from a systematic literature review to integrated definition for sustainable supply chain innovation ssci publisher elsevier articletitle from a systematic literature review to integrated definition for sustainable supply chain innovation ssci journaltitle journal of cleaner production articlelink http dx doi org 10 1016 j jclepro 2016 11 153 content type article copyright 2016 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the behavior of prices and inflation an empirical analysis of disaggregat price data this paper analyzes the effects of inflation on the dispersion of prices as well as other aspects of price behavior using disaggregated data on prices of foodstuffs in israel during 1978 84 we find that the effect of expected inflation on intramarket price variability is stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation we show that even in times of high inflation price quotations are not trivially short and price changes are not synchronized across firms these facts taken together confirm that there is some staggering in the setting of prices we find that the distribution of real prices is far from being uniform as many menu cost based models assume or conclude in fact as inflation increases to very high levels this distribution is not even symmetric when the annual inflation rate reaches 130 percent there are equal chances of finding real prices above or below the market average but upward deviations in the real price are further away from zero than downward ones furthermore as the annu

discrete equilibrium price dispersion an explicit solution of an equilibrium model with price setting firms and searching customers makes possible a number of comparativestatics predictions about how cost differences among firms search costs of customers and taxes will affect the mean and variance of the distribution of market prices another implication of the model is that a firm s demand depends on the difference between its price and the average price in the market

menu costs and markov inflation a theoretical revision with new evidence abstract we revisit a foundational theoretical paper in the menu cost literature sheshinski and weiss 1983 optimum pricing policy under stochastic inflation review of economic studies 50 3 513 529 one of the few to treat stochastic inflation with persistent deviations from trend in contrast to the original finding we show that optimal pricing in this environment entails using different s s bands in high inflation and low inflation states of the world the low inflation band is strictly contained within the high inflation band this revised solution has very different implications from the original one firms are generally risk loving not risk averse with respect to inflation an increase in the variance of inflation increases price dispersion when inflation is high and decreases price dispersion when inflation is low on an aggregate level this optimal pricing would lead to bunching of prices and non neutrality of money in the setting of caplin and spulber 1987 menu costs and the neutrality of money quarterly journal of economics 102 4 703 725 to test the main finding we construct an establishment level dataset from the months surrounding mexico s tequila crisis in 1995 in the high inflation state price increases are larger and establishments allow their prices to vary more widely around their respective long run mean relative prices cross establishment price dispersion is lower but this result seems due to decreased establishment heterogeneity rather than narrower s s bands overall the evidence suggests that establishments employ wider s s bands in the high inflation state

learning in an equilibrium search model this paper explores the role of learning in an equilibrium search model with asymmetric information firms with identical but privately observed marginal cost sell a homogeneous good to heterogeneously informed consumers a reservation price equilibrium exists if the uninformed consumers search cost is sufficiently large in this equilibrium the amount of price dispersion is inversely related to the realization of marginal cost also the average price level is less responsive to cost changes than when cost is observable finally uncertainty about firms marginal cost increases the expected price level copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

nonlinear impact of inflation on relative price variability using a half a century long disaggregated price data for 22 food products collected from 19 cities we show that the association between inflation and price variability is nonlinear with respect to changes in inflation rate we obtain similar results for expected and unexpected inflation

detecting supply chain innovation potential for sustainable development in a world of limited resources it could be argued that companies that aspire to be good corporate citizens need to focus on making best use of resources user value and environmental harm are created in supply chains and it could therefore be argued that company business ethics should be extended from the company to the entire value chain from the first supplier to the last customer starting with a delineation of the linkages between business ethics corporate sustainability and the stakeholder concept this article argues that supply chains generally have a great innovation potential for sustainable development this potential could be highlighted with system thinking and the use of change management knowledge promoting not only innovations within technology but also within organizational improvement we propose process models and performance indicators as means of highlighting improvement potential and thus breaking down normative business ethics requirements to an opertionalizable corporate level good business ethics should focus on maximizing stakeholder value in relation to harm done our results indicate that focusing on supply chains reveals previously unknown innovation potential that seems to be related to limited system understanding the assumption is that increased visibility of opportunities will act as a driver for change results also highlight the importance of focusing on sustainability effects of the core business and clearly relating value created to harm done

international factor movements in the presence of a fixed factor abstract to the basic model of international factor mobility is added a third immobile factor unlike the basic model the factor flows that result from a policy of free mobility are now uniquely determined additionally a large variety of privately optimal national policies is predicted each dependent upon the country s endowment pattern and the fiscal instruments available to it several of the predicted policies e g subsidies paid to migrant factors and simultaneous restrictions on the export of both factors are incompatible with the basic model

money and the dispersion of relative prices revisited this study extends the literature on relative price dispersion by addressing two questions that have remained largely unanswered a what is the impact on relative price dispersion of the variance of the uncertain relationship between money and prices b is there evidence across industries of a differential impact on price dispersion of the variance of the uncertain relationship between money and prices these issues are examined in a bivariate garch m model using monthly data from 1963 1997 the results at the aggregate level indicate that the variance of the uncertain relationship between money and prices has a positive and significant impact on relative price dispersion during the period 1963 to 1997 disaggregated analysis at the industry level suggests that the magnitude of the impact of the variance of the uncertain money price relationship differs greatly across industries and generally tends to have a greater impact on the price dispersion of durable goods than on the price dispersion of nondur

inflation price dispersion and market structure abstract in this paper we use a novel data set containing prices from bazaars convenience stores and supermarkets in istanbul to re examine the relationship between price dispersion and inflation although existing evidence is mixed we find positive and significant relationships between dispersion on the one hand and lagged dispersion and unexpected product specific inflation on the other we also find evidence that dispersion is initially decreasing in anticipated aggregate inflation but is eventually increasing finally average price duration and dispersion are lowest in the bazaar this is intuitive since menu and search costs should be minimal in that market structure

the relationship between relative prices and the general price level it is very nearly a truismi amaong neoclassical economists that the public is wont to confuse changes in the general price level with relative price changes correspondingl y one might speak of the independence between the two as one of the central postulates of the neoclassical tradition william stanley jevons was aml ong the first to identify this basic dichotomin economic life as well as to attempt to explain the ordinary citizen s seenming incapacity to understand it

price dispersion and inflation evidence from israel the paper considers the question whether observed price differentials reflect perceived differences in quality service agreements or location or whether information imperfections can explain this phenomenon it sets out theoretical arguments linking inflation to reductions in the information stock held by agents and thus to greater price dispersion the hypothesis is tested using monthly price data for 13 uniquely defined goods sold in israel between 1971 and 1984 price dispersion is shown to be positively related to the rate of market price inflation since inflation is an unlikely proxy for changes in perceived characteristics the findings support price dispersion theories based on optimally imperfect decision making

product variety and firm agglomeration for the purpose of explaining interindustry variation in the geographic distribution of firms we explore the impact of product heterogeneity on the incentives for firms to cluster in the presence of a ubiquitous periphery of stand alone firms our analysis revolves around two counteracting forces greater product heterogeneity increases consumer search which raises the amount of shopping at a cluster since this results in greater demand for a firm that joins the cluster this effect increases the incentive to cluster however greater product heterogeneity gives stand alone firms more local monopoly power since this raises their price cost margins this effect increases the incentive for a firm to stand alone our analysis shows that the former effect typically dominates so that greater firm agglomeration is associated with industries characterized by greater product heterogeneity

nonstandard foundations of equilibrium search models abstract we develop an equilibrium sequential search model which includes most of the literature as special cases in particular the model can accommodate heterogeneity in buyers search costs and demand functions and firms cost functions with general demand and cost functions we identify conditions which ensure existence of equilibrium in pure strategies utilizing recent progress in the theory of large games by khan and sun these conditions elucidate the essential structure of equilibrium search models although we focus on sequential search our methodology can be used for other classes of equilibrium search models as well

equilibrium price distributions equilibrium price distributions for a homogeneous product consistent with individual incentives are investigated they arise in informationally imperfect markets in which the only primitive datum is the distribution of search costs it is shown that single multi and continuous price distributions are all viable long run phenomena depending on the nature of search costs a method for computing equilibrium price distributions is also provided jevons law of one price has long been an accepted dictum in economic theory in a classroom presentation it still serves sometimes implicitly as a major premise in many micro models of market interaction much of the descriptive theory as well as welfare analysis hinges on this assumption yet one s day to day experience reveals that price differentials are a viable phenomenon and that looking for lower prices may very well be a rewarding activity the prospects of eventually hitting a bargain and the resulting price reduction would more than compensate for the cost incurred during the search process moreover the existence of price dispersions appear to be an empirically stable phenomenon snapshots of markets for relatively homogeneous products reveal substantial and recurring price differentials stigler 1961 and pratt wise and zeckhauser 1979 for example report some evidence supporting this claim an important article by stigler 1961 focused economists attention on the crucial role played by the informational structure of markets it gave rise to the study of the

strategic policies towards international factor movement in this paper the authors analyze the optimal policies of two active countries toward international movement of both labor and capital in a two stage noncooperative game they show that a complete buyout of both factors by either country can never be a nash equilibrium although a partial buyout is possible furthermore in equilibrium the large country tends either to remain virtually passive or to play along with the small country whereas the small country adopts more significant policies

conditional relative price variance and its determinants open economy evidence from germany the authors present empirical tests of two hypothesis derived from an open economy version of the multimarket equilibrium model the first hypothesis holds that the conditional relative price variance is positively related to the variance of domestic monetary and foreign nominal and real shocks the second hypothesis claims a negative impact of an increase in conditional relative price variance on normal output in contrast to earlier studies the authors use direct measures of conditional relative price variance based on arch estimates the authors results show that both hypotheses are consistent with german data copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

search market equilibrium bilateral heterogeneity and repeat purchases abstract we develop a general model of search market equilibrium with heterogeneous buyers and sellers this framework unifies previous models with one sided heterogeneity and clarifies many of their special properties it easily accounts for price dispersion active search and the matching of buyer and seller types it also extends to repeat purchases once we embed it into a dynamic game with incomplete information we formalize the inferences and strategies underlying equilibria where firms charge constant prices and customers patronize them loyally we establish a general correspondence between such equilibria and single purchase markets journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 l13

inflation and relative price variability reinstating parks results this paper revisits parks seminal work on the time series relationship between inflation and relative price variability the results reported show that a significant positive association is obtained allowing for an asymmetrical response of relative prices to episodes of positive and negative inflation this finding is maintained after excluding oil shock years extending park s original sample to 1996 using an alternative data set and allowing for a higher degree of disaggregation

international factor mobility and national advantage abstract in this paper we prove rigorously v k ramaswami s proposition that in bilateral trade between two countries sharing the same technology represented by a strictly concave production function with positive marginal productivities of capital and labor the policy active country can gain more by importing monopsonistically the relatively scarce factor than by placing monopolistic restrictions on the export of the relatively abundant one we show that what matters is not the location but the constraints within which maximization takes place hence the monopsonistic results can be replicated by appropriate export arrangements the analysis is extended to consider the welfare implications to the policy passive country

price dispersion inflation and welfare we examine the implications of inflation for both price dispersion and welfare in a monetary search economy in our economy if the degree of buyers incomplete information about prices is fixed both price dispersion and real prices are increasing in inflation as the inflation rate approaches the friedman rule both price dispersion and welfare losses vanish if households choose the number of prices to observe then the optimal inflation rate may exceed the friedman rule as inflation induces search and up to a point raises welfare by eroding market power

inflation and relative price variability in the short and long run new evidence from the united states this paper presents new evidence that a positive association exists between inflation and relative prices and relative inflation rates in very disaggregated data for the united states over the period 1975 through 1992 there is also evidence that the response of relative prices and relative inflation rates to inflation varies inversely with the information content of a given shock to inflation the relationship is studied from two cross sectional perspectives using individual price series collected from forty eight u s cities evidence on the persistence of the effects of inflation on relative prices is also presented results here demonstrate the absence of a long run relationship between inflation and relative price dispersion i e the two series are not cointegrated finally results from vector autoregressions further imply the effect is smaller than indicated by typical estimates copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

international factor movements and the ramaswami argument in a succinct but classic article appearing in economica in 1968 ramaswami put forth an argument supporting the superiority of a policy that attracts foreign factors over a policy that allows a relatively abundant factor to emigrate in each case the active home country is assumed to levy taxes on factor flows so as to capture for itself the discrepancy in return to the same factor at home and abroad the asymmetry reflected by this policy ranking rests on a basic propeity of production functions the convexity of technology plus the ability of the active home country to hire or rent out factors at wages or rentals prevailing in the foreign country briefly put the ramaswami argument proceeds as follows suppose the active home country is capital abundant and has levied on optimal tax on earnings of its own capital operating abroad now consider repatriating this capital and allowing for the first time some inflow of foreign labour in particular suppose the home country allows a level of immigration identical to the labour force previously employed with the home capital that is being repatriated such a transfer of home capital and foreign labour out of the foreign country leaves factor proportions abroad undisturbed and thus does not alter the wage that must be paid to attract the requisite bundle of foreign workers although the home country thus avoids any increase in factor costs in foreign markets it can increase output since the capital labour ratiooriginally employed at home at high home wage rates is greater than the ratio in the freshly acquired bundle from abroad by adopting a uniform capital labour ratio over all factors now employed at home output and thus real income rises there may be even further gains to be had by allowing yet a different optimal level of immigration in the home country which has now banned capital exports 2 essential to the ramaswami argument is the ability of the home country to extract a bundle of factors previously employed abroad without disturbing factor prices in that country indeed jones coelho and easton 1983 have suggested that in the context of the ramaswami discussion the original argument could be pursued to suggest that the home country gains not only from repatriating its own capital but from actually encouraging foreign capital to be employed at home such a capital flow is admittedly uphill the home country would have to pay out more in rentals than such capital can earn at home despite this fact such an import of capital and labour in the same proportions found abroad does not alter foreign factor prices but does via the same ramaswami type argument on the convexity of the technology result in gains at home although ramaswami s own discussion starts with a repatriation of home capital previously invested abroad his argument can be applied directly to the foreign autarky factor endowment bundle if technology exhibits constant returns to scale and if all both factors are indeed internationally

international migration versus foreign investment in the presence of unemployment abstract this paper extends the standard two factor one good model of international factor movements to include unemployment due to a minimum income guarantee within the capital abundant country from this country s perspective we establish important departures from previous full employment results most notably our analysis shows that 1 free factor mobility is worse than no mobility 2 the optimal degree of labour migration is zero and 3 national welfare can always be maximized by an optimal flow of capital the analysis is then extended to examine 1 illegal migration 2 subsidization of employment and 3 alternative views of unemployment

search price setting and inflation a model of monopolistic competition in an inflationary environment is developed which embodies optimal sequential search price dynamics and entry on the part of consumers and firms respectively equilibrium price strategies are s s these bounds increase continuously with consumer search costs and so does price dispersion indeed the whole equilibrium varies smoothly from the competitive bertrand to the monopolistic diamond 1971 end of the spectrum the latter s paradoxical result is explained as a limiting case where frictions on firms side of the market price adjustment costs but not on buyers search costs tend to zero a positive relationship between smooth and perfectly anticipated inflation and price dispersion or uncertainty is established

the theory of international factor flows the basic model abstract the basic model used to discuss the simultaneous international flow of labor and capital is a one commodity model in which a common technology is shared between countries the ramaswami result wherein an optimal restriction of labor inflows is superior to an optimal restriction on capital outflows for a capital abundant country is extended to reveal that optimality requires inflows of both factors box diagrams and iso welfare contours are used to show how optimal policy rankings are reversed if foreign labor must be paid higher home wages

relative price variability and inflation a disaggregated analysis relative price variability has been studied at the cross sectional intermarket level this paper addresses the equally important phenomenon of intramarket variability the dispersion of commodity price movements around the industry average using quarterly price data for 80 disaggregated commodity groups in the united kingdom from 1974 to 1984 the paper investigates the determinants of intramarket price variability and replicates some previous crosssectional tests for the united kingdom intermarket price variability is found to be positively related to inflation which confirms previous results for the united states and other countries intramarket variability is found to be positively related to the average market rate of price change but the strength of this relationship appears to be inversely related to the level of industry concentration these results generally support the propositions and findings reported by stigler and kindahl

inflation and efficiency in search markets this paper examines how inflation affects efficiency and output in monopolistically competitive search markets it formalizes the conventional wisdom linking higher inflation price dispersion and increased resources devoted to search it also brings to light the induced exit of arms which reduces rent dissipation but the most important effect of inflation is how it alters the distribution of real transactions prices whether this reduces or promotes efficiency and output is shown to depend critically on preferences and market structure and especially on whether search costs are large or small relative to consumer surplus

implications of rational inattention abstract a constraint that actions can depend on observations only through a communication channel with finite shannon capacity is shown to be able to play a role very similar to that of a signal extraction problem or an adjustment cost in standard control problems the resulting theory looks enough like familiar dynamic rational expectations theories to suggest that it might be useful and practical while the implications for policy are different enough to be interesting

perspectives on buy outs and the ramaswami effect abstract in a simple two factor one commodity model in which foreign labor can be hired at low foreign wage rates and technology is common to both countries optimal strategy at home involves hiring almost all factors abroad at their autarky prices a buy out strategy this paper shows that when technologies differ partial or times complete buy out of factors from the technologically superior country may still be optimal alternatively a partial buy out may be appropriate when there exists a third internationally immobile productive factor

motives and performance outcomes of sustainable supply chain management practices a multi theoretical perspective many researchers believe the tremendous industrial development over the past two centuries is unsustainable because it has led to unintended ecological deterioration despite the ever growing attention sustainable supply chain management sscm has received most sscm research and models look at the consequences rather than the antecedents or motives of such responsible practices the few studies that explore corporate motives have remained largely qualitative and large scale empirical analyses are scarce drawing on multiple theories and combining supply chain and business ethics literature we purport that instrumental relational and moral motives are behind a firm s engagement in sscm practices specifically we examine the links between corporate motives sscm practices and firm performance using a sample of 259 supply chain firms in germany we empirically test five hypothesized relationships our results reveal that relational and moral motives are key drivers and that firms exhibiting high levels of moral obligations tend to outperform those primarily driven by amoral considerations findings of this study contribute to multiple literatures espousing sustainability management and can help policy makers stakeholder groups and scholars develop more robust strategies for encouraging firms to practice sscm

search with learning from prices does increased inflationary uncertainty lead to higher markups aggregate cost uncertainty arising from real shocks or unanticipated inflation reduces the informativeness of prices by scrambling relative and aggregate variations but when agents can acquire additional information such increased noise may in fact lead them to become better informed and price competition will intensify we examine these issues in a model of search with learning where consumers search optimally from an unknown price distribution while firms price optimally given consumers search rules we show that the decisive factor in whether inflation variability increases or reduces the incentive to search and thereby market efficiency is the size of informational costs

on the choice between capital and labour mobility trade theorists since the pioneering work of kemp 1966 have considered the question of national advantage from international factor mobility by considering only one factor to be so mobile kemp analyzed elegantly the question of optimal policies in 2 x 2 x 2 model and showed that since monopoly power could exist in both the goods and factor markets in consequence of international capital mobility the optimal policy intervention would generally involve two policy instruments tariffs cum subsidies on goods and duties cum subsidies on international capital flows jones 1967 subsequently extended kemp s argument to the secondbest context by examining the optimal level of one of these instruments when the other was arbitrarily set at zero elsewhere in this issue brecher 1983 shows in an elegant and original contribution that the jones policy problem is in fact a third best rather than a second best problem as generally believed and that if only one of the tariff and capital mobility taxes cumsubsidies can be used it is generally possible to improve welfare further by admitting an altogether different domestic policy instrument namely a production or consumption tax cum subsidy as the case may be the research of bhagwati was supported by the german marshall fund grant no l 34015 the problem analyzed in the paper was posed in bhagwati 1979 and an early ingenious and neglected analysis in ramaswami 1968 was noted by bhagwati we have profited greatly from these contributions also from reading webb 1970 ramaswami 1970 and a recent paper of calvo and wellisz 1983 on this problem this result is in consonance with the results of bhagwati ramaswami and srinivasan 1969 for the case without international capital mobility but the consonance is intuitive only after the result was established for the case with international capital mobility