Measuring International Inequality Aversion. WP254. September 2008

I measure the rate of aversion to inequality in consumption as expressed in the development aid given by rich countries to poor ones between 1965 and 2005. Over time, OECD countries have become less concerned about international inequity. Even for a fairly leaky bucket, the consumption rate of inequity aversion is less than the rate of risk aversion, which implies that the pure rate of inequity aversion is negative. That is, rich countries would prefer to see greater inequality between rich and poor countries

AD-DICE: an implementation of adaptation in the DICE model

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMS) have helped us over the past decade to understand the interactions between the environment and the economy in the context of climate change. Although it has also long been recognized that adaptation is a powerful and necessary tool to combat the adverse effects of climate change, most IAMs have not explicitly included the option of adaptation in combating climate change. This paper adds to the IAM and climate change literature by explicitly including adaptation in an IAM, thereby making the trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation visible. Specifically, a theoretical framework is created and used to implement adaptation as a decision variable into the DICE model. We use our new AD-DICE model to derive the adaptation cost functions implicit in the DICE model. In our set-up, adaptation and mitigation decisions are separable and AD-DICE can mimic DICE when adaptation is optimal. We find that our specification of the adaptation costs is robust with respect to the mitigation policy scenarios. Our numerical results show that adaptation is a powerful option to combat climate change, as it reduces most of the potential costs of climate change in earlier periods, while mitigation does so in later periods.integrated assessment modelling, adaptation, climate change

International Cooperation on Climate Change Adaptation from an Economic Perspective

This paper investigates the economic incentives of countries to cooperate on international adaptation financing. Adaptation is generally implicitly incorporated in the climate change damage functions as used in Integrated Assessment Models. We replace the implicit decision on adaptation with explicit adaptation in a multi-regional setting by using an adjusted RICE model. We show that making adaptation explicit will not affect the optimal mitigation path when adaptation is set at its optimal level. Sub-optimal adaptation will, however, change the optimal mitigation path. Furthermore this paper studies for different forms of cooperation what effects international adaptation transfers will have on (i) domestic adaptation and (ii) the optimal mitigation path. Adaptation transfers will fully crowd out domestic adaptation in a first best setting. Transfers will decrease overall mitigation in our numerical simulations. An analytical framework is used to analyse the most important mechanisms and a numerical model is used to assess the magnitude of effects.Climate Change, Adaptation Funding, Integrated Assessment Modeling

International Cooperation on Climate Change Adaptation from an Economic Perspective. ESRI WP323. October 2009

What role could a property tax play in broadening the Irish tax base? Could a recurrent tax on immovable property provide greater stability than a system of stamp duties, while removing obstacles to mobility? What about the relationship between a property tax and ability to pay – should or could the bills facinThis paper investigates the economic incentives of countries to cooperate on international adaptation financing. Adaptation is generally implicitly incorporated in the climate change damage functions as used in Integrated Assessment Models. We replace the implicit decision on adaptation with explicit adaptation in a multi-regional setting by using an adjusted RICE model. We show that making adaptation explicit will not affect the optimal mitigation path when adaptation is set at its optimal level. Sub-optimal adaptation will, however, change the optimal mitigation path. Furthermore this paper studies for different forms of cooperation what effects international adaptation transfers will have on (i) domestic adaptation and (ii) the optimal mitigation path. Adaptation transfers will fully crowd out domestic adaptation in a first best setting. Transfers will decrease overall mitigation in our numerical simulations. An analytical framework is used to analyse the most important mechanisms and a numerical model is used to assess the magnitude of effects.g those with valuable houses and little income be reduced or eliminated without making a property tax a quasi-income tax? These are among the questions explored in this paper, which provides a broad picture of the issues, illustrated by detailed microsimulation of the impact of specific forms of property tax

A review of public health economic modelling in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

Background: The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) use economic modelling to inform judgements whenever further insight is required for decision-making. Doing so for public health guidance poses several challenges. The study’s objective was to investigate the level of heterogeneity in NICE’s public health economic models with regards to economic evaluation techniques, perspectives on outcomes and the measurement of non-health benefits. Methods: A review of all economic modelling reports published by NICE’s Centre for Public Health (CPH) as part of their guidance. Results: The review identified 56 eligible pieces of public health over the relevant period. Of these, 43 used economic modelling and 13 used no formal economic model. In total 61 economic models were used. Though the CPH specifies a reference case, in practice there is a large amount of variability from one model to the next. The most common perspective used for evaluations was that of the National Health Service (NHS); the most common economic evaluation approach was cost-utility analysis (CUA). 23 of the 56 topics used other combinations of perspective and technique, which allowed them to incorporate non-health effects, such as productivity, the effect on taxes raised and benefits spending, costs to the criminal justice sector, the effect on educational attainment and general wellbeing. Conclusions: NICE regularly updates its reference case, and non-CUA evaluation techniques have become more prominent in recent years. The results highlight the genuine advantages of having a variety of economic evaluation techniques available, which can be matched with the given topic. While it is always necessary to be wary of the possibility of gamesmanship and cherry picking, there is a surprising alignment between many approaches in certain circumstances

Brandname confusion: Subjective and objective measures of orthographic similarity

Determining brand name similarity is vital in areas of trademark registration and brand confusion. Students rated the orthographic (spelling) similarity of word pairs (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and brand name pairs (Experiment 5). Similarity ratings were consistently higher when words shared beginnings rather than endings, whereas shared pronunciation of the stressed vowel had small and less consistent effects on ratings. In Experiment 3 a behavioral task confirmed the similarity of shared beginnings in lexical processing. Specifically, in a task requiring participants to decide whether 2 words presented in the clear (a probe and a later target) were the same or different, a masked prime word preceding the target shortened response latencies if it shared its initial 3 letters with the target. The ratings of students for word and brand name pairs were strongly predicted by metrics of orthographic similarity from the visual word identification literature based on the number of shared letters and their relative positions. The results indicate a potential use for orthographic metrics in brand name registration and trademark law

Fermionic Molecular Dynamics for nuclear dynamics and thermodynamics

A new Fermionic Molecular Dynamics (FMD) model based on a Skyrme functional is proposed in this paper. After introducing the basic formalism, some first applications to nuclear structure and nuclear thermodynamics are presentedComment: 5 pages, Proceedings of the French-Japanese Symposium, September 2008. To be published in Int. J. of Mod. Phys.

Tensile testing of cellulose based natural fibers for structural composite applications

A series of tensile tests were conducted on a Lloyd LRX tensile testing machine for numerous natural fibers deemed potential candidates for development in composite applications. The tensile tests were conducted on the fibers jute, kenaf, flax, abaca, sisal, hemp, and coir for samples exposed to moisture conditions of (1) room temperature and humidity, (2) 65% moisture content, (3) 90% moisture content, and (4) soaked fiber. These seven fibers were then tested for the four conditions and the mechanical properties of tensile strength, tensile strain to failure, and Young's modulus were calculated for the results. These results were then compared and verified with those from the literature, with some of the fibers showing distinctly promising potential. Additionally, a study on the effect of alkalization using 3% NaOH solution was carried out on flax, kenaf, abaca, and sisal to observe impact that this common fiber pre-treatment process has on fiber mechanical properties. The result of the investigation indicated that over treatment of natural fibers using NaOH could have a negative effect on the base fiber properties. It is consequently apparent that a treatment time of less than 10 min is sufficient to remove hemicelluloses and to give the optimum effect