The Economics of Sustainability: A Review of Journal Articles

Concern about sustainability helped to launch a new agenda for development and environmental economics and challenged many of the fundamental goals and assumptions of the conventional, neoclassical economics of growth and development. We review 25 years’ of refereed journal articles on the economics of sustainability, with emphasis on analyses that involve concern for intergenerational equity in the long-term decisionmaking of a society; recognition of the role of finite environmental resources in long-term decisionmaking; and recognizable, if perhaps unconventional, use of economic concepts, such as instantaneous utility, cost, or intertemporal welfare. Taken as a whole, the articles reviewed here indicate that several areas must be addressed in future investigation: improving the clarity of sustainability criteria, maintaining distinctions between economic efficiency and equity, more thoroughly investigating many common assumptions in the literature about prospects for resource substitution and resource-enhancing technical change, and encouraging the empirical investigation of sustainability issues.economic efficiency, intergenerational equity, social optimality, sustainable development

The combined approach to ontology-based data access

The use of ontologies for accessing data is one of the most exciting new applications of description logics in databases and other information systems. A realistic way of realising sufficiently scalable ontology- based data access in practice is by reduction to querying relational databases. In this paper, we describe the combined approach, which incorporates the information given by the ontology into the data and employs query rewriting to eliminate spurious answers. We illustrate this approach for ontologies given in the DL-Lite family of description logics and briefly discuss the results obtained for the EL family

Combined FO rewritability for conjunctive query answering in DL-Lite

Standard description logic (DL) reasoning services such as satisfiability and subsumption mainly aim to support TBox design. When the design stage is over and the TBox is used in an actual application, it is usually combined with instance data stored in an ABox, and therefore query answering becomes the most importan

Optimal investments in clean production capacity

For the mitigation of long-term pollution threats, one must consider that both the process of environmental degradation and the switchover to new and cleaner technologies are dynamic. We develop a model of a uniform good that can be produced by either a polluting technology or a clean one; the latter is more expensive and requires investment in capacity. We derive the socially optimal pollution stock accumulation and creation of nonpolluting production capacity, weighing the tradeoffs among consumption, investment and djustment costs, and environmental damages. We consider the effects of changes in the pollution decay rate, the capacity depreciation rate, and the initial state of the environment on both the steady state and the transition period. The optimal transition path looks quite different with a clean or dirty initial environment. With the former, investment is slow and the price of pollution may overshoot the long-run optimum before converging. With the latter, capacity may overshoot

Latino and Black smokers in the Health and Retirement Study are more likely to quit: the role of light smoking

Abstract Background Older persons are more vulnerable to tobacco mortality and less likely to make quit attempts. Less is known, however, about the role of race and ethnicity on quit rates in the U.S. Using a nationally representative data source of older adults in U.S., we aimed to study racial and ethnic differences in smoking cessation rates. Methods We used data from all waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) between 1992-2012. The HRS is a longitudinal nationally representative survey of adults over the age of 50 in the United States. We followed current smokers at baseline (year 1992) until time to first quit. Race/ethnicity was the main predictor; gender, age, education, marital status, count of chronic medical conditions, depressive symptoms, and drinking at baseline were control variables. Cox regression was used for analysis of time to quit. Results Hazard ratios of quitting during the first ten (Hazard ratio = 1.51, p < 0.05) and 20 years (Hazard ratio = 1.46, p < 0.05) were larger for Latinos over the age of 50 compared to Whites. In addition, hazard ratios of quitting during the first 20 years (Hazard ratio = 1.19, p < 0.05) were larger for Blacks over the age of 50 compared to Whites. These findings were partially explained by cigarette consumption intensity, such that Latinos were lighter smokers and therefore more likely to quit than Whites. Conclusion Latinos and Blacks were more likely than Whites to quit smoking cigarettes within 20 years. However, this finding may be explained by cigarette consumption intensity.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134608/1/12971_2016_Article_90.pd

Treatment of gastrointestinal hemorrhage

Background: We assessed the value of selective arteriography in the diagnosis and management of acute gastrointestinal hemorrhage. Methods: We reviewed the records of 107 consecutive patients who had gastrointestinal hemorrhage and underwent selective arteriography between January 1992 and October 2003: 10 had upper gastrointestinal bleeding, 79 had lower gastrointestinal bleeding, and 18 had varicose bleeding with portal hypertension. Selective embolization was attempted in 15 patients to obtain hemostasis. Angiographic findings were reviewed and prospective reports were compared with the final diagnosis and outcome. Results: Of 129 angiographic studies, 36 correctly revealed the bleeding site and 93 were negative. Extravasation was seen in 24 cases at the level of stomach (n = 2), duodenum (n = 1), small bowel (n = 5), or colon (n = 16). Indirect signs of bleeding sources were identified in 12 patients (stomach in one, small bowel in four, large bowel in four, liver in three). Transcatheter embolization induced definitive hemostasis in 11 of 15 patients (73%), namely in the stomach (n = 2), small bowel (n = 3), colon (n = 7), and liver (n = 3). Three patients required surgery after embolization. Conclusion: Abdominal arteriography may localize gastrointestinal bleeding sources in approximately one-third of cases. Selective embolization may provide definitive hemostasis in most instance

North Dakota Economic-Demographic Assessment Model (NEDAM): Technical Description

This report describes the logic, structure, data bases, and operational procedures of the North Dakota model.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Ethnic differences in lipid metabolism in two groups of obese South African women

There is a higher prevalence of ischemic heart disease (IHD) in South African white than black women. The objective of this study was to determine biochemical explanations for this prevalence. The study group contained 15 obese black women (OBW) and 14 obese white women (OWW), ah premenopausal, who were examined after an overnight fast. Anthropometric measurements and blood concentrations of glucose, non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs), catecholamines, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, C-peptide, proinsulin, lipograms, cortisol, growth hormone, and post-heparin Lipoprotein Lipase activity were measured during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), Body composition was measured using bioelectrical impedance analysis, and subcutaneous and visceral fat mass were assessed with CT-scans. Visceral fat area was higher in OWW (139.7 +/- 10.7 cm(2)) than in OBW (72.3 +/- 3.9 cm(2)) (P < 0.01), as were fasting and 3 h triglyceride concentrations (P < 0.05 for all). OWW also had higher NEFA levels than OBW at 3 and 4 h compared, with OBW (P < 0.05 for both). Fasting cortisol (266 +/- 24 vs. 197 +/- 19 nmol/l; P < 0.05) was higher in OWW than in OBW. These data demonstrate that OWW have higher visceral fat mass than OBW, which may lead to a more atherogenic fasting and postprandial Lipid profile. The higher cortisol levels of the OWW may promote visceral fat deposition. - Punyadeera, C., M-T. van der Merwe, N.J. Crowther, M. Toman, C. P. Schlaphoff, and I. P. Gray. Ethnic differences in lipid metabolism in two groups of obese South African women