Treatise (D.M.A.) Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Pamela Ryan, Florida State University, College of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 5-26-2004). Document formatted into pages; contains 161 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographical references.

"In the process of book selection, literary award winners are given careful scrutiny, but a work should not be automatically selected simply because it has won an award. The librarian should familiarize himself with the background of the award-making bodies and should find out as much as possible about the quality and desirability of their selections. Careful attention should be given to the critics and other literary authorities in order to insure the most worthwhile and suitable additions to the collection. Such an endeavor is the purpose of this paper, which specifically is a consideration of the Pulitzer Prize novels covering the period from 1944 through 1959. The scope of the appraisal was limited to this period because there is a previous work, a master's thesis by Charlotte Georgi of the University of North Carolina, which treated the field of fiction from the first award through 1943. Thirteen prize-winners have been chosen during this period, there having been three years in which no award was given. Since fiction is in great demand, in many libraries, it was decided that a study of the most prestigious award given for fiction in this country would be both interesting and valuable to the writer and that it would be somewhat of an aid to public librarians in their selections for this area of the collection. That is, it is hoped that the appraisal of these novels will furnish standards for selecting fiction"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "June, 1960." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Agnes Gregory, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-67).

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

"Realizing the importance of the subject of literary awards, the interest in short stories, and the value of good anthologies to the small library the writer chose for her study a short story award--The O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories. The first twenty-five years of that anthology paralleled an era in which she was interested. The study has been confined to the first, second and special prize-winning stories of those years (1919-1943). The study has followed these divisions: a history of the award and its purpose; an analysis of the stories as to types; a recording of the inclusion of these stories in lists of stories of note; a noting of their selection for publication in other anthologies; a tabulation of the types of magazine in which the stories first appeared; a consideration of the authors of the stories. The results of the study have been given, wherever possible, in tabular form with a summary for each table"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "January, 1955." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Agnes Gregory, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-91).

"This study, conducted in nine languages, sought to examine the library use and reading habits of eminent individuals. All living Nobel Laureates were identified and asked to provide information about their childhood interests and habits and also those which characterize their adult careers. The respondents indicated that they enjoyed reading as children, and many relied on library services to provide them with most of the materials they read. The Laureates who grew up in the United States had more access to library services, made more use of libraries as children, and felt competent to use libraries at earlier ages than did many of their counterparts growing up outside this country. The reading habits of their childhood seem to persist into adulthood more predictably than their library use patterns, or for that matter their involvement in other leisure activities"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "1996." / "Submitted to the School of Library and Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." / Advisor: F. William Summers, Major Professor. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 1996. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-270).

Thesis (Doctorat)--Université de Rennes, 1910. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-260).

The increase in the number of literary awards has created a selection problem for the librarian in that she is not always able to accept automatically a work solely on the basis of its recognition as a prize winner. It has become necessary that the librarian familiarize herself with the background and program of the body making the award, the works per se and subsequent criticism in order to judge their worth for the library collection. The writer of this paper, recognizing this problem, was prompted to investigate the worth of literary awards. A preliminary survey of the awards and critics' reaction to them indicated a more detailed study would be justified. A thorough investigation of all the literary awards would be impossible, but a study restricted to one seemed worthwhile as well as practical. This, in turn, would form a basis for the evaluation of comparable awards, for techniques employed here, in all probability, could be used in a study of other recognized literary works. This paper, therefore, encompasses Pulitzer Prize dramas for 1918 to 1950 and evaluates these dramas, in terms of popular and literary merit. / "August, 1953." / At head of title: Florida State University. / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Mary Edna Anders, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-66).

Inducement prize contests, where a monetary prize is offered for a specified technological achievement, are increasingly popular means of incentivising research and innovation. Such prizes are often modelled by the rent-seeking Tullock contest, or an all-pay auction. However, the direct application of such models can overlook some particular features of technological competition. This thesis addresses three such features. The first model notes that preliminary prizes are often part of contest designs. A two-round Tullock model is used to investigate a potential motivation for offering such prizes when contestants have different productivities. A designer can identify and purchase the rights to the more productive technology where the award of the preliminary prize is conditional on the winner licensing his technology to other contestants. In this way, endowing a preliminary round results in the potential for increased second round productivity, but at the cost of a reduced second round prize. Such a structure is optimal when the productivities are sufficiently different. In the second model, it is noted that expenditures in inducement prize contests are often too large to be explained by the cash prize alone. There usually exists a final consumer application of the research. This chapter examines how different types of prizes arise by considering the informational content of winning and the effect this has on quality differentiation in when there is an established quality leader. A purely informational 2 prize influences investment decisions and also the qualities offered in the market. The main result is that some prizes may aim to select the highest quality firm as often as possible, whereas other prizes may aim to reward the entrant only if a significant improvement in quality is made. In the third model, prizes are not the only instruments available to contest designers. In particular, subsidy of spending may be possible. This chapter uses an intuitive interpretation of the Tullock contest to offer a matching-funds instrument to a budget constrained principal. It is shown that symmetric prize/subsidy contest designs may be optimal even in the context of contestant asymmetry, in contrast to most existing contest design models. It is also shown that if only one subsidy is offered, it is always to the weaker contestant. The role of contest accuracy in these findings is also considered.

This dissertation consists of three essays in applied microeconomics. The first chapter offers an overview of the work, highlighting the main contributions, methodology and results.The second chapter extensively discusses how one could and should take into account two different but inter-related impacts that tournament prizes have on outcome: the sorting and the incentive effects. The sorting effect refers to the fact that if higher prizes are offered in a tournament, more able participants will join. The incentive effect of prizes relates to an increase in effort corresponding to an increase in prizes, from participants that already decided to join a competition. Previous theoretical and empirical literature focused mainly on the second effect as if relevantly economic tournaments are close in nature. Also, previous empirical studies missed an important channel through which prizes affect outcome and likely estimated biased coefficients for the incentive effect.The third chapter analyzes the impact of the first old-age relief program on the health of the elderly in the United States in the 1930s. The study attempts to provide a picture of how the elderly would fare in an economy where the Social Security system of today does not exist but instead a less birocratic and costly system is in place. The 1930s offers an economist interested in such a counterfactual analysis a unique opportunity since this is precisely the time when Social Security had not started to make payments yet but the states and the federal government became involved in financially supporting the needy elderly.The fourth chapter examines whether public messages can break bubbles in experimental asset markets. This study has policy relevancy in terms of the role a central bank might have in targeting not only inflation as currently defined but asset prices as well. Whereas this role is controversial and remains to be determined, theoretical models advanced the idea of public messages as potential coordination devices among traders in an environment that experiences a bubble. Chapter 4 details the design and results of an experiment that tests this coordination role of a public message.The final chapter summarizes the findings.