Tagging and Targeting of Energy Efficiency Subsidies

A corrective tax or subsidy is "well-targeted" if it primarily affects choices that are more distorted by market failures. Energy efficiency subsidies are designed to correct multiple distortions: externalities, credit constraints, "landlord-tenant" information asymmetries, imperfect information, and inattention. We show that three important energy efficiency subsidies are primarily taken up by consumers who are wealthier, own their own homes, and are more informed about and attentive to energy costs. This suggests that these subsidies are poorly targeted at the market failures they were designed to address. However, we show that "tagging" can lead to large efficiency gains.Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Ants determine their next move at rest: Motor planning and causality in complex systems

© 2016 The Authors. To find useful work to do for their colony, individual eusocial animals have to move, somehow staying attentive to relevant social information. Recent research on individual Temnothorax albipennis ants moving inside their colony’s nest found a power-law relationship between a movement’s duration and its average speed; and a universal speed profile for movements showing that they mostly fluctuate around a constant average speed. From this predictability it was inferred that movement durations are somehow determined before the movement itself. Here, we find similar results in lone T. albipennis ants exploring a large arena outside the nest, both when the arena is clean and when it contains chemical information left by previous nest-mates. This implies that these movement characteristics originate from the same individual neural and/or physiological mechanism(s), operating without immediate regard to social influences. However, the presence of pheromones and/or other cues was found to affect the inter-event speed correlations. Hence we suggest that ants’ motor planning results in intermittent response to the social environment: movement duration is adjusted in response to social information only between movements, not during them. This environmentally flexible, intermittently responsive movement behaviour points towards a spatially allocated division of labour in this species. It also prompts more general questions on collective animal movement and the role of intermittent causation from higher to lower organizational levels in the stability of complex systems

Sublattice Magnetization in Several Rare‐Earth and Yttrium Iron Garnets by Means of \u3csup\u3e57\u3c/sup\u3eFe NMR

We have observed the NMR of 57Fe on the a and d sublattices of YIG, GdIG, and LuIG between 4° and 200°K. Using the spin‐echo technique the frequencies could be determined to within a few kHz. For LuIG the determination of the frequency was less accurate due to the presence of the lutetium resonances which overlay the iron resonances. Assuming the frequency is proportional to the sublattice magnetization, the data were fitted to the equation derived from spin‐wave theory. For YIG and LuIG inclusion of the T 7/2 term was necessary to represent the data above 40°K. Using the theory of noninteracting spin waves we have derived expressions for the sublattice magnetizations in terms of the exchange integrals Jaa, Jad, Jdd , and J′ad , where J′ad describes interactions between next‐nearest‐neighboring pairs of spins on the a and d sublattices. Our experimental results indicate that Jaa and Jdd are not negligible. The T3/2 coefficients were found to be about 15% larger for LuIG than for YIG. Our value of the exchange stiffness constant of YIG is 10% larger than those determined calorimetrically and hence agrees with values determined by microwave instability measurements. For LuIG our value of this constant agrees with the specific heat value

The Economic Value of Climate Information in Adaptation Decisions : Learning in the Sea-level Rise and Coastal Infrastructure Context

Traditional methods of investment appraisal have been criticized in the context of climate change adaptation. Economic assessment of adaptation options needs to explicitly incorporate the uncertainty of future climate conditions and should recognise that uncertainties may diminish over time as a result of improved understanding and learning. Real options analysis (ROA) is an appraisal tool developed to incorporate concepts of flexibility and learning that relies on probabilistic data to characterise uncertainties. It is also a relatively resource-intensive decision support tool. We test whether, and to what extent, learning can result from the use of successive generations of real life climate scenarios, and how non-probabilistic uncertainties can be handled through adapting the principles of ROA in coastal economic adaptation decisions. Using a relatively simple form of ROA on a vulnerable piece of coastal rail infrastructure in the United Kingdom, and two successive UK climate assessments, we estimate the values associated with utilising up-dated information on sea-level rise. The value of learning can be compared to the capital cost of adaptation investment, and may be used to illustrate the potential scale of the value of learning in coastal protection, and other adaptation contexts

Shock-vortex shear-layer interaction in the transonic flow around a supercritical airfoil at high Reynolds number in buffet conditions

This paper provides a conceptual analysis and a computational model for how the unsteady ‘buffeting’ phenomenon develops in transonic, low incidence flow around a supercritical aerofoil, the OAT15A, at Reynolds number of 3.3 million. It is shown how a low-frequency buffet mode is amplified in the shock-wave region and then develops upstream and downstream interaction with the alternating von Kármán eddies in the wake past the trailing-edge as well as with the shear-layer, Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices. These interactions are tracked by wavelet analysis, autoregressive (AR) modelling and by Proper Orthogonal Decomposition. The frequency modulation of the trailing-edge instability modes is shown in the spectra and in the wall-pressure fluctuations. The amplitude modulation of the buffet and von Kármán modes has been also quantified by POD analysis. The thinning of the shear layers, both at the outer edge of the turbulent boundary layers and the wake, caused by an ‘eddy-blocking’ mechanism is modelled by stochastic forcing of the turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation, by small-scale straining of the higher-order POD modes. The benefits from thinning the shear-layers by taking into account the interfacial dynamics are clearly shown in the velocity profiles, and wall pressure distribution in comparison with the experimental data

Job Growth in Early Transition: Comparing Two Paths

Small start-up firms are the engine of job creation in early transition and yet little is known about the characteristics of this new sector. We seek to identify patterns of job growth in this sector in terms of niches left from central planning and ask about differences in job creation across two different transition economies: Estonia, which experienced rapid destruction of the pre-existing firms, and the Czech Republic, which reduced the old sector gradually. We find job growth within industries to be quantitatively more important than job growth due to across-industry reallocation. Furthermore, the industrial composition of startups is strikingly similar in the two countries. We offer convergence to "western" industry firm-size distributions as an explanation. We also find regularities in wage evolution across new and old firms, including small differences in job quality across the two transition paths.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39888/3/wp503.pd

The Lantern Vol. 22, No. 1, December 1953

• Mrs. K. • The Death of Israel Chauncey • The Tramp • The Man Who Remembered the Future • Music, When Soft Voices Die... • Cloud-Horses • Faith • Hymn To What Might Have Been • In Autumn • Reverie • A Lantern • A Taste of Perfection • A Reverie • Small Dog • Rhapsody of Life • From the Tower Window • Ethelred Ihttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1061/thumbnail.jp