The Regulation of Hunting: A Population Tax

Within hunting, wildlife populations are estimated to be too high in many countries which is assumed to be due to the market failure, that each hunter harvests too little compared to what the regulator wants. This may be due to the existing regulation which, among other things, requires knowledge of the individual harvest. However, information about the individual harvest may be costly to obtain. Thus, we may have to look for alternatives to the existing system. This paper proposes a population tax/subsidy as an alternative which is the difference between the actual and optimal population multiplied by an individual, variable tax rate. The variable tax rate is, among other things, based on the difference in marginal value of the population between the hunter and the regulator. The paper shows that the population tax/subsidy secures a first-best optimum. Thus, the population tax is a good alternative to the existing regulation.

In the shadow illegal markets and economic sociology

Illegal markets differ from legal markets in many respects. Although illegal markets have economic significance and are of theoretical importance, they have been largely ignored by economic sociology. In this article we propose a categorization for illegal markets and highlight reasons why certain markets are outlawed. We perform a comprehensive review of the literature to characterize illegal markets along the three coordination problems of value creation, competition, and cooperation. The article concludes by appealing to economic sociology to strengthen research on illegal markets and by suggesting areas for future empirical research. -- Illegale Märkte unterscheiden sich in vielerlei Hinsicht von legalen Märkten. Trotz ihres großen wirtschaftlichen Gewichts und ihrer theoretischen Bedeutung blieben sie in der Wirtschaftssoziologie bislang weitgehend unbeachtet. Dieses Papier schlägt eine Kategorisierung illegaler Märkte vor und diskutiert die Gründe für ihr Verbot. Auf der Grundlage einer umfassenden Literaturauswertung werden die Strukturmerkmale illegaler Märkte anhand der drei Koordinierungsprobleme der Wertbildung, des Wettbewerbs und der Kooperation dargestellt. Das Papier schließt mit Empfehlungen für zukünftige empirische Forschung.

Numerical simulation of flow, H2SO4 cycle and new particle formation in the CERN CLOUD chamber

To study the effect of galactic cosmic rays on aerosols and clouds, the Cosmic Leaving OUtdoor Droplets (CLOUD) project was established. Experiments are carried out at a 26 m3 tank at CERN (Switzerland). In the experiments, the effect of ionising particle radiation on H2SO4 particle formation and growth is investigated. To evaluate the experimental configuration, the experiment was simulated using a coupled multidimensional CFD – particle model (CLOUD-FPM). In the model the coupled fields of gas/vapour species, temperature, flow velocity and particle properties were computed to investigate the tank's mixing state and mixing times. Simulation results show that the mixing state of the tank's contents largely depends on the characteristics of the mixing fans and a 1-fan configuration, as used in first experiments, may not be sufficient to ensure a homogeneously mixed chamber. To mix the tank properly, 2 fans are necessary. The 1/e response times for instantaneous changes of wall temperature and saturation ratio inside the chamber were found to be in the order of few minutes. Particle nucleation and growth was also simulated and particle number size distribution properties of the freshly nucleated particles (particle number, mean size, standard deviation of the assumed log-normal distribution) were found to be mixed over the tank's volume similar to the gas species

Who is afraid of capital mobility? On labor taxation and the level of public services in an open economy

This paper deals with the impact of international capital mobility on labor taxes and the size of the public sector. It employs a model of the labor market, where national trade unions arc able to set wages above the competitive level. In a closed economy, a higher labor tax raises wage demands of the unions and thus increases the distortion on the labor market. With perfect international capital mobility, competition between trade unions leads to full employment, irrespective of the labor tax rale. The distorting effect of the labor tax vanishes and governments arc able to increase the supplied quantity of public services to the first best level.Capital Mobility,Labor Taxation

Diversity in Central Asia: Culture, transition & entrepreneurship

With the demise of the USSR in 1991, five new countries became independent in Central Asia. This study presents an overview about transition, emergence and nature of entrepreneurship in a world’s region that displays amongst the most important energy resources in gas and oil

Many-body localization in a disordered quantum Ising chain

Many-body localization occurs in isolated quantum systems when Anderson localization persists in the presence of finite interactions. Despite strong evidence for the existence of a many-body localization transition a reliable extraction of the critical disorder strength is difficult due to a large drift with system size in the studied quantities. In this work we explore two entanglement properties that are promising for the study of the manybody localization transition: the variance of the half-chain entanglement entropy of exact eigenstates and the long time change in entanglement after a local quench from an exact eigenstate. We investigate these quantities in a disordered quantum Ising chain and use them to estimate the critical disorder strength and its energy dependence. In addition, we analyze a spin-glass transition at large disorder strength and provide evidence for it being a separate transition. We thereby give numerical support for a recently proposed phase diagram of many-body localization with localization protected quantum order [Huse et al. Phys. Rev. B 88, 014206 (2013)].Comment: 4+ pages + 1.5 pages appendix, 5 figure

Unbounded growth of entanglement in models of many-body localization

An important and incompletely answered question is whether a closed quantum system of many interacting particles can be localized by disorder. The time evolution of simple (unentangled) initial states is studied numerically for a system of interacting spinless fermions in one dimension described by the random-field XXZ Hamiltonian. Interactions induce a dramatic change in the propagation of entanglement and a smaller change in the propagation of particles. For even weak interactions, when the system is thought to be in a many-body localized phase, entanglement shows neither localized nor diffusive behavior but grows without limit in an infinite system: interactions act as a singular perturbation on the localized state with no interactions. The significance for proposed atomic experiments is that local measurements will show a large but nonthermal entropy in the many-body localized state. This entropy develops slowly (approximately logarithmically) over a diverging time scale as in glassy systems.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, v2. added more dat

Wildlife and the restorative potential of natural settings

How does the likelihood of encountering wildlife affect residents' expectations about psychological restoration when visiting a local natural setting, and their choices among settings for future recreation? Do urban and rural residents differ in such expectations and choices? We addressed these questions in a web-based experiment with 223 adult residents randomly sampled from urban and rural areas in each of three regions in Sweden. Residents in all six areas can encounter fear-irrelevant wildlife (roe deer, squirrel) near the home, but the presence of fearrelevant wildlife (wolf, wild boar) differs across the areas. The respondents read scenarios concerning encounters with each of these four animals during recreational visits to a nearby natural setting. The scenarios varied in how frequently the person could expect to encounter each animal across visits (never, sometimes, often). For all 12 scenarios, respondents answered questions about anticipated experiences and restoration outcomes, and the effect of encounter likelihood on future recreational setting choices. Across all areas, with all outcomes, increased likelihood of encounters with the wolves and wild boar detracted from anticipated restorative potential, whereas increased likelihood of encounters with roe deer and squirrel enhanced anticipated restorative potential. A similar pattern showed in recreational setting choices. A domination wildlife value orientation moderated the effects of encounter likelihood for wolf and wild boar, whereas a mutualistic orientation moderated the effects of encounter likelihood for squirrel and roe deer. Our results suggest that wildlife management and public health practice could work together not only to address the fears of residents, but also to enhance the restorative quality of local natural settings by protecting wildlife