Economics Commons^™

Evaluation Of Best Management Practices To Reduce Nutrients Runoff In Watersheds In Arkansas, Hector German Rodriguez Diaz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are many non point sources (NPS) of pollution issues across the state of Arkansas. Each region of the state has different concerns. Many watersheds have been included in the Arkansas's 2008 303(d) list for NPS impairments with sediment and nutrients being the primary causes of concern. This research hypothesized that there are no cost or net returns risks when adopting best management practices (BMPs) to control nutrients runoff and that selection, timing, placement and cost have no impact on the implementation of BMPs. Using two priority watersheds, the L'Anguille River and the Lincoln Lake, as examples, the environmental benefits …

The Very Basics Of Sustainability - An Alternative Viewpoint (Slides With Audio) (Large File! To Speed Up Download, Right-Click On "Download" Link To Save To Own Pc.), Jim Mcgovern

Other resources

This presentation sets out the very basics of ‘sustainability’, although a definition of sustainability is not attempted. Some of the very basics are the context in which the Earth and humankind exist in space and time, the Earth’s climate, the Earth’s population and humankind’s options and choices. The author advocates keeping an open mind on all available options, including the use of oil, gas, coal, tar sands, carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear power etc., as well as the technologies that are more widely considered ‘green’. The author also argues that, in addressing the challenges that humankind faces, globally concerted effort …

Varroa In The Aloha State, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

The Hawaiian word for fate is hopena, and since the early 1900s, it’s been a matter of hopena that Varroa mites would eventually come to the Islands. The inevitability increased in 2001 when APHIS/USDA forced Hawai’i to allow transshipments of queens and package bees from New Zealand to Canada to pass through its ports. Since Varroa arrived on Oahu in 2006 and on the Big Island in 2008, many agencies have been working together to create appropriate infrastructure to address the latest arrival. According to Hawai’i Department of Agriculture (HDOA) branch chief Neil Reimer, 'Before Varroa showed up in Hawai’i, …

Incorporating Fairness Motives Into The Impulse Balance Equilibrium And Quantal Response Equilibrium Concepts: An Application To 2x2 Games, Alessandro Tavoni

Alessandro Tavoni

Substantial evidence has accumulated in recent empirical works on the limited ability of the Nash equilibrium to rationalize observed behavior in many classes of games played by experimental subjects. This realization has led to several attempts aimed at finding tractable equilibrium concepts which perform better empirically; one such example is the impulse balance equilibrium (Selten, Chmura, 2008), which introduces a psychological reference point to which players compare the available payoff allocations. This paper is concerned with advancing two new, empirically sound, concepts: equity-driven impulse balance equilibrium (EIBE) and equity-driven quantal response equilibrium (EQRE): both introduce a distributive reference point to …

Crop Bioengineering: Enormous Potential For Catalyzing International Development, Peter Gregory, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Bioengineering provides unique and dramatic opportunities for crop improvement. It can be used to develop crop varieties that would otherwise be unavailable and can facilitate much faster and more precise ways of developing improved varieties. It can help to increase yields and reliability and thus reduce food costs for the consumer while helping to control input costs for farmers through reduced applications of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer.

The extent to which this will be achieved depends on how effectively the global scientific community – including both the public and private sectors – can cooperate in harnessing the power of …

Research Choice And Finance In University Bioscience, David E. Ervin, Steven T. Buccola, Hui Yang

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Academic bioscience's rising importance for downstream technology and growing private sector relationships have evoked substantial policy attention. We contribute to the scrutiny by asking how university bioscientists design and finance their research, with particular attention to the mutuality of research portfolio choice and funding success. The analysis requires consideration of other major influences on academic science, including scientific norms, human capital, and institutional environment. Drawing on a national survey of university bioscientists, we find that public financial support encourages more basic investigation and private support encourages more applied investigation. Yet downstream research is only moderately more excludable than upstream. Once …

How Fast Is The World's Center Of Co2 Emissions Moving Eastwards?, Nicole Andréa Mathys, Grether Jean-Marie

Nicole Andréa Mathys

Borrowing from physics the concept of center of mass and applying it to the distribution of CO2 anthropogenic sources provided by the EDGAR data base, we can draw on the Earth’s surface the trajectory of the world’s pollution center of gravity over the 1970-2005 period. It is strongly heading to the East, and more so than GDP, which suggests that Asian production is getting more CO2 intensive than Western production.

A Neuroeconomic Theory Of The Decision Process, John Dickhaut, Aldo Rustichini, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Publications

We develop a neuronal theory of the choice process (NTCP), which takes a subject from the moment in which two options are presented to the selection of one of the two. The theory is based on an optimal signal detection, which generalizes the signal detection theory by adding the choice of effort as optimal choice for a given informational value of the signal for every effort level and a cost of effort. NTCP predicts the choice made as a stochastic choice: That is, as a probability distribution over two options in a set, the level of effort provided, the error …

The Corporate Agenda For Environmental Property Rights, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Market and property-rights based approaches to environmental problems have been heavily promoted by conservative think tanks. Consequently policies such as emissions trading, water markets, tradeable fishing quotas and conservation banking pervade environmental policy in English speaking nations. They have enabled the corporate neo-liberal agenda of deregulation, privatisation and an unconstrained market to be dressed up as an environmental virtue. This market-faith based approach is proving to be largely ineffective at protecting the environment and also inequitable.

The Graphic Novel As A Choice Of Weapons, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

In the late 1930s, the photographer Gordon Parks arrived in Washington, DC, to work with Roy Stryker, director of the Farm Security Administration. Parks' first assignment was to tour the nation's capital, a city still governed by Jim Crow laws. Stryker locked Parks' camera in a closed and then bade the young black man adieu, with the expectation Parks would not return for a week.

Bee Pollination In Agricultural Ecosystems, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

In her endorsement of this landmark study of pollinators’ role in Industrial Agriculture and wildlife management, May Berenbaum writes that this book should be ‘‘required reading for practitioners and policymakers alike.’’ Although at times, the book’s structure feels like a forced march, I concur with Berenbaum for the most part. It is a powerful expression from fifteen of the more important voices shaping discussions ranging from genetically-modified organisms to alfalfaleafcutting bees to biocontrols. To have them collected in one collection is a testament to pollination management being taken seriously as a profession. The writers included in this book are impressive …

A Public Choice Framework For Controlling Transmissable And Evolving Diseases, Ted C. Bergstrom, Carl T. Bergstrom, Ben Althouse

Ted C Bergstrom

Control measures used to limit the spread of infectious disease often generate externalities. Vaccination for transmissible diseases can re- duce the incidence of disease even among the unvaccinated, whereas antimicrobial chemotherapy can lead to the evolution of antimicro- bial resistance and thereby limit its own e#11;ectiveness over time. We integrate the economic theory of public choice with mathematical models of infectious disease to provide quantitative framework for making allocation decisions in the presence of these externalities. To illustrate, we present a series of examples: vaccination for tetanus, vaccination for measles, antibiotic treatment of otitis media, and antiviral treatment of pandemic …