Qualitative Choice Analysis

Qualitative Choice Analysis

Author: Kenneth Train

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780262200554

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This book addresses two significant research areas in an interdependent fashion. It is first of all a comprehensive but concise text that covers the recently developed and widely applicable methods of qualitative choice analysis, illustrating the general theory through simulation models of automobile demand and use. It is also a detailed study of automobile demand and use, presenting forecasts based on these powerful new techniques. The book develops the general principles that underlie qualitative choice models that are now being applied in numerous fields in addition to transportation, such as housing, labor, energy, communications, and criminology. The general form, derivation, and estimation of qualitative choice models are explained, and the major models - logit, probit, and GEV - are discussed in detail. And continuous/discrete models are introduced. In these, qualitative choice methods and standard regression techniques are combined to analyze situations that neither alone can accurately forecast. Summarizing previous research on auto demand, the book shows how qualitative choice methods can be used by applying them to specific auto-related decisions as the aggregate of individuals' choices. The simulation model that is constructed is a significant improvement over older models, and should prove more useful to agencies and organizations requiring accurate forecasting of auto demand and use for planning and policy development. The book concludes with an actual case study based on a model designed for the investigations of the California Energy Commission. Kenneth Train is Visiting Associate Professor in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of Economic Research at Cambridge Systematics, Inc., also in Berkeley. Qualitative Choice Analysisis included in The MIT Press Transportation Studies Series, edited by Marvin L. Manheim.


Optimal Regulation

Optimal Regulation

Author: Kenneth Train

Publisher: Mit Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780262200844

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Optimal Regulation addresses the central issue of regulatory economics - how toregulate firms in a way that induces them to produce and price "optimally." It synthesizes the majorfindings of an extensive theoretical literature on what constitutes optimality in various situationsand which regulatory mechanisms can be used to achieve it. It is the first text to provide aunified, modern, and nontechnical treatment of the field.The book includes models for regulatingoptimal output, tariffs, and surplus subsidy schemes, and presents all of the material graphically,with clear explanations of often highly technical topics.Kenneth E. Train is Associate AdjunctProfessor in the Department of Economics and Graduate School of Public Policy at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. He is also Principal of the firm Cambridge Systematics.Topics include: Thecost structure of natural monopoly (economies of scale and scope). Characterization of firstandsecond-best optimality. Surplus subsidy schemes for attaining first-best optimality. Ramsey pricesand the Vogelsang-Finsinger mechanism for attaining them. Time-ofuse (TOU) prices and Riordan'smechanisms for attaining the optimal TOU prices' Multipart and self-selecting tariffs, and Sibley'smethod for using self-selecting tariffs to achieve optimality. The Averch-Johnson model of howrate-of-return regulation induces inefficiencies. Analysis of regulation based on the firm's returnon Output, costs, or sales. Price-cap regulation. Regulatory treatment of uncertainty and its impacton the firm's behavior. Methods of attaining optimality without direct regulation (contestability,auctioning the monopoly franchise.)


Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence

Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence

Author: Alan S. Kaufman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2005-08-05

Total Pages: 816

ISBN-13: 0471746886

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The classic text--now updated with a new interpretive approach tothe WAIS?-III Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence, the classic text fromAlan Kaufman and Elizabeth Lichtenberger, has consistently providedthe most comprehensive source of information on cognitiveassessment of adults and adolescents. The newly updated ThirdEdition provides important enhancements and additions thathighlight the latest research and interpretive methods for theWAIS?-III. Augmenting the traditional "sequential" and "simultaneous"WAIS?-III interpretive methods, the authors present a new approachderived from Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory. This approachcombines normative assessment (performance relative to age peers)with ipsative assessment (performance relative to the person's ownmean level). Following Flanagan and Kaufman's work to develop asimilar CHC approach for the WISC?-IV, Kaufman and Lichtenbergerhave applied this system to the WAIS?-III profile of scores alongwith integrating recent WAIS?-III literature. Four appendices present the new method in depth. In addition to adetailed description, the authors provide a blank interpretiveworksheet to help examiners make the calculations and decisionsneeded for applying the additional steps of the new system, andnorms tables for the new WAIS?-III subtest combinations added inthis approach. Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence remains the premierresource for the field, covering not only the WAIS?-III but alsothe WJ III?, the KAIT, and several brief measures of intelligence,as well as laying out a relevant, up-to-date discussion of thediscipline. The new, theory-based interpretive approach for theWAIS?-III makes this a vital resource for practicing psychologists,as well as a comprehensive text for graduate students.


Soil and Sediment Remediation

Soil and Sediment Remediation

Author: Piet Lens

Publisher: IWA Publishing

Published: 2005-09-30

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 1843391007

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Soil and Sediment Remediation discusses in detail a whole set of remediative technologies currently available to minimise their impact. Technologies for the treatment of soils and sediments in-situ (landfarming, bioscreens, bioventing, nutrient injection, phytoremediation) and ex-situ (landfarming, bio-heap treatment, soil suspension reactor) will be discussed. The microbiological, process technological and socio-economical aspects of these technologies will be addressed. Special attention will be given to novel biotechnological processes that utilise sulfur cycle conversions, e.g. sulfur and heavy metal removal from soils. Also the potential of phytoremediation will be highlighted. In addition, treatment schemes for the clean-up of polluted megasites, e.g. harbours and Manufactured Gaswork Plants (MGP), will be elaborated. The aim of Soil and Sediment Remediation is to introduce the reader in: the biogeochemical characteristics of soil and sediments- new techniques to study soil/sediment processes (molecular probes, microelectrodes, NMR) clean up technologies for soils polluted with organic (PAH, NAPL, solvents) or inorganic (heavy metals) pollutants- preventative and remediative strategies and technologies available in environmental engineering novel process applications and bioreactor designs for bioremediation the impact of soil pollution on society and its economic importance.


Recurrent Events Data Analysis for Product Repairs, Disease Recurrences, and Other Applications

Recurrent Events Data Analysis for Product Repairs, Disease Recurrences, and Other Applications

Author: Wayne B. Nelson

Publisher: SIAM

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0898715229

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Survival data consist of a single event for each population unit, namely, end of life, which is modeled with a life distribution. However, many applications involve repeated-events data, where a unit may accumulate numerous events over time. This applied book provides practitioners with basic nonparametric methods for such data.


Beyond the Homeland

Beyond the Homeland

Author: Claudia Sagona

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13:

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Despite the flurry of research on aspects of Phoenician culture, encompassing their socio-economic developments and the mechanics of their settlement of Mediterranean coastal lands, the fundamental issue of dating Phoenician achievements remains quite fluid. A range of criteria - textual sources, artefact analysis, stratigraphic data, and, increasingly, radiocarbon readings - provide a bewildering and sometimes conflicting picture of Phoenician chronology, which, in many respects, remains tenuous and free-floating. Owing to the nature of Phoenician colonisation, its chronology is often compartmentalised into discrete regional units. This volume brings together a number of essays focusing squarely on the chronology of the Phoenician-Punic world, ranging from the homeland to the western settlements. The essays are written by specialists in their field, who have encapsulated the chronological framework, and the problems therein, for regions touched by Phoenicians interests. A benchmark study, Beyond the Homeland will be of value not only to Phoenician-Punic scholars, but also to those in related fields who need an accessible study (in English) to navigate the chronological complexities of the field.


Boundaries

Boundaries

Author: Christine E. Gudorf

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1589016858

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In this expanded and revised edition of a fresh and original case-study textbook on environmental ethics, Christine Gudorf and James Huchingson continue to explore the line that separates the current state of the environment from what it should be in the future. Boundaries begins with a lucid overview of the field, highlighting the key developments and theories in the environmental movement. Specific cases offer a rich and diverse range of situations from around the globe, from saving the forests of Java and the use of pesticides in developing countries to restoring degraded ecosystems in Nebraska. With an emphasis on the concrete circumstances of particular localities, the studies continue to focus on the dilemmas and struggles of individuals and communities who face daunting decisions with serious consequences. This second edition features extensive updates and revisions, along with four new cases: one on water privatization, one on governmental efforts to mitigate global climate change, and two on the obstacles that teachers of environmental ethics encounter in the classroom. Boundaries also includes an appendix for teachers that describes how to use the cases in the classroom.