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This study sets out to examine the factors that influence human capital formation in predominately rural communities. The results indicated that parents' educational attainment greatly influences the quality of education for their children. Thus, consolidating smaller poor schools in which the parents have limited education above primary and secondary schools, will not likely lead to much if any improvement in students' test scores.

Public productivity, in particular the efficiency of public expenditures, has been a subject of academic and nonacademic debate for a long time. A number of studies have been conducted over the years on the subject using mostly conventional statistical methods such as production functions and occasionally using techniques such as data envelopment analysis (DEA). Most of these studies were conducted at a microlevel using a single decision unit with limited data. This study uses a multistage DEA to analyze public productivity using panel data for all fifty states of the United States over a twenty-one–year period. Based on well-known Farrell’s technical efficiency, the study measures productivity using both constant and variable returns to scale. The results of the study show that there has been a general decrease in efficiency during the study period, with some exceptions, consistent with the growth trend in the national economy.

Although price reduction is an interesting topic in marketing literature and has studied in numerous papers, less attention is paid to its effect on consumer behavior. This paper analyzes the effect of the price promotion on consumer’s behavior in terms of the percentage of buying and the brand loyalty in the U.S. differentiated yogurt market. This paper tries to answer the following questions. Is the choice of high preferred brands sensitive to the price promotion of less preferred brands? Are there loyal consumers in the yogurt market? How sensitive is the consumer loyalty of high preferred brands to the price promotion of less preferred brands? Results show that a unit increase in the frequency of price reduction of less popular brands will decrease the consumer’s choice of high popular brands significantly. Switching across brands is very common and there are less loyal consumers in the yogurt market where main brands have collectively only 12% loyal consumers. Loyalty of high popular brands is also sensitive to the price promotion of less popular brands as a unit increase in the frequency of price reduction for less preferred brands will decreases the share of households who are loyal to high popular brands of General Mills and Danone.