Corporate Incentives and Nuclear Safety

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Hausman
Keyword(s):  
Electricity Market ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Public Utilities ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Safety Measures ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Market Restructuring ◽  
Strategy I

Following electricity market restructuring, approximately half of all commercial US nuclear power reactors were sold by price-regulated public utilities to independent power producers. At the time of the sales, some policymakers raised concerns that these corporations would ignore safety. Others claimed that the sales would bring improved reactor management, with positive effects on safety. Using data on various safety measures and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, I find that safety improved following ownership transfers and the removal of price regulations. Generation increased, and this does not appear to have come at the cost of public safety. (JEL D24, L51, L94, L98, Q42, Q48)

scholarly journals Fostering Household Formation: Evidence from a Spanish Rental Subsidy

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ainhoa Aparicio-Fenoll ◽  
Veruska Oppedisano
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cash Transfer ◽  
Household Formation ◽  
Parental Home ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Causal Impact ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Identification Strategy

Abstract In Southern Europe youngsters leave their parental home significantly later than in Northern Europe and the United States. In this paper, we study the effect of a monthly cash subsidy on the probability that young adults live apart from parents and childbearing. The subsidy, introduced in Spain in 2008, is conditional on young adults renting accommodation, and it amounts to almost 20% of the average youngsters’ wage. Our identification strategy exploits the subsidy eligibility age threshold to assess the causal impact of the cash transfer. Difference-in-Differences estimates show positive effects of the policy on the probability of living apart from parents, living with a romantic partner, and childbearing for 22 year-olds compared to 21 year-olds. Results persist when the sample is expanded to include wider age ranges. The effect is larger among young adults earning lower incomes and living in high rental price areas. This is consistent with the hypothesis that youngsters delay household formation because the cost is too high relative to their income.

Nuclear Power An Optimistic Beginning, A Clouded Future

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. McElroy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Electricity Market ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Facilities ◽  
The Us ◽  
Fukushima Daiichi ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Offshore Earthquake

Nuclear power was widely regarded as the Holy Grail for energy supply when first introduced into the US electricity market in the late 1950s and early 1960s— power so cheap that utilities could scarcely afford the cost of the meters needed to monitor its consumption and charge for its use. The first civilian reactor, with a capacity to produce 60 MW of electricity (MWe), went into service in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in late 1957. By the end of 1974, 55 reactors were in operation in the United States with a combined capacity of about 32 GWe. The largest individual power plant had a capacity of 1.25 GWe: the capacity of reactors constructed since 1970 averaged more than 1 GWe. The industry then went into a state of suspended animation. A series of highly publi¬cized accidents was responsible for this precipitous change in the fortunes of the industry. Only 13 reactors were ordered in the United States after 1975, and all of these orders were subsequently cancelled. Public support for nuclear power effectively disappeared in the United States following events that unfolded at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979. It suffered a further setback, not only in the United States but also worldwide, in the wake of the disaster that struck at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The most recent confidence- sapping development occurred in Japan, at the Fukushima- Daiichi nuclear complex. Floodwaters raised by a tsunami triggered by a major offshore earthquake resulted in a series of self- reinforcing problems in March 2011, culminating in a highly publicized release of radioactivity to the environment that forced the evacuation of more than 300,000 people from the surrounding communities If not a death blow, this most recent accident certainly clouded prospects for the future of nuclear power, not only in Japan but also in many other parts of the world. Notably, Germany elected to close down its nuclear facilities, leading to increased dependence on coal to meet its demand for electricity, seriously complicating its objective to markedly reduce the nation’s overall emissions of CO2.

Neural networks trained with high-dimensional functions approximation data in high-dimensional space

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Jian Zheng ◽  
Jianfeng Wang ◽  
Yanping Chen ◽  
Shuping Chen ◽  
Jingjin Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Data Distribution ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Sufficient Data ◽  
High Dimensional Space ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Neural Networks ◽  
Using Data

Neural networks can approximate data because of owning many compact non-linear layers. In high-dimensional space, due to the curse of dimensionality, data distribution becomes sparse, causing that it is difficulty to provide sufficient information. Hence, the task becomes even harder if neural networks approximate data in high-dimensional space. To address this issue, according to the Lipschitz condition, the two deviations, i.e., the deviation of the neural networks trained using high-dimensional functions, and the deviation of high-dimensional functions approximation data, are derived. This purpose of doing this is to improve the ability of approximation high-dimensional space using neural networks. Experimental results show that the neural networks trained using high-dimensional functions outperforms that of using data in the capability of approximation data in high-dimensional space. We find that the neural networks trained using high-dimensional functions more suitable for high-dimensional space than that of using data, so that there is no need to retain sufficient data for neural networks training. Our findings suggests that in high-dimensional space, by tuning hidden layers of neural networks, this is hard to have substantial positive effects on improving precision of approximation data.

scholarly journals Punishment Strategies across Societies: Conventional Wisdoms Reconsidered

Games ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Ramzi Suleiman ◽  
Yuval Samid
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Strong Predictor ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
Free Riders ◽  
The World ◽  
Emergence Of Cooperation ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Cost

Experiments using the public goods game have repeatedly shown that in cooperative social environments, punishment makes cooperation flourish, and withholding punishment makes cooperation collapse. In less cooperative social environments, where antisocial punishment has been detected, punishment was detrimental to cooperation. The success of punishment in enhancing cooperation was explained as deterrence of free riders by cooperative strong reciprocators, who were willing to pay the cost of punishing them, whereas in environments in which punishment diminished cooperation, antisocial punishment was explained as revenge by low cooperators against high cooperators suspected of punishing them in previous rounds. The present paper reconsiders the generality of both explanations. Using data from a public goods experiment with punishment, conducted by the authors on Israeli subjects (Study 1), and from a study published in Science using sixteen participant pools from cities around the world (Study 2), we found that: 1. The effect of punishment on the emergence of cooperation was mainly due to contributors increasing their cooperation, rather than from free riders being deterred. 2. Participants adhered to different contribution and punishment strategies. Some cooperated and did not punish (‘cooperators’); others cooperated and punished free riders (‘strong reciprocators’); a third subgroup punished upward and downward relative to their own contribution (‘norm-keepers’); and a small sub-group punished only cooperators (‘antisocial punishers’). 3. Clear societal differences emerged in the mix of the four participant types, with high-contributing pools characterized by higher ratios of ‘strong reciprocators’, and ‘cooperators’, and low-contributing pools characterized by a higher ratio of ‘norm keepers’. 4. The fraction of ‘strong reciprocators’ out of the total punishers emerged as a strong predictor of the groups’ level of cooperation and success in providing the public goods.

scholarly journals Extending the Coverage of the Trust–Acceptability Model: The Negative Effect of Trust in Government on Nuclear Power Acceptance in South Korea under a Nuclear Phase-Out Policy

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 3343
Author(s):  
Seungkook Roh ◽  
Hae-Gyung Geong
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Public Acceptance ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Nuclear Phase ◽  
Phase Out

This article extends the coverage of the trust–acceptability model to a new situation of nuclear phase-out by investigating the effect of trust on the public acceptance of nuclear power, with South Korea as the research setting. Through the structural equation modeling of a nationwide survey dataset from South Korea, we examined the effects of the public’s trust in the various actors related to nuclear power on their perceptions of the benefits and risks of nuclear power and their acceptance of nuclear power. Contrary to previous studies’ findings, in South Korea, under a nuclear phase-out policy by the government, trust in government revealed a negative impact on the public acceptance of nuclear power. Trust in environmental non-governmental groups also showed a negative effect on nuclear power acceptance. In contrast, trust in nuclear energy authority and trust in nuclear academia both had positive effects. In all cases, the effect of a trust variable on nuclear power acceptance was at least partially accounted for by the trust’s indirect effects through benefit perception and risk perception. These findings strengthen the external validity of the trust–acceptability model and provide implications for both researchers and practitioners.

scholarly journals Electoral Incentives and the Allocation of Public Funds

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederico Finan ◽  
Maurizio Mazzocco
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Term Limit ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Politicians allocate public resources in ways that maximize political gains, and potentially at the cost of lower welfare. In this paper, we quantify these welfare costs in the context of Brazil’s federal legislature, which grants its members a budget to fund public projects within their states. Using data from the state of Roraima, we estimate a model of politicians’ allocation decisions and find that 26.8% of the public funds allocated by legislators are distorted relative to a social planner’s allocation. We then use the model to simulate three potential policy reforms to the electoral system: the adoption of approval voting, imposing a one-term limit, and redistricting. We find that a one-term limit and redistricting are both effective at reducing distortions. The one-term limit policy, however, increases corruption, which makes it a welfare-reducing policy.

Heat Transfer Correlation for Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Flowing in Vertical Bare Tubes

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahil Gupta ◽  
Eugene Saltanov ◽  
Igor Pioro
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transfer ◽  
Error Analysis ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Transfer Coefficients ◽  
Data Points ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Gen Iv

Canada among many other countries is in pursuit of developing next generation (Generation IV) nuclear-reactor concepts. One of the main objectives of Generation-IV concepts is to achieve high thermal efficiencies (45–50%). It has been proposed to make use of SuperCritical Fluids (SCFs) as the heat-transfer medium in such Gen IV reactor design concepts such as SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR). An important aspect towards development of SCF applications in novel Gen IV Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) designs is to understand the thermodynamic behavior and prediction of Heat Transfer Coefficients (HTCs) at supercritical (SC) conditions. To calculate forced convection HTCs for simple geometries, a number of empirical 1-D correlations have been proposed using dimensional analysis. These 1-D HTC correlations are developed by applying data-fitting techniques to a model equation with dimensionless terms and can be used for rudimentary calculations. Using similar statistical techniques three correlations were proposed by Gupta et al. [1] for Heat Transfer (HT) in SCCO2. These SCCO2 correlations were developed at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (Canada) by using a large set of experimental SCCO2 data (∼4,000 data-points) obtained at the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) AECL. These correlations predict HTC values with an accuracy of ±30% and wall temperatures with an accuracy of ±20% for the analyzed dataset. Since these correlations were developed using data from a single source - CRL (AECL), they can be limited in their range of applicability. To investigate the tangible applicability of these SCCO2 correlations it was imperative to perform a thorough error analysis by checking their results against a set of independent SCCO2 tube data. In this paper SCCO2 data are compiled from various sources and within various experimental flow conditions. HTC and wall-temperature values for these data points are calculated using updated correlations presented in [1] and compared to the experimental values. Error analysis is then shown for these datasets to obtain a sense of the applicability of these updated SCCO2 correlations.

Effects of the award of public service contracts on the performance and payroll of winning firms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Ravenda ◽  
Maika Melina Valencia-Silva ◽  
Josep Maria Argiles-Bosch ◽  
Josep García-Blandón
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Effective Management ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Service Contracts ◽  
Performance Dimensions ◽  
Service Procurement ◽  
Medium Firms

Abstract We investigate the effects of an exogenous demand shock arising from the award of public service contracts by Italian public administrations in 2015 on a sample of 1782 winning small and medium firms that were not awarded any contract during the previous 3 years. Using a difference-in-differences model with continuous treatments estimated on a propensity score matched sample, our results reveal that higher awarded values enhance various performance dimensions of the winning firms as well as their average payroll per employee. Nonetheless, higher winning rebates moderate the positive effects of the award on payroll by inducing the winning firms to downward manage both salaries and social security contributions per employee to maintain their desired level of performance. The effects are mostly significant for smaller microenterprises. In addition, winning rebates negatively affect the performance of firms in the construction industry by leading these firms to downward manage the payroll of their employees more aggressively than firms in other industries. Our findings provide novel insights for the implementation of industrial policies aimed at achieving sustainable macroeconomic and social goals, within the business fabric, through the effective management of public service procurement.

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