We study the optimal resource portfolio for a price-setter firm under a consumer choice model with supply and demand risks. The firm sells two products that are vertically differentiated, and has the option to invest in both dedicated and flexible resources. Our objective is to understand the effectiveness of the two hedging mechanisms, resource flexibility and demand management through production differentiation, under demand and supply risks. We show that the presence of consumer-driven substitution does not always reduce the need for the firm to offer differentiated products. In particular, when the firm faces demand risk and differential production costs, it might invest in the flexible resource and offer differentiated products for a wider range of parameters. Interestingly, more uncertainty (in the form of additional supply risk) does not always make the firm more eager to adopt a hedging mechanism. This depends on the relationship between resource risks, product attributes, and resource investment costs. On the other hand, when the firm invests in the flexible resource, this never completely replaces the dedicated resources, and always results in a "diverse" resource portfolio. While this happens in the supply risk setting mainly due to resource diversification advantage, it also happens in the demand risk setting due to the vertical differentiation between the products. Finally, in the absence of differential production costs, demand management by itself (without resource flexibility) becomes powerful enough to hedge against the demand risk, but not the supply risk, due to the additional resource diversification benefit of the flexible resource in the latter setting. / Ph. D.

The industrial arts profession has long been aware of the imbalance between the demand for industrial arts teachers and the supply of qualified teachers, but the size of the shortfall has not been known. This study identified a need for at least 1,754 additional qualified teachers in 1977-78, a figure that is four times the number of vacant positions (439) identified by the U.S. Office of Education for that year. Data collected from state industrial arts supervisors and heads of industrial arts teacher education programs nationwide reveal new insights into the state of teacher supply and demand. In thirty states, an average of 10.7 percent of the teachers left the profession. Only 75.7 percent of the 1976-77 bachelor's degree recipients with certification in industrial arts education accepted teaching positions in 1977-78. During the two- year period from 1976-77 to 1977-78 the number of vacant teaching positions increased in twenty-one states. Three states that did not have vacancies in 1976-77 had vacancies in 1977-78. The number of persons who were employed to teach industrial arts, not being fully qualified to teach, decreased only slightly from 1976-77 to 1977-78. During 1977-78, 600 new teaching positions were created and filled with qualified teachers. Unfortunately, 200 positions were abolished in that year because qualified teachers could not be obtained. It does not appear likely that the supply of qualified teachers coming from teacher education programs will increase anytime soon. The supply may actually decrease during the next five years or more because undergraduate enrollments were at only half the capacity in 1978-79. / Ed. D.

In certain situations, information costs and training related externalities may lead to under investment in human capital, i.e., a non-Pareto equilibrium in which marginal social return to human capital investment exceeds its marginal social cost. When this situation occurs, it may be economically sound to have the public sector make selected human capital investments. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the comparative cost-effectiveness of two general types of publicly funded training programs: those with explicit training and employment agreements between firm representatives and training officials as characterized by State Customized Training (SCT) and those with no such agreements as characterized by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) programs. The methodology was to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the benefits to the programs' graduates and the costs to the public over various working-life scenarios and discount rates. The benefit-cost ratios were higher for SCT for every scenario tested. The conclusion reached was to the extent that SCT and CETA are representative of agreement/non-agreement types of training programs, training programs with training and employment agreements are more cost-effective than those programs without such agreements. / Master of Arts

The economic incentive to restrict supply in the cobalt market is analyzed. The economic framework for supply restriction and associated conditions for revenue maximization and profitability in a dominant firm price leadership market is presented. The major focus of the economic framework presented is the magnitude of net demand elasticity faced by a producer considering supply restriction. Elasticities of market demand and competitive supply and the market share of the producer considering supply restriction are derived as the components of net demand elasticity. The potential for total revenue and profit maximization by dominant firm supply restriction in the cobalt market is estimated for a range of net demand elasticities. Cobalt market demand price elasticity is derived from cobalt market demand estimates. Preceding the market demand and price elasticity estimatation is a review of factor demand and an analysis of cobalt market demand. Market share of the dominant producer in the cobalt market is estimated from historical data. A range of competitive supply elasticities that would result in increasing the dominant producer's total revenue and profit is derived. / Master of Arts

The relationship between economic and demographic factors and the flow of new students into undergraduate engineering programs was investigated. An empirical analysis was undertaken based on a lagged-supply model developed earlier by Richard Freeman. The analysis involved the replication of the Freeman model over the 1948-1972 period, the extension of the model through 1986, and the forecasting of first-year engineering enrollments up to the year 2000. The model developed in this thesis was able to a accurately mirror the engineering enrollment trends from 1948 to 1986. The economic variables--especially R&D expenditures and starting engineering salaries relative to median income of college graduates--were found to be important factors in the flow of freshmen into engineering. None of the variables relating to demographic trends were found to significantly related to first-year engineering enrollment. The importance of the federal government's role in the engineering labor market through research and development funding is discussed, along with forecasts of possible trends in first-year engineering enrollment. / Master of Arts

In this study, county level data for three time periods (1970, 1985, and 1989) are examined to determine the factors affecting the distribution of primary care physicians in rural counties of Virginia. Consistent predictors of proportions of physicians to the population were identified: golf holes per capita and the ratio of hospital beds to population were the most consistent predictors. Per capita income and the elderly population were only significant for some of the years. Variables deemed to be controllable by the community (in the short run) were generally more consistent in predicting the proportions of physicians to population. Policy implications are discussed, and several strategies for improving access to health care in rural areas, thus altering the massive imbalance in physician to population ratio in urban and rural areas are suggested. / Master of Science

Given the neoclassical assumptions of optimizing economic agents, perfect information, perfect competition, and productive efficiency, timber supply is a dynamic process. Different discrete-time dynamic timber supply models and their solution methods are compared and their common elements derived. A continuous-time model is derived, but not solved. The discrete-time timber supply model is then incorporated into a dynamic multi-sector model and a dynamic general equilibrium model. In the multi-sector model, all household's utility functions are aggregated into a single community utility function which is maximized subject to the technology of the economy. The technology for the forest sector is the same as in the discrete-time dynamic timber supply models. Wood is treated as an intermediate input into the production of consumer goods. The technology of the consumer goods sectors is based on the technology used in computable general equilibrium models. The optimal steady state problem for this model is discussed, and the solution for an example problem is presented. Disaggregating the utility function is necessary for modeling true general equilibrium. This greatly complicates the problem of Ending numerical solutions, but enriches the model considerably. The formulation of the general equilibrium model as an optimization problem is described, but proved rather difficult to solve. The optimal steady state problem can be solved using an algorithm developed by Scarf (1967) for finding fixed points of continuous functions. The fixed-point approach provides a reliable solution method and appears to have more potential for modeling departures from perfect competition than the optimization approach. The equivalence of the two approaches is discussed. / Ph. D.

The primary focus of this thesis is to explore important factors affecting the manufacturing sector in developing economies, with a specific focus on India. The first two chapters of this thesis investigate how financial and land-related policy reforms can significantly impact firm dynamics and resource allocation in manufacturing industries. This contributes to our understanding of how targeted policy measures can lead to substantial changes in firm growth and innovation. Furthermore, the third chapter explores the development of contextually relevant measures to assess the scope of quality differentiation in manufacturing industries. The first chapter, Bank Expansion, Firm Dynamics, and Structural Transformation: Evidence from India’s Policy Experiment, examines the impacts of bank expansion on firm dynamics and labor allocation. This paper focuses on a policy experiment in India designed to encourage bank expansion in ``under-banked'' districts. Empirical findings demonstrate significant growth in manufacturing firms in these districts due to eased credit access, resulting in increased capital accumulation, sales revenue, and employment. However, the expansion predominantly benefited incumbent firms, with minimal stimulation of firm entry or product innovation. The reform also induced notable labor reallocation towards manufacturing sectors, particularly in areas with lower agricultural productivity. The second chapter, Land Constraints and Firms: Evidence from India’s Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act, empirically examines the effects of land constraints on resource allocation and innovation in manufacturing firms, leveraging the staggered repeal of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) as a natural experiment. The ULCRA, enacted in 1976, imposed restrictions on land holdings and transfers in India. The findings suggest that the repeal of the ULCRA significantly reduced land market frictions, leading to increased landholdings and transactions among affected firms, thereby enhancing their productivity and growth. The results demonstrate that easing land constraints plays a critical role in reducing misallocation and driving economic growth in the manufacturing sector. In the third chapter, Plants and the Scope for Quality Differentiation: An Empirical Study in India, a new proxy is introduced for determining the scope of quality differentiation in manufacturing industries, based on the slopes of Quality Engel curves. This proxy is empirically validated by establishing a positive correlation between price-plant size elasticities and the scope for quality differentiation. These findings suggest that the Engel slope may serve as a more suitable proxy for evaluating quality differentiation scopes, particularly in the context of developing countries. In all, the thesis not only sheds light on the intricate relationship between policy measures and industrial development, but also contributes to the understanding of quality differentiation in the context of emerging economies

No description available.

Location-allocation problems can be described generically as follows: Given the location or distribution (perhaps, probabilistic) of a set of customers and their associated demands for a given product or service, determine the optimum location of a number of service facilities and the allocation of products or services from facilities to customers, so as to minimize total (expected) location and transportation costs. This study is concerned with a particular subclass of location-allocation problems involving capacitated facilities and a continuum of demand. Specifically, two minisum, network-based location-allocation problems are analyzed in which facilities having known finite capacities are to be located so as to optimally supply/serve a known continuum of demand. The first problem considered herein, is an absolute p-median problem in which p > l capacitated facilities are to be located on a chain graph having both nodal and link demands, the latter of which are defined by nonnegative, integrable demand functions. In addition, the problem is balanced, in that it is assumed the total demand equals the total supply. An exact solution procedure is developed, wherein the optimality of a certain location-allocation scheme (for any given ordering of the facilities) is used to effect a branch and bound approach by which one can identify an optimal solution to the problem. Results from the chain graph analysis are then used to develop an algorithm with which one can solve a dynamic, sequential location-allocation problem in which a single facility per period is required to be located on the chain. Finally, an exact solution procedure is developed for locating a capacitated, absolute 2-median on a tree graph having both nodal and link demands and for which the total demand is again equal to the total supply. This procedure utilizes an algorithm to construct two subtrees, each of whose ends constitute a set of candidate optimal locations for one of the two elements of an absolute 2-median. Additional localization results are used to further reduce the number of candidate pairs (of ends) that need to be considered, and then a post-localization analysis provides efficient methods of comparing the relative costs of the remaining pairs. / Ph. D.