In this paper, we used the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the bounds test approach to estimate the elasticity of demand for natural gas in Western and Central Canada. The best model specification selected by Schwarz Information Criterion (SIC) for each province suggests that there exist long-run relationships between the dependent variable and independent variables for all provinces, except Ontario. Consumption per capita in these provinces can be explained by natural gas prices, electricity prices, income, and heating degree days (a measurement for the weather factor) in levels for the selected specification. The results show that natural gas demand is very inelastic with respect to natural gas prices and also with respect to heating degree days.

No description available.

Distance based vehicle insurance (sometimes know as “Pay as you drive,” “Pay by the mile” or “Pay per-km” insurance) has long been advocated by transportation planners as a transportation demand management (TDM) strategy. In addition to reducing congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, it also has the potential to meet a number of planning goals, such as health and equity improvements. Despite the wide interest in and predicted benefits of distance based insurance, there is little consensus on the detailed design of a system that could be implemented. Five main distance based pricing schemes have been proposed: a flat per-km rate, temporal or “time of day” pricing, road-type pricing, demographic pricing and “differential” pricing, which prices low mileages at a higher per-km rate. Each of these systems treats risk differently and thus results in different cross-subsidies between drivers. The proposal’s design thus has implications for an insurance system’s fairness and equity. This report examines the distribution of crash risk across time, across space, and across the different demographic groups. It then compares the current annual insurance system’s treatment of risk with that of various proposals for distance based insurance. It evaluates each proposal, considering its treatment of risk and its potential for increasing fairness and equity of costs and of mobility. It also examines each proposal’s other impacts, such as effectiveness in maintaining privacy and in reducing health impacts, greenhouse gas emissions and congestion. The recommended model is a flat per-km rate. Each driver would pay the same rate for every kilometer driven, regardless of time or place. However, individual drivers’ per-km rates would vary, depending on current insurance rating factors, such as residential location, type of car and driving record.

This thesis consists of three different papers summarized as follows. In The political economy of environmental regulation, I study how enforcement of national environmental legislation differ across municipalities in Sweden depending on the local political situation. While the legislation is national, enforcement is decentralized. I find that municipalities where the Green Party joins the ruling political coalition issue more environmental fines than other municipalities. In pricing on the fish market I use Swedish data to study how size affects the price per kilo of fish for several species. In traditional fishery biomass models, fish stocks are treated as homogenous. New theoretical heterogeneous fishery models, where size is allowed to differ in a fish stock, have important implications for regulation, for example that it is optimal to regulate on numbers of fish instead of weight. However, prices in these models are assumed to be constant. My estimates can be used to shed some light on how prices change when the size composition of the catch changes. In my third and final chapter, Settlement under the threat of conflict - The cost of asymmetric information, I present a theoretical model where two players can divide a good peacefully or engage in a contest in order to obtain the entire good. I assume that one player's valuation of the good is private information and show how this affects the expected cost of the contest and thus the probability of peaceful settlement.

Labai svarbu ir savalaikiškai ištirti vartotojų poreikį broilerienai, aktualu nustatyti vartotojų požiūrį į Lietuvoje užauginamą produkciją bei importuotą. ir kokia yra priklausomybė vyrų bei moterų tarpe, ir nuo gaunamo atlyginimo. Vartotojų tyrimai rodo, kad auga paklausa lengvai virškinamiems, greitai paruošiamiems, aukštos maistinės kokybės gyvulininkystės produktams. Darbo tikslas - Išsiaiškinti broilerienos paklausą ir pasiūlą Lietuvoje, įvertinti broilerienos suvartojimo tendencijas, analizuoti broilerienos rinką, pagrindinius gamintojus. Įvertinti importą ir eksportą, taip pat sužinoti pagrindinius veiksnius, lemiančius broilerienos produktų pasirinkimo apsisprendimą Tyrimui atlikti buvo iškelti uždaviniai. Tyrimo uždaviniai: 1. Įvertinti broilerienos pasiūlą ir paklausą Lietuvoje; 2. Ištirti broilerienos pasirinkimą priklausomai nuo vartotojo atlyginimo; 3. Išanalizuoti pagrindinius veiksnius, lemiančius broilerienos pirkimo apsisprendimą vyrų ir moterų tarpe; 4. Reklamos įtaka broilerienos pirkimui; 5. Išsiaiškinti kliento požiūrį į importuotą ir Lietuvoje pagamintą broilerieną. Rezultatai: 1. Tyrimu nustatyta, kad didieji prekybos centrai nėra populiaresni už gamintojo parduotuves (P=0,07). Mažmeninės prekybos vietos nėra populiarios, lyginant su didžiaisias prekybos centrais ir gamintojo parduotuvėmis (P<0,001). 2. Tyrimo rezultatai parodė, kad renkantis paukštyno produkciją, vyrai linkę nekreipti dėmesio, kurio paukštyno produkciją perka, o moterys tvirtai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Actuality of the work: A number of the earlier inquiry of customers needs have shown that there is a great demand for the high quality nutrition products, in accordance with their light digestibility and short term of cooking. Therefore the nutrition industry. This might help them to get acquaintance with different use and offer of national and import broiler products by men and women. Goal of the work: Inquiry of possibilities of broiler supply and demand in Lithuania, valuate the tendencies of broiler use, analyze broiler market and the main suppliers. It is very important to valuate the particularities of broiler import and export which could influence the offer and customers use. Tasks to reach the goal:1) Valuate the broiler supply and demand in Lithuania; 2) Inquire the clients‘ choice in accordance with their income and price; 3) Analyze the main factors which can influence the broiler offer and use different choice of customers: between men and women; 4) State the advertisement influence on the broiler sell; 5) Valuate the customers‘ opinion on the offer of national and important broiler products. General conclusion and results: 1. The inquiry (P=0,07) has shown that there is no high difference of popularity by broiler sell in the wide market and in the producer’s shops. The retail are not popular (P<0,001) in accordance with wide market centers and the producer’s shops; 2. The results of this inquiry have shown the men and women choice in accordance with the... [to full text]

The supply and demand analysis helps to recognize market and the factors which settled market changes. It allows to prepare more effective plan of activity and protect managers from theirs incorrect decisions. The market of piglet fodders was chosen, seeking to put into practice the theoretical supply and demand factor analysis. Such decision predetermined the fact that the market of pigs foddes although small, however very important and besides that about it very little information. The subject of research: to evaluate the piglets fodders production and consumption tendencies, to analyse the pigs fodders market in Lithuania, main fodders producers, importers and consumers, to find out pigs breeders point of view about supplied fodders. Results:1 Analysed pigs complex in which are bred 55,4 percent of every year bred pigs in Lithuania feed schemes, there is defined, that in all complex are applied early piglets feeding. All of analyzed respondents are using imported prestarter ir starter feeds and at latest pigs age before fattening, are using feeds, which are produced in own feed mills Hence from commerce point of view, the biggest demand from piglets feeds is suitable for prestarters and starters feed. 2.Evaluated criterions in accordance with which respondents are chosen feeds, there is defined, that pigs breeders consider not very important the criterions such are feed form and production technology. Although during research time was cleared up, that those indexes... [to full text]

Vienas iš svarbiausių veiksnių organizacijos valdyme yra orientacija į personalą; jo poreikius, bei motyvavimą. Šiame darbe nagrinėjamos problemos bei pateikiami sprendimai vienai didžiausių Lietuvos pramonės šakų – tekstilės pramonės organizacijoms. Pirmoje dalyje detaliai buvo apžvelgiamos motyvavimo teorijos, jų trūkumai, bei veiksmingumas. Antroje dalyje apklausos pagalba buvo aiškinami „Scandye“ įmonės motyvacinės sistemos spragos ir taisytinos jos vietos. Trečioje dalyje, remiantis antros dalies tyrimu, bei keletu kitų papildomų tyrimų, buvo pateiktas motyvavimo sistemos modelis tekstilės pramonės įmonėms ir organizacijoms. Apbendrinamai galima teikti, kad buvo rasta daug spragų taikomose motyvavimo sistemose tekstilės pramonės įmonėse ir buvo pateikti galimi tų spragų sprendimo variantai. / One of the most important management functions in modern organization is orientation to personnel. Textile industry is one of the most important industries in Lithuania. The aim of this research paper is to find out which theories and models ar suitable to textile industry. The first part of the paper is base don scientific literature; main motivational theories and their application in our days organizations The second part of the paper introduces „Scandye“ organization; motivational system and it‘s problems. The third part presents the model of improvement of motivational system in the textile industry. In sum, the result of the survey gives the ideas how to improve motivational system in textile industry.

Mediated microbial sensors utilizing two different yeast isolates (SPT1 and SPT2) were developed for the estimation of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Measurements of glucose/glutamic acid (GGA) standard solution with potassium ferricyanide mediation resulted in linear ranges extending from the detection limits (i.e. 2 and 5 ppm BOD) to 100 and 200 ppm BOD for the SPT1- and SPT2-based sensors, respectively. The standard error of the mean (SEW for 10 ppm. BOD measurements was 10.1% (SPT1) and 3.9% (SPT2). Response reproducibility had 10.6% error between three identically prepared SPT1 sensors. Response times for concentrations of 20 ppm BOD were within 10 minutes. For pulp mill effluent, the detection limits were 2 (SPT1) and 1 (SPT2) ppm BOD, with SEMs of 3.6% and 14.3% for the SPT1 and SPT2 sensors, respectively. Based on the results obtained in this study, it is concluded that SPT2 is the more suitable biocatalyst for pulp mill wastewater analysis. / While 18S rRNA gene sequence analyses, including BLAST homology searches, have suggested that isolate SPT1 is a close relative of Candida sojae (99.8% homology), no close matches have been found for isolate SPT2. The closest match for SPT2 was to Candida krusei (76.0% homology). Evidence from biochemical tests, fatty acid analysis, and 18S rRNA gene sequence analyses, indicates that isolate SPT2 is a novel yeast species.

No description available.

Surgical scheduling is complicated by naturally occurring, and human-induced variability in the demand for surgical services. We used time series methods to detect, model and forecast these behaviors in surgical demand time series to help improve the scheduling of scarce surgical resources. With institutional approval, we studied 47,752 surgeries undertaken at a large academic medical center over a six-year time frame. Each daily sample in this time series represented the aggregate total hours of surgeries worked on a given day. Linear terms such as periodic cycles, trends, and serial correlations explained approximately 80 percent of the variance in the raw data. We used a moving variance filter to help explain away a large share of the heteroscedastic behavior mainly attributable to surgical activities on specific US holidays, which we defined as holiday variance. In the course of this research, we made a thoughtful attempt to understand the time series structure within our surgical demand data. We also laid a foundation, for further development, of two time series techniques, the multiwindow variance filter and cyclostatogram that can be applied not only to surgical demand time series, but also to other time series problems from other disciplines. We believe that understanding the non-stationarity, in surgical demand time series, may be an important initial step in helping health care managers save critical health care dollars. / Thesis (Ph.D, Mathematics & Statistics) -- Queen's University, 2009-02-09 11:55:42.494