This paper advances the literature on education demand in developing countries by studying a policy of nationwide school fee eliminations in South Africa. I use a regression discontinuity design that compares schools just above a threshold poverty level, most of which eliminate fees, to schools just below the threshold, most of which continue to charge fees. I show that fee elimination has a re...

This paper estimates a dynamic model of the world markets for five nonrenewable resources over the period 1970-2004 and tests for market power in each of these markets. In particular, for each nonrenewable resource, we test whether the countries supplying the nonrenewable resource behaved as price-takers or oligopolists. The results show that during the study period the world markets for copper...

The third Marshall-Hicks-Allen rule of elasticity of derived demand purports to show that labor demand is less elastic when labor is a smaller share of total costs. As Hicks, Allen, and then Bronfenbrenner showed, this rule is not quite correct, and actually is complicated by an unexpected negative relationship involving labor’s share of total costs and the elasticity of substitution. The stand...

This paper studies optimal taxation in a Dixit–Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition. In this setting, taxes may be used as an instrument to o¤set distortions caused by producer markups. Since markups tend to be higher in industries where …rms face less elastic demand, tax rates will be pushed lower in these industries. This tends to work against the familiar inverse elasticities intuition...

This paper extends the theory of real options, which mainly considers the problem of timing of investment, by letting the firm choose also the quantity produced after the time of investment. Under the conditions of irreversible investment and uncertainty in future demand, the firm can adjust its output quantity at each point in time in the future. Our paper shows that changing the structure of ...

Seismic design procedures in current building provisions are based on linear and nonlinear static approaches that use capacity-demand index relationships such as the relationship between the lateral strength and the maximum lateral displacement. Previous research on the development of these relationships is based on linear-elastic ground motion acceleration response spectra, whereas the current...

the aim of this study was to represent effective componentsin demand chain which help organizations attain high performance levelsthrough identification of these components and determining theirdegree of importance. the following questions were major ideas of thisstudy: what are the most effective components in demand chain? andhow are they effective on organizational performance? to this end,m...

Sanitation improvement is crucial in saving lives that are lost due to water contamination. Progress towards achieving full sanitation coverage is still slow in low-income informal settlements in most developing countries. Furthermore, resources are being wasted on installing facilities that are later misused or never used because they do not meet the local demand. Understanding demand for impr...

in the current paper, finite element method is employed for numerical simulations and the study of influential parameters on elastic modulus of polymer-matrix nano-composites. effects of different key parameters including particle elastic modulus, interphase elastic modulus, matrix elastic modulus, interphase thickness and particle volume fraction on total elastic modulus of nano-composite mate...

The present paper analyzes optimal bidding in discriminatory and competitive multi{unit auctions when bidders have price elastic demand functions. Distinctions are drawn between bidders who are either rms or consumers, and bidders who are either risk neutral or risk averse. Assuming price{ taking bidders who face a given probability distribution of the stop{out price, closed{form solutions of o...