A CGE assessment of a university's effects on a regional economy - supply-side versus demand-side effects

In recent years many universities have commissioned studies of the effect of their institution on the local economy. Typically these impact studies have concentrated on the demand-side stimuli to the regional economy that the university generates. Normally, the studies are undertaken with comparative-static input-output models. The present study employs a dynamic multiregional computable general equilibrium model to investigate supply-side as well as demand-side effects. There are a range of supply-side effects that have been investigated in the spatial econometrics literature. The supply-side impacts of the university that we examine in particular are a rise in the average skill level of the local workforce, and successful R&D outcomes. CGE modelling allows simulation of the associated productivity effects, while the dynamic features of the model allow for consequent effects on the region's population and capital stock growth rates to be taken into account.

Competition reforms and collaborative federalism: a dynamic multiregional applied general equilibrium analysis

In 1995 all Australian state and territory governments entered into an agreement with the federal government to introduce a comprehensive program of national competition policy (NCP) reforms. A number of studies have attempted to assess the benefits of these reforms by (i) estimating, via data envelopment analysis or similar techniques, the productivity gap between Australian industries affected by the reforms and their foreign counterparts, and (ii) then modelling the long-run effects of bringing the relevant Australian industries to world-best-practice levels of efficiency. These studies have been criticised for having severely overestimated the efficiency gains from NCP, and for ignoring the associated labour market adjustments. In this paper we take advantage of FEDERAL-F's historical modelling and forecasting capabilities to take a new approach to the problem. First, to measure the efficiency gains from NCP, we use the observed changes in efficiency in one of the sectors subject to NCP reforms (utilities) immediately after the introduction of NCP (rather than following the earlier approach of making a comparison between actual and best-practice levels of productivity). The changes in the utilities sector's primary factor productivity pre- and post- the introduction of NCP are calculated during historical simulations with FEDERAL-F. We investigate the impacts that the changes in observed productivity improvements have had on regional indicators of aggregate economic activity, with particular attention to indices of regional labour market adjustment costs. The changes in these indices provide measures of the value of labour inputs that are lost as implementation of the NCP alters the flow of people between different labour market categories.

The impact of cattle drinking points on aquatic macroinvertebrates in streams in south-east Ireland

peer-reviewedTeagasc PublicationMeasures that prevent cattle access to watercourses are commonly implemented through agri-environment schemes, in an effort to address the objectives of the Water Framework Directive. Despite the widespread implementation, few studies have assessed the impact of cattle access to streams on aquatic macroinvertebrates. This study assessed the local-scale impact of cattle drinking points on water quality parameters (i.e. macroinvertebrate and water chemistry metrics) on 39 intensively-managed grassland farms in the south-east of Ireland. The results indicate that sites that were more than or equal to good quality upstream of cattle drinking points, were more susceptible to cattle access impacts than sites where upstream water quality was less than good. The European Court of Auditors (2011) recommended that there should be a higher rate of EU contribution for measures with higher environmental potential, in this instance, for cattle exclusion measures targeted to sites where background quality is more than or equal to good. Appropriate efforts should thus be made to incentivise farmers in good to high status sites to adopt cattle exclusion measures

Rotor and control system loads analysis of the XV-15 with the advanced technology blades

An analysis of the rotor and control system loads of the XV-15 with the Advanced Technology Blades (XV-15/ATB) was conducted to study the effects of modifications designed to alleviate high collective actuator loads encountered during initial flight tests. Rotor loads predictions were correlated with flight data to establish accuracies of the methodology used in the analysis. Control system loads predictions were then examined and were also correlated with flight data. The results showed a significant reduction in 3/rev collective actuator loads of the XV-15/ATB when the control system stiffness was increased and the rotor blade chord balance and tip twist were modified

A word frequency study of terms used in five economic geography textbooks

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Transferring and Constructing Knowledge: Designing an STC

This article describes the design and benefits of a Science and Technology Center (STC)- based workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The topic in this case was hydrologic literacy in teaching issues and concepts concerning semi-arid hydrology in the Southwest, as defined by educators and scientists associated with Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas (SAHRA). Participants concluded that a science workshop designed to explicitly combine science content and inquiry-based pedagogy is beneficial, but learning new content is not a guarantee that it will be used in the participants' science curricula. To increase chances for teachers to alter practice, workshops must model new pedagogy while teaching new content, and instructors must be very explicit about how new teaching techniques were used to teach new content. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Deductive Optimization of Relational Data Storage

Optimizing the physical data storage and retrieval of data are two key database management problems. In this paper, we propose a language that can express a wide range of physical database layouts, going well beyond the row- and column-based methods that are widely used in database management systems. We use deductive synthesis to turn a high-level relational representation of a database query into a highly optimized low-level implementation which operates on a specialized layout of the dataset. We build a compiler for this language and conduct experiments using a popular database benchmark, which shows that the performance of these specialized queries is competitive with a state-of-the-art in memory compiled database system