This study focuses on the development of new, non-parametric efficiency measures based on the idea of aggregation via merging functions. We use Shephard's (1970) axiomatic approach of distance functions as the basis for theoretical methodology. In particular, this approach is a background for non-parametric efficiency measures defined on a linearly...
This dissertation addresses three topics on the implications of firm behaviors in creating and adopting knowledge of production, choosing international location for production and market access, and using informative advertising in a market competition with multidimensional product characteristics. The first study investigates the empirical evidence of local knowledge spillovers in...
In this work, I address foundational concerns at the interface of institutions, governance structure, transaction costs, and efficiency in public-private contracting. Following transaction cost economic perspective, I build and justify the theoretical models explaining that institutions may affect the economic performance of public-private contracting through the effect of transaction costs....
This dissertation addresses three topics on applied microeconomics. First, we investigate issues of market power and tax incidence in the U.S. brewing industry. Since alcohol consumption can be addictive, we derive a structural econometric model of addiction from a dynamic oligopoly game. This model identifies the degree of market power...
Environmental sustainability and economic growth is at the forefront of international policy discussions. There is no question that climate change is happening, but also that countries all around the world aspire to continued economic growth. When it comes to climate change, scientists agree that increased carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in...
This dissertation explores the intricacies associated with the use of distance functions in empirical studies. It focuses on the measurement of advertising efficiency and investigates the properties of the models that seek to approximate the abatement costs of socially undesirable outputs. The first manuscript is devoted to the development of...
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...
In response to a question raised by Knox Lovell, we develop a method for estimating directional output distance functions with endogenously determined direction vectors based on exogenous normalization constraints. This is reminiscent of the Russell measure proposed by Färe and Lovell (J Econ Theory 19:150–162, 1978). Moreover it is related...
Productivity change after transition to an individual transferable quota (ITQ) management system is driven by exit of some vessels, entry of other vessels, and changes in productivity of existing vessels. Generally, it is thought that an ITQ system boosts productivity due to the exit of less productive vessels. However, ITQ...
There is continuing interest in the trend of costs associated with pollution abatement activities. We specify an environmental production technology to model the joint production of good and bad outputs. The joint production model calculates pollution abatement costs and identifies changes in these costs associated with: (1) technical change, (2)...
Recently, in an attempt to produce robust production frontier estimators, Aragon et al. [2005, Nonparametric frontier estimation: a conditional quantile-based approach. Econometric Theory 21, 358-389] and Martins-Filho and Yao [2008, A smooth nonparametric conditional quantile frontier estimator. Journal of Econometrics 143, 317-333] considered the estimation of nonparametric α- frontier models...
This study has two main objectives. First, we propose an alternative way for treating deposits in modeling a banking firm, which account for both their input and output features. Second, we contribute to modeling failures in the banking sector by distinguishing three groups of factors affecting failures: bank level, industry...
Small manufacturing firms often serve a domestic market but would like to expand their sales overseas. It is difficult for a small firm to develop overseas contracts and relationships, however, in part because of their small size, and because the advantages of their products may not always be obvious. The...
This dissertation addresses issues of strategic behavior of firms in lobbying, brand and generic advertising, and advertising-price relationships in imperfectly competitive markets.
In the first study, we investigate conditions under which lobbying can improve social welfare and show that this type of lobbying will be undersupplied from society’s perspective. We...
The following three essays explore the use of the directional output distance function (Chambers et al., 1996), an economic model originally developed to measure efficiency and productivity for multi-input and multi-output production processes, to assess performance for multi-attributed environmental processes.
The first essay illustrates the use of the directional output...
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...
Two essays are focused on semiparametric econometric methods. The first essay investigates applicability of the smooth back tting estimator (SBE) to statistical analysis of residential energy consumption. The second essay attempts to incorporate additivity restrictions into semiparametric stochastic frontier estimation. The procedure described in the first study is used to...
The biorevolution in the 1970’s greatly stimulated investment in life-science
research. The present dissertation is aimed at evaluating the impact of US public
investment on industrial investment in life-science research. The focus is on three major
life-science fields: biology, medicine, and agriculture. A dynamic model of industrial
R&D investment is...
Calls continually are made to provide economic assessments of research program achievements and efficiency. Yet little effort has been given to develop an assessment framework that would focus on the research discovery itself, treating the research manager as a producer and the research technology as a knowledge production function. The...
We review nonparametric estimation of efficiency and productivity, by which we mainly mean activity analysis, or data envelopment analysis (DEA). The review covers topics that we hope will be of special interest to those doing research in the realm of agriculture. We also include a brief appendix addressing nonparametric estimation...
Numerous studies have linked individual nutrient loadings from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers to
the growth of the hypoxic, or oxygen depleted, zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico. However, in the
discussion of policy to remediate Gulf hypoxia, it is beneficial for stakeholders and policymakers to obtain
a single...
In recent years, economists have started to move beyond calculating regulatory effects on a pollutant-by-pollutant basis since their interaction is important. In this study, we take up this issue. To allow for joint production of multiple pollutants and marketable output, we specify our technology using a directional distance function. This...
Reducing harvesting capacity in fisheries is of international importance. In 1999, member nations of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) agreed to an International Plan of Action to reduce fishing capacity. Two initial concerns were the acceptance of a workable definition of capacity and the development of methods...
With the advent of tradable permit programs for bad outputs (e.g., SO₂ emissions); concerns arose over whether
the theoretical gains from trade would be realized. We will employ a methodology that calculates the potential
gains accruing to coal-fired electric power plants from implementing a tradable permit program. The magnitude
of...
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/ locate /eneco
Tradable permits and unrealized gains from trade☆
RolfFäre a,b, Shawna Grosskopf c, Carl A
The Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA) and Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries Management require restoration of fishery resources and a matching of capacity to desired resource levels. There is, thus, a need to reduce harvesting capacity throughout many of the fisheries of the world. Yet, even the term capacity is...
Interest in ecosystem-based management or the ecosystem-based approach
to fisheries management has rapidly increased on a global basis. Most
options for ecosystem-based management have emphasized some type of
biological and natural conservation or non-use, and minimal attention has
been given to assessing the social and economic ramifications of
ecosystem-based management....
Jointly with kilowatt-hours (kWh), electric power plants also produce CO₂, NO[subscript x], and SO₂. In this paper, we apply an environmental production model based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare the production of kWh under command-and-control regulation of the undesirable byproduct with tradable permit regulation of the byproduct. This...
The three essays in this dissertation progressively answer the following questions: (a) How important are constraints? (b) Who benefits from removing constraints? (c) When does a constraint for a single market predominantly affect closely related markets? These questions are applied in the context of time, weather, and minimum wage constraints,...
The spatial and dynamic pattern of landscape changes has a profound effect on the supply of environmental services, including the provision of habitat for fish and wildlife. Spatial heterogeneity is a common feature of landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, most notably in areas important to the production of salmonid fish...
This dissertation addresses issues concerning the behavior of firms, which has significant effects on performance. In the first study, we empirically investigate the effect of the reduction in number of firms on price competition in the U.S. macro-brewing industry. The number of macro brewing firms decreased from 766 in 1935...
Due to the current cultural paradigm that incorporates the desire to be environmentally friendly and mitigate rising fuel costs, arguments about the cost of public transit systems, ridership rates, and methods to increase use are frequent topics of public policy concern. In response to these cultural and economic concerns, the...
Members of the family Sciomyzidae, known as snail-killing or marsh flies, are unique amongst insects in that the vast majority of reared species feed exclusively on mollusks and as a result their biological control potential has been well documented in the scientific literature. However, in North America there is a...
With the advent of tradable permit programs for bad outputs (e.g., SO₂ emissions); concerns arose over whether
the theoretical gains from trade would be realized. We will employ a methodology that calculates the potential
gains accruing to coal-fired electric power plants from implementing a tradable permit program. The magnitude
of...
Full Text:
).
1 Gollop and Roberts (1983), Tran and Smith (1983), and Färe, Grosskopf, and Pasurka
(1986) are
With the advent of tradable permit programs for bad outputs (e.g., SO₂ emissions); concerns arose over whether
the theoretical gains from trade would be realized. We will employ a methodology that calculates the potential
gains accruing to coal-fired electric power plants from implementing a tradable permit program. The magnitude
of...
With the advent of tradable permit programs for bad outputs (e.g., SO₂ emissions); concerns arose over whether the theoretical gains from trade would be realized. We will employ a methodology that calculates the potential gains accruing to coal-fired electric power plants from implementing a tradable permit program. The magnitude of...
A capsid protein termed p87 of the Orgyia pseudotsugata multicapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (OpMNPV) was located to the HindIII-G fragment of the viral genome by Southern hybridization. A 3.6 kb segment of this region was sequenced and an 1872-nt open reading frame encoding the p 87 protein was identified and...
At the Oregon State University heating plant the primary source
of heat energy is natural gas with crude oil as the standby supply of
fuel. In the future, as natural gas becomes a rarer commodity, more
reliance will be placed on the use of the more expensive, more polluting,
but...
The importance of wood bonding increased in the last decades due to the
increased usage of wood composites whose performance depends to a large extent on
the adhesive penetration and subsequent bonding of the adherends. The presented
research used XMT (x-ray microtomography) to perform a non-destructive, threedimensional
analysis of the...
Full Text:
OF THE DISSERTATION OF
Günter Georg Rolf Modzel for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Wood
In this paper we focus on the specification of revenue functions in their dual price space. We consider two distance functions—the Shephard output distance function and the directional output distance function—and define both in price space. The former is multiplicative in nature and satisfies homogeneity, whereas the latter is additive...
This study examines productivity change in the Mid-Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog fishery, which has been managed since 1990 using Individual Transferable Ouotas (ITQ). Productivity change is estimated through a Malmquist index from 1981-2008, capturing change before and after implementation of the quota system. We then decompose the index to...
Discard rates in marine fisheries have been estimated at more than 80% for some individual fisheries, with an average global discard rate of 8%. Discarding of catch can be problematic for three main reasons: (1) in the absence of accurate and precise discards estimates, unreliable catch data distort estimation of...
According to conventional economic wisdom the economically more efficient technology will always outcompete the less efficient. This hypothesis has usually been taken to hold for the exploitation of common pool renewable natural resources such as fish stocks. This paper claims that, while this is not necessarily false, it may be...
The very restrictive quotas of cod in the Baltic Sea are a strong force for searching alternatives. Since 1996 for instance, the cod quota for the German fishery was reduced from 22 000 t to 13 000 t in the year 2001. And further cuts took place in 2002. However,...
Large areas along Java’s north coast are threatened by subsidence and abrasion. Subsidence is even faster than sea level rise. Although forbidden by law, farmers have cleared the mangrove forest almost up to the coastline, thus reducing sedimentation and increasing exposure to coastal abrasion. Four interventions are needed: reduce groundwater'...
Aquaculture is increasingly important for the future supply of fish because of steadily increasing demand while supply from fisheries is stagnating. In the EU aquaculture production has grown strongly in some countries, such as Spain and Greece, but was flat at a low level in others, such as in Germany,...
Indonesian tuna fisheries are complex due to variation in the scale of fleet in the fisheries, their multi-species nature and problems with data collection. Moreover, like many developing-country fisheries, their management needs to take into account many other goals besides rents maximization, such as the distribution of rents and the...
The highstanding islands of Oceania are recognized as a source of significant particulate organic carbon delivered to nearshore marine environments. The existing data on carbon export in Oceania are largely derived from small mountainous watersheds (<10,000 km2) with little or no sediment storage capacity and located in subtropical to temperate...
We propose a novel, accurate quantification of precipitation and evaporation, as needed to understand fundamental hydrologic processes. Our system uses a collection vessel placed on top of a slender rod that is securely fixed at its base. As the vessel is deflected, either by manual perturbation or ambient forcing (for...
Yearly revisions of Total Allowable Catch under EU policies for the management of North Sea fisheries come at
high management costs and capital adjustment costs. It is unclear whether current EU fisheries policy strikes the
right balance between the need to regularly adjust fish quota to new information on one...
Heavy biodegraded crude oils have larger numbers of coeluting compounds than non- biodegraded oils, and they are typically not resolved with conventional gas chromatography (GC). This unresolved complex mixture (UCM) has been investigated using comprehensive two- dimensional gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-ToFMS) within a set of biodegraded petroleums derived from...
The genetic aspects of population health are critical, but frequently difficult to assess. Of concern has been the genetic constitution of Scandinavian wolves (Canis lupus), which represent an important case in conservation. We examined the incidence of different congenital anomalies for 171 Scandinavian wolves, including the immigrant founder female, born...
Although an inordinate fraction of the global sediment flux to the ocean occurs in tropical mountainous river margins, little is known regarding the sources and fate of organic matter in these systems. To address these knowledge gaps, the distribution and composition of organic matter in sediments from the Fly River...
Chrysobothris mali Horn and C. femorata Olivier (Coleoptera : Buprestidae) are two flatheaded wood boring beetle species that have become economically impactful pests in North American high value tree cropping systems. Both species are native to North America, with C. femorata occurring across the continent (Wellso and Manley 2007), whereas...
The Younger Dryas climatic event is a global phenomenon associated with a 1,000 year return to glacial conditions during the late Pleistocene period between 12,800 and 11,500 cal BP. Because of its significant effects on paleoenvironmental conditions in some parts of the world, archaeologists commonly seek to assess whether the...
This study aims to improve knowledge of how suspended particulate matter (SPM) affects hydrophobic contaminant transport in the lower Columbia River and its estuary, using polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as model compounds. It is hypothesized that PAHs are transported to the estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM), a prime feeding zone in...
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________________________________________________________________________
Fredrick G. Prahl
This study aims to improve knowledge of how suspended particulate matter
Remote sensors are becoming the standard for observing and recording ecological data in the field. Such sensors can record data at fine temporal resolutions, and they can operate under extreme conditions prohibitive to human access. Unfortunately, sensor data streams exhibit many kinds of errors ranging from corrupt communications to partial...
The purpose of this project was to create a code generating software tool, which is one section of the Oregon SpeedCode Universe. The Code Generator automatically generates compilable source code to form working Macintosh applications. This source code provides a prototype for the actual final application. This is done with...
When stratification is employed to reduce the variance of an
estimate of the population mean, and the population does not possess an
a priori partitioning, the degree of reduction provided is affected by
the method of allocation, by the number of strata, and by the choice of
the stratum boundaries....
Advances in sensor technology are greatly expanding the range of quantities that can be measured while simultaneously reducing the cost. However, deployed sensors drift out of calibration and fail, so every sensor network requires quality control procedures to promptly detect these failures. To address these problems, we propose a two-level...
The purpose of this study was to examine how three
groups of counselors 1n Oregon's secondary schools viewed
the issue of what tasks should be performed by the Oregon
secondary school counselor. The three groups surveyed
were: sixty-three counselors who have standard norms,
sixty-six counselors who have basic norms, and...
Maintaining the sustainability of the earth’s ecosystems has attracted much attention as these ecosystems are facing more and more pressure from human activities. Machine learning can play an important role in promoting sustainability as a large amount of data is being collected from ecosystems. There are at least three important...
Locating archaeological sites that predate the arrival of modern sea level has been difficult along the Oregon coast. This is in part believed to be the result of geologic processes that have influenced the preservation, distribution, and visibility of sites within the Oregon coastal landscape. Because of these changes, researchers...
The primary focus of this investigation was to assess whether
or not selected ecological indices and leisure preferences demonstrated
statistically significant relationships with the aged's self-concept.
Gerontology, a relatively embryonic discipline, has only
recently begun to examine the impact of demographic, physical and
socio-psychological stresses upon the geron's self-concept. Even...
Pacific flatheaded borer (PFB), Chrysobothris mali Horn (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), has recently become a serious pest in newly planted European hazelnut, Corylus avellana L. (Betulaceae) in Oregon. Larvae feeding on the inner bark can lead to girdling, loss of transpiration, and ultimately can cause dieback or death of the tree. Although...
In recent years, many studies have focused on the molecular and biochemical mechanisms regulating the development of wine grapes. The course of grape berry development is directed by genetic design and is mediated by phytohormones, which regulate grape berry growth and development by orchestrating a complex network of interacting genes,...
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are causing ocean acidification (OA) and ocean warming, which have negative effects on the larvae of many marine invertebrates. Oregon pink shrimp (Pandalus jordani) currently encounter upwelling events that can result in pH values as low as 7.6, and, more recently, marine heat waves that raise...
Archaeological investigations at the Cooper's Ferry site in Western Idaho have recovered cultural remains dating to 16,000 years ago, suggesting the oldest human occupation recorded in North America. However, many archaeologists have argued the initial peopling of North America occurred no earlier than the opening of an ice-free corridor between...
Networks of distributed, remote sensors are providing ecological scientists with a view of our environment that is unprecedented in detail. However, these networks are subject to harsh conditions, which lead to malfunctions in individual sensors and failures in network communications. This behavior manifests as corrupt or missing measurements in the...
If informed and rational judgments are to be made concerning
proposed large scale interbasin water diversions, it is imperative
that competent positive analysis be undertaken by scientists of relevant
disciplines. It is the primary purpose of this thesis to pull together
into a single interrelated package, the economic theory needed...
Orthopaedic soft tissue degenerative diseases significantly affect the population, especially as it ages. Degeneration is characterized by a progressive loss of extracellular matrix (ECM) components necessary for the proper functioning of the tissues and joints, eventually leading to pain and dysfunction. In humans, the intervertebral disc (IVD) and tendon are...
This thesis is an effort to formalize and document some of the changes occuring in the Warwar Valley of Gongola State, Nigeria, West Africa. The documentation will comprise a photographic study over time accompanied by an ethnographic narrative. Information gathered from photographic images, field notes and the anthropological record will...
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-1980
AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF
Evan G. Schneider for the degree of Master of Arts
in
This study was conducted to investigate the student-to-student interactions that take place in an online community college course, and how the interactions impact an online learning community. The literature review revealed three related themes: (a) the impact of the teaching/learning environment on student interaction, (b) barriers in the online environment,...
The research conducted here originated with the question of what caused the massive build-up of nuclear arsenals, which included ever larger and more powerful bombs and delivery systems from them, in the United States and the Soviet Union, even though the consensus beforehand was that nuclear energy should be prohibited...
Here we present a phylogeny of beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera) based on DNA sequence data from eight nuclear genes, including six single-copy nuclear protein-coding genes, for 367 species representing 172 of 183 extant families. Our results refine existing knowledge of relationships among major groups of beetles. Strepsiptera was confirmed as sister...
Given the many significant roles that bacteria play in modern food manufacturing, it is crucial that we have a fundamental understanding of how bacterial communities assemble and behave in the food manufacturing environment. The focus of this dissertation was to investigate both the spatial and temporal distributions of microbial communities...
Self-regulation skills lay the foundation for short- and long-term school success, and strengthening these skills in early childhood can have significant implications for immediate and future life outcomes (e.g., Blair & Diamond, 2008; McClelland, Acock, Piccinin, Rhea, & Stallings, 2013). A large body of literature has investigated how characteristics of...
The relationship between a country's degree of openness and its economic well-being has been examined extensively both theoretically and empirically. Numerous empirical studies using different openness measures have found a positive effect of openness on growth. However, the validity of such measures have
come into question due to data issues....
Marbled Murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) are threatened seabirds that are prone to disturbance both at sea and at old-growth forest nesting areas. I examined murrelet behavior and activity patterns in forest and marine ecosystems of Oregon. Diving behavior was studied during the 1995 and 1996 breeding seasons and was compared to...
In this thesis, a new learning algorithm is introduced that is targeted towards individual fairness. In order to be individually fair, mispredictions need to be avoided as each such prediction means the learning algorithm was unfair towards some individual. Therefore, achieving individual fairness implies having a perfect classifier, which is...
Human beings are now recognizing that fish are no longer free gifts from the nature and we have to manage it wisely. The current management schemes are more or less based on the allocation of fish by individuals or communities through rules and regulations, resulting in illegal fishing, high MCS...
The world sugar market does not perform in a perfect competitive
setting. This research has applied a new framework to analyze the
impacts of liberalization in international trade in sugar. The current
round of GATT negotiation has placed agricultural trade reform on top of
the list. Trade in sugar will...
Decisions about college are significant in the lives of students and their families, especially since these are often the first major life-decisions that adolescents are able to make largely on their own (Galotti, 1995; Galotti & Mark, 1994). It is widely recognized that family history plays a role in whether...
We evaluated genes previously identified from a large scale functional genomics screen for their potential value to help enhance carbon sequestration in planted trees. We used poplar as a model tree species because of its abundant genetic variation, ease of gene transfer, and availability of large databases for genomic, anatomical,...
A parent’s criminal justice involvement (CJI) can have a lasting impact on their children. Additionally, if these children are involved in Child Protective Services (CPS) they have often faced a form of abuse or neglect and they may be increasingly vulnerable to additional risks. Although a literature base exists that...