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Thesis (M.Sc. (Agricultural Economics)) --University of Limpopo, 2018 / Legumes are crops that are rich in protein and if households are made aware of their importance, they can be acquired at lower costs and dependency on animal proteins can also be reduced. The cowpea smallholder producers in Africa are faced with numerous challenges such as persistent pests such as aphids that reduce yields, lack of improved varieties and the inability to produce in quantities large enough to sell to local or broader markets in South Africa. The aim of this study was to examine economic efficiency of cowpea production among smallholder cowpea farmers in Capricorn and Waterberg districts of Limpopo province. The descriptive statistics indicated that interviewed farmers years of schooling ranged from 0 to 13 years, with an average of five years of attending school. Farmers’ age ranged between 33 and 78, with an average age of 61 years. The average income received on monthly basis from the overall agricultural produce was R1735.83 per farmer. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) results showed that the Technical Efficiency (TE) scores of cowpea farmers had a mean of 0,9588 with a minimum of 0,7500 and maximum of 1,000. This means that 95% of the farmers were technically efficient. The allocative Efficiency score ranges from a minimum of 0,4070 and a maximum of 1,000 with a mean of 0,6519. The Allocative Efficiency (AE) scores imply that farmers were not utilizing inputs. The Economic Efficiency scores ranges from a minimum of 0,3820 to 1,000 with a mean score of 0,6218. This implies that cowpea smallholder farmers were economically inefficient on average and that the cost of cowpea production for each farm could be decreased on average by approximately 38% to obtain the same level of output. The Tobit regression model found that the explanatory variables which were significant are age, educational level, primary income source, farm size, method of intercropping, purpose of growing cowpea and source of field labour. The study recommends that there is a need to provide primary education to the farmers for them to be able to measure and calculate the inputs they use and output they attain in order to improve their efficiency levels. Key words: Economic Efficiency, Smallholder Farmers and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).

The study examined contractor demographics, business and technological characteristics, costs, and production information for 15 independent logging firms in the Appalachians. Contractors represented nine states and were studied from 1995 to 1997. Each contractor's cost and production information was used to determine his economic efficiency for the study period. Total annual production for the firms ranged from 2,728.26 tons to 213,194.74 during the three-year period. Four contractors' median weekly production decreased from 1996 to 1997, while three contractors increased their weekly median production. Labor was the largest cost category for the smaller production contractors and contracted services tended to be the largest category for the larger producers. Regression analyses found that the cost of producing an additional ton increased from 1995 to 1996 and decreased from 1996 to 1997. Total cost per ton increased for four contractors from 1995 to 1996, while four showed decreasing cost per ton. For 1996 to 1997, five contractors had a cost per ton increase and seven showed a cost per ton decrease. Some of these shifts can be attributed to the fact that several of the mechanized contractors in the Central-Appalachians were "start-up" contractors when the study began. West Virginia contractors had the highest workers' compensation premiums per ton and Georgia contractors had the lowest. Labor costs per ton were highest for North-Central Appalachian contractors and lowest for the Southern Appalachian contractors. Contractors who produced predominantly sawlogs tended to have higher efficiency rankings than those who produced primarily pulpwood. / Master of Science

O uso de fronteira de produ¸c˜ ao estoc´ astica com m´ ultiplos produtos tem despertado um interesse especial em ´areas da economia que defrontam-se com o problema de quantificar a eficiˆencia t´ecnica de firmas. Na estat´ýstica cl´ assica, quando se defronta com firmas que possuem v´arios produtos, as fun¸c˜ oes custo ou demanda s˜ ao mais utilizadas para calcular essa eficiˆencia, mas isso requer uma quantidade maior de informa¸c˜ oes sobre os dados, al´em das quantidades de insumos e produtos, tamb´em s˜ ao necess´ arios seus pre¸cos e custos. Quando existem apenas informa¸c˜ oes sobre os insumos (x) e os produtos (y) h´a a necessidade de se trabalhar com a fun¸c˜ ao de produ¸c˜ ao e a inexistˆencia de estat´ýsticas suficientes para alguns parˆ ametros tornam a an´alise d´ýficil. A abordagem Bayesiana pode se tornar uma ferramenta muito ´ util para esse caso, pois ´e poss´ývel obter uma amostra da distribui¸ c˜ ao de probabilidade dos parˆ ametros do modelo, possibilitando a obten¸c˜ ao de resumos de interesse. Para obter as amostras dessas distribui¸ c˜ oes m´etodos Monte Carlo com cadeias de Markov, tais como, amostrador de Gibbs, Metropolis-Hastings e "Slice sampling" s˜ ao utilizados. / The use of stochastic production frontier with multiple-outputs has been waking up a special interest in areas of the economy that are confronted with the problem of quantifying the technical efficiency of firms. In the classic statistics, when it is confronted with firms that possess several outputs, cost or profit functions are more used to calculate that efficiency, but that requests an amount larger of information about data set, besides the amounts of inputs and outputs, are also necessary your prices and costs. When just exist information on inputs (x) and outputs (y) there is need to work with the production function and the lack of enough statistics for some parameters turn the difficult analysis. Bayesian approach can become a useful tool for that case, because is possible to obtain a sample of the distribution of probability of the parameters of the model, making possible the obtaining of summaries of interest. To obtain samples of those distributions methods Markov chains Monte Carlo, that is, Gibbs sampling, Metropolis-Hastings and Slice sampling are used.

La DSE est née des premières actions caritatives catholiques et s'est consolidée grâce à la proclamation de textes pontificaux sur la dignité humaine au cœur de l'activité économique. Sans livrer un manuel scientifique d'utilisation, la DSE proclame des principes et oriente implicitement les comportements des agents économiques qui s'y réfèrent. Le études transversales entre la DSE et les filières de l'économie et de la gestion sont rares. La DSE, de son côté, ne proclame ni modèles ni stratégies d'entreprises précises. Une étude critique des principaux courants économiques, du courant de la Responsabilité Sociale des Entreprises (RSE) ainsi que de certains modèles de management à la lumière de principes de la DSE permet d'identifier les postulats que la DSE approuve et ceux qu'elle réprouve en termes de respect de la dignité de la personne. La DSE s'adresse particulièrement aux patrons d'entreprise, principaux promoteurs de la répartition équitable de la valeur ajoutée entre parties prenantes, notamment s'ils aspirent à la pérennisation de leurs activités économiques. La DSE permet de justifier la cohabitation possible entre équité sociale et efficacité économique travers la conversion perpétuelle du progrès économique en développement humain. À travers l'universalité de se principes, la DSE est susceptible d'être acceptée par tous les hommes de bonne volonté. Des dirigeants de diverse origines culturelles construisent implicitement leurs objectifs et leurs lignes de conduite sur ces principes. Ils sont convaincus que la réussite de leurs affaires est étroitement liée à leur souci permanent de respecter le principe de la dignité humaine. / The SDC was born from the first catholic charitable actions and was later consolidated by the proclamation of pontifical texts on the dignity of the human person within economic activity. Though not providing a scientific instruction manual, the SDC proclaims principles and implicitly orients the behavior of the economic agents who refer to it. Transversal studies linking the SDC to the scientific channels of economics and management are rare. The SDC, on its part, proclaims no precise models or strategies for enterprises. A critical study of the main economic currents, of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) stream and of some management models in light of the SDC principles allows identifying the postulates approved by the SDC, as well as the ones disproved, with regard to personal dignity and human development. The SDC is particularly addressed to business executives, as they are the main promoters of an equitable distribution of the added value among the stakeholders, especially if they aspire at a perpetuation of their activities. This teaching allows the justification of a possible coexistence between social equity and economic efficiency. It proclaims that economic progress ought to be constantly converted into development of the common good. Thanks to the universality of its principles, the SDC is likely to be accepted by all people of good will. Business executives of diverse cultural origins implicitly build their objectives and set up their lines of action on these principles. They are convinced that success in their businesses is intimately connected with a permanent concern for respecting the ultimate principle of human dignity.

This thesis explores the concept of sustainability in the context of the community expectation for sustainability in cities. Effective sustainability performance requires all three pillars of environmental sustainability (stewardship), social equity and economic efficiency to achieve complementary outcomes rather than simply individual outcomes. For cities, one challenge of sustainability is centred on urban form, transport characteristics and the interactions between these and the communities they support. Better understanding of these dynamics is an important step in a meaningful interpretation of sustainability performance of cities. Reviews of methodological gaps in sustainability performance of cities are framed into a statement of problem. Gaps include a holistic assessment framework, methodologies to better understand urban dynamics, the drivers that produce sustainability performance and to objectively measure the performance of all three pillars of sustainability. The common transport planning and land-use planning methods are identified as suitable building blocks for improvements in sustainability assessment, and accessibility is established as an important part of sustainability. In a new approach to sustainability analysis, a sustainability framework is formulated. A concept of "environmental sustainability - accessibility space" is introduced as a novel visualisation of sustainability performance. Propositions are formed that a city's sustainability performance can be analytically quantified and simply visualised in terms of the three pillars of sustainability. Sydney, a global city with a history of planning, is the case study to empirically test the propositions, with the sustainability framework providing the conceptual reference points. Having developed a picture of the urban dynamics in the Sydney case study, the proposed sustainability metrics are developed and the propositions tested. Sustainability metrics consisting of three typologies are shown to indicate the sustainability performance characteristics for the three pillars of sustainability in terms of data set shape, frequency and spread in the "environmental sustainability accessibility space". The visualisations although built from many thousands of pieces of data provided a simple representation giving a holistic view of the sustainability characteristics and trends. Collectively, the sustainability framework, sustainability metrics, companion urban dynamics metrics, and urban system measures are demonstrated as a meaningful methodology in assessing city sustainability performance.

O uso de fronteira de produ¸c˜ ao estoc´ astica com m´ ultiplos produtos tem despertado um interesse especial em ´areas da economia que defrontam-se com o problema de quantificar a eficiˆencia t´ecnica de firmas. Na estat´ýstica cl´ assica, quando se defronta com firmas que possuem v´arios produtos, as fun¸c˜ oes custo ou demanda s˜ ao mais utilizadas para calcular essa eficiˆencia, mas isso requer uma quantidade maior de informa¸c˜ oes sobre os dados, al´em das quantidades de insumos e produtos, tamb´em s˜ ao necess´ arios seus pre¸cos e custos. Quando existem apenas informa¸c˜ oes sobre os insumos (x) e os produtos (y) h´a a necessidade de se trabalhar com a fun¸c˜ ao de produ¸c˜ ao e a inexistˆencia de estat´ýsticas suficientes para alguns parˆ ametros tornam a an´alise d´ýficil. A abordagem Bayesiana pode se tornar uma ferramenta muito ´ util para esse caso, pois ´e poss´ývel obter uma amostra da distribui¸ c˜ ao de probabilidade dos parˆ ametros do modelo, possibilitando a obten¸c˜ ao de resumos de interesse. Para obter as amostras dessas distribui¸ c˜ oes m´etodos Monte Carlo com cadeias de Markov, tais como, amostrador de Gibbs, Metropolis-Hastings e “Slice sampling” s˜ ao utilizados. / The use of stochastic production frontier with multiple-outputs has been waking up a special interest in areas of the economy that are confronted with the problem of quantifying the technical efficiency of firms. In the classic statistics, when it is confronted with firms that possess several outputs, cost or profit functions are more used to calculate that efficiency, but that requests an amount larger of information about data set, besides the amounts of inputs and outputs, are also necessary your prices and costs. When just exist information on inputs (x) and outputs (y) there is need to work with the production function and the lack of enough statistics for some parameters turn the difficult analysis. Bayesian approach can become a useful tool for that case, because is possible to obtain a sample of the distribution of probability of the parameters of the model, making possible the obtaining of summaries of interest. To obtain samples of those distributions methods Markov chains Monte Carlo, that is, Gibbs sampling, Metropolis-Hastings and Slice sampling are used.

This diploma thesis deals with the determination of the profit and loss statement and the subsequent creation of the project cash flows and the evaluation of the economic efficiency of the administrative building project using criteria based on the time value of money. The theoretical part deals with problems of development projects and their evaluation as well as general description of brownfields. The practical part is elaborated on two thematic issues, it is a presentation of brownfields on the territory of the city of Brno and the second is the evaluation of a specific brownfield project.

In the wake of events like the COVID-19 pandemic, the storming of the Capitol, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s time to start labeling misinformation for what it is: a negative externality to society. The spillover effects from the proliferation of mis- and disinformation have the potential to negatively impact the institution of democracy, civic engagement, and downstream health outcomes. Put simply, to understand the misinformation problem is to understand its complexities, its pitfalls, and its motivations. Taken as a whole, this paper articulates the need for a divergence from conventional economic theory on efficiency to a pro-social, welfare-based approach to internalization efforts. In doing so, this analysis presents a full-scale characterization of misinformation as a negative externality, starting with the reorganization of traditional microeconomic theory, followed by a platform-by-platform evaluation of various internalization strategies and evidence from the literature on the impacts of misinformation, and concluding with a commentary on potential remediation approaches. / Thesis ( BA ) — Boston College, 2022 . / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences . / Discipline: Departmental Honors . / Discipline: Economics .

Thesis advisor: Thomas Wesner / In the wake of events like the COVID-19 pandemic, the storming of the Capitol, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s time to start labeling misinformation for what it is: a negative externality to society. The spillover effects from the proliferation of mis- and disinformation have the potential to negatively impact the institution of democracy, civic engagement, and downstream health outcomes. Put simply, to understand the misinformation problem is to understand its complexities, its pitfalls, and its motivations. Taken as a whole, this paper articulates the need for a divergence from conventional economic theory on efficiency to a pro-social, welfare-based approach to internalization efforts. In doing so, this analysis presents a full-scale characterization of misinformation as a negative externality, starting with the reorganization of traditional microeconomic theory, followed by a platform-by-platform evaluation of various internalization strategies and evidence from the literature on the impacts of misinformation, and concluding with a commentary on potential remediation approaches. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.