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Objective – This chapter examines the performance of the market to discover efficient equilibrium under alternative auction designs.

Background – Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permits”) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management programs. These auctions create thick markets that can provide important information about changes in current market conditions.

Methodology – This chapter uses experimental methods to examine the extent to which the predicted increase in the Walrasian price due to a shift in willingness to pay (perhaps due to a shift in costs of pollution abatement) is reflected in observed sales prices under alternative auction formats.

Results – Price tracking is comparably good for uniform-price sealed-bid auctions and for multi-round clock auctions, with or without end-of-round information about excess demand. More price inertia is observed for “pay as bid” (discriminatory) auctions, especially for a continuous discriminatory format in which bids could be changed at will, in part because “sniping” in the final moments blocked the full effect of the demand shock.

Conclusion – Uniform-price auctions (clock and sealed-bid uniform-price, and continuous uniform-price) generate changes in purchase prices that are reasonably close to predicted changes. There is some evidence of tacit collusion causing prices to be too low relative to predictions in most cases. The worst price tracking was observed for discriminatory auctions.

Application – Uniform-price auctions appear to perform at least as well as other auction designs with respect to discovery of efficient market prices when there are unexpected and unannounced changes in willingness to pay for permits.

Based on a literature and practice review, the purpose of this paper is to examine the theoretical and clinical basis for using wordless books with patients who have intellectual disabilities (ID) and/or autism.

A literature review identified seminal peer-reviewed English language articles relating to the neuroscience of information and emotion processing for adults with ID and/or autism. In addition to published examples, illustrative case examples were contributed by clinicians regularly using wordless books.

Many people, including those with ID, selectively attend to visual information. Minimising the cognitive load by using wordless pictorial narrative reduces anxiety, and empowers the patient. Clinicians using such resources describe positive clinical outcomes. Only the Beyond Words wordless books have been identified in published clinical trials.

Although existing evidence suggests a strong positive impact, further research into the use of wordless books for people with ID is needed.

Wordless books are reported to help develop staff skills and empathy for supporting adults with ID. The books facilitate some legally required reasonable adjustments to increase service access. Staff training is needed for effective use of wordless books.

Wordless books specifically designed with and for adults with word processing difficulties, ID and/or autism to enhance health literacy and explore their own narratives and emotional responses around health experiences and personal traumas are a unique approach. This paper may also offer the first exploration of their neuropsychological underpinnings.

Purpose – This chapter is the introductory chapter for the volume.

Approach – We begin with “A Fable for Our Time” and discuss the role that laboratory experimental social science research can play in policy issues regarding energy, the environment, and sustainability. We follow this general discussion with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the volume.