Health and Environmental Protection in Pesticide Manufacturing

Debate on the safety of pesticide manufacturing has been stimulated by a significant increase in the scale and complexity in the manufacturing technologies involved and the occurrence of major accidents, for example in Bhopal, India. and Seveso, Italy. New technological and managerial techniques are needed to manufacture pesticides with acceptable levels of safety. The accidental release of toxic substances must be controlled. In the foreseeable future, crop protection will continue to depend on the use of pesticides, and pesticide manufacturing should taken into account both environmental and economic goals. This report focuses on economically feasible control measures and management strategies for dealing with risk situations during the manufacture of pesticides. The concepts discussed herein are primarily directed to industrial and public authorities in developing countries. Environmental and health considerations throughout the technological life cycle of pesticide manufacture are elaborated

Stabilization Policies at Crossroads? An Interim Report From Central and Eastern Europe

The papers in this volume were written by experts from Central and Eastern Europe and constitute the core of the material presented at the international workshop on "Macroeconomic Stabilization of Economies in Transition" held in Prague, Czech Republic from 22 to 24 April 1993. The purpose of the workshop was to assemble policy-makers and interested scholars from Central and Eastern European countries, as well as western experts to thoroughly discuss the accumulated experience with macroeconomic stabilization during economic reforms in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, former Czechoslovakia and its successors the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Those who presented papers and those who commented drew attention to problems now explicit and urgent in countries which pioneered reform to convert from communist central planning to a pluralist market system. The late-comers to the transition process are very likely to face similar complications and dilemmas. Organizers of the workshop firmly believed that dissemination of experience from more rapidly advancing reform countries could contribute to a better understanding of burdensome stabilization tasks and to a future improvement and refinement of stabilization policies and tools, particularly for the benefit of the transitional laggards. The results of the workshop inferred that the stabilization of a post-socialist economy is a difficult but attainable goal. The character of stabilization policies underwent many modifications and adjustments. Their initial stringency was abandoned and replaced by more adaptive policies in some countries. The workshop participants generally also agreed that regardless of the approach utilized to implement the stabilization effort (shock versus gradual approach), countries face similar problems after the stabilization phase: they comprise long-term and painful restructuring of industries; budget imbalances; extensive restructuring of the public sector; enlarging the scope of currency convertibility; time-consuming privatization; and so forth. Recognition of the dynamic changes in the recent past, as well as the decisions facing policy-makers in post-communist countries in contemplating how to proceed where from each unique position already attained, guided us to choose "Stabilization Policies at Crossroads?" as the title of this volume

Small Scale Privatization in Eastern Europe and Russia from a Historical and Comparative Perspective

This Working Paper is a summary of a workshop which was held at IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria on 26-28 June 1992. Small scale privatization (SSP) of shops, restaurants and other consumer services has been accomplished in the first stage of the complex process of privatization in Eastern Europe. It was also an experiment for measuring the demand for previously state owned property and for verifying different techniques of privatization. The Russian Federation is now undertaking the first steps in SSP and may learn much from recent experiences of the other East European economies. In order to facilitate such an exchange, a workshop was organized at IIASA to analyze the pattern of SSP in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, the former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. The characteristics at each stage of the privatization processes were thoroughly discussed and compared across the nations, beginning with the emergence of the idea of SSP, through legislation and the rise of unexpected tensions during the implementation phase, to the characteristic features of newly privatized retail and service businesses

Testing Scalar-Tensor Gravity Using Space Gravitational-Wave Interferometers

We calculate the bounds which could be placed on scalar-tensor theories of gravity of the Jordan, Fierz, Brans and Dicke type by measurements of gravitational waveforms from neutron stars (NS) spiralling into massive black holes (MBH) using LISA, the proposed space laser interferometric observatory. Such observations may yield significantly more stringent bounds on the Brans-Dicke coupling parameter \omega than are achievable from solar system or binary pulsar measurements. For NS-MBH inspirals, dipole gravitational radiation modifies the inspiral and generates an additional contribution to the phase evolution of the emitted gravitational waveform. Bounds on \omega can therefore be found by using the technique of matched filtering. We compute the Fisher information matrix for a waveform accurate to second post-Newtonian order, including the effect of dipole radiation, filtered using a currently modeled noise curve for LISA, and determine the bounds on \omega for several different NS-MBH canonical systems. For example, observations of a 1.4 solar mass NS inspiralling to a 1000 solar mass MBH with a signal-to-noise ratio of 10 could yield a bound of \omega > 240,000, substantially greater than the current experimental bound of \omega > 3000.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; to be submitted to Phys. Rev.

On Research and Development Management in the Transition to a Market Economy

The optimal organization of research and development (R&D) in a market economy is one of the unsettled questions of economics. R&D has great externalities that make its support more complicated than most goods in which the contrasting of private benefits with private costs in a market system approximates the social welfare. Thus, the organization of R&D becomes a key issue in a transition to a market system of a former centrally planned economy. This is particularly so for the USSR, which has been a major source of science and technology. Recognizing its importance, Deputy Prime Minister Laverov approached the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) to initiate collaborative work with the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology and the USSR Academy of Sciences on the topic of Research and Development Management in the Transition to a Market Economy in the autumn of 1990. Dr. Peter de Janosi, Director of IIASA, and Professor Merton J. Peck, Leader of the Economic Reform and Integration (ERI) Project (also IIASA), met the Deputy Prime Minister to discuss such a cooperation. The collaboration began with a meeting in November 1990 organized by IIASA with the support of the Committee for Systems Analysis of the USSR Academy of Sciences. This meeting explored the feasibility of creating an IIASA research activity on the impact of economic reform and transition upon the organization and management of science and technology in the USSR. An agreement was reached that IIASA would participate in an activity with the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology concerning R&D Management in the Transition to a Market Economy. This activity would be led by Professor Richard Levin from Yale University and Dr. Sergei Glaziev from the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute in Moscow. The second conference held on this topic, cosponsored by the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology and IIASA, and organized with the International Center for Research into Economic Transformations (Moscow), was an outgrowth of discussions with representatives of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the State Committee, and the Center in January 1991. IIASA was invited to arrange a meeting in which the numerous issues involved in the restructuring and organization of scientific and technological activities in the Soviet Union could be discussed in systematic ways. Soviet experts prepared papers dealing with the Soviet Union's present situation and reform plans regarding R&D management. These papers were presented at the Conference and commented on by a small group of economists, engineers, and R&D managers from the United States, Europe, and Japan. The Conference, held in Moscow in July 1991, provided an exceptional opportunity to review and discuss science policy in a economy making the difficult transition to a market system. The new data and ideas for changes in the Soviet science and technology sector were of great interest to experts from West and East. The discussions resulted in a commitment to longer term research on an extended list of topics. More about the future plans can be read in the corresponding section of this paper

Research and Development Management: From the Soviet Union to Russia

In the past, intensive interest in Soviet research and development has been sporadic both in the West and in the USSR. The end of the 1980s coincided with the demise of the Soviet model of economic development. As a result, a surge of attention has been given to the factors driving the motor of Soviet growth and development, as well as R&D. The opening, first, of the Soviet and, subsequently, of the Russian economy, finally exposed it to global standards. The long period of international isolation with respect to scientific and technological exchanges made it difficult for scholars and policy makers at home and abroad to measure the status of Soviet advances. Consequently, some overrated the levels, while others underestimated them. The purpose of this study is to provide a clear picture of the R&D resources and management that were created under the former Soviet-style system and of the roots and prospects of the present reform movement

Economic Reform & Integration Project (ERI) of the Technology, Economy & Society (TES) Program

In summer 1989 IIASA was approached by Academician S. Shatalin of the Soviet Union with the request to consider establishing an activity that could analyze international economic interdependencies and serve as a scientific forum to support economic reforms in the Soviet Union and the other socialist Member countries of our Institute. In late 1989, the Economic Reform and Integration (ERI) Project was established with the general aim of establishing bridges between eastern and western economic theory and practice, creating conditions for mutually assimilating successful managerial experience, and for possible rapprochement of economic systems. This paper presents the current status of the IIASA ERI Project

Research and Development Management in the Transition to a Market Economy

On the initiative of the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology (now the Ministry of Science, Higher Education and Technology Policy of the Russian Federation), the Russian Academy of Sciences, IIASA, together with the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute (CEMI) and the International Center for Research into Economic Transformation (ICRET), an international research Project under the title "R&D Management in the Transition to a Market Economy" was created in 1991. The main goals of the Project include the study of international experiences of R&D management and elaboration of proposals on the reorganization of science and technology development management in the former centrally planned countries, and primarily in Russia. The proposed research can be divided according to three main themes: (i) to study conditions, tendencies and problems of the reorganization of the scientific and industrial complex in the state and private sector during the economic transition period; (ii) to study international experience of industrial R&D management during the transition to a market economy; (iii) to carry out scenarios of R&D reorganization and restructuring in Russia and other post-communist countries. During the first year of the Project, several studies have been completed. The most important of them were dealing with intellectual property rights issues; elaboration of proposals on the reorganization process; research institutes and laboratories behavior under the conditions of economic reform. By now, the Project organized two international conferences: "Research and Development Management in the Transition to a Market Economy" (Moscow, July 1991); and "Industrial R&D Management in the Transition to a Market Economy" (Laxenburg, Austria, March 1992); as well as a Workshop on Patent Legislation and Protection of Intellectual Property (New Haven, USA, February 1992). This book includes papers, presented at these three meetings, which summarize the results of studies carried out within the Project

Economies in Transition: Statistical Measures Now and in the Future. Proceedings of the Sochi International Forum, October 1990

This collection of papers includes contributions by Eastern and Western experts from the fields of statistical analysis and comparative economics. This international group met to present and discuss their work at the International Forum entitled "Economies in Transition: Statistical Measures Now and in the Future," which was held in Sochi, USSR, from 15 to 17 October 1990. The Forum was organized and co-sponsored by IIASA and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The overall theme of the Forum was an investigation of meaningful socio-economic measurements for transitional economies. Two main topics were at the focus of attention. The first was the construction and development of statistics needed to more accurately monitor an economy in transition from one system to another, particularly from a centrally planned command-type to a market-style economic system. The second was international, especially East-West, socio-economic comparisons based on traditional (insofar, as these still continue to be relevant and useful), as well as on non-conventional measures. The purpose of the Forum was to bring together both experienced "users" and statisticians. Our belief is that only their union can help overcome current shortcomings of Eastern European statistics and explicate (and subsequently facilitate possible implementation of) measures which are capable of truly reflecting the transitional character of the former centrally planned economies