The dollar dilemma : the falling dollar has made American goods more attractive to consumers abroad, but not everyone is happy about the currency's slide

Dollar, American ; Exports ; Federal Reserve District, 5th

National Political Influence and the Catholic Church

Democratic transitions recently became a topic of great discussion among political scholars as a domino effect of democratization began in Latin America in the 1970s and continued through Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. In many of these transitions, the Catholic Church played a crucial role as the protector of civil society during periods of communist and right-wing authoritarian rule, as well as taking an active role to promote the establishment of democracy. While the Church’s political role in transition is important, significantly fewer scholars have explored how democracy affected the Catholic Church within the national context. Even fewer have attempted cross-national comparisons of the Church, thus permitting generalizations to be made about the political influence of the Church since the institution of democratic governance

Long term production of genetically transformed somatic embryos of orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata) in suspension culture

Orchardgrass is the only Gramineae species whose somatic embryos progress to a fully mature (germinable) stage within one liquid medium. As embryos mature, the scutellar epidermis begins to dedifferentiate and cells are sloughed off. These cells divide and form new embryos creating a cyclic regeneration system. Genetic transformation of these cells provides the opportunity to mass produce transformed embryos. In this study, somatic embryos removed from leaves were transformed via microprojectile bombardment with a gene construct containing both the uidA gene coding for expression of the bar gene which inactivates phosphinothricin (PPT), the active ingredient in herbicides such as Basta and bialaphos. Both genes were driven with the ubi1 promoter. Embryos were cultured before bombardment on Schenk and Hildebrandt medium amended with 30 μM dicamba (SH-30) and containing 0.3 M each of mannitol and sorbitol for a 24 h pre and 24 h post bombardment osmotic treatment. The embryos were then transferred to fresh SH-30 medium and cultured in the dark at 21°C for 2 wk to form callus. Samples of the resulting calli were incubated in 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl β-D glucuronic acid (x-gluc) substrate to test for GUS expression. All embryos whose callus showed GUS expression were placed into suspension culture. The cultures were sieved through a 710 μm mesh screen at 30 d intervals and the medium and cells which passed through were returned to culture. From the tissue that was removed, 100 embryos were incubated in x-gluc to determine the number of transformed embryos present. The number of embryos expressing GUS was found to increase more than 2 fold between 30 d and 60 d after culture initiation and did not decrease until 120 d after initiation. One hundred remaining embryos were plated on SH medium without dicamba (SH-0) and incubated in 16 h light/8 h dark at 21 °C/15 °C in order to germinate. Regenerated plants were potted and kept in the greenhouse. A young leaf of each plant was brushed with a 0.1% solution of Basta to test for tolerance to the herbicide. A total of 143 plants were tested. Six displayed complete tolerance and 10 showed a localized reaction where the herbicide was applied. Of the six tolerant plants, one was confirmed by Southern blot analysis to contain the bar transgene. Six cultures remaining from the above experiment were each sieved through a 710 μm and a 210 μm screen to create three fractions of different cell size. Each fraction was then split into two cultures. One culture was suspended in liquid SH-30 medium amended with 12 mM each of proline and serine plus 2.5 mg/L bialaphos added as a selective agent. The other culture was suspended in SH-30 medium with casein hydrolysate and used both as a control and to continue the culture. The control cultures were then split into a casein hydrolysate control and a control containing 12 mM each of proline and serine. At 14 d intervals, fresh weight of each culture was measured and viable cells were counted in 1 ml samples of each culture. At 49 d after culture initiation, all cultures were incubated in x-gluc to test for both the number of embryos expressing GUS and the extent to which GUS was expressed. It was observed that, although more embryos exhibited some amount of GUS expression in non-selective cultures, cultures which had undergone selection pressure displayed uniform GUS expression throughout the tissue

Management-Based Strategies for Improving Private Sector Environmental Performance

Improvements in environmental quality depend in large measure on changes in private sector management. In recognition of this fact, government and industry have begun in recent years to focus directly on shaping the internal management practices of private firms. New management-based strategies can take many forms, but unlike conventional regulatory approaches they are linked by their distinctive focus on management practices, rather than on environmental technologies or emissions targets. This article offers the first sustained analysis of both public and private sector initiatives designed specifically to improve firms’ environmental management. Synthesizing the results of a conference of leading scholars and policymakers organized by the Regulatory Policy Program at Harvard University, we consider in this article whether management-based strategies can lead to improved environmental outcomes and, if so, how they should be designed to be most effective. We report research findings showing that management-based strategies can yield improvements in industry’s environmental performance, indicating that anyone concerned about environmental quality should seriously consider the use of these strategies. Nevertheless, we urge caution about overstating what can be accomplished through management-based strategies, as they will not always lead to significant change in private sector firms’ environmental performance. Although management-based strategies deserve greater consideration because they can yield positive results, these results are unlikely to be significant or reliable enough to make such strategies the mainstay of society’s approach to environmental protection

Performance Track’s Postmortem: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of EPA’s “Flagship” Voluntary Program

For nearly a decade, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) considered its National Environmental Performance Track to be its “flagship” voluntary program — even a model for transforming the conventional system of environmental regulation. Since Performance Track’s founding during the Clinton Administration, EPA officials repeatedly claimed that the program’s rewards attracted hundreds of the nation’s “top” environmental performers and induced these businesses to make significant environmental gains beyond legal requirements. Although EPA eventually disbanded Performance Track early in the Obama Administration, the program has been subsequently emulated by a variety of state and federal regulatory authorities. To discern lessons useful for similar voluntary programs, we report here the findings from a multipronged, multi-year research effort assessing business participation in Performance Track. We find no evidence to support the sweeping assertions EPA made about the program’s achievements. Facilities participating in Performance Track simply could not be shown to be top performers. Rather, what most distinguished these participants was a factor distinct from environmental quality, namely their propensity to engage in outreach with government and community groups. Furthermore, drawing on an extensive analysis of business participation in Performance Track and other EPA voluntary programs, we show how Performance Track faced inherent limitations in its ability to induce any dramatic environmental gains, making its model more of a poor substitute for the conventional regulatory system than a plausible means for the system’s transformation

Management-Based Strategies for Improving Private Sector Environmental Performance

Improvements in environmental quality depend in large measure on changes in private sector management. In recognition of this fact, government and industry have begun in recent years to focus directly on shaping the internal management practices of private firms. New management-based strategies can take many forms, but unlike conventional regulatory approaches they are linked by their distinctive focus on management practices, rather than on environmental technologies or emissions targets. This article offers the first sustained analysis of both public and private sector initiatives designed specifically to improve firms\u27 environmental management. Synthesizing the results of a conference of leading scholars and policymakers organized by the Regulatory Policy Program at Harvard University, we consider in this article whether management-based strategies can lead to improved environmental outcomes and, if so, how they should be designed to be most effective. We report research findings showing that management-based strategies can yield improvements in industry\u27s environmental performance, indicating that anyone concerned about environmental quality should seriously consider the use of these strategies. Nevertheless, we urge caution about overstating what can be accomplished through management-based strategies, as they will not always lead to significant change in private sector firms\u27 environmental performance. Although management-based strategies are unlikely to become the mainstay of society\u27s approach to environmental protection, they deserve greater consideration because they can yield positive results

Performance-Based Regulation: Prospects and Limitations in Health, Safety and Environmental Protection

Regulation aims to improve the performance of individual and organizational behavior in ways that reduce social harms, whether by improving industry\u27s environmental performance, increasing the safety of transportation systems, or reducing workplace risk. With this in mind, the phrase performance-based regulation might seem a bit redundant, since all regulation should aim to improve performance in ways that advance social goals. Yet regulators can direct those they govern to improve their performance in at least two basic ways. They can prescribe exactly what actions regulated entities must take to improve their performance. Or they can incorporate the regulation\u27s goal into the language of the rule, specifying the desired level of performance and allowing those targeted by regulation to decide how to achieve that level. This second approach is the kind of regulation that is the subject of this working paper. Incorporating performance goals into regulatory standards is by no means a new idea, but in recent years there has been renewed interest in expanding the use of performance standards in a variety of areas of health, safety, and environmental regulation. In keeping with its mission of advancing research and promoting policy outreach, the Regulatory Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government convened a workshop on May 13, 2002, to see what could be learned from agencies\u27 experiences with performance standards and to begin to identify the likely conditions for the effective use of performance standards. The workshop brought together decisionmakers from a dozen different government agencies as well as leading researchers from the fields of economics, engineering, law, and political science. The dialogue at the workshop sought to build on the experiences of different regulatory agencies that have used performance-based regulation and to clarify its advantages and disadvantages in addressing health, safety, and environmental problems. This working paper summarizes and syntheses the dialogue that emerged from the discussion, addressing the role of performance standards in the regulator\u27s toolbox, the conditions under which performance standards can be effective, and the challenges associated with implementing performance-based regulation in practice

Government Clubs: Theory and Evidence from Voluntary Environmental Programs

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established numerous voluntary environmental programs over the last fifteen years, seeking to encourage businesses to make environmental progress beyond what current law requires them to achieve. EPA aims to induce beyond-compliance behavior by offering various forms of recognition and rewards, including relief from otherwise applicable environmental regulations. Despite EPA\u27s emphasis on voluntary programs,relatively few businesses have availed themselves of these programs -- and paradoxically, the programs that offer the most significant regulatory benefits tend to have the fewest members. We explain this paradox by focusing on (a) how programs\u27membership screening corresponds with membership rewards, and (b) how membership levels correspond, in turn, with membership screening. Our analysis of three major case studies, as well as of data we collected on all of EPA\u27s green clubs, shows that EPA combines greater rewards with more demanding membership screening, which in turn corresponds with lower participation. EPA\u27s behavior can be understood as a response to the political risks the agency faces when it recognizes and rewards businesses it otherwise is charged with regulating. Given the political constraints on EPA\u27s ability to offer significant inducements to business, we predict participation in all but the most inconsequential voluntary environmental programs will remain quite low, thereby inherently limiting the ultimate value of voluntary programs as a strategy for advancing environmental protection

Motivating Without Mandates: The Role of Voluntary Programs in Environmental Governance

For the last several decades, governments around the world have tried to use so-called voluntary programs to motivate private firms to act proactively to protect the environment. Unlike conventional environmental regulation, voluntary programs offer businesses flexibility to adopt cost-effective measures to reduce environmental impacts. Rather than prodding firms to act through threats of enforcement, they aim to entice firms to move forward by offering various kinds of positive incentives, ranging from public recognition to limited forms of regulatory relief. Despite the theoretical appeal of voluntary programs, their proper role in government’s environmental toolkit depends on the empirical evidence of how these programs work in practice. This paper offers a comprehensive empirical overview of voluntary programs’ design and impact. It shows that not all voluntary programs are the same. Rates of business participation in voluntary programs depend on a variety of factors, including both how these programs are designed as well as, importantly, what kinds of relevant background regulatory threats may loom for business. Although governments and policy advocates sometimes urge voluntary programs as a substitute for conventional government regulation, it appears that the most effective voluntary programs depend on a robust backdrop of community pressure and regulatory threats. Studies that find these programs yield statistically discernible effects on firm behavior generally find only substantively small impacts, suggesting that at best voluntary programs can serve as a modest supplement to government regulation