published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics

published_or_final_version / abstract / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

The emergence of the global economy has forced the Australian government to revise economic strategies and to seek institutional changes. Higher education's new roles in research and human resource development, have been manifested in university commercialization activities. Mindful that Universities are prestige rather than profit maximizers, this study applies Schumpeter's (1942) theoretical model for the survival of a firm under financial stress. The model's responses, extended to education by Leslie and Miller (1973), include new products, new markets, restructuring, increased productivity and new supply factors. University entrepreneurial activities have monetary and non-monetary impacts. The non-monetary costs and benefits of Australian university enterprise were studied by Leslie (1992) and Leslie and Harrold (1993). In this study, academics at Curtin University of Technology (Perth, Western Australia) were selected as entrepreneurial or non-entrepreneurial subjects and surveyed on the non-monetary costs and benefits of entrepreneurial activities affecting Curtin's teaching, research and public service mission. This data were analyzed and subsequently compared with data obtained by Leslie (1992). Differences in academic perceptions were found among the Curtin respondents by gender, academic status, discipline area, entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial revenue importance. Using the Leslie data inter-institutional differences were examined and an order of entrepreneurial institutional types proposed, with Curtin University described as a frontier entrepreneurial university. The taxonomy of costs and benefits developed by Leslie (1992) was revised with the addition of personal social costs, stress, networking and professional development. An estimate was made of the dollar value of non-monetary items; non-monetary benefits were three times the dollar value of monetary benefits; non-monetary costs were less than half the monetary cost levels. The ratio of non-monetary costs to benefits was 1:3.5. Academics in the disciplines of engineering and science had more favorable perceptions of entrepreneurial costs and benefits than respondents in business studies. Health science respondents were described as having pessimistic perceptions. Future research may look at the levels of commercial revenue and investigate the effects of the amount of financial success or failure on the entrepreneurial efforts of academics. In university enterprise successes seem to foster success and the favorable perceptions of academics.

This study addresses the issue of soil fertility maintenance in relation to crop yield and farm income growth in general in the west African semi-arid tropics. It describes the structural and the input-output characteristics of food crop production and soil fertility management inside a typical village of southern Upper-Volta and then proceeds to infer from cross-section variations the relationships among the existing soil fertility management practices, soil fertility, crop yields, farm income, resource productivities and the average intensity of land utilization. These inferences are used to identify the technical changes as well as the input and output substitutions that characterize the adjustment mechanism of the cropping system vis-a-vis land use intensification. The technical, social and economic factors that explain and constrain the maintenance and the improvement of soil fertility and thereby limit the growth and the development of the cropping system are pointed out together with the types of agricultural research orientations and rural development policy actions that are most needed to effectively and efficiently relax the major constraints. The cropping system has been shown to be composed of five soil-crop management rings, with varying intensities of land utilization, that conceptually surround the household's habitat. Physical measures of soil fertility suggested that the cropping system more or less maintains or improves the chemical fertility of soils on upland but fails to do so on lowland. However, on upland and over the long term, an intensification of cultivation may have some adverse effects on the physical status of the soil and lead to a decline in field capacity. Statistical measures of yields, farm income and resource productivities following the intensity of land use scale suggested than an increase in the intensity of land utilization caused by an increasing demand for arable lands has no adverse effect on crop yields, farm income and resource productivities. This is made possible by the adjustment mechanism of the cropping system vis-a-vis land use intensification. The main feature of the adjustment process is besides out-migration, a substitution of red sorghum for millet and white sorghum, accompanied by a substitution of mineral and organic fertilizers for fallow.

Government involvement in the production and marketing of milk and dairy products is more pronounced than in any other agricultural product. The U.S. government administers two major programs that affect significantly the production and marketing of milk throughout the United States. These are the Federal Milk Marketing Order Program and the Dairy Price Support Program. In Arizona, in addition to these two major programs, the United Dairymen of Arizona Cooperative operates a base system that determines how cooperative milk revenues are allocated among producer members. This dissertation discusses some theoretical models that provide some insights into the following questions: (1) How would the dairy industry perform without the historically administered prices? (2) What are the benefits and costs associated with the order program and the base system? Then, this inquiry focuses on the Arizona and New Mexico dairy sectors. The two production sectors are quite similar, as are the marketing institutions, except for the existence of the base system in Arizona. Milk supply response in Arizona and New Mexico is investigated. Two ways in which supply adjustments can be achieved are identified and empirically investigated. (1) Creation of new dairy facilities or relocation of dairy facilities from other markets. If the decision to invest in Arizona or New Mexico is assumed as given, it is found that the existence of base system is a significant factor in explaining the location choice of new producers. (2) Expansion in output of existing dairy farms. It is found that dairy farmers in Arizona and New Mexico respond to changes in the farm level price of milk. The last effort of the empirical investigation is on the consumers' welfare losses due to the regulations of the Arizona and New Mexico dairy markets. It is found that the milk marketing orders and the policies of the UDA Cooperative in Arizona and AMPI in New Mexico, on the average, enforce a tax on Arizona's consumers of fluid milk in the amount of 10 million dollars per year, or 13.5 percent of producers' total revenue, and a tax on New Mexico's consumers of fluid milk in the amount of 5.6 million dollars per year, or 12.6 percent of producers' total revenue. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

The dynamics of salt accumulation in the soil over time is one of major important information input needed for decision-making in regard to irrigate with saline water. As all waters contain some dissolved salts, during the irrigation these salts tend to concentrate in the soil causing depressed plant growth. Saline irrigation water, low soil permeability, inadequate drainage conditions, low rainfall and poor irrigation management all contribute to the tendency of salt accumulation in the soil. The principal salt accumulation problem of economic importance arises when non-saline soils become saline as result of irrigation. The dynamics of salt accumulation in this study, is based on the model for tracing salt distribution in the soil affected by the quantity and quality of irrigation water, amount of nitrogen and initial soil salinity. To verify the model for tracing salt distribution in the soil and to statistically estimate a crop-production function and soil salinity relation, agronomic data were used from field experiment conducted at the University of Arizona, Maricopa Agricultural Center (MAC), during the 1985 growing season and that utilized cotton variety Delta Pine 61. From the point of view of the response functions and salt accumulation in the soil, many assumptions were made before formulating the models. Results show that (1) no conclusions could be drawn with respect to the model of salt accumulation in the soil, (2) in the case of yield production function and soil salinity relation, the water quantity coeffient had an absolute value greater than one, (3) water quality and nitrogen coefficients had an absolute value less than one, (4) initial soil salinity coefficient had negative value, (5) looking for the best combination amoung the variables inputs, the marginal rate of substitution was greater than the ratio of prices, (6) the time path for soil salinity converge to a steady state conditions, and (7) the profitability of cotton irrigated with drip system is sensitive to yield increases and increases in the price of cotton.

Bulletin No. 145 Revised; Revised by H. Embleton

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