RENEWABLE ENERGY AND GREENHOUSE GAS MITIGATION

The paper develops an exhaustible resource model with cumulative pollution and a backstop technology that exhibits increasing marginal costs of production. The model explores conditions under which it is optimal to have a protracted transition period where both an exhaustible and renewable resource are used simultaneously.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

RENEWABLE ENERGY AND GREENHOUSE GAS MITIGATION

The paper develops an exhaustible resource model with cumulative pollution and a backstop technology that exhibits increasing marginal costs of production. The model explores conditions under which it is optimal to have a protracted transition period where both an exhaustible and renewable resource are used simultaneously

CONTRACT STRUCTURE, LEARNING-BY-DOING AND THE VIABILITY OF NEW AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES

The paper examines contracts in new agricultural industries that exhibit learning-by-doing. A dynamic model analyzes a contract's effect on production decisions, as well as investments in processing capacity and learning. The results of the model are applied qualitatively to the biomass electricity industry

The Value to Consumers of Health Labeling Statements on Breakfast Foods and Cereals

Food manufacturers have an incentive to include nutrient content claims, health claims, or other types of labeling statements on foods if they believe that consumers will be willing to pay more for products with specific attributes. We estimated semi-log hedonic price regressions for five breakfast bar and cereal product categories using Nielsen ScanTrack scanner data for 2004 and found that labeling statements for these foods are often associated with substantial increases in consumer willingness to pay. The largest effects were associated with “carb-conscious” carbohydrate labeling (reflecting the time period of the data), followed by fat and sugar content labeling statements

Curiosity predicts smoking experimentation independent of susceptibility in a US national sample.

PurposeTo improve smoking prevention efforts, better methods for identifying at-risk youth are needed. The widely used measure of susceptibility to smoking identifies at-risk adolescents; however, it correctly identifies only about one third of future smokers. Adding curiosity about smoking to this susceptibility index may allow us to identify a greater proportion of future smokers while they are still pre-teens.MethodsWe use longitudinal data from a recent national study on parenting to prevent problem behaviors. Only oldest children between 10 and 13years of age were eligible. Participants were identified by RDD survey and followed for 6years. All baseline never smokers with at least one follow-up assessment were included (n=878). The association of curiosity about smoking with future smoking behavior was assessed. Then, curiosity was added to form an enhanced susceptibility index and sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value were calculated.ResultsAmong committed never smokers at baseline, those who were 'definitely not curious' were less likely to progress toward smoking than both those who were 'probably not curious' (ORadj=1.89; 95% CI=1.03-3.47) or 'probably/definitely curious' (ORadj=2.88; 95% CI=1.11-7.45). Incorporating curiosity into the susceptibility index increased the proportion identified as at-risk to smoke from 25.1% to 46.9%. The sensitivity (true positives) for this enhanced susceptibility index for both experimentation and established smoking increased from 37-40% to over 50%, although the positive predictive value did not improve.ConclusionThe addition of curiosity significantly improves the identification and classification of which adolescents will experiment with smoking or become established smokers

Bivariate parameter sweeps of (a) annual proportion of cigarette smokers switching to new product and the proportion of these switchers and dual users who would have otherwise quit smoking that year (b) new product initiation factor and annual proportion of new product users switching to cigarettes or transitioning to dual use on cumulative difference in deaths for ages 35–84 between the status quo and hypothetical scenario A in 2050.

<p>Bivariate parameter sweeps of (a) annual proportion of cigarette smokers switching to new product and the proportion of these switchers and dual users who would have otherwise quit smoking that year (b) new product initiation factor and annual proportion of new product users switching to cigarettes or transitioning to dual use on cumulative difference in deaths for ages 35–84 between the status quo and hypothetical scenario A in 2050.</p