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With the continued development of the economy, the income gap among Chinese rural households continues to widen. The land system plays a decisive role in developing "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" and land circulation is a factor in the increase in income inequality among farm households. Based on the 2013 China Household Income Project (CHIP), this article used the re-centered influence function (RIF) regression method to empirically test the impact of rural land circulation on the income gap of rural households in China in three regions: the central, eastern and western regions. The quantile regression tested the impact mechanism of income inequality of rural households from the perspective of labor mobility and land circulation. The empirical results showed that land circulation increases the income inequality of rural households. The theoretical mechanism test proved that the dynamic relationship between land circulation and labor mobility increases rural household income. However, this increase has a greater effect on rural households with a high income and a small effect on rural households with a low income, resulting in a further widening of the income gap. Therefore, while increasing the income of rural households through land circulation, the government should also consider income equity. Finally, this article puts forward the policies and opinions on land reform and provides a brief discussion on the future direction of development.

In legislative systems a bill is commonly considered and reported by an appropriate committee before it is considered on the floor of the house. Since motions on the floor frequently relate to such bills, it is often apposite to refer to a motion's relevant committee. This article presents a mathematical model of the relationship between the relevant committee's divisions on the floor and a motion's probability of passing. Let x be the proportion of the relevant committee voting yea on the floor, z be the proportion of the relevant committee voting nay on the floor, and y be the proportion of the relevant committee neither voting yea nor voting nay on the floor, then a motion's probability of passing is (x2 + y2)/(x2 + y2 + z2). The fit between theory and observation is quite good: six hundred eleven roll calls from the 90th and 91st Congresses have been analyzed; 0.628 of the motions actually passed; and 0.613 of the motions were expected to pass.

In the 1970s assessment, and examinations in particular, were the focus of world-wide university student protest. In Australian tertiary institutions, greater use was consequently made of "continuous assessment". After a period of quietude assessment re-emerged a decade later as a "hot" national issue in North America and as the subject of research and discussion in England. In Australia, a report for the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission published in 1987 (the "Pearce Report"), discussed at length the question of assessment in Australian law schools. These more recent debates reflected in part the fact that assessment practices in at least the law schools of Australian universities had not fundamentally changed since the seventies revolt. While assessment modes had in the meantime diversified greatly, according to the Pearce Report the problem-type, written examination remained the dominant mode in Australian law schools. In the early 1990s) universities are undergoing a period of rapid change spurred on by Federal government initiatives. One important consequence of this re-evaluation is the affirmation that teaching is the university's primary function. It is with this ultimate goal in mind that this article is written. The basic premise is that assessment not only serves as a means of certification. It also performs, inevitably, an important teaching function. It is submitted that assessment still suffers from being the "grand afterthought of the educational process". As is commonly observed, law teachers tend to repeat the methods of instruction that are familiar to them from their student days. In one study most academics surveyed saw assessment only in terms of it providing an incentive to make students work, and to enable their intellectual abilities to be measured. Students (including law students) in another study also viewed it in similar terms. Surveys conducted by the Pearce Inquiry reported widespread dissatisfaction with methods of assessment. Why assessment has been ignored from an educational viewpoint is a complex question. Possible explanations include the influence of the legal profession on teaching; teacher apathy; few incentives; external constraints (such as scarce resources) and the lack of training in and knowledge of educational theory. There is not space to analyse all of these causes. This article's main concern is more elementary — to remedy the lack of scrutiny of law school assessment as an educational tool. Assessment needs to be re-examined in the light of its teaching and certification functions, but especially the former. To understand what we do or fail to do when we implement assessment schemes, it firstly elaborates on the teaching and certification functions which may be fulfilled and are inevitably fulfilled by student assessment. Current assessment practices are then subjected to a critical analysis. The article concludes by providing a check-list of considerations for the thoughtful law assessor: considerations which, it is submitted, should form the basis of assessment practice.

We construct a general axiomatic approach to measuring spatial concentration around a center or capital point of interest, a concept with wide applicability from urban economics, economic geography and trade, to political economy and industrial organization. By analogy with expected utility theory, we propose a basic axiom of independence (sub-group consistency) and continuity for a concentration order that ranks any two distributions relative to the capital point. We show that this axiom implies an expected influence representation of that order, conceptualizing concentration as an aggregation of the expected influence exerted by the capital on all points in the relevant space (or vice-versa). We then propose two axioms (monotonicity and rank invariance) and prove that they imply that the associated influence function must be a decreasing isoelastic function of the distance to the capital. We apply our index to measure the concentration of population around capital cities across countries and US states, and also in US metropolitan areas. We show its advantages over alternative measures, and explore its correlations with many economic and political variables of interest.

We construct a general axiomatic approach to measuring spatial concentration around a center or capital point of interest, a concept with wide applicability from urban economics, economic geography and trade, to political economy and industrial organization. By analogy with expected utility theory, we propose a basic axiom of independence (sub-group consistency) and continuity for a concentration order that ranks any two distributions relative to the capital point. We show that this axiom implies an expected influence representation of that order, conceptualizing concentration as an aggregation of the expected influence exerted by the capital on all points in the relevant space (or vice-versa). We then propose two axioms (monotonicity and rank invariance) and prove that they imply that the associated influence function must be a decreasing isoelastic function of the distance to the capital. We apply our index to measure the concentration of population around capital cities across countries and US states, and also in US metropolitan areas. We show its advantages over alternative measures, and explore its correlations with many economic and political variables of interest.

AbstractAfter two decades in which transnational governance of production processes has typically meant voluntary subscription to privately developed standards, some transnational rulemaking projects are promoting mandatory compliance with law. The emerging timber legality regime is one example of this, and scholars' efforts to theorize this regime have produced provocative new analyses of interactions between public and private standards. Recent analyses, including those in this issue, predict that the new legality regime will bolster voluntary initiatives that certify sustainable forests. Based on research in Indonesia and China, I argue that this prediction is questionable and that the rise of the timber legality regime could constrict, rather than expand the space for global private authority. Further, I argue that it would not be entirely a bad thing if the legality regime overtook sustainability certification. Behind these specific arguments are general perspectives on how domestic circumstances shape transnational business governance and on the role of states in pluralistic fields of governance – both issues that are obscured by more architectural approaches.