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THE ROLE OF A DISCUSSANT Without question, this work by Isard and Smith is presented as a contribution to the theory of behavior in space. Many months ago I naively agreed--note that I said naive, which is not to be confused with one of Walter's simple people--to comment on their effort, presumably to congratulate, to criticize, to extend or otherwise to evaluate their study. I am hesitant to fulfill this agreement. This hesitance does not mean [ have been intimidated by the lengthy title and its impressive array of pregnant terms. It does reflect my feeling that the theorist working on the spectrum of social sciences concerned, at least, with things, people, and actions in a regional or spatial context is consistently beset by contradictions and uncertainties about the value, merit, and need for his efforts. There are incessant reminders that the theory is always puny relative to the magnitude of problems that society wants and needs to resolve. Moreover, the theory invariably seems inadequate and weak relative to even the limited aspirations of an academic social science theory that is seemingly within range of our capabilities but, as yet, beyond our accomplishments. Conversely, it is invariably a simple matter for a critic to dismiss the available theory as trivial, irrelevant, crude, misleading or, for a multitude of other reasons, unworthy of retention as a viable and useful contribution. The strategies that lead to these conclusions are well known to all of us and, [ suspect, occasionally used by all of us. The dilemma confronting the critic is what to do in lieu of pat criticism. A common ploy is to describe your own research, which may be (though, not necessarily) relevant to the paper at hand. My ploy is to display some of my thoughts and other mental wonderings that arose as I read or, more accurately, confronted their paper.

This Golden Anniversary Issue, The Brightest of Dawns: 50 Years of Regional Science has been written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). The title represents our belief that the multiregional field of regional science has now been firmly established. A sound scholarly foundation, grounded in social science theory, has been laid. The toolkit of powerful techniques for applied regional analysis is an ever-expanding one. And the institutional basis is now solidly established, with a plethora of active regional science associations, domestic and international conferences galore, a host of well-established regional science journals, a number of interdisciplinary academic programmes, and numerous prestigious regional research institutes. Today, regional scientists carry out their craft not just within the academic departments of the world’s leading universities, but also in government agencies and the business sector.

Considerable attention is being given to the relationship of air pollution and land use. Schuler's paper is an important theoretical contribution to this research. I The principal assumption on which Schuler's work is based is a behavioral one: that the desirability of a particular residential location is inversely related to the pollutant concentration there. This is an assumption for which there is increasing empirical support? Schuler pioneers by distinguishing and interrelating three major categories of polluting activities: industrial processes, residential heating, and transportation. The configuration of his city is a rectangle with industrial emissions originating along a vertical line at the center and diffusing horizontally. Given the long-run time horizon, the partial equilibrium assumptions appear especially restrictive. Production (and hence the level of industrial emissions) is fixed and there is no trade-off between total output and transportation. Both industry and land must be nonlocally owned so that income remains constant. The relative and absolute prices of polluting goods remain the same before and after abatement. Oron, Pines, and Sheshinski have completed work very similar to Schuler's and a comparison of the models is useful. 3 The model of O. P. and S. is based on the same behavioral assumption concerning utility, housing, and air pollution. It is more simple in that it is confined to transportation emissions alone,' but more complex in that the city is circular. The context is general equilibrium, in which income is not fixed. Whereas Schuler's focus is on competitive spatial equilibrium before and after abatement, O. P. and S. are mainly concerned with the difference between a competitive equilibrium allocation and the optimum allocation in which taxes are used to internalize pollution effects. Their model does not include public services nor alternative transportation technologies, as Schuler's does.

The abstract is a statement of no more than 100 words. It is a summary of the content and is printed at the beginning of the paper to allow readers to identify the paper' contents. Do not repeat it in the concluding section of the paper.

From a general standpoint, three approaches are postulated for reducing spatial externalities: (1) Pigouvian tax on emittees, (2) damage suits, (3) zoning. Why not a fourth, which is to internalize the externality by creating a market for it? With internalization one may not get a reduction per se in emissions; that is, firms (cities) merely have to pay for the resource. An article by H. Mohring and J. Boyd in Economica (Nov. 1971) shows that in comparison to the Pigouvian tax, the internal~zation approach (or asset utilization, as they call it, after Frank Knight's example of :highways) can yield superior results. A generalization of spatial externalities must consider all approaches, or at least be consistent with all. Turning to the model, I think the damage function leaves out a very important step that yields many significant problems later on. As equation (1) is written, there is an implicit assumption that choosing pollution reduction inputs has no impact on the relative price of inputs used to produce final goods (or the relative price of the final goods themselves). Pollution control cannot be viewed realistically in a vacuum. Clearly, my choice of more x and less y will have a strong impact on resource allocation, through real factor input and output decisions (via the price system). Similarly, to argue that society wishes to minimizes the social costs of abatement plus recycled damage is fine (see equation(2)), but we cannot view abatement costs without considering the indirect effects on real inputs and final products. As presently specified, the trivial solution of zero production is the optimal choice ! To show the effect of the omission in equations (1) and (2),* consider a firm that produces a primary product (Y~), whose production results in a residual product (YR). YR is either recovered as a useful by-product (Yb) or emitted as a waste (Y~). Assume YR is some fixed proportion (k) of Y~, where 0 < k < 1. Now