Environmental Performance of State-Owned and Privatized Eastern European Energy Utilities

Privatization in Eastern Europe has helped in the transition of the region\u27s economies from planned to free market. However, the effects of privatization on the environment are relatively unknown and many firms remain under state ownership today. We compare the environmental performance of state-owned and privatized energy utility plants in Eastern Europe utilizing a novel panel data that includes reported sulfur dioxide emissions, energy input, and ownership status. We find that state-owned plants emit more sulfur dioxide than privately owned plants; this is environmentally significant as privatization is associated with a reduction in emissions of about 55%

Analyzing the Characteristics of Plants Choosing to Opt-Out of the Large Combustion Plant Directive

The EU Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) is a major but largely unstudied environmental regulation. Most of the 1585 large combustion plants in this analysis are electricity supply plants or combined heat and power plants. We find that, controlling for country characteristics and plant size, plants in the electricity supply, combined heat and power, district heating, and paper industries have a higher probability of being opted-out of the emission limit values (ELVs), which necessitates eventual plant closure. Controlling for plant size and industry, increasing the amount of solid fuel or natural gas utilized at a plant is associated with a decreased likelihood of being opted-out of the ELVs

How Responsive Are EU Coal-Burning Plants to Changes in Energy Prices?

The European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS) has implicitly made it more expensive to burn coal relative to natural gas because coal has a higher carbon content. Therefore, it is important to understand how much plants reduce their coal usage in response to higher coal prices to assess the effectiveness of the ETS in reducing carbon emissions. We analyze a novel panel of coal-burning large combustion plants from a subsample of eight EU countries and found that, holding constant the natural gas price, a 1% increase in the coal price results in a 0.36% decrease in coal consumption. At current ETS prices, this implies that the average large combustion plant in our sample EU countries is burning 7% less coal than it would be absent in the ETS. This suggests that the ETS has significantly reduced carbon emissions from coal-fired plants for the eight countries represented in our sample

Colloidal glass transition: Beyond mode-coupling theory

A new theory for dynamics of concentrated colloidal suspensions and the colloidal glass transition is proposed. The starting point is the memory function representation of the density correlation function. The memory function can be expressed in terms of a time-dependent pair-density correlation function. An exact, formal equation of motion for this function is derived and a factorization approximation is applied to its evolution operator. In this way a closed set of equations for the density correlation function and the memory function is obtained. The theory predicts an ergodicity breaking transition similar to that predicted by the mode-coupling theory, but at a higher density.Comment: to be published in PR

Bounds for stop-loss premiums of stochastic sums (with applications to life contingencies).

In this paper we present in a general setting lower and upper bounds for the stop-loss premium of a (stochastic) sum of dependent random variables. Therefore, use is made of the methodology of comonotonic variables and the convex ordering of risks, introduced by Kaas et al. (2000) and Dhaene et al. (2002a, 2002b), combined with actuarial conditioning. The lower bound approximates very accurate the real value of the stop-loss premium. However, the comonotonic upper bounds perform rather badly for some retentions. Therefore, we construct sharper upper bounds based upon the traditional comonotonic bounds. Making use of the ideas of Rogers and Shi (1995), the first upper bound is obtained as the comonotonic lower bound plus an error term. Next this bound is refined by making the error term dependent on the retention in the stop-loss premium. Further, we study the case that the stop-loss premium can be decomposed into two parts. One part which can be evaluated exactly and another part to which comonotonic bounds are applied. As an application we study the bounds for the stop-loss premium of a random variable representing the stochastically discounted value of a series of cash flows with a fixed and stochastic time horizon. The paper ends with numerical examples illustrating the presented approximations. We apply the proposed bounds for life annuities, using Makeham's law, when also the stochastic nature of interest rates is taken into account by means of a Brownian motion.Comonotonicity; Life annuity; Stochastic time horizon; Stop-loss premium;

Evidence for a Universal Slope of the Period-Luminosity Relation from Direct Distances to Cepheids in the LMC

We have applied the infrared surface brightness (ISB) technique to derive distances to 13 Cepheid variables in the LMC which have periods from 3-42 days. The corresponding absolute magnitudes define PL relations in VIWJK bands which agree exceedingly well with the corresponding Milky Way relations obtained from the same technique, and are in significant disagreement with the observed LMC Cepheid PL relations, by OGLE-II and Persson et al., in these bands. Our data uncover a systematic error in the p-factor law which transforms Cepheid radial velocities into pulsational velocities. We correct the p-factor law by requiring that all LMC Cepheids share the same distance. Re-calculating all Milky Way and LMC Cepheid distances with the revised p-factor law, we find that the PL relations from the ISB technique both in LMC and in the Milky Way agree with the OGLE-II and Persson et al. LMC PL relations, supporting the conclusion of no metallicity effect on the slope of the Cepheid PL relation in optical/near infrared bands.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the "Stellar Pulsation and Evolution" conference, Monte Porzio Catone, June 200

The Molecularly Imprinted Polymers. Influence of Monomers on The Properties of Polymers - A Review

The synthesis of MIPs for two types of templates (herbicides, and flavonoids) and their application in analytical chemistry are discussed. Particular attention has been paid the issue of bonding the template and selection of appropriate monomer in different types of compounds. This short review aims at presenting the molecular imprinting technology (MIT) which is considered as an attractive method to produce impressive receptors for application in analytical chemistry. The challenge of designing and synthesizing a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) can be a daunting prospect to the uninitiated practitioner, simply because of the number of experimental variables involved, e.g. the nature and levels of template, functional monomers, cross-linkers, solvents, initiators and even the method of initiation and the duration of polymerization. Indubitably, the most important place of the polymer is its quotheartquot or the cavity corresponding to the template and the waynbs