The Commission on Graduate Education in Economics had raised several concerns regarding the role of mathematics in graduate training in economics (Krueger, 1991; Colander, 1998, 2005). This paper undertakes a detailed scrutiny of the notion of a utility function to motivate and describe the common...

The paper deals with two specific types of utility functions displaying decision maker's risk aversion at expressing the utility of monetary values. These functions are following: w(c) = 1 – e-x/R, u(x) = ln(x + R), where x is a monetary value and R is a constant expressing the degree of risk...

Given that information technology (IT) security has emerged as animportant issue in the last few years, the subject of securityinformation sharing among firms, as a tool to minimize securitybreaches, has gained the interest of practitioners and academics. Topromote the disclosure and sharing of...

A plethora of literature exists on irrigation development. However, only a few studies analyse the distributional issues associated with irrigation induced technological changes (IITC) in the context of commodity markets. Furthermore, these studies deal with only the theoretical arguments and to...

Trust is particularly important in online markets to facilitate the transfer of sensitive consumer information to online retailers. In electronic markets, various proposals have been made to facilitate these information transfers. We develop analytic models of hidden information to analyze the...

Large estimates of the benefits of microeconomic reform have been put forward in official studies. By contrast, Quiggin (1997) concludes that benefits of microeconomic reforms have been modest. A key area of disagreement relates to the claim that increased competition leads to increases in...

This article presents two new methodologies for the optimal placement of distributed generation (DG) in an optimal power flow (OPF) based wholesale electricity market. DG is assumed to participate in the real time wholesale electricity market. The problem of optimal placement, including size, is...

This thesis identifies the conditions under which and quantifies how much society gains from integrating demand response directly into wholesale electricity markets and the level of participation that will bring about these improvements. Furthermore, it identifies the conditions under which the...

This study investigates the rationale behind the 2007 removal of the fodder subsidy in Jordan and the effects this had on livestock owners in the Northern Badia. Furthermore, it examines possible solutions for improving the efficiency of the sector as well as its sustainability. The...

This dissertation involves two set of papers. The first chapter contains a brief introduction of the issues covered in this thesis. In the first set of papers (chapters 2 and 3) I investigate the use of product standards in international trade. Product standards relate to restrictions on the...