In traditional growth theory, the terms of trade are important growth factors. However, the new exported growth hypothesis suggests that shifting from resource to innovation rents via the free market trade mechanism accelerates growth. Given its revealed comparative advantages in natural resources, Namibia is attempting to apply World Bank, and UNIDO new growth criteria to stimulate economic growth. This research analyzes Namibia's data from 1968-1992, estimates the impacts and tests the significance of resources, technology, and mineral exports in economic growth. It assumes variable elasticity of substitution (VES) production technologies in which capital, labor, and land inputs can be disaggregated and hypotheses concerning scale, complementary and substitute inputs can be examined. A disaggregated examination of traded and nontraded sectors is employed over two sub-periods: 1968-1980, and 1981-1992. The analysis confirms the importance of mineral exports to the economy but finds no discernible sign of accelerated growth as a function of the shifting structure and the new growth criteria. The attempt to shift from resource rents in the early period to an industrial emphasis in the later period fails to accelerate Namibia's growth. Global constant returns to scale pre-1980, and diminishing returns to scale post-1980 obtain. The switch from complementary and flexible substitute inputs pre-1980 to rigid substitutes post-1980 suggests technical inefficiencies. The vent-for-surplus nature of the mineral subsector is supported; but attempts to industrialize via manufacturing are not vindicated, and the surplus arising pre-1980 dissapates post-1980, as evidenced by the low or negative factor productivities and technical change. The result is that neither the expected growth nor acceleration in technical change patterns are observed. Policies seem to have discouraged investment in the traded resource sectors such that structural changes expanded the low productivity nontraded service sectors. Namibia is a vent-for-surplus example in which resource rents do not sustain early economic growth, and attempts to shift to innovation rents fail to stimulate growth. Given the paucity of data, Namibia's case confirms that export surpluses from resources may be a necessary element, but not a sufficient condition, for sustainable growth.

This dissertation attempts to advance our understanding of price dynamics by investigating how prices adjust following a change in demand. Previous work has the common feature of an equilibrium that supports collusion among firms. A new explanation based upon the private incentives of unilateral market power is offered for sluggish or countercyclical price adjustment. After discussing the theoretical and empirical literature on the cyclical nature of prices and price-cost margins in chapter one, the next three chapters develop and test the market power model. The second chapter examines the short-run version of the model. The market power of firms changes with the business cycle, and this affects the cyclical pricing behavior of firms. Following a decrease in demand in the short-run, capacity-constrained firms all choosing a market clearing price as a best response may have a strong incentive not to lower their prices to the new competitive price. Experimental markets with complete information convincingly support the conjecture that unilateral market power is a source of countercyclical markups. This short-run market power model of cyclical pricing is then extended in chapter three to a long-run framework. In the long-run version of the market power model, duopolists simultaneously choose capacity with an uncertain demand in the first stage. Once capacity is chosen, the demand is revealed to the firms and they compete in prices. The fourth chapter tests the unique implications of the market power model with a time series field study. The market power model predicts that real price changes are drawn from a distribution with a high variance when output concurrently is in a contractionary state, but from a low variance when output is in an expansionary state. The evidence is consistent with the unique prediction of the market power model. Chapter five explores other explanations for sluggish price adjustment which have received considerable theoretical attention in macroeconomics, but which have been subjected to limited direct testing. This chapter uses experimental economies to test how menu costs and their interactions with potentially rigid factor costs affect product price adjustment.

This dissertation uses a political economy approach to analyze national telecommunications markets. The analytical framework combines stakeholder analysis with the Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm of industrial economics. Since the telecom network is an important national resource, telecom policymaking can be expected to be a highly political process in which powerful stakeholders vie to influence policy. The central hypothesis is that national telecommunications policy decisions reflect the main stakeholder's interests in each country. First, the introductory chapter discusses economic issues affecting telecommunications network development. Then, the literature on the political economy of telecommunications is reviewed. Next, the theoretical principles behind this analysis are presented. Data collection for the study was based on a multiple case study methodology using information on the markets for basic services, payphones, mobile telephony, paging, EDI and the Internet in Malaysia and Singapore. In Malaysia and Singapore, the primary stakeholders are the dominant political parties, UMNO and PAP, respectively. In both cases, telecom policy and the resultant market structures can be traced to the politics of the 1960s. Malaysian market structures are seen as the outcome of UMNO's goal of increasing Malay participation in the economy while maintaining high economic growth rates. This led to the formation of competitive markets composed mainly of Malay-owned companies. Singaporean market structures are viewed as the outcome of its one-party political system in which the main stakeholder is the PAP. The result was a tendency towards monopolistic markets run by government-owned companies. At the time of data collection (1996), five of the six markets studied in Malaysia were competitive, while five of the six Singaporean markets studied were monopolies. Ownership patterns also fit in with expectations. In Malaysia, all but two of the twenty-six companies studied were majority Malay-owned, while in Singapore all five of the telecommunication companies studied were owned by the Singaporean government. The Internet was the exception to this pattern. Malaysia's second Internet Services Provider began operations in November 1996, making it Malaysia's least competitive market, while Singapore's third Internet Service Provider launched its services during March 1996, making it Singapore's most competitive market.

The purpose of this dissertation is the discovery of basic principles that govern the design of electronic markets. The advances in communication technology have given us the ability to create fully automated markets that can function twenty-four hours a day and that can accommodate the participation of software agents as proxies to decrease transactions costs and increase efficiency. While computers cannot fully replace humans, it is already the case that humans face competition from software agents in their daily market activities on the Internet. This dissertation examines an experimentally created, real-time electronic market for multiple units of a homogenous good that (1) accommodates the participation of software agents as both buyers and sellers, (2) offers its users a variety of institutions (rules) of exchange, and (3) is specifically designed to analyze the way different institutions, time costs, and software agent participation affects human behavior. The experiments show that it is possible to construct software agents using common patterns of human behavior in previously investigated similar market situations. These agents can then successfully become an integral part of a new electronic market environment. We notice that human market participants initially underestimate the software agents' ability to compete--a phenomenon that can lead to lower efficiency levels. Two factors are important in the choice of institution: the level of market information that the institution provides and its relative success in the initial phase of the trading period.

The adoption of import oriented policies introduced distortions into the economy which caused Nigeria to ignore resource-based industry in agriculture, petroleum and metal production. The resulted in the transfer of technology into industries with a continual reliance on imported inputs. This pattern of production represented a drain on foreign exchange and was opposed to the initial assumption that import substituting industry would save foreign exchange. These policies introduced an anti-export bias and an anti-employment bias into the economy as the price of capital was kept artificially low which penalized the agriculture sector by adversely affecting the terms of trade enjoyed by the producers of agricultural commodities. Nigeria's implementation of policies that created disincentives to efficiently allocate resources was the initial cause of stagnation. However, the implementation of policies which created disincentives to expand production in agriculture and crude oil exports continued stagnation.

The thesis is divided into three essays. In the first essay, a two-by-two model is formulated in which changes in price are caused by technological progress that takes place in one sector. It is found that the factor used intensively in the sector where technology advances will be better off in terms of both goods if the proportionate decrease in the price of that good is less than the proportionate increase in productivity; the other factor, although it suffers from the change in factor intensity, may still be better off due to the improvement in productivity. The second essay deals with technology that is accessible to every one in the economy. Since technology is a public good, it pays to devote more resources in the creation of new technology if the population size is larger; productivity increases as the investments for new technology increase. The optimal level of population is reached when the positive effect of increased productivity is balanced by the negative effect of the increased labor size. The third essay discusses two topics: first, the optimal level of technology acquisition; second, the international indebtedness. Productivity will increase because of the acquired technology; however, the secondary burden of the royalty payments will turn the terms of trade against the adopting country. The optimal level of technology acquisition is then reached when the gains from the acquired technology are balanced by the losses from the worsening terms of trade. In the second part of the third essay, the advanced country temporarily falls behind in the creation of technology but expects to regain the leading margin in productivity. Both countries can be better off if the advanced country now borrows from the backward country and pays the loan back with interest when the leading margin in technology of the advanced country is reestablished in the future.

We propose an access price determination approach, where the only regulatory instrument is the interconnection charge. Retail prices are set by unconstrained profit maximizing firms. We present a two stage model, solved backwards. In the second stage, the two firms compete freely, taking the access price as given. In the first stage, the regulator uses the information generated in the second stage to set the social welfare maximizing access price. We first assume a certainty model where firms have constant marginal costs. Firms may have different costs at the retail level and may choose either prices or quantities of the retail service. We find that the regulator generally provides the entrant with a subsidy (paid by the incumbent) in the form of an access price that does not cover marginal costs. A virtual (real) subsidy is provided when the incumbent has lower (higher) retail costs than the entrant. We then assume that the firms may not have constant marginal costs and that the regulated firm holds private information about its type. We determine an access pricing rule in which any excess of the incumbent's price over its marginal costs lowers the optimal access price. Finally, we use simulation models to compare our partially regulated model with a fully regulated model in which the regulator sets the interconnection and the retail prices. We find that when the integrated firm holds all the private information, the partially regulated model achieves a lower expected social welfare. Nevertheless, when the regulator and the regulated firm do not know the entrant's type, the partially regulated model can achieve a higher level of welfare. We also find that under uncertainty, the partially regulated model often results in the offering of one single contract regardless of the announced type of the incumbent.

This thesis deals with the appraisal of the economics of underground conversion in surface limestone mining operations. Software that predicts the time at which an open pit operation should be converted to underground extraction has been developed. The software is based on estimates of capital expenditures required for the underground conversion and for future equipment acquisitions and replacements under both open pit and underground operating alternatives, as well as long-term operating cost estimates for both alternatives. Open pit and underground cost estimates can be entered either directly, or estimated using O'Hara and Suboleski's (1992) cost estimation equations. It is assumed that an underground source of limestone is accessible and that its extraction is technically feasible. The program determines the cost-flow profile of each alternative and compares their present worth equivalents at yearly intervals over a pre-determined period of analysis. The program reports the optimum time for the conversion, if indeed it exists. / The report starts with a review of limestone and dolomite as mineral commodities. This is followed by a brief literature review relating to underground conversion of surface mining operations. Mining methods and costs related to industrial minerals are then described and discussed. The thesis concludes with a detailed description of the software and a hypothetical case study.

<p> As the global pattern of severe weather intensifies, complex disaster-related appraisals are becoming increasingly more common. Post-disaster appraisals are particularly challenging due to several key factors: (1) the large number of objects in each appraisal, (2) the diversity of the objects and (3) the limited time frame for completion. Due to these complicating factors the methodologies that were once central to the structure of valuation are crumbling and new metrics are being formed to accommodate these labyrinthine post-disaster jobs. By way of a single case study undertaken post-Hurricane Sandy, this document explores the process of redesigning appraisal methodologies, of approaching uncommon historical objects found often in these now less exceptional cases, of identifying "value signifiers" for those objects and ultimately of reimagining the very core of what it means to appraise fine art.</p>

Blind signatures make anonymity a reality in digital cash systems. However, when deployed in digital cash systems such as eCash, blind signatures raise such drawbacks as bad scalability and unfair anonymity. In this thesis, efforts have been done to combine digital signatures and a mechanism called "money-exchange" found in NetCash to build a new digital cash system. In the new system, two forms of digital cash are introduced: digital notes and digital coins. "Money-exchange" is extended to permit cash exchange from one form to the other. At the side of the digital cash issuer, at least two databases are maintained to detect double-spending. The new digital cash system is secure due to its deployment of both symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms. The combination of blind signatures and the extended money-exchange mechanism offers unconditional and fair anonymity, and it makes the system more scalable with the regards to the number of clients served.