Heterogeneity among agent types and second-best management for non-market ecological services

Second-best management affects different agent types differently, and heterogeneity among agents may create instances when only second best management is feasible. Capital-theoretic bioeconomic modeling often has imposed representative agent assumptions that may not capture this heterogeneity. Interactions between agent heterogeneity and second-best management have received little attention. Such heterogeneity is particularly important when management actions do not directly affect extensive margin decisions. We employ a microparameter model in a dynamic bioeconomic model to incorporate agent heterogeneity and intensive and extensive margin decisions for a nonmarket good, recreational fishing. The model yields qualitatively different management recommendations when a representative agent is assumed than when heterogeneity is included using the microparameter approach.entry-exit, microparameter, bioeconomics, recreational fishing, landing limits, optimal control, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q20, Q22, Q26,

SPLIT-SAMPLE TESTS OF "DON'T KNOW" AND "INDIFFERENT" RESPONSES IN AN ATTRIBUTE BASED CHOICE MODEL

stated preference, contingent valuation, no opinion, internet survey, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

CONTROLLING WILDLIFE AND LIVESTOCK DISEASE WITH ENDOGENOUS ON-FARM BIOSECURITY

The spread of infectious disease among and between wild and domesticated animals has become a major problem worldwide. We analyze the socially optimal management of wildlife and livestock, including choices involving environmental habitat variables and on-farm biosecurity controls, when wildlife and livestock can spread an infectious disease to each other. The model is applied to the problem of bovine tuberculosis among Michigan white-tailed deer. The optimum is a cycle in which the disease remains endemic in the wildlife, but in which the cattle herd is depleted when the prevalence rate in deer grows too large.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Skip the Trip: Air Travelers’ Behavioral Responses to Pandemic Influenza

Theory suggests that human behavior has implications for disease spread. We examine the hypothesis that individuals engage in voluntary defensive behavior during an epidemic. We estimate the number of passengers missing previously purchased flights as a function of concern for swine flu or A/H1N1 influenza using 1.7 million detailed flight records, Google Trends, and the World Health Organization’s FluNet data. We estimate that concern over ‘‘swine flu,’’ as measured by Google Trends, accounted for 0.34% of missed flights during the epidemic. The Google Trends data correlates strongly with media attention, but poorly (at times negatively) with reported cases in FluNet. Passengers show no response to reported cases. Passengers skipping their purchased trips forwent at least $50 M in travel related benefits. Responding to actual cases would have cut this estimate in half. Thus, people appear to respond to an epidemic by voluntarily engaging in selfprotection behavior, but this behavior may not be responsive to objective measures of risk. Clearer risk communication could substantially reduce epidemic costs. People undertaking costly risk reduction behavior, for example, forgoing nonrefundable flights, suggests they may also make less costly behavior adjustments to avoid infection. Accounting for defensive behaviors may be important for forecasting epidemics, but linking behavior with epidemics likely requires consideration of risk communication

Canard Cycles and Poincar\'e Index of Non-Smooth Vector Fields on the Plane

This paper is concerned with closed orbits of non-smooth vector fields on the plane. For a subclass of non-smooth vector fields we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of canard kind solutions. By means of a regularization we prove that the canard cycles are singular orbits of singular perturbation problems which are limit periodic sets of a sequence of limit cycles. Moreover, we generalize the Poincar\'e Index for non-smooth vector fields.Comment: 20 pages, 25 figure

SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATION OF CROWN ETHERS

Mono- and bis-benzo-15-crown-5-ether derivatives have been synthesized and determined their potentiometric K+ selectivity factors. Of bis-crown ether urethanes highly selective Iigands were found some of which was used as active ingredient in potassium selective membrane electrode. Sugar based crown ethers, aza-crowns and cryptands were also prepared and applied as chiral catalyst in enantioselective reactions

The Voluntary Adjustment of Railroad Obligations

Automatic memory management techniques eliminate many programming errors that are both hard to find and to correct. However, these techniques are not yet used in embedded systems with hard realtime applications. The reason is that current methods for automatic memory management have a number of drawbacks. The two major ones are: (1) not being able to always guarantee short real-time deadlines and (2) using large amounts of extra memory. Memory is usually a scarce resource in embedded applications. In this paper we present a new technique, Real-Time Reference Counting (RTRC) that overcomes the current problems and makes automatic memory management attractive also for hard real-time applications. The main contribution of RTRC is that often all memory can be used to store live objects. This should be compared to a memory overhead of about 500% for garbage collectors based on copying techniques and about 50% for garbage collectors based on mark-and-sweep techniques

Large normally hyperbolic cylinders in a priori stable Hamiltonian systems

We prove the existence of normally hyperbolic invariant cylinders in nearly integrable hamiltonian systems

Memory Effects and Scaling Laws in Slowly Driven Systems

This article deals with dynamical systems depending on a slowly varying parameter. We present several physical examples illustrating memory effects, such as metastability and hysteresis, which frequently appear in these systems. A mathematical theory is outlined, which allows to show existence of hysteresis cycles, and determine related scaling laws.Comment: 28 pages (AMS-LaTeX), 18 PS figure