Phenolic compounds are found in surface and groundwater as well as wastewater from several industries. It is necessary to eliminate phenols and phenolic compounds from contaminated water before releasing into water bodies due to their toxicity to human beings. Photocatalytic degradation seems to be a promising technology for the degradation of several phenolic compounds. Complete mineralization of phenol and phenolic compound has been achieved with TiO 2 -based photocatalysts under both UV and visible-light irradiation. This chapter will evaluate the conventional processes and advanced oxidation processes for the degradation of phenol and phenolic compounds. The process economics and efficiencies of different advanced oxidation processes will also be discussed. The main focus of the chapter is photocatalytic degradation processes under UV and visible light along with a detailed review of several factors affecting degradation of phenol and phenolic compounds. Photocatalytic degradation process is governed by reactions with hydroxyl radical or superoxide ion. The extent of degradation depends on light sources (UV, visible, and solar), the type of photocatalyst, and experimental conditions (pH, photocatalyst dosage, initial concentration of phenolic compounds, light intensity, electron donor concentration, etc.). Visible-light-active photocatalysts are applied by several researchers to exploit sunlight and to make the photocatalysis process sustainable. In the future, using sunlight in place of UV could make photocatalysis economically more efficient.

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In a developing economy with an ethnically diverse society, such as India's, household welfare and its distribution within the household unambiguously depend on how much time each member of the household spends on productive activity. In this paper we examine the welfare impact of reducing the time spent by members of households, particularly women, through political reservations in rural India. Using a unique data set we find that (i) Political reservations and the ability of women to participate in the process of governance contribute to household welfare by allowing women to participate in labor markets, essentially because provision of public goods and in particular water, increases the productivity of household labor time. (ii) The concomitant decline in household work and increase in labor market participation is a robust indicator of increased productivity of household labor time being translated into productive work. In particular women participate in self employment and on cultivation. The effect on household incomes caused by members engaged in self-employment activities and own-cultivation is higher compared to effects caused by participation in off-farm wage labor. (iii) Further, our results are robust to the inclusion of residential location, access to credit, and shocks.

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In 2012-2013 the share of agriculture and allied activities declined to about 13.7 percent of India's GDP 1. Due to rising competition in international markets and increasing costs of production, sustaining efficiency in farm production necessitates estimation of both technical and economic efficiencies. In this paper, we examine India's agrarian performance in terms of restricted profit functions and factor demand equations, using village-level panel data for years 1999 and 2006. We also attempt to decompose output growth between the two periods into technical progress, technical efficiency, and input growth using a translog production function following Kalirajan, Obowa and Zhao (1996) to examine whether output growth was input-driven or technology driven. The decomposition analysis is important from a policy perspective to understand whether the given technology has been applied to its full potential. We find that the technical change between 1999 and 2006 has been negative, while the technological progress is positive, therefore we can infer that full potential of technological change between 1999 and 2006 could not be leveraged due to the decline in technical efficiencies. To fully leverage the same, policy prescriptions should target increasing farm level technical efficiencies.

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We explore whether the U.S. exchange rate could have an influence on cash rental rates for farmland in five U.S. cornbelt states. We find that farmland cash rents have a fairly strong, positive correlation with the U.S. dollar, in terms of its real value relative to major agricultural trading partners. One explanation for the correlation is that a strong dollar lowers the price of key inputs and thus has purchasing power effects. A strong dollar may therefore be associated with higher net returns, and the payment of higher cash rents by farmers. We find support for this hypothesis through a series of econometric models.

This paper compares the economic integration of immigrants into the labor force between Germany and Canada. Both Canada and Germany rely on immigrants to remain competitive in the economy due to low birth rates and an aging population in both countries. Canada and Germany are based on two contradictory discourses in their consideration of immigration. While Canada has relied since its colonization by the British and French on immigrants for economic expansion and nation building, Germany never considered itself to be an immigrant country, but rather as a host of guest workers who would leave 1 day when their labor power was not needed any longer. Thus, a cross-national comparison between two opposing immigration discourses is a valuable contribution to the global research on immigration as it can highlight similarities and differences in the successful economic integration of immigrants. Further, it can point to determining factors that contribute to the economic integration of immigrants. In order to measure if the two countries have differences in the success of economic integration of immigrants, the measures of unemployment rates, field of work, and income of immigrants are compared and contrasted.