Diss Me, Baby!: July 2009 Archives

Dr Linus Nyiwul's dissertation defense was conducted almost exclusively in the language of math, with very little generic English explanation for the non-resource management layperson. So I cannot write very much about it, except that it was obvious that his faculty members are excited about the potential of this framework Dr Nyiwul has created for government regulators to exploit market mechanisms by leveraging emissions standards against the needs of firms to attract investors.

There are a couple of premises that Dr Nyiwul builds upon, including a perception that investors would prefer to put their money into "green" companies, and evidence that companies who improve their own environmental management systems experience increases in stock value (e.g., Feldman 1996). Dr Nyiwul described a whole lot of complicated stuff that needs to be properly balanced:

• setting a standard,
  
• needing to monitor to ensure companies are meeting the standard,
  
• keeping the cost of monitoring low enough to be reasonable (for government) while
  
• making the threat of monitoring real enough that companies prefer to comply rather than risk being caught and having to pay the penalty.
  

Somehow all those things get crunched through some equations that calculate

1. "marginal damage" (whatever this means! it apparently refers wholistically to "society") and
2. monitoring costs (to the government) and
3. costs of compliance (for the firms)

.... now, where it gets real interesting is when the government establishes two emissions standards: a regular standard (the minimum to be deemed "in compliance" and avoid penalties) and an overcompliance standard - which would earn a special certification proving uber-greenness (or something en route to such glorified status). There is pilot project currently underway, the National Environmental Performance Track (NEPT), which has weaknesses but whose results - plugged into Dr Nyiwul's equations - demonstrates that TWO STANDARDS IS GOOD POLICY! Not to mention that firms which earn the overcompliance certification have a special marketing asset to appeal to investors. (They have to meet the minimum "regular" standard first, then apply and demonstrate accomplishment of the overcompliance standard.)

There was some fancy problem-framing, as Linus described one finding, saying that it came about in one way if you set the problem up this way, and comes about in another way if you set the problem up that way. (I love the fact that subjectivity can be found in math!) There are some issues with firms getting to self-report emissions (apparently without verification, unless the regulator goes to conduct the actual monitoring?) And there was quite a discussion about looking at the problem endogamously: with free entry into and out of the market. And output and size effects really matter (but cannot be reversed) in terms of the direct and indirect effects of enforcement costs. Yea, I don't really know what those sentences mean in "real" economic terms, but there may be other things in play at times which can lead to inconclusive results.

but.... drumroll please! Dr Linus Nyiwul concludes, and his faculty agree:

The challenges that issue forth from Dr Nyiwul's work include (in no particular order):

1. identifying which are the important uncertainties (given that anything could be uncertain except for whatever is under direct regulatory monitoring)


2. defining clearly what "overcompliance" means (if "compliance" means paying the right tax, i.e., reducing emissions in order to minimize tax.... does overcompliance move a firm into a "credit" situation?)


3. how to extend the framework from a single firm to an industry


4. identifying how the framework as it is fits within known policy issues and concerns, and


5. extending the frame beyond emissions to look at a lot of other policy issues.

For her final oral examination for a Ph.D in Resource Economics, Siny Joseph presented an analysis of Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for seafood. I echo the words of the external member of her committee, who said,


Dr Siny Joseph's field is I.O. Economics - a term that I had to Google after the defense! My complete ignorance of the jargon in this field should alert you to the high probability that I have misconstrued or misunderstood major elements of her work. I will do my best to summarize and hope for correcting comments as needed.

Extrapolating from the wikipedia entry and my limited exposure to other disciplines, Industrial Organization explores the economic interaction between two dynamic forces:

1. the strategic behavior of firms (which I believe is the purview of my friends specializing in strategic management) and
2. the structures of markets (statistical analysis like I've never seen!)

Given my lowest-score-in-the-cohort competence in all things math, most of the substance of Siny's analysis and discussion with her Committee Members occurred in a language I cannot even pretend to understand: replete with "k-bars," and K's with subscript L's and H's, "thetas" and fixed parameter values composing profit maximization formulas... Go grrl go! Her findings, however, were described in comprehensible English - and they are fascinating.

Seventy percent of seafood purchased by consumers in the U.S. is imported; of these imports, 80% comes from less developed countries. COOL (Country of Origin Labeling) is legislation introduced in the 2002 Farm Bill, and implemented with seafood in 2005, with the idea that food quality and food safety are linked with where the food originates. Coincidentally, COOL is being extended to more foods this year with continuing debate over exemptions and on-going criticism of delays, making Dr Joseph's research findings immediately relevant. Regarding seafood, huge sectors are exempt: restaurants and other food service providers, specifically, and products deemed to be "processed." In general, then, COOL applies to the seafood you buy in a grocery store or market to cook at home.

It seems the first major task in an I.O. economic analysis is to define the boundary between what is included and what is excluded from the study. Siny focused on the US market, presumably because the boundaries could be readily established. (In a case study on shrimp, she explained the distinction between a "covered" and "uncovered" market, explaining she'd had to go with the former - specifically an undifferentiated market - because the mathematical expressions for the latter were unmanageable. Basically (I think!) this means using idealized equations rather than ones more representative of real life.) Generally, Americans will assume that seafood of domestic origin is of higher quality than seafood of foreign origin, and consumers are most willing to pay the costs of labeling during and immediately after food scares - so that they (we, smile) can make (at least) this basic differentiation.

But (I kept thinking to myself) - labeling after a scare doesn't do much to protect consumers during the scare and of course has no contribution to risk prevention whatsoever. So why isn't labeling just done, as a matter of business habit? "Because," Dr Joseph explained, "firms can masquerade low quality seafood as high quality when consumers don't have all the information, and that's where the profit comes from." She and her committee members debated nuances of the statistical measurements, recommending and justifying choices of particular statistical tools, but did not question Siny's basic finding that (now, with only three years of info available) the greatest profit comes under what's called "voluntary COOL" (which does occur with some seafood products), followed by partial implementation of COOL (the status quo), and drops the lowest under "total COOL" - an ideal she recommends because "real consumption is greatest when there is full implementation of COOL."

The rub for me during the whole presentation is the use of this indicator called WTP: Willingness to Pay. What I'd like to see is a complementary WTP2 (squared) equation: Willingness to Profit. Somehow the whole debate seems framed with WTP2 as an unquestionable given - companies have the inalienable right to maximize profit and consumers have to pay for safety. It just strikes me as wrong; at least out-of-balance. Firms can afford to pay much more than any individual can! Anyway, Siny's Committee engaged vigorously with her findings: "I like the story you're trying to tell," said a professor by speakerphone, wondering about pursuing the angle of diversion, and all of them wondering about policy recommendations based on these findings.

There was a measure of "Total Welfare" that supposedly mixes the best consumer outcome with the best business outcome.... and Dr Joseph did present some evidence that companies would label voluntarily under certain/specific conditions (of known/demonstrated consumer demand?), but for the most part companies are trying to duck this completely. For instance, shrimp traders are required to label unprocessed shrimp, so they would rather do something that qualifies as "processing" in order to avoid labeling. Doesn't it cost to do that, too? Honest - I get very confused! Why is one type of cost preferable to another? I think someone needs to institute an equation such that consumer WTP cannot exceed 1/2 the square root of the actual incurred cost apportioned over the entire volume in order to somehow link a decrease in the firm's WTP2 (willingness to profit) with the increase consumers are willing to pay. (Which is probably why I'm not an economist.)

Nonetheless, even if the current data is not totally amenable to a single clear and concise argumentative point, I definitely agree with Siny's committee member: "I like your plan of attack." I want to be able to argue convincingly that the government (through legislation) should be on the consumer's side - not only in the grocery store, but I would also like to be able to confirm the quality of seafood purchased in restaurants.

Keep it up, Dr Siny Joseph!

Sven thought it appropriate to frame our first meeting with a bio-fact he'd just learned from the local dinosaur museum. I'm not a biologist, so I don't know the life chances of tadpoles, but I certainly hope the light of our collaboration isn't so bright that we get eaten by bats!

Things happen.
Things happen and we make up their reasons.

We never know if others perceive phenomena in the same way that we do; all we have are references points of presence, perception, and language. Today, gazing upon the Saw Mill River, I wondered if I hadn't been alone, if someone was with me, would they have been as immersed in the gentle rumble of these quick shallow rapids as I was? And what of previous shared experiences - do we remember them similarly? If we both/all recall the event, are the same or different features highlighted in memory? How did we interpret it at the time, and has that interpretation become more fixed and rigid, or has it softened, becoming more fluid with the expanded lens of hindsight?

At any junction history stretches back, a biographical momentum that imbues each person with impetus for being in the present moment of shared spacetime. Until the moment of meeting, each person is on an independent course - a course shaped by previous relationships and experiences but as yet unaffected by the now-unfolding encounter. What will come from contact is unpredictable, yet not beyond the ken of knowledge, intuition, and intention. What do we want to result from mutual exposure, from the mixing of our life trajectories?

Upon return to Amherst I stumbled into another beginning - a friend's dream project, well underway. Could these two beginnings, initiated so close in time albeit on opposite sides of the Atlantic, complement each other? And if they could, what would be my role? I've been thinking (metaphorically, as I do) that I want to be part of a pile supporting bridges over deep water. I'm not "a" bridge, myself, and the support I can offer is insufficient of itself to keep any bridge aloft and protected from scour. But, perhaps, from the relative stability of my own perch . . . this web of inter-relations connecting mentors, colleagues, friends, professional contacts . . .

and meanwhile, as always, the river flows on.

Re-reading this entry, "no mother tongue" (inspired by yesterday's thrilling conversation with Rhona and Katya, grin) what re-jumps out at me, post-fieldwork, is "how language makes human interrelations visible."

Yes. That is what my dissertation will strive to show. From the basis of choices that Members of the European Parliament make to use or not use the simultaneous interpreters (or, to minimize and under-utilize the system of simultaneous interpretation instead of embracing and maximizing its culture-creating potentials) one can describe the current structural/power relations. From a clear picture of 'here-and-now,' and the judicious use of institutional and cultural theories, I suggest one can also project the continuing or resultant outcomes of these power relations into the future.

But - and here is where I continue to experiment with action research - if I spell out the projection, then I contribute to its manifestation. Instead of giving more power to an already established momentum of what seems pre-determined, I aim to present the logic of language choice with a scattering of openings that invite readers (as interlocutors) to choose among alternatives. Rather than writing in such a way that interlocutors are compelled by the (presumed!) power of my voice to accept/resist or otherwise engage only with a single, central, fixed point of argumentation, a variety of modes and unfoldings of communicative interaction should not only be possible, but actually occur.

Then we enter dialogue, and have a chance to reconfigure discourse.

Forty years ago, my dad embarrassed me by stopping on a winding highway in the Colorado Rockies and waving down other drivers asking if they wanted to watch the moon launch. I was six years old. We were on the annual summer camping trip. Dad had had the foresight to load up our black-and-white portable tv with a powercord to the cigarette lighter, and he had kept an eye on the time. Not too many cars passed by, and none took up his offer. My brother and I understood that he was excited, but the significance of watching that grainy image of a rocket launching into space was beyond us at the time. Ever since, I rarely remember the event without tears - my own bit of vicarious spaceflight, an historic event witnessed by one of the largest global television audiences at that time. I do not recall watching the moon landing (although we probably did), it must have been under more ordinary circumstances and thus did not imprint as deep.

The photos from The Big Picture's Remembering Apollo 11 entry capture the glory as well as the sheer hard labor. One of the experiments (photo 29) has functioned ever since, demonstrating that the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of 2.5 inches/year. (How does this influence, I wonder, the tidal flow of rock that the folks at CERN need to track?) A friend pays tribute to Neil Armstrong's expression after the moonwalk (#24), a man who kept his cool "in situations that would have most of us soiling our pants -- this incredibly brave, stoic man -- is photographed by Buzz Aldrin with an incredulous, half-smile, his eyes brimming with tears after having just friggin walked on the surface of the friggin Moon."

Stephen Hawking writes,

"Sending humans to the moon...changed the future of the human race in ways that we don't yet understand and may have determined whether we have any future at all."

I'm partial to the views of Earth. If only they were enough to keep us mindful of the very narrow conditions that sustain our atmosphere. Humanity is like the population of a spacecraft, only not everything is mechanized according to our abilities for control. In #35, Michael Collins describes the three billion human inhabitants of earth, two explorers in the Eagle, and one moon captured by chance. Now, we have still one moon, and there are plenty of explorers - but adventures of this type seem more rare. Meanwhile the population on earth has more than doubled. We have food and fuel issues that require massive infrastructural adjustments. Unlike a NASA spaceship, there's no dedicated team working collaboratively to secure the future of our hardy planet. Tough as she is, there are vulnerabilities that need to be addressed in order to continue supporting a viable human population. Hawking argues that we need a more aggressive space exploration program to inspire more young people to enter the sciences, and that we need to be thinking in terms of centuries: 200-500 years to find Goldilocks Zones in star systems only thirty light years away.

The Goldilocks Zone refers to the conditions necessary for a planet to have surface water. Gilese 581c was discovered just two years ago, only 20.5 light years away. The thing is, while technology probably can get us there eventually, we've somehow got to keep this planet going at least as long as that takes! We now have the group communication tools to make incredible collaborations possible. Watch this ten minute video from Clay Shirky, an expert on internet communication technologies: UsNow: Part 2 of 7.