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.     

Poverty Point Objects Reconsidered

In this paper we examine the enigmatic but plentiful hand-molded, baked-clay objects known as Poverty Point Objects (PPOs) from a number of different facets. Although the vast majority of these Terminal Archaic artifacts are found in the Lower Mississippi Valley, they also are found at sites as far north as Clarksville, Indiana, and as far east as the Atlantic Coast of Florida. Although most archaeologists generally assume PPOs were used primarily for roasting food, we consider a variety of other possible functions, including their use in boiling water and as symbolic tokens linking the far-flung Poverty Point culture area. We demonstrate that even though a few other archaeological cultures in the world used round clay balls for cooking, the Poverty Point culture was unique in the care, variety, and standardized forms of its baked-clay objects. We discuss the various PPO types and their possible functions in nine distinct regions in the southeastern United States and, based on our thin-section analyses of 66 samples, we demonstrate that PPOs circulated among different sites in these regions.     

Heidegger's Pragmatism: Understanding,being, and the critique of metaphysics

In many ways, the 1707 Act of Union encouraged various practices of literary nation-building and the search for authentic ’British’ voices. In their desire to assert the politeness of this newly constituted British identity, writers such as Joseph Addison, Thomas Blackwell and James Macpherson shared a preoccupation with a quality which Addison termed ‘majestick Simplicity’. The implicit codification of polite manners and taste in the Spectator might at first appear to contradict this literary fascination with the search for exemplars of native British simplicity. This article explores the continuity of these concerns in the writings of Addison, Blackwell and Macpherson, suggesting some of the ways that authenticity and politeness exerted conflicting demands on the eighteenth-century literary culture of Britishness.     

WHO PAYS THE SEVERANCE TAX?

Over the past four years, taxes levied by states on energy production have become a source of contention between the “energy have” and “energy have–not” regions of the nation. The popular notion that the taxes are shifted forward to consumers has gone virtually unchallenged in the policy debate. This paper examines the incidence and burden of severance taxes and also assesses the impact of severance taxation on production, investment, and land use. The author concludes that severance taxes are not shifted forward to consumers but are borne by producers and resources owners in the form of reduced profits and rents.     

A SEARCH FOR MULTIPLE EQUILIBRIA IN URBAN INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE*

ABSTRACT Theories featuring multiple equilibria are widespread across economics. Yet little empirical work has asked if multiple equilibria are features of real economies. We examine this in the context of the Allied bombing of Japanese cities and industries in World War II. We develop a new empirical test for multiple equilibria and apply it to data for 114 Japanese cities in eight manufacturing industries. The data provide no support for the existence of multiple equilibria. In the aftermath even of immense shocks, a city typically recovers not only its population and its share of aggregate manufacturing, but even the industries it had before.