COMMENT: EFFICIENCY OF ITQS IN THE PRESENCE OF PRODUCTION EXTERNALITIES

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Using Participation Data to Estimate Fishing Costs for Commercial Salmon Fisheries in Alaska

This paper estimates the fishing costs and the returns to fishing for nine commercial salmon fleets in Alaska. The econometric model uses a two-stage least squares estimation procedure to estimate the effect of congestion and heterogeneity on the returns to fishermen. The hypotheses that fishermen are homogenous and that there is no congestion externality present in the fisheries are strongly rejected. The data indicates that fishermen are quite heterogeneous in fishing skill levels. This difference accounts for the overall estimates of positive net returns to the common property fisheries. Estimates of the net returns to the fisheries suggest that the returns to different gear types vary largely. The set net fleets are found to have the highest return as a percentage of total revenues.Fishing costs, econometric model, heterogeneity, skill rents, commercial salmon fisheries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Production Economics,

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Endogenous Property Rights in a Game of Conflict

This paper derives the conditions under which property rights can arise in an anarchy equilibrium. The creation of property rights requires that players devote part of their endowment to the public good of property rights protection. In the Nash equilibrium, players contribute zero to the protection of property rights. In contrast, a king who provides property rights protection paid for by a tax on endowments can completely eliminate conflict, but such a king has an incentive to take the surplus for himself. Thus players have an incentive to find a solution that keeps power in their own hands. In a social contract, players first credibly commit part of their endowments to providing property rights and then allocate the balance of their endowments between production and conflict. While property rights can arise under a social contract if the productivity of resources relative to the size of the population is sufficiently high, these property rights may be less than perfectly secure. Nevertheless, for sufficiently high productivity of resources relative to the size of the population, the social contract welfare dominates autocracy. Key Words:

Conservation for Sale: A Dynamic Common Agency Model of Natural Resource Regulation

This paper considers the regulation of a natural resource within a dynamic common agency framework. In setting harvest quotas, the regulator responds to lobbying pressure (contributions) from harvesters and conservationists. The truthful Markov perfect equilibrium stock is then an increasing function of the effective political weight for conservationists. Since the contributions to the regulator are independent of the no-regulation equilibrium, both individual and aggregate welfare may decline by adopting regulation. Indeed, harvesters operating under private property will always oppose regulation, and harvesters operating under common property will oppose regulation if their welfare is not valued highly enough by the regulator. Since conservationists' gross welfare is always improved by regulation, and since the regulator cannot fully capture their rents, conservationists will support regulation. For regulation to be supported by harvesters and conservationists, it is more important that the welfare of harvesters be taken into account by the regulator. This is because harvesters, like conservationists, value the stock, but conservationists, unlike harvesters, place no value on the harvests.KEY WORDS: Common agency; natural resources; conservation; truthful Markov perfect

Luminous Intensity for Traffic Signals: A Scientific Basis for Performance Specifications

Humnan factors experiments on visual responses to simulated traffic signals using incandescent lamps and light-emitting diodes are described

Lunar apatite with terrestrial volatile abundances

The Moon is thought to be depleted relative to the Earth in volatile elements such as H, Cl and the alkalis. Nevertheless, evidence for lunar explosive volcanism has been used to infer that some lunar magmas exsolved a CO-rich and CO_2-rich vapour phase before or during eruption. Although there is also evidence for other volatile species on glass spherules, until recently there had been no unambiguous reports of indigenous H in lunar rocks. Here we report quantitative ion microprobe measurements of late-stage apatite from lunar basalt 14053 that document concentrations of H, Cl and S that are indistinguishable from apatites in common terrestrial igneous rocks. These volatile contents could reflect post-magmatic metamorphic volatile addition or growth from a late-stage, interstitial, sulphide-saturated melt that contained ~1,600 parts per million H_2O and ~3,500 parts per million Cl. Both metamorphic and igneous models of apatite formation suggest a volatile inventory for at least some lunar materials that is similar to comparable terrestrial materials. One possible implication is that portions of the lunar mantle or crust are more volatile-rich than previously thought

Dynamic enhancement of drug product labels to support drug safety, efficacy, and effectiveness

Out-of-date or incomplete drug product labeling information may increase the risk of otherwise preventable adverse drug events. In recognition of these concerns, the United States Federal Drug Administration (FDA) requires drug product labels to include specific information. Unfortunately, several studies have found that drug product labeling fails to keep current with the scientific literature. We present a novel approach to addressing this issue. The primary goal of this novel approach is to better meet the information needs of persons who consult the drug product label for information on a drug’s efficacy, effectiveness, and safety. Using FDA product label regulations as a guide, the approach links drug claims present in drug information sources available on the Semantic Web with specific product label sections. Here we report on pilot work that establishes the baseline performance characteristics of a proof-of-concept system implementing the novel approach. Claims from three drug information sources were linked to the Clinical Studies, Drug Interactions, and Clinical Pharmacology sections of the labels for drug products that contain one of 29 psychotropic drugs. The resulting Linked Data set maps 409 efficacy/effectiveness study results, 784 drug-drug interactions, and 112 metabolic pathway assertions derived from three clinically-oriented drug information sources (ClinicalTrials.gov, the National Drug File – Reference Terminology, and the Drug Interaction Knowledge Base) to the sections of 1,102 product labels. Proof-of-concept web pages were created for all 1,102 drug product labels that demonstrate one possible approach to presenting information that dynamically enhances drug product labeling. We found that approximately one in five efficacy/effectiveness claims were relevant to the Clinical Studies section of a psychotropic drug product, with most relevant claims providing new information. We also identified several cases where all of the drug-drug interaction claims linked to the Drug Interactions section for a drug were potentially novel. The baseline performance characteristics of the proof-of-concept will enable further technical and user-centered research on robust methods for scaling the approach to the many thousands of product labels currently on the market

Luminous Intensity for Traffic Signals: A Scientific Basis for Performance Specifications - Appendices

Luminous Intensity for Traffic Signals: A Scientific Basis for Performance Specifications - Appendice

Modeling Arguments in Scientific Papers to Support Pharmacists

International audienceThe scientific literature is a well-known source of arguments, which are embedded in natural language publications. Ontologies and knowledge bases have become increasingly valuable sources of knowledge synthesized from an ever-increasing bodyof scientific publications. We present a motivating scenario for using argumentation within a scientific knowledge base