Sample Proposal Approval Form

Three committee member signatures are required for the thesis. Five signatures are required for the dissertation. The dissertation or thesis proposal will be filed with the adviser and with the Graduate School but will not be part of the final research document. A copy of the Thesis or Dissertation Proposal Approval Form should be sent to the dean of the Graduate School, but none of the supporting documents need be sent.

The writer wishes to thank Mr. David B. Dalzell for helping to obtain the necessary data, Dr. Thomas C. Campbell for his assistance and gentle prodding, and Mr. Raymond McKay who gave me the necessary incentive to complete the work.

[The Acknowledgments page is not required. If you wish to dedicate your dissertation or thesis to one person or to various people, you must do so in the Acknowledgments section, not on a separate dedication page.]

In the literature in economics, the traditional or neoclassical theory of the firm is a collection of theories about firms operating under a set of assumed conditions. That theory has been subjected to severe criticism because it creates a credibility gap between business firms as they are and as they are depicted by the theory. Many economists have looked to the use of computer simulation models to lead to improvements in the neoclassical theory of the firm. In this dissertation, a theoretical framework for corporate simulation modeling is developed, based on microeconomic theory, accounting relationships, marketing theory, and the various decision processes or heuristics used in a firm. A computer simulation model of an actual firm is then developed based on that theoretical model. The model is validated using historical data from an existing ologopolistic firm. The conclusion is that such a theoretically-based model does predict most of the target output variables of the firm which was modeled and, in turn, validates major portions of the neoclassical theory.

Policy simulations of the model are presented to show the use of the model in tracing the effects of changes in policy on the target variables of the firm.

[The date above is the date of graduation, not the date of submission of the dissertation or thesis.]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS*                                                                                                    i
ABSTRACT                                                                                                                   ii
CONTENTS                                                                                                                   vii
TABLES                                                                                                                        viii
CHAPTER
I. THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND                                                                               1
    Introduction
    Statement of the Problem
    Definition of Terms
    Collection of the Data
    Analysis of the Data
   Organization of the Study
II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE                                                                                  20
    Introduction
    General Literature
    Literature on Simulation
III. RESEARCH DESIGN                                                                                                     42
    Introduction
    Theoretical Model
    Theoretical Relationships
    Statistical Procedures
IV. THE MODEL                                                                                                               60
    Introduction
    Discussion of the Equations
    Validation
V. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS                                                         101
    Summary of the Study
    Conclusions
    Recommendations for Future Research
LITERATURE CITED 119 APPENDIX A: Models of Production Management                                   124

*Subheadings need not be bulleted, as here; it is a function of HTML. And page numbers for subheadings should be included, with or without dot leaders.

**Major items in CONTENTS may be all caps, as here, or in lower case. Use in Table of Contents must be consistent with first pages of chapters.

[If a List of Figures is included, that list should resemble this List of Tables.]

The 'firm' is the expression most widely used in economics to cover all forms of what might be described, at least in the United States, as business enterprise. The essential feature of the firm, from the economist's point of view, is that it controls some productive activity.

In the literature of economics, the traditional or neoclassical theory of the firm is a collection of theories about firms operating under a set of assumed conditions. The severest criticism to which this theory of the firm has been, and continues to be, subjected is that it creates a credibility gap between business firms as they are and as they are depicted by the neoclassical theory. Proponents of the neoclassical theory argue that this is not objectionable since the theory was not designed to resolve actual business problems. To them, the neoclassical model is a simple logical exercise in which assumptions directly imply the conclusions and the conclusions directly imply the assumptions. For example, the profit-maximization assumption immediately implies that the firm will continue to expand production so long as the increments to revenue form the sale of additional output exceeds the increments to cost of producing that output. And the firm that hires increments of labor and other inputs so as to equate marginal revenue product to marginal factor cost must be profit maximizing. Since the implications of the model are not realistic in the view of some economists, and since the model implications follow directly from the assumptions, any criticism of the model or suggestions for improving it require a careful assessment of the assumptions.

signature

date

[This approval is to be signed by the candidate and presented to the dean of the Graduate School with the original and copies of the dissertation or thesis after final approval of the committee.]

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Last revised on: 27 March 2007
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