The annoyance caused by airplane noise in the vicinity of Orly Airport and the reaction of neighboring residents

General conclusions and the technical appendix of a report on the attitudes of people living near Orly Airport (Paris) toward airplane noise are presented. The noise was found to be very disruptive of residents' lifestyle and well being, although differences in perceived nuisance were noted. The factors inducing people to protest and who they blame for the present situation are discussed. It was found that the public image of protestors was generally positive and that people who did not protest were viewed as passive, uncaring, or else connected to aviation

Effects of aircraft noise on the equilibrium of airport residents: Testing and utilization of a new methodology

The focus of the investigation is centered around two main themes: an analysis of the effects of aircraft noise on the psychological and physiological equilibrium of airport residents; and an analysis of the sources of variability of sensitivity to noise. The methodology used is presented. Nine statistical tables are included, along with a set of conclusions

Effects of aircraft noise on the equilibrium of airport residents: Supplementary analyses to the study carried out around Orly

The effects of aircraft noise on humans living near airports were studied. Two main questions were considered: do residents give evidence of psychological or physiological disturbances in unusually intense noise sectors; and do personality or health factors account for the high interindividual variability of annoyance? The methodology used and results obtained are presented. Samples of the survey questionnaires are included

Taking into account nighttime annoyance in the calculation of the psophic index

The annoyance factor caused by air traffic noise on the residents of areas near airports is discussed. The psophic index is used to predict the level of overall annoyance suffered on the average by residents around airports. The calculation method differentiates between daytime and nighttime annoyance

Nature of the annoyance and noise annoyance relation around airports

A survey of 5,000 individuals living around Orly Airport is described. The psobic index was used as the noise index which indicated the intensity of the annoyance experienced by people living around the airport. The results indicate that sensitivity to noise is related to certain personal factors

Institutions, infrastructure, and trade

We examine the influence of infrastructure, institutional quality, colonial and geographic context, and trade preferences on the pattern of bilateral trade. We are interested in threshold effects, and so emphasize those cases where bilateral country pairs do not actually trade. We depart from the institutions and infrastructure literature in this respect, using selection-based gravity modeling of trade flows. We also depart from this literature by mixing principal components (to condense our institutional and infrastructure measures) with a focus on deviations in the resulting indexes from expected values for given income cohorts to control for multicollinearity. We work with a panel of 284,049 bilateral trade flows from 1988 to 2002. Matching bilateral trade and tariff data and controlling for tariff preferences, level of development, and standard distance measures, we find that infrastructure, and institutional quality, are significant determinants not only of export levels, but also of the likelihood exports will take place at all. Our results support the notion that export performance, and the propensity to take part in the trading system at all, depends on institutional quality and access to well developed transport and communications infrastructure. Indeed, this dependence is far more important, empirically, than variations in tariffs in explaining sample variations in North-South trade

How predictable is technological progress?

Recently it has become clear that many technologies follow a generalized version of Moore's law, i.e. costs tend to drop exponentially, at different rates that depend on the technology. Here we formulate Moore's law as a correlated geometric random walk with drift, and apply it to historical data on 53 technologies. We derive a closed form expression approximating the distribution of forecast errors as a function of time. Based on hind-casting experiments we show that this works well, making it possible to collapse the forecast errors for many different technologies at different time horizons onto the same universal distribution. This is valuable because it allows us to make forecasts for any given technology with a clear understanding of the quality of the forecasts. As a practical demonstration we make distributional forecasts at different time horizons for solar photovoltaic modules, and show how our method can be used to estimate the probability that a given technology will outperform another technology at a given point in the future

The relationship between noise and annoyance around Orly

The extent to which annoyance estimated by an isopsophic index is a good forecaster for annoyance perceived near airport approaches was investigated. An index of sensed annoyance is constructed, and the relationship between the annoyance index and the isopsophic index is studied

Culture and Development: An Analytical Framework

This paper develops a framework which analyzes how a population's culture affects the decisions of rational profit maximizing firms, while simultaneously exploring how the actions of these firms in turn affect the population's culture.By endogenizing culture as well as the more usual economic variables, it shows how an economically valuablebehavioural trait can be sustained as part of a competitive equilibrium.It is shown that, for given primitives, an economy can be in either a 'good' steady state, in which the valuable cultural trait is present, or a welfare dominated 'bad' one in which the valuable cultural trait disappears.Starting from the 'good' steady state and implementing productivity improvements raises welfare, but if changes are too rapid this steady state will not be reached from the old one.Instead, the unique trajectory is to the bad steady state where welfare is reduced.culture;development;inequality;technological change

Trust, Social Capital and Economic Development

Many argue that elements of a society s norms, culture or social capital are central to understanding its development.However, these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models.Here we argue that trustworthiness is the economically relevant component of a society s culture and hence comprises its social capital.Individuals are trustworthy when they perform actions they have promised, even if these do not maximize their payoffs.The usual focus on incentive structures in motivating behaviour plays no role here.Instead, we emphasize more deep-seated modes of behaviour and consider that trustworthy agents are socialized to act as they do.To model this socialization, we borrow from a relatively new process of preference evolution pioneered by Bisin and Verdier (2001).The model developed endogenously accounts for social capital and explores its role in the process of economic development.It captures in a simple, formal way the interaction between social capital and the economy s productive process.The results obtained caution against rapid reform, provide an explanation for why late developing countries cannot easily transplant the modes of production that have proved useful in the West, and suggest an explanation for the pattern of reform experiences in ex-communist countries.technological change;public finance;economic development