Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Permaculture At Umass-Amherst: Garden Share Project, Madeleine K. Charney

University Libraries Publication Series

Student-run project at UMass-Amherst which highlights the value of growing and eating local and organic foods.

The Genius Of The Nation Versus The Gene-Tech Of The Nation: Science, Identity, And Gmo Debates In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Introduction In the late 1990s, Hungarian politicians, environmentalists, and agricultural lobbyists weighed the pros and cons of allowing genetically modified (GM) food and seeds to enter the Hungarian market. Starting around 1994, a small group of Hungarian environmentalists began researching GM issues. Initially, they feared that as a post-socialist country seeking foreign investment, Hungary would become prey to multinational corporations seeking an ‘emerging market’ with a lax regulatory environment. The terms of the debate were reframed over time, notably following 1998, when a number of European Union member states banned the imports of GM foods and when Hungarian expatriate geneticist …

Northampton Community Garden: Paradise It Is, Madeleine K. Charney

University Libraries Publication Series

Logistics and philosophy behind this well-run community site.

The University As A Contributor To The Local Economy: Key Thoughts For Local Planners, John Mullin, Zenia Kotval

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Publication Series

As we move into the twenty-first century, economic development officials are increasingly attempting to find new ways to "jump start" their local economies. Traditionally, this has involved, among others, finding appropriate land, ensuring there is adequate infrastructure, helping to train the local workforce, bringing financial institutions on board and assisting local entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to the market place. More recently, it has been also oriented toward ensuring that human capital is being invested into the community such that the local schools, recreation facilities, cultural attractions and public safety systems are all first rate. What has been too frequently …

Planning For Retail Activities In Small Downtowns: Towards A Pragmatic Approach, John Mullin, Zenia Kotval

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Publication Series

Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous shift in terms of retail activity in our downtowns. The changes that have occurred have influenced where and how we shop, where we live and how we define the centers of our communities. As these have evolved, planners have constantly attempted to react and adapt. At times, they have been quite sucessful while, more often, they have been frustrated. What is most perplexing is that the shifts show no signs of abating. It is an exciting time to be undertaking downtown planning!

At Home With Death, Madeleine K. Charney

University Libraries Publication Series

From website to gravesite, a budding landscape designer learns firsthand about the ties between technology, community, and the land.

Is Necessity The Mother Of Innovation? The Adoption And Use Of Web Technologies Among Congressional Offices, Kevin M. Esterling, David M.J. Lazer, Michael Neblo

National Center for Digital Government

From first paragraph: Communication between legislator and constituents is fundamental to effective democratic representation, and devising the institutional means for citizen/legislator communication stands as one of the core and persistent problems in the practice of democracy. A legislator needs information about the preferences, ideals, norms, and beliefs of her constituents in order to do her job well. Similarly, citizens need information about the actions and decisions of their representative in order to maintain appropriate accountability. But as national problems become more complex, and as the political process grows more and more dominated by experts and organized groups, it is becoming …

University Libraries Annual Report 2004, Jay Schafer

University Libraries Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

What Do We Think About Them? Stereotypes In Russia About U.S. High Schools., Svetlana Pivovar

Master's Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Equitable Carbon Revenue Distribution Under An International Emissions Trading Regime, Nathan Hultman, Daniel M. Kammen

PERI Working Papers

When people hear about ‘global warming’ or the Kyoto Protocol, many think of a topic of boundless uncertainty and political controversy. One reason for this reaction is the current U.S. administration’s statement that ‘Kyoto is dead’ and impossible to implement in the United States. As the largest greenhouse polluter in the world, the U.S. is indeed vital to any meaningful attempt to address the certain threat of climate change. Yet climate change will not go away simply because the Bush Administration refuses to sign one particular international accord. Scientists believe with high certainty that the impacts of current greenhouse gas …

Extractive Reserves: Building Natural Assets In The Brazilian Amazon, Anthony Hall

PERI Working Papers

Amazonia possesses the world's largest remaining area of tropical rainforest (3.5 million sq. km). Despite three decades of settlement and intensive development, the forest is still relatively intact compared with similar areas elsewhere. The region is an increasingly important source of natural assets for both regional and national economic growth, and provides livelihood support to a population of several million. In addition, the Amazon supplies key environmental services in terms of the conservation of biological diversity, climate regulation, and watershed management, as well as sequestering an estimated ten percent of global carbon emissions.

The Rise Of European Unemployment: A Synopsis, Engelbert Stockhammer

PERI Working Papers

This paper takes Keynesian macroeconomics and growth theory as its starting point and uses it to analyse the rise of unemployment in the large European economies. In a nutshell the explanation proposed in a series of papers2 is the following. Employment growth is determined by demand growth. The path of growth is set by investment decisions. Changes in labor market institutions are unable to explain the rise in unemployment. Econometric evidence on the relative explanatory power of labor market institutions and capital accumulation in explaining labor market variables are presented in Stockhammer (2004a). I conclude that capital accumulation determines the …

Was The Imf's Imposition Of Economic Regime Change In Korea Justified? A Critique Of The Imf's Economic And Political Role Before And After The Crisis, James Crotty, Kang-Kook Lee

PERI Working Papers

As late as October 1997 the IMF declared that the Korean economy was experiencing a temporary liquidity squeeze, not a solvency problem. Yet in December 1997 Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer declared that Korea suffered from a systemic “breakdown of economic relations” so complete that only radical economic restructuring could restore prosperity. The IMF attached what it called “extreme structural conditionality” to its loan agreements with Korea, demanding a complete and rapid transition from Korea’s traditional East Asian economic model to a globally integrated neoliberal model. We subject the IMF’s assertion that the allocative efficiency of the Korean economy had …

Deepening Divides In The U.S. Economy, 2004: Jobless Recovery And The Return Of Fiscal Deficits, Robert Pollin

PERI Working Papers

Writing in March 2004, two manifestations of the current conditions have become most prominent, having become, in fact, major news stories on an almost daily basis as we move deeply into the Presidential election season. The first is the so called “jobless recovery” from the 2001 recession, and the second is the return to large fiscal deficits by the federal government. In what follows, I wish to consider both of these developments, showing how they both reflect and reinforce the economy’s negative trajectory, though not primarily for the reasons that have been most prominently cited in mainstream discussions of these …

Review (For Challenge Magazine) Of The Roaring Nineties: A New History Of The World’S Most Prosperous Decade By Joseph E. Stiglitz, Robert Pollin

PERI Working Papers

In The Roaring Nineties, Professor Joseph Stiglitz delivers a forceful and largely effective attack on U.S. economic policy during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. The author undertakes this criticism despite the fact that Bill Clinton chose him to serve as a Member and then Chair, of his Council of Economic Advisors. In 1997, Stiglitz moved on to become Chief Economist at the World Bank, another position which he could not have obtained without the endorsement of the Clinton Administration. In the book’s preface, Stiglitz makes clear his sincere appreciation to President Clinton for appointing him to these senior policymaking posts. …

Air Pollution And Per Capita Income, Rachel A. Bouvier

PERI Working Papers

During the last decade, researchers have investigated the relationship between per capita income and environmental quality. This paper disaggregates the relationship between per capita income and emissions of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds into scale, composition and technology effects, using data from European and North American countries from the period 1980-1986. Results indicate that the scale effect outweighs the composition and technology effects in the cases of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds, while the opposite is true in the cases of carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. The results also suggest that greater democracy is …

International Environmental Justice: Building The Natural Assets Of The World’S Poor, Krista Harper, S. Ravi Rajan

PERI Working Papers

In recent years, vibrant social movements have emerged across the world to fight for environmental justice – for more equitable access to natural resources and environmental quality, including clean air and water. In seeking to build community rights to natural assets, these initiatives seek to advance simultaneously the goals of environmental protection and poverty reduction. This paper sketches the contours of struggles for environmental justice within and among countries, and illustrates with examples primarily drawn from countries of the global South and the former Soviet bloc.

A Future For Small Farms? Biodiversity And Sustainable Agriculture, James K. Boyce

PERI Working Papers

Small farms play a crucial role in conserving the agricultural biodiversity that underpins longterm food security worldwide. Particularly in centers of crop genetic diversity – such as Mesoamerica in the case of maize (corn) and the Andean region in the case of potatoes – small farmers are the ‘keystone species’ in agricultural ecosystems of great value to humankind. Today, however, a formidable nexus of market forces and political forces threatens both small farmers and the biodiversity they sustain. Countervailing public policies are urgently needed. These should include the removal of existing policy biases against small farmers; social recognition of the …

Rising Foreign Outsourcing And Employment Losses In U.S. Manufacturing, 1987-2002, James Burke, Gerald Epstein, Minsik Choi

PERI Working Papers

Foreign outsourcing, otherwise known as off-shoring, has become a matter of intense public debate and great concern in the United States presidential contest, especially in light of the large job losses experienced by U.S. workers since George Bush became president. Yet, there is a lack of good data on foreign outsourcing since the early 1990s. This paper presents updated measures of foreign outsourcing for the recent period. Its main findings are that the share of foreign-sourced goods in total manufactured inputs almost doubled – from 12.4% to 22.1%– in U.S. manufacturing between 1987 and 2002. Since the early 1990s, outsourcing …

Declining Corporate Income Taxes In The 1990s: A State-By-State Analysis Of Effective Tax Rates, Elissa Braunstein

PERI Working Papers

Between 1995 and 2000, inflation-adjusted federal corporate income taxes grew an average of 2.0 percent a year; the annual average for state and local corporate tax revenue actually declined by 0.12 percent during the same period. A number of statelevel studies have documented this decline by showing that corporations are paying a declining share of state taxes. But such results are inconclusive because they do not control for changes in corporate profitability. In this paper we use data from the National Income and Product Accounts to create a time series of corporate profits by state, enabling us to investigate corporate …

Compensation For Environmental Services And Rural Communities: Lessons From The Americas, Herman Rosa, Deborah Barry, Susan Kandel, Leopoldo Dimas

PERI Working Papers

In principle, payments for environmental services – such as watershed management, biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration – can advance the goals of both environmental protection and poverty reduction. A review of recent initiatives in the Americas suggests, however, that this desirable combination is not automatic. If payments for environmental services (PES) schemes are to be an effective vehicle for strengthening livelihoods in poor rural communities, they must be designed with that objective firmly in mind. This paper draws key lessons from diverse experiences in Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, and New York.

Levels, Differences And Ecms – Principles For Improved Econometric Forecasting, P. Geoffrey Allen, Robert Fildes

PERI Working Papers

An avalanche of articles has described the testing of a time series for the presence of unit roots. However, economic model builders have disagreed on the value of testing and how best to operationalise the tests. Sometimes the characterization of the series is an end in itself. More often, unit root testing is a preliminary step, followed by cointegration testing, intended to guide final model specification. A third possibility is to specify a general vector autoregression model, then work to a more specific model by sequential testing and the imposition of parameter restrictions to obtain the simplest data-congruent model ‘fit …

Direct And Market Effects Of Enforcing Emissions Trading Programs: An Experimental Analysis, James J. Murphy, John K. Stranlund

PERI Working Papers

Since firms in an emissions trading program are linked together through a permit market, so too are their compliance choices. Thus, enforcement strategies for trading programs must account for not only the direct effects of enforcement on compliance and emissions decisions, but also the indirect effects that occur because changes in enforcement can induce changes in permit prices. This paper uses laboratory experiments to test for these direct and indirect market effects. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find a direct effect of enforcement on individual violations, as well as a countervailing market effect through the permit price. Thus, the productivity …

An Economic Valuation Of Recreational Shellfishing On Cape Cod, David T. Damery, P. Geoffrey Allen

PERI Working Papers

Estimated total value for recreational shellfishing on Cape Cod was $7.4 million in 2002, based on results of a survey of 233 shellfish permit holders, a figure that has roughly kept pace with inflation based on a similar study conducted in 1975. The total value is made up of two components, the actual permit fees collected ($387,000) and an estimate of consumer surplus, which was based on willingness to accept compensation to give up a fishing permit and hence is unbounded by the survey respondents’ income. An estimate based on willingness-to-pay (WTP) gave a total value estimate of $1.0 million …

Pricing-To-Market: Price Discrimination Or Product Differentiation?, Nathalie Lavoie, Qihong Liu

PERI Working Papers

We employ a vertical differentiation model to examine the potential bias in pricing-tomarket (PTM) results when using unit values aggregating differentiated products. Our results show that: i) false evidence of PTM (“pseudo PTM”) is always found when using unit values, whether the law of one price holds or not; and ii) the extent to which results are biased due to pseudo PTM increases with the level of product differentiation. Correspondingly, our simulation results suggest that: i) it is possible to get a statistically significant estimate of the exchange rate coefficient, even when there is no real PTM; ii) the probability …

Hypothetical Bias In Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation Studies, Michael Ash, James J. Murphy, Thomas H. Stevens

PERI Working Papers

This paper uses a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between hypothetical bias and the price respondents are asked to pay. For public goods, the results clearly indicate a difference in the price elasticity between hypothetical and actual payment conditions. Since the bias increases for larger dollar amounts, any simple guidelines, such as NOAA’s “divide by two” rule of thumb, could be misleading. Future attempts to calibrate contingent valuation responses should reflect this price sensitivity.

The Economics Of Implementing Traceability In Beef Supply Chains: Trends In Major Producing And Trading Countries, Diogo M. Souza-Monteiro, Julie A. Caswell

PERI Working Papers

Countries have implemented traceability systems, especially after discovery of BSE in cattle, in order to quickly identify hazard sources. We compare the economic impacts of mandatory and voluntary systems in the EU, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and the United States in terms of the systems’ breadth, depth, and precision.

Judaic Studies And Me, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

At the time I carried out my researches in Alaska among the Eskimo, in Balkan villages and in Southeast Asia among the peoples of Laos I must admit that I usually perceived “Self” and ”Other” as distinct categories, and certainly not interactive ones. But, from a contemporary point of view, applying a reflexive approach, I now readily perceive interrelationships which, at that time, seemed remote from one another. This specifically applies to the ways in which Jews and the Jewish experience have not been separated from but really a part of my experiences in distant places.

International Environmental Justice: Building The Natural Assets Of The World’S Poor, Krista Harper, S. Ravi Rajan

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

In recent years, vibrant social movements have emerged across the world to fight for environmental justice –- for more equitable access to natural resources and environmental quality, including clean air and water. In seeking to build community rights to natural assets, these initiatives seek to advance simultaneously the goals of environmental protection and poverty reduction. This paper sketches the contours of struggles for environmental justice within and among countries, and illustrates with examples primarily drawn from countries of the global South and the former Soviet bloc.

This working paper is also accessible at the folllowing URL:

http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/28d064d65f/publication/107/

A newer, revised …

Headed Spans And Autosegmental Spreading, John J. Mccarthy

Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.