Ghrelin is a gut peptide that stimulates food intake and increases body fat mass when administered centrally or peripherally. In this study, ghrelin was overexpressed in neurons using the neuron-specific enolase (NSE) promoter sequences and mouse ghrelin cDNA (NSE-Ghr). Ghrelin expression in NSE-Ghr brain tissues was increased compared with wild-type mice. Ghrelin expression was also increased ...

When bidders anticipate an opportunity for resale trade, tlze value of winning an auction is determined in part by the option values of buying and selling in tlze secondary market. One iinplication is that a bidder's willingness to pa)) at an auction increases with the expected level of competition between resale buyers. Empirical evidence from auctions of timber contracts supports this predict...

This paper examines the effect of government intervention via taxation on domestic welfare. A case-study of Brazilian market power on rubber markets during the boom years of 1870-1910 shows that the government generated 1.3% of GDP through an export tax on rubber but that it could have generated 4.7% in total, had the government set the tariff at the optimal level. National, regional and local ...

We estimate the value of competition in United States Forest Service (USFS) timber auctions, in the context of the Reagan administration’s bailout of firms that faced substantial losses on existing contracts. We use a model with endogenous entry by asymmetric firms, allowing survivors to respond to the exit of bailed-out firms by entering more auctions and for these marginal entrants to have lo...

Set-asides and subsidies are used extensively in government procurement and resource sales. We analyze these policies in an empirical model of US Forest Service timber auctions. The model fits the data well both within the sample of unrestricted sales used for estimation, and when we predict (out-of-sample) outcomes for small business set-asides. Our estimates suggest that restricting entry sub...

We construct an intertemporal model of rent-maximizing behaviour on the part of a timber harvester under potentially multi-dimensional risk as well as geographical heterogeneity. Subsequently, we use recursive methods (in particular, the method of dynamic programming) to characterize the optimal policy function, the rent-maximizing timber-harvesting profile. One noteworthy feature of our applic...

The United States paper and paperboard industry has experienced significant structural changes over the past twenty-five years, including reductions in the number of mills, lower rates of capacity growth, employment cutbacks, and a loss of market share to foreign competitors. These structural shifts portray an industry that increasingly has difficulty adapting to a more competitive global envir...

A growing body of research points to the fact that capital markets react to environmental news and thus create incentives for pollution control in both developed and emerging market economies. In this paper we conduct an event study to examine the impact of environmental rating of large pulp and paper, auto and chlor alkali firms on their stock prices. We find that the market generally penalize...

It is shown how, within the framework of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes, it is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed. By a purely local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the dist...

The theory of demand and supply implies a positive relationship, or ‘‘price transmission’’ between the prices of products at different stages of manufacturing. This relationship was investigated with quarterly prices of softwood stumpage in the US South, and national prices of forest products, from 1977 to 2002. All prices, net of inflation, were found to be nonstationary and there was no evide...