This thesis examines the social structure of the Caribbean island of Tobago between 1838, the year of the Emancipation of the slaves, and 1900, the year after Tobago was united to Trinidad to form the Colony of Trinidad and Tobago. One chapter gives the background to this period, by analysing the major social groupings, cleavages and conflicts of the slavery era, particularly of the years just prior to the Emancipation. The study has two main objectives. Firstly, it describes and analyses the changing class/colour configuration of Tobago, and the way in which gender was constitutive of the structuring of access to land, occupations and social mobility. This is done both on the period before the collapse of the sugar economy in the 1880s and on the restructuring of the society after 1884. Secondly, this case study in historical sociology is placed within the framework of the theoretical literature on the sociology of development. It seeks to explain the acute economic crisis which Tobago underwent in the 1880s, which led to the collapse of both its sugar economy and its viability as a separate government. Within the matrix of Tobago's dependence in the global capitalist system, the study shows the critical explanatory factors to be the source and deployment of capital, the social structure of the island, and the outcomes of intra- and inter-class struggles. The analysis is multi-faceted, using a variety of sources to understand the demographic, political, economic and social dimensions of societal structure and change. Since metayage (sharecropping) was the dominant relationship of production after 1848, theories on metayage are examined and related to the Tobago evidence. The Caribbean debate on the 'flight from the estates' after Emancipation is also considered, and new, fruitful lines of analysis are explored. Directions for future research, particularly on Grenada, are given.

The thesis describes and explains average house prices and the distribution of house prices in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s, and average house and land prices and their distribution in Sydney from 1925 to 1970. Part I starts with a brief discussion of the special nature of housing. The rest of Part I describes the house and land prices that the study aims to explain. The Sydney data are described at greater length because these were developed mainly by the writer. Part II reviews economic theories of the price of housing services in the long and short run, the distribution of house prices, and the relationship between house and land prices. The models of average house prices allow, inter alia, for the dual role of housing as a consumption good and asset, the interaction between the demand for and supply of housing, and the disequilibrium nature of the housing market. The models of the distribution of house prices draw on economic theories of urban structure and hedonic house prices. Part III applies these models to explain short and long-run changes in house prices in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide since about 1970; the distribution of house prices within each city; and intercity differences in house prices. Part IV models average house and land prices, and explains their spatial distribution, in Sydney from 1925 to 1970. Part V summarises the main results of the research. The thesis provides plausible explanations for most of the observed major house price phenomena. The Appendices contain a note on the requirements for a Ph.D., a review of relevant literature by other writers, and a summary of related work on property prices by the author.

This thesis investigates the value of housing which is a specific group of investment assets and a major component of household wealth for the UK, in particular the primary valuation drivers of the UK housing prices, by using quantitative modelling. Understanding the primary valuation drivers of housing prices will make market participants aware of the size of their risk exposure and can help them to detect early signals of the possibility of investment opportunities. Policy-makers can use information about the underlying valuation drivers of the house prices to stabilize the market. This thesis contributes to literature both methodologically and empirically. This thesis proposes a three-step theoretical framework for studying the drivers of housing prices. The rationale is that people make investment decisions by studying the underlying costs and benefits. Additionally, people respond to expectations under the given behaviour rules, which refer to the institutions in place. There are a series of empirical findings. Firstly, the classical fixed parameter models are poor in terms of robustness, especially the regression coefficient changes in both magnitude and sign over samples. The time varying coefficients indicate the possibility of institutional changes and the changes in expectations. Secondly, the thesis supports the bounded rationality expectation hypothesis implying that the UK housing bubbles reflect people’s biased expectations. The UK house prices were undervalued from 1996Q1 to 2002Q4; and thereafter overvalued. As a proportion, the bubble ranges from -52% to 27.4% in log scale. Thirdly, the thesis empirically supports that the UK housing market experiences both fast-moving and slow-moving institutional changes over previous decades. Fourthly, the thesis does not support the feedback theory. Overall, the three-step theoretical framework is empirically supported. Through a series of institutional changes, people’s biased expectations are playing a far more important role in driving the UK house prices than the fundamentals.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Italy became an industrial society. The rural world, which had hardly changed over centuries, underwent a momentous transformation. This PhD thesis documents the changes in rural central Italy, specifically the Marche and Umbria regions, between 1945 and 1970, and analyses how this period has been remembered. This research is important because these major changes, including the collapse of the dominant sharecropping system, have had very little attention; central Italy has been neglected in favour of comparisons between North and South. Those who lived through this period have not been heard, and that generation is now disappearing. Fifty interviews were recorded with former sharecroppers and others, in three small areas in the Umbria-Marche Apennines, during study in Italy in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Local archives and libraries were also consulted. The themes of the five chapters are: the decline of sharecropping; the social role of the Church and its ownership of land; migration; change through political action and mechanization; and abandonment of the countryside. The research shows that as people left the countryside to work temporarily elsewhere, many in other European countries, the rural population fell and the agricultural labour market changed. Farming families had less insecurity and more choice. It finds that sharecropping persisted until the 1990s, despite legislation intended to end it, but farmers started to diversify outside the sharecropping contract which no longer determined how people lived. The research suggests that the Church prefers to forget that priests had to manage parish land under sharecropping. Peasants took political action annually over sharecropping contracts, but this was patchy and is not always remembered. Mechanization, however, is shown to have permanently affected the rural economy. The crumbling of characteristic farmhouses in depopulated landscapes is examined; their neglect suggests problematic memories of the peasant past.

This thesis examines and seeks to understand the formation and operation of housing markets in Greater Soweto, an agglomeration of black townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. The thesis falls into six parts: 1) a description of the demographic, socio-economic and settlement characteristics of Greater Soweto, drawing on a household survey and on original source material which has not previously been subjected to analysis; 2) an historical study which examines the development of housing markets from the 1820s to the late 1970s, paying particular attention to the progressive depriving of African people of their rights in housing and land, including rights to reside or even be present in an urban area; 3) a study of the machinery for providing housing and how it operated (1930 to the early 1980s); 4) an examination of the allocation policies of successive administrations and tenure markets (1930 to the early 1980s); 5) a study of the privatisation of council-built housing (the late 1970s to 1994); and 6) a case study of private sector finance for house purchase and the role played by Meadowlands purchasers in safe-guarding their newly acquired property rights (mid-1980s to 1994). Particular attention has been paid to the mechanisms of housing market formation and operation, using ideas contained in theories developed by academics in developed countries and originally applied to those countries. This study shows that it was the conjunction of economic, racial and housing policies and measures (the desire for cheap labour, the priority attached to extraction of mineral resources and the systematic depriving African people of any property stake) which shaped housing and population in Greater Soweto over the years. Fundamentally, however, this thesis shows that it was through pressure from grassroots movements that housing policies today (whilst still being driven by the needs of capital) have come to be based on the mechanism of giving people enforceable and tradeable housing rights and choice.

No description available.

The exponential growth in lending to the Irish commercial real estate sector in the mid-2000s facilitated a rapid appreciation in property prices that ultimately resulted in the creation of a real estate bubble. This bubble was a highly leveraged indigenous model of investment, centred upon the speculation of prices. When the prices began to fall in 2008, the depletion in the Irish banking sectors capital base brought into sharp focus the over exposure to real estate lending. As a response, the Irish Government formed the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) in December 2009 whose primary function was to acquire €74bn of loans from the Irish financial institutions and carry out the management and disposal of these, in order to restore liquidity to the banking system and preserve values across the commercial real estate sector. The research presented in this thesis serves as the first robust evaluation of the performance of NAMA relative to its stated objectives. The research adopts a mixed method approach to decipher the impact of NAMA on the Irish commercial property market. Firstly, regression modelling of the Irish property market is undertaken to analyse key financial and property market indicators in the context of NAMA's intervention in the market. The second empirical strand comprises an evaluation of NAMAs sale transactions and disposal strategies in order to ascertain the distinct role played by NAMA in restoring liquidity and confidence to the Irish commercial property market. The final strand of empirical analysis comprised structured interviews with key stakeholders in the Dublin market to determine how the market responded to NAMA's deleveraging activities. The interview evidence provides further insights surrounding the operational characteristics and intervention strategies employed by NAMA in order to distinguish the extent of NAMA's role in facilitating recovery within the confines of the real estate cycle and wider macro-economic recovery. The research outcomes indicate that NAMA played an intensive role in reviving the Irish commercial market by acting as a stimulus for liquidity in its disposal activity, and deepening the circuit of capital flows by attracting new investors to the market. The research highlights a number of favourable factors which were conducive to NAMA's overall performance to date. In particular, the distinct composition of NAMA's portfolio gave the vehicle an advantage in its asset management and disposal activities. Further to this, the transparency and maturity of the Irish commercial property market combined with the broader context of low interest rates and poor bond yields deemed that Irish real estate assets were highly desirable at the time of NAMA's deleveraging process. However, the research ascertains that while NAMA has been a provider for development finance, the Agency could have had a stronger role as a facilitator of development in the early stages of operation, in order to address the huge supply shortage in Dublin adequately. Nonetheless, the research illustrates that NAMA has been a model of best practice in its disposal activities and provides a template for other distressed real estate markets. The key principles applied by NAMA include its timely implementation, strong governance structures, phased disposal strategy and portfolio disposals. The research concludes that asset management vehicles such as NAMA have the capacity to stabilise distressed property markets, by providing a measured and systemic release of assets to the market and in this context can act as an anchor for liquidity and confidence.

Location has been found to be a paramount factor for house prices. Not only do house prices vary between different places, these spatial variations also tend to change through time. This thesis seeks to understand the role of location, or 'space' on house prices and the contemporary changing geographical patterns of house prices in England and Wales over time through novel model-based statistical approaches. How 'space' can be incorporated into different price modelling strategies is first examined. It is found that 'space' is important at multiple scales for house prices, and multilevel models specified at the micro level of house and the macro level of neighbourhoods are particularly effective at capturing these multiscale latent effects. This framework is then deployed to compare different conceptualisations of 'space', through postcode, census geography and neighbourhood classifications for London. It is again confirmed that location is important and that geography and spatial contiguity matters. It proceeds by incorporating the 'time' element to analyse the changing dynamics of house prices between places. The spatial and temporal variations in London house prices are considered simultaneously through growth curve models and group-based methods. Both the observed and unobserved heterogeneous price trajectories between places are used to develop a new typology of neighbourhood change. The spatiotemporal patterns for the entirety of England and Wales are finally investigated through a fixed- and random-effects approach, whereby both regional-level and multiple sub-regional levels are considered simultaneously. Very distinctive patterns are found in London compared to what has happened in other regions. This thesis presents the first large-scale systematic analysis of the contemporary changing geographies at multiple spatial scales during a time when the UK's housing market has undergone substantial temporal fluctuations and increased spatial variations. The empirical results also have important implications for central and local governments for spatially differentiated housing policy and local urban regeneration.

This thesis involves an investigation of how knowledge discovery can be applied in the area Geographic Information Science. In particular, its application in the area of property valuation in order to reveal how different spatial entities and their interactions affect the price of the properties is explored. This approach is entirely data driven and does not require previous knowledge of the area applied. To demonstrate this process, a prototype system has been designed and implemented. It employs association rule mining and associative classification algorithms to uncover any existing inter-relationships and perform the valuation. Various algorithms that perform the above tasks have been proposed in the literature. The algorithm developed in this work is based on the Apriori algorithm. It has been however, extended with an implementation of a ‘Best Rule’ classification scheme based on the Classification Based on Associations (CBA) algorithm. For the modelling of geographic relationships a graph-theoretic approach has been employed. Graphs have been widely used as modelling tools within the geography domain, primarily for the investigation of network-type systems. In the current context, the graph reflects topological and metric relationships between the spatial entities depicting general spatial arrangements. An efficient graph search algorithm has been developed, based on the Djikstra shortest path algorithm that enables the investigation of relationships between spatial entities beyond first degree connectivity. A case study with data from three central London boroughs has been performed to validate the methodology and algorithms, and demonstrate its effectiveness for computer aided property valuation. In addition, through the case study, the influence of location in the value of properties in those boroughs has been examined. The results are encouraging as they demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and algorithms, provided that the data is appropriately pre processed and is of high quality.

Ever since the issue of inaccuracy and variance in commercial property valuation was first documented in the mid-80s by Brown (1985) and Hager and Lord (1985), many researchers have investigated the complex factors involved in effective problem solving in the valuation domain, focusing on the valuer and the valuation process. Several behavioural issues, including heuristics, have been noted to affect valuation outcomes. There is a growing literature on understanding the concept of expertise, especially using the field of cognitive psychology, and the present research explores valuer’s cognitions in a commercial valuation context. The study aimed to determine how the role of valuers’ cognitions and cognitive structures are crucial in furthering our understanding of effective valuation problem solving, as well as improving valuer training efforts. The research was undertaken from a ‘Critical Realist’ perspective, and used a knowledge elicitation method called ‘Cognitive Task Analysis’. Data were collected through a ‘Verbal Protocol Analysis’ (VPA) of a simulated commercial valuation exercise based on a real building, using semi-structured interviews. Six subjects (comprising two expert valuers, two intermediate valuers and two novice valuers) participated in the simulated valuation and in the follow-up interviews. Two further experts were interviewed to validate the findings.