In this paper, an integrated model of the costs of climate change damage and carbon dioxide abatement is used under an optimal control regime to simulate the international agreements on greenhouse gas abatement, where each region aims to minimise their overall costs. The model used is EGEM (Environmental Global Econometric Model), described in Smith et al. [1], which forecasts energy related carbon dioxide emissions and the impact of carbon taxes. Here the model is extended to include a function for the costs of damage from climate change, and optimal policies are found under various scenarios by minimising both the long–run costs of damage and the cost of abatement in terms of the size of tax needed. Optimising from the perspectives of two non–cooperating regions (Europe and North America) is shown to produce significantly lower taxes than a cooperative case, resulting in large gains to cooperation.

AbstractAdolescents' trajectories of impulsive and hostile behaviors provide a dynamic index of risk for the emergence of Cluster B (antisocial and borderline) personality disorders in early adulthood. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that preoccupied states of mind in the Adult Attachment Interview would increase both the level and rate of growth in adolescents' trajectories of aggressive and sexual risk-taking behaviors measured at ages 13, 15, and 17. Overall, preoccupied states of mind predicted higher levels of sexual risk taking and aggressive behaviors across all three assessments as well as higher rates of growth in sexual-risk taking and caregiver-reported aggression over time. In addition, preoccupied females showed slower rates of decline in self-reported hostile emotions than did preoccupied males. The effects of gender as a moderator of the relations between preoccupied status and risk trajectories for personality disorders are discussed.

This study of economically disadvantaged 13-year-olds examined the relations between serious reading difficulties and clinical levels of externalizing behaviors in school. The variable-centered results showed that family variables, adolescent verbal ability, and negative emotion patterns differed in uniquely predicting reading achievement and externalizing behaviors. The person-centered analyses established robust groups of adolescents showing problems in a single domain, both domains, or neither domain, and that family and adolescent variables distinguished the adolescent groups in predictable ways. Longitudinal results available for a subsample showed that high problem levels for the groups were stable across elementary school and associated with first-grade characteristics. The results provide evidence for relatively independent pathways of reading and externalizing difficulties for young disadvantaged adolescents.

This longitudinal study of 105 economically disadvantaged children examined the relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in 3rd- and 5th-grade assessments (8- to 12-year olds). The variable-centered results showed that reading problems predicted change in internalizing behavior in the context of child and family predictors. The person-centered results showed that children with reading problems in both grades had higher internalizing scores in 5th grade but not in 3rd grade than children with reading problems in 3rd grade or no problems. Child-reported negative emotion experiences varied similarly across grade. The results tie reading problems to emotional distress in school and support conclusions about the direction of effects and the internalization of academic difficulty for disadvantaged children.

Recent simulations of continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) cochlear implant speech processors have used acoustic stimulation that provides only weak cues to pitch, periodicity, and aperiodicity, although these are regarded as important perceptual factors of speech. Four-channel vocoders simulating CIS processors have been constructed, in which the salience of speech-derived periodicity and pitch information was manipulated. The highest salience of pitch and periodicity was provided by an explicit encoding, using a pulse carrier following fundamental frequency for voiced speech, and a noise carrier during voiceless speech. Other processors included noise-excited vocoders with envelope cutoff frequencies of 32 and 400 Hz. The use of a pulse carrier following fundamental frequency gave substantially higher performance in identification of frequency glides than did vocoders using envelope-modulated noise carriers. The perception of consonant voicing information was improved by processors that preserved periodicity, and connected discourse tracking rates were slightly faster with noise carriers modulated by envelopes with a cutoff frequency of 400 Hz compared to 32 Hz. However, consonant and vowel identification, sentence intelligibility, and connected discourse tracking rates were generally similar through all of the processors. For these speech tasks, pitch and periodicity beyond the weak information available from 400 Hz envelope-modulated noise did not contribute substantially to performance.

How can greenhouse gases be controlled and reduced? Will it be in time? This book adds a significant new contribution to the crucial climate change/global warming debate. Incorporating the key political and legal considerations into 'real world' applied economic analysis, the authors provide a unique focus on the wider political economy of the problem. All the key issues of controlling climate change (costs, timing and degree of stabilisation, ecological taxt reform, developing countries, and evolution of international agreements), are placed firmly within the current legal and political context, with state-of-the-art economic techniques introduced to analyse different policy proposals. Covering both the developing and developed world, this book identifies important new policies to foster effective agreements on eissions and prevent global warming - realistic policies, likely to receive support at both international and domestic levels. be in time? This book adds a significant new contribution to the crucial climate change/global warming debate. Incorporating the key political and legal considerations into 'real world' applied economic analysis, the book's authors provide a unique focus on the wider political economy of the problem. All the key issues of controlling climate change (costs, timing and degree of stabilisation, ecological tax reform, developing countries and evolution of international agreements), are placed firmly within the current legal and political economy context, with state-of-the-art economic techniques introduced to analyse different policy proposals. Covering both the developing and developed world, this book identifies important new policies to foster effective agreements on emmissions and prevent global warming - realistic policies which are likely to receive support at both international and domestic levels.

The Rio Earth Summit resulted in commitments to reduce CO 2 emissions from all industrialized countries, but there are many banners to overcome before its full objectives can be met. One major obstacle is carbon leakage, the increase in developing country emissions predicted as a result of OECD policies for abatement. Causes of carbon leakage are discussed here and its magnitude assessed. The effect is found to be relatively small - nevertheless, in the long run policies that provide incentives for CO 2 abatement globally will become imperative.

An econometric model of fossil fuel demand has been estimated for eight OECD countries, relating coal, oil and gas demands to GDP and prices. In addition a model of endogeneous technical progress has been estimated, aiming to include both price induced innovation in energy and structural change in the economy as long-term determinants of energy consumption. A number of possible international carbon/energy tax agreements are simulated, showing the impacts on carbon dioxide emissions and comparing the two models. In the long run the magnitude of taxes required to stabilize or reduce emissions would be large, and there are important differences between countries in price responses, which must be taken into account in international modelling and policy formulation.