This thesis contains three essays on topics in agricultural economics. The research is focused on the economic effects of different trade policies applied within the US, Canada and the European Union. <p>Essay one evaluates the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the single EU common market. The degree of integration of these three countries in agricultural trade in the EU has not previously been evaluated. Trade theory suggests that one of the outcomes resulting from a regional trade agreement is increased market integration among markets in member states. The cointegration of the commodity prices across countries is tested using time-series techniques. This method is important as it can be applied to questions relating to globalization. <p>Essay two examines the biofuel industry in Canada and US from a trade perspective. The development of a large market for biofuels is judged to have two main benefits for North America: environmental benefits in Canada and energy security in the US. A theoretical model is developed using the option value theory to determine whether the two distinct motivating factors can lead to different levels of optimal subsidies in each country. While the development of a biofuel industry is viewed as extremely important in a number of countries, the trade laws on subsidies with respect these products lacks clarity. This research represents an important step in understanding the economics of biofuels and the situations where trade disputes can be expected to appear in the future.<p>Dumping is the subject of the third essay where the strategies of firms in the face of an anti-dumping action are examined using game theory. The possibility of free riding in case of an anti-dumping petition is investigated in two situations: the benefits of the anti-dumping case are considered either a public good or a joint product. The second situation can be applied only for US, because of so-called Byrd Amendment. The theoretical model developed represents an important contribution to trade policy and it can be easily applied when examining the effects of other trade or domestic policies.

This thesis contains three essays on topics in agricultural economics. The research is focused on the economic effects of different trade policies applied within the US, Canada and the European Union. <p>Essay one evaluates the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the single EU common market. The degree of integration of these three countries in agricultural trade in the EU has not previously been evaluated. Trade theory suggests that one of the outcomes resulting from a regional trade agreement is increased market integration among markets in member states. The cointegration of the commodity prices across countries is tested using time-series techniques. This method is important as it can be applied to questions relating to globalization. <p>Essay two examines the biofuel industry in Canada and US from a trade perspective. The development of a large market for biofuels is judged to have two main benefits for North America: environmental benefits in Canada and energy security in the US. A theoretical model is developed using the option value theory to determine whether the two distinct motivating factors can lead to different levels of optimal subsidies in each country. While the development of a biofuel industry is viewed as extremely important in a number of countries, the trade laws on subsidies with respect these products lacks clarity. This research represents an important step in understanding the economics of biofuels and the situations where trade disputes can be expected to appear in the future.<p>Dumping is the subject of the third essay where the strategies of firms in the face of an anti-dumping action are examined using game theory. The possibility of free riding in case of an anti-dumping petition is investigated in two situations: the benefits of the anti-dumping case are considered either a public good or a joint product. The second situation can be applied only for US, because of so-called Byrd Amendment. The theoretical model developed represents an important contribution to trade policy and it can be easily applied when examining the effects of other trade or domestic policies.

Group work is pervading modern society's life with potentially huge advantages but also the peril of motivational losses. This master thesis focuses on the latter ones, namely on free-riding and social loafing, in the educational context. I conducted a field research at the Institute of Economic Studies at Charles University in Prague. The results are set into context with existing studies from the US, scrutinizing the generalizability of these studies. Students of this sample consider teamwork as relatively neutral, appreciate the possibility to learn from each other the strongest and consider free-riding as the biggest disadvantage. Free-riders are described as poorly prepared, having trouble to complete work at home and delivering poor quality work. As remedy, students prefer to be able to pick a team on their own. This thesis can partially confirm prior research but also contradicts some anterior findings since free-riders in this thesis are not described as behaving distractively and students do not primarily want instructors to grade them on their individual performance.

TESIS PARA OPTAR AL GRADO ACADÉMICO DE MAGÍSTER EN MARKETING / Cross-channel y free-riding corresponden a conductas cada vez más comunes en el mundo del retail. Mientras la conducta cross-channel se asocia al cambio de canales, la conducta free-riding se asocia al cambio de retailer durante el proceso de búsqueda de información y compra de un producto. Estos comportamientos, tienen efectos directos sobre los retailers, ya que deben adaptar sus estrategias con el fin de satisfacer las demandas de estos consumidores. El siguiente estudio tiene el objetivo de investigar la conducta cross-channel y la conducta free-riding en un contexto de retail multicanal, buscando entender si estos comportamientos se ven influidos por distintos tipos de producto (de distinta naturaleza y riesgo percibido). Mediante un cuestionario auto administrado, se obtuvo que los distintos tipos de productos no tienen incidencia en la conducta cross-channel, sin embargo, la interacción entre la naturaleza del producto y su riesgo, afecta a la conducta free-riding. Los hallazgos del estudio pueden ser utilizados en el marketing, con el fin de recomendar estrategias para la retención de clientes.

abstract: Designing a hazard intelligence platform enables public agencies to organize diversity and manage complexity in collaborative partnerships. To maintain the integrity of the platform while preserving the prosocial ethos, understanding the dynamics of “non-regulatory supplements” to central governance is crucial. In conceptualization, social responsiveness is shaped by communicative actions, in which coordination is attained through negotiated agreements by way of the evaluation of validity claims. The dynamic processes involve information processing and knowledge sharing. The access and the use of collaborative intelligence can be examined by notions of traceability and intelligence cohort. Empirical evidence indicates that social traceability is statistical significant and positively associated with the improvement of collaborative performance. Moreover, social traceability positively contributes to the efficacy of technical traceability, but not vice versa. Furthermore, technical traceability significantly contributes to both moderate and high performance improvement; while social traceability is only significant for moderate performance improvement. Therefore, the social effect is limited and contingent. The results further suggest strategic considerations. Social significance: social traceability is the fundamental consideration to high cohort performance. Cocktail therapy: high cohort performance involves an integrative strategy with high social traceability and high technical traceability. Servant leadership: public agencies should exercise limited authority and perform a supporting role in the provision of appropriate technical traceability, while actively promoting social traceability in the system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2015

This dissertation advances a new argumentative approach to the political problem of black reparations in the contemporary United States appealing to the normative principle of fair play. Among its core presumptions is the view that getting appreciable numbers of white Americans to acknowledge what I call the primary normative case for black reparations will require, among other things, a new kind of discursive move, namely: the deployment of an intermediary case designed to facilitate recognition of the primary one. The two central tasks of my dissertation are to establish the need for such an intermediary case, and to make it via my novel fair play argument. My approach to fair play reasoning involves three main innovations: First, I introduce the possibility of deploying that framework in a corrective mode, to ground redistributive obligations on the part of members of systemically advantaged groups, but which do not imply guilt or blame. Second, in arguing for that deployment, I offer a novel conception of free-riding which I call externalist insofar as it defines the latter without reference to the relevant agents’ mental states. Third, I argue that in a range of cases those corrective obligations of fair play can qualify as reparative despite the fact that their normative force is not determined by direct reference to any discrete wrong, or what I call extrinsically reparative. A key plank of my proposal is the empirical claim that the lens of fair play is better suited to overcoming many of the moral and social psychological obstacles that have long plagued political progress on black reparations in the U.S. I defend this claim by drawing upon various strands of the empirical literature on white racial identity in connection with attitudes toward race-sensitive social policies generally. I argue that it is only upon being safely confronted with the details of how their very whiteness precipitates the nonvoluntary receipt of various unearned material advantages that white Americans will begin to perceive their own personal involvement in America’s long history of racial injustice, and feel a new kind of pressure to do something about it. / 2021-10-29T00:00:00Z

Thesis advisor: Hideo Konishi / The majority of this work focuses on the theoretical analysis of collective action, group efficiency, and incentive mechanisms in team contests where individual outlays of heterogeneous agents are not observable. The reward allocation within the group is instead dependent on observable worker characteristics, modeled as individual abilities, as well as on the observable level of aggregate output. I study the incentives for free-riding and the group-size paradox under a very general set of intra-team allocation rules. I further derive the optimal allocation mechanism which rewards agents according to a general-logit specification based on their relative ability. I derive conditions under which a team's performance is most sensitive to the ability of its highest-skill members, while at the same time higher spread in the distribution of ability has a positive effect on group output. In the final chapter I shift attention to the problem of optimal player order choice in dynamic pairwise team battles. I show that even if player order choice is conducted endogenously and sequentially after observing the outcomes of earlier rounds, then complete randomization over remaining agents is always a subgame perfect equilibrium. The zero-sum nature of these type of contests implies that expected payoffs for each team are independent of whether the contest matching pairs are determined endogenously and sequentially or announced before the start of the game. In both cases the ex-ante payoffs are equivalent to those when an independent contest organizer randomly draws the matches. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Canais de marketing proliferaram nos últimos anos. Por meio da integração de canais virtuais, as vendas de varejistas tradicionais se expandiram. Num ambiente multicanal, os consumidores podem se movimentar facilmente entre diferentes canais. O free-riding acontece quando os consumidores realizam pesquisa on-line ou em sites de comparação de preços e acabam realizando a compra em outro varejista não pesquisado. O cruzamento entre canais pode levar a perdas para o varejista e se torna questão-chave do varejo multicanal na retenção do consumidor. Lançando luz sobre esta questão foi utilizado um modelo teórico originário da geografia humana, o paradigma Push-Pull-Mooring para explicar o comportamento de alternância do consumidor. Este estudo propõe um modelo teórico para explicar o comportamento de alternância do consumidor e o impacto na intenção de free-riding. O modelo final apresentou antecedentes para autoeficácia (push): a experiência prévia com internet e a satisfação em free-riding; para retenção na firma (mooring): o alto custo de mudança e a busca de variedade e, para atratividade do varejo tradicional (pull): qualidade percebida, risco percebido e satisfação com loja física. Foi realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa e quantitativa do tipo survey, aplicada em consumidores com experiência de compra na internet, e modelagem pela análise de equações estruturais. Os resultados empíricos revelam efeito mediador para a variável atratividade do varejo por meio do alto risco percebido na interação com lojas virtuais. Há efeitos moderadores dados pela idade, gênero, renda, busca de informação e hábito de compra. Há fortes evidências de motivação para retenção na firma. / Marketing channels have proliferated in recent years. Through integration of on-line channel, sales of traditional retailers have expanded. In a multichannel environment, consumers can move easily between different channels. Free-riding occur when consumers perform on-line search or consult price comparison sites and end up performing purchase at a retailer not searched before. The crossover between channels can lead to losses for the retailer and becomes one the main issues of multichannel retailing in the area of consumer retention. To shed some light on this issue, a theoretical model from the literature on human geography was used, the Push-Pull-Mooring paradigm to explain the switching behavior of consumers. This study proposes a theoretical model to explain the switching behavior and its impact on free-riding. The final model presents antecedents to self-efficacy (push): previous experience with internet and satisfaction in free-riding; with-in firm lock-in (mooring): the switching costs and the variety seeking; and attractiveness to the competitor\'s offline retail store (pull): perceived quality, perceived risk and satisfaction with offline stores. A qualitative and quantitative survey research was applied to consumer regarding their shopping experience with the internet. The technique of structural equation modeling was performed. The empirical results reveal mediating effect of with-in firm lock-in when the consumer realizes that he/she is serviced on his/her need for variety of products and brands. The mediating effect of attractiveness of competitor\'s offline store is given by perception of satisfaction with retail stores and perceived high risk in interacting with on-line stores. Moderating effects were also found: age, gender, income, information search and buying habit. There is strong evidence of motivation for with-in firm lock-in.

Research questions, results and Empirical Data This book studies the allocation of scarce resources among competing needs and wants. Chapter 1 – Luck, effort and Redistribution on procedural justice provides one possible explanation for the vast differences between US and Western European tax an redistribution levels. Chapter 2- Participation and Peers in Social Dilemmas on social norms investigates two potential reasons why solutions to social dilemmas in for instance insurance systems can persist without being destroyed by the negative forces of free-riding. Chapter 3 - Commitment and Impasses in Negotiation on conflict shifts focus to bilateral bargaining and the reasons for conflict and impasses. Whether they manifest as strikes, job resignations, or trade embargoes, failures of the negotiation process create tremendous loss of social welfare and are therefore important to further understand. Each chapter is based on observations of real human behavior in the lab. The empirical data consists of: 204 M.B.A. students and 96 M.Sc. students from Harvard university, the Stockholm School of Economics, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm university and Karolinska Institutet; 5 experiments over 21 experimental sessions generated 2,520 observations.

Canais de marketing proliferaram nos últimos anos. Por meio da integração de canais virtuais, as vendas de varejistas tradicionais se expandiram. Num ambiente multicanal, os consumidores podem se movimentar facilmente entre diferentes canais. O free-riding acontece quando os consumidores realizam pesquisa on-line ou em sites de comparação de preços e acabam realizando a compra em outro varejista não pesquisado. O cruzamento entre canais pode levar a perdas para o varejista e se torna questão-chave do varejo multicanal na retenção do consumidor. Lançando luz sobre esta questão foi utilizado um modelo teórico originário da geografia humana, o paradigma Push-Pull-Mooring para explicar o comportamento de alternância do consumidor. Este estudo propõe um modelo teórico para explicar o comportamento de alternância do consumidor e o impacto na intenção de free-riding. O modelo final apresentou antecedentes para autoeficácia (push): a experiência prévia com internet e a satisfação em free-riding; para retenção na firma (mooring): o alto custo de mudança e a busca de variedade e, para atratividade do varejo tradicional (pull): qualidade percebida, risco percebido e satisfação com loja física. Foi realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa e quantitativa do tipo survey, aplicada em consumidores com experiência de compra na internet, e modelagem pela análise de equações estruturais. Os resultados empíricos revelam efeito mediador para a variável atratividade do varejo por meio do alto risco percebido na interação com lojas virtuais. Há efeitos moderadores dados pela idade, gênero, renda, busca de informação e hábito de compra. Há fortes evidências de motivação para retenção na firma. / Marketing channels have proliferated in recent years. Through integration of on-line channel, sales of traditional retailers have expanded. In a multichannel environment, consumers can move easily between different channels. Free-riding occur when consumers perform on-line search or consult price comparison sites and end up performing purchase at a retailer not searched before. The crossover between channels can lead to losses for the retailer and becomes one the main issues of multichannel retailing in the area of consumer retention. To shed some light on this issue, a theoretical model from the literature on human geography was used, the Push-Pull-Mooring paradigm to explain the switching behavior of consumers. This study proposes a theoretical model to explain the switching behavior and its impact on free-riding. The final model presents antecedents to self-efficacy (push): previous experience with internet and satisfaction in free-riding; with-in firm lock-in (mooring): the switching costs and the variety seeking; and attractiveness to the competitor\'s offline retail store (pull): perceived quality, perceived risk and satisfaction with offline stores. A qualitative and quantitative survey research was applied to consumer regarding their shopping experience with the internet. The technique of structural equation modeling was performed. The empirical results reveal mediating effect of with-in firm lock-in when the consumer realizes that he/she is serviced on his/her need for variety of products and brands. The mediating effect of attractiveness of competitor\'s offline store is given by perception of satisfaction with retail stores and perceived high risk in interacting with on-line stores. Moderating effects were also found: age, gender, income, information search and buying habit. There is strong evidence of motivation for with-in firm lock-in.