ALBERT

Notizen: Reimbursement systems for health-care providers are very complex, like the production systems that they regulate. This complexity has led to some important misperceptions about the incentive consequences of major reimbursement reforms. One example is the prospective payment system (PPS), developed to provide “high-powered” incentives through fixed prices for hospital admissions for the US elderly. In fact, various features of the DRG system allow reimbursement to vary with actual treatment decisions during an admission, and so are not prospective. This paper develops a general method for measuring actual reimbursement incentives in complex regulated price systems. The method uses regression techniques with variance decompositions to quantify the effects of particular features of the payment system on prospective and retrospective cost sharing, as well as overall generosity of payments. I apply this method to microdata on 20 percent of Medicare hospital admissions in 1987 and 1990 to summarize the incentives created by PPS in practice, and how the incentives are evolving over time. I show that PPS involves limited and decreasing cost sharing with hospitals, most of which is not prospective. The reimbursement incentives vary substantially across diagnoses, demographic groups, and types of intensive treatments, possibly with important implications for hospital behavior and medical expenditure growth. The techniques developed here can be used to analyze a broad range of provider reimbursement mechanisms.

Notizen: In a health insurance market, a large employer or an organized “buyer alliance” is in a position to influence the design of plans offered to its members. We study how the sponsors of buyer alliances manage competition among insurance firms by focusing on their choices of the format of competition, the number of firms allowed to compete, and the quality of care offered by the firms. We find deviations from optimality in all three dimensions. Specifically, we find a tendency toward too many firms and too much quality, and a bias toward a format involving the prescreening of insurance plans by the sponsor.

Notizen: This paper empirically examines the effect of firm-specific characteristics on the length of time required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review and approve new-drug applications between 1990 and 1992. The approach treats regulatory decisions as endogenous and explains the variation in regulatory behavior as a function of differences that exist between firms and drugs. Results show that, controlling for drug-specific characteristics, regulators respond to firm-specific characteristics when evaluating new drug applications. For instance, firms that are less diversified and more R&D-inten-sive receive shorter review times for their new-drug applications than more diversified and less R&D-intensive firms. The reason is that most firm characteristics signal information to reviewers about either firm reputation or application quality. This information reduces reviewers' uncertainty about approving a dangerous or ineffective drug and leads to faster review times. The results suggest that regulators respond to the heterogeneities among firms in the pharmaceutical market in systematic ways.

Notizen: I examine the outcomes of cases of entry by merchant shipping lines into established markets around the turn of the century. These established markets are completely dominated by an incumbent cartel composed of several member shipping lines. The cartel makes the decision whether or not to begin a price war against the entrant; some entrants are formally admitted to the cartel without any conflict. I use characteristics of the entrant to predict whether or not the entrant will encounter a price war conditional on entering. I find that weaker entrants are fought, where “weaker” means having fewer financial resources, less experience, smaller size, or poor trade conditions. The empirical results provide most support for the long-purse theory of predation. Due to the small number of observations available, 47, I discuss qualitative evidence (such as predatory intent expressed in correspondence between cartel members) that supports the empirical results. The results are also found to be robust to misclassification of the dependent variable, which is a particular concern when dealing with historical data.

Notizen: The paper analyzes tender offers and proxy contests as alternative means of resolving corporate governance conflicts between dissidents and incumbent management. We show that when a dissident shareholder is sufficiently confident about the potential benefits from changing corporate policy, he will seek majority control by making a tender offer rather than initiating a proxy contest. When the dissident is relatively uninformed, however, he may opt for a proxy contest, thereby utilizing the information of other shareholders to implement the better policy. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that announcements of tender offers will tend to be associated with larger positive stockprice reactions than announcements of proxy contests. The model is easily extended to allow for promanagement bias in proxy voting by institutional investors. Empirical observations that have been viewed as evidence of such promanagement bias are shown to be quite consistent with the absence of such bias. Policy issues are discussed as well. An interesting result is that even policies targeted at reducing the costs of conducting proxy contests may have ambiguous social consequences, given the possibility of substitution between tender offers and proxy contests.

Notizen: This article investigates the issue ofpredation by a regulated firm. Since it has private information, a regulated firm obtains higher rents in case of successful predation: the fewer the competitors, the higher the marginal social value of the regulated firm's effort and the higher the informational rents. Both principals (the investor of a “target” firm and the regulator) have to provide some incentives to prevent predation: the investor has to reduce the sensitivity of refinancing to predation; the regulator has to lower the gain of successful predation. It is shown that there is a trade-off between the power of the regulatory incentive scheme and the regulated firm's incentives to prey. In addition, as deterring predation is costly, the investor and the regulator compete when offering contracts: each wants to free-ride on the other. Hence, predation may occur in equilibrium although it makes both principals worse off.

Notizen: This paper studies the nature of incentive contracts between a risk-neutral principal and a risk-neutral agent under the constraint that the agent's liability is limited. A necessary and sufficient condition is derived for the existence of a first-best contract under this constraint, and a bonus-based contract is shown to be the most efficient contractual form. Implications of bonus contracts are also discussed.

Notizen: This paper examines the effect of the MFC rules adopted by Medicaid on both price dispersion and price levels in the wholesale pharmaceutical market. Theory suggests that the regulations should reduce price dispersion and increase the average price for those products with a high initial level of price dispersion. Using data which can only measure some dimensions of price discrimination, I find that discrimination falls for products sold to hospitals, but not drugstores. Branded drugs facing generic competition have the most dispersion ex ante. Prices of these brands rise with dispersion at the implementation of the new rules. The last two results are consistent with Scott Morton (1997), where I look only at price changes due to the law. The results of this paper confirm that part of the mechanism of action for the price increase is the high level of price dispersion for some products combined with the MFC.

Notizen: This paper examines the incentive effects of division of labor on worker effort, in the absence of the scale effects studied by Adam Smith. The game-theoretic model gives two results. (1) Suppose workers are identical and risk-neutral, and there is stochastic observation of group output by the firm offering compensations subject to some worker-participation constraint. Then the firm can arrive at the same first-best outcome with or without division of labor. However, if workers are risk-averse, division of labor can give the firm strictly greater profit. (2) A deepening division of labor magnifies this positive incentive effect; but if workers are heterogeneous, or if there are certain informational imperfections in the production process, this incentive advantage of division of labor could be impaired or even reversed. The first result may help explain the emergence of division of labor in the early stages of industrialization without relying on the Smithian advantages, which are also present in some labor deployment schemes without division of labor. The second result throws light on some recent anecdotal evidence of a shallowing division of labor in some areas of modern manufacturing. These factors affecting the efficiency of division of labor are then further discussed in the light of recent empirical findings on division of labor and team work, such as those in Katzenbach and Smith (1993).

Notizen: We show how technological flexibility choices and equilibrium configurations (both simultaneous and sequential duopoly) depend on six industry characteristics. Low market volatility combined with intermediate market size favors inflexible technologies; large values of either volatility or size favor flexible technologies; low or intermediate values of both favor the coexistence of flexible and inflexible technologies. The possibility of a flexibility trap exists in industries of low volatility and intermediate size. Entry prevention can sometimes be achieved by inflexible technologies or flexible technologies, depending on the industry characteristics.

Notizen: We examine how the feasibility of both nonlinear pricing and exclusive dealing arrangements affect incentives for market foreclosure when two manufacturers contract with a retail monopolist. Surprisingly, we find that although market foreclosure equilibria exist, they are Pareto-dominated (from each manufacturer's perspective) by all nonforeclosure equilibria. If one believes that Pareto-dominated equilibria are unlikely to arise, then the difference between our results and those of Mathewson and Winter (1987), who do not allow for nonlinear pricing, suggests an ironic twist on the notion that quantity discounts and other kinds of nonlinear pricing can provide an additional way for a manufacturer to foreclose a rival. By providing a manufacturer with increased flexibility (beyond linear pricing) to extract a retailer's surplus, nonlinear pricing may instead have the effect of reducing the incidence of observed market foreclosure.

Notizen: A model of vertical integration is studied. Upstream firms sell differentiated inputs; downstream firms bundle them to make final products. Downstream products are sold as option contracts, which allow consumers to choose from a set of commodities at predetermined prices. The model is illustrated by examples in telecommunication and health markets. Equilibria of the integration game must result in upstream input foreclosure and downstream monopolization. Consumers may or may not benefit from integration.

Notizen: This paper discusses the regulation of oligopolistic differentiated-product industries. The regulator can control prices and impose quantity restrictions, but cannot control the quality choices of the firms. We inquire about the optimal choice of regulatory regime—whether and under what conditions managed competition or segmentation of the market between regulated monopolies achieves better results. In the spatial duopoly model analyzed here, unhindered competition generally results in an inefficient allocation. When the regulator knows the technologies, optimal managed competition results in distortions of the quality choice, but an optimal regulated-monopolies regime achieves the first best outcome. When the regulator is uncertain about the technologies, neither of these methods yields the first-best outcome. The regulated-monopolies regime still tends to produce better quality choices, but managed competition tends to be more effective at extracting rents from the firms. The overall comparison depends on some finer details of the environment.

Notizen: This paper studies the business practice of offering discounts to new customers in markets with switching costs. In a two-period homogeneous-good duopoly model, it is shown that the equilibrium amount of discounts increases continuously in the expected switching costs of a typical consumer. In equilibrium, firms offer the same prices and discounts in a mature market even if they have different market shares, and the demands faced by these firms in a new market become more elastic. Firms are worse off engaging in the discriminatory pricing, while consumers need not necessarily benefit from it. There is costly equilibrium switching of consumers, which creates a dead-weight loss to the society.

Notizen: This paper analyzes six spectrum auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission from July 1994 to May 1996. These auctions were simultaneous multiple-round auctions in which collections of licenses were auctioned simultaneously. This auction form proved remarkably successful. Similar items sold for similar prices, and bidders successfully formed efficient aggregations of licenses. Bidding behavior differed substantially in the auctions. The extent of bidder competition and price uncertainty played an important role in determining behavior. Bidding credits and installment payments also played a major role in several of the auctions.

Notizen: We examine bid data from the first two broadband PCS spectrum auctions for evidence of value synergies. First, we estimate a benchmark regression for the determinants of final auction prices. Then, we include variables reflecting the extent to which bidders ultimately won or already owned the adjacent wireless properties. Consistent with geographic synergies in an ascending-bid auction, prices were higher when the highest losing bidder had adjacent licenses. The footprints of winning bidders suggest that they were often successful in realizing these synergies.

Notizen: When multiple items are sold through the use of simultaneous ascending-bid auctions, bidders can find it in their mutual interests to reduce their aggregate demand for the items while prices are still low relative to the bidders' valuations. The FCC's first broadband PCS auction provides examples of how such mutual reductions might be arranged even when the bidders are not allowed to communicate with one another outside of the auction arena.

Notizen: In late 1994, GTE, one of the largest telecommunications firms in the world, entered an auction for the rights to provide personal communications services (PCS) using the electromagnetic spectrum. The administering agency, the Federal Communications Commission, adopted a novel multiple-round format for the PCS auction. The format presented GTE with a complex bidding problem. This article describes how the GTE bidding team answered the following question: Given its budget and valuations and the information available about rival bidders, how should GTE bid to achieve the best attainable outcome?

Notizen: The paper reviews the uses of laboratory experimental economics methods in the background research and implementation of the Personal Communication Systems auctions held by the Federal Communications Commission. The applications began during the rule making process with the testing of broad rules that might be implemented. Data from experiments were systematically used. The methods were used again in the software development process where several important contributions were made. Finally, experiences gained from the study of experimental auction processes were used in the actual management of the first auctions and in interpreting auction performance.

Notizen: A series of two-player, second-price common-value auctions are reported. In symmetric auctions, bidders suffer from a winner's curse. In asymmetric auctions in which one bidder has a private value advantage, the effect on bids and prices is proportional rather than explosive (the prediction of Nash equilibrium bidding theory). Although advantaged bidders are close to making best responses to disadvantaged bidders, the latter bid much more aggressively than in equilibrium, thereby earning negative average profits. Experienced bidders consistently bid closer to the Nash equilibrium than inexperienced bidders, although these adjustments towards equilibrium are small and at times uneven.

Notizen: This paper reports the results of over 130 auctions conducted under controlled conditions to examine the robustness of several auction mechanisms to allocate multiple objects. The simultaneous discrete auction process used by the Federal Communications Commission to allocate Personal Communications licenses was contrasted with a sequential auction and a combinatorial auction over a variety of demand conditions. In test environments created to check only the minimum competency of the procedures, the simultaneous discrete auction process produces highly efficient allocations, approaching levels similar to those found with a continuous form of the auction, and it outperforms a sequential auction. However, in environments created to stress test the procedures, a combinatorial auction outperforms the simultaneous discrete auction.

Notizen: The firm is often considered as a nexus of contracts linking the management and its different stakeholders: claim-holders, workers, unions, customers, suppliers, and the state, among others. This paper surveys recent work in contract theory, the multiprincipal incentive theory, and the theory of side contracts, which provides some insights into the structure of those contracts and therefore into the structure of the firm. First, we discuss the incomplete contracting assumptions underlying these variations of the usual grand contract approach. Second, we explain how the theoretical lessons learned from this work—the distribution of contracting rights, the power of incentive schemes within organizations, and the design of communication channels—apply to the theory of the firm.

Notizen: We present a dynamic model of the hospital industry in which nonprofit and for-profit hospitals coexist and compete and are differentiated by their objective functions, investment technologies, and taxation rates. In our model, patients differ by income and type of insurance coverage, and choose admission to their preferred hospital, while hospitals choose investment, entry, exit, and pricing strategies. We estimate the parameters of the model with aggregate data and a GMM procedure. We then use the model to examine the effects of changes in the Medicare reimbursement system, universal health-care coverage, and taxation of nonprofits.

Notizen: We have demonstrated that when providers of health insurance are perceived to be differentiated by consumers, circumstances may arise under which they find it advantageous to restrict the set of health-care providers that they approve to their customers. Even if all health-care providers are equally qualified and efficient, payers may choose to contract with a selected subset of them in order to secure more favorable contract terms. Moreover, in a concentrated health-care market that consists of two health insurance companies (payers) and two health-care providers (hospitals), both payers may choose to contract with only one of the hospitals while excluding the other completely from the market. When consumers' valuation of an extended choice of providers is small in comparison with the extent of differentiation that exists between the payers, such an exclusionary outcome is the unique equilibrium of the game.

Notizen: During the 1980s the share of prescriptions sold by retail pharmacies that was accounted for by generic products roughly doubled. The price response to generic entry of brand-name products has been a source of controversy. In this paper we estimate models of price responses to generic entry in the market for brand-name and generic drugs. We study a sample of 32 drugs that lost patent protection during the early to mid-1980s. Our results provide evidence that brand-name prices increase after generic entry and are accompanied by large decreases in the price of generic drugs.

Notizen: We develop a model of competition among health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to analyze the effects of market power, scale economies, and asymmetric knowledge of health risk on market outcomes. We find that competition among HMOs may, but need not, ensure socially preferred outcomes. Market power or scale economies can sometimes admit socially preferred outcomes when they would otherwise not arise. Asymmetric knowledge of health risk may or may not be constraining. When it is constraining, a variety of patterns of incomplete health insurance can arise, along with excessive or insufficient treatment and preventive care for either high-risk or low-risk individuals.

Notizen: This paper surveys recent work in contract theory that relates to the allocation of tasks among agents within an organization as well as to the effect of product market competition upon optimal contracting and agency costs.

Notizen: In settings where the revelation principle applies, delegation arrangements are frequently inferior to centralized decision making, and at best achieve the same level of performance. This paper studies the value of delegation when organizations are constrained by a bound on the number of contingencies in any contract. For a principal-agent setting with asymmetric information, we compare centralized mechanisms where the principal retains sole responsibility for contracting and coordinating production, with delegation mechanisms where one agent (a manager) is delegated authority to contract with other agents and coordinate production. Relative to centralization, delegation entails a control loss, but allows decisions to be more sensitive to the manager's private information. We identify circumstances under which the flexibility gain outweighs the control loss, so that delegation emerges superior to centralized contracting.

Notizen: This paper examines the integration of market and nonmarket strategies in a setting involving market competition and international trade policy where governments serve as bargaining agents for firms. In the case modeled, the Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) filed a Section 301 petition under US trade law against practices of Fuji Photo Film Company (Fujifilm) in the Japanese distribution system that Kodak alleges constitute trade barriers. The model has four components. The market model characterizes the competition between Fujifilm and Kodak, incorporating characteristics descriptive of the demand and market structure in Japan. Enforcement of an international trade agreement focusing on practices in a distribution system are problematic, so the second model characterizes the sustainability of concessions obtained through a trade agreement using a repeated game extension of the market model. The third model characterizes the bargaining between the US and Japanese governments using the preferences induced by the market model and the limits on sustainable concessions characterized in the second model. Using a common-agency framework, the fourth model represents the nonmarket competition between the two firms as they work to influence the bargaining positions of the governments. The result is a model in which market and nonmarket strategies are integrated in a formal theory of the resolution of trade disputes and the subsequent effects on market competition. The equilibrium characterized allows a comparative statics analysis of the synergies between market and nonmarket strategies.

Notizen: This article investigates the issue of predation by a regulated firm. Since it has private information, a regulated firm obtains higher rents in case of successful predation: the fewer the competitors, the higher the marginal social value of the regulated firm's effort and the higher the informational rents. Both principals (the investor of a “target” firm and the regulator) have to provide some incentives to prevent predation: the investor has to reduce the sensitivity of refinancing to predation; the regulator has to lower the gain of successful predation. It is shown that there is a trade-off between the power of the regulatory incentive scheme and the regulated firm's incentives to prey. In addition, as deterring predation is costly, the investor and the regulator compete when offering contracts: each wants to free-ride on the other. Hence, predation may occur in equilibrium although it makes both principals worse off.

Notizen: Abstract. Crops grown on virgin upland Vertisols of Zambia, are reported to perform rather poorly. However, subsoiling followed by repeated cultivation over two years apparently improves crop growth. Highest yields were recorded under long-term cultivation (12 years). To evaluate the reasons for these differences in crop response to Vertisol management, physical and hydrodynamic characteristics of soil profiles were studied in three soil management systems. The management systems were: uncultivated or virgin land; land cultivated for two years; and land cultivated for 12 years. The mean soil aggregate size decreased with increased time of cultivation, mostly due to the decrease of the largest sized aggregates. The surface horizon dried more slowly on the long-term cultivation plot. A comparison of the hydraulic conductivities indicated that water intake in the deeper layers improved with increased period in cultivation. Oxygen diffusion measurements showed good aeration at field capacity, to a depth of 0.32m on the long-term cultivation plots, but only to 0.17 m and 0.25 m for 2 years cultivation and virgin plots respectively. Repeated cultivation was beneficial in improving surface soil tilth and in improving subsurface drainage, thus removing the problem of a perched water table which occurred close to the soil surface under natural conditions.

Notizen: Abstract. The chemical extractability of heavy metals introduced into the soil during 7 years application of sewage sludge, composted municipal solid waste and sheep manure, and their availability to citrus plants were studied. The total content of metals in the soil (0-20 cm)was increased by the use of sludges and compost, but only the Ni content in the saturation extracts of soil was significantly increased. Total Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn were sequentially fractionated into water-soluble plus exchangeable, organically bound, carbonate-associated, and residual fractions. Most of the heavy metals were present in carbonate and residual fractions, although substantial amounts of water-soluble plus exchangeable Cd, and organically bound Cu and Ni were found. No significant increases in the metal contents in leaves and orange fruits were observed, with the exception of Pb in leaves. Several statistically significant correlations between metal content in plants, metal content in soil fractions, and chemical characteristics of soil were also found.

Notizen: Book reviewed in this article: Human impact on Erosion and Sedimentation By D. E. Walling & J.-L. Probst (editors).

Notizen: Book reviewed in this article: Soil erosion by water in Africa: Principles, Prediction and Protection By D. Nill, U. Schwertmann, U. Sabel-Koscella, M. Bernhard & J. Breuer.

Notizen: Abstract. To provide a practical aid to improving fertilizer practice a mechanistic model was developed that can be readily calibrated for widely different crops. Most of the inputs are easy to obtain and the others, the amounts of fixed soil-K and the velocity constants for fixation and release of soil-K, can be readily measured by a novel procedure which is described.The model calculates for each day the potential increase in plant weight and the increment in root length, from the current plant mass, its %K and pan evaporation. It calculates the maximum amount of K that could be transported through soil to the root surfaces. It modifies this potential uptake by taking account of the ‘feedback’ of plant K on root absorption to give the actual uptake and a new %K in the plant. It calculates the radii of the depletion zones around each root increment and the interchange between the solution, exchangeable and fixed-K in these zones and also in the undepleted regions of soil. Routines are included for the effects of weather on the various processes. Differences between species are accommodated by selecting one of three algorithms for root growth and by adjusting the values of two crop-K parameters that define the decline in a critical and a maximum possible %K with increase in plant mass per unit area.A simplified version of the model runs interactively on the Internet at:

Notizen: Abstract. The effect of rate and timing of autumn/winter straw incorporation on the immobilization of spring-applied N-fertilizer are studied. The immobilization of 15N-labelled fertilizer by straw was determined in pot trials with a sandy loam soil (Wick series) collected from two field experiments. In experiment 1, straw was incorporated at four different rates in the autumn; experiment 2 had a fixed rate of straw (7.5 t/ha) incorporated at monthly intervals from September to March. Immobilization in spring was not enhanced when only stubble was incorporated in autumn. However, autumn incorporation of 7.5 t/ha straw resulted in a significant increase in the immobilization of spring-applied N, equivalent to 10 kg/ha; when 15 t/ha straw was incorporated, immobilization increased to 18 kg/ha. The enhancement of immobilization, immediately following fertilizer application, was dependent on the extent of straw decomposition prior to N application. Thus immobilization was related to cumulative thermal time (day °C above 0°C; Tsum between the date of straw incorporation and fertilizer application). Straw which had been incorporated for Tsum 〉 1200 no longer caused appreciable immobilization of spring fertilizer.

Notizen: Book reviewed in this article: Erosion and sediment yield: global and regional perspectives Edited by D. E. Walling and B. W. Webb.

Notizen: Abstract. The restorative ability of herbaceous (Psophocarpus palustris, Pueraria phaseoloides) and woody (Leucaena leucocephala, Senna siamea, Acacia leptocarpa, Acacia auriculiformis) legume species and of natural regrowth was studied on an eroded and compacted Oxic Paleustalf in southwestern Nigeria. Compared to the control treatment that was continuously cropped for 15 years, four years of fallowing significantly improved test crop yields. However, fallowing with the above species did not substantially improve soil properties, particularly soil bulk density. A longer fallow period may be needed to amend soil physical conditions of this degraded Alfisol. Soil chemical properties were greatly improved following land clearing and plant biomass burning in 1993. However, the residual effect of burning on soil fertility was insignificant in the second cropping year. Among the fallow species, P. palustris and natural fallow showed the best residual effect on test crop performance. Despite the high biomass and nutrient yields of S. siamea and A. auriculiformis, test crop yields on these plots were low due to the border effects from the uncleared and fallowed subplots.

Notizen: Abstract. To study the influence of different vegetation species and plant properties on the generation of surface runoff and soil erosion in south east Spain, a series of rainfall simulation experiments was conducted on small (c. 1.5 m2) plots. These were carried out in October 1993 and May 1994 on two sites close to Murcia. Six vegetation types were studied, with some at different stages of maturity, giving a total of nine vegetation treatments and two bare soil treatments. Four replicates of each treatment were exposed to a rainstorm of 120 mm/h for 15 minutes. The results of the experiments show that there are few significant differences in the ability of the vegetation types studied to control runoff or soil erosion. Of the plant properties considered, only plant canopy cover showed a significant relationship with soil loss and runoff with the greatest reduction in soil loss taking place at canopy covers greater than 30%. The implications of this research are that future efforts should be directed at developing ecological successions and revegetation methods which promote a substantial and sustainable canopy cover.

Notizen: The calculation of purchasing power parities and quantity comparisons for a given year provides interesting information about the relative importance of countries. However, it is necessary to make these estimates annually in order to enable users to apply these parities for international comparison of annual data expressed in national currency. The paper deals with the problems related to merging spatial comparisons and temporal volume and price movements for the countries of the European Community. For these countries full information was collected in 1975 and in 1980, whereas in the intermediate years some price data were collected and price indices at a detailed level have also been collected. First the theoretical problems of consistency between the spatial results and temporal indices are discussed. Because no immediate consistency can be obtained, several methods are proposed to achieve consistency, by estimating one unique set of spatial and temporal indices. The available information for the period 1975-80 has been used in order to test the numerical differences between two sets of parities and price indices over time. Besides theoretical reasons for inconsistency, it is also necessary to take into account errors in the price observations or in the price indices. The results presented in the paper should be considered as provisional and further work will be undertaken to obtain better insights into the inconsistency between these sets of data.

Notizen: To know the size and development of the hidden or underground economy is important for policy making, mainly because the measures undertaken may be misdirected if they are based on biased official statistics. The hidden economy can be measured by considering indicators. The direct methods are based on voluntary surveys and on tax auditing and other compliance methods. The indirect estimation methods rely on the identification of residuals with respect to income and expenditures, as well as in the labor and money markets. The strengths and weaknesses of each of these measurement approaches are discussed and the resulting estimates of the size of the hidden economy are compared. A different approach to measurement is to look at the determinants leading to the existence and growth of the hidden economy. Finally, the method of “unobserved variables” allows the combination of the two approaches by simultaneously considering the determinants and indicators of the under- ground economy. The results show a considerable range of sizes for a given country and year. Though there is a broad range of size estimates, there is general agreement that the hidden economy's size has been growing for all countries over recent decades. Further progress in quantitative knowledge about the hidden economy requires the development of a theoretical model which analyses the interdependencies between the official private sector, the hidden economy, and the public sector.

Notizen: In the course of the nearly two decades since the revised SNA was developed, the role of pensions and insurance in the developed western economies has been significantly altered. The United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) is not fully consistent in its treatment of pension and insurance transactions. This paper examines whether, in view of the changed institutional context, a modification of the SNA treatment of this complex of flows would be desirable. It investigates the impact on household income and saving of adopting a somewhat more consistent transactor/transaction approach for all pension and insurance transactions. Four main topics are covered: (1) social security, (2) private pensions, (3) life insurance, and (4) casualty insurance. Each is considered in terms of the treatment of contributions, the treatment of benefits, and the handling of reserves and the income generated by them. The same sorts of problem arise in all four cases.

Notizen: Production maximization, together with an appropriate distribution of income and wealth, can no longer be considered as the exclusive objective of socio-economic policies. Economic and social life is accompanied by numerous hardships, constraints and damages which demand to be minimized. Combining these dual aims is not easy as no single model has yet been set up taking into account all these inter-relations. However, one may try to reduce the uncertainty about the statistical material that could be required for decision-making in this new context.

Notizen: This paper explores the imputed service price approach to the pricing of the services of consumer-owned-and-used durables in the construction of the consumer price index, using the services of owner-occupied housing as an illustration. A theoretical framework for analyzing this question is first developed. Certain practical problems are then discussed. The conceptual difficulty of constructing an appropriate rate of return on the basis of available data on interest rates and house prices, in the context of inflation, is explored. Two arguments are advanced that statistical agencies ought not to follow the imputed service price approach in pricing the services of owner-occupied dwellings and other consumer durables. On the one hand, nominal interest rates will, in any short period, reflect monetary policy and not any change in the money “rental” of owner-occupied houses. Second, movements in nominal interest rates will also reflect changes in the money price of pure consumption goods, as well as changes in the money price of houses. The argument is extended to other consumer durables and, in the limiting case, to monetary balances, and it is concluded that in all but trivial cases the application of the service price approach leads to price movements of little or no meaning.

Notizen: This paper uses a variety of assumptions to produce calculations of worldwide income distributions from recent international data compilations. The variable quality of the source materials in these compilations along with the arbitrariness in the assumptions required are emphasized. A number of working hypotheses for the worldwide income distribution are offered until data and methods improve. It is suggested the top 1 percent of world population may receive 10–15 percent of world income, the top 10 percent from 45–65 percent, and the bottom 20 percent from 1–4 percent. These figures seem more unequal than those for domestic distributions even for more inegalitarian countries.

Notizen: For estimates of the wealth distribution Canada depends on household surveys taken at 6–7 year intervals. The latest data from this source refer to household balance sheets in the spring of 1977. A comparison with 1970 shows that there is little change in the composition of wealth held by households but that inequality of the wealth distribution has been somewhat reduced. Wealth data by age of family head is presented in order to describe more fully the wealth distribution and composition in Canada.Weaknesses in the data are discussed as well as the difficulties of making appropriate adjustments to the data at the micro record level. For policy evaluation and formulation purposes the lack of comprehensive estimates inclusive of pension wealth as well as the small sample size (12,700 usable records) have been perceived as greater obstacles to utilizing the data than the underestimate in aggregate assets and debts which affects more the higher than the middle and lower ranges of the wealth distribution.

Notizen: The article refutes the contention that Brazil's development has not benefited the poor and that rapid growth has had a polarizing effect on the distribution of income. It uses the National Household Expenditure Survey of 1974–75 to try to quantify the extent of poverty and concludes that the incòme levels of the poor have been underestimated in the past. The evidence suggests also that occupational and regional variables are powerful determinants of income stratification. Wage rate statistics convey information about long-term trends in income. The article notes considerable increases in rural wages during the 1970s as well as wage improvements in the urban informal sector. Shifts in the structure of employment have probably been the most powerful cause of economic improvement in Brazil. The enormous absorption of rural-urban migrants occurred without a flooding of the lower income urban categories. Social indicators and statistics referring to ownership of household durable consumer goods corroborate income and labor market evidence to the effect that there has been considerable progress for the poor during the 1970s. The article reviews statistical evidence bearing on distribution. There is little doubt that the distribution of income in Brazil is very skewed. It is not possible, however, to come to conclusions about changes that might have occurred in the degree of inequality over time. Finally, the article includes data on the “distribution of education” and the “distribution of life expectancy” and notes improvement over time in both.This article takes advantage of the Brazilian population census of 1980 to bring up to date some of the statistical material that bears on the issues of poverty and income distribution. First, the article describes the overall context of Brazilian development since 1960. The second part analyzes the extent of poverty in the mid-1970s. The third part deals with trends in wages, employment and selected welfare indicators. The last section briefly summarizes the information relating to income distribution: what is the extent of skewedness and how has it evolved over time?

Notizen: Income redistribution studies on the macro–economic level have been undertaken in Denmark for the years 1938–39, 1949, 1955, and 1963. By use of national accounts figures and all other available statistics, it was on certain assumptions possible to distribute public sector income and expenditure by income groups.A quite different approach is used in a Danish redistribution study on the micro-economic level for 1971, which relies solely on the comprehensive data from the family budget survey for that year. Unfortunately this study only relates to employee households.This paper deals with the 1963 and 1971 studies. First it describes and discusses the differences in methodology between the two studies and indicates some ideas for future studies in this field in Denmark. In the following sections some main results of the two studies are given, briefly for the 1963 study and more comprehensively for the 1971 study. The studies show the great and growing strength of the policy of redistribution through public sector income and expenditure in Denmark.It is the opinion of the authors that the appearance of redistribution studies based on comprehensive family budget surveys makes for a substantial improvement of redistribution figures, and that the purely micro-level frame of reference makes it possible to interpret the results in a more satisfactory way than before. Furthermore, the appearance of detailed input-output based national accounts data should bring about further improvements in redistribution figures through better data on indirect taxes and subsidies as well as supporting data which are necessary to link the micro and macro levels in a consistent way.

Notizen: It is often discussed that inflation introduces a substantial, arbitrary and regressive redistribution of income and wealth under even mild inflation. But after a quarter century of experience with inflation in postwar Japan, very little is known about these costs of inflation on an empirical basis. Due to the complexity of the evaluation of the redistributional impact on Japan, the present paper analyzes the effects of inflation on individuals or groups as wage earners, debtors and creditors, taxpayers, and holders of real estate.The main results of the present investigation suggest that the Japanese inflation for 1955–75 did not seem to introduce much inequality in the income (flow) account in the economy, but that the inequality between households has appeared more in the wealth (stock) account, especially between the house-owner groups and non-house-owner groups. These observations are mainly derived from the following investigations; (i) the wage lag hypothesis about inflation, even if not wrong, does not seem acceptable when applied to the entire period (1955–75) as well as to each of the five sub-periods; (ii) there has been a substantial transfer of real purchasing power from households to non-financial corporations, and, to a lesser extent, to government entities in the debtor-creditor redistribution; (iii) among households, the most substantial redistribution takes place from the non-houseowners to houseowners with land, because of the huge amount of capital gains from the rapid increase in the price of real estate relative to the prices of other assets or the consumer price index, except for the last three years of rampaging inflation.

Notizen: Preliminary estimates of the total incomes system of accounts (TISA) are provided for 1959 and 1969. They extend conventional accounts to include all consumption services produced by government and households as well as by enterprises, but define household purchases of durable and semi-durable goods as investment. Acquisitions of capital throughout the economy, intangible as well as tangible, and not only in the business sector, are included in capital accumulation along with, for tangible capital, net revaluations, that is capital gains net of increases in the general price level. Imputations are offered for non market consumption and capital accumulation, most prominently in unpaid household work and education. Much of government output, particularly police services and defense, is recalculated as intermediate, along with expenses related to work, while media services, treated by the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as business purchases of intermediate product, enter into TISA consumption. Subsidies are included in the value of product, as are services of volunteers and imputations for the underpayment of military conscripts and of jurors. Separate accounts are offered for the national income and product, business, nonprofit institutions, government enterprises, government and households.The ratios of BEA to TISA Net National Product were 81.4 percent and 76.5 percent in 1959 and 1969, respectively. BEA national income was 74.1 percent of the corresponding TISA net national income in 1959 and 69.6 percent in 1969, reflecting a greater per annum rate of growth of TISA net national income, 7.49 percent, as against 6.82 percent for the corresponding BEA national income.BEA gross private domestic investment, restricted to business acquisitions of tangible capital at original cost, was estimated as only approximately 22 percent of comprehensive TISA gross domestic capital formation in 1959 and some 20 percent in 1969. The BEA net private domestic investment growth rate of 7.32 percent per annum from 1959 to 1969 may be compared with a TISA net domestic capital formation growth rate of 9.42 percent.

Notizen: The paper is concerned with the concept, definition and measurement of a service. Although services are often dismissed as immaterial goods, they are not special kinds of goods and belong in a quite different logical category from goods. The search for appropriate units of quantity in which to measure services is not an idle metaphysical pursuit. Without quantity units there can be no prices, and most economic theory becomes irrelevant. Indeed, large parts of economic theory may be irrelevant to the analysis of services anyway, precisely because they are not goods which can be exchanged among economic units. Services are as important as goods in modern developed economies and they need to be identified and quantified properly if the measurement of economic growth and inflation is to have any meaning for the economy as a whole. The concept of a service is explained in some detail in the paper, and various ways in which services can be classified for purposes of economic analysis are elaborated. The distinction between private and public goods, or rather between private and collective services, is re-examined in the light of the general concept of a service proposed in the paper. Externalities are shown to be simply special kinds of services.

Notizen: This article examines several hypotheses concerning the stochastic nature of year to year variations in individual incomes in light of newly available microdata on individual earnings. In particular, the models of Solow (1951), Champernowne (1953), and Rutherford (1955) are examined in some detail, and their predictions as to changes to be expected in the distribution of individual incomes are tested. The author concludes that the distributions arrived at using these models are not very similar either to each other or to the actual distribution of earnings. Thus, he believes that as an “explanation” of earnings dynamics stochastic process models are unsatisfactory. He further criticizes these models on the grounds that they foster a bias toward the belief in the inevitability, and perhaps desirability, of the current distribution of earnings.

Notizen: This paper investigates the relation between schooling and earnings across and within occupations. Across occupations earnings are positively related to mean education. Within occupations the variance in schooling levels is generally substantial, but within two thirds of the occupations no relation between schooling and earnings is observed, while in the remaining third the pattern of sensitivity varies considerably. The sensitivity of earnings to education is greater for white males than white females and substantially greater for whites than blacks. When the white sample is divided into age cohorts, the degree of sensitivity of earnings to schooling is found to be greater for younger cohorts than older ones, except for the youngest cohort in 1970. In the conclusion, a structural interpretation of the distribution of earnings is proposed to account for the findings.

Notizen: The historical background and present methodology used in compiling the U.K. official estimates of the stock of fixed capital are described. Mention is made of the possibility that with the development of commercial accounting direct estimates of capital stock may be derived from enterprise accounts at some future time. For the present, however, an indirect perpetual inventory approach is followed. Some of the deficiencies of the present estimates are discussed including the effects of possible biases in the life-length assumptions, price indices and the treatment of secondhand assets. Estimates of gross capital stock are given analysed by industry group of ownership and by type of asset.Some conceptual issues are discussed in relation to user requirements, including the distinction between the stock of capital and the flow of services from it.The authors conclude that little can be done to improve the perpetual inventory estimate of fixed capital in the U.K. without devoting more resources to the collection and analysis of new information, particularly on the service lives of fixed assets, the extent of leasing and the transfer of assets between industries.

Notizen: This paper is concerned with the theoretical problems of devising indexes of quality change and with some of the practical problems of constructing such indexes from market data, relating these to the various attempts to construct such indexes in the past. The general conclusion is that, while quality is inherently ordinal, there are three different indexes which might be taken as “measures” of quality change. If changes are sufficiently small, the values of all three indexes will coincide and then, only, can we consider any one of them to be an unambiguous measure of the change.

Notizen: This paper assesses the effects of including wealth and the variability of income on the incidence of poverty and the degree of income inequality in Israel. A special survey, which includes data on the wealth and income of a national sample of Israeli families in 1963–64 and 1964–65, allows us to go beyond measures based on current income alone.The first section reviews earlier studies of poverty in Israel. The next section looks at poverty and inequality in terms of current income, current wealth, and a combined measure of income and wealth. The combined measure is the Hansen-Weisbrod measure (HW), which equals income plus the annuity value of wealth, assuming all wealth is just consumed at the time of death. It is interesting that, in spite of the much higher wealth inequality than income inequality, the HW measure was slightly more equally distributed than income. This result occurred because the annuity component made up a low share of the total HW measure and the correlation between income and wealth was well under 1. Although overall inequality and poverty were similar for income and HW measures, the incidence of poverty by subgroup depended on the measure used.The final section presents a dynamic view of poverty and inequality. Year-to-year changes in poverty were substantial. Because of the use of a relative poverty concept and the rise in real incomes, the real income poverty line rose by 15 percent between 1963 and 1964. Still, of those in income poverty in 1963, 37 percent managed to escape poverty in 1964. The paper shows how the degree to which poverty was stable or transitory varied substantially by age and country of origin.

Notizen: This paper outlines a conceptual basis for the measurement and analysis of levels of welfare. It reflects the thinking that has been ongoing in the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study. Three alternative approaches to the measurement of welfare for the purpose of ranking households are surveyed, and the data requirements and analytical techniques for each highlighted. Various issues are discussed regarding the causal analysis of welfare levels and the changes in them. It is argued that the consideration of several dynamic aspects of welfare is significant for the identification of the poor and the potentially poor and for more accurate measurement of levels of living between socioeconomic groups.

Notizen: At the first residential conference of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which was held at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, in September 1983, Mr Stewart Bates, QC, spoke on the implications of the decision of the House of Lords in the case of W. T. Ramsay Ltd v CIR. A report of those proceedings was held over until the decision of the House of Lords in the case of Furniss, v Dawson was known. The following report is based upon Mr Bates' address and the comments of Mr Stephen Oliver, QC, Mr John Avery Jones and Mr Adrian Shipwright who spoke at a lunchtime seminar convened by the IFS on 9 March 1984 to consider the decision in Furniss v Dawson. This report does not reflect the opinions of the IFS, which has no corporate views.

Notizen: The UK government recently introduced legislation to treat the qualifying distribution on a repurchase of shares in the same way as ‘foreign income dividends’. This paper examines and criticises this reform from two perspectives. First, there is no underlying rationale for such an approach. Second, the legislation moves the tax system away from simplification. A better approach would have been to remove the advance corporation tax (ACT) charge on a repurchase. JEL classification: H25, K34.

Notizen: This paper examines the impact of the UK housing benefit system on the financial returns to employment of people in local authority or Housing Association accommodation. It outlines the current structure of housing benefit and examines its effects on the returns to employment using data from the Family Expenditure Survey. It analyses the consequences of a number of reforms to the current system — lowering social rents, increasing the levels of housing benefit received in work and restricting the amount of rent covered by housing benefit payments. This analysis highlights the trade-offs involved in various strategies available for restructuring the present system. JEL classification: H3, H4, J3.

Notizen: Abstract. The effect of superficial liming of acidic forest soils on CO2 and N2O emissions and CH4 uptake was investigated with closed chambers in two deciduous and two spruce forests, by weekly to biweekly measurements over at least one year. The flux rates of untreated areas varied between 1.94 and 4.38 t CO2-C/ha per y, 0.28 and 2.15 kg/N2O-N/ha per y and between 0.15 and 1.06 kg CH4-C/ha per y. Liming had no clear effect on CO2 emissions which may change in the long-term with decreasing root turnover and increasing C-mineralization. Apart from one exception, liming resulted in a reduction of N2O emissions by 9 to 62% and in an increase of CH4 uptake by 26 to 580%. The variability in N2O emissions between the forest sites could not be explained. In contrast, the variability of annual CH4 uptake rates could be explained by N content (r2= 0.82), C content (r2= 0.77), bulk density (r2= 60), pore space (r2= 0.59) and pH (r2= 0.40) of mineral soil at a depth of 0 to 10 cm, and by the quantity of material in the organic layer (r2= 0.66). Experiments with undisturbed columns of the same soils showed that between 1 and 73% of the total N2O emissions came from the organic layer. However, atmospheric CH4 was not oxidized in this layer, which represents a diffusion barrier for atmospheric CH4. When this barrier was removed, CH4 uptake by the mineral soil increased by 25 to 171%. These results suggest that liming of acidic forest soils causes a reduction of the greenhouse gases N2O and CH4 in the atmosphere, due to changes in the chemical, biological, and physical condition of the soils.

Notizen: Abstract. Agricultural soils, having been depleted of much of their native carbon stocks, have a significant CO2 sink capacity. Global estimates of this sink capacity are in the order of 20-30 Pg C over the next 50-100 years. Management practices to build up soil C must increase the input of organic matter to soil and/or decrease soil organic matter decomposition rates. The most appropriate management practices to increase soil C vary regionally, dependent on both environmental and socioeconomic factors.In temperate regions, key strategies involve increasing cropping frequency and reducing bare fallow, increasing the use of perennial forages (including N-fixing species) in crop rotations, retaining crop residues and reducing or eliminating tillage (i.e. no-till). In North America and Europe, conversion of marginal arable land to permanent perennial vegetation, to protect fragile soils and landscapes and/or reduce agricultural surpluses, provides additional opportunities for C sequestration.In the tropics, increasing C inputs to soil through improving the fertility and productivity of cropland and pastures is essential. In extensive systems with vegetated fallow periods (e.g. shifting cultivation), planted fallows and cover crops can increase C levels over the cropping cycle. Use of no-till, green manures and agroforestry are other beneficial practices. Overall, improving the productivity and sustainability of existing agricultural lands is crucial to help reduce the rate of new land clearing, from which large amounts of CO2 from biomass and soil are emitted to the atmosphere.Some regional analyses of soil C sequestration and sequestration potential have been performed, mainly for temperate industrialized countries. More are needed, especially for the tropics, to capture region-specific interactions between climate, soil and management resources that are lost in global level assessments.By itself, C sequestration in agricultural soils can make only modest contributions (e.g. 3-6% of total fossil C emissions) to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. However, effective mitigation policies will not be based on any single ‘magic bullet’ solutions, but rather on many modest reductions which are economically efficient and which confer additional benefits to society. In this context, soil C sequestration is a significant mitigation option. Additional advantages of pursuing strategies to increase soil C are the added benefits of improved soil quality for improving agricultural productivity and sustainability.

Notizen: Abstract. Field measurement of landfill methane (CH4) emissions indicates natural variability spanning more than seven orders of magnitude, from less than 0.0004 to more than 4000 g/m2 per day. This wide range reflects net emissions resulting from production (methanogenesis), consumption (methanotrophic oxidation), and gaseous transport processes. The determination of an ‘average’ emission rate for a given field site requires sampling designs and statistical techniques which consider spatial and temporal variability. Moreover, particularly at sites with pumped gas recovery systems, it is possible for methanotrophic microorganisms in aerated cover soils to oxidize all of the CH4 from landfill sources below and, additionally, to oxidize CH4 diffusing into cover soils from atmospheric sources above. In such cases, a reversed soil gas concentration gradient is observed in shallow cover soils, indicating bidirectional diffusional transport to the depth of optimum CH4 oxidation. Rates of landfill CH4 oxidation from field and laboratory incubation studies range up to 166 g/m2 per day, among the highest for any natural setting, providing an effective natural control on net emissions. It has been shown that methanotrophs in landfill soils can adapt rapidly to elevated CH4 concentrations with increased rates of CH4 oxidation related to depth of oxygen penetration, soil moisture, and the nutrient status of the soil.Estimates of worldwide landfill CH4 emissions to the atmosphere have ranged from 9 to 70 Tg/y, differing mainly in assumed CH4 yields from estimated quantities of landfilled refuse. At highly controlled landfill sites in developed countries, landfill CH4 is often collected via vertical wells or horizontal collectors. Recovery of landfill CH4 through engineered systems can provide both environmental and energy benefits by mitigating subsurface migration, reducing surface emissions, and providing an alternative energy resource for industrial boiler use, on-site electrical generation, or upgrading to a substitute natural gas. Manipulation of landfill cover soils to maximize their oxidation potential could provide a complementary strategy for controlling CH4 emissions, particularly at older sites where the CH4 concentration in landfill gas is too low for energy recovery or flaring. For the future, it is necessary to better quantify net emissions relative to rates of CH4 production, oxidation, and transport. Field measurements, manipulative studies, and model development are currently underway at various spatial scales in several countries

Notizen: Book Reviewed in this article: Phosphorus loss from soil to water: Edited by H. Tunney, O. T. Carton, P. C.

Notizen: Abstract. Variously timed sub-optimal irrigation strategies were applied to sugarbeet grown on a light soil (loamy sand or sandy loam) over four seasons (1991 to 1994) to investigate the effect on crop growth and nitrate leaching risk. Data from the two dry seasons, (1991 and 1994) are reported here. In the driest year (1991) soil mineral N levels after autumn harvest were negatively related to crop water use (P 〈 0.05). In this season, there was little drainage from the soil profile, and full irrigation reduced residual soil N by 31 kg N/ha (0-90 cm) compared with the unirrigated treatment (79 kg N/ha). The potential for N leaching during the ensuing winter was consequently more than halved. In 1991 and 1994 there was a strong positive linear relationship between dry matter yield, N uptake and water use, but a negative relationship between plant N concentration and water use. These relationships were a function of the severity and not the timing of drought. The additional N uptake associated with increased irrigation and crop water use was biased towards a large concentration in the aboveground crop (tops), which are normally returned to the soil. The C:N ratio of sugarbeet tops was affected by crop water supply with droughted crops having lower values. This would also influence N release and subsequent leaching risk. However, the effects of drought on N leaching risk were relatively small when compared with other root crops such as potatoes.

Notizen: Abstract. The effects of tree crops on the soil physical properties of former agricultural land were compared with those of ley in a rotation with cereals on adjacent sites. Five sites in southern Sweden were investigated focussing on soil water retention characteristics, dry bulk density, macroporosity and saturated hydraulic conductivity. Three of the sites were on light textured soils and two on clay soils. The tree crops were 30 to 35-year-old hybrid aspen, Populus deltoides, and silver birch, Betula pendula, and the ley crops were one to five years old.The light-textured soils under tree crops showed bimodal pore size distributions in the macropore region, whereas under ley crops they showed unimodal distributions. Dry bulk densities were generally smaller and the macroporosities larger under tree crops compared with leyicereal crops. Saturated hydraulic conductivities tended to be larger under tree crops. Slopes of the linear regression lines between saturated hydraulic conductivity and each of the parameters dry bulk density, porosity and macroporosity were steeper in the soil under agricultural crops than under tree crops.Observed differences in physical properties were considered to be an effect of land use, which had brought about changes in aggregate stability, pore size distribution and pore continuity.

Notizen: Abstract. Phosphorus concentrations and outputs have been compared and contrasted in six small agricultural catchments in the west and northeast of Scotland. The loss of P from soils to stream waters was more from catchments with intensive dairy cattle farming in the west than from the less intensively stocked/arable catchments in the northeast, with striking differences being seen between the two regions. In the northeast, intensive animal farming caused less P loss in drainage water than arable management.Larger mean annual concentrations were seen in the west (0.076-0.142 mg PO4-P/l as molybdate-reactive phosphate–MRP) compared with the northeast (0.012-0.025 mg PO4-P/l), a feature caused by the combination of limited P-retention in the western Gleysols and smaller inputs to the largely-podzolic northeastern catchments. Stream concentrations were decreased by dilution during winter storm flows and increased during summer baseflow and at the beginning of soil rewetting in autumn.

Notizen: Book Reviewed in this article: Freshwater Contamination By B. Webb (editor).