Mohammed Dore

• D.Phil (Oxon.)
• Brock University

Structural breaks have attracted considerable attention recently, especially in light of the financial crisis, Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and war. While structural breaks pose significant econometric challenges, machine learning provides an incisive tool for detecting and quantifying breaks. The current paper presents a unified framewo...

This article determines the minimum service population for which construction and operation of drinking water treatment systems become financially viable by comparing costs with revenue. The feasibility of five solutions that have been implemented in Canada are discussed and tested for financial viability using a novel methodology. Recently publish...

A decision support system (DSS) is developed to optimise the performance of different operations of small water treatment systems to improve day-to-day decisions. The support system includes a data management system, knowledge-based system, performance assessment of different unit processes, fault tree analyses, preventive and corrective actions an...

This paper investigates the cost of providing drinking water to municipalities with populations less than 1,000 in Alberta, Canada, and presents the current unit costs, cost recovery ratios, and affordability for a sample of 25 communities. Unit costs are found to vary considerably with the volume of treated water and the type of source water. Of t...

In this chapter, we focus on the long-term health effects of using chlorine in untreated water. We review a select set of epidemiological studies of health impacts in humans from exposure to DBPs, including cancer, adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes, blood lead levels, as well as estrogenic effects. We also discuss the current manageme...

In this chapter, the model presented in Chap. 7 is calibrated and solved with three case studies, which also illustrate the importance of using nonlinear methods. The decision support model would assist utilities in choosing the optimal renewal period for assets.

In the previous chapter, we reviewed the harmful effects of lead in drinking water and highlighted the need to measure lead in drinking water using strict principles of chemistry, and adopt a scientific protocol that is used consistently. In this chapter, we attempt to answer two questions: (1) what can be done to reduce health risks from lead, and...

This chapter is a description of Reverse Osmosis (RO) and other similar treatment processes. RO is likely to become the dominant treatment technology due to the scarcity of fresh water in many areas.

This chapter is a review of drinking water treatment technologies and their unit costs as a function of scale. These are classified into six classes, based on contaminants removed. We find that a UV-based treatment plant is cost-effective.

This chapter reviews principles of source water protection, for both point and nonpoint sources of pollution as well as the main approaches to risk assessment for potable water supplies. It includes an overview of some risk assessment case studies.

Drinking water outbreaks have occurred throughout the world, causing varying illnesses and even death. This chapter reviews past outbreaks of microbial contaminants and the associated lessons that have been learnt. Only the most recent outbreaks are considered, as these are probably the most relevant for policy purposes.

This chapter reviews the scientific evidence that forms the basis for lead sampling protocols used by the USEPA, European Union, and Ontario in Canada. For a proper measure of lead, water must be stagnant in the pipes for at least 6 hours.

This book deals with the water policy and management in Canada. It discusses various problems and risks in the fresh and drinking water supply in the second largest country in the world. Mohammed Dore argues that water is underpriced and used wastefully in Canada. In selected case studies, he illustrates the major threats from human activity to Can...

This chapter is a comparison of the water policy in Ontario and Europe. We compare the usage, treatment technology, consumer satisfaction, level of waste water treatment, and overall quality of drinking water. We come to the conclusion that consumers in Germany enjoy a higher quality of TREATED water than in Ontario. The policy conclusion is that O...

This chapter focuses on the impacts of agricultural and industrial activity on water resources in the province of Alberta, and how these activities could compromise drinking water quality. This chapter provides a profile of the water sector and water policy in Alberta. We also discuss the modification and implementation of the World Health Organiza...

According to the USEPA (2012, http:// water. epa. gov/ type/ drink/ pws/ smallsystems/ basicinformation . cfm), 94 % of 156,000 public water systems in the US are small water systems , serving a population of fewer than 3,300 people. In Canada, the proportion of small systems in one survey was over 75 % (Environment Canada 2004 in http:// www. ec....

As stated in the previous chapter, the whole of the companion book (Dore 2015 in Global drinking water management water and conservation: optimal decision-making. Springer International Publishing Switzerland, Heidelberg) was devoted to the major principles and concepts of sound drinking water management. The objective of this chapter is to summari...

This book and its companion volume (“Global Drinking Water Management and Conservation: Optimal Decision-Making,” Springer, 2015) are motivated by the fact that within a span of 11 years, there were two major waterborne disease outbreaks, one in the USA and the other in Canada, two of the world’s most developed countries. The outbreaks were the wor...

This chapter is a description of the drinking water sector in Newfoundland and Labrador and the very positive government policy on drinking water. As the data on the government’s water portal is excellent, it is also possible to carry out a statistical analysis of the risks associated with factors such as turbidity, color, and natural organic matte...

This chapter focuses on an econometric approach to investigate the effect that economic and structural water demand management strategies have had on Ontario’s per capita consumption of water in 2001, 2006, and 2009. Such information would be a prelude to implementing water conservation measures. But the study of water demand should include not onl...

British Columbia is Canada’s third-largest province, with most people located in the lower mainland and the city of Greater Victoria. British Columbia has abundant natural resources and good water quality in some areas that rank among the highest in the world. However, the current laws and regulations could be strengthened to promote resource conse...

This chapter discusses Ontario’s approach to safe drinking water through the Ontario Drinking Water Quality Standards (DWQS) . Section 4.2 provides an introduction to drinking water systems in Ontario. The purpose of Sect. 4.3 is to review the principles of watershed management in Ontario. Steps that Ontario has taken to create and implement Ontari...

This book deals with the water policy and management in Canada. It discusses various problems and risks in the fresh and drinking water supply in the second largest country in the world. Mohammed Dore argues that water is underpriced and used wastefully in Canada. In selected case studies, he illustrates the major threats from human activity to Can...

This book discusses different drinking water treatment technologies and what contaminants each treatment method can remove, and at what costs. The production of drinking water requires adequate management. This book attempts to fill the existing knowlegde gap about (a) water treatment technologies and their costs, (b) risk assessment methods, (c) a...

This chapter describes Germany’ s approach to water management. We demonstrate the current status of German wastewater treatment and provide a review of the problems of micropollutants in the Netherlands, USA, and Germany.

This chapter reviews the key requirements of the proper management of all water infrastructure assets. We present a Decision Support System that incorporates risk and minimizes costs over an infinite horizon.

In this chapter, we survey the theory and practice of the pricing of water as a public utility. Section 2 reviews the classic theory of marginal cost pricing developed by Dupuit (1854). and expanded by Hotelling Hotelling (1938). We also review pricing in the context of the development of the new theory of public economics and include Ramsey pricin...

The BDS test is the best-known correlation integral–based test, and it is now an important part of most standard econometric data analysis software packages. This test depends on the proximity ( $\varepsilon )$ and the embedding dimension ( $m)$ parameters both of which are chosen by the researcher. Although different studies (e.g., Kanzler in Ve...

In this paper we propose several nonparametric independence tests for serial dependence based on runs. The tests can be applied to quantitative or categorical data. With a Monte Carlo experiment we show the size and power performance of the different statistics under linear and nonlinear data generating processes. We also compare the runs tests wit...

The purpose of this paper is to propose a newly developed non-parametric test for linear and nonlinear causality based on permutation entropy and to show its usefulness in analyzing the potential causal relationship between trading volume and security prices. Most of the empirical applications and tests for causality rely on using Granger causality...

This is the first of two companion books.The production of drinking water requires adequate management, with appropriate pricing and management under risk, an idea that the World Health Organization has been promoting in order to reduce or eliminate waterborne disease outbreaks. In this book, the major theoretical issues in the management of drinki...

We specify a vector autoregression (VAR) model for the U.S. for 1980–2008 to investigate the statistical causal relationships between private non-residential fixed investment, the effective Federal funds rate, personal consumption expenditures, nonfinancial corporate profits, and the nonfinancial corporate credit market debt to test the validity of...

The economies of small island developing states (SIDS) can be sensitive to climate variability in the future. In this chapter, we use four of IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Global Circulation Models (GCMs) to produce precipitation projections for the next 90 years for the small island state of Mauritius. We focus our projections on the Vacoas-Phoenix reg...

This chapter provides an overview of the General Circulation Models, Regional Models, and “downscaling” techniques which can improve model resolution at the local level. Authors review the available literature on projections of precipitation over the next 100 years for Canada. The future projections of Canada as a whole are considered, followed by...

The objective of this paper is to present statistical models of costs based on new data obtained from manufacturers of a menu of treatment technologies suitable for small water systems. This analysis would be of interest to water management engineers and planners. We classify these technologies into six classes, depending on the contaminants remove...

The objective of this paper is to present statistical models of costs based on new data obtained from manufacturers of a menu of treatment technologies suitable for small water systems. This analysis would be of interest to water management engineers and planners. We classify these technologies into six classes, depending on the contaminants remove...

We specify a VAR model for the US for 1980 to 2008 to investigate the statistical causal relationships between private non-residential fixed investment, the effective Federal funds rate, personal consumption expenditures, nonfinancial corporate profits, and the nonfinancial corporate credit market debt to test the validity of the macroeconomic rela...

The paper is a parametric and nonparametric analysis of past precipitation data. We analyze 90 years of daily precipitation data at the Sooke Reservoir in British Columbia, Canada, for evidence of climate change. We fit probability density functions (PDFs) to the data and find evidence of a structural break in the data generating process by using t...

An innovative framework for the performance assessment of a traditional water treatment plant (WTP) is presented that integrates the concepts of reliability, robustness, and Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA). Performance assessment for a WTP comprised of three units (i.e., unit 1: Coagulation/Flocculation and Sedimentation; unit 2: Filt...

This paper examines the financial crisis of 2007/9 and the downturn in the U.S. We argue that effective demand over the 2001–2006 expansion was maintained by credit. The role of credit in a Vector Error Correction Model and Granger-causality between aggregate spending, credit, disposable income, and profits are examined. We show that credit itself...

This study investigates the cost and efficacy of water disinfection practices using data from Canadian Municipal Water and Wastewater Survey. Since only a small number of municipalities use UV or ozone, this study investigates whether the dominant use of chlorine-based disinfectants is due to their efficacy in preventing microbiological problems or...

This article addresses the question of improving the detection of nonlinear dependence by means of recently developed nonparametric tests. To this end a generalized version of BDS test and a new test based on symbolic dynamics are used on realizations from a well-known artificial market for which the dynamic equation governing the market is known....

This paper is a re-examination of the global financial crisis that began in and was accompanied by the most severe recession since the Great Depression. It builds on our earlier paper (Dore and Singh, 2009) and expands its scope. It is divided into parts. The first part deals with the ideological backdrop in which this crisis occurred, namely the b...

This paper reviews three nonlinear dynamical business cycle theories of which only one (The Goodwin model) reflects the stylized facts of observed business cycles and has a plausible turning point mechanism. The paper then examines the US (and now global) financial crisis of 2008 and the accompanying downturn in the US. The paper argues that a skew...

This paper is an outline and critique of William Nordhaus’ book A Question of Balance (2008), in which he proposes his optimal policy for dealing with global climate change. Nordhaus finds that the proposals of the Stern Review and that of Al Gore are inefficient and costly. The critique of Nordhaus is focused on (1) the structure of his model, w...

Much empirical analysis and econometric work recognizes that there are nonlinearities, regime shifts or structural breaks, asymmetric adjustment costs, irreversibilities and lagged dependencies. Hence, empirical work has already transcended neoclassical economics. Some progress has also been made in modeling endogenously generated cyclical growth a...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the economic consequences of asteroid or comet impacts, referred to here as near Earth objects (NEO). As of September 8, 2005, according to the Near Earth Objects Program of NASA (NASA 2005), there are 3535 NEOs, of which asteroids (NEAs) are 3438. NEAs greater than 1 km in diameter are represented by 7...

This paper analyzes recent developments regarding Missouri River management and water use, and the potential for an emerging inter-basin water dispute involving the Great Lakes. It is suggested that revisions to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' master manual for the Missouri River and increasing efforts to put Missouri River water to beneficial us...

The reallocative effects on bauxite production in Jamaica following the imposition of an ad valorem tax in 1974 are considered. The international aluminum industry, being both vertically and horizontally integrated, evolved a successful strategy of time-phasing bauxite production capacity worldwide. The non-neutral tax not only made Jamaican bauxit...

The older static theory of the taxation of exhaustible resources is distinguished from the modern theory based on the work of Harold Hotelling Both advocate some form of a profits-based tax, which is appropriate for conditions of perfect competition. But an oligopolistic market structure has additional quasi-rents which could be captured through ta...

The objective of this paper is to synthesize the large literature recording changing patterns of precipitation in the observed data, thus indicating that climate change is already a reality. Such a synthesis is required not only for environmental researchers but also for policy makers. The key question is the broad picture at major regional and con...

With a growing world population and changing patterns of global precipitation, researchers are examining a number of options in the management and supply of fresh water to areas where the demand for fresh water is outstripping local availability. These options include bulk water exports as well as the establishment of desalination plants. This pape...

This paper investigates the generality of equilibrium in economics. It contrasts the discrete methods of social choice with the continuous (convex) methods of general equilibrium, and argues that if the same discrete methods were applied to general equilibrium, then the generality of the invisible hand story becomes doubtful, and the existence of t...

Government policy, in the form of grants and contracts for desalination technology, has had a major impact on steadily declining costs of desalination. The process, reverse osmosis (RO), exhibits economies of scale, which increases its feasibility as a water treatment technology for large populations. Ultrafiltration, an RO pre-treatment, also show...

The choice between private or public production should be based within the general framework of the theory of optimal taxation, a subset of public economics. This theory suggests that the decision should be based on which form of enterprise has absolute efficiency advantage. This paper spells out the necessary conditions for absolute efficiency adv...

It is argued that standard environmental economic and 'ecological economics', have the same fundamentals of valuation in terms of money, based on a demand curve derived from utility maximization. But this approach leads to three different measures of value. An invariant measure of value exists only if the consumer has 'homothetic preferences'. In o...

The objective of this paper was to consider the social value of biological diversity and explore if this value could be expressed in terms of a unidimensional metric in money. Economics distinguishes between use-values and non-use-values, which are critically evaluated for valuing biodiversity. It is shown that these utility-based valuations have s...

A variety of natural disasters occur in Canada. Yet apart from simple ``return period'' calculations, no apparent research seems to have made systematic use of the OCIPEP database on all natural disasters in Canada over the period of 1900 to 2000. This paper (a) describes the main characteristics of natural disasters in Canada, and (b) presents a m...

This paper is an analysis of income and expenditure patterns of two samples taken from First Nation communities in Saskatchewan. A number of hypotheses related to socioeconomic characteristics are tested. Contrary to the received view, it is found that the residents of the reserves are no worse off, by conventional standards of well-being, than the...

In the past, land use decisions favouring agricultural production have been guided primarily by economic and social considerations, many of which tend to be short-run in nature. Inclusion of long-run sustainability considerations, such as global warming, may alter such decisions, particularly on those lands that are marginal for agricultural produc...

In forest management, actual applications of an integrated approach in forest management are not very frequent. Integrated forest management generally involves taking into account the totality of interactions of various sub-systems-social, economic, and ecological-within the biosphere, together with integration of goals set for such management. Sev...

this report was to study the value of climate data from the

This note synthesizes the discussion on the role of Cournot and Bertrand in the analysis of duopoly by drawing on the history of the debate. We conclude that while Bertrand presented a critique of the mathematical economics of Cournot and stimulated the analysis of strategic choice in game theory, he did not present a duopoly model with price as a...

The central question in preserving the rights of future generations is how to ground a theory of rights that is also acceptable to the present generation, including staunch Republicans, without self-contradiction. Such a theory of rights consists of the three principles of a minimalist liberatarian theory (that of Robert Nozick), and demonstrates t...

This paper builds on an earlier paper prepared for the Canada Country Study, and contains three main messages. The level of knowledge about the economic cost of climate change impacts and adaptive actions that might be taken in Canada is insufficient (Section 3). Subject to many caveats it can be said that Canadians now spend in the order of 2% of...

Investigations of the structural stability of the general equilibrium model show that within a nonlinear framework, the differential equation governing price adjustment requires two conditions: (a) The number of agents must be greater than or equal to the number of commodities; and (b) severe restrictions on the nature of preferences must be placed...

This paper critically reviews Ken Binmores non- utilitarian and game theoretic solution to the Arrow problem. Binmores solution belongs to the same family as Rawls maximin criterion and requires the use of Nash bargaining theory, empathetic preferences, and results in evolutionary game theory. Harsanyi has earlier presented a solution that relies o...

Given the character of the manufacturing (emissions levels and composition of output), we find that approximately $28 billion worth of manufacturing value added is made possible by the carbon uptake service provided by Canadian forests in 1986, with no corresponding increase in emissions. Thus, forests play the role of a “free factory.” The above f...

Recent quantitative analyses of deforestation have concentrated on highlighting relatively straightforward correlations between rates of deforestation and its direct and indirect domestic causes, ignoring complex linkages. We argue that deforestation is part of a structural transformation determined in part by North-South relations through global m...

Recent quantitative analyses of deforestation have concentrated on highlighting relatively straightforward correlations between rates of deforestation and its direct and indirect domestic causes, ignoring complex linkages. We argue that deforestation is part of a structural transformation determined in part by North-South relations through global m...

The limited but controversial evidence on global warming has focused on the importance of forests, especially tropical forests, in their role of carbon sequestration and the possible mitigation of global warming. Unfortunately the tropical forests are fast disappearing. What are the causes of this deforestation? Can a knowledge of the causes of def...

In this paper I argue that the criterion of valuation in neoclassical economics is flawed because it is not an invariant measure of value. It is invariant only when unrealistically restrictive conditions are imposed on the class of admissible utility functions, which in fact makes it a special case. The only sensible alternative is to turn to class...

The model derives an equation of the value of forests from a dynamic optimizing framework. This equation gives the marginal social opportunity cost (MSOC) value of the forests, with value added as the numeraire. However, the shadow price is subject to the restrictive complementary slackness condition, which yields a zero shadow price whenever a con...

This paper extends the pure theory of patents to make it consistent with the empirical evidence on R&D which shows both variable returns to scale and a variable elasticity of cost reduction with respect to R&D (output elasticity). Using a generalized invention possibility function, the authors show that for a given social rate of discount, a social...

Without Abstract

This paper investigates the growth potential of subSaharan African countries to feed their growing populations. A model is specified that incorporates the effects of government consumption as well as the servicing of external debt, two issues over which concern has been expressed. In terms of income per head, it is found that only two countries (Ke...

The general study of allocation mechanisms began with Barone's work, which established the theoretical feasibility of an alternative allocation mechanism. There were a number of aspects of the problem that Barone did not explicitly take into account, and it seemed that the central planner would have to solve millions of equations for feasibility an...

This paper is devoted to considering the implications of intertemporal economic equilibrium in a model with production. To this end, a differential game with a Leontief technology is formulated. In the two-person zero-sum game, it was found that an intertemporal equilibrium is feasible. Furthermore, it was found to be decentralizable, with a requir...