3,100 research outputs found
The Costs of Reducing Carbon Emissions: An Examination of Administration Forecasts
How much will it cost the United States to comply with the Kyoto protocol? The estimates range from over 4 percent of gross domestic product and 14 for the right to emit a ton of gases. In the lowest cost scenarios, U.S. emitters purchase rights to emit from other countries. In the highest cost scenarios, actual U.S. emissions have to be reduced by about 30 percent from what they otherwise would be. Such a cut-back would imply a massive shift from coal- to natural-gas-fired electricity generation. But even the low-cost scenar-ios are excessively expensive because models of the atmo-sphere predict that very little warming would be prevented
An Exploratory Analysis of the Role of Self-Compassion and the Relationship between Religiosity and Depression
Graduate
Applie
Did Enron Pillage California?
Revelations this summer about Enron Energy Services' byzantine electricity-trading practices have fueled charges that merchant power producers and traders artificially engineered the California electricity crisis of 2000-01. A careful examination of the suspect trading practices, however, reveals that there's less to those charges than meets the eye. The trading strategies in question all involved the pursuit of arbitrage opportunities, which arise when price discrepancies exist for a commodity in different locations or time periods. Exploiting arbitrage opportunities generally enhances economic efficiency by ensuring that electricity is reallocated where it is needed most. While some of the arbitrage opportunities were artificially manufactured by the companies themselves (in ways that may or may not have violated the law), most of them arose as a natural consequence of the market structure imposed by the California political system. In any case, it's unclear whether the trading strategies in question actually served to increase prices on balance. Even economists who are convinced that they did contribute to the increase in electricity prices attribute only about 5 percent of the alleged overcharges to the strategies at issue. Most of the price spike of 2000-01 is explained by drought, increased natural gas prices, the escalating cost of nitrogen oxide emissions credits, increases in consumer demand stemming from a hot summer and then a cold winter, and retail price controls that prevented market signals from disciplining producers or consumers. The price collapse in the summer of 2001 stemmed from a reversal of those conditions, not the imposition of federal price controls or the elimination of the trading practices in question
Don't Increase Federal Gasoline Taxes - Abolish Them
Many experts believe that gasoline taxes should be increased for a variety of reasons. Their arguments are unpersuasive. Oil is not disappearing, and when it becomes more expensive, market agents will substitute away from gasoline to save money. The link between oil price shocks and recessions, although real in the 1970s, has been much more benign since 1985 because of the termination of price controls. Market actors properly account for energy costs in their purchasing decisions absent government intervention. Pollution taxes, congestion fees, and automobile insurance premiums more closely related to vehicle miles traveled are better remedies for the externalities associated with automobile travel than a simple fuel tax. Gasoline consumption does not necessarily distort American foreign policy, impose military commitments, or empower Islamic terrorist organizations. State and federal gasoline taxes should be abolished. Local governments should tax gasoline only to the extent necessary to pay for roads when user charges are not feasible. If government feels compelled to more aggressively regulate vehicle tailpipe emissions or access to public roadways, pollution taxes and road user fees are better means of doing so than fuel taxes. Regardless, perfectly internalizing motor vehicle externalities would likely make the economy less efficient -- not more -- by inducing motorists into even more (economically) inefficient mass transit use. The arguments advanced against increasing gasoline taxes are applicable to the broader discussion about America's reliance on oil generally. The case for policies designed to discourage oil consumption is nearly as threadbare as the case for increasing the gasoline tax -- and for largely the same reasons
Rethinking Electricity Restructuring
Electric utility restructuring was initiated in the 1990s to remedy the problem of relatively high electricity costs in the Northeast and California. While politicians hoped that reform would allow low-cost electricity to flow to highcost states and that competition would reduce prices, economists wanted reform to eliminate regulatory incentives to overbuild generating capacity and spur the introduction of real-time prices for electricity. Unfortunately, high-cost states have seen little price relief, and competition has had a negligible impact on prices. Meanwhile, the California crisis of 2000-2001 has led many states to adopt policies that would once again encourage excess capacity. Finally, real-time pricing, although the subject of experiments, has yet to emerge. Most arresting, however, is the fact that restructuring contributed to the severity of the 2000-2001 California electricity crisis and (some scholars also argue) the August 2003 blackout in the Northeast, without delivering many efficiency gains. The poor track record of restructuring stems from systemic problems inherent in the reforms themselves. We recommend total abandonment of restructuring and a more thoroughgoing embrace of markets than contemplated in current restructuring initiatives. But we recognize that such reforms are politically difficult to achieve. A second-best alternative would be for those states that have already embraced restructuring to return to an updated version of the old, vertically integrated, regulated status quo. It's likely that such an arrangement would not be that different from the arrangements that would have developed under laissez faire
Establishing a conceptual model for the sustainable wine district
This research will provide wide ranging, practical and sustainable benefits to regional wine marketers, policy makers, regional government tourism bodies and the allied wine groups to develop the quality branding and marketing of wine products in the smaller regions
Orbital Dependent Exchange-Only Methods for Periodic Systems
Various orbital-dependent exchange-only potentials are studied which exhibit
correct long-range asymptotic behaviour. We present the first application of
these potentials for polymers and by one of these potentials for molecules.
Kohn-Sham type calculations have been carried out for polyethylene in order to
make valuable comparison of these potentials with each other as well as with
Hartree-Fock and exchange-only LDA methods. The Kohn-Sham band gap obtained
with the optimized effective potetial method is corrected with the exchange
contribution to the derivative discontinuity of the exchange-correlation
potential. The corrected band gap obtained with the Slater's exchange potential
is 9.7 eV close to the experiment.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. Phys. Rev. B60, 1999, in pres
Analisis Marketing Komunikasi dalam Menunjang Kinerja Organisasi (Studi Kasus Universitas Kristen Indonesia)
Komunikasi pemasaran menjadi aspek penting dalam keseluruhan misi pemasaran serta sebagai penentu suksesnya pemasaran. Dalam pelaksanaannya, para perencana harus dapat memilih strategi komunikasi pemasaran yang tepat. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif yang memaparkan tentang analisis komunikasi pemasaran dalam menunjang kinerja organisasi di Universitas Kristen Indonesia. Pengumpulan data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah observasi, wawancara, dan dokumentasi. Survey berdasarkan rekapitulasi penerimaan dan kelulusan mahasiswa dalam 3 tahun terakhir, dan wawancara kepada unit humas, mahasiswa, alumni, serta beberapa stakeholder yang telah menjalin kerjasama dengan Universitas Kristen Indonesia. Berdasarkan hal tesebut, penilitian ini bertujuan untuk memberikan informasi, serta mengetahui bagaimana strategi promosi yang telah dilakukan dalam menarik minat calon mahasiswa baru. Hasil analisis penelitian ini menunjukkan bahawa komunikasi pemasaran yang telah dilaksanakan Universitas Kristen Indonesia telah dimulai dari penerimaan mahasiswa, proses pembelajaran mahasiswa, lulusan/alumni serta stakeholder. Hal ini dimaksudkan agar adanya peningkatan penerimaan mahasiswa, peningkatan lulusan, dan adanya stakeholder (dunia usaha, dunia industri, lembaga pemerintahan dan swasta lainnya) dapat menyerap lulusan/alumni pada pasar tenaga kerja
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