After timber harvesting, carbon in wood is transferred to products pool and remains entrapped for a considerable time. It is necessary to estimate this carbon flux in the harvested wood products (HWP); otherwise, carbon emission estimates of a country will be overestimated at the time of harvest. Furthermore, carbon estimates of the HWP must be assessed for uncertainties which need to be reduced as far as possible. Environmental implications might be associated with the HWP traded in the national and international markets. In the current context, there is a lack of economic-environmental studies that relate to the trade of HWP. The first part of this dissertation estimated the U.S. HWP contribution to carbon removals or emissions from 1990 to 2014 using the stock-change, production, atmospheric flow, and simple decay approaches. It concluded that the U.S. HWP stored carbon under all accounting approaches. Net annual carbon stored in the HWP, however, declined under all approaches from 1990 to 2014. The second part of the dissertation investigated uncertainty in the estimates of carbon stock in HWP using Monte Carlo simulation. A sensitivity analysis was also performed. Results showed that the net annual carbon accumulation in HWP was affected by uncertainty associated with input parameters. Carbon estimates in the HWP were most sensitive to uncertainty in the parameter for the carbon conversion factor for roundwood. The third part of the dissertation used a multi-regional input-output model to analyze embodied carbon emissions in the U.S. trade of HWP with its major trading partners – Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Russia. Results demonstrated that the U.S. was a net importer of carbon emissions involving HWP. China was the major contributor of imported emissions, and Canada was the biggest recipient of the U.S. exported emissions. The consumption-based method had a higher emissions inventory in the HWP than the production-based method. Per-capita emissions in the HWP increased with an increase in per-capita GDP. These studies can be informative for policy makers in incorporating HWP in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, and in understanding the economic-environmental relationships of international trade of HWP.

No description available.

This study develops a methodology to analyze the interregional impact of Federal grants to provincial governments. The approach is an application of Input-Output analysis. The methodology is empirically implemented to illustrate the extent that employment income generated by Federal grants to a province spills over into other regions. These spillovers are recorded at an individual industry level and at the regional level. Four grant programs are investigated. These are equalization payments, and three conditional grants: health, social welfare, and education. An interregional Input-Output model is developed for sixteen industries in five regions: the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and the United States. For each region, the government sector is specified by five final demand vectors which correspond to the three expenditure categories of the conditional grant programs, transportationcommunication, and a general category which includes all other provincial government expenditures. This empirical model is based on three sources: the interregional Input-Output table of Canada developed by the Agricultural Economic Research Council, five provincial government expenditure functions estimated for each Canadian region in the model, and the regional government final demand vectors. The results indicate that the gross employment income generated by federal grants is partially contained within the region receiving the ,grant. Ten dollar per capita increases in equalization payments to individual regions generate additional employment income in other regions which varies from $0.63 to $0.03 per capita. In all cases, these per capita spillovers are less than.the per capita employment income generated in the recipient region.For all equalization payments, Ontario received the greatest per~capita spillin followed by Quebec. The smallest per capita spillin accrues to either the Atlantic provinces or the United States. In general, this pattern of spillovers reflects the pattern of employment income.generated in each industry of these regions as equalization payments are increased. However, exceptions are observed. For example, the spillover to the Quebec leather and textile industry which is generated by the equalization payment to Manitoba is larger than the local employment income effect in this industry. A similar pattern of regional per capita spillovers is observed for conditional grants. In general, the largest per capita spillovers are generated by conditional health grants. Overall, the methodology and results indicate how federal grant programs can accommodate interregional spillovers and their consequences for the regional and interindustry distribution of employment income. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.

The purpose of the study is to explore the accuracy of the Input-Output model and its derivative, the Occupation-Based model in investigating the impacts of the 2007 economic crisis on the tourism-related industries and the local economy in the Metro Orlando Area, Florida. The 2007-2008 total visitor expenditure change is taken as an initial shock from the economic crisis on the region's tourism-related industries, and the total impacts are measured in terms of industry output (sales), employment and annual occupational wage. The estimation results are compared with the actual data to verify the accuracy of the modeling results. Paired-sample T tests are performed to determine whether the difference between the actual and estimated results are statistically significant or not. The findings suggest that the Input-Output model tends to overestimate the negative effects from the 2007 economic crisis in terms of output and employment, especially on the tourism-related industries. While the estimation results indicate the 2007 economic crisis greatly damaged the local tourism-related industries between 2007 and 2008, the actual data show that most of these industries experienced output and employment growth in that one year period. Moreover, the study findings also indicate that the Occupation-Based model has the tendency of overestimating the annual wage loss, especially for the occupations which take up large employment ratio in an industry. By investigating the local economic activities during the study period, this study made some explorative efforts in explaining such discrepancies. Theoretical and practical implications are then suggested.

Numerous studies in the hospitality field have focused on the importance of the convention industry to the economic well being of the local tourism industry. Because of intense competition between convention centers, destinations are practicing strategies of expanding their convention facilities and related infrastructure. Unfortunately, many of these expansions appear to have been based on feasibility studies that failed to present rigorous reviews and examinations regarding alleged claims of positive impacts and over-optimistic operational pro-forma statements. The main objective of this study is to propose an alternative framework for feasibility studies, which consists of an updated, rigorous methodology to calculate a more comprehensive picture, on what convention centers can deliver on public and private investment. Data from the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) in Orlando, Florida were used for assessing this proposed framework.

The transition from text-oriented software to graphically-based software has brought about a rapid increase in the number of mouse users. Recently, increased usage of the mouse has been linked with the development of cumulative trauma disorders. This investigation concerns the effects that mouse surface height and wrist support have on wrist posture. Distance between targets and target width were varied to determine performance time and performance accuracy throughout the conditions. Results showed that the presence of a wrist support decreased wrist extension and radial deviation, and increased wrist flexion. However, wrist support had no significant effect on ulnar deviation. There was a significant interaction of support and surface height for wrist extension. Surface height had a significant effect on all dimensions of wrist posture. Higher surface height resulted in increased flexion and ulnar deviation, and decreased extension and radial deviation. Distance between targets was a significant effect for ulnar deviation. The long distance resulted in a greater amount of ulnar deviation. Accuracy was significantly affected by distance between targets and target width. There was a significant interaction of distance and width for flexion. When distance between targets and target width were converted to Indices of Difficulty (ID), it was found that as ID became larger, movement time between targets became longer (as predicted by Fitts' Law). / Master of Science

学位プログラム名: 京都大学大学院思修館 / 京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(総合学術) / 甲第24949号 / 総総博第31号 / 新制||総総||5(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院総合生存学館総合生存学専攻 / (主査)教授 池田 裕一, 教授 IALNAZOV Dimiter Savov, 准教授 関山 健, 安橋 正人 (奈良女子大学) / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy / Kyoto University / DFAM

This dissertation includes three chapters. The first chapter studies the impact of financial shocks and financial frictions on business cycle dynamics in China's economy. The second and third chapters focus on the driving force of structural change and its impact on aggregate fluctuations using an input-output network approach. In the second chapter, I study two questions: (i) How has the U.S. production network structure changed from 1970 to 2017? (ii) What impact does that have on aggregate fluctuations? This paper shows that a few industries, like Finance and Insurance and Professional Services, have become much more central input suppliers over time, while others, like Paper Manufacturing, have become far less important. Therefore, the third chapter considers the driving force behind such structural change. In particular, I study the question of what determines the size of an industry in a production network. China has been one of the world's fastest-growing economies over the past several decades and emerged quickly from the global financial crisis of 2008. Chapter 1, titled DO FINANCIAL SHOCKS DRIVE REAL BUSINESS FLUCTUATIONS IN CHINA, investigates to what extent financial shocks can shape business cycle fluctuations in China. Specifically, I document the cyclical properties of China's macroeconomy and financial market and show the procyclicality of dividend payout and the countercyclicality of debt repurchases with real GDP. To account for these features, I use the real business cycle model incorporating debt and equity financing developed by Jermann and Quadrini (2012) to study how the dynamics of macroeconomic and financial variables are affected by financial shocks in China. This paper finds that financial shocks contribute significantly to business cycle fluctuations in China and can account for over 60% of the variations in the growth rate of output, investment, hours worked, and debt repurchases. Hulton's Theorem states that the impact of an industry-specific shock on the aggregate economy is entirely captured by the size of this industry, regardless of its position in the production network. Chapter 2, titled THE IMPORTANCE OF INPUT-OUTPUT NETWORK STRUCTURE IN THE US ECONOMY, proposes the idea that the network structure in isolation plays an essential role in shaping GDP growth and growth volatility. First, I introduce a new measure of network structure named centrality dispersion and document that the U.S. production network has become sparsely connected from 1970 to 2017, where many industries relied on a few central input suppliers for production. Such changes are associated with slower GDP growth and higher volatility. To account for this evidence, I embed input-output linkages into a multisector real business cycle model and provide a nonlinear characterization of the impact of network structure quantified using centrality dispersion on the macroeconomy. Finally, I study model-implied relationships between production network structure, GDP growth, and growth volatility. The calibrated model accounts for approximately one-quarter of the variation in real GDP growth and 40% of GDP volatility, as observed in the data. Chapter 3, titled THE NETWORK ORIGIN OF INDUSTRY SIZE VARIATIONS, quantifies the origin of industry size variations using the features of a production network. In the analysis, I perform an exact variance decomposition of industry total sales into the supplier, buyer, and final demand components. The findings suggest that matching with many buyers in the network, especially many large buyers is essential in understanding industry size variations. More importantly, these buyer characteristics have become increasingly important in contributing to industry size variations over the 1967-2012 period. Finally, I provide new empirical evidence related to the decomposition results. The evidence reveals a strengthening negative correlation between industry size and the concentration of customer networks in the long run. / Economics

Cyber-physical systems are computers equipped with sensors and actuators that enable them to interact with their surrounding environments. Ground vehicles, drones, and manufacturing robots are examples of such systems that require timing guarantees in addition to functional correctness to achieve their mission objectives. These systems often use multiple microcontroller boards for workload distribution and physical redundancy. The emergence of PC-class embedded systems featuring high processing capabilities and abundant resources presents an opportunity to consolidate separate microcontroller boards as software-defined functions into fewer computer systems. For instance, current automotive systems utilize upwards of 100 electronic control units (ECUs) for chassis, body, power-train, infotainment, and vehicle control services. Consolidation saves manufacturing costs, reduces wiring, simplifies packaging in space-limited situations, and streamlines software update delivery to end-users. However, consolidating functions on PC-class hardware does not address the real-time I/O challenges. A fundamental problem in such real-time solutions is the handling of device input and output in a timely manner. For example, a control system might require input data from a sensor to be sampled and processed regularly so that output signals to actuators occur within specific delay bounds. Input/output (I/O) devices connect to the host computer using different types of bus interfaces not necessarily supported by PC-class hardware natively. Examples of such interfaces include Controller Area Network (CAN) and FlexRay, which are prominent in the automotive world, but are not found in PC-class embedded systems. Universal Serial Bus (USB) is now ubiquitous in the PC-class domain, in part due to its support for many classes of devices with simplified hardware needed to connect to the host, and can be utilized to bridge this gap. USB provides the throughput and delay capabilities for next-generation high bandwidth sensors to be integrated with actuators in control area networks. However, typical USB host controller drivers suffer from potential timing delays that affect the delivery of data between tasks and devices. This Ph.D. thesis examines the use of Universal Serial Bus (USB) as the physical fabric for host-to-device and host-to-host communication, without special switching hardware or protocol translation logic, and through a unified programming interface. Combined with the real-time scheduling framework of the Quest RTOS, this work investigates how to form networks of I/O devices and computing nodes over USB with end-to-end timing guarantees. The main contribution of this thesis is a USB-centric design solution for real-time cyber-physical systems with distributed computing nodes.