The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program required facilities that handle threshold amounts of specific chemicals to report yearly their releases and transfers of these toxic substances. The TRI data have become the yardstick by which regulators, investors, environmental organizations, and local community groups measure company environmental performance. This book tells the story of the TRI from its origin and implementation to its revision and retrenchment. Its mix of case study and quantitative analysis shows how the TRI operates and how the...

"If it bleeds, it leads." The phrase captures television news directors' famed preference for opening newscasts with the most violent stories they can find. And what is true for news is often true for entertainment programming, where violence is used as a product to attract both viewers and sponsors. In this book, James Hamilton presents the first major theoretical and empirical examination of the market for television violence.

Hamilton approaches television violence in the same way that other economists approach the problem of pollution: that is, as an example of market...

Enrolling over 30 million acres, the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest conservation program in the United States. Under the guidelines of the CRP, the federal government pays farmers to stop farming their land in the hopes of achieving a variety of conservation goals, including the reduction of soil erosion, improvement of water quality, and creation of wildlife habitat. In Conserving Data, James T. Hamilton explores the role of information in the policy cycle as it relates to the CRP. The author asks how the creation and distribution of information about what is going on...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program required facilities that handle threshold amounts of specific chemicals to report yearly their releases and transfers of these toxic substances. The TRI data have become the yardstick by which regulators, investors, environmental organizations, and local community groups measure company environmental performance. This book tells the story of the TRI from its origin and implementation to its revision and retrenchment. Its mix of case study and quantitative analysis shows how the TRI operates and how the...

Increasingly governments around the world are experimenting with initiatives in transparency or 'open government'. These involve a variety of measures including the announcement of more user-friendly government websites, greater access to government data, the extension of freedom of information legislation and broader attempts to involve the public in government decision making. However, the role of the media in these initiatives has not hitherto been examined. This volume analyses the challenges and opportunities presented to journalists as they attempt to hold governments accountable in an...