The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides access to information on a variety of topics related to the environment and strives to inform citizens of health risks. The EPA also has an extensive library network that consists of 26 libraries throughout the United States, which provide access to a plethora of information to EPA employees, scientists, and researchers. The EPA implemented a reorganization project to digitize their materials so they would be more accessible to a wider range of users, but this plan was drastically accelerated when the EPA was threatened with a budget cut. It chose to close and reduce the hours and services of some of their libraries. As a result, the agency was accused of denying users the “right to know” by making information unavailable, not providing an adequate strategic plan, and discarding vital materials. This case study explores the background of the digitization project, the practices implemented, and the critiques of the project.

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The Environmental Protection Agency

How the mind works

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7153/w7153.pdf

Rational contagion and the globalization of securities markets

This paper presents a model and some highly tentative empirical estimates of the social costs of monopoly and monopoly-inducing regulation in the United States. Unlike the previous studies, it assumes that competition to obtain a monopoly results in the transformation of expected monopoly profits into social costs. A major conclusion is that public regulation is probably a larger source of social costs than private monopoly. The implications of the analysis for several public policy issues, such as appropriate policy toward mergers and price discrimination, are also discussed.

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The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation

Most economists would agree that past consumption patterns are an important determinant of present consumption patterns, and that one ought to distinguish between long-run and short-run demand functions. But although the distinction between long-run and short-run behavior is traditional in the theory of the firm, it is seldom made in the theory of consumer behavior. If we regard demand theory as a theory of how a given amount of money (expenditure, called income) is allocated among goods, then-in a world without consumer durables-there are three reasons why longand shortrun demand functions might differ. (i) The consumer may have contractually fixed commitments which prevent him from adjusting some portion of his consumption (for example, housing) in response to changes in prices or income. When these fixed commitments lapse, he is able to adjust to his long-run equilibrium. (ii) The consumer may be ignorant of consumption possibilities or of his own tastes outside the range of his past consumption experience. In this case his adjustment to a new price-income situation will involve a time-consuming learning process. (iii) Finally, goods may be "habit forming" so that an individual's current preferences depend on his past consumption patterns. In this case a change in prices or income will cause a change-in consumption which will induce a change in tastes, which will cause a further change in consumption. In this paper I formulate a model of consumer behavior based on habit formation, beginning with a specific class of demand functions derived from the "modified Bergson family" of utility functions. The properties of these utility functions and the corresponding demand functions are briefly summarized in Section 1. I then postulate that the parameters

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Habit Formation and Dynamic Demand Functions

List of Figures. List of Tables. Preface. 1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Theory of Telephone Demand I: Basic Results. 3. Theory of Telephone Demand II: Extensions of Basic Results. 4. Business Telecommunications Demand. 5. Recent Studies of Residential Access Demand. 6. Recent Studies of Toll Demand. 7. The Demand for Local Calls and Related Local Services. 8. Business Telephone System Demand, Total-Bill and Socio-Demographic Effects. 9. Consumption Externalities. 10. Price Elasticities in the Hearing Room: the Promise and Limits of Econometric Analyses of Telecommunications Demand. 11. Evaluation and Conclusions. Appendix 1: The Pre-1980 Empirical Literature on Telephone Demand Access, Local Service, and Interstate Toll. Appendix 2: The Pre-1980 Empirical Literature on Telephone Demand Intrastate Toll, WATS and Private Line, Coin, etc. Appendix 3: A Model of Toll Demand. Bibliography. Index.

Telecommunications Demand in Theory and Practice

The first € price and the £ and $ price are net prices, subject to local VAT. Prices indicated with * include VAT for books; the €(D) includes 7% for Germany, the €(A) includes 10% for Austria. Prices indicated with ** include VAT for electronic products; 19% for Germany, 20% for Austria. All prices exclusive of carriage charges. Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. All errors and omissions excepted. L.D. Taylor, H.S. Houthakker Consumer Demand in the United States

Consumer Demand in the United States

Consumer demand in the United States, 1929-1970

The demand for Internet access continues to grow at a dramatic rate. While the primary mode of access has been dial-up service, recent innovations have allowed even residential subscribers the option of obtaining affordable highs-peed or broadband access. In particular, cable television companies have begun to offer cable modems and many local exchange telephone companies are beginning to offer various forms of digital subscriber line (DSL) service. This chapter analyzes the demand for broadband access to the Internet by US households. Using a very large data set of US households with over 32,000 observations, we estimate a discrete-choice model for the demand for Cable Modems. Preliminary elasticity estimates indicate cable-modem Internet access demand to be price-elastic.

The Demand for High-Speed Access to the Internet:

Preliminaries.- and Overview.- Demand Theory Under Review.- Quantile Regression: A Robust Alternative to Least Squares.- Analyses of Data from BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys.- Description of Data Used from the Ongoing BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys.- Stability of U.S. Consumption Expenditure Patterns: 1996-1999.- Price and Income Elasticities Estimated from BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys and ACCRA Price Data: Some Preliminary Results.- Estimation of Theoretically Plausible Demand Functions from U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey Data.- An Additive Double-Logarithmic Consumer Demand System.- Quantile Regression Analysis of Asymmetrically Distributed Residuals.- CES Panel Dynamics: A Discrete-Time Flow-Adjustment Model.- Engel Curves for 29 Categories of CES Expenditure.- Summary of Cross-Sectional Results.- Analysis of Time-Series Data from National Income and Product Accounts.- Analysis of Time-Series Data on Personal Consumption Expenditures from the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts.- Quarterly PCE Models.- Annual PCE Models.- Discussion of the Time-Series Results.- Comparison of Time-Series and Cross-Sectional Elasticities.- Overall Assessment of CES and PCE Elasticities.- The Dynamics of Personal Saving.- Miscellaneous Studies of Income Distribution and Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference.- The Stationarity of Consumer Preferences: Evidence from Twenty Countries.- Notes on Thick-Tailed Distributions of Wealth.- Conic Distributions of Earned Incomes.- Final Evaluation.

Lester D. Taylor

Papers

Telecommunications Demand in Theory and Practice

Consumer Demand in the United States

Consumer demand in the United States, 1929-1970

The Demand for High-Speed Access to the Internet:

Consumer Demand in the United States: Prices, Income, and Consumption Behavior