Una luz al costado del mundo Title: The Light at the Edge of the World

Wade Davis (1953-), botánico étnico y escritor canadiense, Explorador Residente de la National Geographic Society y autor de The Serpent and the Rainbow [La serpiente y el arco iris] (1986) y One River [Un río] (1996).Culture & Arts, Wade Davis Centro Cultural Encuentros Nro. 41 Una luz al costado del mundo

Essays in Environmental and Energy Economics

This dissertation contributes developments in modeling and policy analysis in environmental and energy economics. All three chapters are useful to ongoing debates in climate change policy and the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. My first chapter develops a model of consumer decision-making in an analysis of the electricity retail choice market in Texas. This project explores (1) the limitations of consumer decision-making in a setting with large choice sets and (2) the relationship between competition and product variety after deregulation. I find strong evidence of inattention and search costs as explanations for consumers\u27 widespread failure to choose cost-minimizing contracts. These findings suggest that policymakers could improve welfare with interventions that reduce search costs and inattention, such as removing the legal obstacles to concierge services or introducing a web-based tool to find consumers\u27 cost-minimizing contract based on their consumption history. My findings also suggest that these interventions could lead to higher adoption of time-varying rates, which could lead to more efficient allocation of grid resources and lower emissions levels. My other main finding is that consumers are constrained in the monopoly setting from expressing their heterogeneous preferences for contract variety. This insight may guide regulators in monopoly settings to consider increasing variety. Of course, the possible benefits of increased variety face a trade-off with the costs of search and inattention. My second chapter is co-authored with Robert Mendelsohn and Paula Pereda. We propose a model to estimate the economic damages from weather shocks and climate change. We contrast our model with the models used in previous literature, and we show that our model estimates substantially different effects than this earlier work, a finding the emphasizes the importance of model selection and careful consideration of the implicit assumptions. We demonstrate our method in the contexts of both agricultural profits and GDP, but this model could be easily transported to a variety of other settings and sectors in the climate change damages literature. My final chapter is co-authored with Kenneth Gillingham and James Stock. We compare several time series models to estimate the price elasticity of new vehicle sales, addressing the classic challenges of price and sales endogeneity and simultaneity in time series analysis with aggregate data. Correctly identifying the price elasticity of new vehicle sales is especially important for estimating the impacts of fuel economy standards because changing fuel economy stringency is assumed to cause a shock to new vehicle prices. The resulting effect on new vehicle sales has broad implications beyond the immediate impact on the vehicle industry. In particular, new vehicles generally have the best safety features and pollution controls, so reducing replacement of used vehicles has consequences for public safety and pollution levels. This project is also a novel application of a structural vector autoregression with instrumental variables (SVAR-IV), a relatively new methodology borrowed from the monetary policy literature. We compare the SVAR-IV with other time series approaches, some of which have been considered in policymaking for fuel economy standards

Water Quality Sampling, Analysis and Annual Load Determinations for TSS, Nitrogen and Phosphorus at the Washington County Road 195 Bridge on the West Fork of the White River

A water quality sampling station was installed at the Washington County road 195 bridge on the West Fork of the White River just above the confluence of the three main forks of the Upper White River in December 2001. The Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) was approved by EPA Region six on March 2002 and sampling was begun at that time. This station is coordinated with a USGS gauging station at the same location. This station was instrumented to collect samples at sufficient intervals across the hydrograph to accurately estimate the flux of total suspended solids, nitrogen and phosphorus into the upper end of Beaver Lake from the West Fork of the White River. The West Fork is listed on Arkansas\u27 1998 303d list as impaired from sediment. The Upper White was designated as the states highest priority watershed in the 1999 Unified Watershed Assessment. Accurate determination of stream nutrients and sediment is critical for future determinations of TMDLs, effectiveness of best management practices and trends in water quality

cis-Bis(benzyldiphenylphosphane-kP)- dichloridoplatinum(II) dichloromethane sesquisolvate

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(Acetyl­acetonato-κ2 O,O′)[(2-bromo­phen­yl)diphenyl­phosphane-κP]carbonyl­rhodium(I)

In the title compound, [Rh(C5H7O2)(C18H14BrP)(CO)], the RhI atom adopts a slightly distorted square-planar geometry involving two O atoms [Rh—O = 2.077 (2) and 2.033 (2) Å] of the acetyl­acetonate ligand, one carbonyl C atom [Rh—C = 1.813 (2) Å] and one P atom [Rh—P = 2.242 (5) Å] of the PPh2(2-BrC6H4) phosphane ligand. Difference electron density maps indicate a disorder of the Br atom over two positions in an approximate 0.95:0.05 ratio. However, this disorder could not be resolved satisfactorily with the present data

(Acetylacetonato-k2O,O0)carbonyl- {dicyclohexyl[4-(dimethylamino)phenyl]- phosphane-kP}rhodium(I)

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ESTIMATED COSTS AND RETURNS FOR CATFISH FARMS WITH RECIRCULATING PONDS ALONG THE UPPER TEXAS COAST

Cost, returns, and economies of scale for small, medium and large catfish farms with recirculating ponds are presented for the upper Texas coast. Internal rates of return are 0.150, 0.183 and 0.219, respectively. Total investment is higher than farms with static ponds but investment per unit production capacity is 7 percent to 16 percent lower. Average total cost per pound is between $0.565 and$0.541, (11 percent –20 percent lower than farms using current technology). These results have implications for regional comparative advantage of catfish production as well as incentive for adoption of new technology in conventional ponds.Aquaculture, Catfish, Economics, Off-flavor, Livestock Production/Industries,