If You are Offered the Right of First Refusal, Should You Accept? An Investigation of Contract Design

Rights of first refusal are contract clauses intended to provide the holder of a license or lease with some protection when the contract ends. The simplest version gives the right holder the ability to act after potential competitors. However, another common implementation requires the right holder to accept or reject some offers before potential competitors are given the same offer, and, if the right holder rejects the initial offer, allows the right to be exercised affirmatively only if competitors are subsequently offered a better deal (e.g. a lower price). We explore, theoretically and experimentally, the impact this latter form of right of first refusal can have on the outcome of negotiation. Counterintuitively, this “right” of first refusal can be disadvantageous to its holder. This suggests that applied contract design may benefit from the same kind of attention to detail that has begun to be given to practical market design.Economic

A study of the stress wave factor technique for evaluation of composite materials

The acousto-ultrasonic approach for nondestructive evaluation provides a measurement procedure for quantifying the integrated effect of globally distributed damage characteristic of fiber reinforced composite materials. The evaluation procedure provides a stress wave factor that correlates closely with several material performance parameters. The procedure was investigated for a variety of materials including advanced composites, hybrid structure bonds, adhesive bonds, wood products, and wire rope. The research program focused primarily on development of fundamental understanding and applications advancements of acousto-ultrasonics for materials characterization. This involves characterization of materials for which detection, location, and identification of imperfections cannot at present be analyzed satisfactorily with mechanical performance prediction models. In addition to presenting definitive studies on application potentials, the understanding of the acousto-ultrasonic method as applied to advanced composites is reviewed

Accounting for externalities in the measurement of productivity growth: The Malmquist cost productivity measure

This paper starts with the basic premise: that conventional measures of productivity growth-often used as a measure of corporate performance-which ignore external or social output, are biased. We then construct an alternative productivity growth measure using activity analysis which integrates the externality/social output into a generalized productivity measure reflecting social responsibility. This method is very general and could be applied to gauge corporate social responsibility. We provide an application to US agriculture to demonstrate the approach: We show that conventional measures of productivity are biased upward when production of negative externalities (or bad) outputs is increasing. Conversely, this same measure of productivity is biased downward when externalities in production are decreasing. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The role of energy productivity in US agriculture

This paper investigates the role of energy on U.S. agricultural productivity using panel data at the state level for the period 1960–2004.We first provide a historical account of energy use in U.S. agriculture. To do this we rely on the Bennet cost indicator to study how the price and volume components of energy costs have developed over time. We then proceed to analyze the contribution of energy to productivity in U.S. agriculture employing the Bennet–Bowley productivity indicator. An important feature of the Bennet–Bowley indicator is its direct association with the change in (normalized) profits. Thus our study is also able to analyze the link between profitability and productivity. Panel regression estimates indicate that energy prices have a negative effect on profitability in the U.S. agricultural sector. We also find that energy productivity has generally remained below total farm productivity following the 1973–1974 global energy crisis.Keywords: Agricultural productivity, Bennet-Bowley indicator, Energy productivit

Road safety assessments and road safety audits on the existing Abu Dhabi Internal road network

Paper presented at the 31st Annual Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2012 "Getting Southern Africa to Work", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.Road safety auditing is a process to pro-actively review the potential for road safety improvements on any road or transportation project, whether in a design phase or as an existing road facility. The process is based on the critical assessment of the project features as they would be experienced by any road user. ARRB Group Ltd (ARRB, the Australian Road Research Board) in co-operation with Parsons International Ltd (PIL) conducted road safety audits on a selection of the internal road network of the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City, UAE. The project was conducted in 2011 and consisted of various tasks: • Conducting a network level road safety assessment of 2 600 carriageway-km of roads and streets to identify high risk areas; • Conducting road safety audits on a sub-set of roads and streets of about 300 carriageway-km forming part of the high risk areas; • Recommending remedial measures; • Developing program level cost estimates for remedial treatments • Prioritising remedial treatments based on their cost effectiveness The network level road safety assessment had been conducted using the Hawkeye video survey system and the risk levels of different sections of the network determined by utilizing the proprietary NetRisk software. Available crash information was superimposed on maps showing the network risk levels. In this manner a clear impression could be formed of those areas where safety concerns existed, based on the pro-active review of road features in the road safety assessment process in coordination with the reactive process of crash analysis. Road safety audits were then conducted on the areas with the highest risk levels. The audits were undertaken by combining traditional on-site reviews with a comprehensive geo-referenced inventory of road safety problems extracted from the video surveys. A first order estimate of the cost of the works to remedy the safety concerns on the 300 carriageway-km of audited roads and streets indicated a programme value in excess of USD 93,5Million1 (at 2011 prices).This paper was transferred from the original CD ROM created for this conference. The material was published using Adobe Acrobat 10.1.0 Technology. The original CD ROM was produced by Document Transformation Technologies Postal Address: PO Box 560 Irene 0062 South Africa. Tel.: +27 12 667 2074 Fax: +27 12 667 2766 E-mail: nigel@doctech URL: http://www.doctech.co.zadm201

Dual, orthogonal, backlit pinhole radiography in OMEGA experiments

Backlit pinhole radiography used with ungated film as a detector creates x-ray radiographs with increased resolution and contrast. Current hydrodynamics experiments on the OMEGA Laser use a three-dimensional sinusoidal pattern as a seed perturbation for the study of instabilities. The structure of this perturbation makes it highly desirable to obtain two simultaneous orthogonal backlighting views. We accomplished this using two backlit pinholes each mounted 12 mm12mm from the target. The pinholes, of varying size and shape, were centered on 5 mm5mm square foils of 50 μm50μm thick Ta. The backlighting is by KK-alpha emission from a 500 μm500μm square Ti or Sc foil mounted 500 μm500μm from the Ta on a plastic substrate. Four laser beams overfill the metal foil, so that the expanding plastic provides radial tamping of the expanding metal plasma. The resulting x-rays pass through the target onto (ungated) direct exposure film (DEF). Interference between the two views is reduced by using a nose cone in front of the DEF, typically with a 9 mm9mm Ta aperture and with magnets to deflect electrons. Comparison of varying types of pinholes and film exposures will be presented from recent experiments as well as an analysis of the background noise created using this experimental technique.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87894/2/10E327_1.pd

Assessing Short-run and Medium-run Fishing Capacity at the Industry Level and Its Reallocation

Reducing harvesting capacity in fisheries is of international importance. In 1999, member nations of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) agreed to an International Plan of Action to reduce fishing capacity. Two initial concerns were the acceptance of a workable definition of capacity and the development of methods to calculate capacity. FAO subsequently offered several definitions of capacity. A general definition of capacity is the output level over a given time period that a fishing fleet could expect to catch if the variable inputs are utilized under normal operating conditions given resource levels, technology, and other constraints. Concurrently, however, FAO and representatives of the member nations expressed concerns about reducing capacity at the national level (i.e., a reallocation of capital, labor, and other inputs) and with respect to both the short and long-run. In this paper, we present a possible approach for determining capacity at a more aggregate level than the vessel (e.g., fishery or region) with respect to the short and intermediate-run, and the allocation of fixed and variable inputs across different fisheries and regions. We extend one approach to measuring capacity of a firm to the case of an industry. Based on extensions of this specification, existing capacities are no longer fixed, but may be scaled up or down at will subject to a constant returns to scale technology. This allows for exploring plausible medium-term technological configurations at the industry level