Market-based Instruments for Environmental Policymaking in Latin America and the Caribbean: Lessons from Eleven Countries

This report is a summary of country studies in Latin America and the Caribbean, addressing the use of market-based instruments (MBIs) and command-and-control (CAC) measures for environmental management in the region. Even though MBIs can significantly add efficiency to existing CAC mechanisms, the scope of MBIs should match the countries institutional capacity to implement them. Gradual and flexible reforms are likely to succeed within the current regional context of continued institutional changes. A key function of MBIs is usually revenue collection, though it does not necessarily lead to successful environmental management. The study suggests that revenues should be channeled to local authorities for an effective MBI's implementation. The report also critiques the regular practice of international donor agencies in recommending the solutions suitable for developed countries, without considering the institutional conditions in developing countries. Further, the study explores both the successes and difficulties experienced in the region regarding regulations, macro-policies, and MBIs; the institutional frameworks of the countries under review; and, the issues considered in the design of MBIs, in order to promote a beneficial dialogue among them

Prime diagnosticity in short-term repetition priming: Is primed evidence discounted, even when it reliably indicates the correct answer?

The authors conducted 4 repetition priming experiments that manipulated prime duration and prime diagnosticity in a visual forced-choice perceptual identification task. The strength and direction of prime diagnosticity produced marked effects on identification accuracy, but those effects were resistant to subsequent changes of diagnosticity. Participants learned to associate different diagnosticities with primes of different durations but not with primes presented in different colors. Regardless of prime diagnosticity, preference for a primed alternative covaried negatively with prime duration, suggesting that even for diagnostic primes, evidence discounting remains an important factor. A computational model, with the assumption that adaptation to the statistics of the experiment modulates the level of evidence discounting, accounted for these results