This dissertation investigates transportation subsidies as sources of urban sprawl. Apart from tolls, motorists do not pay highway user-fees, but they do pay gasoline taxes. Gasoline tax revenues are insufficient to cover the U.S. highway costs. Government, therefore, uses general tax revenues to cover highway expenditures. Since users do not pay the full cost of their travel, they have an incentive to travel longer commuting distances. Highway subsidies are, therefore, a potential contributor to urban sprawl. A similar argument applies to public transit. To capture the effects of subsidized automobile and public transit travel, we ex-tend the standard urban spatial single-mode model (Brueckner, 1987) to incorporate public subsidies for both one and two modes. Comparative static analysis of both models produces empirically testable hypotheses. Our most important theoretical result is that transit subsidies are inversely related to urban sprawl while auto subsidies are directly related to urban sprawl. The empirical analysis focuses on tests of the two-mode model. For consistency with the monocentric assumption of our models, our sample consists of urbanized areas located within a single county and having only one central city. Spatial size of the urbanized area is the dependent variable. Following our theory, explanatory variables comprise the transit subsidy, the highway subsidy, number of households, agricultural land rent, mean household income, and fixed and variable costs for transit and auto. We find that the spatial size of the urbanized area shrinks with an increase in the transit subsidy. The effect of highway subsidies, however, is ambiguous. We apply both ordinary least squares and two-stage least square regression analyses, and the results are qualitatively the same for both methods of estimation.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980. / Bibliography: leaves [95]-100. / Microfiche. / viii, 100 leaves, bound maps 29 cm

Thesis (M. Sc.(Urb. Plan.))--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 115-118).

Thesis (M. Hous. M.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006.

This thesis is focused on evaluation of the disposal of financial subsidies in the agricultural company in the South-Czech region in years 2003 {--}2007. The company is noted as ``A{\crqq}. The theoretic part defines investments and their financing. There are mentioned methods of investment efficiency evaluation in this part and further appraisal of investment from the point of view of requirement, range and effect. The practical part includes characteristic of the chosen agricultural company and evaluation of impact of received subsidies.

The objective of the diploma paper was to assess the role, structure and development of subsidies within the system of financing of municipalities of the Czech Republic after 1993; to find out how the public administration reform was reflected in the system of municipal financing and whether it supported a higher financial self-sufficiency. The analysis of subsidy development was carried by means of comparing the total amount of subsidies and own revenues in relation to the total revenue in the period 1994 - 2007. In addition, the analysis of subsidy structure and the analysis of average volume of subsidies per unit in the period 2001 - 2007 were used in order to reach the intended objective. The paper is focused in particular on the municipalities of South Bohemia Region. Out of the total number of 662 municipalities, a representative sample of 179 municipalities was selected where the analysis was performed. The analysis also included all municipalities of the Czech Republic with population higher than 40,001. The total number of municipalities in the representative sample amounted to 203. The municipalities were classified into eight size categories by population. The public self-administration reform resulted in the fact that revenues from shares and assigned taxes started to flow into the municipal budgets, which contributed to a higher financial and decision-making self-sufficiency of the municipalities. Despite the public administration reform, the volume of subsidies still represents a considerable portion of sources of regional budgets. By means of analysing the structure of subsidies, it was ascertained that the share of the claimed subsidies in the total revenues from subsidies was growing with the growing number of population and on the other hand, the share of subsidies that may not be claimed in the total revenues from subsidies has been declining with the growing population. By means of analysing an average volume of subsidies per unit, it was ascertained that the amount of provided claimed subsidies as well as subsidies that may not be claimed grows with the number of population. In the same time, a considerable variability in revenues from subsidies was ascertained within municipalities in individual size categories. On the contrary, the variability was declining with the growing population.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

No description available.

The transfer of prey resources between ecosystems can have dramatic consequences for both recipient and donor systems by altering food web stability and the likelihood of trophic effects cascading across the ecosystem boundary. Landscape-scale factors influence the importance, direction and magnitude of energy flows, but may also alter the ability of consumer organisms to respond to spatio-temporal changes in allochthonous prey availability. Here, I used flood and drying disturbance gradients to investigate interactions between these two processes on populations of a riparian fishing spider Dolomedes aquaticus (Pisauridae). The abundance of aquatic insects with a winged adult stage, a major component of the diet of D. aquaticus, was markedly higher at less flood-prone rivers and declined with increasing flood disturbance. It was expected that spider populations would be largest at these stable rivers where the aquatic prey abundance was highest. However, a habitat (loose, unembedded riverbank rocks) manipulation revealed that the lack of scouring floods at these sites led to habitat-limited populations, preventing response to the increased prey resource. In fact a peak shaped relationship of spider biomass and abundance was found, with the largest spider populations at intermediately disturbed rivers. In addition, patchy habitat availability was the most likely cause of the small scale (4 m2) aggregation of spiders seen at the most stable and disturbed rivers. These patterns were also associated with strong interactions between the spiders. Stable isotope analysis of field collected spiders and an experimental manipulation of spider densities and food availability indicated that cannibalism rates were likely to be significantly higher at stable and disturbed rivers than those intermediate on the disturbance gradient. Differences in D. aquaticus population size structure and life history traits across the flood disturbance gradient were driven by interactions between resource availability, environmental stability and cannibalism rates. To separate the effects of habitat availability and aquatic prey abundance I used drying rivers, as the amount of aquatic insect prey alters as the water recedes. Desiccation mortality and low aquatic prey biomass most likely caused the spiders' spatial distribution and size class structure to alter in drying river reaches, potentially also leading to differences in cannibalism rates. Overall, cross-ecosystem transfers of prey had large impacts on the distribution, cannibalism rates and life history traits of D. aquaticus but their effects were modified by the nature of the ecosystem boundary. Thus river flow regime controlled the magnitude of the subsidy and its use by a consumer. Hence, cross-ecosystem subsidies will not always lead to larger consumer populations and consumer responses will depend on interactions between large-scale processes.