Efficiency and Equity in the Use of Eminent Domain, with Local Externalies

In Shapiro and Pincus (2008), we proposed a method for arriving at just compensation of private owners of urban land, in cases like Kelo v New London, in which government has plans to use eminent domain to `take' private properties, to be assembled into a single parcel for some public purpose. The required quantum of just compensation can be discovered when the public purpose is to be pursued via private use of the assembled land parcel, and when the private user can be selected through an auction of the assembled land. This paper extends the auction mechanism to include properties which lie outside the area `taken' or resumed by government, but which will be affected by the new use made of the assembled area. The auction provides an efficiency test: does the proposed change in use increase the aggregate value of the land to be resumed plus the affected properties? Local externalities are internalised through the auction. We briefly discuss the political economy of the mechanism.

The L2H2 Auction: Efficiency and Equity in the Assemblage of Land for Public Use

The burden of redevelopment projects, whether or not they ultimately benefit the communities in which they are undertaken, is borne disproportionately by those displaced. Neighborhoods are destroyed and residents are made to leave a home they love, compensated only by its market value. The benefits and costs of redevelopment can only be estimated since there are no direct market tests. Here a mechanism, developed as an extension of two recent papers, by Lehavi and Lichts (L2) and by Heller and Hill (H2), provides a market-based efficiency test for a proposed project and a compensation rule that alleviates the disproportionate burden on displaced residents. Assembled property is sold at an auction. The reserve price (the lowest price at which the assembled property will be sold) is set so that all displaced residents receive at least their personal value of their property. A successful bid, one that claims the assembled property, is sufficient proof of efficiency.

The Efficiency of the Supply of Public Education

The question of whether governments spend too much or too little has been a frequent subject of debate, but has been infrequently analyzed.This paper proposes and then applies a methodology which checks to see whether the "Samuelson condition" for the efficient provision of local public education is satisfied, i.e. whether the sum over the school district of individual marginal rates of substitution between public education and a private numeraire equals the marqinal rate of technical substitution between these two qoods. The econometric methodology uses a micro-based approach to the estimation of marginal rate of substitution functions which accounts for possible biases associated with the selection of school districts by individual households.

The Hall of Mirrors Perceptions and Misperceptions in the Congressional Foreign Policy Process

Explores several factors related to an inconsistency in the voting record by the U.S. Congress on foreign policy issues, compared with the position taken by the public, administration officials, and leaders in business, labor, media, and education

Non-singular inflation with vacuum decay

On the basis of a semi-classical analysis of vacuum energy in an expanding spacetime, we describe a non-singular cosmological model in which the vacuum density decays with time, with a concomitant production of matter. During an infinitely long period we have an empty, inflationary universe, with H \approx 1. This primordial era ends in a fast phase transition, during which H and \Lambda decrease to nearly zero in a few Planck times, with release of a huge amount of radiation. The late-time scenario is similar to the standard model, with the radiation phase followed by a long dust era, which tends asymptotically to a de Sitter universe, with vacuum dominating again. An analysis of the redshift-distance relation for supernovas Ia leads to cosmological parameters in agreement with other current estimations.Comment: Work presented at IRGAC 2006, Barcelona, July 11-15 2006. To appear in a special issue of Journal of Physics

Upper mantle velocity-temperature conversion and composition determined from seismic refraction and heat flow

International audience[1] We compile upper mantle P n velocities from seismic refraction/wide-angle reflection surveys in the southern Superior Province of the Canadian Shield and compare them with temperatures at the Moho deduced from heat flow data. Calculated Moho temperatures and P n velocities correlate well, showing that in this area, P n depends primarily on temperature. The obtained values of @V(P n)/@T depend weakly on the assumed value of Moho heat flow and are on the order of À6.0 Â 10 À4 ± 10% km s À1 K À1 , within the range of temperature derivatives obtained in laboratory studies of ultramafic rocks. Comparison between observed P n velocities and predicted values for several mineralogical models at Moho temperatures allows constraints on both the Moho heat flow and the shallow mantle composition. For all Moho heat flows, undepleted (clinopyroxene-rich) mantle compositions do not allow a good fit to the data. For depleted mantle compositions, temperatures consistent with the observed P n velocities correspond to values of Moho heat flow larger than 12 mW m À2. For our preferred Moho heat flow of 15 mW m À2 , the best fit mantle composition is slightly less depleted than models for average Archean subcontinental lithospheric mantle. This may be due to rejuvenation by melt-related metasomatism during the Keweenawan rifting event. The similarity in P n À T conversion factors estimated from this empirical large-scale geophysical study and those from laboratory data provides confidence in the absolute temperature values deduced from heat flow measurements and seismic studies. Citation: Perry, H. K. C., C. Jaupart, J.-C. Mareschal, and N. M. Shapiro (2006), Upper mantle velocity-temperature conversion and composition determined from seismic refraction and heat flow

Book reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42936/1/10780_2005_Article_BF01191865.pd

Heavy neutrino ball as a possible solution to the "blackness problem" of the Galactic center

It has been recently shown (Tsiklauri & Viollier, 1998a) that the matter concentration inferred from observed stellar motion at the galactic center (Eckart & Genzel, 1997, MNRAS, 284, 576 and Genzel et al., 1996, ApJ, 472, 153) is consistent with a supermassive object of $2.5 \times 10^6$ solar masses, composed of self-gravitating, degenerate heavy neutrinos. It has been furthermore suggested (Tsiklauri & Viollier, 1998a) that the neutrino ball scenario may have an advantage that it could possibly explain the so-called "blackness problem" of the galactic center. Here, we present a quantitative investigation of this statement, by calculating the emitted spectrum of Sgr A$^*$ in the framework of standard accretion disk theory.Comment: version 2, MNRAS style, submitted to MNRA

The Gravitational Demise of Cold Degenerate Stars

We consider the long term fate and evolution of cold degenerate stars under the action of gravity alone. Although such stars cannot emit radiation through the Hawking mechanism, the wave function of the star will contain a small admixture of black hole states. These black hole states will emit radiation and hence the star can lose its mass energy in the long term. We discuss the allowed range of possible degenerate stellar evolution within this framework.Comment: LaTeX, 18 pages, one figure, accepted to Physical Review

A test for efficiency in the supply of public education

This paper devises and applies a statistical test for efficient provision of local public education. The test is based on the `Samuelson condition' of equality between the sum of marginal rates of substitution and marginal cost. The econometric method is a micro-based approach to the estimation of the marginal rate of substitution function. This method accounts for possible `Tiebout bias' caused by the fact that individuals may choose their school districts in accordance with their tastes for education.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27356/1/0000381.pd