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The Science of Strategic Conservation
Make conservation investments using structured decision-making, mathematical programming, the power of markets, and behavioral nudges.
Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, CPAIOR 2007, held in Brussels, Belgium in May 2007. It covers methodological and foundational issues from AI, OR, and algorithmics as well as applications to the solution of combinatorial optimization problems in various fields via constraint programming.
Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, CPAIOR 2011, held in Berlin, Germany, in May 2011. The 13 revised full papers and 7 revised short papers presented together with 3 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. The papers are focused on both theoretical and practical, application-oriented issues and present current research with a special focus on the integration and hybridization of the approaches of constraint programming, artificial intelligence, and operations research technologies for solving large scale and complex real life combinatorial optimization problems.
Strangers on Familiar Soil
A wide-ranging exploration of the diverse historical connections between Chile and California This groundbreaking history explores the many unrecognized, enduring linkages between the state of California and the country of Chile. The book begins in 1786, when a French expedition brought the potato from Chile to California, and it concludes with Chilean president Michelle Bachelet's diplomatic visit to the Golden State in 2008. During the intervening centuries, new crops, foods, fertilizers, mining technologies, laborers, and ideas from Chile radically altered California's development. In turn, Californian systems of servitude, exotic species, educational programs, and capitalist development strategies dramatically shaped Chilean history. Edward Dallam Melillo develops a new set of historical perspectives--tracing eastward-moving trends in U.S. history, uncovering South American influences on North America's development, and reframing the Western Hemisphere from a Pacific vantage point. His innovative approach yields transnational insights and recovers long-forgotten connections between the peoples and ecosystems of Chile and California.
Cognition and Collective Action
We examine the effect of cognitive processes on collective action in a social dilemma using two experiments with cognitive manipulations. Our experiments use a two-stage game: In the first stage, participants vote on implementing formal sanctions to be applied in a second-stage public goods game. Both experiments use this model of a social dilemma where collective action is measured by the adoption of sanctions. The first experiment applies time pressure during the voting stage for sanctions to prompt quick and intuitive thought processes to the decision. The second experiment applies a motivated delay treatment to enact deliberative cognitive processes to the voting stage. We cannot reject the null hypothesis in both studies that cognitive processes affect voting for cooperative rules. We do find an effect that motivated delay decreases contributions to the public good in the second-stage of the game and effects the efficacy of sanctions in the public goods game.
The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis and Beyond
A field of theory and research is evolving around the question highlighted in the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis: How does high realism in anthropomorphic design influence human experience and behaviour? The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis posits that a very humanlike character or object (e.g., robot, prosthetic limb, doll) can evoke a negative affective (i.e., uncanny) state. Recent advances in robotic and computer-graphic technologies in simulating aspects of human appearance, behaviour and interaction have been accompanied, therefore, by theorising and research on the meaning and relevance of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis for anthropomorphic design. Current understanding of the "uncanny" idea is sti...
Experiments on Damage-Based Ambient Taxes for Nonpoint Source Polluters
This article presents experimental tests of a linear and a nonlinear ambient tax mechanism that involve modest information requirements for the regulator. When agents are not allowed to communicate, both tax mechanisms result in emission levels that approximate the social optimum. When agents can communicate, emissions are considerably below the optimum, but we show that the tax function can be scaled to achieve social efficiency. Finally, by disaggregating the overall efficiency measure, we show that changing the pollution threshold that triggers the tax increases the inefficiency resulting from variation in agent-level decisions, but does not affect average emissions.
Experimental Evidence on Policy Approaches that Link Agricultural Subsidies to Water Quality Outcomes
Improving water quality in agricultural landscapes is an ongoing challenge, and most agri-environmental programs in the United States rely on voluntary adoption of conservation practices. Conservation-compliance initiatives require producers to meet specific conservation standards to qualify for payments from farm programs. However, these requirements do not require actual improvements in observed water quality. In this study, we introduce policies to reduce nonpoint source pollution that link eligibility for agricultural subsidies to compliance with water quality goals. We then use economic laboratory experiments to provide empirical evidence related to the performance of these policies. In...
Coping with the Coffee Crisis
At the turn of the millennium, world coffee prices dropped to their lowest levels in 30 years giving rise to the most severe crisis experienced by the coffee sector. The study evaluates the effects of the coffee crisis on the Costa Rican coffee sector and identifies the factors that influence farmers' production and marketing performance. A two-step selection model is applied to analyze farmers' participation in specialty markets and cooperatives and the effects on producer prices. Furthermore, a stochastic production frontier is estimated to explore technical efficiency levels of specialty and conventional coffee farmers. Based on the results of the study, policy recommendations are derived that should help farmers to improve their competitiveness and their ability to cope with the crisis. These include the provision of extension and information, the support of coffee cooperatives, and the diversification of the rural economy.
The Half Has Never Been Told
Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of slaves Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.
