State Regulatory Controls on Oil & Gas

Alaska oil and gas regulatory matters are under the jurisdiction of a three-man Oil and Gas Conservation Committee, all of which are state employees. In the last 10 years State water bottoms in Cook Inlet have been leased, explored and oil production amounting to about 200,000 barrels a day has been established. Cook Inlet is subject to very high tides and heavy ice flows. Five Salmon runs also occur in the Cook Inlet. The average daily production rate per well in the Cook Inlet area is nearly one hundred times the national average. The Prudhoe Bay oil field discovered in 1968 is the largest oil field in North America. It lies entirely on State land. After public hearing, the Committee prescribed 640-acre spacing for two of the thicker reservoirs and detailed many safety and operational requirements. The orders prohibited the flaring of gas except for operational necessities. Over 40 wells have now been completed in this field but a pipeline has not been approved. The State of Alaska looks forward to the challenge of proper development of a resource valuable to the State and the Nation

New Records of Michigan Cicadidae (Homoptera), With Notes on the Use of Songs to Monitor Range Changes

We present records of Diceroprocta vitripennis, Tibicen chloromera, and Tibicen pruinosa (new state record) in Michigan. Monitoring geographic range changes and population size differences by song suggests several population situations for cicadas: (1) sizable populations in most areas of apparently good habitat; (2) widely separated single individuals or small populations on the edges of populated regions, representing range extensions that may be of limited duration; (3) one or a few individuals present only once, probably transferred in soil on roots, and ultimately unsuccessful. Species- specific calling songs allow sensitive measurement of species\u27 range changes

Lifts of convex sets and cone factorizations

In this paper we address the basic geometric question of when a given convex set is the image under a linear map of an affine slice of a given closed convex cone. Such a representation or 'lift' of the convex set is especially useful if the cone admits an efficient algorithm for linear optimization over its affine slices. We show that the existence of a lift of a convex set to a cone is equivalent to the existence of a factorization of an operator associated to the set and its polar via elements in the cone and its dual. This generalizes a theorem of Yannakakis that established a connection between polyhedral lifts of a polytope and nonnegative factorizations of its slack matrix. Symmetric lifts of convex sets can also be characterized similarly. When the cones live in a family, our results lead to the definition of the rank of a convex set with respect to this family. We present results about this rank in the context of cones of positive semidefinite matrices. Our methods provide new tools for understanding cone lifts of convex sets.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure

The Economic Incidence of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Short-haul Pricing Constraint

The public and private interest hypotheses permeate contemporary regulatory analyses. Both theories are used to explain the inception of the first major federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). According to the public and private interest hypotheses, the regulations promulgated by the ICC benefited either railroads or shippers. This paper presents an alternative view consistent with the multiple interest theory of regulation. It is demonstrated that the major regulatory instrument of the ICC, the short-haul pricing constraint (SHPC), altered the equilibria of railroad markets in a way which benefitted the class of shippers (short-haul shippers) facing monopolistic railroad markets. The SHPC also benefitted some railroads by increasing the correspondence between unregulated, cooperative and regulated, noncooperative levels of long-haul shipments. The proposition that the ICC benefited short-haul shippers and railroads is supported by an empirical analysis of the effects of the inception of federal regulation and implementation of the SHPC on stock prices. The results of the paper indicate that the public and private interest interpretations of the ICC are neither contradictory nor complete, but instead are complementary. A theoretical and empirical analysis of the chief regulatory mechanism of the ICC provides this synthesis

Regulation and the Theory of Legislative Choice: The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887

This article concerns the economic incidence of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (ICA). Our focus is the short-haul pricing constraint, a provision of the ICA that prohibited railroads from charging higher rates to isolated, primarily agrarian shippers than it charged to intercity shippers of similar commodities. Utilizing the event study methodology, we find that the impending passage of the ICA generated a distribution of abnormal returns to railroads and shipping firms that is consistent with the theoretical implications of our analysis of the short- haul pricing constraint (SHPC). However, early interpretations of the SHPC by the Interstate Commerce Commission reduced some of the abnormal returns to railroads in a manner that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the short-haul pricing constraint was an important mechanism of early railroad regulation. The analysis does support a multiple-interest interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Act and has implications for the positive theory of regulation

Regulation and the theory of legislative choice: The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887

The economic effects of federal regulation cannot be explained from congressional institutions. Two factors determine the specific pattern. The first is how interests are represented in the Congress, especially in the relevant committees. Committees matter because their members can veto proposals made by others. The second factor is bicameralism. The need to build majority support in two chambers matters when interest groups are not distributed identically across both houses. Specific interests win in the legislative process because of their representation within the political institutions. We examine the first major regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), founded in 1887. The inception of the ICC was not solely a cartel mechanism for the railroads (as the pure capture view asserts) nor solely a mechanism to correct market abuses by the railroads (as the public interest theory maintains). The ICC provided an benefits, some to railroads and some to nonrailroad interests, notably shorthaul shippers

Casual Mediation Analyses with Structural Mean Models

We represent a linear structural mean model (SMM)approach for analyzing mediation of a randomized baseline intervention\u27s effect on a univariate follow-up outcome. Unlike standard mediation analyses, our approach does not assume that the mediating factor is randomly assigned to individuals (i.e., sequential ignorability). Hence, a comparison of the results of the proposed and standard approaches in with respect to mediation offers a sensitivity analyses of the sequential ignorability assumption. The G-estimation procedure for the proposed SMM represents an extension of the work on direct effects of randomized treatment effects for survival outcomes by Robins and Greenland (1994) (Section 5.0 and Appendix B) and on treatment non-adherence for continuous outcomes by TenHave et al. (2004). Simulations show good estimation and confidence interval performance under unmeasured confounding relative mediation approach. Sensitivity analyses of the sequential ignorability assumption comparing the results of the two approaches are presented in the context of two suicide/depression treatment studies

Tube choledochoureterostomy: A simple method for bile diversion

A technique of bile diversion by tube choledochoureterostomy has been devised for the purpose of studying the role of bile in the intestinal absorption of drugs. This method was used in six dogs. No technical difficulties or major complications developed, as are inevitable with alternative methods, including external fistula. © 1990 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved: reproduction in whole or part not permitted

The Effects of Debt on Newlyweds and Implications for Education

The study discussed here examines the relationship between newlywed debt, selected demographic variables, and newlywed levels of marital satisfaction and adjustment. The study used survey data gathered from 1,010 randomly sampled newlywed couples. The findings from this study indicate that entering marriage with consumer debt has a negative impact on newlywed levels of marital quality. Extension educators are in a unique position to provide local high schools, colleges, and the public with information on debt management and its impact on marriage relationships