While institutions are a key determinant of economic behavior and new institutions are often formed as a part of an economic policy, a systematic way to design these institutions and test their potential performance before they are created does not exist. I have attempted in this paper to create and test such a design for an environmental mitigation banking system using system dynamics modeling...

Restructuring in electric power sectors took a significant step backward in the summer of 2000 when wholesale and retail markets in California experienced staggering price increases that continued through June of 2001. During this period, California suppliers neared bankruptcy and one went into bankruptcy, as did the state’s cornerstone market institution, the California Power Exchange. While t...

Many commentators fear that climate engineering research might lead policy-makers to reduce mitigation efforts. Most of the literature on this so-called 'moral hazard' problem focuses on the prediction that climate engineering research would reduce mitigation efforts. This paper focuses on a related ethical question: Why would it be a bad thing if climate engineering research obstructed mitigat...

Forests play a major role in both climate change mitigation and adaptation, but few policies, if any, integrate these two aspects. Using Indonesia and Vietnam as case studies, we identify challenges at the national level but opportunities at the local level. Although both countries demonstrate political commitment to integrating adaptation and mitigation in their development plans, guidelines f...

The exponential increase of the traffic volume makes Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks a top security threat to service providers. Existing DDoS defense mechanisms lack resources and flexibility to cope with attacks by themselves, and by utilizing other’s companies resources, the burden of the mitigation can be shared. Technologies as blockchain and smart contracts allow distributing...

The aim of automatic pathological voice detection systems is to serve as tools, to medical specialists, for a more objective, less invasive and improved diagnosis of diseases. In this respect, the gold standard for those systern^ include the usage of a^optimized representation of the spectral envelope, either based on cepstral coefficients from the mel-scaled Fourier spectral envelope (Mel-Freq...

This paper explores how the transition to a low-carbon society to mitigate climate change can be better supported by a diet change. As climate mitigation is not the focal goal of consumers who are buying or consuming food, the study highlighted the role of motivational and cognitive background factors, including possible spillover effects. Consumer samples in the Netherlands (n = 527) and the U...

Climate change is one of today's most pressing global issues. Policies to guide mitigation and adaptation are needed to avoid the devastating impacts of climate change. The health sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, and its climate impact in low-income countries is growing steadily. This paper reviews and discusses the literature regarding hea...

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify key risks that are posed to the security of a site and building perimeters in the first and second lines of defense against terrorism, and are relevant to facility managers. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach to the literature review was applied. This involved an extensive literature search of existing peer-reviewed r...

Policymakers have good reasons to favor capital-based policies – such as CAFE standards or feebates programs – over a carbon price. A carbon price minimizes the discounted cost of a climate policy, but may result in existing capital being under-utilized or scrapped before its scheduled lifetime, hurt the workers that depend on it, and inflict an immediate income drop. Capital-based policies avo...