Verifiable and Non-Verifiable Anonymous Mechanisms for Regulating a Polluting Monopolist

Optimal regulation of a polluting natural monopolist must correct for both external damages and market power to achieve a social optimum. Existing non-Bayesian regulatory methods require knowledge of the demand function, while Bayesian schemes require knowledge of the underlying cost distribution. We introduce mechanisms adapted to use less information. Our Price-based Subsidy (PS) mechanisms give the firm a transfer that matches or approximates the incremental surplus generated each period. The regulator need not observe the abatement activity or know the demand, cost, or damage functions of the firm. All of the mechanisms induce the firm to price at marginal social cost, either immediately or asymptotically.surplus subsidy schemes, polluting monopolist, verifiable regulatory mechanisms

Similarities and Differences in the Argumentative Characteristics of the Official Brexit Campaigns

This paper adds to the growing empirical literature surrounding the UK's vote to leave the European Union. Specifically, a series of quantitative and qualitative textual analysis tools are implemented on a corpus consisting of the websites of Vote Leave (VL) and Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE). By breaking down argumentative text into two components, this paper attempts to characterise how the two official campaigns differ in the information they choose to convey (or “focus"), and the style by which this information is conveyed. To analyse variation in focus, a structural topic model and thematic analysis of elementary context units are conducted with the inclusion of document-level metadata. This is then compared to survey data and their potential effectiveness is considered. To study the style of information transmission, an analysis of sentiment is used to calculate sentence-level polarity scores. An unambiguous thematic divide is uncovered with BSE employing a “focussed" approach by singling out topics related to the economy, whereas VL chose a “scattershot" approach by spreading their resources across a broader range of themes. The thematic analysis uncovers little reciprocity in most major areas — a notable exception being public services, which acted as a battleground. BSE's focussed approach allowed it to target the most influential topic for the electorate, but despite this, VL's approach led to a greater targeted proportion. A sentiment analysis yields two results: (A) the variability in sentence-level polarity scores was consistent across campaigns, and (2) BSE's website had a significantly greater mean score

Hemispheric Reconstructions: Post-Emancipation Social Movements and Capitalist Reaction in Colombia and the United States

As historians have begun to conceptualize the U.S. Civil War as a global event, so too must they consider Reconstruction as a political process that transcended national boundaries. The United States and Colombia both abolished slavery during civil wars; ex-slaves in both societies struggled for full citizenship and landholding, partially succeeding for a time; in both societies, a harsh reaction ripped full citizenship from the freedpeople and denied their claims to the land. These events, usually studied only as part of a national story in either the United States or Colombia, can also be understood, and perhaps be better understood, as a history of hemispheric and transnational processes—of race, of republican politics, of contests over equality, of capitalism. This essay examines the words and actions of historical actors, especially U.S. African Americans and afrocolombianos, to note the impressive commonalities of discourse (which was almost exactly the same in many cases) and political repertoires. This article focuses first on the agency of African Americans in both societies to create post-emancipation social movements for citizenship and land and then on the, largely successful, reactions against these movements

The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

When Mexican Conservatives offered Maximilian the throne, he assumed that their desire for a monarch meant that the republican experiment in Latin America had failed. Even though he fell in defeat, Latin America’s importance for the development of republicanism and democracy and the shaping of the modern Atlantic world is similarly dismissed today. This refusal to grant the republican experiments in Latin America legitimacy has occluded a powerful alternative possibility for organizing society and understanding the future that emerged in nineteenth- century Latin America. As noted in the prologue, I denominate this alternative “American republican modernity.” In this counter mentalité, Latin Americans did not define a modernity bound to cultured Europe and its civilization but celebrated an imagined modernity located in America, a modernity whose definition was inherently political. Latin America represented the future because it had adopted republicanism and democracy while Europe, under the boots of monarchs and aristocrats, dwelled in the past.1 American republican modernity emphasized republican politics as a marker of modernity. This republicanism did not just involve elite gentlemen’s safeguarding of abstract political and personal rights for privileged individuals; instead, popular groups (to use the nineteenth- century language for the lower class or subalterns) infused republicanism with a democratic challenge and assertions of social and economic rights. Although republicanism began in Latin America as an elite- dominated project, its legitimacy and importance grew due to the demands of popular actors to open the republican nation to people of different classes and racial backgrounds. The force of popular concerns made universalism—the idea that all people, in spite of differences of class, race, or nationality, shared a basic human fraternity and enjoyed rights and citizenship—a central tenet of American republicanism. Although universalism is now viewed with deep suspicion by the postmodern left, it was one of the most powerful tools available to challenge old hierarchies—both on the global scale, between the imperial powers of the Old World and the weak and struggling young nations of the New World, and on the local, between landlord and peasant or master and slave

The Vanguard of the Atlantic World

In the nineteenth century, Latin America was home to the majority of the world's democratic republics. Many historians have dismissed these political experiments as corrupt pantomimes of governments of Western Europe and the United States. Challenging that perspective, James E. Sanders contends that Latin America in this period was a site of genuine political innovation and popular debate reflecting Latin Americans' visions of modernity. Drawing on archival sources in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay, Sanders traces the circulation of political discourse and democratic practice among urban elites, rural peasants, European immigrants, slaves, and freed blacks to show how and why ideas of liberty, democracy, and universalism gained widespread purchase across the region, mobilizing political consciousness and solidarity among diverse constituencies. In doing so, Sanders reframes the locus and meaning of political and cultural modernity

The Vanguard of the Atlantic World

In the nineteenth century, Latin America was home to the majority of the world's democratic republics. Many historians have dismissed these political experiments as corrupt pantomimes of governments of Western Europe and the United States. Challenging that perspective, James E. Sanders contends that Latin America in this period was a site of genuine political innovation and popular debate reflecting Latin Americans' visions of modernity. Drawing on archival sources in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay, Sanders traces the circulation of political discourse and democratic practice among urban elites, rural peasants, European immigrants, slaves, and freed blacks to show how and why ideas of liberty, democracy, and universalism gained widespread purchase across the region, mobilizing political consciousness and solidarity among diverse constituencies. In doing so, Sanders reframes the locus and meaning of political and cultural modernity