This study focuses on identifying communication technology adoption behaviors to provide educational benchmarks for Texas cooperatives. A survey was conducted with questions identifying a range of variables describing adoption behavior of communication technology from the background of cooperative managers to board management policy. The survey categorized 105 different cooperatives by current technology use and management practices. Once the data were collected, a factor analysis to understand underlying relationships of variables was conducted. The survey found that Texas cooperative managers are willing to expand on their current use of communication technology, however a clear definition of how to use new concepts as a powerful tool is needed. In terms of governance, we found that many cooperatives have no stated policies regarding the use of communication technologies. Generally, those cooperatives that had defined technology use policies were more likely to be using more forms of technology. Through a logistic and ordered logistic regression of the data, the study did not reflect our initial hypothesis that age of the respondent and the years working for a cooperative (manger characteristics) would be a significant factor in estimating Texas cooperatives? willingness to adopt new forms of communication technology and social media. However, the cooperatives? technology adoption behavior can best be explained by the data produced from descriptive cooperative information and the existence of employee communication technology policies. Likewise, cooperatives? willingness to adopt social media can best be explained by the data produced from manager attitudes and cooperatives? concerns.

Charles University in Prague Faculty of Social Sciences Institute of Economic Studies MASTER THESIS The determinants of access to finance. Evidence for transition economies Author: Alina Cazachevici Supervisor: Roman Horvath, Ph.D. Academic Year: 2012/2013 Abstract The thesis provides an empirical analysis of impact of country-level and firm-level determinants on access to finance in transition economies. Generalized Ordered Logit model is applied on survey data for transition countries, combined with financial market indicators. The results show that higher concentration in banking sector, as well as higher financial deepening have a positive impact on access to finance, while volatile macroeconomic environment, higher implication of foreign-owned and state- owned banks seems to be perceived as increasing obstacles in accessing external financing. Combining indexes for liberalization in banking sector and liberalization of securities markets proved that before liberalization process firms had better access to finance. One of the possible explanations is that before liberalization state banks were forced by politicians to issue more loans, while after reforms the political pressure was removed, imposing stricter conditions for loan granting. Inclusion of corruption variable yields expectable results that...

Demand for domestic tobacco has decreased over the past two decades. In 2004, the tobacco buyout program terminated marketing quotas and price support established under the federal tobacco program in 1938. Additionally, in 2003, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WTO FCTC) acknowledged the importance of supply control in conjunction with demand control strategies to eliminate or reduce the consumption of tobacco products. According to the Census of Agriculture, the number of tobacco farms in the US fell by 40 percent between 2002 and 2007. Tobacco farmers are looking for alternative on-farm and off-farm sources of income. This study uses a rank-ordered logit model (ROLM) to explore factors affecting farmers’ perceptions about the potential for grain crops, cotton, peanuts, hay, fruits and vegetables, cow/calf, dairy, beef cattle and, other crops/livestock to replace tobacco production. Results suggest that hay is one of the on-farm enterprises perceived as having the highest potential to replace tobacco among burley tobacco farmers. Age, education, farm size and farm cash receipts were found to affect farmers’ perceptions about the potential for different alternative enterprises to replace tobacco. Additionally, results suggest that researchers should be careful when designing ranking questions in order to maximize rate of response and quality of the data obtained from this type of questions.

Masters of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / Concerns about environmental degradation due to agriculture have gained importance as it is associated with soil erosion, health hazards, and ground water pollution. Environment-friendly land use practices have been developed to gain a wide range of environmental benefits including reduced soil erosion, reduced nutrient runoff from crop and livestock facilities, increased biodiversity preservation efforts, and restoration of wetlands and other native ecosystems. No-till is one such practice where soil erosion, nutrient runoff and environmental degradation can be reduced to a certain extent. This study evaluated the factors affecting the adoption of tillage systems in Kansas. A survey was conducted with a total of 135 participants from four different locations in the state of Kansas between August 2006 and January 2007. The adoption process was modeled as a two-step econometric models consisting of perception and adoption equations to estimate the impacts of demographic variables and farmers’ familiarity with and participation in certain conservation programs. The results for the perception models showed that the farm operators’ perceptions regarding whether BPM installation and management is unfair to producers or not and whether environmental legislation is often unfair to producers do not vary systematically across farm size, producers’ familiarity and participation in conservation programs, or other demographics considered in the study. On the other hand, their perceptions regarding how polluted their water supplies varied by their thoughts on relative profitability across various tillage practices, their primary occupation, and their familiarity with conservation programs. Specifically, the results suggested that those who regarded no-till practices to be more profitable than other tillage practices or whose primary occupation was farming-related tended to believe that ground water was not polluted, and those who were less familiar with available conservation programs tended to believe that surface waters were not polluted. The adoption model results suggested that farmers with greater operating acreage, those who perceived that no-till was more profitable than other tillage systems, and those with greater familiarity with and participation in existing conservation programs were more likely to adopt more conservation tillage systems, all else equal. Further, perceptions of fairness of environmental regulations or the level of pollution did not impact the tillage choices.

Promover a segurança viária no entorno escolar é uma estratégia que contribui para que sejam construídas cidades seguras, saudáveis e sustentáveis. Nesse sentido, este estudo é dedicado a identificar a influência das características da estrutura urbana na frequência e na severidade dos acidentes no entorno de escolas de educação básica de Porto Alegre. A análise da frequência e da severidade de acidentes foi conduzida através da estimação de modelos econométricos: binomial negativo e logit ordenado, respectivamente. Para esses, foram calculados os efeitos marginais, permitindo a observação da magnitude dos impactos das variáveis explicativas sobre as variáveis dependentes. As variáveis dependentes frequência e severidade foram extraídas dos acidentes registrados em Porto Alegre entre 2012 e 2014. Foram incluídas, simultaneamente, variáveis da estrutura urbana, das escolas, socioeconômicas e dos acidentes (para a severidade). A partir do geoprocessamento dos dados existentes, os entornos escolares puderam ser caracterizados para três diferentes áreas circulares de análise (buffer ring) de raios de 100, 150 e 200 metros, permitindo a comparação do uso das diferentes áreas. O conjunto de estimativas indica que áreas menores produzem modelos de melhor desempenho para ambas as técnicas empregadas. No entanto, áreas maiores permitem a análise de maior quantidade de variáveis relativas à estrutura urbana. Essa relação sugere os benefícios da escolha a partir do trade-off entre ajuste do modelo e sua capacidade de propiciar análises de variáveis. Foi identificado que a frequência e a severidade de acidentes podem estar relacionadas a uma única variável explicativa de formas opostas – a partir de sinais contrários. Essa diferença de resultados para frequência e severidade de acidentes indica que há maiores benefícios em analisá-las em conjunto. Identificou-se ainda que existem benefícios para a segurança viária em áreas de estrutura urbana com quarteirões menores e maior quantidade de interseções de quatro vias, em frequência e severidade, respectivamente. Já as áreas mais arborizadas tendem a apresentar acidentes de menor severidade nos casos de usuários de modos ativos. / Fostering road safety nearby schools is a strategy that contributes to build safe, healthy and sustainable cities. The aim of this study is to identify the influence of the built environment characteristics in the frequency and severity of accidents nearby elementary and secondary schools in Porto Alegre. The frequency and severity of the accidents were analyzed using econometric models: negative binomial and ordered logit, respectively. The evaluation of their marginal effects allowed the magnitude of the impact caused by the explanatory variable on the dependent variables to be observed. The measured variables frequency and severity were extracted from accidents registered in Porto Alegre from 2012 and 2014. Built environment, socioeconomic and school variables were also included, as well as accident data (for severity). Data geoprocessing allowed school surroundings to be characterized for three different buffer rings, measuring 100, 150 and 200 meters of radius. Thereby it was possible to compare the inclusion of different areas in the study. The estimations indicates that models based on smaller areas have better performances for both employed techniques, whereas larger areas allow the study of a bigger quantity of urban infrastructure variables. That indicates the benefits of choosing based on a trade-off between model adjustment and capacity to engender the analysis of variables. It was shown that frequency and severity of accidents could be related to a single explanatory variable in opposite ways – based on contrary signs. This difference in the results found for frequency and severity indicates that there are more benefits when analyzing them together. Moreover, there are benefits for road safety in areas where the city blocks are shorter and where there are more four-way intersections, in frequency and severity of accidents, respectively. Also, areas of more important afforestation tend to decrease the severity of accidents involving users of active modes.

Work zone tends to cause hazardous conditions for drivers and construction workers since work zones generate conflicts between construction activities and the traffic, therefore aggravate the existing traffic conditions and result in severe traffic safety and operational problems. To address the influence of various factors on the crash severity is beneficial to understand the characteristics of work zone crashes. The understanding can be used to select proper countermeasures for reducing the crash severity at work zones and improving work zone safety. In this dissertation, crash severity models were developed to explore the factor impacts on crash severity for two work zone crash datasets (overall crashes and rear-end crashes). Partial proportional odds logistic regression, which has less restriction to the parallel regression assumption and provides more reasonable interpretations of the coefficients, was used to estimate the models. The factor impacts were summarized to indicate which factors are more likely to increase work zone crash severity or which factors tends to reduce the severity. Because the speed variety is an important factor causing accidents at work zone area, the work zone speed profile was analyzed and modeled to predict the distribution of speed along the distance to the starting point of lane closures. A new learning machine algorithm, support vector regression (SVR), was utilized to develop the speed profile model for freeway work zone sections under various scenarios since its excellent generalization ability. A simulation-based experiment was designed for producing the speed data (output data) and scenario data (input data). Based on these data, the speed profile model was trained and validated. The speed profile model can be used as a reference for designing appropriate traffic control countermeasures to improve the work zone safety.

This thesis investigates the associations between crash outcomes, the existence and type of driver distraction as well as driver’s age. The crash outcomes considered in this thesis consist of the type of crash as well as the injury severity sustained by occupants involved in the crash. An ordered logit model was built to predict the likelihood of severe injuries and a multinomial model was developed to predict the likelihood that a driver will be involved in one of three common crash types: singular, angular, and rearend. In these models, various factors (e.g., weather, driver’s gender, and speeding) have been statistically controlled for, but the main focus was on the interaction of driver’s age and distraction type. The findings of this thesis have implications for policy making and prioritizing capabilities of distraction-related safety systems.

This thesis investigates the associations between crash outcomes, the existence and type of driver distraction as well as driver’s age. The crash outcomes considered in this thesis consist of the type of crash as well as the injury severity sustained by occupants involved in the crash. An ordered logit model was built to predict the likelihood of severe injuries and a multinomial model was developed to predict the likelihood that a driver will be involved in one of three common crash types: singular, angular, and rearend. In these models, various factors (e.g., weather, driver’s gender, and speeding) have been statistically controlled for, but the main focus was on the interaction of driver’s age and distraction type. The findings of this thesis have implications for policy making and prioritizing capabilities of distraction-related safety systems.

The Printing Industry is undergoing a Digital Revolution . The importance of digital printing has been increasing substantially over the last decade. How has this development affected the paper selection of printing firms? Only paper suppliers who successfully anticipate the changing needs of the printing firms will be able to benefit from the industry trend. This paper employs a probability model to analyze a survey data set of 103 digital printing firms in the USA and Canada. The research idea is to link the firm s paper selection with the firm s characteristics in order to gain insights into the printing firm s paper purchase behavior and the overall industry structure. The first part of this work investigates the importance of certain paper aspects, such as price, runnability and print quality. Strikingly, a company s involvement in digital printing, measured by the percent of digital printers of the total number of printers in the firm, is a central determinant of the importance of all paper aspects analyzed. This finding underscores the tremendous importance of the printing firms transition to digital printing for the Paper Industry. Paper runnability is found to become more important the faster the firm grows and can be explained by the fact that more successful firms incur higher opportunity costs from downtime. Another key finding is that the importance of paper price is lower for firms who collaborate with their customer on the paper selection and are able to pass on cost increases in the paper price. The second part involves a more direct assessment of paper selection. Here, the firm s characteristics are utilized to explain the choice of coated versus uncoated paper for the printing job. The analysis shows that firms involved in sophisticated print services, such as Digital Asset Management or Variable Data Printing are more likely to use the high quality coated paper. Further it is found that the usage of coated paper increases with catalog printing whereas it decreases with book and manual printing.

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