Paris West University Nanterre La Défense

About: Paris West University Nanterre La Défense is a education organization based out in Paris, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computer science & Politics. The organization has 895 authors who have published 1430 publications receiving 21712 citations.

European Carbon Prices and Banking Restrictions: Evidence from Phase I (2005-2007)

Abstract: The price of European Union Allowances (EUAs) has been declining at far lower levels than expected during Phase I (2005-2007). Previous literature identifies among its main explanations over-allocation concerns, early abatement efforts in 2005, and possibly decreasing abatement costs in 2006. We advocate low allowance prices may also be explained by banking restrictions between 2007 and 2008, which undermined the ability of the EU ETS to provide an efficient price signal for emissions abatement. Based on a Hotelling-CAPM type analysis, our results suggest EUA spot prices do not meet equilibrium conditions in the intertemporal permits market. We also provide statistical evidence that, during the negotiation of National Allocation Plans for Phase II, the French and Polish decisions to ban banking contribute to the explanation of low EUA Phase I prices. Finally, we provide the first rigorous empirical verification that the cost-of-carry relationship between EUA spot and futures prices for delivery during Phase II does not hold after the enforcement of the inter-period banking restrictions. This situation may be interpreted as a sacrifice of the temporal flexibility offered to industrials in Phase I to give a chance to correct design inefficiencies, and achieve a price pattern leading to effective abatement efforts in Phase II.

Folkecology and commons management in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract: Three groups living off the same rainforest habitat manifest strikingly distinct behaviors, cognitions, and social relationships relative to the forest. Only the area's last native Maya reveal systematic awareness of ecological complexity involving animals, plants, and people and practices clearly favoring forest regeneration. Spanish-speaking immigrants prove closer to native Maya in thought, action, and social networking than do immigrant Maya. There is no overriding "local," "Indian," or "immigrant" relationship to the environment. Results indicate that exclusive concern with rational self-interest and institutional constraints do not sufficiently account for commons behavior and that cultural patterning of cognition and access to relevant information are significant predictors. Unlike traditional accounts of relations between culture, cognition, and behavior, the models offered are not synthetic interpretations of people's thoughts and behaviors but are emergent cultural patterns derived statistically from measurements of individual cognitions and behaviors.

Differential coding of perception in the world's languages

Abstract: Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to be better at communicating about sight and hearing than the other senses, and decades of work based on English and related languages certainly suggests this is true. However, how well does this reflect the diversity of languages and communities worldwide? To test whether there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, stimuli from the five basic senses were used to elicit descriptions in 20 diverse languages, including 3 unrelated sign languages. We found that languages differ fundamentally in which sensory domains they linguistically code systematically, and how they do so. The tendency for better coding in some domains can be explained in part by cultural preoccupations. Although languages seem free to elaborate specific sensory domains, some general tendencies emerge: for example, with some exceptions, smell is poorly coded. The surprise is that, despite the gradual phylogenetic accumulation of the senses, and the imbalances in the neural tissue dedicated to them, no single hierarchy of the senses imposes itself upon language.