The Conservation Security Program was authorized in the 2002 Farm Bill and is hailed by many observers as the first true ?green payments? program for working lands in the United States. Previous analysis and anecdotal evidence for similar conservation programs show that premature termination of...

In organisations decision makers act as information converters, receiving and translating information flows into managerial actions. A system dynamics approach identifies how streams of decisions and resources interact to produce behaviours recognised as problematic for an organisation, for the...

Since the 2001 anthrax attacks, public health officials have become concerned with planning for a potential large scale attack. Researchers have worked to model attack scenarios in order to evaluate various response policies. One response policy that has been proposed is to preemptively...

The productivity of the printing industry in terms of real sales per employee hasbeen growing at an annualized rate of 1.9% for more than a decade. The NationalAssociation for Printing Leadership (NAPL) reports that the industry is lagging, whencompared to the average productivity growth of 4%...

The most productive agricultural regions are in periodic lack of natural rainfall, and its unequal distribution during the vegetation period. During each vegetation period there are 1-5 dry periods, which fact negatively influences the growth and development of crops, and consequently also the...

This document describes the study of a conventional parametric modeling technique to be used for aircraft simulation in support of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) development program for glacial ice research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). A low cost, one-third scale Yak-54 RC...

C2_3

This study attempts to resolve two important issues. First, it investigates the diversification benefit of crude oil for equities. Second, it examines whether or not crude oil derivatives transactions by oil and gas producers can change shareholders' wealth. With these two major goals in mind, I...

This paper shows that the response of agricultural commodity prices in the U.S. related to fluctuations in oil prices in the international market may differ greatly depending on whether the increase is driven by demand or supply shocks in the crude oil market. In the long-run, around 2-7 percent...

Exchange rates have long been thought to have an important impact on the export and importof goods and services, and, thus, exchange rates are expected to influence the price of thoseproducts that are traded. At the same time, energy impacts commodity production in somevery important ways. The...