Extending Foster Care to Age 21: Weighing the Costs to Government against the Benefits to Youth

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 allows states to claim federal reimbursement for the costs of caring for and supervising Title IV-E eligible foster youth until their 21st birthday. This issue brief provides preliminary estimates of what the potential costs to government and the benefits to young people would be if states extend foster care to age 21. The analysis focuses on the increase in postsecondary educational attainment associated with allowing foster youth to remain in care until they are 21 years old and the resulting increase in lifetime earnings associated with postsecondary education. Researchers estimate that lifetime earnings would increase an average of two dollars for every dollar spent on keeping foster youth in care beyond age 18

Taxing Emissions, Not Income: How to Moderate the Regional Impact of Federal Environment Policy

Canadian policymakers have the policy tools needed to ameliorate the regional economic harm that taxing GHG emissions can cause. A price on GHG emissions will affect Canadian provinces differently, possibly undermining support for a policy that incurs regional transfers of income. The authors recommend returning to the provinces the revenues collected through auctioned emissions permits, so that they may offer personal and corporate income tax relief, all to moderate the regional impact of GHG carbon policy. Allowing provinces to retain the revenues collected from auctioned emissions permits would achieve a greater degree of regional equity than the other policy options.Economic Growth and Innovation, GHG emissions, GHG carbon policy. Canadian federal policy, regional impacts of climate policy

NEW CONSERVATION INITIATIVES IN THE 2002 FARM BILL

The role of agri-environmental programs has taken on increased importance in the current Farm Bill debate with an eighty percent increase in Title II funding. However, little empirical evidence exists on the tradeoffs between economic costs and environmental benefits of new agri-environmental programs to assist policymakers in their designs. This paper illustrates some of the budgetary and environmental issues inherent in these initiatives. Several policy options are explored using an environmental simulation model and an economic spatial-equilibrium model for U.S. agriculture. Results indicate abatement levels of nitrogen and pesticides are higher under performance-based policies and those for wind erosion and soil productivity are higher under practice-based policies. Abatement of phosphorus discharge, soil erosion and carbon sequestration remains relatively constant regardless of policy type. A national performance-based conservation policy funded at the $1 billion level has the potential to improve the environmental performance of U.S. farmers by as much as ten percent.Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Laboratory studies, analysis, and interpretation of the spectra of hydrocarbons present in planetary atmospheres including cyanoacetylene, acetylene, propane, and ethane

Combining broadband Fourier transform spectrometers (FTS) from the McMath facility at NSO and from NRC in Ottawa and narrow band TDL data from the laboratories with computational physics techniques has produced a broad range of results for the study of planetary atmospheres. Motivation for the effort flows from the Voyager/IRIS observations and the needs of Voyager analysis for laboratory results. In addition, anticipation of the Cassini mission adds incentive to pursue studies of observed and potentially observable constituents of planetary atmospheres. Current studies include cyanoacetylene, acetylene, propane, and ethane. Particular attention is devoted to cyanoacetylen (H3CN) which is observed in the atmosphere of Titan. The results of a high resolution infrared laboratory study of the line positions of the 663, 449, and 22.5/cm fundamental bands are presented. Line position, reproducible to better than 5 MHz for the first two bands, are available for infrared astrophysical searches. Intensity and broadening studies are in progress. Acetylene is a nearly ubiquitous atmospheric constituent of the outer planets and Titan due to the nature of methane photochemistry. Results of ambient temperature absolute intensity measurements are presented for the fundamental and two two-quantum hotband in the 730/cm region. Low temperature hotband intensity and linewidth measurements are planned

Impact of Electron Collision Mixing on the delay times of an electron beam excited Atomic Xenon laser

The atomic xenon (5d¿6p) infrared laser has been experimentally and theoretically investigated using a short-pulse (30-ns), high-power (1-10-MW/cm3) coaxial electron beam excitation source. In most cases, laser oscillation is not observed during the e-beam current pulse. Laser pulses of hundreds of nanoseconds duration are subsequently obtained, however, with oscillation beginning 60-800 ns after the current pulse terminates. Results from a computer model for the xenon laser reproduce the experimental values and show that oscillation begins when the fractional electron density decays below a critical value of ≈0.2-0.8×10 6. These results lend credence to the proposal that electron collision mixing of the laser levels limits the maximum value of specific power deposition that can be used to excite the atomic xenon laser efficiently on a quasi-CW basi

The Determinants of Lateness: Evidence from British Workers

Using a sample of male and female workers from the 1992 Employment in Britain survey we estimate a generalised grouped zero-inflated Poisson regression model of employeesÕ self-reported lateness. Reflecting theoretical predictions from both psychology and economics, lateness is modelled as a function of incentives, the monitoring of and sanctions for lateness within the workplace, job satisfaction and attitudes to work. Various aspects of workplace incentive and disciplinary policies turn out to affect lateness, however, once these are controlled for, an important role for job satisfaction remains.