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Public Debt And Functional Finance In An Olg Model With Imperfect Competition, Peter Skott, Soon Ryoo

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper examines the role of fiscal policy in the long run. We show that (i) dynamic inefficiency may be empirically relevant in a modified Diamond OLG model with imperfect competition, (ii) fiscal policy may be needed to avoid inefficiency (if investment adjusts passively to saving) and maintain full employment (if investment and saving decisions are taken separately), (iii) a simple and distributionally neutral tax scheme can maintain full employment in the face of variations in 'household confidence', and (iv) the debt ratio is inversely related to both the growth rate and government consumption.

Replacement Versus Historical Cost Profit Rates: What Is The Difference? When Does It Matter?, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper explains the BEA methodology for computing historical cost and replacement cost measures of the net stock of capital in the U.S. economy. It is demonstrated that there exists a threshold rate of inflation in the price of capital goods that keeps the percentage difference between the two capital stock measures constant. Hence, over periods when average inflation in the price index for capital goods is equal to the threshold value, historical cost and replacement cost profit rates would show equal percentage changes; an example of such a period for the U.S. economy is the whole postwar period 1946–2010. …

Climate Change Adaptation Chapter: Marshfield, Massachusetts, Joshua H. Chase, Jonathan G. Cooper, Rory Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Filipe Antunes Lima, Sally R. Miller, Toni Marie Pignatelli

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Climate change, understood as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or its variability, is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Marshfield is already being affected by changes in the climate that will have a profound effect on the town’s economy, public health, coastal resources, natural features, water systems, and public and private infrastructure. Adaptation strategies have been widely recognized as playing an important role in improving a community’s ability to respond to climate stressors by resisting damage and recovering quickly.

Based on review of climate projections for the …

Opportunities As Chances: Maximising The Probability That Everybody Succeeds, Marco Mariotti, Roberto Veneziani

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Opportunities in society are commonly interpreted as ‘chances of success’. Within this interpretation, should opportunities be equalised? We show that a liberal principle of justice and a limited principle of social rationality imply that opportunity pro…les should be evaluated by means of a ‘Nash’criterion. The interpretation is new: the social objective should be to maximise the chance that everybody in society succeeds. In particular, the failure of even only one individual must be considered maximally detrimental. We also study a re…nement of this criterion and its extension to problems of intergenerational justice.

Umass Amherst Friends Of The Library Newsletter - Fall/Winter 2012 (No. 44), Jay Schafer

Library News for the Friends of the UMass Amherst Libraries

The Story of the $60 Gift

On the following pages, you will see and read about the transformative renovations in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library and the Science & Engineering Library that were completed over the summer. An important part of the story that the photos don’t tell is how these projects have been funded. Unlike major infrastructure improvement projects (including the new elevators and the electrical upgrades), the renovation of interior library space is not directly funded by the state or the campus. The success of the Procrastination Station café over the past several years encouraged our Campus Auxiliary …

Prelude To A Master Plan: Ware, Massachusetts, Belen Alfaro, Bruno Carneiro, Margaret Engesser, Kathryn E. Fox, Evadne R. Friedman, Timothy Inacio, Anita Lockesmith, Christina Mills, Stephanie Molden, Meagen Mulherin, Russell Pandres, Vinicius Pereira, Brian Reid, Pedro Soto, Jennifer Stromsten

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Prelude to a Master Plan offers ideas, recommendations, and a toolkit to help the town chart its own path towards that future. While the teams and individual students worked to ‘drill down’ into specific topic areas, the Studio defined three basic areas in order to think about how the various assets, challenges and ideas undermine or reinforce one another. The report is loosely organized in those terms: addressing the outlying rural areas and issues specific to these places, considering one of the key growth areas that has extended from town and the conflicts that arise from the many uses occurring …

Large Excitonic Effects In Monolayers Of Molybdenum And Tungsten Dichalcogenides, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Quasiparticle band structures and optical properties of MoS2, MoSe2, MoTe2, WS2, and WSe2 monolayers are studied using the GW approximation in conjunction with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE). The inclusion of two-particle excitations in the BSE approach reveals the presence of two strongly bound excitons (A and B) below the quasiparticle absorption onset arising from vertical transitions between a spin-orbit-split valence band and the conduction band at the K point of the Brillouin zone. The transition energies for monolayer MoS2, in particular, are shown to be in excellent agreement with available absorption and photoluminescence measurements. Excitation energies for the remaining monolayers …

Investigating Pilot Scale Performance Of An Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment System With A High Rate Anaerobic Side Stream Reactor, Aaron Brennan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The anaerobic side stream reactor (ASSR) process was continuously operated and tested as a pilot scale system, treating 500 gallons of raw wastewater per day. Addition of an ASSR to a conventional activated sludge (CAS) system has been shown to reduce overall waste sludge generation in previous bench scale experiments. This study aimed to specifically test the feasibility of the ASSR process at the pilot scale while comparing it to a full scale CAS plant. The ASSR process differs from the similar Cannibal® process in that it utilizes an SRT in the side stream reactor of only 2 days rather …

Evaluation Of Second-Stage Contactor Media For Manganese Removal, Jonathan Chihoski

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The focus of this research was to determine the performance of different types of media for a post-filter second-stage contactor for the removal of manganese from a drinking water source. The Aquarion Water Company’s Lantern Hill (LH) water treatment facility in Stonington, CT served as the motivation for this study. The groundwater at this site contains significant concentrations of manganese, averaging 0.2 mg/L, as well as iron, 2.3 mg/L, and total organic carbon (TOC), 3.5 mg/L. Currently, the Lantern Hill facility is using a combination of pH adjustment, potassium permanganate, chlorine, and cationic polymer addition prior to down flow through …

Hydrologic Forecasts And Adaptation To Climate Change In The Northeast Water Sector, Sarah Whateley

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Innovative approaches are needed for improving water resources management and decisionmaking under hydroclimatic uncertainty. Presently, water resource management and infrastructure design relies on an assumption of stationarity, the notion that ‘natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability’ (Milly et al., 2008). However, the need to reexamine this paradigm has proliferated in recent literature due to alterations in the hydrologic landscape (Pahl-Wostl, 2007; Peel and Bloschl, 2011). Sustainable management of water resource systems is becoming increasingly difficult as a result of intensification of anthropogenic disturbances, channel modifications, land-cover changes, and future uncertainty in climate change and variability. As we …

The Calorie Consumption Puzzle In India: An Empirical Investigation, Deepanker Basu, Amit Basole

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Over the past four decades, India has witnessed a paradoxical trend: average per capita calorie intake has declined even as real per capita monthly expenditure has increased over time. Since cross sectional evidence suggests a robust positive relationship between the two variables, the trend emerges as a major puzzle. The main explanations that have been offered in the literature to address the puzzle are: rural impoverishment, relative price changes, decline in calorie needs, diversification of diets, a squeeze on the food budget due to rising expenditures on nonfood essentials, and decline in subsistence consumption (due to commercialization). Using a panel …

Erasing Class/ (Re)Creating Ethnicity: Jobs, Politics, Accumulation And Identity In Kenya, Mwangi Wa Githinji

Economics Department Working Paper Series

A large literature on African economies argues that ethnicity plays a role in the politics and economics of African countries. Unfortunately, much of this literature is speculative or anecdotal because of the lack of data, with the exception of a few papers that examine ethnic networking as a business or employment strategy. In many ways Africa’s failure to develop is a failure of nationhood. Creating nation is handicapped by the use of ethnicity. In this paper, I empirically examine the relationship between employment, wages and ethnicity in Africa via a case study of Kenya. I challenge the pervasive view that …

Proposed Reuse And Redevelopment Of The Salem Harbor Power Station, Salem, Massachusetts, Peter Matchak

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This master's project analyses the potential reuse of the Salem Harbor Power Station. The station is slated to close June 2014. The closure is an opportunity for Salem, Massachusetts, to redevelop this site and to envision its future socio-economic possibilities. In this project, the parameters of potential development are reviewed, potential reuses are examined, and the best redevelopment strategies are presented.

This project uses five basic steps. The first was a literature review that focuses on planning concepts for the waterfront industrial landscape and its redevelopment. The second is a site analysis of the power plant that discusses the characteristics …

Developing A Watershed-Level Protocol For Choosing Indicator Compounds For Edcs/Ppcps Using Analytical Methods And Chemometrics, Varun N. Srinivasan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Numerous studies have reported the presence of several endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP) in wastewater effluents and consequently in natural water sources which serve as source water for drinking water utilities. However it is still unclear as to which of these compounds are important and need to be monitored. This paper proposes a new approach to identify indicators or surrogates to monitor these compounds in a watershed based on intensive sampling, analytical methods and statistical analysis. The watershed-level protocol involves identifying common patterns of occurrence in these trace chemicals and proposes indicators based on …

Assessment Of Iron And Manganese Sequestration, Danielle Volpe

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

For drinking water with low to moderate levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) (at or somewhat above the SMCL), sequestration is a less expensive treatment alternative compared to metal oxidation and removal. Sequestration complexes Fe and Mn to prevent precipitation and subsequent water quality problems (turbidity, color, staining, etc.). Despite the widespread use of sequestering agents, research has not resulted in a successful method to directly assess the complexation of Mn and Fe. This study was conducted to develop a method for assessing sequestering agent effectiveness and to assess the effectiveness of several phosphate based sequestering agents for several …

Assessment Of Iron And Manganese Sequestration, Danielle Volpe

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

For drinking water with low to moderate levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) (at or somewhat above the SMCL), sequestration is a less expensive treatment alternative compared to metal oxidation and removal. Sequestration complexes Fe and Mn to prevent precipitation and subsequent water quality problems (turbidity, color, staining, etc.). Despite the widespread use of sequestering agents, research has not resulted in a successful method to directly assess the complexation of Mn and Fe. This study was conducted to develop a method for assessing sequestering agent effectiveness and to assess the effectiveness of several phosphate based sequestering agents for several …

Low Budget Planning For Natural Resources And Open Space Conservation In Whitingham, Vermont, Paul Gagnon

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This master's project was created for the Town of Whitingham, Vermont for the purpose of guiding town planning strategies with regard to open space and natural resources. It responds to Whitingham's draft town plan created in 2010 with the assistance of the Windham Regional Commission and was originally presented to the town planning Commission in May of 2010.

Whitingham is a rural community of 1,300 residents located near the Massachusetts border. Although Whitingham's population has grown slowly over the last twenty years, it has seen a significant increase in subdivision and housing construction, particularly vacation homes. Loss of the town's …

Grey Scars Of The Past: Case-Study-Based Green Principles Of Historic Mill Redevelopment With A Sustainable Future, Marianne E. Iarossi

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Historic mill buildings are vast structures that tend to have a negative connotation associated with them. They are usually looked at as eyesores or symbols of a historic, working past that should be demolished. However, due to a variety of reasons, and the array of benefits that can be created if preserved, these mill buildings should be redeveloped and in a green, sustainable way. This Master's of Regional Planning Project examines the concept of sustainable mill revitalization, and various case study examples in the state of Massachusetts that demonstrate this. Various patterns of the concepts and elements were evident amongst …

Greyfield Adaptive Re-Use: Applying A Matrix Of Contemporary Theory To A Real Site In Springfield, Ma, Kathryn E. Ostermier

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

New neighborhood and home construction since World War II has been rapid and sprawling. Development companies have used increasingly efficient modular plans and construction techniques to design, grade, and construct sub-divisions across the country with little regard for vernacular landscape or a sense of place. Salmon-colored stucco homes in Ladera Ranch, California could be confused with those in Tucson, Arizona, which look just like communities in Homestead, Florida. Rows and cul de sacs of houses with duplicate floorplans, similar color and finish with standard foundation plantings and landscaping blur into one another, and it becomes impossible to place oneself because …

Revitalization Of An Urban Riverfront To Revitalize The Socio-Economic Conditions Of Springfield, Ma, Sneha Rasal

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The City of Springfield, Massachusetts is one of the largest cities in western Massachusetts, and was established on the Connecticut River for trading and as a fur-collecting post. In 18th and early 19th century, it experienced an industrial boom and became a regional financial center. Springfield became a major railroad center and grew to become the regional center for banking, finance, and courts. However, in mid-19th century Springfield suffered due to the flooding of the Connecticut River and the disinvestment in industry. These resulted in an urban sprawl as people started moving away from heart of the city.

Now, once …

Evaluation And Amendments Of A Healing Garden At The Western Massachusetts Hospital, Owen Morgan White

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This study evaluates the variety and quality of four healing gardens currently in existence, with an eye toward developing a healing garden at Western Massachusetts Hospital (WMH) with similar characteristics, but designed specifically to the confines of the WMH site. In the evaluation process, the researcher employed the Mara Eckerling three-layer evaluation method. Personal survey and site photography were performed at four healing gardens; the Howard Ulfelder Healing Garden at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA; the Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts; the Joel Schnaper Memorial Garden at Terrance Cardinal Cooke Health Center in Manhattan, New York and the …

Umass Amherst Friends Of The Library Newsletter - Spring/Summer 2012 (No. 43), Jay Schafer

Library News for the Friends of the UMass Amherst Libraries

While climatologically our New England winter and spring have been unusual, the academic calendar continues on at a steady pace. February was again the time to celebrate the birthday of W.E.B. Du Bois with the 18th Annual Du Bois Lecture. We shared this lecture with the Springfield community and then also participated in the second annual tribute to Du Bois at the St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield.

The 10th Annual Dinner with Friends recognized a new collaboration between Yankee Publishing and the Libraries. We are especially proud that this generations-old New England publishing icon has entrusted its archives to …

Along The Chicopee River From The Mills To The Ludlow Bridge - Creating A Vision For Indian Orchard, Ying Cao, Elizabeth Englebretson, Scott Fulford, Jing Huang, Yiwei Huang, Rocky Liu, Tracy Murphy, Sparky Von Plinsky, Albert Wang, Jinglin Wang, Yan Yan, Shanshan Yu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

The report documents design investigations for Springfield’s Indian Orchard neighborhood. The Graduate Urban Design Studio focused on the exciting area along the Chicopee River from the Indian Orchard Mills to the spectacular outlook at Indian Leap and the neighborhood gateway at the Ludlow Bridge. The primary goal of the project was to unveil the unique assets and character of the area, make these assets more accessible and legible and thus strengthen the identity of Indian Orchard as a vibrant place for its residents and visitors. Crucial keys to attaining this goal are: acknowledging the strong industrial heritage; improving connectivity to …

Pesticide Safety 2012 - Zone Ii, New Website, And Npdes, Brian Wick

Cranberry Station Extension meetings

No abstract provided.

Pesticide Safety 2012 - Herbicide Update, Hilary Sandler

Cranberry Station Extension meetings

No abstract provided.

Pesticide Safety 2012 - What To Do When Your Pesticide Application Goes Wrong, Linda Letourneau

Cranberry Station Extension meetings

No abstract provided.

Real Exchange Rates And The Long-Run Effects Of Aggregate Demand In Economies With Underemployment, Peter Skott, Martin Rapetti, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Successful economic development to a large extent derives from the mobilization of underemployed resources. Demand policy can play an important role. It is critical, however, to consider balance of payments constraints and to ensure an expansion of investment in the modern sector. A combination of investment promotion and exchange rate intervention may be required to achieve these goals.

Pesticide Safety 2012 - Pesticide Safety Review, Martha Sylvia

Cranberry Station Extension meetings

No abstract provided.

Pesticide Safety 2012 - Mrl's And Frost, Carolyn J. Demoranville

Cranberry Station Extension meetings

No abstract provided.

Pesticide Safety 2012 - Mix This, Not That, Hilary Sandler

Cranberry Station Extension meetings

No abstract provided.