Global warming policy: some economic implications

Many analysts believe that the emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity are contributing to global warming, but the linkage is highly uncertain. The largest such source of these gases is carbon dioxide (CO2) from the growing consumption of fossil fuels. Consequently, the conservation of fossil fuels figures prominently in any strategy to reduce the threat of global warming. Because there is considerable uncertainty about the benefits of reducing CO2 emissions but the costs of conservation can be readily quantified, some analysts have suggested that reducing the emissions is like insurance. In this article, Stephen Brown integrates a growing literature on the damage caused by global warming with a world energy model to do a cost-benefit analysis of U.S. compliance with the accord adopted at the United Nations conference on global warming held in late 1997. His analysis shows that reducing U.S. emissions to comply with the accord would represent too much insurance against global warming.Power resources ; Environmental protection ; Pollution

Non-visual information display using tactons

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of different parameters can be used to construct Tactons, e.g.: frequency, amplitude, waveform and duration of a tactile pulse, plus body location. Tactons have the potential to improve interaction in a range of different areas, particularly where the visual display is overloaded, limited in size or not available, such as interfaces for blind people or on mobile and wearable devices

What drives diesel fuel prices?

Historically, gasoline has commanded a premium over diesel, but that changed in mid-to-late 2007, when diesel rose above gasoline. In 2007 and 2008, however, gasoline traded higher than diesel only 21.1 percent of the time. This deviation from historic norms raises an interesting question--what drives diesel prices? As with virtually all petroleum-derived products, the story begins with oil prices. Seasonal patterns also play a significant role. Demand for a range of oil-based products changes with the weather, and prices fluctuate as refiners adjust their output mix. Government regulations are another source of price variability. Earlier this decade, new standards aimed at reducing diesel fuel's sulfur content required further processing that increased refinery costs and prices for consumers. Finally, short-term changes in supply and demand--including imports--factor into pricing on a day-to-day basis. Our model suggests that spot diesel should rise 25 cents a gallon over the next six months and 41 cents a gallon over the next 18 months.Petroleum products - Prices ; Petroleum industry and trade ; Energy consumption ; Econometric models

Seniority, External Labor Markets, and Faculty Pay

We estimate the returns to seniority (the wage-tenure profile) for university faculty, and the degree to which these returns respond to entry-level salaries (or opportunity wages) a relationship unexplored in work to date. Using data on faculty at a Big Ten university (ours), we estimate elasticities of senior-faculty salaries with respect to entry-level salaries, and find that these elasticities decline with seniority. The evidence both provides an explanation of faculty salary compression and suggests the importance of controlling for entry-level salaries in obtaining estimates of the returns to seniority.faculty, wages, college, labor, markets, Brown, Woodbury

Gender Differences in Faculty Turnover

Over the last 15 to 20 years, colleges and universities have paid increasing attention to attracting and retaining faculty women. The rate of progress of women in academe has nevertheless been painfully slow. For example, statistics on economists collected and published by the American Economic Association (Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession 1994) suggest that in recent years, about 20 percent of Economics assistant professors in graduate Ph.D.-granting departments were women, about 10 percent of associate professors were women, and under 5 percent of full professors were women. The percentage of new assistant professors who are women has lagged behind the percentage of new Ph.D.s who are women by 10 to 15 percentage points. And the percentage of promotions to associate (and full) professor that are accounted for by women has lagged behind the percentage of assistant (and associate) professors who were women and "promotable." One of the explanations (or perhaps excuses) offered for the slow progress of women in academe is that faculty women have higher rates of voluntary turnover than do faculty men. This explanation accords with the general finding that women have higher rates of labor market turnover than do men (Blau and Kahn 1981; Light and Ureta 1992), and may provide a psychic calm both for those frustrated by the slow progress of women in academe and for those who might frustrate that progress. Studies to date of faculty turnover have used grouped (or university-level) data, which usually preclude examination of gender differences in faculty turnover (Ehrenberg, Kasper, and Rees 1991; Rees and Smith 1991). In this paper we offer evidence on faculty turnover using micro data from a single large public university Michigan State University (MSU) during the decade of the 1980s. Our findings suggest strongly that the higher separation rates that are observed for faculty women are accounted for by differences between men and women in appointment status that is, faculty women have higher turnover rates than faculty men because a higher percentage of women than of men hold temporary appointments.faculty, college, gender, turnover, Brown, Woodbury

What's driving gasoline prices?

If current market conditions prevail, gasoline prices are set to rise over the next few months and then fall over the next three years, according to this issue of the Economic Letter.

Do higher oil prices still benefit Texas?

Petroleum industry and trade

The relationship between EUV dimming and coronal mass ejections

Aims. There have been many studies of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) dimming in association with coronal mass ejection (CME) onsets. However, there has never been a thorough statistical study of this association, covering appropriate temperature ranges. Thus, we make use of a large campaign database utilising the Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (CDS) and the Large Angle and Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) both on the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) to associate dimming events detected at 1 and 2 million K with CME activity. The aim is to confirm whether the dimming-CME association is real or not. This in turn will confirm whether special attention should be paid to the EUV dimming in the pre-eruption and eruption periods to study the CME onset process itself. Methods. The CDS CME onset campaign data for Mg IX and FE XVI observations on the solar limb are used to compare to LASCO event lists over a period from 1998 to 2005. Dimming events are identified and the physical extent explored, whilst comparing the events to overlying CME activity. Results. For the identified dimming regions we have shown strong associations with CME onsets, with up to 55% of the dimming events being associated with CME activity. This is compared to the random case where up to 47% of the dimming regions are expected to be associated with CMEs. We have also shown that up to 84% of CMEs associated with our data can be tracked back to dimming regions. This compares to a random case of up to 58%. Conclusions. These results confirm the CME-EUV dimming association, using a statistical analysis for the first time. We discuss the repercussions for the study of CME onsets, i.e. analysis of the dimming regions and the periods up to such dimming may be key to understanding the pre-CME onset plasma processes. The results stress that one emission line may not be sufficient for associating dimming regions with CMEs

What drives natural gas prices?

For many years, fuel switching between natural gas and residual fuel oil kept natural gas prices closely aligned with those for crude oil. More recently, however, the number of U.S. facilities able to switch between natural gas and residual fuel oil has declined, and over the past five years, U.S. natural gas prices have been on an upward trend with crude oil prices but with considerable independent movement. Natural gas market analysts generally emphasize weather and inventories as drivers of natural gas prices. Using an error-correction model, we show that when these and other additional factors are taken into account, movements in crude oil prices have a prominent role in shaping natural gas prices. Our findings imply a continuum of prices at which natural gas and petroleum products are substitutes.

Intellectual property rights and product effectiveness

Recent economic literature concludes that an invention-importing country, where domestic invention is scarce or nonexistent, may reduce its welfare and, in some cases, world welfare, by protecting intellectual property developed elsewhere. The analysis presented in this article uses economic theory to show that such a conclusion may not be fully warranted for a wide range of products, such as antibiotics, fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides, whose effectiveness diminishes with cumulative use. Both developed and developing countries may find that protecting intellectual property rights for these products will enhance welfare - even when their invention is provided for free.Intellectual property ; Imports