Cost‐effective strategies to mitigate multiple pollutants in an agricultural catchment in North Central Victoria,Australia

Strategies to reduce phosphorus and sediment yields are identified for two Australian catchments using a nonlinear optimisation model. This provides novel insight into the cost‐effective management of dual pollutants of water courses in Australia. A strong degree of complementarity between the two pollutants is highlighted, given the adsorption of phosphorus to sediment that augments the value of gully and streambank management for mitigation. However, the relationship between the two pollutants is asymmetric. A 30 per cent reduction in phosphorus yield achieves a 75 per cent reduction in sediment yield in one catchment, while a 30 per cent reduction in sediment yield achieves only a 12 per cent reduction in phosphorus yield. Sediment abatement costs are low given the efficiency of gully and streambank management. A 30 per cent phosphorus reduction lowers profit by 3–7 per cent, while a 30 per cent sediment reduction lowers profit by around 1 per cent. Land‐use optimisation requires spatial heterogeneity in land‐use and gully/streambank management responses. Overall, this research demonstrates the need to determine whether one pollutant is more important than another, while recognising the potential that mitigation practices possess for the reduction of multiple emissions during their evaluation.     

Youth leisure careers during post‐communist transitions in the South Caucasus

This paper reports findings from interview surveys with 1215 respondents, split between the capital cities (Yerevan, Baku and Tbilisi) and one non‐capital region (Kotayk, Aran‐Mugan and Shida Kartli) in each of the three South Caucasus countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The respondents, who were drawn from households in larger representative household social surveys, were all born between 1970 and 1976 and were aged 31–37 at the time of the fieldwork in 2007. Their life stage transitions from childhood to adulthood had roughly coincided with their countries’ transitions from communism to post‐communism. Data was collected on the samples’ participation in selected leisure activities from age 16 to 30. Similar data was collected on the samples’ careers in education, the labour market, housing and family relationships. This information enables us to identify typical leisure careers and how their development was affected by events in other life domains, all in the context of the macro‐changes that were in process in each of the research locations. The evidence enables both personal leisure careers and aggregate leisure trends in different socio‐demographic groups to be identified This shows that changes in leisure behaviour between age 16 and 30 were neither widening nor narrowing the differences between the leisure of males and females, or those who married and became parents on the one hand, then, on the other, those who were still single and childless at age 30. In contrast, differences by place, and by social class, grew progressively wider, thus raising the social costs of geographical and social mobility. Changes in leisure behaviour between age 16 and 30 were separating young adults into those who participated in little, if any, structured out‐of‐home leisure, whose main leisure spending, if any, was on alcohol and tobacco (typically consumed in homes and neighbourhoods), and those whose leisure was characterised by relatively high and sustained participation in sport, consumption of high culture, and going out to bars, cafes, cinema, discos, etc.     

Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Australia: A Minimum Disruption Approach

Abstract
While at the Toronto Conference in 1988, Australia adopted a target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent of 1988 levels by the year 2005, however action to reduce emissions has been negligible. Unilateral action is deemed too costly in terms of the negative effects it could have on employment, GDP growth, exports and international competitiveness .
Most Australian studies have evaluated the effect on such variables of employing a specified policy instrument, such as a carbon tax, to reduce emissions. This study instead uses an input-output method developed by Proops, Faber and Wagenhals (1993) to ascertain the minimum set of changes necessary in different sectors of the economy required to achieve the Toronto Target, where constraints on key macroeconomic variables, such as GDP growth and the level of employment, are met. The cost of reducing emissions is defined here in terms of the required structural changes, when factors like GDP growth are held positive .
The results suggest that the necessary changes in various sectors under each of the scenarios are not far removed from the observed rates of change for Australia. The results are also consistent with those obtained for both Germany and the United Kingdom .     

Deterring predation in telecommunications: Are line-of-business restraints needed?

We analyze whether lifting the remaining line-of-business restraints in the Modified Final Judgment (thus permitting the Regional Bell Operating Companies to provide interLATA calling services and to manufacture equipment) would plausibly lead the RBOCs to practice predatory pricing. We assume throughout that the regulated portions of the RBOCs' business would be subjected to price-cap or similar incentive-based regulation and that equal access to bottleneck services would be enforced. Despite employing a very broad definition of predation, we find that it is highly unlikely that the RBOCs would profitably engage in predatory pricing.     

The role for competition policy in economic development: the South African experience

Competition policy is part of the new international orthodoxy in economic policy and, at the same time, was viewed in South Africa as a crucial element of economic transformation. This article reviews the role of competition policy in economic development and the experiences of developing countries such as Brazil and South Korea. It then assesses the effects of competition policy in South Africa after 1994, with the main focus being on the performance of the new competition institutions established in 1999. The case of the steel industry is used to assess the approach and impact of the institutions in a concentrated sector that has simultaneously undergone processes of liberalisation and domestic consolidation.     

10大最具影响力人物

他们都被视为技术和商业领袖,伟大的思想照亮了整个电子工业. 很多有才气、有创造力、雄心勃勃和理想主义的人造就了我们如今看到的电子工业.美国著名的杂志在这些人中选取了10大最具影响力人物,他们在过去30年间给电子工业带来了广泛和深远的影响.