Clearing Alaskan water supply impoundments: management, laboratory study, and literature review

The literature review prepared in conjunction with this study is contained in IWR-67-A, published separately as "Clearing Alaskan Water Supply Impoundments: Literature Review" by the Institute of Water Resources, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska. The data developed in the laboratory portion of the study are contained in IWR-67-B. Contact the Institute of Water Resources for access to this material. IWR-67-A and IWR-67-B are available on microfiche.Water supply impoundments in northern regions have seen only limited application. Reasons for the lack of use of such impoundments include the following: 1) little demand for water due to the low population densities and rustic life styles; 2) a lack of conventional distribution systems in many communities; 3) poorly developed technology for construction of dams on permafrost; 4) adequacy of existing river, lake, ice, and lagoon water supplies; 5) shortage of capital to finance the high cost of construction in remote regions.The work upon which this report is based was supported by funds provided by the United States Department of the Interior, Office of Water Research and Technology, as authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1964, Public Law 88-379, as amended (Project A-043-ALAS)

Real Business Cycle Realizations

Much recent business cycle research focuses on moments of macroeconomic aggregates. We construct examples of real business cycle sample paths for output, consumption, and employment for the U.S. economy. Annual sample paths are generated from an initial condition in 1925, measured technology and government spending shocks since then, and a standard, calibrated, one-sector model of the business cycle. Quarterly sample paths are generated similarly, from an initial condition in 1955. The law of motion for shocks is not parametrized and so decision-rules are estimated by GMM. We compare the paths with actual history graphically and by spectral methods.real business cycles, Solow residuals, US business cycle history

Referendum Design and Contingent Valuation: The NOAA Panel's No-Vote Recommendation

In 1992 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) convened a panel of prominent social scientists to assess the reliability of natural resource damage estimates derived from contingent valuation (CV). The product of the Panel's deliberations was a report that laid out a set of recommended guidelines for CV survey design, administration, and data analysis. One of the Panel's recommendations was that CV surveys should employ a referendum approach. This method describes a choice mechanism that asks each respondent how they would vote if faced with a particular program and the prospect of paying for the program through some means, such as higher taxes. The Panel also recommended that CV referendum questions which commonly use only "for" or "against" answers should be expanded to explicitly offer an "I would-not-vote" response. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effects of such a "would-not-vote" option. In developing the test, we followed the important elements of the NOAA Panel guidelines for the design and administration of a CV survey and use what was acknowledged(by the Panel) as the most carefully developed CV questionnaire to that time, that is, the State of Alaska's study of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Our findings suggest that when those selecting the "would-not-vote" response are treated as having voted "against" the offered program, offering the option does not alter: (a) the distribution of "for" and "against" responses, (b) the estimates of WTP derived from these choices, or (c) the construct validity of the results.

Temporal Reliability of Estimates from Contingent Valuation

In 1992 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) convened a panel of prominent social scientists to assess the reliability of natural resource damage estimates derived from contingent valuation (CV). The product of the panel's deliberations was a report that laid out a set of recommended guidelines for CV survey design, administration, and data analysis. This paper focuses on one of these guidelines�the Panel's call for the "temporal averaging" of willingness-to-pay (WTP) responses obtained from CV surveys as one method for increasing their reliability. The panel suggested: "Time dependent measurement noise should be reduced by averaging across independently drawn samples taken at different points in time. A clear and substantial time trend in the responses would cast doubt on the 'reliability' of the finding." The purpose of this paper is to examine the temporal reliability of CV estimates. Our findings, using a CV instrument designed to measure willingness-to-pay for a program to protect Prince William Sound, Alaska from future oil spills, like the Exxon Valdez spill, exhibited no significant sensitivity to the timing of the interviews. For two samples involving independent interviews taken over two years apart, the distribution of respondents' choices "for" and "against" the protection program did not differ.

Judgements of Solomon: anxieties and defences of social workers involved in care proceedings

Evidence from focus group discussions with social workers in child care and child protection was collected for a research project exploring decision-making in care proceedings and seeking a better understanding of the causes of delay in the process. Here this material is used to examine social workers’ feelings about their work and to explore the anxieties they expressed. Isabel Menzies’s work on containing anxiety in institutions is used to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about the ways in which individuals’ unconscious defences against anxiety may affect the structure, policies and practices of the organization in which they work. It is suggested that this dimension needs to be taken into account in understanding difficulties which arise in putting policy into practice

Was the NOAA Panel Correct About Contingent Valuation?

The past few years have seen a highly charged debate about whether contingent valuation (CV) surveys can provide valid economic measures of people's values for environmental resources. In an effort to appraise the validity of CV measures of economic value, a distinguished panel of social scientists, chaired by two Nobel laureates, was established by NOAA, to critically evaluate the validity of CV measures of nonuse value. The Panel provided an extensive set of guidelines for CV survey construction, administration, and analysis, and distinguished a subset of items from their guidelines for special emphasis and described them as burden of proof requirements. Of particular interest was the Panel's requirement that CV surveys demonstrate "responsiveness to the scope of the environmental insult." That demonstration has come to be called a scope test. The paper reports the findings from the first CV study that adheres to the NOAA Panel's guidelines and includes a formal scope test.