Електоральна культура в Україні (на прикладі виборів до Верховної Ради України 2012 року)

Електоральна культура – це відносно стійка система знань, оцінок і норм електоральної поведінки та відносин, виборчого процесу в цілому [1,72]. Електоральна культура виявляється у ставленні до партій, кандидатів, виборчих комісій, виборчого законодавства, у самоідентифікації себе як прихильника тієї чи іншої партії, політичної сили, у реалізації свого права на голос. Електорат, його рішення є ключовими у виборчих кампаніях, тому насамперед важливо визначити, чому і як виборці голосують на виборах. Визначальними при характеристиці електоральної культури є розуміння виборцями значимості виборів, інтерес до них і вміння оцінити ситуацію, співвіднести свої інтереси з пропозиціями і перевагами кандидатів і партій. При цитуванні документа, використовуйте посилання http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3477

Assessing the Effectiveness of Tradable Landuse Rights for Biodiversity Conservation: An Application to Canada's Boreal Mixedwood Forest

Ecological reserve networks are an important strategy for conserving biodiversity. One approach to selecting reserves is to use optimization algorithms that maximize an ecological objective function subject to a total reserve area constraint. Under this approach, economic factors such as potential land values and tenure arrangements are often ignored. Tradable landuse rights are proposed as an alternative economic mechanism for selecting reserves. Under this approach economic considerations determine the spatial distribution of development and reserves are allocated to sites with the lowest development value, minimizing the cost of the reserve network. The configuration of the reserve network as well as the biodiversity outcome is determined as a residual. However cost savings can be used to increase the total amount of area in reserve and improve biodiversity outcomes. The appropriateness of this approach for regional planning is discussed in light of key uncertainties associated with biodiversity protection. A comparison of biodiversity outcomes and costs under ecological versus economic approaches is undertaken for the Boreal Forest Natural Region of Alberta, Canada. We find a significant increase in total area protected and an increase in species representation under the TLR approach

Optimal Afforestation Contracts with Asymmetric Information on Private Environmental Benefits

We investigate the problem of subsidising afforestation when private information exists with respect to the level of private utility derived from the project. We develop a simple model that allows for an intelligent design of contracts when information is asymmetric. The model involves the Principal and two groups of agents (landowners): a green' group deriving high private utility from the projects and a conventional' group deriving lower utility. Afforestation projects may be produced in different environmental quality, and we distinguish between two cases, a high quality and a low quality project. We find that the optimal set of contracts under asymmetric information involves two different contracts. One in which green landowners are somewhat overcompensated for projects of high quality, and one where conventional landowners are offered contracts including lower quality projects, compared to the symmetric case, but with compensation equal to his indifference payment. It is the ability to reduce quality requirements along with subsidies offered that allows for revelation of the private information. Finally, we discus how the results obtained may be used in the implementation of incentive schemes

Cost Effectiveness in River Management: Evaluation of Integrated River Policy System in Tidal Ouse

The River Ouse forms a significant part of Humber river system, which drains about one fifth the land area of England and provides the largest fresh water source to the North Sea from UK. The river quality in the tidal river suffered from sag of dissolved oxygen (DO) during last few decades, deteriorated by the effluent discharges. The Environment Agency (EA) proposed to increase the water quality of Ouse by implementing more potent environmental policies. This paper explores the cost effectiveness of water management in the Tidal Ouse through various options by taking into account the variation of assimilative capacity of river water, both in static and dynamic scope of time. Reduction in both effluent discharges and water abstraction were considered along side with choice of effluent discharge location. Different instruments of environmental policy, the emission tax-subsidy (ETS) scheme and tradable pollution permits (TPP) systems were compared with the direct quantitative control approach. This paper at the last illustrated an empirical example to reach a particular water quality target in the tidal Ouse at the least cost, through a solution of constrained optimisation problem. The results suggested significant improvement in the water quality with less cost than current that will fail the target in low flow year

The Role of Risk Aversion and Lay Risk in the Probabilistic Externality Assessment for Oil Tanker Routes to Europe

Oil spills are a major cause of environmental concern, in particular for Europe. However, the traditional approach to the evaluation of the expected external costs of these accidents fails to take into full account the implications of their probabilistic nature. By adapting a methodology originally developed for nuclear accidents to the case of oil spills, we extend the traditional approach to the assessment of the welfare losses borne by potentially affected individuals for being exposed to the risk of an oil spill. The proposed methodology differs from the traditional approach in three respects: it allows for risk aversion; it adopts an ex-ante rather than an ex-post perspective; it allows for subjective oil spill probabilities (held by the lay public) higher than those assessed by the experts in the field. In order to illustrate quantitatively this methodology, we apply it to the hypothetical (yet realistic) case of an oil spill in the Aegean Sea. We assess the risk premiums that potentially affected individuals would be willing to pay in order to avoid losses to economic activities such as tourism and fisheries, and non-use damages resulting from environmental impacts on the Aegean coasts. In the scenarios analysed, the risk premiums on expected losses for tourism and fisheries turn out to be substantial when measured as a percentage of expected losses; by contrast, they are quite small for the case of damages to the natural environment

Cardiovascular Risk Reduction with Icosapent Ethyl for Hypertriglyceridemia

BACKGROUND Patients with elevated triglyceride levels are at increased risk for ischemic events. Icosapent ethyl, a highly purified eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester, lowers triglyceride levels, but data are needed to determine its effects on ischemic events. METHODS We performed a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving patients with established cardiovascular disease or with diabetes and other risk factors, who had been receiving statin therapy and who had a fasting triglyceride level of 135 to 499 mg per deciliter (1.52 to 5.63 mmol per liter) and a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level of 41 to 100 mg per deciliter (1.06 to 2.59 mmol per liter). The patients were randomly assigned to receive 2 g of icosapent ethyl twice daily (total daily dose, 4 g) or placebo. The primary end point was a composite of cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, coronary revascularization, or unstable angina. The key secondary end point was a composite of cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke. RESULTS A total of 8179 patients were enrolled (70.7% for secondary prevention of cardiovascular events) and were followed for a median of 4.9 years. A primary end-point event occurred in 17.2% of the patients in the icosapent ethyl group, as compared with 22.0% of the patients in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.68 to 0.83; P<0.001); the corresponding rates of the key secondary end point were 11.2% and 14.8% (hazard ratio, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.65 to 0.83; P<0.001). The rates of additional ischemic end points, as assessed according to a prespecified hierarchical schema, were significantly lower in the icosapent ethyl group than in the placebo group, including the rate of cardiovascular death (4.3% vs. 5.2%; hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.66 to 0.98; P=0.03). A larger percentage of patients in the icosapent ethyl group than in the placebo group were hospitalized for atrial fibrillation or flutter (3.1% vs. 2.1%, P=0.004). Serious bleeding events occurred in 2.7% of the patients in the icosapent ethyl group and in 2.1% in the placebo group (P=0.06). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with elevated triglyceride levels despite the use of statins, the risk of ischemic events, including cardiovascular death, was significantly lower among those who received 2 g of icosapent ethyl twice daily than among those who received placebo. (Funded by Amarin Pharma; REDUCE-IT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01492361

Output Substitution in Multi-Species Trawl Fisheries: Implications for Quota Setting

In most multi-species fisheries managed through output controls, total allowable catches (TACs) are set primarily on the basis of biological considerations, usually on a species by species basis. An implicit assumption of management is that fishers are able to adjust their product mix in line with these quotas. If this is not the case, then over-quota catch occurs, leading to either illegal landings or discards. In either case, the effectiveness of the TAC in conserving the resource is reduced. In this paper we show that in the case of multi-species fisheries that exhibit jointness in production, setting TACs on an individual species' basis is inappropriate. In particular, we quantify technical interactions through the estimation of a multi-output distance function for the UK North Sea beam and otter trawl fisheries, and find that in most cases, the potential of substitutability between the main and alternative species is relatively small. We argue that failure to quantify and integrate these technical interactions in the construction of management instruments for fisheries regulation, may result in increased discarding, illegal fishing and potentially lower than expected future yields