Nonpoint Source (NPS) pollution, pollution that comes from diffuse sources that are difficult to trace back to a single point such as farm fields, is a major concern affecting America's water ways. Nationally, agriculture is the leading source of water impairment and has also been identified as the largest source of pollution affecting the Chesapeake Bay. There are proposals now for a program that would pay farmers to use 15 percent less than the extension recommended amount of fertilizer. Known as the Yield Reserve Program, or Enhanced Nutrient Management, this policy could possibly help to reduce the nutrient loads. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of a Yield Reserve Program on farm yields and net revenues. Costs were estimated for different policy implementations for the Virginia Coastal Plain to better understand problems with this type of program. The effects of Yield Reserve on enterprise net returns, yields, and N applications for corn under varying weather and soil conditions were estimated. Based on experimental trials from North Carolina and Virginia from 2000 to 2004, yield response functions were calculated for corn. The costs of the Yield Reserve Program vary depending on its implementation, but under current proposals these costs were estimated at $113 per hectare, and $10,855,000 for the coastal plain. This proposal is a more costly program than would be necessary to compensate farmers for yield losses based on estimates in this study. / Master of Science

I ett naturreservat intill en camping i utkanten av Järnaområdet skapades en ny typ av Folkets hus. Byggnaden är placerad i sydostlig riktning på toppen av en udde, med ett stort entréplan som starten av huset som sedan klättrar sig ned längs med landskapet mot stranden, där man finner den avslutande badplatsen. Det inrymmer en hosteldel med café och en butik för cykel- och båtuthyrning, samt försäljning av allt som hör friluftsliv till, för att knyta samman platsen och byggnaden med naturreservatet och de motionerare som på olika sätt tar sig till platsen. Här finns även en restaurang, konferenssal, utställning samt öppna gemensamma ytor så som offentliga kontor, mötesrum och ett gemensamt allrum där centrets olika gäster kan möstas. Alla dessa ytor knyts samman av en serie trappor som klättrar med byggnaden ner för berget, med öppna plattformar där man närsomhelst kan kliva av och på byggnaden. Naturreservatets redan befintliga stråk har jobbats in i projektet och passerar genom byggnadens entréplattform och fortsätter vidare från butiksplanet, våningen under. Från byggnaden kommer nya stigar skapas genom besökarnas naturliga rörelse genom och runt alla avsatser. / In a nature reserve next to a campsite on the outskirts of the Järna area, a new type of Folkets hus was created. The building is located in a south-easterly direction on top of a headland, with a large entrance floor as the start of the house which then climbs down along the landscape towards the beach, and ends with a bathing spot. It houses a hostel part with a café and a shop for bicycle- and boat rental, as well as sales of everything that belongs to outdoor life, to connect the place and the building with the nature reserve and the exercisers who pass through the place in different ways. There is also a restaurant, conference hall, exhibition and open common areas such as public offices, meeting rooms and a common living room where the center's various guests can meet. All these surfaces are connected by a series of stairs that climb with the building down the mountain, with open platforms where you can exit and enter the building at any time. The nature reserve's already existing trail have been worked into the project and pass through the building's entrance platform and continue on from the store floor, one floor below. From the building, new paths will be created through the visitors' natural movement through and around all ledges.

Магистерская диссертация состоит из введения, трех частей, заключения, библиографического списка, приложений. В теоретической части представлены основные понятия, опыт обучения кадрового резерва, программа совершенствования обучения кадрового резерва на предприятиях газотранспортной отрасли. В практической части описывается общая характеристика исследуемого предприятия и деятельность службы управления персоналом, проведен анализ использования программы совершенствования обучения кадрового резерва ООО «Газпром трансгаз Екатеринбург». На основе полученных данных разработаны рекомендации по использованию программы совершенствования обучения кадрового резерва ООО «Газпром трансгаз Екатеринбург». В заключении подведены итоги в соответствии с поставленными задачами. / The master thesis consists of introduction, three parts, a conclusion, a bibliographic list, and appendices. The theoretical part presents the basic concepts, the experience of training the personnel reserve, the program for improving the training of the personnel reserve at the enterprises of the gas transportation industry. The practical part describes the general characteristics of the enterprise under study and the activities of the personnel management service, analyzes the use of the program for improving the training of the personnel reserve of Gazprom Transgaz Yekaterinburg LLC. Based on the data obtained, recommendations have been developed for the use of the program for improving the training of the personnel reserve of Gazprom Transgaz Yekaterinburg LLC. In conclusion, the results are summed up in accordance with the tasks set.

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This paper examines the informational role a Property & Casualty (P&C) insurers’ loss accrual (an estimate of expected losses) provides in a merger. This accrual is the largest liability for an insurer and an accurate evaluation of this liability is important in valuing a merger. Our focus is on one specific aspect of the loss accrual. This is the loss accrual’s transparency (or how easy is it to be modeled) and used in a valuation exercise. We propose a two-stage methodology to examine how transparency affects the valuation of acquirers in mergers. In the first stage, we use an event study to measure the acquirer’s cumulative abnormal stock return following the merger announcement. This is a measure of how the market values the transaction.  In the second stage, we then investigate whether, and to what extent, the merger parties’ loss accrual transparencies are related to the market’s valuation of the acquirer. / Business Administration/Accounting

No description available.

As more emphasis is put on biodiversity conservation, how best to select a system of protected areas for wildlife conservation is an issue of great importance. There is a rich economics literature on the reserve site selection problem. However, most economic studies assume the independence of risks that affect wildlife species, leaving the issue of spatially correlated risk largely unexplored. This study contributes to the literature in twoaspects. First, this study incorporates spatially correlated risk, into a reserve site selection model. And second, this study incorporates heterogeneous spatial risk, in the context of land development risk in Virginia, both with and without a budget constraint. To evaluate the significance of spatially correlated risk in conservation design, I apply the reserve site selection model to a Virginia landscape. In a basic setting, a hazard is introduced which is allowed to spread to adjacent land parcels, where I investigate the impact of spatially correlated risk at three spatial scales: one-county, four-county, and state-level. Optimal reserve designs are characterized by similar spatial patterns indicating that spatially correlated risk plays an important role in the selection of parcels for reserve. Specifically, as spatially correlated risk increases, I find that, in general, reserve connectivity decreases. I also examine a setting with heterogeneous risk and observe similar patterns in the optimal reserve design. I find that the reserve becomes more dispersed in higher risk areas primarily. Finally, I explore the tradeoffs between species protection and budget constraints in the presence of heterogeneous spatial risk. All comparative statics indicate that spatial correlated risk plays an important role in conservation reserve design. / Master of Science

no abstract provided by author / Master of Science

Nature reserves affect the local environment and communities. I use household data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) to estimate the impacts of nature reserves on several aspects of rural households: migration, local off-farm work, and off-farm income. This thesis also examines the heterogeneous impacts of nature reserves across administrative levels, lengths of existence time, and types. To reduce selection bias, propensity scores matching (PSM) is carried out to match counties with nature reserves to counties that have a similar possibility of establishing nature reserves, but that do not yet have any. Considering that counties with nature reserves might affect their neighboring counties without nature reserves, I construct two additional samples: one that excludes adjacent counties, and the other that generates new indicators for adjacent counties to check spillover effects directly. I use models with year fixed effects and county fixed effects to estimate the impacts across samples. The estimation results show that national nature reserves (NNRs) generally decrease the possibility of migration, while the impact depends on how long the NNRs have been in place. In the short run, NNRs increase migration. Forest NNRs significantly decrease migration but increase participation in local off-farm work and off-farm income. Nonforest NNRs have positive influences on migration and off-farm income. Although both forest and nonforest NNRs increase off-farm income, the sources might be different. The off-farm income increase in counties with forest NNRs might come from local off-farm work because forest NNRs encourage local off-farm work. The off-farm income increase in counties with nonforest NNRs might come from migration work because nonforest NNRs increase migration. Provincial nature reserves (PNRs) increase the likelihood of migration and the estimates also imply that PNRs only have short-run impacts on the local communities. Forest PNRs increase migration while nonforest ones decrease migration. PNRs generally decrease participation in local off-farm work and off-farm income, except for nonforest PNRs increase both of them. The results indicate that nature reserves of different administrative levels and lengths of existence time negatively affect local off-farm participation and off-farm income. These results imply that nature reserves in China during 2002-2013 had overall negative impacts on the local livelihood. / M.S. / Nature reserves are a crucial ecological policy in China for protecting endangered species and the environment. There is no doubt that nature reserves are beneficial to the environment. However, the multi-faceted social impacts of the establishment of nature reserves on the local households are unclear. This thesis studies the impacts of nature reserves on migration, participating in local off-farm work, and household off-farm income. I obtained household data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP). The selection of nature reserves' locations is nonrandom: counties with nature reserves and those without are different in geographic characteristics, such as the distances to the nearest provincial capital and prefecture, average slope, and average elevation, which could be correlated with local economic development. Without eliminating those differences, the results will be misleading when comparing counties with nature reserves with those without nature reserves. This thesis considers the heterogeneous impacts of nature reserves across administrative levels, lengths of existence time, and types. Considering that counties with nature reserves might also affect their adjacent counties without nature reserves, I construct two additional samples: one that excludes adjacent counties and the other that generates new indicators for adjacent counties to measure the spillover effects directly. The results show that different designations of nature reserves have various impacts on migration. National nature reserves (NNRs) decrease migration, while provincial nature reserves (PNRs) generally increase migration. In the short run, NNRs increase migration and PNRs also increase migration. In general, nature reserves across different administrative levels and lengths of existence time all decrease local off-farm participation and off-farm income. This result implies that nature reserves in China during 2002-2013 had overall negative impacts on the local livelihood in the aspects of participation in local off-farm work and off-farm income.