799 research outputs found
Replication data for: The Effect of Microinsurance on Economic Activities: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
No full textCai, Hongbin, Chen, Yuyu, Fang, Hanming, and Zhou, Li-An, (2015) "The Effect of Microinsurance on Economic Activities: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." Review of Economics and Statistics 97:2, 287-300
Trichotichnus fedorenkoi Kataev & Hongbin & Wrase 2022, sp. n.
No full textTrichotichnus (s. str.) fedorenkoi sp. n. (Figs. 37, 68–73) Type material. Holotype. Male, “N-Vietnam, 40 km W of Cao Bang Phia Oac Mt. 22°36′25′′N / 105°52′08′′E / h ~ 1650–1700 m, deciduous forest, 3–11.X.2018 leg. D. Fedorenko ” (ZIN). Paratypes. Vietnam. CAO BANG: 1 female, same data as holotype (SIEE); 1 male, “N-VIETNAM, Cao Bang Prov. / vic. Tinh Tuc, Son Dong Nui / Pia Oac Nature Res., 850–1300 m, 09.–15.V.2014 / 22°37′55′′N, 105°52′98′′E / leg. A. Weigel by light” (NME). VINH PHUC: 1 male, N-Vietnam, Vinh Phuc Pr., vic. Tam Dao Town, Tam Dao NP, 700–1000 m, 21°27′N 105°38′E, 2–5.V.2013, A. Weigel leg. (NME); 1 female, Mts near Tam-Dao, 900 m, 2.XI.1962, O. Kabakov leg. (ZIN); LAO CAI: 1 female, Lao Cai Prov., near Cat Cat Vill., 2.5 km SW of Sa Pa, 22°19′37′′N 103°49′21′′E, 1400–1450 m, V. 2010, A.V. Abramov leg. (ZIN). NINH BINH: 1 female, Vietnam, N, Ninh Binh Pr., 90 km SW Hanoi, Cuc Phuong NP, primat rescue centre, 190 m, 20°14′24′′N 105°42′53′′E, at light, 25.IV.2012, A. Weigel leg. (NME). Description. Habitus as in Fig. 37. Morphological character states are as described for T. schmidti sp. n., but differing as follows. Body larger (length 8.5–9.1 mm). Dorsal microsculpture highly obliterated, meshes on head almost not recognized. Mesotarsomere 3 in male more elongate, in most specimens longer than wide. Last abdominal sternite (VII) in both sexes rounded at apex. Median lobe of aedeagus (Figs. 68–70) in lateral view slightly arcuate, with almost straight apical half; apex thin, hooked ventrally; in dorsal view median lobe comparatively wide basally, evenly narrowed apically, with terminal lamella (Fig. 68) about as wide as long, roundly narrowed at apex. Ventral side edged laterally and slightly depressed between margins. Apical orifice in dorsal position, wide apically. Internal sac with a large curved spiny patch apically, narrowed to base. . Female genitalia (Figs. 71 & 72): gonocoxite comparatively narrow in ventral view, about 0.6 times as long as gonosubcoxite, with relatively narrower base. Proportions (2 males and 3 females measured): HWmax/PWmax 0.69–0.73; HWmin/PWmax 0.52–0.57; HWmax/HWmin 1.27–1.32; PWmax/PL 1.53–1.57; PWmax/PWmin 1.21–1.28; EL/EW 1.52–1.60; EL/PL 2.92–3.19; EW/PWmax 1.27–1.33. Etymology. The species is named after our friend and colleague Dmitry Fedorenko (Moscow), an excellent carabidologist, who collected a part of the type series. Distribution (Fig. 73). Known from North Vietnam (Lao Cai, Cao Bang, Vinh Phuc and Ninh Binh provinces) where it occurs at altitudes of about 190–1700 m.Published as part of Kataev, Boris M., Hongbin, Liang & Wrase, David W., 2022, New data on carabid beetles of Trichotichnus s. str. (Coleoptera: Carabidae) of Yunnan (China) and adjacent areas, with description of six new species and two new subspecies, pp. 301-353 in Zootaxa 5159 (3) on pages 330-331, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5159.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/678166
Experimental studies of performance and emissions in a 2/4-stroke engine
Full text linkThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel UniversityDirect Injection (DI) gasoline engines are staging a come-back because of its potential for
improved fuel economy through principally the engine down-sizing by boosting, stratified
charge combustion and Controlled Auto Ignition (CAI) at part load operations. The problem
with the Spark Ignition (SI) engine is its inherent low part-load efficiency. This arises due to
the pumping loses that occur when the throttle closes or partially opens. One way of
decreasing the pumping losses is to operate the engine lean or by adding residual gases. It is
not possible to operate the engine unthrottled with a very lean or diluted mixture at low loads
due to misfire. However, the load can also be controlled by changing the valve timing. This
reduce the pumping loses and hence increase the efficiency. Due to the limited time available for complete fuel evaporation and the mixing of fuel and air mixture, locally fuel rich mixture or even liquid fuel can be present during the combustion process. This causes a significant increase in Particulate Matter (PM) emissions from direct injection gasoline engines compared to the conventional port fuel injection gasoline engines, which are of major concern because of its health implications. In the meantime, depleting reserves of fossil fuels and the increasing environmental pollution caused by burning of fossil fuels, have paved the way for fuel diversification. Cleaner and renewable fuel is being introduced worldwide. The use of ethanol as an alternative transportation fuel shows promise for several reasons. While ethanol can be produced from
several types of biomass, it offers properties such as high octane number, higher oxygen content and high heat of evaporation, which make it a most attractive alternative fuel, in particular for the direct injection gasoline engine. In this research, a single cylinder camless engine equipped with an electro-hydraulic valve
train system has been used to study and compare different engine operation modes in the SI and CAI combustion. The fuel consumption, gaseous and particulate emissions of gasoline
and its mixture with ethanol (E15 and E85) were measured and analysed at the same engine
operating condition. The heat release analysis and performance characteristics of CAI and SI
combustion were carried out by the in-cylinder pressure measurement. The effect of load and
valve timings on the gaseous and Particulate Matter (PM) emissions was investigated for both
4-stroke SI and CAI combustion. Within the achieved CAI operational ranges, particle
emissions were found to be dominated by smaller particles (<50nm). Hotter charge and better
mixing are the main parameters affecting the soot particles in the exhaust irrespective of the
combustion modes and valve timings. At part-load conditions investigated, it was found that the CAI combustion produced the lowest NOx emissions of 0.4g/KWh in all fuel blends and lower fuel consumption 223g/KWh with improved combustion efficiency of 94.7% in ethanol fuel E15 and E85. The positive
valve overlap was found to produce lowest fuel consumption of 222.8 g/KWh in all fuel blend
and respond better to ethanol fuel in E15 and E85 with improved indicated efficiency of 40.5% compared to the other modes investigated. The early intake valve throttled SI operation led to a moderate improvement in the fuel consumption of 243.5g/KWh over the throttled SI operation but it was characterised by the slowest combustion and highest CO (33.5g/KWh) and HC (16.8g/KWh) emissions . Less and smaller particles numbers were detected for Early Intake Valve Closure (EIVC) from the combustion of E0 and E15 (4.0E+07#/cm3 less than 50nm in diameter) fuel blends. The particulate emission results showed that soot was the dominant particles in the exhaust, which could be reduced by leaner mixture combustion
.Tertiary Education Trust Fund and University of Portharcourt
Nigeri
Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees
No full textInformational committees are groups of people who are designated to gather information. This article develops a simple model of committee size based on costly participation and preference heterogeneity. In a setting in which the information structure and policy preferences are both represented by normal random variables, I characterize an equilibrium under the mean decision rule and derive the optimal committee size. I show that when effort costs are sufficiently high, preference heterogeneity can provide members additional incentives to gather information, and thus the optimal committee size and the principal's expected payoff can increase in the heterogeneity of committee members' policy preferences. Copyright (c) 2009, RAND.
Political decentralization and policy experimentation
No full textSince 1932, when Justice Louis Brandeis remarked that in a federal system states can serve as "laboratories" of democracy, political decentralization has been thought to stimulate policy experimentation. We reexamine the political economy behind this belief, using a simple model of voting in centralized and decentralized democracies. We find that the electoral logic suggests the opposite conclusion: centralization usually leads to "too much" policy experimentation, compared to the social optimum, while decentralization leads to "too little." Three effects of centralization - an "informational externality," a "risk-seeking" effect, and a "risk-conserving" effect - account for the different outcomes. © 2009 H. Cai and D. Treisman.link_to_subscribed_fulltex
Polluting thy neighbor: Unintended consequences of China's pollution reduction mandates
No full text© 2015 Elsevier Inc.This paper studies how the pollution reduction mandates imposed by China's central government in 2001 triggered unanticipated responses from its provinces. We apply the difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) method to a unique dataset on industry-level activities in counties along 24 major rivers in China from 1998 through 2008. We find that the most downstream county of a province has up to 20 percent more water-polluting activities than otherwise identical counties since 2001. Moreover, we find that the enforcement of pollution fee collection is more lenient in the most downstream county of a province, and that private firms contribute more to the downstream effect than state-owned enterprises and foreign firms. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the provincial governments respond to the pollution reduction mandates by shifting their enforcement efforts away from the most downstream county.link_to_subscribed_fulltex
Competition and Corporate Tax Avoidance: Evidence from Chinese Industrial Firms
No full textThis article investigates whether market competition enhances the incentives of Chinese industrial firms to avoid corporate income tax. We estimate the effects of competition on the relationship between firms' reported accounting profits and their imputed profits based on the national income account. To cope with measurement errors and potential endogeneity, we use instrumental variables, exogenous policy shocks and other robustness analysis. We find robust and consistent evidence that firms in more competitive environments engage in more tax avoidance activities. Moreover, all else equal, firms in relatively disadvantageous positions demonstrate stronger incentives to avoid corporate income tax. Copyright � The Author(s). Journal compilation � Royal Economic Society 2009.
Firm reputation and horizontal integration
Full text linkWe study effects of horizontal integration on firm reputation in an environment where customers observe only imperfect signals about firms' effort/quality choices. Horizontal integration leads to a larger market base for the merged firm, and thus helps reputation building with more effective punishments and better monitoring by eliminating idiosyncratic shocks of individual markets. But it allows the merged firm to deviate only in a subset of markets, which hinders reputation building by making it more difficult for consumers to monitor its quality. We show that these effects give rise to a reputation-based theory of the optimal firm size and derive its comparative statics. Copyright (c) 2009, RAND.
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