used to price this volatility. The vacancy rate isfound to help explain persistent volatility and risk spillovereffects from the bond market and the direct real estate marketare expected. Essay V analyzes the inflation hedging ability of Swedishproperty stocks from 1980 to 1999. Two expected inflationrates—UND1x inflation and GARCH inflation—andcointegration technology are used for this study. For theperiod as a whole, no inflation hedging behavior is found, butfor the period of 1986–1993 when the vacancy rate was low,short-run inflation hedging is indicated. / <p>NR 20140805</p>

Magister Legum - LLM / Abstract to be made available soon. / South Africa