Investigation of the Relationship of Earthquakes and Underground Waste Disposal in The El Dorado Area, Arkansas

From December, 1983 to September, 1989 twelve small earthquakes were recorded for the El Dorado, Arkansas area. Magnitudes of these earthquakes were well below damaging levels. Prior to this time no seismicity was reported in the area, suggesting that the earthquakes were not naturally occurring and may have been the result of human activity. El Dorado is located at the margin of a region of underground waste brine disposal and along a major fault zone. Elevated pore pressures resulting from brine disposal may have reduced the normal (locking) stresses across fault surfaces and triggered fault movement. Two injection wells (Great Lakes Chemical Corporation SWD# 7 and 13) in the El Dorado South field are in closest proximity to fault surfaces at the depth of injection. The two wells also lie at the center of the macroseismic area and show increases in injection rates prior to periods of seismicity. These relationships suggest that pressured fluid injection triggers earthquakes in the area. Future research to corroborate these results should include detailed seismological studies of the El Dorado South field and detailed studies of formation pressures, in situ stresses and geologic structure for all sites of pressured fluid injection and secondary oil recovery operations in the region

What should economists measure? The implications of mass production vs. mass customization

Consumer behavior ; Production (Economic theory) ; Productivity

Country-bashing tariffs: do bilateral trade deficits matter?

Balance of trade ; Tariff

Variety, globalization, and social efficiency

This paper puts recent work on the benefits of variety into the context of an exact quantitative analysis of the Dixit-Stiglitz-Krugman model of monopolistic competition. We show that the gains from international trade are almost completely determined by the increase in variety and not economies of scale, and that the social efficiency question is quantitatively insignificant. These results follow from allowing the number of varieties to affect the elasticity of demand facing each firm. Most applications of the DSK model abstract from variety’s effect by assuming that the elasticity of demand facing each firm equals the elasticity of substitution in a CES utility function, thus fixing the output of each firm by the resulting markup over marginal costs. Finally, we develop a precise expression for real per capita income with any number of sectors. ; Also issued as Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper No. 15

Income taxes as reciprocal tariffs

Tariff ; Taxation

Income taxes as reciprocal tariffs

This article shows the equivalence between tariffs on international trade and income taxation. Traditionally, income taxes have been seen as lowering society's output through the household's labor-leisure trade-off. Income taxes also reduce the degree to which individuals specialize in market activity, which is similar to the way countries respond to tariffs in international trade. Income taxes discourage individuals from specializing in activities that reflect their comparative advantage. In so doing, income taxes may have their most distorting effects, not by encouraging individuals to work less but by causing them to spend more time working at endeavors for which their talent is limited. Using a general model of interpersonal exchange, the authors demonstrate parallels between income taxes and tariffs. Over a range of income taxes, raising taxes can benefit large groups of similarly skilled individuals and hurt small groups. As in tariff theory, the costs of income taxes are small only if they succeed in raising revenue. Thus, it is very costly for an economy to be on the downward portion of its tax revenue (Laffer) curve. The more heterogeneous the society, the higher the income tax rate that will maximize tax revenues. By overlooking the effects of heterogeneity in the workforce and the potential for workers to flee to home production, policymakers may under- or overestimate the effects of income taxes on various sectors of the economy and tax with unintended consequences.Income tax ; Tariff ; Taxation

DAIRY DISPUTES IN NORTH AMERICA: A CASE STUDY

Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade,

Compulsive gambling in the financial markets: Evidence from two investor surveys

This study shows that a group of individual investors in the financial markets displays symptoms of compulsive gambling, or an addiction to trading, based on a standard diagnostic checklist from the American Psychiatric Association. In a representative sample of Dutch retail investors, we find that 4.4% of the investors meet the criteria for compulsive gambling in the financial markets. Another 3.6% meet the criteria for problem gambling, which is a less severe form of gambl

Heterogeneous profiles of coupled sleep oscillations in human hippocampus

Cross-frequency coupling of sleep oscillations is thought to mediate memory consolidation. While the hippocampus is deemed central to this process, detailed knowledge of which oscillatory rhythms interact in the sleeping human hippocampus is lacking. Combining intracranial hippocampal and non-invasive electroencephalography from twelve neurosurgical patients, we characterized spectral power and coupling during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Hippocampal coupling was extensive, with the majority of channels expressing spectral interactions. NREM consistently showed delta–ripple coupling, but ripples were also modulated by slow oscillations (SOs) and sleep spindles. SO–delta and SO–theta coupling, as well as interactions between delta/theta and spindle/beta frequencies also occurred. During REM, limited interactions between delta/theta and beta frequencies emerged. Moreover, oscillatory organization differed substantially between i) hippocampus and scalp, ii) sites along the anterior-posterior hippocampal axis, and iii) individuals. Overall, these results extend and refine our understanding of hippocampal sleep oscillations

Subsurface Geochemical Exploration of Stratabound Copper in Lower Permian Redbeds in North-Central, Oklahoma

This thesis introduces an additional stratabound, redbed copper deposit to the growing list of Midcontinent occurrences.� This northcentral Oklahoma deposit has been defined in the shallow subsurface of Grant County through well-cuttings and electric logs. Paleoenvironmental considerations have been shown to be important in understanding the origin of this deposit. Furthermore, recent developments in low temperature geochemistry have been applied to study its origin.Geolog