Impacts of International Wheat Breeding Research in the Developing World, 1988-2002

Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Sustaining Collection Value: Managing Collection/Item Metadata Relationships

Many aspects of managing collection/item metadata relationships are critical to sustaining collection value over time. Metadata at the collection-level not only provides context for finding, understanding, and using the items in the collection, but is often essential to the particular research and scholarly activities the collection is designed to support. Contemporary retrieval systems, which search across collections, usually ignore collection level metadata. Alternative approaches, informed by collection-level information, will require an understanding of the various kinds of relationships that can obtain between collection-level and item-level metadata. This paper outlines the problem and describes a project that is developing a logic-based framework for classifying collection-level/item-level metadata relationships. This framework will support (i) metadata specification developers defining metadata elements, (ii) metadata librarians describing objects, and (iii) system designers implementing systems that help users take advantage of collection-level metadata.Institute for Museum and Libary Services (Grant #LG06070020)published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Collective modes and correlations in one-component plasmas

The static and time-dependent potential and surface charge correlations in a plasma with a boundary are computed for different shapes of the boundary. The case of a spheroidal or spherical one-component plasma is studied in detail because experimental results are available for such systems. Also, since there is some knowlegde both experimental and theoretical about the electrostatic collective modes of these plasmas, the time-dependent correlations are computed using a method involving these modes.Comment: 20 pages, plain TeX, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Welfare Economics for Tobit Models

In this paper we demonstrate the correct calculation of consumer surplus in censored and truncated regression models, focusing on Tobit models. We review a variety of examples from the literature and isolate the nature of the bias associated with the incorrect calculation of consumer surplus in several of them

A Heating and Cooling Load Model for Single-Family Detached Dwellings in Energy Survey Data

The National Interim Energy Consumption Survey (NIECS) and the Pacific Northwest Residential Energy Survey (PNW) are clustered random samples of households interviewed between 1978 and 1980. These surveys report household equipment holdings and energy consumption levels by fuel, as well as selected household and dwelling characteristics. To study the economic determinants of equipment and usage behavior, it is necessary to first describe the economic environment in which behavior is determined. This technical report carries out the construction of heating-ventilating-air conditioning (BVAC) physical characteristics and costs for the alternative systems available to single-family owner-occupied households. The approach of this report is to construct a very simple thermal model of representative dwellings with characteristics corresponding to those available in typical energy survey data. This model is used to estimate heating and cooling capacity requirements, energy usage, and physical characteristics, for households in the (NIECS) and (PNW) surveys. Cost data from Means (1981) are then used to estimate the capital and operating costs of 19 alternative BVAC configurations for the actual thermal integrity of the building shell and for two alternative thermal standards

Testing Minority Preferences in Broadcasting

The United States government has several policies and programs designed to increase the number of broadcasting stations owned by racial minorities. Increasing the number of minority-owned broadcasting stations, the government claims, will diversify the content of broadcast programs by increasing the amount of minority-oriented programming. Minority owners will program their stations differently than white owners, the government claims. In this paper we present the first econometric test of these propositions about minority ownership of broadcasting stations as well as a number of other related propositions. We conclude that increasing the number of minority-owned broadcasting stations increases the amount of minority-oriented programming. We also conclude that increasing the number of female-owned stations-a policy that has been ruled unconstitutional would be just as effective at increasing minority-oriented programming

The Report of the United States to the International Fiscal Association on the Costs of Tax Administration and Compliance

This is a report prepared for the International Fiscal Association on the costs of tax administration and compliance in the United States. At the federal level, we present comprehensive data on administrative costs and review recent estimates of compliance costs. At the state level, we present new data on the administrative costs of state income taxes and general sales taxes, and review the very limited data on state level compliance costs. We also discuss the growing role of tax preparers, including new empirical results of our own. Finally, we review the recently enacted "Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

State Income Tax Amnesties 1: Causes

The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically for the years 1980-88 the factors which led states with state income taxes to run tax amnesty programs. We find a principal factor to be the level of IRS auditing; in particular, we find that states have tended to "free-ride" on the IRS-if the IRS is active in a state, then that state is less likely to run a tax amnesty program. Indeed, our estimates indicate that had the IRS audit rate remained constant during the 1980-88 period (instead of falling by almost one-half) , then the cumulative probability that an average state would have a tax amnesty by 1988 would have fallen by almost one-half compared to its actual level

The Use and Misuse of Surveys in Economic Analysis: Natural Resource Damage Assessment Under CERCLA

This paper examines problems with the admissibility of contingent use methodology surveys in natural resource damage assessment cases under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), as well as the propriety of their use in formulating public policy. Using a contingent use survey conducted in conjunction with the New Bedford Harbor Superfund case and two follow-up surveys, a number of errors and biases associated with contingent use methodology surveys are isolated and analyzed