COOPERATIVE VERSUS INDIVIDUAL APPROACHES TO TREATMENT OF CONTAMINATED GROUNDWATER BY RURAL RESIDENTS IN THE NORTHEAST

Point-of-use/point-of-entry treatment can provide an affordable means for rural residents on private wells to remedy groundwater contamination. Cooperation among homeowners was hypothesized to be a means of further reducing treatment costs due to quantity discounts and avoidance of dealer mark-ups. Data obtained through a mail survey of water treatment firms was used to test this hypothesis. Individual and group purchase, installation and maintenance costs and manufacturer and dealer costs were compared using analysis of variance. Results indicate a cooperative treatment approach may provide benefits due to quantity discounts but little potential exists for savings via direct manufacturer purchase.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Analysis of U.S. Labor Market Matching Efficiencies and New Hires Rates by Gender and State

The first section of this thesis investigates the primary dynamics and trends of the labor market matching efficiency over time. Instead of utilizing the aggregate U.S. matching efficiency in our analysis, we instead use state-level data to create a measure of matching efficiency for each U.S. state in our panel dataset. We also utilize two empirical models: a “base” model, which covers the entire time period of analysis from 2001 to 2021, and a “pandemic” model, which focuses specifically on the time period the COVID-19 pandemic was present in the U.S. The base model attempts to control for supply-side childcare constraints by including a variable that reflects the level of employment in the NAICS Child Care Services industry, but this variable was found to be statistically insignificant. In the pandemic model, the childcare issues variable was created to control for demand-side childcare constraints as it represents the proportion of U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey respondents who reported themselves as unable to work due to caring for children at home. This novel metric of childcare issues was found to have a strong negative and statistically significant effect on the matching efficiency during the pandemic time period. The second section of this thesis aims to investigate the role of gender in differences in the new hires rate. The variables included in our analysis are inspired by the findings in the first section of this thesis, which indicate childcare issues have a strong negative impact on the matching efficiency. Since the matching efficiency captures how well the unemployed match to vacant jobs as a new hire, this is a natural extension of this research. We utilize sector-level new hires rates and gender compositions to create a proportion of male-to-female new hires rates. We include several variables to reflect labor market and macroeconomic conditions including a gendered ratio of childcare constraints. This childcare issues ratio was created using response data from the U.S. Census Bureau CPS Basic Monthly survey which asks people to report the main reason they were unable to look for work in the past month. We collected all responses indicating issues with family responsibilities and obtaining a form of childcare and found that as the ratio of male to female childcare issues increases, the gap between male and female new hires rates also increases

Mean Field Theory of Spherical Gravitating Systems

Important gaps remain in our understanding of the thermodynamics and statistical physics of self-gravitating systems. Using mean field theory, here we investigate the equilibrium properties of several spherically symmetric model systems confined in a finite domain consisting of either point masses, or rotating mass shells of different dimension. We establish a direct connection between the spherically symmetric equilibrium states of a self-gravitating point mass system and a shell model of dimension 3. We construct the equilibrium density functions by maximizing the entropy subject to the usual constraints of normalization and energy, but we also take into account the constraint on the sum of the squares of the individual angular momenta, which is also an integral of motion for these symmetric systems. Two new statistical ensembles are introduced which incorporate the additional constraint. They are used to investigate the possible occurrence of a phase transition as the defining parameters for each ensemble are altered

Effect of angular momentum on equilibrium properties of a self-gravitating system

The microcanonical properties of a two dimensional system of N classical particles interacting via a smoothed Newtonian potential as a function of the total energy E and the total angular momentum L are discussed. In order to estimate suitable observables a numerical method based on an importance sampling algorithm is presented. The entropy surface shows a negative specific heat region at fixed L for all L. Observables probing the average mass distribution are used to understand the link between thermostatistical properties and the spatial distribution of particles. In order to define a phase in non-extensive system we introduce a more general observable than the one proposed by Gross and Votyakov [Eur. Phys. J. B:15, 115 (2000)]: the sign of the largest eigenvalue of the entropy surface curvature. At large E the gravitational system is in a homogeneous gas phase. At low E there are several collapse phases; at L=0 there is a single cluster phase and for L>0 there are several phases with 2 clusters. All these pure phases are separated by first order phase transition regions. The signal of critical behaviour emerges at different points of the parameter space (E,L). We also discuss the ensemble introduced in a recent pre-print by Klinko & Miller; this ensemble is the canonical analogue of the one at constant energy and constant angular momentum. We show that a huge loss of informations appears if we treat the system as a function of intensive parameters: besides the known non-equivalence at first order phase transitions, there exit in the microcanonical ensemble some values of the temperature and the angular velocity for which the corresponding canonical ensemble does not exist, i.e. the partition sum diverges.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

COOPERATIVE VERSUS INDIVIDUAL APPROACHES TO TREATMENT OF CONTAMINATED GROUNDWATER BY RURAL RESIDENTS IN THE NORTHEAST

Point-of-use/point-of-entry treatment can provide an affordable means for rural residents on private wells to remedy groundwater contamination. Cooperation among homeowners was hypothesized to be a means of further reducing treatment costs due to quantity discounts and avoidance of dealer mark-ups. Data obtained through a mail survey of water treatment firms was used to test this hypothesis. Individual and group purchase, installation and maintenance costs and manufacturer and dealer costs were compared using analysis of variance. Results indicate a cooperative treatment approach may provide benefits due to quantity discounts but little potential exists for savings via direct manufacturer purchase

Forward and Backward Linkages: Implications for Ag-Related Employment

Forward and backward linkages in the U.S. food production and distribution system in 1972 and 1977 are measured utilizing a technique that sequentially assesses forward linkages without double-counting of backward linkages. The employment implications of changing export and domestic consumption final demand on forward and backward linkages are examined