This dissertation consists of six self-contained chapters that are related to the behavior of firms and politicians in a broader sense. After an introduction to the topic, the first part of the dissertation elaborates on how institutional and political framework conditions influence the behavior...

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%...

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...