Commentary: Justice Who Follows Scalia\u27s Path Would Hurt the Working Class

During the campaign, Donald Trump released a list of 21 conservatives from which he promised to pick Supreme Court justices, should he win the election. With President-elect Trump apparently nearing a decision on a nominee to replace the late Justice Scalia, Senate Republicans are no doubt eagerly awaiting the chance to confirm Trump\u27s pick and restore a conservative majority on the court. [excerpt

Eco-Labels for Credence Attributes: The Case of Shade-Grown Coffee

Using the case of shade-grown coffee, this paper examines the market impacts of eco-labels for credence attributes. First, the Mattoo and Singh (1994) test is conducted for the case of shade-grown coffee to investigate the market impacts of a shade label. This analysis in Section II shows that a shade label could pass the test, but the market impacts are likely to be minor. Section II also shows how to use estimates of supply, potential demand, and price elasticities of demand and supply to predict eco-label premiums in the post-label equilibrium. And second, given the importance of consumer demands for eco-label impacts, and since the theoretical foundations of demand for eco-labeled items are not well developed in the literature, Section III takes a closer look at the microeconomics of labels and consumer demand. A nested constant-elasticity-of-substitution preference structure is used to derive theoretically consistent Marshallian demands for shade and non-shade coffee. A numerical simulation shows how relative prices and consumer preferences for the credence attribute and variety are both important factors in demand creation of labeled items.Environmental Economics and Policy, Marketing,

EUROPEAN UNION ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES AND IMPORTS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS FROM THE UNITED STATES

The EU is the third largest regional export market for US agricultural products, with over $6 billion in annual sales. In principle, EU environmental policies designed to control domestic externalities could alter US agricultural exports to the EU. This paper develops a range of theoretically consistent and empirically relevant sectoral models that can be used to estimate the impact of environmental regulations on EU imports of US agricultural products. Section 2 reviews EU environmental policies to discuss how they may directly and indirectly affect EU demand for US agricultural imports. Section 3 develops models for size cases. Cases 1-3 are developed for homogeneous products. Case 1 assumes prices are fixed and the EU policy is a process regulation imposed on domestic producers. Case 2 extends Case 1 to include equilibrium price adjustments. Case 3 extends Case 2 to the situation where the EU policy is a product standard that affects both EU and US producers, although not necessarily in the same way. Cases 4-6 are developed for differentiated products. Case 4 focuses on EU process regulations with equilibrium price adjustments, and Case 5 extends the model to allow for eco-label policies that might shift EU consumer demands for both domestic and imported items. Case 6 extends Case 5 to allow for product standard policies in markets for differentiated products with eco-labels. Section 4 concludes.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Fearless: Bruce Larson and Alice Carter

This Monday, Professor of political science and public policy, Bruce Larson, Assistant Director of Development, Alumni, and Parent Relations, and Technology, Alice Carter, and daughter Lily Larson will be leaving for a semester in Beijing, China. Professor Larson will be joining the ranks of Gettysburg College’s Fulbright recipients, teaching two courses at the China Foreign Affairs University while conducting his research

A Way Around the Divided House Majority

For observers of the U.S. Congress, the inability of Republicans to unite behind a candidate for speaker has been by turn fascinating, exasperating, and frightening. When and if a candidate is finally chosen, Republicans will breathe a sigh of relief, as will many commentators. The real crisis, however, will have just begun. [excerpt

A Methodology for Estimating Instream Flow Values for Recreation

Water flowing in streams has value for various types of recreationists and is essential for fish and wildlife. Since water demdns for offstream uses in the arid west have been steadily increasing, increasing instream flows to enhance the recreational experience might be in conflict with established withdrawals for uses such as agriculture, industries, and households. Since market prices are not observable for instream flows, the estimation of economic value of instream flow would present well known difficulties. The household production function theory was used to build the theoretical model to measure economic value of instream flow. A representative sample of 500 recreationists at three river sites were interviewed during the summer of 1982, to estimate empirical demand equation for recreational activities. In order to estimate economic value of water used in the river, it was assumed taht individuals were combining goods, services, and time as input to produce recreational services. Based on this procedure, empirical estimates of multisite demands were derived. Moreover, the corresponding \u27compensating variations\u27 of consumers, from alteration of instream flow, were quantified

A Prediction of Brown Dwarfs in Ultracold Molecular Gas

A recent model for the stellar initial mass function (IMF), in which the stellar masses are randomly sampled down to the thermal Jeans mass from hierarchically structured pre-stellar clouds, predicts that regions of ultra-cold CO gas, such as those recently found in nearby galaxies by Allen and collaborators, should make an abundance of Brown Dwarfs with relatively few normal stars. This result comes from the low value of the thermal Jeans mass, considering that the hierarchical cloud model always gives the Salpeter IMF slope above this lower mass limit. The ultracold CO clouds in the inner disk of M31 have T~3K and pressures that are probably 10 times higher than in the solar neighborhood. This gives a mass at the peak of the IMF equal to 0.01 Msun, well below the Brown Dwarf limit of 0.08 Msun. Using a functional approximation to the IMF, the ultracold clouds would have 50% of the star-like mass and 90% of the objects below the Brown Dwarf limit. The brightest of the Brown Dwarfs in M31 should have an apparent, extinction-corrected K-band magnitude of ~21 mag in their pre-main sequence phase.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, to be published in Astrophysical Journal, Vol 522, September 10, 199

Modeling a high mass turn down in the stellar initial mass function

Statistical sampling from the stellar initial mass function (IMF) for all star-forming regions in the Galaxy would lead to the prediction of ~1000 Msun stars unless there is a rapid turn-down in the IMF beyond several hundred solar masses. Such a turndown is not necessary for dense clusters because the number of stars sampled is always too small. Here we explore several mechanisms for an upper mass cutoff, including an exponential decline of the star formation probability after a turbulent crossing time. The results are in good agreement with the observed IMF over the entire stellar mass range, and they give a gradual turn down compared to the Salpeter function above ~100 Msun for normal thermal Jeans mass, M_J. The upper mass turn down should scale with M_J in different environments. A problem with the models is that they cannot give both the observed power-law IMF out to the high-mass sampling limit in dense clusters, as well as the observed lack of supermassive stars in whole galaxy disks. Either there is a sharper upper-mass cutoff in the IMF, perhaps from self-limitation, or the IMF is different for dense clusters than for the majority of star formation that occurs at lower density. Dense clusters seem to have an overabundance of massive stars relative to the average IMF in a galaxy.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, Astrophysical Journal, Vol 539, August 10, 200

An unusual manifestation of pulmonary artery perforation during pulmonary artery catheter insertion

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27053/1/0000043.pd

Designing an optimal HIV programme for South Africa: Does the optimal package change when diminishing returns are considered?

Abstract Background South Africa has a large domestically funded HIV programme with highly saturated coverage levels for most prevention and treatment interventions. To further optimise its allocative efficiency, we designed a novel optimisation method and examined whether the optimal package of interventions changes when interaction and non-linear scale-up effects are incorporated into cost-effectiveness analysis. Methods The conventional league table method in cost-effectiveness analysis relies on the assumption of independence between interventions. We added methodology that allowed the simultaneous consideration of a large number of HIV interventions and their potentially diminishing marginal returns to scale. We analysed the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) of 16 HIV interventions based on a well-calibrated epidemiological model that accounted for interaction and non-linear scale-up effects, a custom cost model, and an optimisation routine that iteratively added the most cost-effective intervention onto a rolling baseline before evaluating all remaining options. We compared our results with those based on a league table. Results The rank order of interventions did not differ substantially between the two methods- in each, increasing condom availability and male medical circumcision were found to be most cost-effective, followed by anti-retroviral therapy at current guidelines. However, interventions were less cost-effective throughout when evaluated under the optimisation method, indicating substantial diminishing marginal returns, with ICERs being on average 437% higher under our optimisation routine. Conclusions Conventional league tables may exaggerate the cost-effectiveness of interventions when programmes are implemented at scale. Accounting for interaction and non-linear scale-up effects provides more realistic estimates in highly saturated real-world settings