Monitoring of Pollution Regulation: Do Local Conditions Matter

Economists have greatly criticized regulations that impose uniform environmental standards on plants which may differ in terms both of their marginal abatement cost and marginal damage functions. Such a critic ignores however that the implementation of the standards may vary significantly across plants thus giving rise in fact to non-uniform standards. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of the regulator's monitoring activities, and the factors which explains the decision to inspect or not to inspect a plant's environmental performance. We show that regulators are sensitive to environmental damages in their decision to inspect specific plants and that greater inspection effort, ceteris paribus, is allocated towards those plants whose emissions are likely to generate a higher level of damages. On the other hand, we also show that the behavior of the regulator is also a function of variables that may not be directly related to abatement cost and damages. In particular, we show that variables pertaining to local labor market conditions have an impact on the monitoring strategy adopted by the regulator. These results provide support to both the public interest and economic theory of regulation. Les économistes ont beaucoup critiqué la réglementation qui impose des normes environnementales uniformes à des usines qui peuvent différer tant en termes de coûts marginaux de la diminution de la pollution qu'en termes des fonctions de dommage marginal. De tels critiques ignorent toutefois que l 'implantation de normes peut varier de manière significative d'une usine à l'autre, ce qui se traduit par des normes qui, en fait, ne sont pas uniformes. Le but de cet article est d'analyser les déterminants des activités de contrôle du législateur, et les facteurs qui expliquent la décision d'inspecter ou non la performance environnementale d'une usine. Nous démontrons que les législateurs sont sont sensibles aux dommages environnementaux lorsqu'ils prennent la décision d'inspecter une usine spécifique et que de plus grands efforts d'inspection, ceteris paribus, sont consacrés aux usines qui sont susceptibles de créer les dommages les plus importants. D'un autre côté, nous démontrons également que les comportements du législateur sont aussi fonction de variables qui ne peuvent être reliées directement aux coûts de la réduction de la pollution et aux dommages environnementaux. En particulier, nous démontrons que les variables liées aux conditions locales du marché du travail ont un impact sur la stratégie de contrôle adoptée par le législateur. Ces résultats fournissent un support, à la fois à la théorie de l'intérêt public, et à la théorie économique de la réglementation.Pollution, Environment, Monitoring, Enforcement, Regulation, Pulp and Paper, Pollution, Environnement, Contrôle, Réglementation, Pâte et papier

Monitoring environmental standards : do local conditions matter?

Economists have criticized regulations that impose uniform environmental standards on plants that may face different marginal abatement costs and damage functions. Such critics ignore the difference in standard implementation across plants, giving rise to nonuniform standards. The authors analyze what determines the regulators'monitoring activities and what factors explain their decision to inspect a plant's environmental performance. They find that regulators are sensitive to local environmental damages and allocate inspection efforts to plants whose emissions are likely to generate more damage. Although national standards are uniform, implementation is a function of local conditions. Local monitoring and enforcement of national standards effectively determines the local price of pollution. Ignoring the tradeoffs taking place locally could undermine and render ineffective national regulatory and policy reform. This supports the public interest theory of regulation, which views the regulator as an agent whose objective is to maximize social welfare. The authors also show that the regulator's behavior is a function of variables not directly related to abatement cost and damages. In particular, conditions in the local labor market affect the regulator's monitoring strategy choice. This lends support to the economic theory of regulation, which views regulators as agents whose behavior can best be explained by assuming that they seek to maximize their political support.Administrative&Regulatory Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Environmental Governance,Administrative&Regulatory Law,Health Economics&Finance,Water and Industry

Universal electric-field-driven resistive transition in narrow-gap Mott insulators

One of today's most exciting research frontier and challenge in condensed matter physics is known as Mottronics, whose goal is to incorporate strong correlation effects into the realm of electronics. In fact, taming the Mott insulator-to-metal transition (IMT), which is driven by strong electronic correlation effects, holds the promise of a commutation speed set by a quantum transition, and with negligible power dissipation. In this context, one possible route to control the Mott transition is to electrostatically dope the systems using strong dielectrics, in FET-like devices. Another possibility is through resistive switching, that is, to induce the insulator-to-metal transition by strong electric pulsing. This action brings the correlated system far from equilibrium, rendering the exact treatment of the problem a difficult challenge. Here, we show that existing theoretical predictions of the off-equilibrium manybody problem err by orders of magnitudes, when compared to experiments that we performed on three prototypical narrow gap Mott systems V2-xCrxO3, NiS2-xSex and GaTa4Se8, and which also demonstrate a striking universality of this Mott resistive transition (MRT). We then introduce and numerically study a model based on key theoretically known physical features of the Mott phenomenon in the Hubbard model. We find that our model predictions are in very good agreement with the observed universal MRT and with a non-trivial timedelay electric pulsing experiment, which we also report. Our study demonstrates that the MRT can be associated to a dynamically directed avalanche

Les technologies de l'autonomie et de la santé : entre progrès et régressions

Ce rapport résulté d'une recherche pour l'IRES-CGT et anlyse les enjeux sociétaux, politiques, éthiques et juridiques dud éveloppement des technologies de l'autonomie et de la santé. Il analyse les enjeux d'usage et d'acceptabilité tant pour les publics destinataires -notamment personnes âgées en perte d'autonomie- que pour les professionnels du soin et de l'accompagnement

Monitoring of Pollution Regulation: Do Local Conditions Matter

Les économistes ont beaucoup critiqué la réglementation qui impose des normes environnementales uniformes à des usines qui peuvent différer tant en termes de coûts marginaux de la diminution de la pollution qu'en termes des fonctions de dommage marginal. De tels critiques ignorent toutefois que l 'implantation de normes peut varier de manière significative d'une usine à l'autre, ce qui se traduit par des normes qui, en fait, ne sont pas uniformes. Le but de cet article est d'analyser les déterminants des activités de contrôle du législateur, et les facteurs qui expliquent la décision d'inspecter ou non la performance environnementale d'une usine. Nous démontrons que les législateurs sont sont sensibles aux dommages environnementaux lorsqu'ils prennent la décision d'inspecter une usine spécifique et que de plus grands efforts d'inspection, ceteris paribus, sont consacrés aux usines qui sont susceptibles de créer les dommages les plus importants. D'un autre côté, nous démontrons également que les comportements du législateur sont aussi fonction de variables qui ne peuvent être reliées directement aux coûts de la réduction de la pollution et aux dommages environnementaux. En particulier, nous démontrons que les variables liées aux conditions locales du marché du travail ont un impact sur la stratégie de contrôle adoptée par le législateur. Ces résultats fournissent un support, à la fois à la théorie de l'intérêt public, et à la théorie économique de la réglementation.Economists have greatly criticized regulations that impose uniform environmental standards on plants which may differ in terms both of their marginal abatement cost and marginal damage functions. Such a critic ignores however that the implementation of the standards may vary significantly across plants thus giving rise in fact to non-uniform standards. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of the regulator's monitoring activities, and the factors which explains the decision to inspect or not to inspect a plant's environmental performance. We show that regulators are sensitive to environmental damages in their decision to inspect specific plants and that greater inspection effort, ceteris paribus, is allocated towards those plants whose emissions are likely to generate a higher level of damages. On the other hand, we also show that the behavior of the regulator is also a function of variables that may not be directly related to abatement cost and damages. In particular, we show that variables pertaining to local labor market conditions have an impact on the monitoring strategy adopted by the regulator. These results provide support to both the public interest and economic theory of regulation

Analyse des rituels d'athlètes belges francophones en période pré-compétitive

Les sportifs sont réputés pour accorder une attention toute particulière à des rituels supersticieux, notamment à l'approche d'une compétition. Dans cette étude, nous avons suivis 16 athlètes (course à pied). Durant le mois précédant une compétition importante, dix athlètes ont noté dans un agenda leurs faits et gestes quotidiens en relation avec celle-ci. Les agendas ont donné lieu à une analyse inductive de contenu selon les principes de la « théorie ancrée » (Strauss et Corbin, 1990). Par ailleurs, durant la dizaine de minutes précédant le départ d’une compétition, neuf coureurs ont été filmés pour être soumis ensuite à un entretien d’explicitation (Vermersch et Maurel, 1997). Leur action a été reconstruite a posteriori en respectant les principes de l’analyse globale du cours d’action (Theureau, 1992).Athletes provide a particular attention to supersticious behaviours, specifically when approaching a competition. In this study, we worked with 16 athletes (track and field). During the month before one important competition, ten wrote in a diary their daily activities and thoughts. Moreover, during the 10 minutes preceeding the competition, 9 runners have been videotaped in the perspective to participate into a explicitation interview. The data were used to reconstruct their action on the basis of the analysis of the "course of action"

Social Sustainability in Trade and Development Policy: A Life Cycle Approach to Understanding and Managing Social Risk Attributable to Production and Consumption in the EU-27

Improving social sustainability within Europe and abroad is among the founding premises of the European Union. European Commission external policy documents – in particular, those associated with trade and development - explicitly call for the use of policy instruments as a means of improving social conditions in third countries. Unclear, however, is the extent to which progress in social sustainability as a result of Commission policy measures is being assessed, or measures to further leverage improved social sustainability implemented. Life cycle thinking (LCT) refers to a management philosophy predicated on holistic consideration of management alternatives for the purpose of preventing unintentional burden shifting – whether between supply chain activities or issue areas. Significant strides have already been made in the environmental domain to operationalize life cycle thinking in European Commission policies, with supporting methodological norms, frameworks, tools and data. To date, comparable approaches and instruments are lacking in support of life cycle-based social sustainability policy initiatives. Such information and tools are critical in support of improved policy design, implementation, monitoring and/or reformulation. Social risk refers to the potential for one or more parties to be exposed to negative social conditions that, in turn, undermine social sustainability. We conducted a macro-scale analysis of the social risk profile of EU-27 trade by combining trade statistics regarding imports from intra- and extra-territorial trading partners in 2010 with country and sector-specific social risk indicator data. These data cover 17 social themes in five thematic areas: Labour Rights and Decent Work; Health and Safety; Human Rights; Governance; and Community Infrastructure. We assessed the apparent social risk profiles of EU-27 imports based on consideration of country-of-origin social risk data only, compared to a life cycle-based social risk assessment which took into account the distribution of social risk along product supply chains. Our intention was to better understand how and to what extent current trade-based consumption in the EU-27 may be associated with socially unsustainable conditions, and the value of applying a life cycle perspective for sustainability management in this context. Our analysis underscores the importance of a life cycle-based approach to understanding and managing social risk in support of policies for socially sustainable development. Moreover, the methods and information presented herein offer a potentially powerful decision-support tool for policy makers wishing to better understand the magnitude and distribution of social risk associated with EU production and consumption patterns, the mitigation of which will contribute to socially sustainable development within Europe and abroad. A novel opportunity hence presents itself for decision makers and those who provide scientific and technical support to policy making to collaborate closely in moving forward the agenda for socially sustainable development. This will require the identification of strategic policy directions and supporting research projects, building upon existing, complementary environmental and economic sustainability assessment tools within the European Commission, which will continue to strengthen the elaboration, implementation, and impact assessment of science-based policy for sustainable development.JRC.H.8 - Sustainability Assessmen

A model to simulate the gravitropic response and internal stresses in trees, considering the progressive maturation of wood

Trees-Struct. Funct. ISI Document Delivery No.: AM5EH Times Cited: 0 Cited Reference Count: 21 Pot, Guillaume Coutand, Catherine Toussaint, Evelyne Le Cam, Jean-Benoit Saudreau, Marc Auvergne Regional Council; European Regional Development Fund This work was supported by a grant from the Auvergne Regional Council and the European Regional Development Fund. Springer New yorkInternational audienceThe developed model of gravitropism takes non-instantaneous maturation of wood into account which enabled to correctly simulate different gravitropic phases and realistic internal stress profiles. A new biomechanical model of tree movement in relation to gravity (gravitropism) is proposed in this study. The modelling of the progressive maturation of wood cells is taken into account, as well as spatio-temporal variations in maturation strains (MS) and mechanical properties. MS were identified using an inverse method that allows the model to fit the gravitropic reaction observed experimentally. For this purpose, the curvature during righting movement, the geometry and the mass distribution of a two-year-old poplar tree was measured. The identified MS are higher than expected, which shows the underestimation of MS by usual measurements. By using the same mechanical parameters and MS as an input, the model gives satisfying results in terms of shape modelling for different trees up to 32 days after tree tilting. The model is able to simulate the latency phase observed in the tree righting movement, and the internal stress profile in the trunk is realistic (low compressive value in the central part of the trunk and zero stress in newly formed cells). The next development of the model will aim to simulate the end of the gravitropic phase in relation with the regulation of MS by the tree

Max-log demapper architecture design for DVB-T2 rotated QAM constellations

International audience— Rotated and cyclic-Q delayed (RCQD) quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) improve DVB-T2 system performance over highly time-frequency selective channels. However, when compared with conventional QAM demapper, the RCQD demapper requires a higher computational complexity. In this paper, a complexity-reduced max-log demapper is derived and implemented over a FPGA platform. The proposed demapper allows to find the maximum likelihood (ML) point with a search spanning only M signal constellation points and guarantees to obtain the same log-likelihood ratio (LLR) metrics as the optimum max-log soft decision demapper while spanning at most 2 M signal constellation points. The optimized hardware implementation introduces only a slight performance loss compared to the floating-point full complexity max-log performance. Index Terms — DVB-T2, Rotated and Cyclic Q Delayed (RCQD) Constellations, Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR), Max-Log Demapper