(WP 2010-11) The Benefits of Environmental Improvement: Estimates From Space-time Analysis

This paper develops estimates of environmental improvement based on a two-stage hedonic price analysis of the single family housing market in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. The analysis — which focuses specifically on several EPA-designated environmental hazards and involves 226,918 transactions for 177,303 unique properties that took place between January 2001 and September 2009 — involves four steps: (i) ten hedonic price functions are estimated year-by-year, one for each year of the 2000s; (ii) the hedonic estimates are used to compute the marginal implicit price of distance from air release, superfund, and toxic release sites; (iii) the marginal implicit prices, which vary through time, are used to estimate a series of implicit demand functions describing the relationship between the price of distance and the quantity consumed; and, finally (iv) the demand estimates are compared to those obtained in other research and then used evaluate the potential scale of benefits associated with some basic environmental improvement scenarios. Overall, the analysis provides further evidence that it is possible to develop a structural model of implicit demand within a single housing market and suggests that the benefits of environmental improvement are substantial

Description of a prototype gauge to measure magnitude and direction of hydrowire slope in situ between reversing bottles at all depths and under all conditions of ship drift

The discovery in recent years of vast deep oceanic currents running in a direction contrary to those at the surface provides additional evidence of our need for instrumental means to obtain accurate data on subsurface waters, particularly in little-known oceanic areas where pioneer lowerings are to be made. A description is given of a prototype messenger-operated wire-angle gauge which, used intermediately between reversing bottles, can furnish information on the direction of slope of the hydrowire and its actual degree of obliquity at a number of points. It is only the latter, of course, which can be computed from results obtained when unprotected reversing thermometers are used with the pressure-resisting type

Higher Order Bose-Einstein Correlations test the Gaussian Density Matrix Approach

A multiparticle system produced by a large number of independent sources is described by a gaussian density matrix W. All theoretical approach to Bose-Einstein Correlatios Cn in high energy physics use this form for W. One of the most salient consequences of this form is the fact that all higher order (n>2) moments of the current distribution can be expressed in terms of the first two. We test this property by comparing the data on C2(Q^2), C3(Q^2) and C4(Q^2) from pion-p and K-p reactions at 250 GeV/c with the predictions of a general quantum statistical space-time approach. Even a simplified version of such approach can account for the data. Previous attempts along these lines, which did not use the space-time approach, met with difficulties.Comment: 17 pages (including one Table) and 2 figures. To appear in Physics Letters B (PLB 13397

An attitude on fishery hydrography

An essay on the theme that the fortunes of North Sea fish broods may be determined by some factor (or by some complex of factors) resident within those broad features of water circulation which are ruled by widespread wind conditions inferable from the study of atmospheric pressure gradients, followed thereafter by an ADDENDUM (due to Günter Dietrich) dealing with month-by-month wind conditions over the northern North Sea during the half century now ending, and by an ADDENDUM NoTE briefly indicating what progress has been made along the lines concerned and what is in prospect

The Benefits of Environmental Improvement: Estimates From Space-time Analysis

This paper develops estimates of environmental improvement based on a two-stage hedonic price analysis of the single family housing market in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. The analysis — which focuses specifically on several EPA-designated environmental hazards and involves 226,918 transactions for 177,303 unique properties that took place between January 2001 and September 2009 — involves four steps: (i) ten hedonic price functions are estimated year-by-year, one for each year of the 2000s; (ii) the hedonic estimates are used to compute the marginal implicit price of distance from air release, superfund, and toxic release sites; (iii) the marginal implicit prices, which vary through time, are used to estimate a series of implicit demand functions describing the relationship between the price of distance and the quantity consumed; and, finally (iv) the demand estimates are compared to those obtained in other research and then used evaluate the potential scale of benefits associated with some basic environmental improvement scenarios. Overall, the analysis provides further evidence that it is possible to develop a structural model of implicit demand within a single housing market and suggests that the benefits of environmental improvement are substantial.Hedonic housing model, benefits, environmental improvement

ASSESSING RURAL COMMUNITY VIABILITY AN EXPERIMENTAL MODEL

Community/Rural/Urban Development,