Most interesting phenomena in natural and social systems include transitions and oscillations among their various phases. A new phase begins when the system reaches a threshold that marks a qualitative change in system characteristics. These thres...
Industry cluster theory has been the predominant model guiding economic development policy throughout the world for nearly two decades. As appealing as the cluster approach has been to regional scientists and policy makers it suffers from a number...
This dissertation presents a novel data-driven approach to solve the problem of improving customer loyalty and customer retention. The data mining concepts of action rules and meta actions are used to extract actionable knowledge from customer sur...
In this research, a hybrid predictive model was proposed for the decision-making process. Predictive models can be built through the use of Machine Learning using different classifiers/algorithms to predict results as well as provide recommendatio...
Net Promoter System (NPS) is well known as an evaluation measure of the growth engine of big companies in the business area. The ultimate goal of my research is to build an action rules and meta-actions based recommender system for improving NPS s...
The purpose of this study was to explore traditional public school administrators' perceptions of competition in North Carolina public education after the implementation of charter school legislation. Surveys of traditional public school administr...
My research examines the adoption and diffusion of marriage equality policies in states across the US. I analyze how gender equality and reproductive technology reshape norms around marriage and family to foster the broad support of same sex marri...
The following dissertation adds to the literature on income convergence and population growth in the United States. It also expands knowledge on the relatively underexplored geography – the American micropolitan area. The study identifies determin...
Very few studies to date have directly examined the impact of race or gender patient-provider concordance on the utilization of health services. This is particularly noteworthy given the role that the linkage between concordance and health service...