The U.S. Treasury Tests a New Payment Mechanism

This case presents a set of technical issues confronting the United States Treasury eCheck Pilot Project team in January 2000. The team, which included representatives from the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Fleet Boston, Bank of America, and several hardware and software vendors, was testing a new Internet-based payment mechanism (eCheck). The system had already been tested for a year and a half with the participation of the two commercial banks (Fleet Boston, Bank of America), but this portion of the pilot was now coming to an end. During the first phase of the project, several key design choices had been made, including the use of smart cards to hold digital certificates, and specification of the information flows among the participants (payer, payee, payer bank, payee bank). Now, the system would need to be modified so that the U.S. Treasury could continue to make eCheck payments to a few defense contractors, with the help of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Two new designs are presented for evaluation

Short-Lived Trace Gases in the Surface Ocean and the Atmosphere

The two-way exchange of trace gases between the ocean and the atmosphere is important for both the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere and the biogeochemistry of the oceans, including the global cycling of elements. Here we review these exchanges and their importance for a range of gases whose lifetimes are generally short compared to the main greenhouse gases and which are, in most cases, more reactive than them. Gases considered include sulphur and related compounds, organohalogens, non-methane hydrocarbons, ozone, ammonia and related compounds, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Finally, we stress the interactivity of the system, the importance of process understanding for modeling, the need for more extensive field measurements and their better seasonal coverage, the importance of inter-calibration exercises and finally the need to show the importance of air-sea exchanges for global cycling and how the field fits into the broader context of Earth System Science

Conservation Compliance: How Farmer Incentives Are Changing in the Crop Insurance Era

Conservation Compliance ties eligibility for most Federal farm program benefits to soil and wetland conservation. To be eligible for farm program benefits, farmers must apply an approved soil conservation system on highly erodible cropland (Highly Erodible Land Conservation, or HELC) and refrain from draining wetlands (Wetland Conservation, or WC). Conservation Compliance is effective when the incentive—the farm program benefits that could be lost due to noncompliance—exceeds the cost of meeting soil and wetland conservation requirements. HELC significantly reduced soil erosion on highly erodible cropland and may have also encouraged erosion reduction on land not subject to HELC. Compliance incentives (farm program benefits) under the Agricultural Act of 2014 are found to (1) vary widely across farms with cropland in HEL (highly erodible land) fields, (2)approximate the overall level of incentive that would have been provided under an extension of the 2008 Farm Act (although incentives changed significantly on many farms), and (3) be significantly lower on many farms if crop insurance premium subsidies were not subject to Conservation Compliance. Compliance incentives for WC, although measured only in the Prairie Pothole region of the Northern Plains, are clearly larger than Compliance costs for an estimated 75 percent of wetlands that are already cropped or have characteristics (e.g., productivity, topography) that are favorable to crop production