Thesis (M.Hous.M.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Also available in print.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2005.

Thesis (M. S.)--Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Boston, Thomas, Committee Chair ; Nair-Reichert, Usha, Committee Member ; Li, Haizheng, Committee Member.

Proefschrift Universiteit Maastricht. / Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

No description available.

of the thesis: The thesis deals with subsidies and their legislation. The author notably analyzes the legislation of the Czech Republic regarding the administration of subsidies. The legislation of subsidies is a subject of comparison with the case law of the higher courts of the Czech Republic, especially the Supreme Administrative Court. In the first part the author puts subsidies into a wider context and compares them with the State Aid based on the European Union legislation. The author also defines the concept related to subsidies which is repayable financial assistance. The author decided for detailed description of the State Aid with focus on definitional characters of the State Aid. The legislation of the repayable financial assistance is separately analyzed and compared to the legislation of subsidies. Consequently, the subsidy is defined as a legal concept which is the essence of the whole thesis. The thesis comprehensively defines the concept of subsidy, sets down the possible types of subsidies and determines the financial flow from which subsidies are provided. Individual statements and considerations are supported by the national and foreign literature or the case law national courts. The author further defines the concept subsidy relationship as the basic relationship between the...

Because of the Agreement on Agriculture’s (AoA) Article 13, dubbed the “Peace Clause,” the challengeability of agricultural subsidies has been limited; Article 13 had the power to prevent several types of legal challenges. The Peace Clause has expired, and now many agricultural subsidies can be challenged under substantive provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1994) and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement). However, there has been some uncertainty, because the new arrangement of agricultural subsidies’ challengeability is being defined by the interpretation and correlation of three different WTO agreements. This study verified, using a two-pronged method, that there is no conflict among the GATT 1994, the SCM Agreement and the AoA, and for this reason, they have to be applied together to regulate agricultural subsidies. This does not mean that all SCM Agreement provisions are automatically applied to agricultural subsidies, with a consequent free ride for challenges to agricultural subsidies. A successful challenge still has to overcome the SCM Agreement’s higher thresholds for challengeability compared with those of the GATT 1994 period. This condemnation became more difficult after the implementation of the WTO. Consequently, the goals established in the AoA of substantial and progressive reductions in agricultural support and protection still have to be accomplished.

The aim is to analyze the sports funding from public funds in the Pardubice region. Decide whether this support is sufficient and justified. The analysis focuses in more detail on the various grant programs and the method of evaluating the applications. Funds flowing into the sport in the 2007-2016 are demonstrating graphically and over these years are declining. Partial analysis also shows the success of grant applicants. The number of unsupported applications exceeds the number of supported applications. Based on the analysis it shows that support is justified but insufficient. Support is unsystematic and unstable and coordination between policies in sport, at the state, country and municipal level is missing.

This thesis is concerned with the estimation of the cost involved in supporting minimum housing standards under alternative forms of government intervention. No attempt is made to rationalize what minimum housing standards should be. The intent is to highlight what the relative costs would be to support alternative housing standards, utilizing potentially alternative policy approaches. To rationalize the numerous policy/program alternatives available to governments, attention is focused on six policy alternatives that reflect varying degrees of "leakage" of the provided subsidy to the consumption of non-housing goods and services. These alternatives cover the continuum from pure cash (income) subsidies, wherein up to a 100% "leakage" to the consumption of non-housing goods and services may occur, to direct product intervention, wherein the recipients may be required to reduce the consumption of non-housing goods and services in order to improve their housing standards. The six options are classified by type either as a "cash" subsidy (where the use of the subsidy is not constrained) or a "direct product" subsidy (where the subsidy is used directly for the subsidization of capital and/or operating costs). Under the "cash" subsidy approaches two benchmark options are considered: 1. an "income" policy that involves the subsidization of incomes such that the recipients are free to choose consumption levels. This policy corresponds to pure income redistribution. 2. a "constrained cash" or "in kind" policy that involves the subsidization of incomes at a level dependent on either the level of housing consumption or expenditure on housing consumption. Such a policy covers programs comparable to rent certificates and general housing allowances. The options considered as "direct product" approaches are more arbitrary in nature, reflecting alternative benchmarks: 1. a "direct constrained" policy wherein recipients are forced to reduce their consumption of other goods and services to offset the required increase in expenditure on housing. This policy form is taken as the lower benchmark for the policy continuum, reflecting the potential impact of zoning and occupancy regulat ions. 2. a "direct quantity" policy wherein recipients are compensated for the cost of the additional quantity of housing consumed only. 3. a "direct expenditure" policy wherein recipients are subsidized in the amount of the total increase in expenditure on housing incurred. 4. a "direct price" policy wherein the subsidy is provided to buy down the unit price of housing. Such a policy covers mortgage market intervention and compensated rent control programs. The computation of these costs, for selected Canadian Metropolitan Areas, (CMAs), is undertaken using a simulation model based on a long run (ten year) regional housing market model developed by the Urban Institute, Washington DC, during the early 1970's. This model traces the interaction inherent in the supply and demand of housing in each of many separate, but highly inter-dependent housing submarkets. For this study the demand side of the model has been respecified to allow the incorporation of a tenure option, the use of after tax incomes and the direct estimation of the demand functions. The essence of the modified model is a microeconomic perspective on households and owners contracting for housing at prices and quantities determined in several submarkets. A selected CMA is represented in the form of several residential zones that reflect variations in the housing stock, income levels and distance from the Central Business District. On the demand side, model households are classified into one of ten groupings (reflecting age, family status and income earners) each having different preference schedules. These preference schedules are based on translog utility functions which compare housing consumption, after-tax income, leisure time and neighbourhood quality. On the supply side, a housing unit is characterized by the quantity of "housing services" (combination of size and quality) and the price per unit of service. Several different quality levels are distinguished to correspond to the many alternative quality submarkets in an actual housing market. Profit maximizing behaviour by the owners is assumed to imply linear supply curves (of varying slope for each type of housing unit) as an approximation of the price-quantity relations that govern the behaviour of owners over a ten year period. An unlimited volume of new construction is allowed at fixed unit prices, and in any size that provides a quantity of services greater than a defined minimum. The major inputs to the model are a CMA's set of supply and demand parameters, the 1971 decade-end demand profile and the 1961 decade-start market state. A model solution is an estimate of the market conditions at decade-end. The predicted market conditions are based on an assignment procedure which sets unit prices such that no household has incentives to relocate and owners have no incentive to provide an alternative quantity of "housing services". While the model is conceptually simple and assumes convenient forms for the household preferences and dwelling supply curves, it captures many aspects of housing markets important in distinguishing the impact of alternative subsidy policies. Policy alternatives may be introduced by simply adjusting the demand and/or supply functions to allow straightforward simulations of the necessary subsidy costs under alternative policy options. Eight CMAs were selected for the intervention cost study, reflecting a distribution with regard to geographical location, population and income growth during the 1961-71 decade. In implementing the model for a CMA the number of decade-end model households and dwellings is set at 100, reflecting a ratio of actual dwellings to model dwellings ranging from 287 to 3455 for the selected CMAs while the model parameters have been estimated alternatively from Census data or the 1974 Survey of Housing Units data. Certain parameters relating to neighbourhood externalities and the supply functions must be estimated by comparing model solutions with actual decadal performance. The computed costs of intervention derived from the simulations show a significant variation firstly in terms of the alternative forms of policy and secondly by CMA, reflecting the relative states of the existing housing stock. The most generous form of government support lies with an "income" policy wherein households are provided with sufficient income to consume the minimum quantity of housing by choice. The other end of the scale is represented by a "direct constrained" policy whereby households are forced to increase their housing standards, but the compensation level is only sufficient for them to achieve their prior level of overall satisfaction. The simulated difference in cost between these two alternatives is in the range of a factor of 10. That is, it could cost the government up to ten times more per annum to support housing standards via an "income" policy. The margin between the costs associated with the "income" policy and other alternative "direct product" oriented modes is in the range of a factor of 4 to 5. The results suggest that a general "direct product" oriented policy, tied directly to the change in the quantity of housing consumed (supplied) will cost less than one-third of the amount associated with a general "cash" policy. At present costs this margin corresponds to an additional amount in the region of six billion dollars per annum for Canada. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

<div> <p><a>Biotic interactions play key roles in determining invasive species’ establishment success in receiving ecosystems (Tilman 2004). The invasional meltdown hypothesis suggests that initial invaders can facilitate subsequent invasions through direct (e.g., commensalism, mutualism) and indirect (e.g., changes in habitat and energy flow) pathways (Simberloff & Holle 1999; Simberloff 2006). Such positive interactions among invaders can alter community-level processes, but little research on this has been done in aquatic-terrestrial landscapes. My dissertation explores the links between reciprocal facilitation of invasive species and ecosystem change in a desert river system in the southwest USA. </a></p> <p> Like most rivers in the southwestern United States, the San Juan River has been altered by hydrologic regulation and biological invasions that affect ecosystem function and act synergistically to induce substantial ecosystem change. Invasion of channel catfish (<i>Ictalurus punctatus</i>) has drastically altered the fish assemblage of the San Juan River, yet the impacts of riparian invasion by a fruit-bearing tree, Russian olive (<i>Elaeaganus agustifolia</i>) have largely been ignored. Channel catfish have been observed consuming Russian olive fruits, but the level of facilitation between species and corresponding impact on the ecosystem is unclear. </p> <p>Channel catfish may benefit directly from Russian olive invasion by feeding on fallen fruits and/or indirectly from habitat alteration and invertebrate prey production from Russian olive detritus. Additionally, channel catfish may facilitate germination, growth, and seed dispersal of Russian olive. Mutualism between these invaders could increase the fitness of each species, thereby facilitating invasion success. Plant-animal mutualism is the most common form of facilitation among invaders, but no studies, to our knowledge, have evaluated facilitation between invasive riparian plants and aquatic invaders and their combined impact on ecosystem function. My goal preparing this dissertation is to determine whether mutual facilitation between riparian and aquatic invasive species influences ecosystem change through biotic interactions. </p> <p>To test for mutual facilitation, I first determined the contribution of Russian olive fruits to channel catfish growth by evaluating seasonal diet composition across four sites and six time periods. I then used replicated growth experiments to determine assimilation rates of Russian olive fruits consumed by channel catfish. Using bioenergetics models, I then determined how Russian olive subsidies in San Juan River contribute to channel catfish biomass. To determine whether channel catfish benefit Russian olive reproduction, I compared germination rates of seeds consumed by channel catfish to seeds consumed by terrestrial mammals and control seeds that had not been eaten. </p> <p>Russian olive fruits were the most important diet item for channel catfish during the fall and spring, comprising up to 57 and 70% of stomach contents by mass, respectively, and were consumed throughout the year. Feeding trials revealed that Russian olive fruits contributed little to growth or lipid deposition, but they did provide metabolic energy allowing channel catfish fed exclusively Russian olive fruits to maintain weight. In addition, Russian olive trees received a reproductive benefit through increased germination success of seeds consumed by channel catfish over those transported by water. Using bioenergetic models, I showed that Russian olive fruits subsidized 46% of San Juan River channel catfish biomass, indicating that the subsidy from Russian olive fruits had a population-level impact. This dissertation thus establishes mutual facilitation by non-native species across ecosystem boundaries, a phenomenon that few studies heretofore have demonstrated in the ecology or invasion biology literature.</p> </div> <br>