152,769 research outputs found

    Technical Barriers to Trade in the European Union: Importance for the Accession Countries. CEPS Working Document No. 144, April 2000

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    With trade in industrial products between the EU and the CEECs now essentially free of tariff and non-tariff restrictions, the principal impact of accession to the EU on trade flows will be through access to the Single Market of the EU. A key element of this will be the removal of technical barriers to trade. In this paper we try and highlight the importance of technical barriers to trade between the EU and the various CEECs, distinguishing sectors according to the different approaches to the removal of these barriers in the EU: mutual recognition, detailed harmonisation (old approach) and minimum requirements (new approach). We utilise two sources of information on technical regulations: a sectoral classification from a previous study of the impact of the Single Market and our own detailed translation of EU product related directives into the relevant tariff codes. The analysis suggests that the importance of technical barriers varies considerably across the CEECs. The adjustment implications of access to the Single Market are likely to be greatest for those most advanced in their accession negotiations

    Selection of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing’s Program Using Multi-Criteria Decision Making: A Case Study in Electronic Company

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    Nowadays, green purchasing, stop global warming, love the mother earth, and others that related to environment become hot issues. Manufactures industries tend to more active and responsive to those issues by adopting green strategies or program like Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing (ECM). In this article, an electronic company had applied 12 ECM Program and tries to choose one of those programs using 6 criteria, such as total cost involved, quality, recyclable material, process waste reduction, packaging waste reduction, and regulation compliance. By using multi-criteria decision making model, i.e. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and Modified TOPSIS methods, the ECM Program 9 (Open pit) is the best option. Keywords: Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing (ECM), Electronic Company, AHP, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Modified TOPSI

    You Can’t Build That Here: The Constitutionality of Aesthetic Zoning and Architectural Review

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    Consideration of the novel psychoactive substances (‘legal highs’)

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    Original report can be found at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ Crown Copyright, the Advisory Council/ The Home Office. This work is published under an open government license.The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) committed to providing the Government with advice on novel psychoactive substances (often colloquially termed „legal highs‟). This is a relatively recent phenomenon, exemplified by the drug known as mephedrone. The actions by the ACMD and subsequently by the Government on this drug have gone some way to reducing the potential harms caused by this substance. However, there is more that can be done. The advent of novel psychoactive substances has changed the face of the drug scene remarkably and with rapidity. The range of substances now available, their lack of consistency and the potential harms users are exposed to are now complex and multi-faceted. In light of this we have pleasure in enclosing the Council‟s report. This report provides advice on high level issues that ACMD believe the Government should give careful consideration to in addressing legally available psychoactive substances. The report does not purport to provide a single solution to the problem, but rather a number of practicable options that, in combination, seek to tackle the on-going sale, supply and consequential harms. It is important that the Government recognises that each and every department, that has a locus of responsibility in drug issues should both take personal ownership and share collective responsibility of the recommendations in this report. Tackling the issues that are raised by novel psychoactive substances requires a co-ordination of efforts that can only be realised by a strategic and co-operative approach. The ACMD has identified lead departments for each of the recommendations that should assist and guide the Government in this aim. The ACMD provides key recommendations in this report on legislation, public health, education and research. The key legislative measures are primarily concerned with tightening the enforcement of existing legislation and moving the responsibility for the supply of novel psychoactive substances to the vendors, such that the burden of proof falls to them. The ACMD believe it is for vendors to prove that such substances are neither analogues of current medicines nor products harmful to consumers in their intended form. The ACMD also makes key recommendations around public awareness from local to international initiatives.Final Published versio

    You Can’t Build That Here: The Constitutionality of Aesthetic Zoning and Architectural Review

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    Restoring RLUIPAs Equal Terms Provision

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    The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act\u27s (RLUIPA) equal terms provision prohibits government from implementing a land-use regulation in a manner that treats religious assemblies and institutions less favorably than secular assemblies and institutions. Lower courts have only begun to interpret and apply RLUIPA\u27s equal terms provision, but already they have significantly weakened its protections of religious liberty by giving the provision unnecessarily restrictive interpretations. Not surprisingly, in light of the Supreme Court\u27s invalidation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), the lower courts\u27 restrictive readings seen? driven by concerns that a broader interpretation would exceed Congress\u27s Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power. Yet the lower courts\u27 concerns about the constitutionality of a broader interpretation are misplaced, and their restrictive readings of the equal terms provision severely weaken RLUIPA\u27s protections of religious liberty. This Note argues that a textual interpretation of the provision, which would strictly prohibit unequal treatment of religious assemblies and institutions as compared to secular assemblies and institutions, falls within Congress\u27s prophylactic power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, a textual interpretation is more consistent with Congress\u27s intent to broadly protect religious liberty

    2015 Menino Survey of Mayors

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    The 2015 Menino Survey of Mayors represents the second nationally representative survey of American mayors released by the Boston University Initiatives on Cities. The Survey, based on interviews with 89 sitting mayors conducted in 2015, provides insight into mayoral priorities, policy views and relationships with their key partners, including other levels of government. Sitting mayors shared insight on their specific infrastructure needs and spending priorities, from roads and transit to water treatment and bike lanes, and reacted to police reforms proposed by the White House. They also shed light on the difficult choices they must often make, to promote affordable housing or improve the fiscal health of their city. A significant portion of the Survey is devoted to mayoral leadership, including areas of mayoral control and constituent approval, as well as constraints they confront under increasingly politicized and polarized state legislatures.Cit

    Essays on Environmental Policy and Technological Change

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    This dissertation is comprised of three empirical essays on technological change. The first chapter examines how industrial R&D intensities respond to environmental regulations when considering specific industry characteristics such as pollution intensity and immobility. Specifically, I study the impact of environmental regulations on R&D intensities in 21 manufacturing industries in 28 OECD countries from 2000-2007. I consider pollution intensity and the relative ease of relocation (immobility) as industry characteristics that determine the optimal industry response to increased environmental policy stringency. I find that more pollution intensive industries innovate less as regulatory environments become more restrictive relative to less pollution intensive industries. At the same time, more immobile industries innovate more than more mobile industries as environmental regulations become more stringent, illustrating innovation as an alternative to relocation. In the second chapter, I investigate how energy prices and production, government investment in R&D, and similarities in environmental regulations may influence international collaboration on energy patents. I study the propensity to collaboratively innovate by examining counts of renewable energy and alternative energy patents from 1994-2008 that have multiple inventors that are located in more than one country. Using a gravity model framework, I demonstrate that technological similarity, common languages, trade relationships, and similarity in environmental regulations are important drivers of collaboration in these technologies. When examining collaboration between advanced and developing countries, however, higher production of natural gas in developing countries and stronger environmental regulations in advanced nations positively affects the probability of collaboration. The third chapter explores the role of international financial openness on industrial R&D intensities. International financial integration may provide an important channel of financing for research and development (R&D) that ultimately enhances economic growth. This chapter extends the analysis of Maskus et al. (2012) by examining the impact of refined measures of international financial openness, capital controls, and financial structure on R&D intensities in 22 manufacturing industries in 18 OECD countries for the period 1990-2003. We interact these country-level financial measures with industry characteristics, namely dependence on external financing and the amount of tangible assets. Our findings indicate that multiple capital openness indices and financial structure measures are important determinants of R&D intensity. These refined measures indicate that the significance of FDI as an international financial development measure is driven primarily by external FDI assets. This may indicate that multinational firms are able to access funds from affiliate firms abroad, and use such funds as an important source of financing R&D expenditures

    What Workers Say: Employee Voice in the Anglo-American Workplace

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    [Excerpt] This book is about employee voice in the workplaces of the highly developed Anglo-American economies: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. These are among the most economically successful countries in the world. Despite being located in three different geographic areas, the Anglo-American countries have a common language and legal tradition, have close economic and political ties, and are linked by flows of people, goods, and capital. Many of the same firms operate in each country. The unions in each pay more attention to their counterparts within the group than to unions in other countries. The Anglo-American brand of capitalism – market oriented and open to competition, with modest welfare sates and income transfer systems – differentiates the countries from countries in the “social dialogue” model of the European Union (although the United Kingdom and Ireland are part of the Union) and from the highly unionized labor system in Scandinavia

    Cost-Benefit Analysis and Well-Being Analysis

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