Determining the property ownership on cadastral works in Turkey.
Abstract The transformation process from state to civil ownership in Turkey was started at the end of the Ottoman Empire and continued until after the formation of Turkish Republic. In this process, in accordance with the Civil Code legislation, most land users who had been using state lands were regarded as owners of those lands. These parcels of real estate were used in various ways and it became necessary to register these properties by using a process called ‘written cadastre’. The initial process was slowed down during World War II but an intensive cadastral program was begun after the war in both urban and rural areas, particularly in 1950s. The cadastre work had two components called technical and legal. The definition of land ownership is the legal foundation of the cadastre. If properties have their titles, land ownership can be defined based on the title; otherwise the ownership can be defined according to statements by experts chosen from local people. However, without title or written evidence, determining the land ownership is more problematic. In this context, this study explains how the ownership of properties, with or without a title, is determined in cadastral work in Turkey.
Exotic option-based rural land-use right pricing model
New Chinese rural reform and development strategy necessitates an open transfer market for rural land-use right. However, present evaluation approaches fail to reflect the fair market value of rural land-use right, which not only restricts the efficient rural land market development, but also injures the farmers' interests. Therefore, exotic option pricing method is employed into the pricing model of rural land-use right, which is now liberalized into the market as a main factor of production in agricultural sector. The pricing model highlights that the value of rural land-use right consists of income value and capital value, and build the equivalent portfolio to the underlying assets based on the financial engineering principle. The value of underlying assets is decomposed to the portfolio of two securities with existing evaluation: floating rate securities, and American real call option. The model argues that the net present value (NPV) of annual agricultural income on the rural land is uncertain due to the fluctuation of crop prices, and takes into consideration the potential capital gain from the contingent rural land-use right conversion, i.e. from rural land to urban land. The model not only gives new insights of the value composition of Chinese rural land-use right, but also incorporates the residual term of rural land-use right and accrued agricultural investment on the rural land, which can improve the pricing efficiency of the promising rural land market by the analytical expression.
The economics of the open university revisited
Revision of earlier cost calculations for the Open University and Conventional Universities in the U.K. for 1973 confirms the findings of a significant cost advantage to the Open University. An analysis of developments at the Open University since 1973 indicates, however, that there has been little reduction in average cost in real terms and no improvement is likely on known developments to 1979. This is surprising for it might be expected that as student numbers rise average costs would fall. A more detailed analysis of the structure of Open University costs indicates why this has not happened. A major determinant of costs is the number of courses and these have continued to grow rapidly since 1973. The rate of increase of new courses has been faster than the rate of increase of new students. In effect the University has been using the economies provided by increased student numbers to increase student choice through the provision of more courses rather than reduce average cost.Average cost could be reduced whilst keeping the same number of courses by changing the components of the teaching system such as broadcasting. If such fundamental changes were not acceptable then an alternative would be to change the mix of courses between the relatively expensive science and technology areas and the cheaper arts and social science areas. A further alternative is to keep the same mix but ensure a longer life for science and technology courses.