Traditional literature on energy economics gives a central role to exogenous political events (supply shocks) or to global economic growth (aggregate demand shock) in modeling the oil market. However, more recent literature claims that the increased precautionary demand for oil triggered by increased uncertainty about a future oil supply shortfall is also driving the price of oil. Based on this motivation, in the first chapter, we propose to build a DSGE model to explore macroeconomic consequences of precautionary demand motives in the crude oil market. The intuition behind the precautionary demand is that since firms, using oil as an input in their production process, are concerned about the future oil prices, it is reasonable to think that in the case of uncertainty about future oil supply (such as a highly expected war in the Middle East), they will buy futures and/or forward contracts to guarantee a future price and quantity. We simulate the effects of demand shocks in the oil market on macroeconomic variables, such as GDP and inflation. We find that under baseline Taylor-type interest rate rule, real oil price, inflation and output loss overshoot and go down below steady state at the next period if uncertainties are not realized. However, if the shock is realized, i.e. followed by an actual supply shock, the effect on inflation and output loss is high and persistent. Second chapter analyzes the effect of storage market on the monetary policy formulation as a response to an oil price shock. Some recent literature suggests that although high oil prices contributed to recessions, they have never had a pivotal role in the creation of those economic downturns. A general consensus is that the decline in output and employment was due to the rise in interest rates, resulting from the Fed’s endogenous response to the higher inflation induced by oil price shocks. However, traditional literature assumes that oil price shocks are exogenous to the U.S economy and they ignore the storage market for the crude oil. In this regard, a model with an endogenous (demand shock) or exogenous (supply shock) price shock may produce a totally different monetary policy proposal when there exists a market for storage for the crude oil. The rationale behind this idea is that when goods’ prices are sticky in the economy, the monetary authority can effect the level of inventories through the changes in the real interest rates. Thus, lower interest rate rules, as proposed in the literature, will cause additional oil supply scarcity in the spot market. Therefore, an optimal monetary policy that maximizes the welfare in the economy should consider the adverse affect of low interest rates on the crude oil market.

Background: In technology based industries, firms which originate from advanced economies have traditionally occupied the leading position. In order to keep that position, they relied on strong efforts devoted to research and development, striving for being at the cutting edge of technology. During the last decade, we observed that some change happened amongst the top ranking of firms within the telecommunication industry with the apparition of Huawei, which originates from China, an emerging economy, in second position. Aim: This research is aimed to investigate the influence of firm’s human resource and market demand on firm’s innovation strategy. Definitions: Human resource represents the employees working for a company. In our study, when we mention human resource we deal with employees working in research and development. Market demand refers to the products which are demanded on a specific market. For our research we divided it in three categories: less advanced, advanced and most advanced products. Innovation strategy deals with the way a firm organizes its research and development in order to innovate according to either, in our research, new-tofirm or new-to-world innovation strategy. Completion and results: This study revealed that Huawei managed to adjust its innovation strategy in accordance with its human resources and market demand. Thanks to an efficient and adapted innovation strategy, Huawei now manages to perform better than its main competitor Ericsson, not only on developing or emerging markets, but also in advanced markets. We also observed the role of rules and regulations and cooperation, without which Huawei would not have been able to lead an efficient new-to-firm strategy. We created a model which is designed to give a better understanding of the situation and illustrate the interrelation between human resource, market demand, innovation strategy and performance.

It is now widely recognized that society’s over-reliance on the automobile contributes to environmental problems, especially in urban areas. Nevertheless, efforts to bring about modal shifts through transportation demand management strategies typically have had limited success. As a result, transportation research is increasingly focused on understanding the decision-making process of travel behaviour changes including mode choice and automobile ownership. The purpose of this study is to explore how individuals arrive at a decision to live either car-free or car-lite. Using a grounded-theory approach, this thesis explores the factors involved in a car-free/car-lite decision and the manner in which those factors work together to create the decision making process(es). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 driving members of a car-sharing organization, each of whom made a decision to go car-lite (car-sharing is their additional vehicle) or car-free (car-sharing is their primary vehicle). Five main interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: finances, personal values and attitudes, personal history, perceived accessibility and situational life events. In particular, the participants’ experiences reinforce the importance of situation life events in the decision-making process, a factor not commonly identified in behaviour change theory. Additionally, the participants’ narratives illustrate that intention is created from an individual’s inclination and ability to make a travel behaviour change. However, translation from intention into action appears to be conditionally dependent on contextual and/or situational changes, most often in the form of situational life events, that provide a push into or out of the decision-making process. Findings underscore the importance of life events as catalysts for bringing travel behaviour in line with an individual’s sense of what is important and what is possible. This research illustrates the relevance of qualitative work in advancing transportation research – particularly in understanding human travel decisions. While the current transportation-planning paradigm is appropriate for making short-term forecasts, we must recognize that non-linear, non-utilitarian, long-term, often qualitative factors, such as those identified in this research, are not exogenous to travel decision making. Results also provide a basis for reflecting on the appropriateness of various metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of transportation demand management initiatives.

The force exerted during manual tasks is a dominant risk factor for upper-limb musculoskeletal disorders. To identify tasks that may lead to fatigue over a shift, or increase the risk of injury, the demands placed on the hand and forearm system must be quantified and predicted. The purpose of this research was to determine how different ways of simulating manual tasks affected the estimate of demand on the hand and forearm and how well normative data could be used to provide an estimate of that demand. The forces and moments required to perform 20 manual tasks were measured and simulations with three different levels of realism developed, ranging from simple feedback, with real parts, postures and timing to more controlled simulations with simplified parts, standard postures and 5s static exertions. 11 workers hired from a temporary employment agency each performed the simulated tasks and their physical demand was determined using perceived effort, the muscle activity of 8 hand and forearm muscles, and grip (or pinch) force matching. Based on these criteria, the best simulation was that with the same handle size, shape and orientation as the criterion version of the task using simple feedback to match one or two forces. Over the variety of tasks studied here, perceived effort, grip force matching and extensor digitorum activation provided the most similar demand estimate to the criterion task of all measured parameters. The more controlled simulation had the highest correlation compared with normative demand. Overall, the more changes in hand-object interface made between the task of interest and a simulation or normative data, the greater the discrepancy in demand. Normative data tended to underestimate demand, thus underestimating the risk of fatigue and injury. The use of simulations and task specific normative data to estimate hand task demand, with an accuracy useful for field measurements by ergonomists, was supported.

The water soft path (WSP) has been formulated as a progressive paradigm in water management. The WSP has four main principles: water should be viewed as a service; ecological sustainability is of utmost importance; water quantity and quality should be conserved; and planning should be done from the future backwards, not projected from the present. It may be possible to use conservation-based water pricing programs, especially at the residential level, in order to incrementally implement the WSP. Moreover, the implementation of residential seasonal water rates has been suggested as a method to curb peak demand in municipal water systems, thereby deferring infrastructure expansion. The purpose of this thesis is to answer the question: what are the barriers to implementing residential seasonal water rates in the Region of Waterloo? This question is addressed using a variety of data sources, with the majority of the information coming from academic and non-academic literature, and from interviews with water professionals and local councillors. The results provide a descriptive case study concerning the barriers to implementing seasonal water rates in one particular region of southwestern Ontario, but the conclusions can be generalized to describe some of the barriers to the implementation of seasonal water rates in Ontario. Results suggest that some barriers are more severe than others, and that the more serious ones may be addressed by: expounding the potential for seasonal water rates to curb peak demand; carefully designing a rate study to be administered with non-price programs; and implementing the designed rate structure as a pilot study. It is suggested that the implementation of seasonal water rates can be used as an incremental step towards the adoption of WSP principles, but not without first envisioning a desirable future.

Exports are an important source of income for Sweden. They are influenced by macroeconomic factors such as GDP. This paper examines the elasticity of Swedish export to changes in the GDP of Sweden’s 25 most important export partners. The sensitivity to changes in GDP, the elasticity, can be different for different goods. Therefore, we examine export elasticities for five different commodity groups, which include durable as well as non-durable goods. Moreover, special focus is put on the trade relationship between Sweden and Germany in order to see if their long common trade history has any impact on the elasticity of Swedish exports to Germany. The analysis is based on an export demand function that links exports to GDP and geographical distance. We include dummy variables in our regression model to control for EU-membership and common borders.       For Swedish exports to Germany, we find that exports of food and live animals are least elastic, whereas exports of machinery and transport equipment are most elastic. This is coherent with previous empirical findings about demand elasticities of non-durable and durable goods. We find that exports in two out of five commodity groups are unit elastic. This means that when German GDP increases by one percent, Sweden’s export to Germany in these commodity groups also grows by approximately one percent. Thus, Sweden is not able to capture additional profit through over proportional increases in exports to Germany. For Swedish exports to its 25 most important trading partners, on average, we find that exports of manufactured goods as well as machinery and transport equipment are the least elastic exports. This gives them the lowest growth potential.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate if there are associations between job stress in terms of demand, control, and support and physical inactivity. Method: A cross-sectional design was used in this study which is based on the “Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health” (SLOSH) from 2006. SLOSH includes men and women, between 19-68 years old and from all labor markets sectors. A total of 5 141 participants sent in their survey. Indices of the components in the demand-control-support model were created and multiple regression analyses with physical inactivity as the dependent variable were performed. Adjustment for possible confounders (age, sex, marital status, children, education, physical work, computer work, working hours, shift work, smoking, alcohol consumption, sleep quality and BMI) were made. Result: The main result showed an association between passive work (low demands and low control) in combination with poor support and physical inactivity. This result was statistically significant both unadjusted (OR: 1.38, CI: 1.12-1.71) and adjusted (OR: 1.28, CI: 1.03-1.59) for several covariates. Conclusion: This study suggests that especially passive work (low demands and low control) in combination with poor support from supervisors and colleagues are associated to physical inactivity. Further research needs to establish causality.

<p>This dissertation consists of three chapters relating to dynamic demand models of storable goods and their application to taxes that are imposed on soft drinks. Broadly speaking, the first chapter builds the estimation strategy for dynamic demand models of storable goods that allows for unobservable heterogeneous preferences in household's tastes. The second chapter uses the estimation strategy developed in the first chapter to study the policy implications of taxes that are imposed on sugary soft drinks. The last chapter explores and provides an explanation for the level of pass-through for soda taxes. </p><p>To be more specific, the first chapter develops techniques for incorporating systematic brand preferences in dynamic demand models of storable goods. Dynamic demand models are important for correctly measuring price elasticities of products that can be stockpiled. However, most of the literature excludes systematic preferences over consumers' brand tastes. This chapter resolves this issue by incorporating random coefficient Logit models into a dynamic demand framework and hence allows for realistic demand substitution patterns. It builds on Hendel and Nevo's 2006 Econometrica paper, where the authors introduce a model of dynamic demand that flexibly incorporates observable heterogeneity and estimates it via a three-step procedure that separates brand and volume choices. While a powerful tool, this method is tricky to execute. Therefore, this chapter also discusses the difficulties that may face implementers.</p><p>The second chapter predicts the effects of taxes on sugar sweetened soft drinks (sugar taxes) on both total consumption and the welfare of different types of consumers. It specifies and estimates a structural dynamic demand model of storable goods with rational and forward-looking households. It flexibly incorporates persistent heterogeneous consumer preferences and develops a computationally attractive method for estimating its parameters. Sugar taxes have been proposed at both the national and state-level, and passed in three states, as a means of slowing or reversing the growth in obesity and diabetes. To accurately analyze the effects of these policies, this chapter takes two specific aspects of soft drinks into account: storability and differentiation. It compares the results from this model to two benchmark studies: a static model with consumer heterogeneity and a dynamic model without households' persistent heterogeneous tastes. It finds that failing to account for dynamics (i.e. storability) results in overestimated reduction in consumption and failing to account for persistent heterogeneous preferences (i.e. differentiation) results in overestimated reduction in consumption and underestimated welfare loss. The model and method developed here are readily applicable to many studies involving storable goods, such as firms' optimal pricing behavior and anti-trust policies analyses.</p><p>The third and last chapter focuses on the incidence of soda taxes by studying the pass-through level of these taxes. It lays out a framework for thinking about the determinants of the pass-through level. More specifically, it builds theoretical models that examine the pass-through under more complex supply structures with multiple manufactures and retailers. In addition to providing some intuition behind theoretical predictions of the models, this chapter also presents empirical results found in the data along with their implications.</p> / Dissertation

While the demand for video streaming services has risen rapidly in recent years, supporting video streaming service to a large number of receivers still remains a challenging task. Issues of video streaming in the Internet, such as scalability, and reliability are still under extensive research. Recently proposed network contexts such as overlay networks, and mobile ad hoc networks pose even tougher challenges. This thesis focuses on supporting scalable video streaming applications under various network environments. More specifically, this thesis investigates the following problems: i) Server selection in replicated batching video on demand (VoD) systems: we find out that, to optimize the user perceived latency, it is vital to consider the server state information and channel allocation schemes when making server selection decisions. We develop and evaluate a set of server selection algorithms that use increasingly more information. ii) Scalable live video streaming with time shifting and video patching: we consider the problem of how to enable continuous live video streaming to a large group of clients in cooperative but unreliable overlay networks. We design a server-based architecture which uses a combined technique of time-shifting video server and P2P video patching. iii) A Cooperative patching architecture in overlay networks: We design a cooperative patching architecture which shifts video patching responsibility completely to the client side. An end-host retrieves lost data from other end-hosts within the same multicast group. iv) V3: a vehicle to vehicle video streaming architecture: We propose V3, an architecture to provide live video streaming service to driving vehicles through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) networks. V3 incorporates a novel signaling mechanism to continuously trigger video sources to send video data back to the receiver. It also adopts a store-carry-and-forward approach to transmit video data in a partitioned network environment. We also develop a multicasting framework that enables live video streaming applications from multiple sources to multiple receivers in V2V networks. A message integration scheme is used to suppress the signaling overhead, and a two-level tree-based routing approach is adopted to forward the video data.

This thesis develops a power line carrier(PLC) communication module using FSK modulation technology by integration of PLC chip, with various hardware circuits such as DSP, signal coupling and amplifier circuits, filter. The communication performance and conduction EMI tests and executed for the communication module developed. The PLC module is then applied for appliance control of commercial customers to fulfill the demand response function for energy conservation by reducing the summer peak loading. Besides sending the load control command from central station in the smart grid, the power consumption of various appliances can also be collected and transmitted back to the control station via two way communication with the PLC communication module. Finally, the broadband PLC (BPLC) is applied for the CCTV supervision in system to support asset management of distribution room to prevent the power equipment from steal. With the remote control of light brightness and CCTV lens with high data transmission rate provided, the communication performance of PLC can therefore be verified in this study.