Production of turkeys in Utah has had a rapid growth since its beginning a few decades ago. In 1929 there were only 226,000 birds sold by Utah producers and in 1960 there were 2,798,000 birds sold. Over this 31 year period of time production has increased 12 times.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business. / Recent regulatory changes in developed economies have sought to apply uniform standards for corporate governance following a series of high profile corporate collapses between 2000 and 2002. The various regulatory responses raised questions in the governance literature on the appropriateness of a “one size fits all” approach. However, empirical outcomes in this literature do not provide a consistent picture on how, or even whether, governance choices vary with firm characteristics. This thesis addresses the lack in empirical direction by investigating the discriminatory power of a fundamental firm variable, the price-to-book ratio (P/B), that is often applied in Australian and other studies to predict governance outcomes. It evaluates how a joint price-to-book, price-to- earnings, firm classification (P/B, P/E) captures variations in governance choices by Australian firms and compares the results with those using a conventional P/B classification. Choices for two key mechanisms – the level of independence of the board of directors and the quality of its external auditors, are examined as they feature prominently in regulatory reforms. The results show that a joint P/B, P/E classification captures significant differences in the use of both mechanisms confirming that governance frameworks vary with firm characteristics. Consistent with expectations, these differences are recorded for board independence within high and within low P/B firms. Significant variations are also identified in the choice of auditor quality within both P/B classes of firms. By enabling a more parsimonious analysis of firm characteristics through the joint P/B, P/E framework, these results enhance our understanding of the choice of independent directors and high quality auditors. They also lend support to the general proposition that a “one size fits all” governance framework could lead to unnecessary costs for firms as they seek optimal governance arrangements that suit their specific information environments.

It can be stated that where a valuation is used as an assessment of risk there is no research-backed theory of valuation, that is one that explains the methodology used and is validated by a hypothesis. The significance of this thesis is the recognition of the ignorance, and confusion that exists and the need of a theory to explain methodology verified by a hypothesis or hypotheses. This thesis is the result of systemic research in an attempt to define the confusion that exists, resulting from the application of inappropriate economic theories in valuation. This research also attempts to find the reason for and the source of the confusion. This research supports that which has previously been advocated that valuation principles of valuation Practice must be underpinned by a working theory embedded in positive economics. The finding of this paper is that price theory is an appropriate proxy for valuation theory where a valuation is used as an assessment of the recovery of funds. However importantly this research also recognises and examines the possible ability of other related economic theories to explain areas price behaviour where price theory cannot. The findings of this research are likely to have important implications in the valuation profession. Hopefully this will result in stimulating debate and a realisation of a need for a theory which supports a credible and validated process of valuation.

Immediately following public offerings, underwriters often repurchase shares of poorly performing IPOs in an apparent attempt to stabilize the price. Using proprietary Nasdaq data for a large sample of IPOs, I study the price effects and cross-sectional determinants of price support. Some of the key findings are: (1) Price stabilization is substantial, inducing significant price rigidity at and below the offer price. Stabilization appears, at least in the short run, to raise the equilibrium stock price. (2) Many studies suggest that stabilization helps to mitigate information asymmetry problems in the IPO market. I find no evidence that stocks with larger ex-ante information asymmetries are stabilized more strongly. (3) The characteristics of the lead underwriter emerge as the strongest determinants of price support. Larger and more reputable investment banks stabilize more, perhaps to protect their reputations with investors. But there are substantial differences in price support even among the largest underwriters (after controlling for IPO characteristics and underwriter size). (4) Investment banks with retail brokerage operations stabilize much more than other large investment banks. This puzzling result seems inconsistent with the common view that stabilization benefits primarily institutional investors, and I outline and examine several alternative explanation

In this paper we characterize the "price of anarchy", i.e., the inefficiency between user and system optimal solutions, when costs are non-separable, asymmetric and nonlinear, generalizing earlier work that has addressed "price of anarchy" under separable costs. The generalization models traffice equilibria, competitive multi-period pricing and competitive supply chains. The bounds established in the paper are tight and explicitly account for the degeee of asymmetry and nonlinearity of the cost function. We introduce and alternate proof method for providing bounds that uses ideas from semidenfinite optimization. Finally, in the context of nulti-period pricing our analysis establishes that user and system optimal soulutions coincide.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 2000. / Major Professor: Subhash C. Sharma. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (February 27, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This study proposes two methods, (1) a probabilistic method based on historical oil prices and (2) a method based on Gaussian simulation, to model future prices of oil. With these methods to model future oil prices, we can calculate the ranges of uncertainty in traditional probability indicators based on cash flow analysis, such as net present values, net present value to investment ratio and internal rate of return. We found that conventional methods used to quantify uncertainty which use high, low and base prices produce uncertainty ranges far narrower than those observed historically. These methods fail because they do not capture the "shocks" in oil prices that arise from geopolitical events or supply-demand imbalances. Quantifying uncertainty is becoming increasingly important in the petroleum industry as many current investment opportunities in reservoir development require large investments, many in harsh exploration environments, with intensive technology requirements. Insight into the range of uncertainty, particularly for downside, may influence our investment decision in these difficult areas.

Price discrimination has been widely discussed in economics. Scholars have discussed perceived fairness in the direct exchange perspective, sellers and buyers. However, there are few studies related price discrimination and its impact on consumers¡¦ psychology. Therefore, this paper examines the influence of price discrimination on consumers¡¦ perceived unfairness and their purchase intention as well as the effect of discount depth and discount framing in consumer¡¦s perspective. Results obtained from 402 questionnaires collected in Taiwan indicate that (1) price discrimination has influence on consumers¡¦ perceived (un)fairness; (2) discount depths moderate the impact of price discrimination on consumers¡¦ perception of unfairness; (3) advantaged inequality has influence on consumers¡¦ purchase intention; (4) discount framing doesn¡¦t have influence on either consumers¡¦ perceived unfairness or their purchase intention.

Motivated by a period of time in which we face historically high oil prices, this thesis analyzes to what extent oil prices actually influence inflation. By constructing a simple chart, one can see that oil price and inflation seem to have a similar pattern. However, to draw any conclusions from that is impossible. We show with econometric methods the relationship between oil prices and inflation in the case of Sweden. Sweden, as a net importer of oil, spent approximately 43.3 billion SEK on crude oil during 2004. That is 414.200 barrels of crude oil each day. Taking this into account, what would happen if the oil price suddenly increased by 10%? Considering the fact that 43.3 billion SEK is a rather large amount of money, it seems obvious that such an oil price increase should have some impact on the Swedish economy and inflation. This would occur partly through higher prices of gasoline for example, but it would occur also due to the indirect effect that companies face through higher production costs and will most likely pass on some part of that cost to the consumers. We have gathered data for oil prices and inflation for Sweden since 1981 to 2004. Together with other variables that also affect the inflation, such as money supply and interest rates, we did econometric regressions to find evidence for the relationship. We reach the conclusion that if the oil prices increase by 10%, inflation is assumed to increase with about 0.15-0.20%.