Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) will soon start to be introduced into the transportation sector, thereby raising a host of issues related to their use, adoption and effects on the electricity sector. Their introduction has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions from the...

The recent rise in world oil prices, coupled with heightened interest in the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, has led to a sharp increase in domestic biofuels production around the world. Previous authors have devoted considerable attention to the impacts of these policies on a...

Despite the significant rise in obesity in the U.S., economic research on obesity is still in its infancy. This paper employs a microeconomic approach to investigate the effects of price and income changes on weight in an effort to determine how a high-calorie food tax, a low-calorie food...

As a developing nation in the process of undergoing successful and relatively equitable development, Vietnam is recognized as an example of the potential opportunities afforded by a successful trade driven development strategy. Improved understanding of the linkages between trade, growth, and...

Water scarcity is a growing problem world wide. Economists uniformly suggest water pricing to improve water use efficiency; however, governments tend to reject that advice due to political risk, and economic and cultural concerns. This dissertation addresses questions of what policy alternatives...

Economists are challenged to account for the influence of cultural norms and expectations on economic behavior. Recent experimental economic evidence suggests culture significantly affects certain economic behavior. It is not clear, however, how pervasive culture's influence is on multiple...

This dissertation consists of three essays. They examine diverse economic phenomena, but they are bound by a need to treat randomness effectively and practically. Each essay seeks to demonstrate enhanced capacity to effectively and practically treat randomness in specific problems of data...

This study analyzes the relationship between dollar exchange rate and crude oil price. Unlike previous literature which established a bilateral causal relationship between the two prices, this paper proposes that gold price is likely to be a common driver of the two prices and therefore, the...

During recent decades the number of obese adult Americans increased from 15% to 31%. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of food price and income changes on body weight in an effort to determine how a high-calorie food tax, a low-calorie food subsidy, and/or income...

This paper seeks to understand the main sources of uncertainty in assessing the impacts of climate change on agricultural output, international trade, and poverty. We incorporate biophysical uncertainty by sampling from a distribution of productivity shocks reflecting the impacts of climate on...