The field of International Trade aims to study the consequences of the spatial disconnection between the activities of production and consumption, which has been allowed by the increasing opening of the economies. However, while most of the history of the field has focused on the role played by production in shaping trade patterns, only recently researchers have emphasized the importance of demand characteristics. This dissertation follows these recent works by containing three essays that specifically study the importance of demand characteristics on export patterns at the microeconomic level. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I explore the importance of the dynamic aspects of demand on the export decisions made by firms. Standard dynamic models of trade identify sunk entry costs as the main export barrier faced by firms. However, these large entry costs are inconsistent with the existence of many small new exporters with low survival rates in foreign markets. In this chapter, I study the role of destination-specific demand dynamics by introducing, in a dynamic model of trade, the idea that firms gradually accumulate consumers in foreign markets. Estimating the model using export data from individual French firms, I show that this consumer margin is consistent with the dynamics of sales, prices and survival of exporters, but also leads to much lower estimates of the entry costs of exporting - about one third of those estimated in the standard model. Moreover, this change in the nature of trade barriers has important implications at the aggregate level. In contrast to the standard model, this model correctly replicates the slow response of trade to shocks and the increasing contribution of the extensive margin in this response. Finally, I demonstrate using out-of-sample predictions that the model better predicts actual trade responses to an observed shock than the standard model. The second chapter presents a novel instrumental variable strategy to estimate product quality at the micro level using trade data. Written with Gabriel Smagghue from University Carlos III of Madrid, this work develops a new firm-specific instrument, based on variations in exchange rates combined with firm-specific import shares, that delivers, under weak assumptions, consistent estimates of demand elasticity and firm product quality. Implementing our method using French customs data, we document the reliability of these measures through correlations with firm characteristics and alternative measures of quality. Finally, we use our estimates to document the quality response of French firms when facing low-wage competition on foreign markets. Finally, in the third chapter of this dissertation, I document the positive correlation between the size of a firm and its advertising intensity - measured by the amount spent in advertising as percentages of sales. Taking advantage of firm-level information about advertising expenditures from the Chilean manufacturing census, I show that this correlation holds between firms operating within a similar industry, and is stronger in industries with a larger scope for vertical differentiation. Building on these findings, I develop a model of advertising with heterogeneous firms, based on Arkolakis (2010). In addition to using advertising to inform consumers about the existence of their good, firms can use advertising to affect consumers' valuation of their products. Consistent with the empirical findings, this latter feature of advertising leads to a positive link between the advertising intensity of a firm and its size. Moreover, this link is amplified by a parameter describing the degree of vertical differentiation of the product.

This study is concerned with the analyses of modern electric power-grids designed to support large supply-demand considerations in metro areas of large cities. Hence proposed are methods to determine optimal performance of the associated distribution networks vis-á-vis power availability from multiple resources (such as hydroelectric, thermal, wind-mill, solar-cell etc.) and varying load-demands posed by distinct set of consumers of domestic, industrial and commercial sectors. Hence, developing the analytics on optimal power-distribution across pertinent power-grids are verified with the models proposed. Forecast algorithms and computational outcomes on supply-demand performance are indicated and illustratively explained using real-world data sets. This study on electric utility takes duly into considerations of both deterministic (technological factors) as well as stochastic variables associated with the available resource-capacity and demand-profile details. Thus, towards forecasting exercise as above, a representative load-curve (RLC) is defined; and, it is optimally determined using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method using the data availed on supply-demand characteristics of a practical power-grid. This RLC is subsequently considered as an input parametric profile on tariff policies associated with electric power product-cost. This research further focuses on developing an optimal/suboptimal electric-power distribution scheme across power-grids deployed between multiple resources and different sets of user demands. Again, the optimal/suboptimal decisions are enabled using ANN-based simulations performed on load sharing details. The underlying supply-demand forecasting on distribution service profile is essential to support predictive designs on the amount of power required (or to be generated from single and/or multiple resources) versus distributable shares to different consumers demanding distinct loads. Another topic addressed refers to a business model on a cost reflective tariff levied in an electric power service in terms of the associated hedonic heuristics of customers versus service products offered by the utility operators. This model is based on hedonic considerations and technoeconomic heuristics of incumbent systems In the ANN simulations as above, bootstrapping technique is adopted to generate pseudo-replicates of the available data set and they are used to train the ANN net towards convergence. A traditional, multilayer ANN architecture (implemented with feed-forward and backpropagation techniques) is designed and modified to support a fast convergence algorithm, used for forecasting and in load-sharing computations. Underlying simulations are carried out using case-study details on electric utility gathered from the literature. In all, ANN-based prediction of a representative load-curve to assess power-consumption and tariff details in electrical power systems supporting a smart-grid, analysis of load-sharing and distribution of electric power on smart grids using an ANN and evaluation of electric power system infrastructure in terms of tariff worthiness deduced via hedonic heuristics, constitute the major thematic efforts addressed in this research study. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

There are a number of factors recognised as significant for nursing staff retention. These include, a lack of organisational care, bullying (commonly referred to as horizontal violence), and high workload acuity. However, there does not appear to be any indication that these factors influence the retention of nurses within the speciality of acute perioperative nursing. A descriptive study using postpositivist methodology and triangulation of methods was designed to answer the question: What are the critical factors that influence staff retention in an acute perioperative environment? Forty-eight (n = 48) perioperative nurses answered a questionnaire in relation to individual needs, provision of nursing care and administration and management. Four (n = 4) nurses subsequently participated in a focus group interview that explored in more depth, the survey data related to the following characteristics: Educational opportunities; Level of workload acuity; Rostering flexibility; Management; Established policies/Quality assurance; Graduate orientation programs and Professional relationships in an acute perioperative setting. Data analysis revealed that > 90% of respondents agreed that these characteristics are important for job satisfaction and influence staff retention in an acute perioperative environment. A sense of belonging appears to be the most important theme that emerged from the qualitative data. Job satisfaction and staff retention are attained when nurses have a sense of belonging in the workplace. To achieve these, nurses need to identify barriers, develop their communication and leadership skills and determine the ideal professional practice model. The themes (Figure 5), "Finding time" and increased "sick leave", in relation to workload acuity are new findings that provide a platform for future research.

The steel industry is always considered as the traditional industry that unwilling to make an investment in new information technology, besides several annual sales volumes and more than 3 billion large scale steel maker, there are very few has implemented MIS, eERP, SCM, CRM,etc. that mean the Steel Industry Supply and Demand Chain to take electronization , still have long way go too, even so, the government , society , big factory , information industry person promote the mental and physical efforts of the bet in enterprise's electronization , the government offers favourable measure , society to make the standard , big factory of the industry and invest in the person who carries out the case and best instance , information industry of electronization and provide aid of technology etc., the effect carried on in big electronization specifically of factory is obvious to all, but the information drop of visiting a existence from upstream to downstream in the supply and demand chain is still quite great, the information hedge among enterprises, reduce the transparency of information , the unfairness of the trade, delay, the obstacle of linking up among enterprises fails to suppress effectively, to stepping the enterprise , transnational towing the Utopia in coordination with the commercial speech. This article is focus on ¡§What is the development trend of the Steel Industry¡¦s supply and demand chain systems?¡¨, and how the steel downstream and upstream complay with it , and in order to build and construct the information structure of the supply and demand chain of the steel industry in management tactic topic that the information transparency improves among enterprises (B2B), what happen in relevant enterprises in running the supply and demand chain implementation project? Especially,what need to be changed in existing systems? What is the driver of the changes? As to extant information system, is there any new or change requirements that revise in these decisions? The author has participated in practice going through and experience of every special project actually in the case company over the past over years by ten, extract with a case of chain electronization of supply and demand, make into the research paper of the case. The case company was established in 1973, the total capital is more than 3,200 million NT$, plate the surface steel factory Cold-Rolled, Galvanized Steel Coils, Printed Color Steel Coils for the representative and medium-and-large-sized consistent homework in Taiwan , Southeast Asian steel industry , there is cold-rolled , zinc-plated , roast intact consistent homework procedure of paint, total sales amount is NT$18,900 million in 2004, a customer-oriented, at the orientation builds and constructs one steel industry model as, " We are not biggest but will be the best " , " Investigate steel industry second by enterprise model popularity for eight years in succession international high to is it cold-rolled speciality have , plate surface steel factory march toward to make a profit. Give a new lease of life to and shorten and hand over a procedure, purchases to the procedure , guest and tells the procedure the procedure and system, good staff , shareholder , customer , social relationships that and is devoted to establishing at the same time ; Quality exceeding customers' expectation , Ethical business conduct, Safe and pleasant working environment , Personal development through challenging work, Fair reward to employees , set up the good mechanism of communication with supplier and customer, it is satisfied with the environment to create the staff , feedback the social home town. With the quality policy that ¡§Correctly grasp each customer's expectation¡¨, the market coming to get up because should be new developing, new customer develop and set up with the new stronghold , set up dynamic fast reaction system , react fast , make policy fast , hand in one quickly , serve fast. The case company always offers better quality products to meet customer's demand , maintain better equipment stability and efficiency. In the tactics of expanding of the market , pay attention to the technological innovation and study development , develop the high additional value products , research and develop the new technology , new application, it set up SCM , CRM , BI ,etc. information infrastructure, give play to ' pursue to the good and not only on to the good ' spirit, cooperate in coordination, set up international and specialized dull and stereotyped steel product group. This thesis carries on the process as follows. To study and present having it about the steel industry and supply and demand chain and the article of the relevant field of transparency of information first . And then state taking action and describing reason of special project designed to solve above-mentioned problems. Then, important incidents happened during taking action of discussion, and explain the case company during special project in order to implement the topic produced of information systems which constructs the supply and demand chain of the steel industry , will to address considering the key factor and key performance and assessment model of the e-SCM and information transparancy implementation, and to provide as a consultation and good application example to the relevant enterprises of steel in the electronic tactics of the supply and demand chain finally.

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Statistics / Master / Master of Social Sciences

No description available.

Decreasing block pricing refers to the practice of selling a product at successively lower marginal prices as the amount purchased in any one time period increases. In more familiar terms, this practice can be thought of as any quantity discount scheme as long as marginal price does not vary continuously with quantity. Decreasing block pricing results in a faceted, non-convex budget set, and under standard assumptions concerning consumer preferences, yields several nonstandard theoretical implications. The central goal of this paper is to formulate an estimation technique which is consistent with these implications. When the budget set is not convex, the uniqueness of consumer equilibrium is no longer guaranteed. It also follows that discontinuities in demand occur whenever consumer equilibrium shifts from one facet of the budget constraint to another. Prior empirical studies have not made use of demand functions consistent with these results. In Chapter 2, a utility-maximizing algorithm was developed to determine consumer equilibrium given the declining block pricing schedule and income for a Cobb-Douglas utility function. In developing this algorithm, it was made clear that the proper approach for estimating individual demand was through the use of a block-dependent independent variable. The coefficient of this block-department independent variable provided an estimate of a utility function parameter which completely specified the Cobb-Douglas form. Incorporating this utility function estimate into the utility-maximation algorithm made it possible to obtain estimates of consumption given changes in any or all of the rate schedule components. While the use of a block-dependent independent variable is the theoretically correct method for estimating demand, it poses an inescapable problem of errors-in-variables. A Monte Carlo study was performed in Chapter 2 to investigate, among other things, the seriousness of the errors-in-variables bias. The results were quite encouraging. When using data incorporating extremely large error variances, amazingly precise estimates were obtained. Another encouraging Monte Carlo result was when comparing samples not containing a discontinuity with those with one, it was found that the latter produced estimates with statistically significant superiority. Chapter 3 generalized the estimation technique of the previous chapter to allow the estimation of demand using cross-sectional data. The data base recorded monthly electricity consumption for households from a number of cities whose utilities had decreasing block rates. Seven of these cities were selected for analysis. The data also included various demographic characteristics and electric appliance stock information. The generalization was accomplished by assuming that all households had a Stone-Geary utility function. Also, the utility function parameter representing the minimum required quantity of electricity was assumed to depend linearly on the household's appliance stock and demographic characteristics. This allowed demand to vary across households on the basis of this parameter and income. The results of applying this regression technique to the cross-sectional data were then compared with results from a conventional, non-theoretically based demand specification. The data were used in pooled and individual month form with the former yielding much better statistical results. The Stone-Geary form provided a greater number of significant coefficients for price and income variables than the conventional version. The predominant failure of the conventional version was that the coefficient of marginal price was rarely significant and when significant, frequently of the wrong sign. For the same samples, the Stone-Geary results were quite acceptable except for the regressions involving one of the cities. Thus, it was demonstrated that a method consistent with the theoretical implications of decreasing block pricing is easily applied to cross-sectional data and produces better results than conventional techniques.

No description available.

The research sets out to investigate the effect of the policy of Rationalization and Redeployment on the culture of teaching and learning in three primary schools in the Pinetown District in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Rationalization and Redeployment was a policy adopted by the new government of South Africa to address the inequalities in education created by apartheid. There was an excess of educators in historically advantaged schools and a shortage of teachers in historically disadvantaged schools. The average teacher: pupil ratio in historically advantaged schools in 1991 was 1: 18 while the average teacher: pupil ratio in historically disadvantaged schools in the same year was 1: 43. Due to budgetary constraints the new government was unable to employ more educators to fill vacancies in historically disadvantaged schools. Therefore redeployment of human resources became imperative. While this may have been a simple solution for the new government, it proved to be a daunting experience for educators, which resulted in a negative influence on the culture of teaching and learning in schools. Two critical questions were posed: 1. What impact did the contents, claims, objectives, assumptions and silences of the policy of rationalization and redeployment have on the culture of teaching and learning? 2. How did the implementation of the policy of rationalization and redeployment affect the culture of teaching and learning? The two research questions were addressed by analysing the Kwa-Zulu Natal Education Departmental Circulars, from 1996 to 2004 pertaining to the rationalization and redeployment policy and by analysing questionnaires administered to educators and the school management team in three schools chosen for this study. 62 questionnaires were administered of which 56 were returned. The responses were analysed and conclusions were drawn. From the research it is quite evident that the policy of rationalization and redeployment had a negative effect on the culture of teaching and learning. It became evident that this policy was politically motivated rather than an attempt to improve the education in the country. In addition several conclusions and recommendations are presented in the concluding chapter. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.