OPTIMALITY OF RECYCLING AND THE LOCATION OF A RECYCLING CENTER

ABSTRACT. Consider a community investigating the integration of recycling into its waste management program. Even if (1) the county's citizens do not gain utility from recycling, (2) landfill space is plentiful, and (3) the market price for recyclables is zero, recycling can still be optimal for a local government. By determining the relationship between the amount of recycling and the location of a recycling center, conditions are identified under which recycling will reduce total waste management costs enough that municipal recycling will be optimal. In addition, it is shown that the likelihood of municipal recycling increases with the size of the city.     

Conflict, Uncertainty, and the Role of Planning and Analysis in Public Policy Innovation

Innovation by "groping along," in which appointed public officials experiment during program implementation after little, if any, initial planning and analysis, has been promoted as a more accurate model of policy innovation than the rational comprehensive model of policy change. Analysis of two cases of environmental regulatory policy innovation suggests that administrative agencies may be more likely to follow the conventional model of the policy cycle when high levels of conflict are likely to accompany policy initiatives. The cases also suggest, however, that public officials will experiment during the innovation process when they are uncertain about the nature of the problem and the probable impacts of alternative solutions.     

Technology networking in border regions: Case study of the Euregion Maas‐Rhine

This paper describes the results of a study investigating cross‐border networking by enterprises in the border region where the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet, the so‐called Euregion Maas‐Rhine. The study was undertaken in view of the completion of the Single European Market in 1993, which was expected to induce enterprises to make more effective use of available opportunities to improve their innovative and hence competitive potential. Special attention was given to knowledge transfer and sourcing of technology across borders. It was found that the majority of enterprises are still oriented towards a purely national environment. Technology‐intensive enterprises that are engaged in cross‐border networking, however, seem to be doing better than the ones that maintain a national orientation.     

Conceptualizing and Researching Policy Convergence1

This article develops criteria to classify the relative development of public policies across countries as convergent, divergent, identical and synchronous, and indeterminate. It emphasizes that relative policy developments have to be compared over defined time periods, and that they cannot be aggregated or averaged over several time periods, or across policy sectors or policy dimensions. The significance of policy convergence between countries needs to be evaluated against relative policy developments between other countries during the same period. Given these rigorous conceptual and methodological requirements, it is doubtful whether policy convergence is as pervasive as generally assumed in the literature.     

Ancestral pueblo population aggregation and abandonment in the North American Southwest

After over a century of archaeological research in the American Southwest, questions focusing on population aggregation and abandonment continue to preoccupy much of Pueblo archaeology. This article presents a historical overview of the present range of explanatory approaches to these two processes, with a primary focus on population aggregation in those regions occupied by historic and prehistoric Pueblo peoples. We stress the necessarily complementary nature of most of these explanations of residential abandonment and aggregation. Case studies from the northern Southwest illustrate the continuous nature of these processes across time and space. We suggest that additional explanatory potential will be gained by the use of well-defined theoretical units to frame our current approaches. We extend the use of the local community concept as a theoretical unit of organization that, along with explicit archaeological correlates, should help advance our research into population aggregation and abandonment in this and other regions of the world.     

Technology transfer agencies and regional economic development

Many regions in Western Europe have set up technology transfer agencies in order to support endogenous potential by encouraging the diffusion of new technologies from universities and large firms to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). However, many studies have shown that business partners such as customers and suppliers are the most important partners for the stimulation of the innovativeness of SMEs. Universities and transfer agencies are given a very low rank in these studies. These results have led to doubts about the usefulness of these institutions for regional economic development. In order to increase transparency, streamlining of the agencies involved is necessary so that there are fewer actors and more cooperation between them. To be able to reach technology‐following SMEs, at least one transfer organization in every region should employ senior engineers with extensive business experience to visit firms frequently (proactive) to help them come up with some technological issues (demand‐oriented). These agencies need long‐term financial backing so as to provide free advice to technology‐following SMEs.