Chapter 12: Increase of Rent-Bearers and of Rents

1. What are the most obvious ways of increasing the productiveness of land?

2. How does a new railroad affect the value of the land it passes through?

3. How would the rent of a rocky island be affected if it became a summer resort?

4. Mention any cases you may have seen where a greater value was imparted to land by a newly discovered use.

5. A tunnel was made to drain a mine; the stock doubled in price. Was it really the stock, the old mine, or the new hole in the mountain-side that had increased in value?

6. Criticize the statement that, in an economic sense, land is a "fixed stock for all time."

NOTE.--The changes which the rent concept is undergoing can
be traced in the work of Alfred Marshall. See _Principles
of Economics_, Bk. V, ch. IX on "Quasi-rent," and ch. X on
"Situation Rent," and Bk. VI, ch. IX, Secs. 6-7, in which
Marshall modifies the older conception of rent. This is
discussed in "The Passing of the Old Rent Concept," cited
above (in note to ch. 10).