A firm's productivity is composed of two parts: pure technical change and location-specific (agglomeration) externalities. Regional productivity is thus an aggregation of productivity of firms producing similar goods and located in a given region. International trade can affect both components of regional productivity. First, trade openness in a closed economy...
Long-run food price changes respond to long-run changes in food demand, quasi-fixed and variable production factors, and agricultural productivity. Recent global food-price volatility puts a renewed spotlight on the trends and sources of any agricultural productivity growth. Because food prices’ most critical effects are on human hunger, it is especially...
The objective of this dissertation is to examine multi-product firms' productivity and export behavior. More specifically, this dissertation estimates productivity of firms that produce and sell multiple products, and the role of productivity in such firms' export behavior. In doing so, this dissertation develops a firm-level gravity approach to test...
This thesis examines the role of Erikson’s (1950) theory of generativity in facilitating knowledge transfer during the preretirement transition. McAdams and de St. Aubin’s (1992) updated framework for generativity is used as a theoretical foundation to explain motivation and actions during this period. Through the use of multiple-case studies, twenty-one...
Photosynthetic energy allocation strategies were investigated in the marine diatom, Thalassiosira pseudonana, grown under a wide range of light limitation. Steady-state, continuous cultures were established at three light-limited growth rates. Simultaneous measurements of photosynthetic activity were made that targeted different points in photosynthetic energy flow from gross to net photosynthesis....
In this work I integrate some of my recent research developments in the theory and practice of Productivity and Efficiency Analysis of Economic Systems. In particular, I present some new theoretical relationships between various measures of efficiency and productivity, propose new solutions to some aggregation problems in efficiency analysis and...
Long-term experiments were started at Pendleton and Moro, Oregon in the 1930's to evaluate the effects of tillage, fertilizer, and residue management on crop productivity in non-irrigated semi-arid regions. Coupled with multi-year varietal improvement, rotation, and green manure studies, they define those practices which sustain soil productivity and improve crop...
The distribution of barite (BaSO₄) in marine sediments has long been studied as a proxy for paleoproductivity. While pure barite is known to be a stable mineral in oxic sediments, it is also known that variations in the Sr/Ba ratio influence its solubility and liability during early diagenesis. To extract...
This dissertation’s three essays investigate trade and productivity effects on firm behavior based on new heterogeneous-firms trade models in the case of Korea. In the first essay, firms’ decision to export in the case of Korean manufacturing industries is examined, where the change in firms’ productivity before and after exports...
Quantifying and modeling processes involved in the global carbon cycle is important to evaluate the temporal and spatial variability of these processes and understand the effect of this variability on future response to changing climate and land use patterns. Biomass accumulation and Net Primary Productivity (NPP) are large components of...