USING ECONOMIC INCENTIVES TO CONTROL POLLUTION IN RUSSIA

This paper investigates Russia's system of environmental management, especially economic tools used to control pollution. It also describes the Russian experience with a system of pollution fees. In particular, we consider how the system of pollution fees works, how fee levels are set, the incentive properties of the fees, and the ultimate use to the Russian government of the revenue from the emission fees. Although the emission fees are quite substantial for some pollutants, the incentive properties of the fees are almost nonexistent. The primary purpose of pollution fees is to generate funds for state-owned enterprises to invest in pollution abatement equipment. This is substantially different from the operation of a pollution fee in the West.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Policies And International Integration: Influences On Trade And Foreign Direct Investment

This paper assesses the importance of border and non-border policies for global economic integration. The focus is on four widely-advocated policies: removing explicit restrictions to trade and FDI; promoting domestic competition; improving the adaptability of labour markets; and ensuring adequate levels of infrastructure capital. The analysis covers FDI and trade in both goods and services, thus aiming to account for the most important channels of globalisation and dealing with most modes of cross-border services supply. It first describes trends in trade, FDI and the four sets of policies using a large set of structural policy indicators recently constructed by the OECD, including the new summary indicators for FDI-specific regulations described in Golub (2003). It then estimates the impact of policies on bilateral trade and bilateral and multilateral FDI. The results highlight that, despite extensive liberalisation over the past two decades, there is scope for further reducing policy barriers to integration of OECD markets. Remaining barriers have a significant impact on trade and FDI, with anticompetitive domestic regulations and restrictive labour market arrangements estimated to curb integration as much as explicit trade and FDI restrictions. Simulating the removal of such barriers suggests that the quantitative effects of further liberalisation of trade, FDI and domestic product and labour markets on global integration could be substantial

XPS study of the effect of hydrocarbon contamination on polytetrafluoroethylene (teflon) exposed to atomic oxygen

The presence of hydrocarbon contamination on the surface of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) markedly affects the oxygen uptake, and hence the wettability, of this polymer when exposed to an oxygen plasma. As revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, the oxygen-to-carbon ratio (O/C) for such a polymer can increase sharply, and correspondingly the fluorine-to-carbon ratio (F/C) can decrease sharply, at very short exposure times; at longer times, however, such changes in the O/C and F/C ratios reverse direction, and these ratios then assume values similar to those of the unexposed PTFE. The greater the extent of hydrocarbon contamination in the PTFE, the larger are the amplitudes of the 'spikes' in the O/C- and F/C-exposure time plots. In contrast, a pristine PTFE experiences a very small, monotonic increase of surface oxidation or O/C ratio with time of exposure to oxygen atoms, while the F/C ratio is virtually unchanged from that of the unexposed polymer (2.0). Unless the presence of adventitious hydrocarbon is taken into account, anomalous surface properties relating to polymer adhesion may be improperly ascribed to PTFE exposed to an oxygen plasma

REAL OPTIONS ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN ORGANIC WHEAT AND BARLEY PRODUCTION IN SOUTH CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA USING PRECISION AGRICULTURE TECHNOLOGY

Real options theory is employed to measure the value of investing in organic wheat production using precision agriculture technology. Results reveal that an option to wait until market uncertainty is resolved is valuable. Information obtained via precision agriculture technology is also valuable to producers seeking organic certification.organic wheat production, real options theory, precision agriculture technology, Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Interaction-assisted propagation of Coulomb-correlated electron-hole pairs in disordered semiconductors

A two-band model of a disordered semiconductor is used to analyze dynamical interaction induced weakening of localization in a system that is accessible to experimental verification. The results show a dependence on the sign of the two-particle interaction and on the optical excitation energy of the Coulomb-correlated electron-hole pair.Comment: 4 pages and 3 ps figure

Algorithms and literate programs for weighted low-rank approximation with missing data

Linear models identification from data with missing values is posed as a weighted low-rank approximation problem with weights related to the missing values equal to zero. Alternating projections and variable projections methods for solving the resulting problem are outlined and implemented in a literate programming style, using Matlab/Octave's scripting language. The methods are evaluated on synthetic data and real data from the MovieLens data sets