We conduct a benefit-cost analysis of a relicensing agreement for two hydroelectric dams in Michigan. The agreement changed daily conditions from peaking to run-of-river flows. We consider three categories of costs and benefits: producer costs of adapting electricity production to the new time profile of hydroelectric output; benefits of reductions in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions;...

J. Paz-Ferreiro1, A. Méndez6, A. M. Tarquis3,4, A. Cerdà5, and G. Gascó2 1School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne 3001, VIC, Melbourne, Australia 2Departamento de Producción Agraria, E.T.S.I. Agrónomos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28004 Madrid, Spain 3CEIGRAM, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ciudad Univers...

Cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analyses are tools that have been used by public policy analysts for years. Programs as diverse as environmental and land use regulations, welfare benefits, job training programs, and immunization policies have all been analyzed in this manner. Since the early 1980s, Federal regulatory agencies have been required to conduct benefit-cost analyses on major regu...

GAO reviewed numerous studies of effects of Federal environmental, safety, and health regulations on R&D and innovation. These studies indicate that investment in innovation activities depends on the expected profits the innovation will produce, Anything that tends to lengthen the time before benefits can be realized, limit those benefits, or increase the cost of investment, tends to reduce the...

Lizards thermoregulate by behavioral and physiological adjustments. The resultant control over metabolic processes is generally assumed to be beneficial. However, these thermoregulatory adjustments have associated costs which, if extensive, make thermoregulation impractical. We extend this idea into an abstract mathematical, cost-benefit model of thermoregulation in lizards. Investigation of th...

Global warming has driven the expansion of cultivated land to high-altitude areas. Intensive vegetable production, which is generally considered be a high economic value and environmental risk system, expanded greatly in mountainous areas China. However, cost production these poorly understood. In this study, pepper at low (traditional area) (newly altitudes were investigated Shizhu, typical cr...

Corn is one of humankind’s earliest innovations. It was domesticated 10,000 years ago when humans learned to cross-pollinate plants and slowly turned a scraggly nondescript grass called teosinte into plump, productive modern corn (Figure 1). As needs change, so does plant breeding. Today, while biotech super-giants manipulate corn genetics to satisfy farmer desires and a global market, indigeno...

I present a multi-impact economic valuation framework called the Social Cost of Atmospheric Release (SCAR) that extends the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) used previously for carbon dioxide (CO2) to a broader range of pollutants and impacts. Values consistently incorporate health impacts of air quality along with climate damages. The latter include damages associated with aerosol-induced hydrologi...