VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Geyer, L. Leon"

Browsing by Author "Geyer, L. Leon"

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Addressing the consequences of predator damage to livestock and poultry
Umberger, Steven H.; Geyer, L. Leon; Parkhurst, James A. (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2005-09-01)
To prevent uninformed decisions that could further exacerbate livestock and poultry losses from predators, it is important to understand the regulations and procedures affecting compensation for damages and the deterrent strategies for offending animals.
Advance Medical Directives
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2009-05-01)
An introduction to advance medical directives, including a form based on Virginia code.
Advance medical directives
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2001)
Analysis of In-Lieu Fee Programs in providing Wetland and Stream Compensatory Mitigation
Tutko, Benjamin Thomas (Virginia Tech, 2017-10-16)
The nation's Section 404 permitting program, of the Clean Water Act (CWA), represents one of the longest regulatory histories of designing and implementing credit trading programs to satisfy regulatory requirements. The role and the function of in-lieu fee (ILF) programs in supporting this regulatory structure have undergone a substantial change. For the first time in the history of the Sec. 404 program, 33 CFR Part 332 and 40 CFR Part 230, Subpart J (the "2008 mitigation rule" or "rule"), prioritizes the use of off-site mitigation over on-site-mitigation. Additionally, the rule prioritizes advanced, third-party mitigation; especially as achieved through mitigation banks; over any off-site compensatory mitigation provided by ILF programs (33 CFR 332.3(b)(1)). This new regulatory environment favors the use of commercial mitigation bank credits while acknowledging that the limited permittee demand of off-site mitigation credits, in particular areas, justifies the continuing need for ILF programs (Corps and EPA 2008, p.19606,19611). This research examines how regulatory officials use ILF programs under the 2008 mitigation rule, and, it determines the extent to which ILF programs are capable of fulfilling the role envisioned for them under the 2008 mitigation rule. Simulation results indicate that commercial mitigation banks cannot meet risk adjusted returns under limited credit demand conditions. ILF programs offer some additional financial capacity to fill the void in commercial bank coverage; but, this potential is limited in low demand conditions. Furthermore, empirical case studies of a Virginia and Georgia provide evidence that regulatory officials rely on ILF programs to provide off-site compensatory mitigation almost exclusively in the absence of private credit supply, as intended in the 2008 rule. Evidence in Georgia and Virginia also indicate that, in some situations, ILF programs face difficulties in providing mitigation under the constraints of limited demand and more stringent regulatory requirements.
An analysis of workers' compensation insurance for the southeastern United States logging industry
Wilson, George Edward (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1989)
The objective of this research was to analyze the workers’ compensation insurance system for the logging industry in the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Insurance rate components were fairly consistent among the nine states investigated. Approximately 72 percent of the workers’ compensation insurance rate is composed of loss components and components utilized to update and predict future losses of the year (time period) that the manual rate is in effect. The higher manual rates for the production based 2705 classification can be explained, in part, due to the different premium basis, i.e., production versus payroll. Upset factors based on 1) historical wage and productivity information and 2) a logging contractor survey, indicated that statewide upset factors were too low to equate production based payroll to actual payroll. Low upset factors provide a direct disincentive for contractors to move to an actual payroll basis. Experience modification, premium discounts and retrospective rating are used to customize premium to firm specific characteristics. The credibility test of the experience modification parameters indicated that a greater weight to firm specific characteristics is warranted for harvesting operations. The majority of logging injuries in North Carolina and Virginia occurred during felling and topping activities. An increase in lacerations as an injury type and topping as an occupation type in the coastal plain region may indicate that feller bunching and gate delimbing reduced neither the number or type of injuries. The high number of inexpensive losses contributes substantially to the logging industry’s poor safety image. A number of recommendations for improving the workers’ compensation system are presented. Recommendations which focused on system changes included eliminating numerical exemptions, establishing a $500 deductible clause, creating a mandatory retrospective rating plan for assigned risk policies, and designing greater credit and debit modifications based on firm characteristics. It was also suggested that a regional accident reporting system, funded from surcharged assigned risk policies, be established to provide actuarial data for rate hearings and loss control programs. Other recommendations included eliminating the 2705 "pulpwood only" classification, increasing and indexing the state’s upset factors, and determining the amount of premium slippage that occurs.
Analyzing Cost Implications of Water Quality Trading Provisions: Lessons from the Virginia Nutrient Credit Exchange Act
Aultman, Stephen (Virginia Tech, 2007-07-26)
The purpose of this study was to analyze the cost implications of various provisions of the Virginia Nutrient Credit Exchange Act. The first objective was to estimate the cost implications of point source trading provisions of the Act. An integer programming cost minimization model was constructed to estimate the cost of achieving four point source trading policy scenarios. The model estimated the annual cost of meeting two different nutrient cap levels, each with and without a limits-of-technology concentration standard requirement for new and expanding point sources. The limits-of-technology concentration standard requirement was found to significantly affect cost while providing little apparent benefit to water quality. The second objective was to develop a screening procedure for municipalities to estimate the cost of generating waste load allocation from nonpoint source offsets under their jurisdictional control. A spreadsheet based cost screening procedure was developed for municipalities to estimate the cost of implementing of nitrogen offsets from stormwater practices, septic retirement, and land conversion. One of the important findings from developing the screening procedure is that the cost of generating WLA from non-point sources under the control of local governments was much higher than the cost of removing nitrogen at wastewater treatment plants.
Conservation Easements: Providing Economic Incentive for the Conservation of Open Space and Farmland in the United States
Sowers, Joseph Kurstedt (Virginia Tech, 1999-12-15)
The intensification of land uses in the United States results from population growth, rapid expansion in the service sector, and residential land use growth. These trends cause diminishment of open space and increase sprawl-type land development. So-called "livability" issues are of growing importance in many metropolitan and rural areas across the country. Exasperating this transformation of land use, current demographic trends in the U.S. imply a near-future turnover of a large percentage of farmland and open space land in the form of estate transfer. Current U.S. estate tax policy could be accelerating the transfer of open spaces to developed land uses. Local zoning ordinances, as well as state and federal infrastructure subsidies are also compounding this trend. To date, no method exists which evaluates the economic feasibility of open space preservation. This thesis proposes to establish such a method. A landholder may conserve their land parcel in a non-developed use in perpetuity by placing a Conservation Easement on the property. This land value, the development rights of the land parcel, can be donated to a non-profit organization. The landowner may then deduct the development right value from their income tax as a charitable donation. This thesis compares the economic viability of a landholder that donates a Conservation Easement and invests the tax benefits, with that of a landholder that sells their land parcel to development interests. Further, this thesis explores the demographic profile for which preserving open space may be economically beneficial for the donor of a conservation easement. This thesis is the intersection of three literatures, drawing together three separate land preservation paradigms. First, the altruistic philanthropy landowners exhibit when donating development rights without economic impetus. Second, the thesis introduces the income tax benefits, and their investment potential, available in the Internal Revenue Code for charitable donations. Third, federal land preservation mandates and subsequent funding availability is examined. These tools function together to provide implications for facilitating the deterrence of sprawl-type development. Further, these tools will be compared to the current methods of land preservation, consisting of local zoning ordinances and the purchase of development rights by governmental agencies. These current policies possess serious shortcomings in ameliorating conflict between land uses, as well as diverting sub-urban development from prime farm and open space land. Conservation Easements are shown to have applications in the protection of land subject to estate turnover, control of land uses that cause nuisance externalities, and general local land policy. A spreadsheet algorithm in Microsoft Excel Solver format is included that determines the economic feasibility of performing an easement at the individual landholder level.
Costs and legal issues of reserving water supply sites for future use
Geyer, L. Leon; Shabman, Leonard A. (Virginia Water Resources Research Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1982-06)
Does It Matter Who We Ask in Household Surveys? A Study on Gendered Effects and Decision Making Processes in Ecuador
Yang, Chao (Virginia Tech, 2015-01-05)
The understanding of how households make decisions may improve the success of an economic development program and enhance targeted training efforts. Technology adoption and farm management decisions depend on household decision making. If a relevant decision maker can be clearly identified and specifically trained to meet his or her needs, the development program may be enhanced. Many approaches have been developed to help understand household decision making processes and the responses to household surveys provide the basis for many such approaches. Survey questions are often asked of a single person, and proxy responses are commonly used. Though potential bias from proxy responses is well documented, there is less information regarding the relationship between the proxy and his or her characteristics and the veracity of responses to subjective questions like who makes decisions within the household or who is in charge of major responsibilities. This paper employs the methods of mining contrast-set (Bay and Pazzani, 1999, 2001) and association rule (Agrawal et al., 1993) to answer the general question of whether and under what conditions proxy responses to survey questions are acceptable in a rural area of Ecuador. It also analyzes how factors such as gender of the respondent matters and how other factors affect the suitability of using proxy responses. The findings show that gender matters for farm-household decision making in rural Ecuador. For instance, more male than female respondents are likely to claim that they are responsible for household decision-making. Respondents answer differently not only to some subjective questions such as who sells crops, but also to objective survey question such as the number of female workers in a family. Factors such as the age of the respondent are found to influence responses about certain activities such as preparing and applying pesticides. The pattern of responses to both objective and subjective questions as well as the effect on responses by characteristics differ by areas where the survey is conducted, etc..
The Effects of Conservation Easements on Land Values
Zhang, Xiaowei (Virginia Tech, 2004-05-05)
The Conservation easement has become a popular tool for land protection in the past few decades. Whether this development restriction will necessarily decrease the land value is an empirical question. This study employs a hedonic pricing approach to test empirically the effects of conservation easements on land values. The econometric results indicate that conservation easements can slightly increase the land values, but the effect is statistically insignificance. Considering the limited dataset, the interpretation of the results warrant some caution.
Evolution of property rights to a natural resource: the oyster grounds of the Chesapeake Bay
Santopietro, George D. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1986)
Economists take an interest in property rights structures because of their importance in the definition of incentive structures. Fisheries have been analyzed as open access resources because they are not often organized around private property rights. The lack of private property rights though should not be taken to imply unlimited access. There is a need to differentiate between situations in which an institutional structure supports a system of common property rights from those in which access to a resources is truly limited. In this study, a conceptual framework of the structure and workings of property rights to natural resources is developed. This includes a taxonomy of possible property rights structures that differentiates among types and degrees of common and private property. The study then compares and contrasts the differing views in the economics literature on the process by which property rights evolve. This conceptual framework is used to develop a set of research questions that will structure the inquiry about the evolution of property rights to a specific natural resource, the Chesapeake Bay oyster grounds. The conventional and Institutionalist perspectives are related to fishery management policy and their differences assessed. The Institutionalist perspective is shown to raise questions about the historical development of property rights that would not be considered by conventional economists. The resulting research questions are used to explain the economic history of the property rights to the Chesapeake Bay oyster grounds from 1607 to 1986. In Maryland and Virginia certain grounds of the Chesapeake Bay are reserved as a public oyster fishery, but, they have been regulated and managed by the states. In the history of the fishery, those who harvest from the public grounds have continually resisted the extension, or even encouragement of oyster cultivation on private leaseholds. The primary advocates of greater privatization of the bottoms have been economists and biologists. The governments of each state have chosen to maintain the commons in order to provide employment for watermen and to more widely distribute income among them. The results of a survey of Virginia's oyster harvesters are presented. These provide further insights for discussing the role of the watermen in the evolution of property rights, and help to form conclusions on the future of the fishery. This case study leads to the discussion of conclusions on the theory of the economics of property rights.
Export Taxes In Argentina: A Case Study
Knight, Russell Henry (Virginia Tech, 2005-04-29)
With the recent agreement on a framework in the Doha Round for the WTO, trade liberalization is taking another step forward. Unfortunately, export taxes get overlooked as only five countries have this protectionist/rent seeking policy: Argentina, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and Ukraine (USDA FAS, 2004). However, the impact of these policies can be felt all over the world. The focus of the case study is on the differential export taxes (DET) placed on soybeans by the Government of Argentina and analyzing the impact of government intervention on trade. Argentina is the third-largest producer of soybeans, and the worldâ s largest exporter of soybean oil and meal with domestic consumption totaling less than five percent of the meal and oil that is processed. In Argentina there is a constant export tax level of twenty percent that is applied to all commodities in agriculture but in the case of oilseeds, raw soybeans are taxed 3.5% more than all other grains and oilseed products. This differential tax favors the exports of valued-added products, i.e. soybean oil and meal. Previous attempts to eliminate the DET have failed. FEDIOL, the Federation that represents the vegetable oils and fats industry in the European Union, filed a complaint against Argentina in the late 1970s and again in the early 1980s, but failed because the DET was not listed as a subsidy under the GATT.
Financial responsibility provisions for underground storage tanks in Virginia
Thompson, Paul S.; Conn, W. David; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Water Resources Research Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988-08)
The Impact of Bankruptcy Exemptions for Retirement Assets
Baker, Matthew (Virginia Tech, 2013-05-21)
When filing for personal bankruptcy, an individual can, in almost all cases, claim an exemption for retirement assets. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances from 2007 and 2010, we test the theory that highly educated or financially sophisticated households allocate more resources to retirement assets under conditions of higher probability of filing for personal bankruptcy. This hypothesis stems from the concept of asset sheltering, in which an individual will demonstrate a preference for assets that are exempt from a particular risk. To address our hypothesis, we run a Heckman model on the Survey of Consumer Finances data. Our results provide evidence to match our theory for only highly educated or financially sophisticated individuals, conditional on owning retirement assets. That is, we observe highly educated and financially sophisticated households allocate more resources to retirement accounts when they are at higher risk for bankruptcy. Other characteristic groups do not demonstrate a similarly strong relationship between the probability of filing for bankruptcy and the level of retirement assets.
An Introduction to Trusts
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2009-05-01)
A general overview of the use of trusts in estate planning.
Love, marriage, and divorce
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2001)
Love, Marriage, and Divorce
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2009-05-01)
An overview of the rights of spouses in property upon divorce with reference to Virginia law, including information on premarital and marital agreements.
Penalties for Foodborne Illness: Jury Decisions and Awards in Foodborne Illness Lawsuits
Mahdu, Omchand (Virginia Tech, 2015-07-28)
This study examined how case attributes impact plaintiff success and payouts in jury settled foodborne illness (FBI) lawsuits. Given the risk to firms in terms of potentially large payouts, future litigation, and lost reputation, the results may provide economic incentives for food firms and others in the supply chain to produce safer and better quality foods. Legal databases were systematically searched to identify cases of FBI, which were resolved through the U.S. court system. Reviewing the outcomes of 511 FBI jury trials between 1979 and 2014, plaintiffs won 34.8% of cases, and received a median award of $32,264. The Heckman two-step estimation procedure was used to examine the effects of various factors on plaintiff success rates and subsequent amounts awarded. Plaintiff chances of victory increased if lawsuits involved a child, foodborne pathogen was identified and pain and suffering was claimed, and decreased if defendants used of one or more expert witnesses or had 'deep pockets'. Cases involving a child, chronic complications, or defendants with 'deep pockets' resulted in higher awards. Corporate and policy implications of these findings are considered.
Planning for Long-Term Health Care
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2009-05-01)
Outlines basic issues on Medicaid eligibility and planning for long term care.
Planning for long-term health care
Richardson, Jesse J.; Geyer, L. Leon (Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2001)

Browsing by Author "Geyer, L. Leon"

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