The changing face of conveyancing responsibility

In this note the authors examine two cases, one from Australia, the other from New Zealand, both of which explore the responsibility of legal practitioners engaged as professionals in the buying and selling of land. What is shown is that the allocation of risk and responsibility is constantly under scrutiny for those involved in the conveyancing process, something which the nascent Australian electronic conveyancing protocols will only heighten.

Food aid and food production: A theoretical analysis

It has been claimed that food aid leads to permanent dependency as it depresses domestic food prices and thus farmers find it profitable to take land out of food production and into more lucrative activities. This paper develops two alternative scenarios under which the hypothesis about the damaging effect of food aid may not be true. Under the first scenario, it is argued that food production in developing countries is often low due to unfavourable trade policies and if food aid is tied to the removal of bias against the agricultural sector, food aid will not have any disincentive effect on food production. The second exercise argues that the revenue raised by the recipient government by selling aid could be used for R and D in agricultural production.