THE IMPACT OF LABELS AND BRAND NAMES ON CONSUMER CHOICE AT THE RETAIL MARKET

Consumer/Household Economics,

Three Essays on the Impacts of Air Pollution and Environmental Policy

This dissertation analyzes the effects of United States environmental policy - specifically that which regards air pollution - on health, labor market, and environmental outcomes. The first chapter examines the potential long-term effects of childhood exposure to atmospheric lead. The outcome of interest is crime, and the policy analyzed is the leaded gasoline phaseout. The second chapter seeks to investigate the effects of environmental regulation on labor markets. Nonattainment status designation creates variation in regulatory levels across counties based on a county’s air quality for a given pollutant, in this case ozone. The third chapter provides analysis of the design ramifications of the Acid Rain Program’s tradable permit market for sulfur dioxide established by Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The study examines how the two-phase approach as well as the initial permit allocation rule affected emissions. These studies all show evidence of the wide range of effects environmental policy can have

Power and empowerment in writing center conferences

This study explores power and empowerment in writing center peer conferences. Arguing against the notion of “hierarchical” and “collaborative” conference categories, it suggests that because both participants enact power in conference interaction, conferencing power dynamics exist on a continuum. Issues of ownership are also placed on a continuum (and associated with enactments of power); this study argues against idealized notions of tutees “owning” their texts and conferencing goals. It distinguishes between empowerment in a practical sense (associated with improving writing skills) and in a political sense (associated with increasing critical awareness). The research involved ethnographic methods: it followed two peer tutors through a 3-credit hour, semester-long preparation course and through their first year working as writing tutors; also, 48 conferences involving the two tutors were audio-recorded. Additional methods involved discourse analysis of 8 complete conference transcripts, as well as analysis of several audio tapes and partial transcripts. The two tutors were involved extensively in data analysis; the study emphasizes their involvement, their perceptions of power and empowerment, and their influence on data analysis and coding procedures. Political empowerment was rare in the conferences examined; however, practical empowerment was encouraged within a range of conferencing dynamics. Empowerment, however, could also be hindered within a range of dynamics: more hierarchical exchanges sometimes gave tutees little opportunity to practice concepts or demonstrate learning, while more collaborative exchanges sometimes seemed confusing and frustrating to the tutee. Thus, the study suggested the importance of tutor flexibility in employing and adjusting conferencing approaches. It also suggested that tutors are empowered by conferencing; both tutors planned to become teachers and felt their tutoring experiences would strongly affect their teaching. The writing center’s ability to empower students may lie especially in its ability to expose potential teachers to political issues associated with teaching, writing, and language

Enumeration by kernel positions for strongly Bernoulli type truncation games on words

We find the winning strategy for a class of truncation games played on words. As a consequence of the present author's recent results on some of these games we obtain new formulas for Bernoulli numbers and polynomials of the second kind and a new combinatorial model for the number of connected permutations of given rank. For connected permutations, the decomposition used to find the winning strategy is shown to be bijectively equivalent to King's decomposition, used to recursively generate a transposition Gray code of the connected permutations

Symmetric chain decomposition for cyclic quotients of Boolean algebras and relation to cyclic crystals

The quotient of a Boolean algebra by a cyclic group is proven to have a symmetric chain decomposition. This generalizes earlier work of Griggs, Killian and Savage on the case of prime order, giving an explicit construction for any order, prime or composite. The combinatorial map specifying how to proceed downward in a symmetric chain is shown to be a natural cyclic analogue of the $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ lowering operator in the theory of crystal bases.Comment: minor revisions; to appear in IMR

ESTIMATING IMPLICIT MARGINAL PRICES OF QUALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF TOMATOES

A hedonic price function is developed for estimating the implicit prices for selected quality characteristics of fresh tomatoes at three points in the marketing season. The estimation of this function, proposed as a method of evaluating change in the post-harvest system, is accomplished using a flexible functional form. Those quality characteristics that most affect the price of tomatoes can help determine the economic feasibility of alternative handling techniques or new technologies.Demand and Price Analysis,

PRICING QUALITY ATTRIBUTES AT THE WHOLESALE LEVEL

Demand and Price Analysis,

Comprehensive Income: How Is It Being Reported And What Are Its Effects?

SFAS No. 130 allows three format choices for reporting comprehensive income (CI); two involve reporting CI in a performance-based financial statement, while the third option incorporates it into a statement of changes in stockholders' equity (SCSE).  Prior research suggests that reporting CI in the latter option results in less useful information for investors.  This study examines CI reporting for a sample of financial service firms and demonstrates that a majority (63%) of them chose a SCSE format.  In addition, a significant association existed between both the direction and size of the components of other comprehensive income and the format chosen.&nbsp

Big Bath Earnings Management: The Case Of Goodwill Impairment Under SFAS No. 142

The big bath theory of earnings management suggests that firms experiencing low earnings in a given year may take discretionary write downs to reduce even further the current period’s earnings.  The notion is that the company and its management will not be punished proportionately more for the big hit it takes to its already depressed earnings.  This “clearing of the decks” makes it easier to generate higher profits in later years.  SFAS No. 142, with its new requirement to test goodwill annually for impairment, provided a unique opportunity to test this big bath theory.  Examining Fortune 100 companies, this study presents compelling evidence that the big bath theory is more than just a theory but is instead a practiced method of managing earnings