Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-101). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-95).

For Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and brown trout (Salmo trutta), the decision to migrate or when to migrate is believed to be influenced by the individual’s metabolic rate (MR) relative its food intake. As MR was expected to be related to behaviour, the potential links between behaviour and metabolic costs was studied. For both salmon and trout the dominant individual had a higher standard metabolic rate (SMR) than its subordinate counterpart. Also, successful migrants of brown trout had a higher SMR than unsuccessful migrants, whereas no such difference was found for obligate migratory Atlantic salmon. Measures of variation in MR and boldness indicated that Atlantic salmon was more sensitive to stress than brown trout and became passive when stressed. When two trout were interacting, an increase in ventilation rate (VR) was positively correlated to fighting intensity. The first day after an interaction, VR did not differ between small dominant and subordinate trout (mean size 3.7g), whereas for large trout (26.0g) subordinates had higher VR than dominants. However, a combination of low temperature (10°C) and high water velocity (22cm/s) eliminated this difference. This probably reflects the high swimming activity of small dominants and the low motivation for dominants to defend a large territory when temperatures were low and the cost of moving was high. These results show that the relationship between MR and behaviour may differ depending on species, fish size and environmental factors.

In the last ten years, the railways generally throughout the world have suffered a decline in their share of the transportation market relatively to other modes of transportation. This has meant a serious loss of business which has led to many financial difficulties. This loss of a share of the market has come about despite the lasting importance of the railways generally in the economy, despite their necessity in economic development and despite their continued progress in technology. Should the railway situation continue to deteriorate, transportation systems could be endangered seriously. In this thesis, a reform of railway pricing policies is proposed as an important contribution to the solution of the present railway problem. [...]

When a customer requests a discount fare, the airline must decide whether to sell the seat at the requested discount or to hold the seat in hope that a customer will arrive later who will pay more. I model this situation for a single leg flight with multiple fare classes and customers who arrive according to a semi-Markov process (possibly nonhomogeneous). These customers can request multiple seats (batch requests) and can be overbooked. Under certain conditions, I show that the value function decreases as departure approaches. If each customer only requests a single seat or if the requests can be partially satisfied, then I show that there are optimal booking curves which decrease as departure approaches. I provide counterexamples to show that this structural property of the optimal policy does not hold in general. When customers are allowed to cancel I show that booking curves exist and may be monotone in certain cases. I also consider the situation where the customer's request size and fare offered are not known, but their joint probability distribution is available, and show that under certain conditions existence of booking curves obtains, and that under further assumptions, they are monotone. Finally, the theoretical results are used in realistic numerical examples, which are compared to certain deterministic upper bounds and revenues obtained under heuristic policies. The airline yield management problem described above is an instance of a generic revenue management problem, which, in turn, can be cast into a finite horizon semi-Markov dynamic optimal control problem. I provide examples of other applications of revenue management.

The three chapters of this thesis address two questions. First, how are real and nominal exchange rates between different national currencies determined? Second, how does this determination influ- ence the international transmission of macroeconomic fluctuations and, especially, monetary policy disturbances? Chapter 1 comprises an empirical evaluation of long-run purchasing power parity as a theory of equilibrium nominal exchange rate determination for the post-Bretton Woods data. Structural time series methods are used to identify bivariate moving average representations of nominal exchange rates and relative goods prices and to test whether these empirical representations are consistent with the implications of purchasing power parity. Long-run purchasing power parity can be un ambiguously rejected for the G- 7 countries. There are permanent deviations from parity which account for almost all of the variance of real exchange rates, and which are driven by permanent disturbances to nominal rates which are never reflected in relative goods prices. Chapter 2 presents an empirical evaluation of the hypothesis that the global Depression of the 1930’s was attributable to international transmission of (idiosyncratic) U.S. monetary policy actions through the International Gold Exchange Standard - fixed exchange rate - regime. Specifically, the analysis evaluates whether the interwar output collapse in Canada was caused by transmitted U.S. monetary policy disturbances. A multivariate structural time series representation of the Cana dian macroeconomy is estimated which is consistent with the dynamic and long-run equilibrium properties of a Mundell- Fleming small open economy model and in which U.S. data represent the ‘rest of the world’. The empirical results show that U.S. monetary disturbances play a negligible role for both Canadian and U.S. output movements in the 1930’s. Permanent common real shocks to outputs can account for the onset, depth and duration of the Depression in both economies. There is little evidence to support a Gold-Standard transmitted global output collapse through the transmission mechanisms usually associated with purchasing power parity theories of real exchange rate determination. Chapter 3 develops an alternative theory of real and nominal exchange rate determination and of the international transmision mechanism which can account for many stylized facts regarding the empirical behaviour of real and nominal exchange rates that long-run purchasing power parity fails to explain. In a two-country, two-currency overlapping generations model, the role of optimal portfolio choices between internationally traded assets is emphasized - rather than goods market trade - as the source of currency demands. These demands, and supplied of assets generated by domestic monetary policies, determine both real and nominal exchange rates. Here, monetary policy changes can induce permanent international and intra-national reallocations through real exchange rate and real interest rate adjustments. This transmission mechanism differs markedly from that implied by purchasing power parity.

A field trial and a greenhouse experiment were conducted to investigate the impacts of N and K nutrients on plant N/K assimilation, nitrate reductase activity (NRA), curd yield and quality of cauliflower cv. ‘Minuteman’. In the field study the treatments consisted of five N rates (0, 55, 110, 165 and 220 kg/ha) and three K rates (0, 25 and 50 kg/ha). In the greenhouse study the treatments were five levels of N (0, 16.5, 33, 50 and 66.5 mg/plant/day) using a modified Hoagland nutrition solution. In the field study the interaction of N/K rates was significant in cauliflower whole plant N/K uptake. Head N/K accumulation was 32-35% of plant total N/K uptake (8.0 g/plant), which was significantly correlated with head yield and size (P<0.05). Cauliflower NRA was associated with leaf/head sap NO3-N concentrations. It is suggested that nitrogen and potassium translocation is an important factor of cauliflower yield and quality.

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<p>Previous research pertaining to the financial aspect of the mining industry has focused predominantly on mining products' values and the companies' sensitivity to exchange rates. There has been very little empirical research carries out in the field of the statistical behaviour of mning companies' cash flow data. This paper aimed to study the time-series behaviour of the cash flow data series of JSE listed mining companies.</p>