The evaluation subgroup of a fibre inclusion

Given a fibration of simply connected CW complexes of finite type, we study the evaluation subgroup of the fibre inclusion as an invariant of fibre-homotopy type. For spherical fibrations, we show the evaluation subgroup may be expressed as an extension of the Gottlieb group of the fibre sphere provided the classifying map induces the trivial map on homotopy groups. We extend this result after rationalization: We show that the rationalized evaluation subgroup of the fibre inclusion decomposes as the direct sum of the rationalized Gottlieb group of the fibre and the rationalized homotopy group of the base if and only if the classifying map induces the trivial map on rational homotopy groups.Comment: 15 page

Environmental taxes and policies for developing countries

Increasing urbanization and industrialization can exacerbate pollution problems in developing countries. Tax revenues in developing countries are too low to support adequate infrastructure for treating and disposing of wastes, but the problem is also attributable to the classic problem of externalities in productiion and consumption."Externalities"means that the costs of environmental degradation are not considered by the private decisionmakers undertaking the activities that cause the problems. Two types of policies are commonly considered to correct this market failure and improve the allocation of resources: command-and-control policies (such as emmission and abatement standards) and market-based incentive policies (such as emissions charges, taxes on production and consumption, and marketable pollution quotas), which raise the price of such activities for the perpetrators. Market based incentives theoretically reduce pollution at least cost and increase government revenues, but may require costly monitoring to be effective, and are usually implemented in an environment of imperfect information about the costs of abatement. Sometimes command and control policies make more economic sense in this environment. Efficiency gains from curbing pollution in developing countries may be large. Some polluting activities are subsidized, so curtailing them brings both fiscal and environmental benefits. Taxing polluting inputs and outputs is a particularly attractive policy in developing countries which often lack experience in administering and enforcing other types of environmental regulation. Corrective taxes make use of existing administrative structures and increase tax revenues, which can be spent on public goods to improve environmental quality (including treatment facilities for water and sewage, waste disposal, and sanitation) or can be used to reduce other taxes (which are often highly distortionary in countries with a narrow tax base). Which goods and inputs to single out for corrective taxation depends on the main sources of pollution, which varies from country to country. Air pollution from vehicles is growing in many countries where increased fuel taxes, perhaps coupled with improved regulations for vehicle maintenance, may be desirable. Higher taxes on high sulphur coal would curb both industiral and household emissions of sulphur dioxide. Charges can be implemented for fixed site easy to monitor industrial emissions. Subsidies to industries that cause pollution should be phased out and those industries should be subjected to higher than average tax rates.Water and Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Urban Services to the Poor,Urban Services to the Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies

Jackson State University's Center for Spatial Data Research and Applications: New facilities and new paradigms

Jackson State University recently established the Center for Spatial Data Research and Applications, a Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing laboratory. Taking advantage of new technologies and new directions in the spatial (geographic) sciences, JSU is building a Center of Excellence in Spatial Data Management. New opportunities for research, applications, and employment are emerging. GIS requires fundamental shifts and new demands in traditional computer science and geographic training. The Center is not merely another computer lab but is one setting the pace in a new applied frontier. GIS and its associated technologies are discussed. The Center's facilities are described. An ARC/INFO GIS runs on a Vax mainframe, with numerous workstations. Image processing packages include ELAS, LIPS, VICAR, and ERDAS. A host of hardware and software peripheral are used in support. Numerous projects are underway, such as the construction of a Gulf of Mexico environmental data base, development of AI in image processing, a land use dynamics study of metropolitan Jackson, and others. A new academic interdisciplinary program in Spatial Data Management is under development, combining courses in Geography and Computer Science. The broad range of JSU's GIS and remote sensing activities is addressed. The impacts on changing paradigms in the university and in the professional world conclude the discussion

Local Broadband Access: Primum Non Nocere or Primum Processi - A Property Rights Approach

High-speed or "broadband" Internet access currently is provided, at the local level, chiefly by cable television and telephone companies, often in competition with each other. Wireless and satellite providers have a small but growing share of this business. An influential coalition of economic interests and academics have proposed that local broadband Internet access providers be prohibited from restricting access to their systems by upstream suppliers of Internet services. A recent term for this proposal is "net neutrality." We examine the potential costs and benefits of such a policy from an economic welfare perspective. Using a property rights approach, we ask whether transactions costs in the market for access rights are likely to be significant, and if so, whether owners of physical local broadband platforms are likely to be more or less efficient holders of access rights than Internet content providers. We conclude that transactions costs are likely to be lower if access rights are assigned initially to platform owners rather than content providers. In addition, platform hardware owners are likely to be more efficient holders of these rights because they can internalize demand-side interactions among content products. Further, failure to permit platform owners to control access threatens to result in inadequate incentives to invest in, to maintain, and to upgrade local broadband platforms. Inefficiently denying platform owners the ability to own access rights implies a need for price regulation; otherwise, there will be incentives to use pricing to circumvent the constraint on rights ownership. Price regulation is itself known to induce welfare losses through adaptive behavior of the constrained firm. The impact on welfare might produce a worse result than the initial problem, assuming one existed. Much of the academic interest in net neutrality arises from the belief that the open architecture of the Internet under current standards has been responsible for its remarkable success, and a wish to preserve this openness. We point out that the openness of the Internet was an unintended consequence of its military origins, and that other, less open, architectures might have been even more successful. A policy of denying platform owners the ability to own access rights could freeze the architecture of the Internet, preventing it from adapting to future technological and economic developments. Finally, we examine the net neutrality issue from the perspective of the "essential facility doctrine," a tool of the common law of antitrust. The doctrine establishes conditions under which federal courts will mandate access by competitors to the monopoly platform of a vertically-integrated firm. Because local broadband Internet access is not today a bottleneck monopoly (there are several competitors and the market is at an early stage of development), the essential facilities doctrine would not permit reassignment of access rights from platform owners to competitors. We conclude that "net neutrality" is a welfare-reducing policy proposal.Technology and Industry, Regulatory Reform