Old Wine in New Bottles? An Overview of Two Centuries of Free Trade between the United States and Canada

On February 5, 2003 the Maine International Trade Center and University of Maine Canadian American Center co-sponsored a day-long forum on the challenges and opportunities of free trade between Canada and the United States. This article presents the edited remarks of Scott See who gave audience members a whirlwind overview of the history of Canadian-American free trade from the Revolutionary War era up to passage of the Free Trade Agreement in 1989

Siderophile element fractionation in meteor crater impact glasses and metallic spherules

Meteor Crater, Arizona provides an opportunity to study, in detail, elemental fractionation processes occurring during impacts through the study of target rocks, meteorite projectile and several types of impact products. We have performed EMPA and INAA on target rocks, two types of impact glass and metallic spherules from Meteor Crater. Using literature data for the well studied Canyon Diablo iron we can show that different siderophite element fractionations affected the impact glasses than affected the metallic spherules. The impact glasses primarily lost Au, while the metallic spherules lost Fe relative to other siderophile elements

Tradable Pollution Permits and the Regulatory Game

This paper analyzes polluters\u27 incentives to move from a traditional command and control (CAC) environmental regulatory regime to a tradable permits (TPP) regime. Existing work in environmental economics does not model how firms contest and bargain over actual regulatory implementation in CAC regimes, and therefore fail to compare TPP regimes with any CAC regime that is actually observed. This paper models CAC environmental regulation as a bargaining game over pollution entitlements. Using a reduced form model of the regulatory contest, it shows that CAC regulatory bargaining likely generates a regulatory status quo under which firms with the highest compliance costs bargain for the smallest pollution reductions, or even no reduction at all. As for a tradable permits regime, it is shown that all firms are better off under such a regime than they would be under an idealized CAC regime that set and enforced a uniform pollution standard, but permit sellers (low compliance cost firms) may actually be better off under a TPP regime with relaxed aggregate pollution levels. Most importantly, because high cost firms (or facilities) are the most weakly regulated in the equilibrium under negotiated or bargained CAC regimes, they may be net losers in a proposed move to a TPP regime. When equilibrium costs under a TPP regime are compared with equilibrium costs under a status quo CAC regime, several otherwise paradoxical aspects of firm attitudes toward TPP type reforms can be explained. In particular, the otherwise paradoxical pattern of allowances awarded under Phase II of the 1990 Clean Air Act\u27s acid rain program, a pattern tending to favor (in Phase II) cleaner, newer generating units, is explained by the fact that under the status quo regime, a kind of bargained CAC, it was the newer cleaner units that were regulated, and which therefore had higher marginal control costs than did the largely unregulated older, plants. As a normative matter, the analysis here implies that the proper baseline for evaluating TPP regimes such as those contained in the Bush Administration\u27s recent Clear Skies initiative is not idealized, but nonexistent CAC regulatory outcomes, but rather the outcomes that have resulted from the bargaining game set up by CAC laws and regulations

Publishing ‘paper bullets’: Politics, propaganda, and Polish-English translation in wartime London

During World War 2, publishing was an important element of the war effort for both the Allies and the Axis powers. Wartime propaganda and cultural diplomacy relied primarily on books, magazines and the daily press. The exiled governments in London, including the Polish government, undertook a major effort to translate, publish and promote numerous books and pamphlets that would appeal to British readers and, thus, help sway public opinion. This paper focuses on translation as an important aspect of wartime publishing that has not yet received much scholarly attention. It offers a contribution to research into the role and place of translations in wartime publishing by discussing the Polish government-in-exile’s translation and publishing campaign. Drawing on various archival sources, it demonstrates that publishing translations was an important part of wartime cultural diplomacy and it led to the development of extensive state-private networks that brought together exiled governments and British publishers. By analysing this material in a broad cultural context, the paper highlights the historical, ideological and political relevance of translation studies research to wartime publishing and censorship

Superposition of Weyl solutions: The equilibrium forces

Solutions to the Einstein equation that represent the superposition of static isolated bodies with axially symmetry are presented. The equations nonlinearity yields singular structures (strut and membranes) to equilibrate the bodies. The force on the strut like singularities is computed for a variety of situations. The superposition of a ring and a particle is studied in some detailComment: 31 pages, 7 figures, psbox macro. Submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit