A percentage of either measured or predicted maximum heart rate is commonly used to prescribe and measure exercise intensity. However, maximum heart rate in athletes may be greater during competition or training than during laboratory exercise testing. Thus, the aim of the present investigation was to determine if endurance-trained runners train and compete at or above laboratory measures of ‘maximum’ heart rate. Maximum heart rates were measured utilising a treadmill graded exercise test (GXT) in a laboratory setting using 10 female and 10 male National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) division 2 cross-country and distance event track athletes. Maximum training and competition heart rates were measured during a highintensity interval training day (TR HR) and during competition (COMP HR) at an NCAA meet. TR HR (207 ± 5.0 b·min-1; means ± SEM) and COMP HR (206 ± 4 b·min-1) were significantly (p < 0.05) higher than maximum heart rates obtained during the GXT (194 ± 2 b·min-1). The heart rate at the ventilatory threshold measured in the laboratory occurred at 83.3 ± 2.5% of the heart rate at VO2 max with no differences between the men and women. However, the heart rate at the ventilatory threshold measured in the laboratory was only 77% of the maximal COMP HR or TR HR. In order to optimize traininginduced adaptation, training intensity for NCAA division 2 distance event runners should not be based on laboratory assessment of maximum heart rate, but instead on maximum heart rate obtained either during training or during competition.

The thesis is an empirical study of the changes that occurred in the Fortune list of the largest American industrial corporations from 1963 to 1987. The mobility and turnover of big firms has been studied only from a neoclassical perspective in the past, and the emphasis was placed on the level of overall concentration in the economy. In this thesis, the changes in the list are analysed adopting a Schumpeterian/evolutionary framework that emphasize the importance of innovation and economic change as major determinants of economic progress. Recent evolutionary models that describe the evolution of industries. and the work of economic historians such as Alfred Chandler provide a framework for the empirical analysis. The main findings.are: I. The takeover activity is the main source of turbulence in the list. 2. There are significant inter-industry differences in the type of competition and in the behaviour of the industries. and these differences shed light on the overall changes. 3. The emergence of microelectronics has powerful destabilising effects, and its diffusion interacts with other trends such as the growing globalisation of competition between large firms and the rise of the market for corporate control.

Reproductive competition among females is an under-studied aspect of behavioural ecology. In species where males provide non-sharable resources that enhance individual and offspring fitness, such as feeding young, intrasexual conflict among females should be expected. My thesis examined reproductive competition among female song sparrows by estimating the reproductive costs of losing male care and behavioural strategies females employed to avoid the loss of male care. I used a long-term study of song sparrows, a facultatively polygynous passerine, on Mandarte Island, British Columbia Canada, to examine the potential reproductive and survival costs that polygyny might have on females. I found that polygynous females without male care experienced lower nest and lifetime reproductive success than polygynous females with male care. In contrast, female status within polygynous groups had no impact on overwinter survival. Three strategies that females might use to avoid polygyny or ensure access to male parental care while in polygyny include 1) intrasexual aggression to deter secondary females from settling, 2) infanticide of primary female’s nest by secondary females to improve nesting status or 3) nest timing to either increase the comparative worth of the nest through synchrony, or eliminate competition for male care through asynchrony. Using a mount presentation experiment I found that resident females reacted as predicted if intrasexual aggressive behaviour was used to deter secondary female settlement and ensure male parental care. Over 18 years when polygyny occurred in the population, I found evidence that the presence of secondary females was correlated with a rise in the nest failure rate of primary females, but I found no evidence that polygynous females used nest timing strategies to influence access to male care. Overall, my results suggest that female song sparrows use aggressive behaviours to reduce secondary female settlement, and within polygynous groups secondary females may use infanticide to advance their status. Despite the existence of female strategies to circumvent the loss of fitness due to polygynous mating, polygyny still occurred regularly in the population. This observation suggests that the strategies described above are often not effective, or that their costs outweigh the potential gains to individual fitness.

The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of intraspecific competition on the growth and reproduction of yellow nutsedge. A field experiment was conducted to examine twelve tuber densities of yellow nutsedge, ranging from 1 to 1000 tubers/m$ sp2$. Results indicate that spring tuber populations of 100 tubers/m$ sp2$ and lower require close to 100% control of the infestation in order to prevent the yellow nutsedge population from increasing. Yellow nutsedge spring tuber population does not appear to influence tuber distribution in the soil profile. All tuber densities examined produced the greatest proportion of tubers in the top 20 cm of the soil profile. Tuber and shoot production increased as initial yellow nutsedge tuber populations increased from 1 to 1000 tubers/m$ sp2$, as did tuber and shoot biomass. Consequently, intraspecific competition does not appear to come into effect at tuber populations of 1000 tubers/m$ sp2$ and less. / Predictions were made to determine the spread of yellow nutsedge based on an infestation of a single tuber. A single yellow nutsedge tuber could grow to infest an area of 50 m$ sp2$ in 5 years. Information concerning the effect of spring tuber density on the reproduction and spread of yellow nutsedge should be used in formulating control strategies for this weed.

The thesis deals with the means whereby a firm can gain a competitive advantage over its rivals. After considering how this issue is dealt with in the management literature, the thesis focuses on two possible routes to competitive advantage. The first is largely internal to the firm, and concerns the design of managerial contracts to provide managers with the incentives to act in the best interests of shareholders. The second route is external, involving strategic market moves in relation to rival firms. These two possible routes to competitive advantage are appraised in light of recent theoretical developments in 1principal-agent analysis the internal route, and the new industrial economics the external route. The final section of the thesis is empirical and deals with the share price experience of the top 100 U. K. companies since 1970. The econometric notion of cointegration is employed to test for the existence of sustained competitive advantage. The tentative conclusion reached is that while companies may be able to achieve a sustained competitive advantage, the compensation contracts employed have not been a successful means of obtaining such advantage. The suggestion is that external routes to competitive advantage might be more effective.

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The word, competition, entered economic discourse slowly and naturally, over many decades and even centuries, as a term of common usage. From that point of view, I trace the development of the word, as it underwent various conceptual modifications en route to the more technical concept of perfect competition. The growing divergence between the ordinary meaning and the technical concept of competition represents one of the many gauges of the progress of economics towards becoming a rigorous science, but that divergence has also brought with it a number of problems. Thus, the purpose of my thesis is two-fold: it is both a scholarly and a didactic one. As for scholarship, I set forth a textually accurate account of how the word competition has figured in the early rise and the more mature consolidation of economics as a special discipline, in which the abstract idea of a "perfect" type of market competition was employed by economists as an heuristic fiction, to bring together all the separate elements of what Edgeworth has so nicely termed the Economic Calculus. As for didactics, my thesis also serves as an exercise in identifying several root problems stemming from the concept of competition, both in its common and technical forms. Suggestions are made as to how some of the perplexities of present-day economic theory, based on the notion of perfect competition, can be resolved. Key Themes:- In Chapter I, four major themes are announced and subjected to semantic analysis. Eunning throughout the remainder of the history, they refer to the dualities, ambiguities and qualities of vagueness and imprecision which pertain to the common-sense or ordinary notion of competitive conduct, understood as the striving of two or more persons against one another for the same object. Upon careful study, competition is readily seen to be both equilibrating and disequilibrating in its tendencies, comprising both innovative and adaptive patterns of behaviour, and is both freeing and constraining in its effects, entailing as it does not only deliberate and conscious striving (or the exercise of free will) but as well the clash of opposing interests, or contention between two or more persons, Themes 1 and II. As a consequence of the foregoing dualities, the word itself holds out emotive connotations that are both positive and negative (Theme III), giving the word a character of ambivalence which is inherent from its very root meaning. Thus, in its role as a principle of economic thought, competition has elicited widely, and sometimes wildly, varying responses from those who have contemplated its workings and have passed judgement upon its status. Finally, because of its very abstraction or generality of meaning, the common-sense idea of competition is imprecise and open-ended, insofar as its general meaning specifies nothing about (a) the nature of the objectives of competitive pursuit, (b) the Betting in which competitive striving takes place, (c) the participants and their grouping into competitive "units," and (d) the strategies and patterns of conduct followed - Theme IV. Critical Episodes:- The historical narrative proceeds, for the most part, in a chronological sequence, and is organized around a series of decisive moments, when crucial turning-points are reached and passed, separating distinct traditions of thought, or else marking the subtle transition from one mode of reasoning to another. After a brief preliminary survey of the medieval and early modern scholastic literature, the main historical narrative begins essentially with an account of the "classical" mercantilist literature of the first half of the 17th century, with its emphasis upon national rivalries and the so-called balance-of-trade doctrine. With these preparatory steps taken, the remainder of the historical content of the thesis can be summarized in terms of the following critical episodes:- 1. l670s-1700. The beginnings of the breakdown of the classical mercantilist doctrine is accompanied by subtle shift away from the emphasis upon national rivalry towards a more individualized and sectionalized understanding of competitive interdependence, in which the negative overtones of (national) conflict in market exchange are gradually replaced by a more positive attitude towards competition as a stimulus to economic progress and efficiency. 2. 1750s-1776. The final breakdown of the mercantile logic, as the dominant influence over economic thought, occurs with the sudden and dramatic rise and momentary ascendancy of the physiocratio school, a decisive confrontation taking place between Forbonnais, latter-day exponent of "liberal mercantilism," and Quesnay, Baudeau and others of the new school (1766-68). As a principle of harmony in the physiocratic doctrine, market competition is depicted as an exchange of equivalents between individuals, and hence a limited but beneficial force in economic affairs.Adam Smith, sharing the physiocrats' liberal attitude and individualized concept of competition, adapts and improves their economic calculus, giving to competition a more positive and directive role, by showing how it regulates and thus facilitates market exchange, which in turn allows for a more productive employment of resources. 3. 1815-1848. Building upon Smith's foundations of economic liberalism, the classical economists make important conceptual and analytical advances in regard to the economic calculus, such as in enunciating the law of diminishing returns, but do rather little to alter Smith's treatment of competition. A crisis in classical liberalism is soon reached (c. 1825), in facing the newly emergent tradition of socialist thought, whereby there ensues a fierce clash of opinion concerning such things as the freeing versus constraining character of competition. As a result, the behavioural process of competition tends to become associated with a particular set of economic institutions (property, contract, markets, and market exchange). The debate points to the need to distinguish between primary and secondary income distribution (paralleling that of "class" and "individual") and the need to clarify the nature of competitive grouping. 4. 1866-71. After much delay, there occurs a transition from the classical modes of verbal reasoning towards the neoclassical styles and methods of mathematical reasoning, a transition which was hastened by Thornton's sharp attack upon competition as a law-like principle (1866) and by Jevons's response to the growing need to improve the classical value theory. However, the substance of classical doctrine is retained in neoclassical theory, as is shown by the instrumental role played by "perfect" competition, as an heuristic fiction used in the building of the neoclassical calculus. This source of continuity is qualified, though, to the extent that the classical principle of competition is supported less and less by a direct intuitive appeal to empirical evidence and more and more by the resort to abstraction and the logical rigour of mathematical theory. 5. 1889-91. After a decade or more of rapid progress and genuine improvement and refinement of mathematical technique of analysis, neoclassical theory reaches a state of crisis, brief in duration but far-reaching in its implications, when Edgeworth's static approach to equilibrium analysis departs from the Valrasian dynamics of tatonnement, faintly signalling the onset of a new outlook as to the nature and purpose of abstract economics.

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