Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-332).

Thesis (doctoral)--Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2003. / Thesis documentation sheet inserted. Appendix includes reproductions of three papers published elsewhere and one manuscript, some co-authored with others. Includes bibliographical references. Also partially issued electronically via World Wide Web in PDF format; online version lacks appendix.

In the labor market, workers can increase their chances of meeting potential employers through costly search. My first chapter aims to empirically quantify the search intensity of workers, both employed and unemployed. My second chapter develops a theoretical model to study the optimal unemployment insurance with search intensity endogenously chosen by unemployed workers. I devote my third chapter to empirical identification of whether major illness leads to persistent household poverty in rural China. My first chapter studies the search behaviors both on and off the job, and the effect of search intensity on wage determination. Four determinants of wages are considered: productivity, workers’ bargaining power, competition between employers due to on-the-job search, and search intensity. I estimate the structural model using the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), together with supplementary information from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The empirical results demonstrate that search intensity declines as the worker gets a wage rise from her current job. My second chapter addresses the efficiency issues arising from the externalities and hidden-action features of search effort. The solution to the social planner’s problem may not be decentralized in a competitive market. Calibration shows that the current US unemployment insurance (UI) system generates an 8.07% welfare loss relative to the socially optimal allocation. In the third chapter, I use a unique dataset on Chinese rural households to test whether severe illness can cripple a rural household’s economic resources leading to temporary and/or persistent poverty. When health shocks are assumed to be exogenous, in the sense that households cannot control the arrival rate of adverse health shocks by choosing the amount of medical expenditures, a Markov regime-switching regression model reveals no significant evidence that a severe illness causes persistent household poverty. To endogenize health shocks and choices on medical expenses, a dynamic structural model is employed. The structural estimates support the view that major illness leads to persistent household poverty. / text

My dissertation is a study of paintings with hunting subjects made in France between the 1730s and 1750s, concomitantly with the escalation of Louis XV's (r. 1715- 1774) obsession with hunting. It concentrates on up-close depictions of dying and dead animals by prominent artists such as Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), François Boucher (1703-1770), and Jean-François De Troy (1679-1752). Particular attention is paid to how the moments that surrounded the kill of the prey by royal hunters--the hallali and the curée--were conjured up by these painters, and how their canvases were integrated into interiors, particularly those dedicated to the king's after-hunt gatherings. These painted drops of blood, hanging tongues, dislocated bodies, and tortured carcasses complicate the lack of seriousness and alleged playfulness of the discursively and ideologically determined category of the Rococo. / History of Art and Architecture

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

The hunting economy of Cumberland Sound is analyzed according to the spring, break-up and open water seasons. Physical, biological and cultural factors interact in different manners and degrees to produce seasonal variations in the miles travelled per hunt, the duration of the hunt, the catch per man per day, the percentage loss of seals due to sinking, the miles travelled per seal landed, and the number of shots fired per seal killed. If the hunt is mechanized during all three seasons, then in terms of number of seals landed per hunter per day and net profit per landed seal, hunting is most efficient during the break-up season.

No description available.

The goal of this study is to develop a general theoretical perspective for the archaeological study of intersocietal interaction among hunter-gatherers. Several theoretical frameworks have been offered for the study of interaction, including acculturation, ecological interdependency, peer polity interaction, world-system theory, and a number of more particularist approaches. Although all offer valuable insights, only world-system theory has the potential for application to all types and scales of intersocietal interaction, past and present. The perspective developed here represents an experimental modification of the world-system perspective, with the addition of aspects of previous hunter-gatherer studies, most of which are strongly influenced by cultural ecology. / This theoretical perspective is used to develop a model of change in hunter-gatherer world-systems. Particularly important factors in this model are the density and spatio-temporal distribution of subsistence resources, and the availability of "preciosities" (exchanged objects of high value). These factors are hypothesized to affect hunter-gatherer world-systems in terms of three variables: (1) "breadth", the number of interacting regional groups; (2) "depth", the relative importance of the interaction to each regional group; and (3) "internal differentiation", the degree of variability among regional groups within the interacting system. Finally, the model is tested on the archaeological and ethnographic records of the Inuit inhabitants of Herschel Island, northern Yukon Territory, and adjacent regions during the "contact period" of the past 500 years. The test predictions are largely supported by the data, which indicate that the increasing availability of preciosities and the changing distribution of subsistence resources during the contact period caused the indigenous world-system to increase in depth and breadth, and to begin to change in pattern of internal differentiation.

There is an increasing recognition that conservation projects need to provide tangible benefits to the communities involved in them. In Africa a common method of providing economic benefits to communities is to sell the right to hunt wildlife in conservation areas. The Makasa Nature Reserve is a joint project between a conservation body and a community. The reserve is a conservation project that aims to provide economic benefits to the community involved. There are a number of possible income generating strategies for the Makasa Nature Reserve. This study is an examination of the revenue that the reserve could generate from game hunting. There are a number of wildlife species on the reserve that can be hunted but buffalo are the most attractive to hunters and the most lucrative for the reserve. In order to determine the number of buffalo that can be harvested a two-stage approach was used. Firstly, a deterministic mathematical model of the buffalo population was developed in the study. This model was used to establish age structures of the buffalo population which will maximise a given objective function. An age structure that has a harvest level that will maximise the revenue of the reserve was selected as being the most appropriate for the buffalo population at Makasa. In the second stage a stochastic model of the buffalo population was developed which incorporated environmental and demographic stochasticity. A management policy for the buffalo population, which was based on the age structure that maximises revenue, was developed. The stochastic model was used to aid the development of the management policy and to determine the average harvesting rate of buffalo from the Makasa reserve. Using the information gathered on the harvesting rate of buffalo and combining it with the likely harvesting rate of other species from the reserve, it is possible to get a broad picture of the likely economic potential of game hunting on the Makasa Nature Reserve. This approach of determining the offtake of the economically dominant species in the reserve and then combining this information with the likely offtake of other species in the reserve can be generalised and applied to similar reserves. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

This thesis looks at how the Cree people of Wemindji, James Bay, Québec, understand and live with ecological complexity and dynamism. The focus is on the interplay between variability, change, and continuity in the Canada goose (Branta canadensis) hunt. Looking at Cree goose-hunting in the light of cultural ecology and resilience thinking, the research suggests that Cree hunters are attentive and responsive to ecological fluctuations, fine-tuning local arrangements to local environmental conditions. Ecological variability and unpredictability, such as weather, goose population dynamics and migration patterns, are mediated by local management strategies in which goose hunting areas shift in space and time. However, whereas these strategies are still practiced nowadays, they are (to some extent) overwhelmed by changes occurring at larger scales. Some of these are related to climate change and anthropogenic disturbances; others are related to social-cultural changes that influence resource-use patterns. I discuss how these different drivers interact among themselves and impact the goose-hunt, and how the Wemindji Cree respond to these changes.