A real pendulum with friction will oscillate for a while after a short push, but will eventually come to rest close to a location where is potential energy has a minimum. If the system is closed, i.e. without a source of energy, it will eventually stop moving at a location near a minimum of the potential, no matter what type of friction force acts on the pendulum. This ‘variation principle’ is ...

Intensively feeding animals can be a costly exercise, and as a result many producers are exploring innovative ways to reduce their input costs. Commercial by-products from the human food industry (eg brewers grain, citrus pulp and apple pulp) have recently become popular in animal production. Bakery waste displays favourable characteristics for animal production, however, limited information is...

Lignocellulosic biomass such as agricultural and forestry residues and dedicated crops provides a low-cost and uniquely sustainable resource for production of many organic fuels and chemicals that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance energy security, improve the economy, dispose of problematic solid wastes, and improve air quality. A technoeconomic analysis of biologically processing li...

Pricing in online markets has been of much interest to academics and practitioners, particularly for unique IT services. In this paper, we theorize and empirically examine three primary factors that affect provider pricing of outsourced IT services: production cost, competitive dynamics (accounting for competitors’ attributes) and frictional cost (accounting for buyers’ information). We test th...

This paper explores the relationship between the intensity of competition in product markets and firms’ incentives to lower their production costs by illegal means. Our framework combines a Salop circle with a crime model à la Becker, allowing us to differentiate between several measures for the intensity of competition. We establish that more firms in the industry (i.e., lower entry costs) red...

The Internet and the emerging global infostructure pose new opportunities and threats to businesses. This paper looks at the implications of these emerging low cost communications infrastructures on business practice and strategy. I examine how firms are using the Internet to improve innovation, production, sales, and service processes and I consider the effects of lower communications and coor...

We study the use of fines and inspections to control production activities that create external damages. The model contains a continuum of firms, differing in their compliance costs, so that only high-cost firms evade the regulations. If fines are low, then Pigouvian rules for taxing externalities apply, modified to account for costly inspections. According to Becker’s classic work on crime and...

Feed costs are the major cost of live turkey production. With recent use of grain and oilseeds for bio-energy production and increased need for feed worldwide, we have seen significant cost increases for feed ingredients and thus to the overall cost of turkey feed. While initially this was thought to be a market swing, it now appears that higher input costs are the norm and thus efforts to redu...