Economic Incentives Versus Command and Control: What's the Best Approach for Solving Environmental Problems?

Now, decades after the first environmental laws were passed in this country, policymakers face many choices when seeking to solve environmental problems. Will taxing polluters for their discharges be more effective than fining them for not meeting certain emissions standards? Will a regulatory agency find it less costly to enforce a ban or oversee a system of tradable permits? Which strategy will reduce a pollutant the quickest? Clearly, there are no "one-size-fits-all" answers. Many factors enter into the decision to favor either policies that lean more toward economic incentives (EI) and toward direct regulation, commonly referred to as command-and-control (CAC) policy. Underlying determinants include a country's governmental and regulatory infrastructure, along with the nature of the environmental problem itself. Even with these contextual factors to consider, we thought it would be useful to compare EI and CAC policies and their outcomes in a real-world setting. To do this, we looked at six environmental problems that the United States and at least one European country dealt with differently (see box on page 14.) For each problem, one approach was more of an EI measure, while the other relied more on CAC. For example, to reduce point-source industrial water pollution, the Netherlands implemented a system of fees for organic pollutants (EI), while the United States established a system of guidelines and permits (CAC). It turned out, in fact, that most policies had at least some elements of both approaches, but we categorized them as EI or CAC based on their dominant features. We then asked researchers who had previously studied these policies on either side of the Atlantic to update or prepare new case studies. We analyzed the 12 case studies (two for each of the six environmental problems) against a list of hypotheses frequently made for or against EI and CAC, such as which instrument is more effective or imposes less administrative burden

Diffractive wave guiding of hot electrons by the Au (111) herringbone reconstruction

The surface potential of the herringbone reconstruction on Au(111) is known to guide surface-state electrons along the potential channels. Surprisingly, we find by scanning tunneling spectroscopy that hot electrons with kinetic energies twenty times larger than the potential amplitude (38 meV) are still guided. The efficiency even increases with kinetic energy, which is reproduced by a tight binding calculation taking the known reconstruction potential and strain into account. The guiding is explained by diffraction at the inhomogeneous electrostatic potential and strain distribution provided by the reconstruction.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Recognition map analysis and crop acreage estimation using Skylab EREP data

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Improving the Accuracy of UK Regulatory Cost Estimates

UK Government departments are required to undertake a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) when introducing any policy change that places a burden on businesses, charities, the voluntary sector or individuals. Part of this assessment involves the appraisal of the costs (and benefits) associated with complying with all the available options, as well as the wider economic costs. Recent evidence has suggested that the compliance costs, when assessed ex post, tend to be lower than the ex ante assessment made beforehand (see e.g. Harrington et al 1999). Accurate cost estimates are important as errors can lead to under or over regulation. This, in turn, can result in growth and innovation being hindered or, in the case of under regulation, growth being achieved at the expense of the natural resource base (including human health and well being). In order to shed more light on the validity of RIA cost estimates and identify ways of improving their accuracy, Defra decided to commission a study comparing the ex ante and ex post costs of complying with regulatory changes. A total of eight case studies were carried out for this study, covering a range of recent environmental, agricultural and food-related regulations in the UK. Preliminary findings of this study indicate that while ex ante costs are often overestimated, there can also be significant underestimates. Reasons for errors in cost estimation are discussed and strategies for improving their accuracy suggested.Public Economics,

Investigation of LANDSAT follow-on thematic mapper spatial, radiometric and spectral resolution

The author has identified the following significant results. Fine resolution M7 multispectral scanner data collected during the Corn Blight Watch Experiment in 1971 served as the basis for this study. Different locations and times of year were studied. Definite improvement using 30-40 meter spatial resolution over present LANDSAT 1 resolution and over 50-60 meter resolution was observed, using crop area mensuration as the measure. Simulation studies carried out to extrapolate the empirical results to a range of field size distributions confirmed this effect, showing the improvement to be most pronounced for field sizes of 1-4 hectares. Radiometric sensitivity study showed significant degradation of crop classification accuracy immediately upon relaxation from the nominally specified values of 0.5% noise equivalent reflectance. This was especially the case for data which were spectrally similar such as that collected early in the growing season and also when attempting to accomplish crop stress detection

Error estimation of closed-form solution for annual rate of structural collapse

With the increasing emphasis of performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) in the engineering community, several investigations have been presented outlining simplified approaches suitable for performance-based seismic design (PBSD). Central to most of these PBSD approaches is the use of closed-form analytical solutions to the probabilistic integral equations representing the rate of exceedance of key performance measures. Situations where such closed-form solutions are not appropriate primarily relate to the problem of extrapolation outside of the region in which parameters of the closed-form solution are fit. This study presents a critical review of the closed form solution for the annual rate of structural collapse. The closed form solution requires the assumptions of lognormality of the collapse fragility and power model form of the ground motion hazard, of which the latter is more significant regarding the error of the closed-form solution. Via a parametric study, the key variables contributing to the error between the closed-form solution and solution via numerical integration are illustrated. As these key variables can not be easily measured it casts doubt on the use of such closed-form solutions in future PBSD, especially considering the simple and efficient nature of using direct numerical integration to obtain the solution

HSCT high-lift technology requirements

The viewgraphs and discussion of high lift needs and related aerodynamic goals established in system studies are described. The goals are presented for the takeoff, approach, and subsonic climb and cruise modes. The status of the related high lift databases and available design and analysis methods are described. Various high lift research and technology areas for future work including innovative concepts verification, flap design, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calibration and application, high Reynolds number testing, subsonic/transonic flap optimization, and flight testing are described