Informal Development Due to Market Pressure -- A Case Study on Cyprus and the Role of Land Administration
Results of a detailed two-year research conducted by the authors are presented in this paper. It is shown that, among other reasons, informal constructions also appear in several attractive European areas due to increased market pressure. In the first part an introduction on the current state-of-the-art of informal development in Europe is presented and the findings of the research are given in brief about three Mediterranean countries: Spain, Albania, and Greece. Although the social, economic, administrative and cultural situation and the extent of informal development vary among these countries, current identified major causes for informal development are: migration in search of work and shelter, lack of affordable housing, and increased market pressure combined with inefficient land administration and/or permitting and controlling procedures. In part two of this paper, an in-depth research on Cyprus, a country which had never experienced informal development until recently, is presented. The research aims to focus especially on the risk due to increased market interest, whose economic benefits overwhelm even the long established regulatory systems for the management and administration of land. 
This original research shows that informal development is emerging in Cyprus as well. This very new phenomenon is caused by the rapid national and international market pressure in both urban and rural areas of the island. A description of the land administration tools and the procedures regulating land development is given; weaknesses of the system to meet the current needs are identified; and proposals for its improvement are offered. Relevant statistics are derived through a research on the cadastral and planning data. It is proved that recent interest in popular areas often leads to informal development.Considerations are presented concerning the importance of a continuously upgrading multipurpose and reliable land administration and regulatory system, which is vital for the security of tenure, the support of the emerging market needs, and for providing for sustainable land-uses.
Cadastral Renewal and Automation Project in Cyprus
Cadasters are often seen as being one of the pillars of modern land administration systems alongside efficient land registration, property valuation, real estate taxation, and land use management systems. An effective land administration system, it is conventionally argued, is seen as being an essential prerequisite for an efficient property market. Such a system should include ways of ensuring that property rights are protected and that trading in land, the transfer of property rights, and the raising of capital by pledging property as security can take place efficiently. In order to achieve these ends modern land administration systems have land registration to record property rights, their ownership and transfer, and cadasters to map property rights and record their geo-co-ordinates.
Speci fi cation Test for Panel Data Models with Interactive Fixed E ff ects ∗
In this paper, we propose a consistent nonparametric test for linearity in a large dimensional panel data model with interactive fixed effects. Both lagged dependent variables and conditional heteroskedasticity of unknown form are allowed in the model. We estimate the model under the null hypothesis of linearity to obtain the restricted residuals which are then used to construct the test statistic. We show that after being appropriately centered and standardized, the test statistic is asymptotically normally distributed under both the null hypothesis and a sequence of Pitman local alternatives by using the concept of conditional strong mixing that was recently introduced by Prakasa Rao (2009). To improve the finite sample performance, we propose a bootstrap procedure to obtain the bootstrap -value. A small set of Monte Carlo simulations illustrates that our test performs well in finite samples. An application to an economic growth panel dataset indicates significant nonlinear relationships between economic growth, initial income level and capital accumulation.