Economic Incentives Versus Command and Control: What's the Best Approach for Solving Environmental Problems?

Now, decades after the first environmental laws were passed in this country, policymakers face many choices when seeking to solve environmental problems. Will taxing polluters for their discharges be more effective than fining them for not meeting certain emissions standards? Will a regulatory agency find it less costly to enforce a ban or oversee a system of tradable permits? Which strategy will reduce a pollutant the quickest? Clearly, there are no "one-size-fits-all" answers. Many factors enter into the decision to favor either policies that lean more toward economic incentives (EI) and toward direct regulation, commonly referred to as command-and-control (CAC) policy. Underlying determinants include a country's governmental and regulatory infrastructure, along with the nature of the environmental problem itself. Even with these contextual factors to consider, we thought it would be useful to compare EI and CAC policies and their outcomes in a real-world setting. To do this, we looked at six environmental problems that the United States and at least one European country dealt with differently (see box on page 14.) For each problem, one approach was more of an EI measure, while the other relied more on CAC. For example, to reduce point-source industrial water pollution, the Netherlands implemented a system of fees for organic pollutants (EI), while the United States established a system of guidelines and permits (CAC). It turned out, in fact, that most policies had at least some elements of both approaches, but we categorized them as EI or CAC based on their dominant features. We then asked researchers who had previously studied these policies on either side of the Atlantic to update or prepare new case studies. We analyzed the 12 case studies (two for each of the six environmental problems) against a list of hypotheses frequently made for or against EI and CAC, such as which instrument is more effective or imposes less administrative burden

Understanding Errors in EIA Projections of Energy Demand

This paper investigates the potential for systematic errors in the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) widely used Annual Energy Outlook, focusing on the near- to midterm projections of energy demand as measured in physical quantities. Overall, based on an analysis of the EIA’s 22-year projection record, we find a fairly modest but persistent tendency to underestimate total energy demand by an average of 2 percent per year over the one- to five-year projection horizon after controlling for projection errors in gross domestic product, oil prices, and heating/cooling degree days. For the 14 individual fuels/consuming sectors routinely reported by the EIA, we observe a great deal of directional consistency in the error patterns over time, ranging up to 7 percent per year. Electric utility renewables, electric utility natural gas, transportation distillate, and residential electricity all show significant biases, on average, across the full five year projection horizon examined. Projections for certain other fuels/consuming sectors have significant unexplained errors for selected time horizons. Independent evaluation of this type can be useful for validating ongoing analytic efforts and for prioritizing future model revisions.EIA, energy forecasting, bias

Diffractive wave guiding of hot electrons by the Au (111) herringbone reconstruction

The surface potential of the herringbone reconstruction on Au(111) is known to guide surface-state electrons along the potential channels. Surprisingly, we find by scanning tunneling spectroscopy that hot electrons with kinetic energies twenty times larger than the potential amplitude (38 meV) are still guided. The efficiency even increases with kinetic energy, which is reproduced by a tight binding calculation taking the known reconstruction potential and strain into account. The guiding is explained by diffraction at the inhomogeneous electrostatic potential and strain distribution provided by the reconstruction.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Recognition map analysis and crop acreage estimation using Skylab EREP data

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Electrical transport and low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy of microsoldered graphene

Using the recently developed technique of microsoldering, we perform a systematic transport study of the influence of PMMA on graphene flakes revealing a doping effect of up to 3.8x10^12 1/cm^2, but a negligible influence on mobility and gate voltage induced hysteresis. Moreover, we show that the microsoldered graphene is free of contamination and exhibits a very similar intrinsic rippling as has been found for lithographically contacted flakes. Finally, we demonstrate a current induced closing of the previously found phonon gap appearing in scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments, strongly non-linear features at higher bias probably caused by vibrations of the flake and a B-field induced double peak attributed to the 0.Landau level of graphene.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Improving the Accuracy of UK Regulatory Cost Estimates

UK Government departments are required to undertake a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) when introducing any policy change that places a burden on businesses, charities, the voluntary sector or individuals. Part of this assessment involves the appraisal of the costs (and benefits) associated with complying with all the available options, as well as the wider economic costs. Recent evidence has suggested that the compliance costs, when assessed ex post, tend to be lower than the ex ante assessment made beforehand (see e.g. Harrington et al 1999). Accurate cost estimates are important as errors can lead to under or over regulation. This, in turn, can result in growth and innovation being hindered or, in the case of under regulation, growth being achieved at the expense of the natural resource base (including human health and well being). In order to shed more light on the validity of RIA cost estimates and identify ways of improving their accuracy, Defra decided to commission a study comparing the ex ante and ex post costs of complying with regulatory changes. A total of eight case studies were carried out for this study, covering a range of recent environmental, agricultural and food-related regulations in the UK. Preliminary findings of this study indicate that while ex ante costs are often overestimated, there can also be significant underestimates. Reasons for errors in cost estimation are discussed and strategies for improving their accuracy suggested.Public Economics,

Recognition map analysis and crop acreage estimation

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Investigation of LANDSAT follow-on thematic mapper spatial, radiometric and spectral resolution

The author has identified the following significant results. Fine resolution M7 multispectral scanner data collected during the Corn Blight Watch Experiment in 1971 served as the basis for this study. Different locations and times of year were studied. Definite improvement using 30-40 meter spatial resolution over present LANDSAT 1 resolution and over 50-60 meter resolution was observed, using crop area mensuration as the measure. Simulation studies carried out to extrapolate the empirical results to a range of field size distributions confirmed this effect, showing the improvement to be most pronounced for field sizes of 1-4 hectares. Radiometric sensitivity study showed significant degradation of crop classification accuracy immediately upon relaxation from the nominally specified values of 0.5% noise equivalent reflectance. This was especially the case for data which were spectrally similar such as that collected early in the growing season and also when attempting to accomplish crop stress detection

Apparent rippling with honeycomb symmetry and tunable periodicity observed by scanning tunneling microscopy on suspended graphene

Suspended graphene is difficult to image by scanning probe microscopy due to the inherent van-der-Waals and dielectric forces exerted by the tip which are not counteracted by a substrate. Here, we report scanning tunneling microscopy data of suspended monolayer graphene in constant-current mode revealing a surprising honeycomb structure with amplitude of 50$-$200 pm and lattice constant of 10-40 nm. The apparent lattice constant is reduced by increasing the tunneling current $I$, but does not depend systematically on tunneling voltage $V$ or scan speed $v_{\rm scan}$. The honeycomb lattice of the rippling is aligned with the atomic structure observed on supported areas, while no atomic corrugation is found on suspended areas down to the resolution of about $3-4$ pm. We rule out that the honeycomb structure is induced by the feedback loop using a changing $v_{\rm scan}$, that it is a simple enlargement effect of the atomic resolution as well as models predicting frozen phonons or standing phonon waves induced by the tunneling current. Albeit we currently do not have a convincing explanation for the observed effect, we expect that our intriguing results will inspire further research related to suspended graphene.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, modified, more detailed discussion on errors in vdW parameter