Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Glynn Tonsor / Few things facing the U.S. meat industry in recent years have garnered more attention of economic researchers than food safety events, policies, and mitigation efforts. This dissertation has two main essays and themes focusing on both domestic and international food safety issues. Contributing new insights to this situation, the impacts of FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Service) recalls on consumer meat demand in the United States are estimated by a series of Rotterdam models in the first study using monthly grocery-scanner data. Multiple model specifications are employed to further assess effects across meat products and geographic regions. Recall variables are constructed separately as beef E. coli recall, beef non-E. coli recall, pork recall, and poultry recall variables to facilitate finer assessment of demand impacts. Results suggest beef E. coli recalls significantly reduce the demand for ground beef contemporaneously among most, but not all, regions in the United States. The ultimate finding of food safety effects neither being fully homogeneous nor entirely heterogeneous warrants appreciation. In order to protect domestic consumers and meat industries from potential food safety hazards, some member countries of the WTO implement sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures as non-tariff barriers. The second study focuses on investigating the determinants of red meat trade patterns and associated impacts of SPS regulations. This analysis uses multiple product-level gravity equation models and PPML (Poisson Pesudo Maximum-likelihood estimators to overcome sample selection bias and heteroscedasticity and examine the trade relationship among other factors. Results indicate that, trade values of frozen beef and pork are significantly reduced by the implementation of SPS measures. Also, the spillover effects across meat products on trade were detected which provides essential information to the meat industry, policy makers, and trade representatives.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Michael W. Babcock / Many of the railroad demand studies are out-dated, lacking the most recent data. We felt that it is time to re-evaluate the rail markets to determine if changes have occurred in the determinants of railroad demand. This paper examines the effects of industrial production and revenue per ton of railroads on the demand for railroad service for selected manufactured goods. Also there appears to be a fundamental shift in railroad pricing after 2004. Thus a dummy variable for the 2005-2010 period was included in the model. Although there is variation in the price elasticity of demand across the manufactured goods markets, all are price inelastic.

In this paper we first show that the gains achievable by integrating pricing and inventory control are usually small for classical demand functions. We then introduce reference price models and demonstrate that for this class of demand functions the benefits of integration with inventory control are substantially increased due to the price dynamics. We also provide some analytical results for this more complex model. We thus conclude that integrated pricing/inventory models could repeat the success of revenue management in practice if reference price effects are included in the demand model and the properties of this new model are better understood. (authors' abstract)

M.Comm. (Economics) / The recent global financial and economic crisis has brought about renewed interest in the nexus between credit markets and monetary policy. This research aims to contribute to the understanding of the factors that drive the demand for credit on an aggregate level, and the household and corporate sectors for the South African economy. The study assessed the equilibrium determinants of the aggregate and sectoral demand for credit in South Africa by making use of a cointegrated vector autoregression (CVAR) methodology. In addition, the periods of debt overhang and short-falls, at aggregate and sectoral levels in the credit market, are derived from these equilibrium levels. The estimated models indicate the existence of long-run relationships for the aggregate credit demand equation, a classic demand-type relationship linking aggregate credit with gross domestic product (GDP) and the lending rate is established. For credit extended to the corporate sector, the results indicate that in the long-run it is determined by investment expenditure, operating surpluses and the lending rate. Whereas for credit extension to the household sector, it was found that the lending rate, disposable income and household debt were its important long-run determinants. All the results of the estimated equations are in line with a demand-type relationship and the traditional hypothesis that credit is demanded to finance real economic transactions, namely for liquidity purposes and to finance working capital. The results of the short-term dynamics indicate that credit extension variables are the equilibrium variables, although the speed of adjustment parameter is found to be sluggish, which shows that the slow adjustment to equilibrium from shocks to the credit markets is attributable to the existence of stronger frictions and transaction costs in credit markets. These findings justify the persistent periods of credit overhang and short-falls in South Africa that this study derives from the equilibrium coefficient terms. The study shows that periods of credit overhang and short-falls are linked to the business cycle phases in South Africa.

D.Ed. (Teaching studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

<p>The aim of this dissertation is to examine, model and estimate firm responses to</p><p>demand shocks by focusing on specific industries where demand shocks are well</p><p>identified. Combining reduced-form evidence and structural analysis, this dissertation</p><p>extends the economic literature by focusing on within-firm responses of firms</p><p>to two important demand shocks that are identifiable in empirical settings. First,</p><p>I focus on how firms respond to a decrease in effective demand due to competition</p><p>shocks coming from globalization. By considering China's accession to the World</p><p>Trade Organization in 2001 and its impact on the apparel industry, the aim of these</p><p>chapters is to answer how firms react to the increase in Chinese import competition,</p><p>what is the mechanism behind these responses, and how important they are in explaining</p><p>the survival of the Peruvian apparel industry. Second, I study how suppliers'</p><p>survival probability relates to the sudden disruption of their main customer-supplier</p><p>relationships with downstream manufacturers, conditional on suppliers' own idiosyncratic</p><p>characteristics such as physical productivity.</p> / Dissertation

Initiatives in many countries to improve learner performances in mathematics in poor communities have been described as largely unsuccessful mainly due to their cursory treatment of curriculum alignment. Empirical evidence has shown that in high achieving countries the notion of coherence was strongly anchored in cognitively demanding mathematics programs. The view that underpins this study is that a cognitively demanding and coherent mathematics curriculum has potential to level the playing field for the poor and less privileged learners. In South Africa beyond 1994, little has been done to understand the potential of such coherent curriculum in the context of the NCSM. This study examined the levels of cognitive demand and alignment between the written, tested and taught NCSM. The study adopted Critical Theory as its underlying paradigm and used a multiple case study approach. Wilson and Bertenthal’s (2005) dimensions of curriculum coherence provided the theoretical framework while Webb’s (2002) categorical coherence criterion together with Porter’s (2004) Cognitive Demand tools were used to analyse curriculum and assessment documents. Classroom observations of lesson sequences were analysed following Businskas’ (2008) model of forms of mathematical connections since connections of different types form the bases for high cognitive demand (Porter, 2002). The results indicated that higher order cognitive skills and processes are emphasized consistently in the new curriculum documents. However, in the 2008 examination papers the first examinations of the new FET curriculum, lower order cognitive skills and processes appeared to be emphasized, a finding supported by Umalusi (2009) and Edwards (2010). Classroom observations pointed to teachers focusing more on rote learning of both concepts and procedures and less on procedural and conceptual understanding. Given the widespread evidence of the tested curriculum impacting on the taught curriculum, this study suggests that this lack of alignment between the advocated curriculum on one hand, the tested and the taught curricula on the other, needs to be investigated further for it endangers the teaching and learning of higher order cognitive skills and processes in the FET mathematics classrooms for the poor and less privileged. Broader evidence suggests that this would work against efforts towards supporting the upward mobility of poor children in the labour market.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Donald Cox / This dissertation consists of two essays which address the origins of the business cycle. In particular, it asks: to what extent do behavioral or psychological effects, famously termed "animal spirits" by John Maynard Keynes, contribute to the amplification of business cycle fluctuations. The first essay, titled "The Labor Market Effects of Bad Economic News", examines the effects of economically pessimistic newspaper articles on hiring and employment patterns. Combining information on newspaper subscriptions with automated content analysis of newspaper articles, the paper reconstructs the flow of pessimistic news across the United States during the past recession on a county-by-county, quarter-by-quarter basis. This high resolution map of pessimistic news delivery is then used to estimate the causal impact of media pessimism on labor market outcomes. Exposure to negative news is found to suppress hiring and total employment during the early stages of the recession by up to 40% compared to pre-recession levels; overall, media pessimism can account for some 7% of jobs lost between 2007 and 2010. Further analysis of Google search data suggests that this contractionary effect is mediated by changes in public attitude caused by exposure to pessimistic stories in the media. Importantly, this study considers only articles which report negative news about the state of the national economy, rather than stories which focus on local events. It argues that the prevalence of such news stories affects local labor market conditions, but is unlikely to be affected by such conditions. This approach helps to address the simultaneity issues which have dogged previous research on the topic. The second essay, titled "Uncertainty and Risk Averse Firms in DSGE" a develops theoretical framework to rationalize the previous paper's empirical results. This paper solves a simple general equilibrium model in which firms are risk averse over future profits in a manner analogous to household risk aversion. It shows that response to increased economic uncertainty - particularly uncertainty with regards to future consumer demand, economies with risk averse firms are likely to undergo a business cycle contraction. This result also addresses a long standing problem in the RBC literature; namely, how to generate a contraction with a Keynesian demand side shock. In most models with risk averse utility-maximizing households, a reduction in aggregate demand due to consumer-side changes is expansionary. The paper argues that by introducing firm-side risk aversion into the model, this counter-intuitive behavior can be corrected in a realistic and parsimonious manner. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

[pt] A utilização de um modelo eficiente para o abastecimento de clientes VMI (Vendor Management Inventory) é um dos fatores mais importantes para que as empresas promovam uma relação equilibrada entre o nível de serviço oferecido ao cliente e o custo logístico associado a operação. Dado a importância do assunto, e a possibilidade por parte da autora de participar da implementação de um novo sistema para o abastecimento de clientes VMI em uma empresa de gases industriais e medicinais, o objetivo desta dissertação foi analisar a adoção deste novo sistema e os principais resultados obtidos após sua implementação. Foram ressaltados os pontos relacionados com a previsão de vendas, a programação de entregas e os indicadores de desempenho. A metodologia utilizada para a elaboração desse trabalho incluiu: pesquisa bibliográfica, dados de fontes primárias extraídos de sistemas de informação da empresa e de entrevistas não estruturadas com funcionários envolvidos na operação, além de visitas in loco para observação direta. Os resultados desta dissertação foram uma análise da operação antes e depois da implementação do novo sistema na Empresa de Gases Alfa e uma comparação com a operação da matriz americana da Empresa. Os motivos pelos quais a operação no Brasil não atingiu os mesmos patamares da operação americana, mesmo após a adoção do novo sistema, assim como ações de melhoria, também foram expostos na dissertação. / [en] The use of an efficient model for costumer VMI (Vendor Management Inventory) supply is one of the most important factors for companies to promote a balanced trade-off between the service level offered to the costumer and the logistic cost associated to the operation. Given the importance of the subject, and the possibility of the author to take part of the implementation of a new system to supply VMI costumers of an industrial and medicine gases company, the aim of this dissertation was to analyze the adoption of this system and the main results obtained after its implementation. It shall be highlighted spots related to sales prevision, delivery programming and performance indexes. The methodology used for elaborate this dissertation has included: bibliographic research, data of primary sources of the information system of the company and non-structured interviews with employees involved in the operation, besides in situ visits for direct observation. The results of this dissertation were an analysis of the operation before and after the implementation of the new system and a comparison with the operation of the company`s American office. The reasons through which the operation in Brazil has not reached the levels of the American operation, even after the adoption of the new system, as well as improvement actions, were also herein exposed.