Journal of Antitrust Enforcement Agency effectiveness study

The Agency Effectiveness Study explores a wide range of the daily concerns faced by competition agency heads and their staff, with an emphasis on the formal and informal ways in which they are addressed. Managing and operating a competition agency is very much a process of learning-by-doing. The aim of the study is, therefore, to capture and make available the know-how that competition agency officials accumulate during their service. In particular, it aims to provide a candid account of the practical challenges encountered and solved by heads of agencies and their staff as they navigate through changing legal, social, political, and organizational landscapes

The origin of PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 background levels in Germany with focus on North Rhine-Westphalia

Air pollution is bad for human health and an international problem which is far from being solved. A large portion of the total PM10 and NO2 burden at, e.g., a street canyon, comes from background concentration. To analyse the origin of these background concentrations, simulations for PM10, PM2.5, and NO2 have been performed with the chemical transport model EURAD (EURopean Air pollution Dispersion model system) for the domain of North Rhine-Westfalia (NRW) with different groups of emission sources within NRW switched off. The results allow a better estimation of the kind of measures needed to meet the EU limit values for PM10 and NO2. Additionally, simulations for Germany with and without anthropogenic emissions in Germany have been performed to determine the contribution of transboundary transport to the background concentration in Germany. The model results show that the contribution of the different sources depends upon the area and constituent. 30 to 80% of the background concentration (annual mean) stems from transboundary transport of air pollutants. While at the conurbation Rhine-Ruhr industry is the main contributor for PM10 and PM2.5, and road traffic for NO2, in the rural areas the contribution of industry and road traffic has about the same magnitude for all constituents