BACKWARD IMPLICIT CONTRACTS, PRE-COMMITMENT AND MARKET POWER IN THE INTERNATIONAL DURUM WHEAT MARKET

We devise a formal test of market power that is applied to the international durum market. The model captures the asymmetric cost structure brought about the initial payment system of the Canadian Wheat Board. The model generates testable hypotheses about market conduct and optimal strategic positioning.Crop Production/Industries, Industrial Organization,

Relative decompression risks of spacecraft cabin atmospheres

Relative decompression risk studies of spacecraft cabin atmosphere using miniature pig

The effect of television on the leisure time activities of sixth grade children in Medford, Massachusetts.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

How Does Advertising Affect Market Performance? The Case of Generic Advertising

The effect of advertising on market performance has been a long-standing debate. Advertising that increases the dispersion of consumers’ valuations for advertised goods raises the market power of firms, while advertising that decreases the dispersion of consumers’ valuations leads to narrower price-cost margins and superior performance in markets for advertised goods. Numerous challenges confound the empirical identification of advertising effects on market performance. This paper proposes a simple method that relies on the revealed preferences of firms participating in generic advertising programs. Generic advertising programs provide a unique window through which to observe advertising effects on market performance, because changes in the dispersion of consumers’ valuations systematically redistributes rents among firms according to observable characteristics on producer size. We examine producer attitudes towards generic advertising in the “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” campaign of the U.S. Beef Checkoff program and find the likelihood a producer favors an expansion of the advertising program increases in operating scale. This finding is consistent with advertising effects that have led to a decrease in the dispersion of consumers’ valuations for beef products and a commensurate increase in market performance.Advertising, Oligopoly, Marketing, L1, M37,

The risk of cancer in primary care patients with hypercalcaemia: a cohort study using electronic records.

PublishedJournal ArticleBACKGROUND: The risk of cancer with hypercalcaemia in primary care is unknown. METHODS: This was a cohort study using calcium results in patients aged ⩾40 years in a primary care electronic data set. Diagnoses of cancer in the following year were identified. RESULTS: Participants (54 267) had calcium results: 1674 (3%) were ⩾2.6 mmol l(-1). Hypercalcaemia was strongly associated with cancer, especially in males: OR 2.92, 95% CI 2.17-3.93, P=<0.001; positive predictive value (PPV) 11.5%; females: OR 1.86, 95% CI 1.39-2.50, P<0.001: PPV 4.1%. CONCLUSIONS: Hypercalcaemia is strongly associated with cancer in primary care, with men at most risk, despite hypercalcaemia being more common in women

Relative Decompression Risks of Spacecraft Cabin Atmospheres - Comparision of Gases Using Miniature Pigs Final Report

Using miniature pigs for analysis of altitude decompression sickness and relative decompression hazards of various cabin atmospheres of inert gase

Geology of Northeastern Victoria Land, Antarctica

The northeastern corner of Victoria Land-an area of 50,000 square kilometers east of the Rennick Glacier and north of the Newnes Ice Shelf-was studied geologically during a helicopter-supported reconnaissance in 1964,extending and refining previous work by New Zealand geologists. The oldest rocks of the region are the plutonic rocks of the Freyberg Mountains and other ranges in the southwest part of the region. These schists, gneisses, migmatites, and granitic rocks are presumed to be correlative with the late Precambrian and early Paleozoic terrane of the Transantarctic Mountains. Lying east of these plutonic rocks are low-grade metamorphosed clastic sedimentary rocks presumed to be of middle Paleozoic age; the steep contact with the plutonic rocks appears to be a sheared unconformity. The basal (?) formation, polymict conglomerate and black slate, forms a northwest-trending outcrop belt 10km wide of steeply dipping rocks. Further northeast and presumably next higher stratigraphically is quartzite and quartz conglomerate, forming an outcrop belt 8-15km wide. The remaining metasedimentary rocks belong to the Robertson Bay Formation of metasiltstone and metagraywacke, tightly folded about northwest-trending axes and forming an outcrop belt 150km wide, from the Millen Range to Robertson Bay. Numerous stocks and small batholiths of hornblende-biotite granodiorite intrude and bake the Robertson Bay Formation. The continental Beacon Sandstone, intruded by thick dikes and sills of Jurassic (?) diabase, overlies the older rocks of the southwestern part of the region, and has been brocken by normal faults and folded gently. The Beacon is in turn overlain by plateau basalts. Late Cenozoic basalt-trachyte volcanism along the Ross Sea coast has formed large, north-trending Adare, Hallett, and Daniell Peninsulas and similar Coulman Island. Each of these masses consists largely of volcanic rocks extruded beneath ice sheets at least as thick as 1500m; the continental ice cap was much more extensive at times past than it is now. The volcanic rocks are chaotic palagonite breccias, flow breccias, pillow lavas, and complexes intrusive into them. Subaerial calderas, flows, and cones formed along the crestal rift zones. The pre-Tertiary rocks are upraised along faults at the edge of the Ross Sea. Peaks reaching altitudes of 4000m near the coast attest to the magnitude of late Cenozoic uplift

Clinical implications of increased testing in primary care

This is the final version. Available from BMJ Publishing Group via the DOI in this recor

Search for L5 Earth Trojans with DECam

Most of the major planets in the Solar system support populations of co-orbiting bodies, known as Trojans, at their L4 and L5 Lagrange points. In contrast, Earth has only one known co-orbiting companion. This paper presents the results from a search for Earth Trojans (ETs) using the DECam instrument on the Blanco Telescope at CTIO. This search found no additional Trojans in spite of greater coverage compared to previous surveys of the L5 point. Therefore, the main result of this work is to place the most stringent constraints to date on the population of ETs. These constraints depend on assumptions regarding the underlying population properties, especially the slope of the magnitude distribution (which in turn depends on the size and albedo distributions of the objects). For standard assumptions, we calculate upper limits to a 90 per cent confidence limit on the L5 population of N_(ET) < 1 for magnitude H < 15.5, N_(ET) = 60–85 for H < 19.7, and N_(ET) = 97 for H = 20.4. This latter magnitude limit corresponds to Trojans ∼300 m in size for albedo 0.15. At H = 19.7, these upper limits are consistent with previous L4 ET constraints and significantly improve L5 constraints