This dissertation examines three labor market issues regarding public schooladministrators in Texas using personnel records from the 1994-95 school year untilthe 2003-04 school year. The first essay explores promotion rates of men and womento school principal, a position that requires...

Offshore outsourcing continues to gain prominence as the printing industrystrides into the future. With different segments of the industry looking at reducingcosts and, in exchange providing value-added services, more companies turntowards outsourcing services offshore as a solution. Although it...

Well-defined interfaces and standardization allow for the composition of single Web services into value-added complex services. Such complex Web Services are increasingly traded via agile marketplaces, facilitating flexible recombination of service modules to meet heterogeneous customer demands....

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks (SVN) implies new economic and organizational challenges. This work provides an auction-based coordination mechanism that enables the allocation and pricing of service compositions in SVNs. The mechanism...

Game theoretic modeling involves making assumptions on agents' infinite hierarchies of beliefs. These assumptions are understood to be only approximately satisfied in the actual situation. Thus, the significance of game theoretic predictions depend on robustness properties of the solution...

This article deals with the optimal differentiation of agri-environmental contracts based on a self-selection mechanism. The paper demonstrates that both economic efficiency and effectiveness of public expenditures can be increased, if a menu of combinations of farming practices and payments are...

Paper removed by author 02/04/09.

Many conservation programs offer financialcompensation to farmers in exchange for socially desiredservices, such as soil conservation or biodiversity protection.Realization of the conservation objective at minimum costrequires payments to just cover the extra costs incurred byeach individual...