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Poland has joined the European Union and is set to join the European Monetary Union (EMU) in the near future. Euro area membership involves potential costs and benefits. On the one hand, Poland will abolish the zloty/euro exchange rate and, as a result, transaction costs and exchange rate risk within the single currency area will be eliminated. On the other hand, it is argued that a single currency area implies the costs stemming from the sacrifice of autonomous monetary stabilization policy, which allows for an independent interest rate policy, and an exchange rate adjustment mechanism in the presence of country-specific shocks. This dissertation focuses on a quantitative assessment of the economic costs of joining the EMU. The evaluation of the volatility of main macroeconomic variables under the current inflation targeting regime and fixed exchanged rate is performed within an optimizing dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy with nominal rigidities. Model dynamics under terms of trade and world interest rate shocks are investigated. We find that the euro adoption implies a higher macroeconomic volatility. Analyzing the impact of terms of trade shock, the inflation targeting regime is more favorable, as an inability to devalue the currency under the euroization scenario leads to a slower recovery in demand for non-tradable goods and thus consumption. Considering the impact of a sudden decline in the world interest rate, an excessive zloty appreciation and the tightening of monetary policy under inflation targeting pushes the economy into a deeper recession compared to the adoption of the euro regime, while long-run implications are almost the same for the two scenarios. / Economics

This dissertation examined the relationships among adoptive status, social capital, and academic achievement. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) had 609 adopted and 11, 940 non-adopted adolescents. I used OLS regression models to help explain why adopted adolescents have significantly lower grade point averages (GPA) than non-adopted adolescents. Potential mediators were family social capital, closeness to family, mother and father, mothers' and fathers' involvement in their children's education, self-esteem, academic expectations, and in-school behavioral difficulties. Only closeness to fathers and in-school behavioral difficulties differed by adoptive status. Compared to non-adopted adolescents, adopted adolescents were closer to their fathers and had more in-school behavioral difficulties. Adopted adolescents also had lower GPA's, even when all other predictors were in the model. However, were it not for greater closeness to their fathers, adopted adolescents' would have had even more in-school behavioral difficulties and consequently, lower academic achievement. The results have implications for social capital theory and theory and research concerning adoptive families. / Ph. D.

This dissertation explores household risk and savings behavior in Zimbabwe, and agricultural technology adoption, and the impact of public investments on the economy and community health in Ethiopia. The first paper analyzes changes in per capita consumption and savings behavior in Zimbabwe before and after a range of financial and weather-related shocks using comparable national income, consumption and expenditure surveys of 1990/91 and 1995/96. The empirical results show that before droughts and macroeconomic adjustments Zimbabweans used savings to smooth consumption. In contrast, risk management strategies were severely limited after the shocks; consumption tracked income more closely in the latter period. The inability to effectively address the risks arising from droughts and economy-wide structural changes implies that any subsequent economic and social uncertainty will have serious welfare consequences. The second paper examines the interaction between public investments, community health, and productivity- and land-enhancing technology adoption decisions by farm households in Northern Ethiopia. It models technology adoption as a sequential process where the timing of choices can matter. The econometric test results indicate that the decision and intensity of technology adoption are highly correlated with the sequential nature of adoption. The most striking results concern the importance of disease - the amount of time spent sick and time spent caring for sick family members are inversely associated with both the decision and intensity of technology adoption. Finally the third paper looks at the welfare impacts of a public water resource development project with health side effects in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. It uses a model of a social planner to characterize the optimal implementation of such projects over time, showing how health and production are important considerations in this decision. The empirical analysis shows that the marginal net benefits of Tigray's current microdam investments are positive. The lost income households suffer from increased time away from productive activities (due to sickness) is compensated for by increased yields and market opportunities brought about through irrigated agriculture. However, it should be noted that this conclusion is based on efficiency and not equity. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to better understand how the diffusion (spread) and adoption (acceptance) of SkillSoft® (an e-learning product) occurred among employees of one military organization and to distill individual perceptions regarding influences that affected the process. This case study focused on the process and its challenges. Relating personal perceptions of the process and how various categories of influences (personal, organizational, technological, mandated policy, change) may have affected the process in a military organization provides a unique account that has been lacking in the literature. The results of this case study resonate with earlier research by Rogers (1983), Weinstein (1981), Sherry (1997), and Schein (1985), which found that influences (personal, organizational and technological) can have a dynamic effect on the diffusion and adoption of an innovation such as SkillSoft®. The study findings revealed that interviewees preferred job related e-learning experiences which support prior research by Bonk and Wisher (2000), and research by Thomerson and Smith (1996) who found that change in the way training is delivered can have an effect on the individual’s willingness to adopt an e-learning program like SkillSoft®. The study augments previous findings by Berge, (1997) indicating that culture can be a barrier to the implementation of on-line learning. The findings illuminated that awareness of the organization’ s environment (culture, mission, organization structure, decision-making process, communications channels, skills of employees), users’ requirements, as well as the product’s (SkillSoft®) fit with individual learning styles, are key elements to be considered when implementing an e-learning product in a military setting. Post Script: With the acquisition of SMARTFORCE®, SkillSoft® Corporation was able to diversify its e-learning training opportunities (course library) to better meet the learning requirements of military personnel since the initiation of this case study. Currently the 2003 SkillSoft® SMARTFORCE® library of courses is available free of charge on-line and is enhancing the knowledge and skills of active duty, reserve military personnel and Department of Defense government civilians. / Ph. D.

Concerns about the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, human health, and wildlife have led to research and promotion of integrated pest management (IPM) strategies. Recently, an IPM program was introduced in the Albanian olive sector through the USAID-funded global IPM-CRSP project to develop improved olive IPM technologies. This study develops and applies a protocol for integrated economic impact assessment of olive pest management strategies designed by the IPM-CRSP project in Albania. The main components of the integrated approach for economic impact assessment of olive IPM include (i) net return analysis for measuring farm level impacts; (ii) economic surplus modeling for measuring market-level impacts; and (iii) modeling of IPM adoption under output uncertainty. The economic surplus equilibrium displacement model developed for the Albanian olive market with no international trade accounts for IPM research-induced supply shifts, increased demand due to quality improvement, and research-induced spillovers to non-target zones. The main sources of data for performing partial budgeting and economic surplus analysis were: (i) an expert survey; (ii) partial budgets compiled based on a farmer survey and expenditure records from field-level experiments; and (iii) data collected at the market level. The data used to estimate the dichotomous logit model came from a 1999 survey of 200 growers and a survey of 120 growers carried out in 2000 in the Vlora district of Albania. The net return analysis indicates that compared to conventional practices, the proposed olive IPM packages generally promise higher yields, improved quality of olive products, lower pesticide use, and higher net returns to producers. However, adoption of some of the IPM practices implied higher production costs. Based on the simulation results, the Albanian olive industry has the potential to derive a net IPM research benefit between $39 million (assuming that farmers move directly from minimum spraying to IPM) and $52 million (assuming that farmers move from full pesticide program to IPM) over the next 30 years. Farmers' reliance on pesticide use on olives and other crops does not seem to hinder IPM adoption. Grower perceptions and the process of expectation formation significantly influence adoption decisions. Addressing the process of expectation formation and changing these perceptions by educational programs and better access to information will encourage IPM adoption. / Ph. D.

Adoption is an important family structure in The United States. In 2013, more than 1.7 million children were adopted including domestic, International, and foster care adoptions in the U.S. I examine the perceived and received support from grandparents to adoptive families and the impact it has on the families' lives. Qualitative methods in the form of semi-structured open-ended interviews were used to conduct 28 interviews with adoptive parents. My findings reveal that maternal grandmothers were more likely to be supportive and involved in adoptive families compared to other grandparents. Secondly, perceived support was directly mentioned or implied by every adoptive family. Third, single mothers expressed more desire for and instances of grandparent support. Fourth, the majority of grandparents who were initially hesitant or reluctant about adoption were later supportive and accepting of the adopted child(ren). Fifth, most adoptive families received and perceived support. However, some families who did not receive or perceive much support were able to find alternative support systems. Finally, verbal and emotional supports were the most reported forms of support from grandparents to adoptive families. Almost all adoptive families reported some level of emotional and/or verbal support from one or more grandparent. Future research can more thoroughly examine family outcomes from grandparent support. Looking at the other support systems adoptive families use is an additional area of future research. / Ph. D.

Public agricultural research has been conducted in Africa for decades and has generated numerous crop technologies, while little is understood on how agricultural research affects the poor and vulnerable groups such as children, and how farmers' perceptions affect their adoption decisions. This dissertation helps fill this gap with three essays on adoption and impacts of improved maize varieties in rural Ethiopia. The first essay estimates poverty impacts. Field-level treatment effects on yield and cost changes with adoption are estimated using instrumental variable techniques, with treatment effect heterogeneity fully accounted for in marginal treatment effect estimation. A backward derivation procedure is then developed within an economic surplus framework to identify the counterfactual income distribution without improved maize varieties. Poverty impacts are estimated by exploiting the differences between the observed and counterfactual income distributions. Improved maize varieties have led to 0.8-1.3 percentage drop in poverty headcount ratio and relative reductions in poverty depth and severity. However, poor producers benefit the least from adoption due to their small land holdings. The second paper assesses the impacts on child nutrition outcomes. The conceptual linkage between maize adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model. Instrumental variable (IV) estimation suggests the overall impacts to be positive and significant. Quantile IV regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among the most severely malnourished. By combining a decomposition procedure with estimates from a system of equations, it is found that the increase in own-produced maize consumption is the major channel such impacts occur. The third paper explores how farmers' perceptions of crop traits affects their willingness to adopt improved maize varieties. Under a random utility framework, a mixed logit procedure is implemented to model farmer's adoption intention, where perceptions of key varietal traits are first identified, and then instrumented using a control function approach to account for potential endogeneity. Perceived yield is found to be the most important trait affecting farmers' adoption intention. Further, yield perceptions among previous adopters appear to be affected by within-village peer effects rather than the real crop performance. / Ph. D.

New agricultural technologies can improve productivity to meet the increased demand for food that places pressure on agricultural production systems in developing countries. Because technological innovation is one of major factors shaping agriculture in both developing and developed countries, it is important to identify factors that help or that hinder the adoption process. Adoption analysis can assist policy makers in making informed decisions about dissemination of technologies that are under consideration. It is also important to estimate the impact of a technology. This dissertation contains three essays that estimate factors affecting integrated pest management (IPM) adoption and the impact of IPM on sweet gourd farming in Bangladesh. The first essay estimates factors that affect the timing of IPM adoption in Bangladesh. It employs duration models, fully parametric and semiparametric, and (i) compares results from different estimation methods to provide the best model for the data, and (ii) identifies factors that affect the length of time before Bangladeshi farmers adopt an agricultural technology. The paper provides two conclusions: 1) even though the non-parametric estimate of the hazard function indicated a non-monotone model such as log-normal or log-logistic, no differences are found in the sign and significance of the estimated coefficients between the non-monotone and monotone models. 2) economic factors do not directly influence the adoption decision but rather factors related to information diffusion and farmer's non-economic characteristics such as age and education. Particularly, farmer's age and education, membership in an association, training, distance of the farmer's house from local and town markets, and farmer's perception about the use of IPM affect the length of time to adoption. Farm size is the only variable closely related to economic factors that is found to be significant and it decreases the length of time to adoption. The second paper measures Bangladeshi farmers' attitudes toward risk and ambiguity using experimental data. In different sessions, the experiment allows farmers to make decisions alone and communicate with peers in groups of 3 and 6 to see how social exchanges among peers affect attitudes toward uncertainty. Combining the measured attributes to household survey data, the paper investigates the factors affecting those attributes as well as the role of risk aversion and ambiguity aversion in technology choice by farmers who: face uncertainty alone, in a group of 3, or in a group of 6. It finds that Bangladeshi farmers in the sample are mostly risk and ambiguity averse. Their risk and ambiguity aversion, moreover, differ when they face the uncertain prospects alone from when they can communicate with other peer farmers before making decisions. In addition, farmer's demographic characteristics affect both risk and ambiguity aversion. Finally, findings suggest that the roles of risk and ambiguity aversion in technology adoption depend on which measure of uncertainty behavior is incorporated in the adoption model. While risk aversion increases the likelihood of technology adoption when farmers face uncertainty alone, only ambiguity aversion matters and it reduces the likelihood of technology adoption when farmers face uncertainty in groups of three. Neither risk aversion nor ambiguity aversion matter when farmers face uncertainty in groups of six. The third paper presents an impact assessment of integrated pest management on sweet gourd in Bangladesh. It employs an instrumental variable and marginal treatment effects approach to estimate the impact of IPM on yield and cost of sweet gourd in Bangladesh. The estimation methods consider both homogeneous and heterogeneous treatment effects. The paper finds that IPM adoption has a 7% - 34% yield advantage over traditional pest management practices. Results regarding the effect of IPM adoption on cost are mixed. IPM adoption alters production costs from -1.2% cost to +42%, depending on the estimation method employed. However, most of the cost changes are not statistically significant. Therefore, while we confidently argue that the IPM adoption provides a yield advantage over non-adoption, we do not find a robust effect regarding a cost advantage of adoption. / Ph. D.