Pork production has been evolving from relatively small, family-run operations toward large-scale operations with several employees. This study uses a national survey of pork producers and their employees to answer several questions about the structure of wages and benefits in this rapidly...

A long-standing puzzle in labor economics has been the positive relationship between wages and firm size. Even after controlling for worker's observed characteristics such as education, work experience, gender, and geographic location, a significant firm size wage effect averaging 15 percent...

The EPA has imposed mandatory refuge requirements for Bt crops to prolong the efficacy of Bt. Growers have no economic incentive to plant the required refuge because refuge crops are on average less productive and more risky. This paper evaluates refuge insurance—insurance thatpays indemnities...

The EPA has imposed mandatory refuge requirements for Bt crops to prolong the efficacy of Bt. Growers have no economic incentive to plant the required refuge because refuge crops are on average less productive and more risky. This paper evaluates refuge insurance--insurance that pays indemnities...

This dissertation addresses three important business and policy related issues regarding financial theories and their application in different markets. Chapter one extends option-pricing theory to value alternative asset-securitization structures. By decomposing each structure into fixed income...

The 1998 failure of Long-Term Capital Management (‘LTCM’), a very large and prominent Greenwich, Connecticut based hedge fund, is said to have nearly brought down the world financial system. Over the years, few financial debacles such as LTCM, have been so often written about or discussed...

I design an input-output model to investigate the energy supply chain of coal-coke-steel in China. To study the demand, supply, and energy-intensity issues for coal and coke from a macroeconomic perspective, I apply the model to test two hypotheses: (1) coal and coke intensities in individual...

The debate on the impact of modern logistics on industrial location choice and property markets focuses on (1) whether modern inventory control and supply- chain configuration consolidate manufacturing and distribution locations and (2) whether modern logistics have reduced the demand for...

Past empirical literature provides strong evidence that competitionincreases when new firms enter a market. However, rarely have economistsbeen able to examine how competition changes with the threat of entry.This paper uses the evolution of the zip code level market structure offacilities-based...

The Slovenian transition represents a slow but steady liberalization of constraints on competition. Using a unique longitudinal data set on all manufacturing firms in Slovenia over the period 1994-2001, this study analyzes how firm efficiency changed in response to changing competitive...