This research examines the role of the abatement subsidy as a potential environmental policy option under various scenarios. This is achieved through a combination of theoretical and empirical analyses. The main motivation for this work stems from the existing literature on the abatement subsidy where its role seems to be a negative one from a policy standpoint. The reason for this is that in oligopoly models with free-entry the abatement subsidy encourages new firms into the market via higher profits thereby raising the level of total emissions in the industry, even though at the same time it lowers each firm's emissions. The overarching findings indicate that the abatement subsidy might play a role in environmental policy. The theoretical component of the work employs a symmetric free-entry Cournot oligopoly model both in a closed-economy and international settings. The key findings from these are that the subsidy lowers per-firm emissions and total industry emissions, and that the subsidy is welfare-enhancing when implemented multilaterally. As for the empirical component of the work, the analyses suggest that the subsidy is associated to lower per-firm emission levels and that the number of firms variable is not statistically significant.

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The Focus of this mixed method research was the implementation of lean six sigma principles to improve productivity of outpatients’ programs where each case requires multiple scheduling, multiple visits to patients’ homes and multiple visits to the health department. The site is the Peoria City/County Health Department (PCCHD). The PCCHD is the delegate agency for Illinois Department of Public Health Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (EH). They are also a recipient of the Federal Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control (LHC) program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In line with their mission, they sought opportunities to review and streamline their lead abatement programs to improve productivity and effectiveness of service value offered to their recipients. This research analyzed the current state of lead abatement efforts in Peoria County and used lean six sigma methodologies to identify quantifiable opportunities to improve the effectiveness of PCCHD’s lead abatement efforts. Results show that through the use of lean six sigma methods, the lead time of the PCCHD lead abatement program Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was reduced by 30%. Secondly opportunities to eliminate duplication and omission of activities between lead abatement programs were identified and recommended. This research confirms that lean six sigma methods can also be applied successfully to more complex programs such as the lead abatement programs that require multiple scheduling, multiple visits to patients’ homes and multiple visits to the health department

The objective of this study was to determine if an organic media attached growth bioreactor could effectively be used as a means of odor control for swine waste. The pilot-scale attached growth bioreactor system was evaluated against a standard pit recharge system, which served as the control. Performance was based on water quality testing, odor assessments by a human sensory panel, and air phase measurements of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. The affect of aeration on the system was also evaluated, along with various types of organic media (kenaf, hardwood mulch, and corncobs). Overall, the bioreactor systems were effective in reducing orthophosphate, COD, volatile acids, and phenol concentrations as compared to the control. The bioreactor systems were not effective in reducing the conductivity, ammonia or total solids concentration of the wastewater. With the exception of the corncob media, all bioreactor systems significantly reduced the overall odor intensity and the fecal characteristic of the wastewater as compared to the control system.

Three Essays in Energy and Environmental Economics Author: Mgr. Lukáš Rečka Supervisor: Mgr. Milan Ščasný, Ph.D. Academic Year: 2018/2019 Abstract This thesis consists of three articles that share the main theme - energy and environment. The dissertation aims mainly at the Czech energy system and analyses it development after the Velvet Revolution and its possible future development. The first article applies Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index decomposition to analyses the main driving forces of significant reduction in air quality pollutants during the transition of the Czech economy towards market economy in the 1990s. It continues then to investigate how the driving forces affected the emissions volumes during succeeding the post-transition period up to 2016. The second article reacts on the 2015 governmental decision to lift brown coal mining limits in the North Bohemia coal basin. The paper analyses the impacts of maintaining the ban on mining coal reserves and compares them with three alternative options that would each weaken the environmental protections of the ban. The impacts of each of these alternative governmental propostions are analysed on the Czech energy system, the fuel- and the technology-mix, the costs of generating energy, related emissions and external costs associated with the emissions....

Precision dairy technologies (PDT) are becoming more accessible and are therefore becoming more common on commercial dairy farms and in dairy research. Prior to any use of PDT, one should understand the precision, accuracy and bias of the device by a validations studies before interpreting the behavior measurements. Thus, the objective of the first section of my thesis is to validate ruminating, feeding and resting measurements of a behavior monitoring collar used in the second section. Precision dairy technology is used in heat stress studies to compare behavior of cows exposed to different heat stress treatments or abatement strategies. Heat stress is an important issue to research because it negatively affects cow behavior, physiology, and therefore production in lactating dairy cows. The objective of the second section is to assess the ability of a free choice soaker to reduce heat stress measured utilizing PDT and compare use of a free choice to a soaker in addition to one of the two treatments 1) no mandatory soakings, or 2) two mandatory soakings.

This study examines the reactions of market makers and investors to large dividend increases to identify the motives for dividend increases. Uniquely, this study simultaneously tests the signaling and agency abatement motivations as explanations of the impact of dividend increases on stock prices and bid-ask spreads. The agency abatement hypothesis argues that increased dividends constrict management's future behavior, abating the agency problem with shareholders. The signaling hypothesis asserts that dividend increases signal that managers expect higher or more stable cash flows in the future. Mean stock price responses to dividend increase announcements during 1995 are examined over both short ( _1, 0) and long ( _1, 504) windows. Changes in bid-ask spreads are examined over a short ( _1, 0) window and an intermediate (81 day) period. This study partitions dividend increases into a sample motivated by agency abatement and a sample motivated by cash flow signaling. Further, this study examines the agency abatement and cash flow signaling explanations of relative bid-ask spread responses to announcements of dividend increases. Estimated generalized least squares models of market reactions to sampled events support the agency abatement hypothesis over the cash flow signaling hypothesis as a motive for large dividend increases as measured by Tobin's Q and changes in the distribution of cash flows.

Graduation date: 1995

Abstract The impact of environmental regulation on competitiveness is a major issue of concern to policy makers. It has also been the subject of considerable academic debate in the past few years on environment-competitiveness. The relationship between environmental goals and industrial competitiveness has conventionally been thought of as involving a tradeoff between social benefits and private costs. In the recent decade, the environment-competitiveness debate has been shifted to a new dynamic international competitiveness paradigm. Michael Porter suggested that the traditional trade-off between environmental regulation and competitiveness may have overestimated environmental compliance costs, neglected innovation offsets, and disregarded the affected industry's initial competitiveness. In this thesis, we aim to examine firm-level evidence to assess the Porter hypothesis as well as the basic correlation between environmental goals and industrial competitiveness. Our approach mainly concentrates on the possibility of Porter hypothesis. Porter hypothesis suggests that more severe environmental regulation may have a positive effect on firm¡¦s performance by stimulating innovation. To capture the dynamic impacts and the incurred adjustments for enterprises in complying with the environmental standard requires a model with dynamic adjustment features. Our investigation shows that the impact of environmental regulation on TFP growth rate could become less detrimental and even positive, confirming the Porter hypothesis. This dynamic pattern is seen clearly in our results in many samples.

This thesis explores some theoretical and empirical issues in the voluntary contributions to public good. Chapter I contains a brief motivation and introduction. In chapters II and III, we analyze two non-cooperative methods for either enhancing or mitigating externality-causing activities. Chapter II deals with positive externality in the public good contribution context, and chapter III with negative externality in the pollution abatement context. Chapter IV contains an empirical analysis of charitable donations by the elderly. Chapter II models the so-called ``corporate challenge gift'' used in real world fund-raising, and adopts the concept to voluntary contributions to public goods more generally. We model the process as a sequential game in public good contributions. One of the agents sets a quantity-contingent matching scheme to leverage higher contributions from the other players. Under the assumption that the preferences of agents are public information and the assumption that the scheme setter can commit to the matching plan, we show that the scheme brings efficient levels of total contributions to the public good. Chapter III applies some ideas from a joint work with Professor Robin Boadway and Professor Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Tremblay on ``Commitment and Matching Contributions to Public Goods'' to the issue of reducing negative externality-causing activity. In particular, it adapts both the Guttman-Danziger-Schnytzer type of rate-matching mechanism and the quantity-contingent matching method for public good contributions to the international pollution abatement problem. In a simple two-country model, we find that both matching schemes induce the countries to internalize the negative externality imposed on the other country. However, perhaps due to the lack of enough policy instruments, they cannot equate the marginal costs of abatement across the countries, leaving room for Pareto improvement. This further improvement can be achieved if the two countries also contribute to a conventional public~good. Chapter IV is an empirical exercise on some positive externality-generating activities by the elderly. It attempts to document the charitable giving of money and time by people aged 60 or above in the 2003 PSID data for the United States and analyze the influences of some economic and demographic factors on these activities. Income, wealth, the subjective rating of health status, and years in school are found to have statistically significant impacts. Income and wealth appear to have distinct influences. The tax price of money donation also has a statistically significant effect on money donations. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-19 01:48:10.777