This paper develops a dynamicmodel in a one-supplier-one-retailer fresh agricultural product supply chain that experiences supply disruptions during the planning horizon.The optimal solutions in the centralized and decentralized supply chains are studied. It is found that the retailer’s optimal order quantity and the maximum total supply chain profit in the decentralized supply chain with whole...

Media attention on retirement security generally focuses on the need to save enough to enjoy a comfortable retirement. However, accumulating a nest egg is no longer the only significant challenge – the other is managing one’s nest egg in retirement. In contrast to previous birth cohorts who often received a lifetime income from a defined benefit pension plan, in today’s 401(k) world retirees mu...

This paper analyses the choice between a customs union (CU) and a free trade agreement (FTA) based on the dynamics of political influence induced by the two agreements. An FTA preserves the maximum future discretion a government might have over its trade policy in a trade agreement, but a CU commits the government to a particular external trade policy. For this reason, if government receives an...

The use of charcoal as a soil amendment and for CO2 sequestration raises many questions about the characteristics of those “biochars” and their impacts on soils and organisms. This paper reviews and revises the analyses of the principal characteristics used to distinguish biochars, and presents a small survey of measured properties. Explicit terminology is proposed about “resident and mobile ca...

The use of lump sum bonuses as a variable pay system is increasingly popular with businesses. Used as a means to reward strong individual performances of employees, lump sum bonuses are granted according to the manager’s appraisal of the employee’s performance. The aim of this research is to ascertain whether there are factors other than individual performance that exert an influence on the gra...

We construct an optimal execution strategy for the purchase of a large number of shares of a financial asset over a fixed interval of time. Purchases of the asset have a nonlinear impact on price, and this is moderated over time by resilience in the limit-order book that determines the price. The limit-order book is permitted to have arbitrary shape. The form of the optimal execution strategy i...

In this paper we derive conditions under which optimal tax rates for addictive goods exceed tax rates for non-addictive consumption goods within a rational addiction framework where exogenous government spending cannot be financed with lump sum taxes. We reexamine classic results on optimal commodity taxation and find a rich set of new findings. Two dynamic effects exist. First, households anti...

In this paper, I present an Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. The problem of material constitution arises whenever it appears that an object a and an object b share all of the same parts and yet are essentially related to their parts in different ways. (A familiar example: A lump of bronze constitutes a statue of Athena. The lump and the statue share all of the same...

Because life annuities can increase the level and decrease the volatility of lifetime consumption, economists have long been puzzled by the low demand for life annuities. One potential rational explanation is that adverse selection drives up life annuity prices, which drives down demand. We study the choice between life annuities and lump sums made by 32,000 retiring public employees. These uni...

A frequency tunable planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) is presented for use in the following bands: DCS, PCS, and UMTS. Initially, the tuning was achieved by placing a lumped capacitor, with values in the range of 1.5 to 4 pF, along the slot of the radiator. The final tuning circuit uses a varactor diode, and discrete lumped elements are fully integrated with the antenna. The antenna prototype is...