The impact of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme on electricity generation sectors

In order to comply with their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, France and Germany participate to the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) which concerns predominantly electricity generation sectors. In this paper we seek to know if the EU ETS gives appropriate economic incentives for an e¢ cient and strong system in line with Kyoto commitments. Because if so electricity producers in these countries should include the price of carbon in their costs functions. After identifying the di¤erent sub periods of the EU ETS during its pilot phase (2005-2007), we model the prices of various electricity contracts and look at their volatilities around their fundamentals while evaluating the correlation between the electricity prices in the two countries. We finnd that electricity producers in both countries were constrained to include the carbon price in their cost functions during the …rst two years of operation of the EU ETS. During this period, German electricity producers were more constrained than their French counterparts and the inclusion of the carbon price in the cost function of electricity generation has been so much more stable in Germany than in France. Furthermore, the European market for emission allowances has increased the market power of the historical French electricity producer and has greatly contributed to the partial alignment of the wholesale price of electricity in France with those of Germany. .Carbon Emission Trading, Multivariate GARCH models, Structural break, Non Parametric Approach, Energy prices.

Les conflits d'usage des espaces périurbains et le contentieux administratif. Le cas de la région Ile-de-France..

L’article porte sur une analyse des conflits d’usages d’espace, traduits par les requêtes devant la justice administrative française de 1981 à 2005. Le terrain d’étude est le périurbain francilien, territoire qui connaît une forte urbanisation et où la diversité des modes d’occupation du sol nécessite une meilleure compréhension de la dynamique spatiale et temporelle de la conflictualité. L’étude empirique montre une corrélation entre l’augmentation des conflits d’usage en Île-de-France et la dynamique de périurbanisation. Elle met en évidence un couplage entre certains types de conflits et certaines caractéristiques du territoire : les problèmes d’urbanisme font souvent l’objet conflictuel dominant dans les communes plutôt aisées, tandis que l’opposition aux infrastructures publiques se situe fréquemment dans les communes à forte urbanisation. Les nuisances des installations classées sont souvent localisées dans des communes plutôt peu aisées.The article provides an analysis of land-use conflicts extract from the rulings of French Administrative Courts from 1981 to 2005. It focuses on Paris’s suburb, where the urbanisation process and the diversity of land-use require a deeper comprehension of the problem. Our results show that the land-use conflict’s evolution is correlated with the urbanisation process. They also detect a coupling phenomenon between conflict’s type and territory’s parameters : urbanism disputes often arise in wealthy municipalities, whereas oppositions to public infrastructure have particularly risen in strongly urbanising towns. Classified industrial facility’s nuisances have been found in unfortunate municipalities.Île-de-France; contentieux; périurbanisation; conflit d’usage; Paris region; periurbanisation; land-use conflict; litigation;

Illness and healthcare experiences of recent low-income international migrants in a UK city

Multiple factors account for inequality in health outcomes and in access to healthcare in the UK, including ethnicity and length of residence in the country. This thesis explores the subjective experiences of a group of recent low-income international migrants who live in Brighton and Hove and have used local health services to seek care for a range of illnesses and conditions. The project was formulated in collaboration with Brighton and Hove City Council and the then NHS Brighton and Hove (now Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group), using local professional knowledge and experience to recruit participants and collect narratives from a ‘hard to reach’ social group. The theoretical background of this thesis draws on ‘lived’ experience in the context of illness. Analysis of qualitative interviews, using narrative typologies derived from the work of Frank (1991), revealed both the commonalities across and the specificities of illness experiences, and highlighted a multi-factorial web of bio-psychosocial and economic factors at play. The interviews overwhelmingly fitted with a chronic, ‘chaos’ typology, in which diagnoses were commonly contested. The particularities of recent migrant status impacted upon participants’ illness experiences and healthcare use. Migrants made comparisons with health systems in their countries of origin and managed healthcare through social networks. The findings from the data analysis around patient experience showed that the overall experience was negative, characterised by disappointment, with communication and access problems as recurrent themes. These outcomes may be explained by both direct and indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination and stigma were perceived by many participants in the attitudes and practices of staff, which some participants linked to their own ethnicity, immigration status and faith. From this study it is possible to hypothesise that healthcare practices and policy may give rise to some of the perceptions of discrimination

Predictive balance control during backward walking and effects of a haptic input based intervention on predictive balance control during walking

Background Falls are a leading cause of injuries and hospitalizations in individuals globally and in Canada. Even though falls can occur during any activity, a majority of falls occur during walking. Understanding and improving balance control during walking can help reduce falls. One way of improving balance control may be to add haptic input during walking and including backward and tandem walking in gait training programs. Purpose The overall purpose of this study was to examine the balance control and sensorimotor integration during backward walking as well as study the effects of an intervention consisting of backward and tandem walking on balance control in healthy adults. Methods and results Study one: Test-retest reliability, standard error of measurement, and minimal detectable change were computed for spatiotemporal and balance control measures for forward, backward, and tandem walking for fifteen healthy adults. The results demonstrated moderate to excellent reliability for all spatiotemporal and balance measures but low to poor reliability for variability measures for forward, backward, and tandem walking. Study two: Differences in spatiotemporal and balance control measures between forward and backward walking and the correlation of backward walking velocity with biomechanical balance control measures during forward and tandem walking were examined in fifty-five healthy adults. Backward walking was significantly different in terms of spatiotemporal and balance control measures compared to forward walking. Participants walked significantly slower and with a significant reduction in relative double support time during backward walking compared to forward walking. Step length and anteroposterior margin of stability were significantly reduced, and step width and mediolateral margin of stability were significantly increased during backward walking compared to forward walking. Backward walking was also significantly more variable compared to forward walking. Step length, step width, and anteroposterior and mediolateral margins of stability were significantly more variable during backward walking compared to forward walking. Velocity during backward walking showed a significant positive correlation with anteroposterior margin of stability and velocity during forward walking and a significant negative correlation with step length variability during forward walking. Study three: The effects of vision and haptic input added with haptic anchors during backward walking was examined in 55 healthy adults. It was observed that walking backward with eyes closed significantly changed spatiotemporal and balance control measures compared to walking with eyes open. Participants walked slower, with an increased amount of double support time, reduced step length, and increased step width when walking backward with eyes closed compared to walking with eyes open. Variability of step width and margin of stability in the anteroposterior and mediolateral directions were also significantly higher when walking backward with eyes closed. Margin of stability in the mediolateral direction was significantly lower when walking backward with the haptic anchors compared to walking without haptic anchors. An interaction between vision and haptic input revealed that step length was significantly lower when walking backward using the haptic anchors compared to walking without haptic anchors in the eyes open condition. Study four: This study examined the effects of a six-week (three days/week) intervention on balance control during forward, backward, and tandem walking in a total of forty-five healthy adults. Fifteen participants completed the intervention using haptic anchors, another fifteen completed the same intervention without the haptic anchors, and a control group of fifteen participants did not complete the intervention. The intervention consisted of performing ten trials each of backward and tandem walking with eyes closed over a distance of ten meters in random order at the participants’ preferred speed. During forward walking, change in step length variability was significantly higher in the eyes closed condition compared to the eyes open condition. During backward walking, velocity, %DS, and step length change scores were significantly higher in the eyes closed condition compared to eyes open and the change score for AP MOS was significantly higher in the eyes closed condition compared to the eyes open condition only for the group that trained without the haptic anchors. During tandem walking, change score for ML MOS was significantly lower in the eyes closed condition compared to the eyes open condition. No significant effects of the intervention were observed on any measures for forward, backward, and tandem walking except the AP MOS change scores in the group that performed the intervention without using the haptic anchors. Conclusion This thesis provided novel evidence on the reliability of spatiotemporal and balance control measures across three different walking styles. The findings provide support in favour of using MOS measures as well as backward walking to assess mobility and integrity of the balance control system. The insignificant effects of the haptic input based intervention warrants further research on the long-term use of haptic anchors to improve balance control

Le pragmatisme de Richard Posner : un regard critique

L'article offre une analyse critique de l'affirmation selon laquelle la théorie économique du droit de Richard A. Posner s'inscrit dans le droit fil de la tradition méthodologique du pragmatisme. Si l'ambition des juristes pragmatistes comme Holmes, Cardozo ou Llewellyn était de mettre à jour les ressorts extrajuridiques, hors de la logique juridique classique, de la décision judiciaire, Posner réduit ce projet en affirmant que le juge américain se prononcerait en mimant les résultats (efficients) auxquels le marché aurait pu mener si son fonctionnement n'avait pas été contrarié par des obstacles comme des coûts de transaction, des effets externes, des défauts d'information, etc. En d'autres termes, le juge décide au regard d'un critère de wealth maximization. Cette position est peu conforme aux règles de la méthode pragmatiste : elle prend une certaine distance avec les faits et l'expérience pratique de la décision judiciaire, et constitue plus une position normative qu'un résultat empiriqueDroit économie Posner pragmatisme Holmes Llewellyn