Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Implementable Institutional Reform That Transfers Control Of Government Spending Levels From Politicians To Voters, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

Elected representatives have little incentive to pursue the interests of those electing them once they are elected. This well-known principle-agent problem leads, in a variety of theories of government, to non-optimally large levels of government expenditure. An implication is that budgetary rules are seen as necessary to constrain politicians' tax and spending behavior. Popular among such constraints are various Balanced Budget Amendment proposals. These approaches, however, are shown here to have serious limitations, including failure to address the central concern of spending level. An alternative approach is advanced here that relies on a Coase-like mechanism that transfers control of government …

The Economics Of Ghost Towns, Philip E. Graves, Stephan Weiler, Emily E. Tynon

PHILIP E GRAVES

The ghost towns of the American West are both intriguing historical artifacts and reflections of unique economic forces at work. In this study we develop linked labor and housing market models balancing the wages, rents, and local amenities of isolated boomtown sites to better understand the sources of such communities’ dramatic cycles. High variance boom-towns provide a unique context for investment in housing and other foundational infrastructure, leading directly to the unusually transient local development patterns seen in ghost town settings. We use Colorado-based case studies to illustrate the relevance of the model. Comparisons with more modern rural settings in …

Vision Of Self-Sufficiency Comes Alive (On Less Than Two Acres!), Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

A Montague, Massachusetts family relishes their traditional homesteading lifestyle.

The Impact Of Employment Quotas On The Economic Lives Of Disadvantaged Minorities In India, Nishith Prakash

Nishith Prakash

Using nationally representative household data from India, I estimate the effects of the world’s biggest and arguably most aggressive employment-based affirmative action policy for minorities on their labor market and children’s outcomes. In India, public sector jobs are set aside for scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs), the two principal disadvantaged minority groups in India. To identify the causal effect of these job reservations, I take advantage of the fact that the share of jobs set aside is based on a strict policy rule stipulated by the Indian Constitution. The policy rule requires that the shares of public sector …

Do Means-Tested School Lunch Subsidies Change Children's Weekly Consumption Patterns?, Nishith Prakash, Larry Howard

Nishith Prakash

This article examines whether participation in the means-tested component of the National School Lunch Program changes the dietary patterns of children. Endogeneity bias arising from the incentive effects of lunch subsidies on program take-up is addressed using an identification trategy that relies on variation across school districts in the financing of and demand for school meal programs. Analyzing data on 5th grade public elementary school children observed in spring 2004, we find significant changes in the weekly consumption patterns of subsidized children relative to children that do not receive a means-test subsidy. Our estimates indicate increases in consumption for items …

Does Employment Quota Explain Occupational Choice Among Disadvantaged Groups? A Natural Experiment From India, Larry Howard, Nishith Prakash

Nishith Prakash

This paper examines the effect of a federally-mandated public sector employment quota policy for minorities on their occupational choice. We utilize multiple logit models to estimate the effect of the policy on the choice between a high, middle, or low-skill public sector occupation during the 1980s and 1990s. The main findings are, first, the policy has a significant effect on the choice of occupation for both groups. The policy increases the probability of the scheduled caste group choosing high-skill occupations and decreases the probability of choosing middle-skill occupations. In contrast, the policy decreases the probability of the scheduled tribe group …

The Development Of Humans – A Study Including Languages, Cultures, Religions And Genetics, Dr. Erik Dahlquist, Dr. Allan Dahlquist

Dr. Erik Dahlquist

The book covers the development of culture, religion, language and genetics of the human population since prehistory. Four main cultures have spread around the globe: 1) Monosyllabic language people with ancestor cult 2) Austroasiatic people with sun worshipping and megalit graves. Counting with 20 as the base 3) Uralic speaking people with kings from the sky, and strong city states. Moon and mother godess. Don´t differentiate between male and female, he and she. 4) Inflectual language speaking people with sky gods and cattles. Indoeuropeans. Often endings differentiating he and she. Shows how original cultures are refelected in todays society.

The Allocation Of Permits In U.S. Climate Change Legislation, Don Fullerton, Daniel Karney

Don Fullerton

Don Fullerton and Daniel Karney of the University of Illinois take a hard look at the allocation of CO2 emissions permits under the Waxman-Markey bill and give it minimally passing marks.

Distributional Effects Of Environmental And Energy Policy: An Introduction, Don Fullerton

Don Fullerton

This chapter reviews literature on the distributional effects of environmental and energy policy. In particular, many effects of such policy are likely regressive. First, it raises the price of fossil-fuel-intensive products, expenditures on which are a high fraction of low-income budgets. Second, if abatement technologies are capital-intensive, then any mandate to abate pollution may induce firms to use more capital. If demand for capital is raised relative to labor, then a lower relative wage may also hurt low-income households. Third, pollution permits handed out to firms bestow scarcity rents on well-off individuals who own those firms. Fourth, low-income individuals may …

Defining And Measuring Entrepreneurship For Regional Research: A New Approach, Sarah A. Low

Sarah A. Low

A strong correlation might exist between entrepreneurship and long-term regional

employment growth (Acs and Armington, 2003). Entrepreneurship may be a more

sustainable economic development strategy than alternatives, like industrial recruitment,

because entrepreneurs tend to locate in their home region. Research and policies on

fostering entrepreneurship are hindered, however, by the lack of a clear definition and

measure of entrepreneurship (Bruyat and Pierre-Andre, 2000). Multiple definitions of

entrepreneurship, often flawed, lead to contradictory findings that fuel policymaker

confusion (Tamasy, 2006). Most importantly, the commonly used measures of

entrepreneurship ignore innovation—a long established defining attribute of

entrepreneurship for economic development. This is …

Status And Trends Of Wind Energy Development - Fact Sheet, Erik Edward Nordman

Erik Edward Nordman

The West Michigan Wind Assessment project team is comprehensively analyzing the benefits and challenges of wind energy development in coastal West Michigan, including Oceana, Muskegon, Ottawa and Allegan counties. This fact sheet summarizes the findings of their first report, Status and Trends of Wind Energy Development in West Michigan. Additional reports will examine potential impacts from a variety of perspectives and evaluate policy options for minimizing conflicts. For more information or to access the full report, please visit the project web site: www.gvsu.edu/wind.

Water Allocation Under Distribution Losses: Comparing Alternative Institutions, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Eithan Hochman, Chieko Umetsu, David Zilberman

Ujjayant Chakravorty

The distribution of water resources is characterized by increasing returns to scale. Distribution links water generation to its end-use. Standard economic analysis overlooks the interaction among these micro-markets - generation, distribution and end-use. We compare water allocation when there is market power in each micro-market. These outcomes are compared with benchmark cases - social planning and a competitive business-as-usual regime. Simulations suggest that institutions with market power in generation and end-use generate significantly higher welfare than the distribution monopoly and the competitive regime. However, if the policy goal is to maximize the size of the grid, a distribution monopoly is …

Fuel Versus Food, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Marie-Helene Hubert, Linda Nostbakken

Ujjayant Chakravorty

Many countries have actively encouraged the production of biofuels as a low-carbon alternative to the use of fossil fuels in transportation. To what extent do these trends imply a reallocation of scarce land away from food to fuel production? This paper critically reviews the small but growing literature in this area. We find that an increase in biofuel production may have a significant effect on food prices and, in certain parts of the world, in speeding up deforestation through land conversion. However, more research needs to be done to examine the effect of newer generation biofuel technologies that are less …

Bio-Economic Evaluation Of Implementing Trawl Fishing Gear With Different Selectivity, Lone Grønbæk Kronbak, J. Rasmus Nielsen, Ole A. Jørgensen, Niels Vestergaard

Niels Vestergaard

The paper develops a biological-economic evaluation tool to analyse the consequences for trawl fishers of implementing more selective fishing technologies. This is done by merging a dynamic biological population model and an economic cost–benefit evaluation framework to describe the consequences for the fish stocks, fishermen and society. The bio-economic evaluation is applied to the case of the Danish trawl fishery in Kattegat and Skagerrak, which experiences a high level of discards and bycatches of several species. Four different kinds of selectivity scenarios are evaluated in comparison with a baseline. The results from the evaluation are indicators for the consequences on …

Ecological Benchmarking To Explore Alternative Fishing Schemes To Protect Endangered Species By Substitution : The Danish Demersal Fishery In The North Sea, Niels Vestergaard, Jens Kjærsgaard, Kristiaan Kerstens

Niels Vestergaard

The cod stock in the North Sea is threatened by overexploitation. To recover this fishing stock, pressure needs to be reduced. This implies that catch compositions with small amounts of cod are preferred by public policy makers. The present analysis assesses the technological efficiency of fishing trips in terms of the substitution possibilities away from cod by considering landings of cod as an undesirable output. A conservative non-parametric frontier technology approach imposing minimal assumptions and based on directional distance functions is applied to explore alternative fishing activities for Danish gill netters operating in the North Sea with the goal of …

Fat Bloom Development And Structure-Appearance Relationships During Storage Of Under-Tempered Dark Chocolates, Dr. Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, Alistair Paterson, Mark Fowler, Joselio Vieira

Professor Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa

Fat bloom development and associated changes in microstructure, texture, appearance and melting properties were studied. Dark chocolates varying in particle size (PS) (D90 of 18, 25, 35 and 50 µm) were processed and pre-crystallised to under-temper regime. Bloom was induced by storing products under ambient conditions (18 ± 2 °C, RH 50%) and changes in texture, surface whiteness, gloss and melting properties evaluated on cooling and after every 24 h in storage until reaching asymptotic values. Microstructure of products were characterised during blooming using stereoscopic binocular microscopy. Measurements on texture and surface whiteness showed initial rapid increases with consequential reductions …

Comparison Of Rheological Models For Determining Dark Chocolate Viscosity, Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, Alistair Paterson, Mark Fowler, Joselio Vieira

Professor Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa

Parameters in chocolate rheology, namely shear viscosity and yield stress, are important in manufacture and directly influenced by product particle size distribution (PSD) and composition. The Casson model was the standard confectionery industry strategy to quantify rheological properties of molten chocolate until in 2000, the International Confectionery Association recommended the use of interpolation data to describe viscosity. The two strategies are compared and correlated in defining rheological properties of molten dark chocolates prepared using different PSD, fat and lecithin content. Rheological parameters were determined using a shear rate-controlled rheometer and data examined using correlation, regression and principal component analyses to …

Valuing Beach Closures On The Padre Island National Seashore, George R. Parsons, Ami K. Kang, Christopher G. Leggett, Kevin J. Boyle

George Parsons

We estimate the economic loss due to hypothetical beach closures on the Padre Island National Seashore on the Gulf Coast of Texas. We consider the closure of the entire park, groups of beaches in the park, and for comparison, beaches elsewhere on the coast. We estimate a linked site choice/trip frequency model of day trips. The site choice model is estimated using multinomial and mixed logit. The trip frequency model is estimated using a negative binomial regression. Using the mixed logit model, the mean per-trip loss for the closure of all Padre beaches is about $20; the loss-to-trip ratio is …