Designing Water Markets to Manage Coupled Externalities: An Application to Irrigation-Induced Salinity in Australia

In this paper, the design of water markets for the management of irrigation-induced salinity in Australia is addressed. Indeed, this setting exhibits complex interactions between the different features of the resource water. Quality, quantity of surface and ground-water interact in ways that produce coupled environmental externalities. It is then difficult to design efficient policy instruments to tackle all the issues at stake. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of three types of water market mechanisms, involving diversion rights and recharge rights.water markets, irrigation induced salinity, Australia, externalities, policy instruments, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q25, Q53,

A Structural Econometric Model of Price Discrimination in the Mortgage Lending Industry

We propose a model of discrimination in the market for mortgages. The model explains accepted loan applications and determines loan sizes and interest rates simultaneously. A competitive, and a discriminating monopoly version of the model are proposed. Offered interest rates and loan sizes are a function of observable borrower characteristics. The competitive model rests on a marginal condition, re°ecting contract optimality, to which a zero-profit condition is added. In contrast, the discriminating monopoly maximizes profitsunder a borrower participation constraint, reflecting the availability of a rental market as an outside option. Each version of the model is a bivariate, nonlinear model, and is estimated by standard maximum likelihood methods. The data used for estimation is a sample of clients of a French network of mortgage lenders. We show the presence of "social discrimination" in the data, the loan conditions depending, not only on the borrower's wage and downpayment, but also on the borrower's occupational status. Abnormally high risk premia in the competitive version of the model suggest the presence of market power, justifying an attempt at estimating its monopolistic version. The discriminating monopoly model estimates show that the borrowers' price-elasticity of demand for housing varies with occupational status, and is inversely related with the lender's interest rate markups. This confirms that the lender exploits structural differences in the preferences to discriminate, as predicted by standard theories.mortgage loans, price discrimination, discriminating monopoly.

Creativity Training for Future Engineers: Preliminary Results from an Educative Experience

Due in part to the increased pace of cultural and environmental change, as well as increased competition due to globalization, innovation is become one of the primary concerns of the 21st century. We present an academic course designed to develop cognitive abilities related to creativity within an engineering education context, based on a conceptual framework rooted in cognitive sciences. The course was held at \'Ecole Polytechnique de Montr\'eal (\'EPM), a world renowned engineering school and a pillar in Canada's engineering community. The course was offered twice in the 2014-2015 academic year and more than 30 students from the graduate and undergraduate programs participated. The course incorporated ten pedagogical strategies, including serious games, an observation book, individual and group projects, etc., that were expected to facilitate the development of cognitive abilities related to creativity such as encoding, and associative analytical thinking. The CEDA (Creative Engineering Design Assessment) test was used to measure the students' creativity at the beginning and at the end of the course. Field notes were taken after each of the 15 three-hour sessions to qualitatively document the educative intervention along the semester and students gave anonymous written feedback after completing the last session. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that an increase in creativity is possible to obtain with a course designed to development cognitive abilities related to creativity. Also, students appreciated the course, found it relevant, and made important, meaningful learnings regarding the creative process, its cognitive mechanism and the approaches available to increase it.Comment: 10 page

A New Course on Creativity in an Engineering Program: Foundations and Issues

The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the need to improve organizations' creative potential. In the last 60 years, hundreds of books have been written on the subject and hundreds of webpages display information on how to be more creative and achieve innovation. Several North American and European universities offer graduated programs in creativity. However, building an effective and validated creativity training program is not without challenges. Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. Without aiming for a degree in creativity, could future engineers benefit from training programs in creativity? This article presents the conceptual framework and pedagogical elements of a new course in creativity for engineering students.Comment: 10 pages, Intl Conf on Innovative Design and Manufacturing (pp. 270-275). Aug 13-15, Montreal. IEEE Conference Proceeding

New Advances in Forming Functional Ceramics for Micro Devices

Micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) are finding uses in an increasing number of diverse applications. Currently the fabrication techniques used to produce such MEMS devices are primarily based on 2-D processing of thin films. The challenges faced by producing more complex structures (e.g. high aspect ratio, spans, and multi-material structures) require the development of new processing techniques. Potential solutions to these challenges based on low temperature processing of functional ceramics, selective chemical patterning, and micro-moulding are presented to show that it is possible to create complex functional ceramic structures which incorporate non-ceramic conducting and support structures. The capabilities of both techniques are compared and the relative advantages of each explored

The impact of trust on private equity contracts

This paper adresses the impact of trust on private equity contracts. Trust between investor and entrepreneur is essential to help overcome control problems, especially in an environment with severe agency risks and incomplete contracts. In this study, information about the effects of trust is collected using a simulation with 144 entrepreneurs and investors. We find that trust has an impact on the desired contracts of entrepreneurs, but not on that of investors. Our findings suggest that for parties, faced with potentially large agency problems (investors), trust and control seem to play complementary roles. On the other hand, for parties faced with smaller agency problems (entrepreneurs), trust seems to be a substitute for control