On the theory of a firm : The case of by-production of emissions.

Five attributes of emission generating technologies are identified and a concept of byproduction is introduced, which implies these five attributes. Murty and Russell [2010] characterization of technologies, which requires distinguishing between intended production of firms and nature's laws of emission generation, is shown to be both necessary and sufficient for by-production. While intended production could be postulated to satisfy standard input and output free-disposability, these will necessarily be violated by nature's emission generation mechanism, which satisfies costly disposability of emission as defined in Murty [2010]. Marginal technical and economic costs of abatement are derived for technologies exhibiting by-production. A simple model of by-production illustrates that, while common abatement paths considered in the literature do involve a technological trade off between emission reduction and intended production, there also almost always exist abatement paths where it is possible to have both geater emission reductions and greater intended outputs. Further, marginal abatement costs will usually be decreasing in the initial level of emissions of firms. Counterintuitive as these results may sound in the rst instance, they are intuitively obvious in the by-production approach as it is rich enough to incorporate both standard economic assumptions with respect to intended production of firms and the rules of nature that govern emission generation.theory of a firm ; technology ; input and output free-disposability ; diminishing returns to inputs ; joint production ; emission-generation ; marginal abatement cost

Constraints on profit income distribution and production efficiency in private ownership economies with Ramsey taxation

In economies with Ramsey taxation, decreasing returns to scale, and private ownership, we show that second-best production efficiency is desirable when profit tax rates vary across groups of firms provided that the institutional rules which define profit incomes of consumers depend on the distribution of profits across these groups of firms. The classic results of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972] (of firm-specific profit taxation) and Diamond and Mirrlees [1971] and Guesnerie [1995] (of uniform one-hundred percent profit taxation) follow as special cases of our model. Moreover, second-best analysis suggests the desirability of proportionate taxation of inter-firm transactions in the absence of profit taxes. Alternatively, it recommends profit taxation as a perfect substitute for intermediate-input taxation. The analysis also suggests that, combined with the knowledge of the distribution of profit incomes in the economy, profit taxation can promote both efficiency and redistributive objectives of the government.Ramsey taxation, private ownership, prot taxation, production ineciency, general equilibrium.

The Theory of By-Production of Emissions and Capital-Constrained Non-Cooperative Nash Outcomes of a Global Economy

The reduced form approaches that are commonly adopted in the literature to model emission-generating technologies (EGTs) do not distinguish between emission-causing and non-emission causing goods in production. We provide a new set of axioms to describe EGTs. Technologies that satisfy these axioms are called by-production technologies (BPTs). A distance function representation of BPTs is derived and it is shown that a BPT can be decomposed into a standard neo-classical intended-production technology and nature's emission-generation set (the relationship in nature between emissions and emission-causing goods). As an illustrative application of the BP approach, we study cross-country differences in emission levels due to cross-country di erences in capital endowments at a noncooperative Nash equilibrium, where emissions impose both local and global externalities. The change in emission levels as we move from capital-poor to capital-rich countries is decomposed into income and substitution e ects. The latter are a result of changes in the trade-off between intended-production and emission-generation, which is attributed to diminishing returns to emission-causing inputs or cleaning-up activities, while the nature of the former is governed by the assumption that emission is an inferior good. The implications of increasing returns to capital, substitutability or complementarity between capital and emission-causing inputs such as fuels, extraction costs of fuels, and inter-fuel substitution in production are studied and a set of conditions that result in an environmental Kuznets curve is derived.distance function representation of multi-output technology, emission-generating technologies, free and costly disposability, environmental Kuznets curve, environmental externalities, non-cooperative Nash equilibrium, income and substitution effects, inferior good, returns to scale, inter-fuel substitution.

Topology of utility possibility frontiers of economies with Ramsey taxation

This paper establishes the generic size and structure of the second-best Pareto frontier and its various components in private ownership economies with Ramsey taxation. It provides conditions under which the second-best Pareto frontier of an economy with H consumers will have the expected structure of a H . 1-dimensional manifold. In a class of economies, it shows that, generically, while the jointly production and consumption ine cient component of the second-best Pareto manifold is a submanifold that also has a dimension equal to H . 1, the production e cient, consumption e cient, and the rstbest components are lower dimensional, and hence negligible in size, submanifolds. Thus, it formally demonstrates that the economies usually studied in the literature, where all second-best are production e cient, are extremely rare. Market prices cannot be used in lieu of social shadow prices in most economies for cost-bene t tests. This begs further research for recovering the true social shadow prices from the data in such economies.Ramsey taxation ; second-best ; production e ciency ; general equilibrium ; private ownership ; di erential topology ; transversality theorem.

Constraints on income distribution and production efficiency in economies with Ramsey Taxation

We study the link between second-best production efficiency and the constraints on income distribution imposed by private ownership of firms in economies with Ramsey taxation. We review the result of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972], Mirrlees [1972], Hahn [1973], and Sadka [1977] about firm-specific profit taxation leading to second-best production efficiency. Problems in the proofs of this result in these papers have been identified by Reinhorn [2005]. We provide an alternative, and with some hope a more intuitive, proof of this result. The mechanism employed in our proof is also used to show second-best production efficiency under some configuarations of private ownership without any (or at best, uniform) profit taxation. The results obtained raise questions about the genericity of the phenomenon of second-best production inefficiency and about recovering social shadow prices in such economies

Aerosol speckle effects on atmospheric pulsed lidar backscattered signals

Lidar systems using atmospheric aerosols as targets exhibit return signal amplitude and power fluctuations which indicate speckle effects. The effects of refractive turbulence along the path on the aerosol speckle field propagation and on the decorrelation time are studied for coherent pulsed lidar systems

Study of the extra-ionic electron distributions in semi-metallic structures by nuclear quadrupole resonance techniques

A straightforward self-consistent method was developed to estimate solid state electrostatic potentials, fields and field gradients in ionic solids. The method is a direct practical application of basic electrostatics to solid state and also helps in the understanding of the principles of crystal structure. The necessary mathematical equations, derived from first principles, were presented and the systematic computational procedure developed to arrive at the solid state electrostatic field gradients values was given

Spectroscopic investigations and measurements of certain ARC jet parameters

The NASA/JSC Atmospheric Reentry Materials and Structures Evaluation Facility (ARMSEF) was intensively and extensively involved in ground testing of spacecraft materials and thermal protection systems (TPS) in simulated reentry conditions. Ground experiments on surface catalytic efficiency of such TPS requires a knowledge of the flow system in the arc jet. In the work described, spectroscopic diagnostic techniques are used to determine the free stream constituents. Specifically, the emission spectrum of the free stream constituents was obtained and the species therein identified. A laser system was added on, which will give the added capacity of studying the arc jet flow using Laser Raman Spectroscopy (LRS). The LRS technique will complement information obtained from the emission spectra. A short list of further work that can be done in the area of spectroscopic investigations on the arc jet is mentioned

Temperature determination of shock layer using spectroscopic techniques

Shock layer temperature profiles are obtained through analysis of radiation from shock layers produced by a blunt body inserted in an arc jet flow. Spectral measurements of N2(+) have been made at 0.5 inch, 1.0 inch, and 1.4 inches from the blunt body. A technique is developed to measure the vibrational and rotational temperatures of N2(+). Temperature profiles from the radiation layers show a high temperature near the shock front and decreasing temperature near the boundary layer. Precise temperature measurements could not be made using this technique due to the limited resolution. Use of a high resolution grating will help to make a more accurate temperature determination. Laser induced fluorescence technique is much better since it gives the scope for selective excitation and a better spacial resolution

Nuclear quadrupole resonance studies in semi-metallic structures

Both experimental and theoretical studies are presented on spectrum analysis of nuclear quadrupole resonance of antimony and arsenic tellurides. Numerical solutions for secular equations of the quadrupole interaction energy are also discussed