Suchergebnisse

The aim of this paper is to quantify the relative importance of motivations based on warm-glow, social and moral norms and cost of time used recycling on household recycling efforts. We also test for crowding-out of intrinsic motivations when recycling is perceived as mandatory. We find that the most important variable increasing household recycling efforts is agreeing that recycling is a pleasant activity in itself, which may be interpreted as a warm-glow effect. The most important variable reducing household recycling is the opportunity cost of time spent recycling. We find no evidence of crowding-out of intrinsic motivation when recycling is perceived as mandatory. On the contrary, we find that governmental legislation increases household recycling efforts on most materials.

In conducting economic policy, governments generally face conflicts in various objectives, e.g. between efficiency and equity. In Norway, one objective of energy politics has been to reduce electricity consumption, and several tax increases have been proposed. Whether this objective may be in conflict with objectives of efficiency and equity is the focus in this paper. We discuss the effects on household behaviour of three different electricity tax schemes, one proportional and two non-linear. For each household we estimate the reduction in household electricity consumption. As measures of distributional effects and efficiency effects we estimate compensating variation and excess tax burden from the tax schemes. We find that the non-linear tax scheme targeting high electricity consumption is most preferred in order to reduce consumption and least preferred concerning the objective of minimizing excess tax burden. When considering distributional effects, the ranking of tax schemes depends on the weight placed on different household groups.

BACKGROUND: Termination of acute inflammation is an active process orchestrated by lipid mediators (LM) derived from polyunsaturated fatty acids, referred to as specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPM). These mediators also provide novel therapeutic opportunities for treating inflammatory disease. However, the regulation of these molecules following acute myocardial infarction (MI) remains of interest. METHODS: In this prospective observational study we aimed to profile plasma levels of SPMs in ST-elevation MI (STEMI) patients during the first week following MI. Plasma LM concentrations were measured in patients with STEMI (n = 15) at three time points and compared with stable coronary artery disease (CAD; n = 10) and healthy controls (n = 10). FINDINGS: Our main findings were: (i) Immediately after onset of MI and before peak troponin T levels, STEMI patients had markedly increased levels of SPMs as compared with healthy controls and stable CAD patients, with levels of these mediators declining during follow-up. (ii) The increase in SPMs primarily reflected an increase in docosapentaenoic acid- and docosahexaenoic acid-derived protectins. (iii) Several individual protectins were correlated with the rapid increase in neutrophil counts, but not with CRP. (iv) A shift in 5-LOX activity from the leukotriene B(4) pathway to the pro-resolving RvTs was observed. INTERPRETATION: The temporal regulation of SPMs indicates that resolution mechanisms are activated early during STEMI as part of an endogenous mechanism to initiate repair. Thus strategies to boost the activity and/or efficacy of these endogenous mechanisms may represent novel therapeutic opportunities for treatment of patients with MI. FUND: This work was supported by grants from the South-Eastern Norwegian regional health authority, the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society, and the Barts Charity.