Green Leader or Green Liar ? Differentiation and the role of NGOs

This paper addresses how corporate environmentalism can be a means of differentiation and of green-washing. Since consumers can seldom directly observe a firm's environmental quality (a problem not easily solved through eco-labeling), published environmental reports and advertising can mislead them. As a result, the role of the NGO becomes both crucial and ambiguous. On the one hand, by helping to increase consumer awareness, NGOs enlarge the market share of green differentiated firms. On the other hand, the risk that consumers will punish a firm perceived to be supplying inaccurate environmental information may bring about the paradoxical result of discouraging differentiation efforts.Differentiation, environmental concern, imperfect competition, quality, advertising, NGO.

Contract Design to Sequester Carbon in Agricultural Soils

According to several studies, agricultural carbon sequestration could be a relatively low cost opportunity to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration and a promising means that could be institutionalised. However the potential for additional carbon quantities in agricultural soils is critical and comes from the agricultural firms behaviour with regards to land heterogeneity. In this paper, our aim is to set incentive mechanisms to enhance carbon sequestration by agricultural firms. A policymaker has to arrange incentives as agricultural firms have private information and do not spontaneously switch to the required practices. Moreover, a novelty in our paper is to show that the potential for additional carbon sequestration is similar to an exhaustible resource. As a result, we construct an intertemporal principal-agent model with adverse selection. Our contribution is to specify contracts in order to induce truthful revelation by the firms regarding their intrinsic characteristics towards carbon sequestration, while analytically characterizing the optimal path to sequester carbon as an exhaustible resource.Adverse selection ; agriculture ; carbon sequestration ; incentives ; land-use

Environmental Tax and the Distribution of Income among Heterogeneous Workers

This paper analyzes the environmental tax policy issues when labor is heterogeneous. The objective is to assess whether an environmental tax policy could be Pareto improving, when the revenue of the pollution tax is recycled by a change in the labor tax properties. We show that, depending on the heterogeneity characteristics of labor and on the initial structure of the tax system, a policy mix could be designed in order to leave each class of worker unharmed. It consists of an increase in progressivity together with a decrease in the flat rate component of the wage tax.Environmental tax, Heterogeneous agents, Welfare analysis, Tax progressivity.

Double Dividend Hypothesis, Golden Rule and Welfare Distribution

This paper analyzes the double dividend issues within the framework of overlapping generations models. We characterize the necessary conditions for obtaining a double dividend, i.e. an improvement of environmental and non-environmental welfare when the revenue from the pollution tax is recycled into a change in the labor tax rate. We show that, depending on the initial capital stock and on the intertemporal elasticity of substitution, conditions may be defined to simultaneously allow (i) the obtaining of a long term double dividend, (ii) the economy to move closer to the modified golden rule and (iii) in the short term, an improvement in the welfare of the two present generations.Environmental tax; Overlapping generations model; Golden rule; Double dividend

Double Dividend with Involuntary Unemployment: Efficiency and Intergenerational Equity

This paper analyzes the double dividend and distributional issues within an overlapping generations models framework with involuntary unemployment. We characterize the necessary conditions for the obtention of a double dividend when the revenue of the environmental tax is recycled by a variation of the labor tax rate. We show that an employment dividend may occur without any efficiency dividend and that the young generation is not always harmed by the fiscal reform, even without any intergenerational transfers. Therefore, three dividends (environmental, efficiency and intergenerational equity) can simultaneously occur.Environmental tax; Intergenerational equity; Unemployment; Double dividend

Employment Double Dividend and Wage Determination

This paper investigates the double dividend issue in a general equilibrium model of a closed economy in which polluter are firms and households, and firms are monopolistic competitors on the non polluting good market. We compare the effects of the reform on employment for two non-competitive labor-market scenarios: a wage bargaining model and an efficiency wage model. Moreover, three characteristics of the unemployment benefits are considered: fixed in real terms, indexed to production price or fixed replacement ratio. It is shown that if environmental taxes pre-exist, such a reform can boost employment if and only if at least households energy consumption is taxed regardless the unemployment scenarios. Moreover the reform yields more easily a second dividend if wages are negotiated than in efficiency wage model. Finally, the maximum level of initial environmental taxes rates compatible with an employment dividend depends on the characteristics of the unemployment benefits.Environmental tax ; Double dividend ; Unemployment ; Bargaining wage model ; Efficiency wage model

Electroencephalographic changes in albino rats subjected to stress

Twenty one albino Wistar rats were subjected to stress for 7 hours. There was a significant difference in the slopes of regression lines for 7 nonulcerous rats and those for 14 ulcerous rats. Nonulcerous rats subjected to stress showed greater EEG curve synchronization than did ulcerous rats. If curve synchronization can be equated to a relaxed state, it may therefore be possible to explain the protective action of hypnotics, tranquilizers and analgesics on ulcers

A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students, Volume II

Provides a comprehensive review of research on the academic acceleration of gifted students

Brunn-Minkowski inequalities for path spaces on Riemannian surfaces

We define Minkowski summation with respect to a path space on a manifold, extending the well-known notion of geodesic Minkowski sum. For path spaces on two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds consisting of constant-speed curves, we give necessary and sufficient conditions under which this Minkowski summation satisfies a local Brunn-Minkowski inequality.Comment: typo corrected in the proof of Proposition 2.

Growth Competitions on Spherically Symmetric Riemannian Manifolds

We propose a model for a growth competition between two subsets of a Riemannian manifold. The sets grow at two different rates, avoiding each other. It is shown that if the competition takes place on a surface which is rotationally symmetric about the starting point of the slower set, then if the surface is conformally equivalent to the Euclidean plane, the slower set remains in a bounded region, while if the surface is nonpositively curved and conformally equivalent to the hyperbolic plane, both sets may keep growing indefinitely.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures; Added reference