Letter from the Secretary of War, relative to the Montana Indian War claims of 1867

42-3Military AffairsMontana Indian War Claims. [1567] Suppression of Indian hostilities in 1867.1873-5

Letter from the Attorney-General, in response to a resolution of the 2d instant, with reference to the practice of the United States Courts at Fort Smith, Ark., and Paris, Tex., in the appointment of commissioners for the investigation of offenses committed in the Indian Territory.

51-1JudiciaryU.S. Courts at rort Smith, Arkansas, and Paris, Texas. [2688] Appointment of com'rs to investigate crimes in Indian Territory questioned.1890-26

La teleología como un obstáculo epistemológico en la enseñanza de la evolución.

Si bien la enseñanza de la evolución hace parte de los programas curriculares que se desarrollan en la educación primaria, secundaria y algunos programas universitarios en Colombia, esta enseñanza tropieza frecuentemente con obstáculos epistemológicos como lo son: las arraigadas creencias religiosas como el creacionismo (para explicar el origen y la inmutabilidad de lo vivo), la malinterpretación de la teoría evolutiva darwiniana, las explicaciones del fenómeno viviente basadas en animismos, vitalismos, mecanicismos finalistas,  etc

Stochastic Frontier Models for Long Panel Data Sets: Measurement of the Underlying Energy Efficiency for the OECD Countries

In this paper we propose a general approach for estimating stochastic frontier mod- els, suitable when using long panel data sets. We measure efficiency as a linear combi- nation of a finite number of unobservable common factors, having coefficients that vary across firms, plus a time-invariant component. We adopt recently developed economet- ric techniques for large, cross sectionally correlated, non-stationary panel data models to estimate the frontier function. Given the long time span of the panel, we investigate whether the variables, including the unobservable common factors, are non-stationary, and, if so, whether they are cointegrated. To empirically illustrate our approach, we estimate a stochastic frontier model for energy demand, and compute the level of the “underlying energy efficiency” for 24 OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2008. In our specification, we control for variables such as Gross Domestic Product, energy price, climate and technological progress, that are known to impact on energy consumption. We also allow for hetero- geneity across countries in the impact of these factors on energy demand. Our panel unit root tests suggest that energy demand and its key determinants are integrated and that they exhibit a long-run relation. The estimation of efficiency scores points at European countries as the more efficient in consuming energy

'Underlying Energy Efficiency' in the US

The promotion of US energy efficiency policy is seen as a very important activity by the Energy Information Agency (EIA). Generally, the level of energy efficiency of a state is approximated by energy intensity, commonly calculated as the ratio of energy use to GDP. However, energy intensity is not an accurate proxy for energy efficiency, because changes in energy intensity are a function of changes in several factors including the structure of the economy, climate, efficiency in the use of resources and technical change. The aim of this paper is to measure the ‘underlying energy efficiency’ for the whole economy of 49 ‘states’ in the US using a stochastic frontier energy demand approach. A total US energy demand frontier function is estimated using panel data for 49 ‘states’ over the period 1995 to 2009 using several panel data models: the pooled model; the random effects model; true fixed effects model; the true random effects model; and the Mundlak versions of the pooled and random effects models. The analysis confirms that energy intensity is not a good indicator of energy efficiency; whereas, by controlling for a range of economic and other factors, the measure of ‘underlying energy efficiency’ obtained via the approach adopted here (based on the microeconomic theory of production) is

The Economic Crisis and Residential Electricity Consumption in Spanish Provinces: A Spatial Econometric Analysis

This paper presents an empirical analysis of residential electricity demand considering the existence of spatial effects. This analysis has been performed using aggregate panel data at the province level for 46 Spanish provinces for the period from 2001 to 2009. For this purpose, we estimated a log-log demand equation using a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances (SARAR). The purpose of this empirical analysis is to determine the influence of price, income, and spatial spillovers on residential electricity demand in Spain. We are particularly interested in analyzing the impact of household disposable income variation across provinces observed during the economic crisis period from 2008-2009. The estimation results show relatively high income elasticity and relatively low price elasticity. Furthermore, the results show the presence of spatial effects in Spanish residential electricity consumption

Does the Swiss Car Market Reward Fuel Efficient Cars? Evidence from Hedonic Pricing Regressions, Matching and a Regression Discontinuity Design

To correct market failures due to the presence of negative externalities associated with energy consumption, governments have adopted a variety of policies, including taxes, subsidies, regulations and standards, and information-based policies. For example, labels that clearly convey energy consumption rates, associated costs, and emissions of conventional pollutants and CO2, have been devised and used in the last two decades in several countries. In 2003, Switzerland introduced a system of fuel economy labels, based on grades ranging from A to G, where is A best and G is worst, to assist consumers in making decisions that improve the fleet s fuel economy and lower emissions. We use a dataset documenting all passenger cars approved for sale in Switzerland each year from 2000 to 2011 to answer three key research questions. First, what is the willingness to pay for fuel economy? Second, do Swiss drivers - or Swiss auto importers on their behalf - appear to do a one-to-one tradeoff between car purchase price and savings on fuel costs over the lifetime of the car? Third, does the label have an additional effect on price, all else the same, above and beyond that of fuel efficiency alone? Hedonic pricing regressions that exploit the variation in fuel economy across make-models, and over time within make-models, suggest that there is a (modest) capitalization of fuel economy into car prices. The diesel premium, however, exceeds the future fuel cost savings made possible by diesel cars, even at zero discount rates. An alternate calculation suggests that the fuel economy premium is consistent with a very low discount rate (2.5%). We use a sharp regression discontinuity design (RDD) based on the mechanism used by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy to assign cars to the fuel economy label to see if the label has an independent effect on price, above and beyond that of the fuel economy. The RDD approach estimates the effect to be 6-11%. To broaden the fuel economy range over which we assess the effect of the A label, we also deploy matching estimators, and find that the effect of an A label on car price is approximately 5%