Business Commons^™

The Farmers' Holiday Association In Eastern Iowa, 1932-1933, Joel Dinger

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

The Farmer's Holiday Association (FHA) was a short-lived phenomenon in Depression-era history. It arose out of the National Farmers Union, the most powerful farm organization of the immediate post-World War I era. While the main goal of the FHA was noble, cost of production guarantees were probably unattainable. Additionally, the method used try and attain this goal was questionable. Furthermore, the movement took on a life 1 of its own. For the most part, most of the activities took place in western Iowa and eastern Nebraska, with significantly less activity taking place in eastern Iowa.

In this paper, the background …

Worker Training And Retraining Programs In Iowa: Explanation And Alteration, Aaron Gilkes

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

The existence and structure of state funded worker training and retraining programs are a much debated economic and political topic in Iowa. On one side of the debate there is a group of economic developers and community college personnel trying to operate a system of worker training programs. On the other side of the debate there are certain staff at the University of Iowa Labor Center would like to have these programs revised. The debate covers a wide variety of topics including the treatment of the unemployed, worker and community competitiveness, and the growth of human capital in Iowa.

This …

Selected Problems Involving The Probability Of Ruin For An Insurance Company, Andrew J. Schafer

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

In the actuarial science literature, an insurance company is said to be ruined if, at some time t > 0, the aggregate claims up to time t exceed the sum of the initial surplus and the total premium collected up to time t. The calculation and/or estimation of the probability of ruin is of fundamental importance. In this paper we use computer simulation to estimate the probabilities of ruin over a finite horizon of time when the aggregate claims process is Compound Poisson and the distribution of the claim sizes is: (i) Weibull, and (ii) exponential with a random parameter. The …

Subliminal Advertising: The Commercial Appropriation Of The Unconscious, Brian D. Williams

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

Subliminal advertising refers to the use of subliminal techniques by mass media and what these media messages are doing to society. A secret technology has existed and been in widespread use for decades which modifies consumer's behavior invisibly, channels basic value systems, and manages to drive much bigger segments of the population into certain pathological behaviors.