UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item ESSAYS ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT IN INDIA(2013) Malik, Kabir; Cropper, Maureen; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Expanding electricity generation is driving economic activity in the developing world. Increasing energy demand, largely met through the combustion of coal and natural gas, poses significant trade-offs between development objectives and environmental well-being. In this dissertation I examine the Indian electricity sector. Chapter 1 studies the impact of regulatory changes affecting state-owned electricity utilities on the efficiency of coal-fired power plants. The results indicate that the unbundling of generation companies from state-owned utilities improved operating reliability at coal-fired power plants. The improvements were, however, restricted to states that restructured their electricity utilities prior to the Electricity Act of 2003. The results also show that the reforms did not result in an improvement in thermal efficiency or capital utilization at these plants. Chapter 2 estimates the health impacts from PM2.5, SO2 and NOx emissions from coal-fired plants in India. I derive estimates of the total premature mortality impact from each plant in my sample associated with each of the three pollutants. I find that the majority of the impact, about 70%, is due to SO2 emissions--a pollutant currently unregulated in India due to the low sulfur content of Indian coal. I also conduct a cost benefit analysis of two pollution control options currently available in India--coal washing and the installation of an flue-gas desulfurization unit (FGD). The results from the case study show that both options pass the cost-benefit test using reasonable estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) for India. Chapter 3 more thoroughly examines the benefits and costs of FGD retrofit at coal-fired power plants in India. Using emissions estimates and output from a medium-range Lagrangian puff (atmospheric) model I estimate the net benefits of FGD installation for a sample of power plants. The results show that a substantial proportion of power plants pass the cost-benefit test for an FGD installation using reasonable estimates of the VSL for India. The results indicate a substantial scope for FGD installation to control SO2 emissions in the Indian power sector and suggest that it should be considered as a viable option for pollution control policy.Item THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF TELEVISION NEWS AT A TIME OF DEREGULATION: A CASE STUDY OF PRACTITIONERS IN THREE MAJOR MARKETS.(2013) Swift, Kevin Patrick; Beasley, Maurine H.; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Broadcast news has undergone monumental changes since 1980. Longstanding rules regarding ownership and practices began to be loosened at this time, forever changing the practice of local broadcast television news. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 stimulated groundbreaking changes as rules of ownership were significantly relaxed. The result was a buying frenzy of television stations by major corporations in some places where small group and local ownership once dominated. The way broadcast news operated was changed dramatically in the years following these changes in policy. The purpose of this research was to gain qualitative knowledge regarding the effects of changes in FCC deregulation policy on practitioners of local broadcast television news during a time of great technological change and audience fragmentation. I examined what effects took place as a result of expanded corporate ownership and policies during this time of an already shifting landscape. To complete this research, which was conducted from 2007 to 2009, broadcast news professionals who had been in the business a minimum of fifteen years were interviewed. I interviewed a total of ten news professionals in three separate large broadcast markets, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland. What I found was that broadcasters felt they had been affected negatively by the changes and were unhappy about the state of the broadcast news business. Practitioners said they were doing more with less, supervising inexperienced help, struggling with unstable work routines and working in newsrooms where morale was at an all-time low. Many experienced reporters were being told to learn how to shoot and edit their own video or quit. The practitioners also described a split in philosophy with ownership. Negative changes, said many of the practitioners, were partially the result of expanded corporate ownership, which was allowed by deregulation. While deregulation did not dictate how news should be produced it was mentioned repeatedly as one of the factors that paved the way for a period of major change in the broadcast news landscape. Other factors, such as rapidly changing technology, internet expansion and an economic downturn were also mentioned among the many changes that practitioners said they had experienced. During the time of a shifting media landscape broadcast deregulation allowed expansion of media ownership which resulted in further changes that affected practitioners. This case study gave a voice to a sample of those practitioners and allowed them to explain the challenges it meant for them as professionals.Item Dream Deregulated: The Politics of U.S. Housing Finance, 1968-1985(2013) Henderson, Robert; Freund, David M.P.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Beginning in the late 1970s, policymakers enacted a series of legislative and regulatory changes that, by 1985, combined to dismantle the New Deal-era system of housing finance. These policy changes fundamentally restructured the way that Americans accessed credit for homeownership from primarily borrowing via long-term, fixed-rate mortgages from local, federally insured S&Ls that collected deposits at a regulated cost, to increasingly borrowing through adjustable-rate mortgages issued by unregulated brokers who then sold those mortgages to investors in a secondary market, typically through an intermediary such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. "Dream Deregulated" argues that this transformation of housing finance undermined the progressive intent of the open housing and community reinvestment initiatives of the 1960s and 1970s by making housing credit less stable for all borrowers, relative to the New Deal system, and by largely disconnecting housing finance from the institutional structure that the civil rights initiatives were designed to regulate. It further argues that policymakers pursued broad deregulation of housing finance only after their pursuit of a narrower agenda of deregulation, that of deposit interest rate ceilings, opened the door to a series of arguments for further deregulation, particularly of S&L assets, including authorization of adjustable rate mortgages. The populist politics of the deregulation of deposit rate ceilings, taken up by and on behalf of "small savers," provided a discursive wedge for advocates of broader deregulation, taken up by and on behalf of the interests of the largest financial institutions and a neoliberal political agenda. "Dream Deregulated" investigates the policymaking process as a case study in what Paul Pierson calls "politics in time." This study bridges scholarship on fair housing and community reinvestment with that on the deregulation of housing finance, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the politics of opportunity in the United States during the latter third of the twentieth century. It historicizes the politics of financial deregulation, and, with its focus on the populist politics of deregulation, helps to explain the "construction of consent" to a neoliberal regime. Finally, "Dream Deregulated" demonstrates how a contradictory complex of housing policies contributed to the recent financial crisis.