optimal production and carbon emission reduction level under cap and trade and low carbon subsidy policies abstract in recent years massive carbon emissions have caused serious global environmental damage such as a worsening greenhouse effect and thick haze to curb carbon emissions as well as maintain sustainable economic development governments promote the development of low carbon economy by issuing multiple policies among which the cap and trade policy ctp and low carbon subsidy policy lcsp are widely adopted moreover manufacturers are increasingly adopting carbon emission reduction technology to produce greener products considering related government policies and rising environmental awareness among consumers to give policy making insights to governments as well as production and carbon emission reduction decision making insights to manufacturers this paper investigates the impacts of ctp and lcsp on the production and carbon emission reduction level of a manufacturer and explores which policy is better for society the results show that the carbon emission reduction level increases as the carbon trading price increases whereas it is independent of the unit low carbon subsidy interestingly the carbon trading price does not always have a negative effect on the manufacturer s profit and the cap does not always produce a positive effect on the manufacturer s profit more importantly we find that lcsp is more beneficial to society when the environmental damage coefficient is less than a threshold but otherwise ctp is more beneficial

incentive policies from 2006 to 2016 and new energy vehicle adoption in 2010 2020 in china abstract new energy vehicle nev development is key to reducing vehicle pollutant emissions conserving fuel oil energy and sustaining both the automotive industry and the transportation industry of a country china is now ranked first in terms of nev adoption policies are the main driving force this paper aims to uncover how policies systematically link together to provide support direct rapid development regulate various players to cope with the challenges and achieve an impressive progress in nev adoption in china we propose a policy dependency mapping method which enables us to analyze 175 nev policies from national jing jin ji regional beijing tianjin and hebei from january 2006 to april 2016 with adoption targets projected from 2016 to 2020 our research reveals that the nev policies constitute complex policy systems involving governments at various levels with multiple purposes the national policies direct local policies and depend upon local policies to implement and meet the decomposed targets whereas regional policies horizontally coordinate the provincial governments and solve issues across provincial boundaries local policies play a key role in implementing the national and regional policies and address different local challenges such as traffic congestion and local economy development the nev policy systems are dynamic and nev adoption in local areas is uneven the public sector is the first breakthrough to promote nev adoption followed by a demonstration in the private sector beijing takes the lead in terms of both ev adoption and policymaking challenges in local protectionism technology advancement with subsidies phasing out and subsidies fraud are discussed these findings help both policy makers and nev players to understand the nev development roadmap and create better strategies to promote nevs in the future

impact of loss aversion on the newsvendor game with product substitution abstract this paper studies a newsvendor game in which two substitutable products are sold by two different retailers newsvendors with loss averse preferences each loss averse retailer facing stochastic customer demand and deterministic substitution rate will make an order quantity decision to maximize his expected utility since product substitution causes two retailers to make decisions in a competitive environment game theory is used to find the retailers optimal order quantities it is shown that under certain conditions there exists a unique nash equilibrium in the newsvendor game under a symmetry assumption each retailer s equilibrium order quantity is decreasing in the loss aversion coefficient and increasing in the substitution rate further if the effect of loss aversion on the order quantity is strong enough to dominate the effect of competition the total inventory level of a decentralized supply chain will be lower than that of a centralized supply chain numerical experiments are conducted to illustrate our results

the democracy deficit of corporate social responsibility in post neoliberal times an analysis of the argentinian and ecuadorian experiences several evaluations of contemporary left of center governments in south america suggest that natural resource governance in the region has become post neoliberal only in the sense that states augmented the appropriation and distribution of rent motivated by sustained international demand for commodities the political ecologies of mining remain characterized by increasing demands for more democratic decision making as occurred in the 1990s in order to explain this continuity most studies focus on the interactions between states and civil societies they state that a pragmatic stance on resource governance regards rent capture and distribution over the development of mechanisms for inclusion in decision making these assessments give only a partial account of the interactions involved in such dynamic they underestimate corporate behavior as a central component of emerging forms of governance we argue that companies were central actors of the production of mining conflicts during the 1990s and still exert an important degree of influence in resource governance through corporate social responsibility csr strategies our findings show that since the neoliberal legal and administrative reforms of the early 1990s argentinian and ecuadorian governments have supported a system of mining governance that regards the economic interests over the demands for more democratic decision making nevertheless even after recognizing the deleterious effects of neoliberal csr practiced by companies left of center governments have not been able to steer corporate behavior in a new direction

constrained school choice an experimental study 31 pages 18 tables jel classification c72 c78 d78 i20 trabajo publicado como articulo en american economic review 100 4 1860 1874 2010 http dx doi org 10 1257 aer 100 4 1860

substitutes and stability for matching with contracts we consider the matching problem with contracts of hatfield and milgrom 2005 and we introduce new concepts of bilateral and unilateral substitutes we show that bilateral substitutes is a sucient condition for the existence of a stable allocation in this framework however the set of stable allocations does not form a lattice under this condition and there does not necessarily exist a doctor optimal stable allocation under a slightly stronger condition unilateral substitutes the set of stable allocations still does not necessarily form a lattice with respect to doctors preferences but there does exist a doctor optimal stable allocation and other key results such as incentive compatibility and the rural hospitals theorem are recovered

valuing managerial flexibility an application of real option theory to mining investments abstract the value of managerial flexibility is assessed using data on prices costs grades reserves ore extraction and metal output for a panel of canadian copper mines a real option model is estimated and solved for project and option values most empirical researchers i consider the initial investment decision but neglect flexible operation thereafter ii assume that price is stochastic but ignore cost and reserve uncertainty and iii model price as a nonstationary stochastic process the evolution of three state variables price cost and reserves is assessed here differences in assumptions compared to others are found to lead to large differences in estimated project and option values

assessment of environmental responsibility of oil and gas companies in russia the rating method abstract the article analyzes preconditions specifics and results of the first russian environmental rating of oil and gas companies the russian oil and gas industry strategically important for the national economy is also environmentally unfriendly and opaque companies lack adequate motivation to follow best international environmental standards and practices for disclosure of information about their environmental performance and impacts environmental responsibility of the oil and gas sector has been subject to both public scrutiny and scientific discussions for many decades however these issues have been rarely if ever explored using a reliable and equitable tool which would provide for comparison between different companies this article attempts to analyze the application of such a tool environmental responsibility rating of oil and gas companies in russia the idea behind launching the rating was to provide end consumers and financial institutions an opportunity to compare the companies products and services and to evaluate corporate risks including reputation on the basis of unbiased comparison and evaluation of the companies environmental responsibility and their management s commitment the rating s rationale is premised on the assumption that an environmental rating based on publicly available data and information could be accepted by companies top management as a competitive advantage or disadvantage in obtaining access to better cheaper and long term financial resources and in improving market demand for their final value added products this study offers a complex analysis of qualitative and quantitative indicators of companies activities in three fields environmental management environmental impact and disclosure transparency the rating s results demonstrate that there are big differences among russian oil and gas companies in their levels of environmental responsibility and transparency large publicly traded companies with a strategic focus on gas have received top ratings privately held smaller oil companies are at the bottom along with the subsidiaries of major russian and international corporations transparency of subsidiary companies tends to be lower than that of parent corporations in some cases a close relationship between the company s management and population of the surrounding region plays a positive role in promoting environmental responsibility assumptions for this environmental rating have been at least partially confirmed by the positive dynamics of the associated petroleum gas apg utilization level by oil and gas companies in russia this rating is based on novel and creative approach and has already contributed to forming average quantitative impact indicators in the industry the assumptions and conclusions of this study can also be tested by comparing the first environmental rating of oil and gas companies data with the data produced in the next rating

broadening the market design approach to school choice school choice refers to policies that allow parents preferences to be an input to the decision of which school a student will attend a rich body of research has developed over the past 10 15 years to study mechanisms that implement school choice this literature has mostly taken the inputs of school choice preferences priorities and capacities as exogenous more recently researchers have sought to embed the school choice problem into its wider context thereby broadening the scope of market design questions and enriching the analysis this article discusses current school choice policy issues in light of this recent literature and outlines remaining open questions

electric vehicles rising from the dead data needs for forecasting consumer response toward sustainable energy sources in personal transportation abstract since standard vehicles are powered by internal combustion mechanisms that rely on fossil fuels electric vehicles that are propelled by one or more electric engines have been proposed as an alternative to promote sustainable personal transportation in this paper we propose a general demand model for vehicle purchases at the individual level assuming that the necessary microdata is available we then list the ideal microdata that would be needed for estimating this general demand model for elaborating this list we take into account the particularities of low emission vehicles with emphasis in their cost reliability environmental benefits tradeoff as well as the potentiality for evaluation of welfare improving policies related to adoption of energy efficient technologies we discuss data sources and collection strategies for the different attributes of the model especially for those characteristics that are nonstandard such as symbolic values for instance we discuss the role of range anxiety as a barrier of adoption of electric vehicles and the implied relevance of including driving range to get consumers willingness to pay for better performing electric batteries

a practical approach for the management of resources and reserves in small scale mining abstract artisanal asm and small scale mining ssm are well known sources of environmental health and safety risk nonetheless due to the massive increase in the price of gold in the last few years asm and ssm units have rapidly appeared and are operating in many remote locations around the world this trend is bound to last since there are no valid alternative livelihoods for the operators in the sector and the attractiveness of the profit does not counterpoise any concern about the environment or safety the most viable solution for such activities is a shift towards responsible operations this can be done by turning an asm operation into a sustainable and profitable ssm industrial extractive unit for doing so capital investment is needed from external investors the main task therefore is to make asm attractive for investment the approach proposed in this work is based on a main differential from large scale mining the attractiveness for external investment only lies in proving in the early stages of the business a minimum mineral reserve that is able to rapidly return the investment committed to upgrade the artisanal operation into a small scale industrial one plus an attractive profit this is done by introducing the concepts of minimal reserve to be proved and replication the paper proposes a practical methodology for the evaluation of the minimal reserve to be proved based on mining and processing capex and opex a portion of the profits of the operation on such minimal reserve is to be shared between the stakeholders of the business and another is to be re invested in future exploration with this last share the process of proving the reserve can be consequently replicated to the next portion of the mineral resource this methodology is applied to prove viable a real ssm unit in ecuador the results are compared with large scale reserve estimations the order of magnitude of the volume that needs to be proved at the start to make the operation viable varies by 1 1000 in favor of ssm

climate change accounting and the australian mining industry exploring the links between corporate disclosure and the generation of legitimacy abstract this paper explores how disclosure is used by key bodies in the australian mining industry as a means to respond to climate change and ensure their social licence to operate the study utilises a legitimacy theory framework and a multi case analysis to examine the environmental disclosure practices via a variety of media of two companies and two industry bodies within australia s mining industry it is revealed that a combination of legitimising strategies is undertaken by key bodies in the australian mining industry however to differing degrees depending on the organisation there is also support for the notion that different media plays a critical role in facilitating the legitimacy seeking behaviours of the companies and industry bodies this study extends existing literature on legitimacy theory by highlighting the value of utilising this perspective to explore contemporary phenomena such as corporate responses to climate change the findings of this study have practical significance as they are expected to have important policy ramifications one of the differentiating features of this paper compared to prior studies utilising a legitimacy theory framework is the examination of legitimising disclosure strategies at an industry level which complements a company level analysis moreover variations in legitimising disclosure strategies and communication media employed may be due to their focus on differing conferring publics and stakeholder groups

how environmental regulations affect innovation in the australian oil and gas industry going beyond the porter hypothesis the impact of environmental regulation on innovation is of central interest to many industries and policy makers alike while traditional research adopts a top down view of regulation and attempts to measure the innovation response the more bottom up view of contemporary theory argues that firms produce innovations that exceed compliance levels as a competitive strategy we approach this dichotomy by investigating innovation introduced by australian oil and gas firms in light of environmental regulatory compliance burden and firm level characteristics including competitive capabilities analyses of survey responses executive level interviews and conference proceedings reveal both regulatory top down and competitive advantage bottom up perspectives explain innovation in this industry regression analyses reveal that product service and novel innovations all types are related to a high compliance burden competitive skills research and development activity and engagement in formal collaborations interview and conference data add nuance to our findings revealing collaborative compliance frameworks result in similar innovation outcomes

sustainability in mining minerals and energy new processes pathways and human interactions for a cautiously optimistic future the supply of minerals and energy is critical to global society however this supply is associated with social and environmental impacts leading to concerns of generational and intergenerational equity in light of these concerns a call for papers for a special volume on the mining industry was issued with the view that such academic work could assist in reducing the negative impacts associated with this industry this paper introduces the special volume the sustainability agenda of the minerals and energy supply and demand network an integrative analysis of ecological ethical economic and technological dimensions the special volume contains 84 articles divided into several themes sustainability accounting and reporting corporate social responsibility future mining challenges integrative frameworks for sustainability management aspects mining in a developing context and new frontiers in the oil and gas industry the special volume also includes two letters on contemporary issues with commentaries on these from experts in the fields viz community conflict and land rehabilitation insights obtained across these themes are summarized and recommendations are made of what is needed to build upon the findings of this special volume a research agenda is proposed for the future from the gaps and synergies identified the overall contribution of this special volume is that it renews the debate on the sustainability challenges for the mining industry and provides transdisciplinary insights into resolving some of these challenges

techno economic evaluation of innovative steel production technologies at current primary steel production levels the iron and steel industry will fail to meet the 80 emission reduction target without introduction of breakthrough technologies wortler et al 2013 19 the current research analyses the technical and economical long term potential of innovative primary steel production technologies in germany throughout 2100 techno economic models are used to simulate three innovative ore based steelmaking routes verses the reference blast furnace route bf bof the innovative routes in focus are blast furnace with ccs bf ccs hydrogen direct reduction h dr and iron ore electrolysis ew energy and mass flows for the production of one tonne of crude steel cs are combined with hypothetical price cost and revenue data to evaluate the production routes economically technically and environmentally this is a purely theoretical analysis and hence further external factors that may influence practical implementation or profitability are not considered different future developments are considered by using three scenarios representing an ambitious a moderate and a conservative transformation of the german energy sector in general looking into the future bares various uncertainties which should be reflected in a suitable manner according to the present scenario analysis chances are that with rising prices for coal and co2 allowances bf bof and even bf ccs become unprofitable by mid century with a high share of renewable energy sources and high prices for co2 allowances h dr and ew become economically attractive in the second half of the current century when bf based routes are long unprofitable energy and raw material efficiency is significantly higher for h dr and ew and furthermore the 80 reduction target by 2050 can be achieved in the ambitious scenario however high investment costs and high dependency on electricity prices prohibit a profitable implementation before 2030 2040 without further subsidies ew is the most energy and resource efficient production route since continuous electricity is needed for the continuous operation the electricity costs are 20 40 higher than for h dr with high capacity hydrogen storage units even though hydrogen production implies efficiency losses compared to the ew route the decoupling of hydrogen production from continuous operation of the steel plant through hydrogen storage offers the opportunity to use cheap excess renewable electricity this makes the h dr economically and environmentally the most attractive route and provides a crucial contribution to stabilize the grid and to store excess energy in a 100 renewable energy system

cradle to cradle design creating healthy emissions a strategy for eco effective product and system design eco effectiveness and cradle to cradle design present an alternative design and production concept to the strategies of zero emission and ecoefficiency where eco efficiency and zero emission seek to reduce the unintended negative consequences of processes of production and consumption eco effectiveness is a positive agenda for the conception and production of goods and services that incorporate social economic and environmental benefit enabling triple top line growth eco effectiveness moves beyond zero emission approaches by focusing on the development of products and industrial systems that maintain or enhance the quality and productivity of materials through subsequent life cycles the concept of eco effectiveness also addresses the major shortcomings of eco efficiency approaches their inability to address the necessity for fundamental redesign of material flows their inherent antagonism towards long term economic growth and innovation and their insufficiency in addressing toxicity issues a central component of the eco effectiveness concept cradle to cradle design provides a practical design framework for creating products and industrial systems in a positive relationship with ecological health and abundance and long term economic growth against this background the transition to eco effective industrial systems is a five step process beginning with an elimination of undesirable substances and ultimately calling for a reinvention of products by reconsidering how they may optimally fulfill the need or needs for which they are actually intended while simultaneously being supportive of ecological and social systems this process necessitates the creation of an eco effective system of nutrient management to coordinate the material flows amongst actors in the product system the concept of intelligent materials pooling illustrates how such a system might take shape in reality 2006 published by elsevier ltd

the mining industry under the thumb of politicians the environmental consequences of the spanish coal decree abstract the so called coal decree royal decree 143 2010 and subsequent royal decree 1221 2010 have modified the historical use of coal trends in the spanish economy since 2010 the use of domestic coal in spain s electricity sector will be promoted by the royal decree until 2014 this energy strategy on the one hand and political decision on the other were advanced under the flag of energy security and the fulfillment of the 9th principle of the international council of mining and metals icmm which specified that sustainable development in mining areas should maintain among other things employment the mutual understanding between the government and the local mining industry is confronted with vast criticism at the institutional firm and social levels regarding a the disparities generated between electricity generation technologies b the increase of electricity market prices the national competition commission reported the royal decree and c subsequent environmental harm the coal decree has changed the gradual decrease of coal in the spanish energy mix since the end of the 1990s the environmental efficiency gains accumulated over the past several years would be lost as a result of this change of direction in policy in the last fifteen years the coal industry in spain has been under pressure from political decisions that have forced the dismantling of the industry a labor reconversion of mining areas and the conversion of coal fired power plants into combined cycle gas power plants this situation considerably reduced co2 emissions from coal combustion in spain improving the environmental efficiency of the entire economy for many years nevertheless the implementation of the royal decree has changed these trends this paper will examine the environmental consequences of the coal decree from 2010 to 2014 based on actual economic and energy demand requirements and actual electricity mix composition a post keynesian energy age model to forecast energy demand and the derived co2 emissions will be applied to evaluate the change in the reduction of emissions observed in the electricity sector since 2005 and in the spanish economy since 2010 the results will be compared to other alternative scenarios of co2 emissions evolution

sustainability reporting among mining corporations a constructive critique of the gri approach abstract the environmental crisis is giving rise to growing public demand for socially responsible and ecologically viable mining practices large mining corporations are responding by advancing the idea of a sustainable mining industry these responses are accompanied by concerted efforts to advertise a company s relative progress in this direction through the publication of sustainability reports based on the global reporting initiative gri framework many scholars contest the effectiveness of that framework arguing that gri based reports can mislead decision makers who are concerned with sustainability or even camouflage unsustainable practices particularly at the site level few scholars however have scratched below the surface of criticism in order to consider how to improve the effectiveness of that framework this article takes a closer look at this problem by answering the following question what needs to be changed in mining corporations gri based frameworks for the purpose of promoting more meaningful and reliable sustainability performance information this article followed a qualitative methodological approach based on literature reviews and 41 semi structured interviews the analysis was guided by an evaluation of the extent to which the predominant gri based approach to sustainability reporting meets a number of principles of sustainability assessment and reporting known as the bellagiostamp principles this paper outlines a number of specific changes that should be promoted in mining corporations frameworks if their reports are to provide meaningful and accurate information about sustainability progress such changes include a more systematic consideration of site level performance scenario building and legacy effects overall this article corroborates the view that meaningful and reliable standardized disclosures of contributions to sustainability are unlikely to emerge any time soon the geographical dispersion of mining facilities imposes substantial difficulties to the contextualization of sustainability evaluations

stable and strategy proof matching with flexible allotments we introduce a framework of matching with flexible allotments that can be used to model firms with cross division hiring restrictions our framework also allows us to nest some prior models of matching with distributional constraints building upon our recent work on observable substitutability we show that multi division choice functions with flexible allotments enable stable and strategy proof matching these results illustrate the value of clearly mapping when stable and strategy proof matching is possible

a method for allocating renewable energy source subsidies among final energy consumers abstract in a new context of growing need for renewable energy sources res tariff design has become a critical component of energy system regulation a methodology for allocating the cost of res subsidies that ensures an optimal balance between compliance with the main regulatory principles of tariff design and each state s specific policy is of cardinal importance in the current context this paper presents and discusses a novel methodology to allocate the res subsidy costs which consists of distributing them among final energy consumers in proportion to their consumption regardless of the type of final energy consumed liquid fuels gas electricity or coal first the different designs of res subsidies are categorized and a review of a good number of the res burden sharing mechanisms implemented in the eu is presented then the proposed methodology is developed on the basis of the basic regulatory principles underlying the tariff design and the current regulatory context in force in the eu finally to illustrate its actual impact in a real case example the proposed methodology is applied to the spanish system in which the burden of extra costs incurred for res amounts to a very large proportion of the overall energy system costs

the loss averse newsvendor game abstract this paper extends the standard newsvendor problem based upon risk neutrality to a game setting where multiple newsvendors with loss aversion preferences are competing for inventory from a risk neutral supplier we show that if the supplier allocates the total demand among the newsvendors proportional to their order quantities then there exists a unique nash equilibrium order quantity in this newsvendor game we also find that while the demand stealing effect increases the total order quantity of the newsvendors the loss aversion effect decreases the newsvendors total order quantity and if strong enough may lead to a lower total inventory level of the decentralized supply chain than that of an integrated supply chain

optimal electric vehicle production strategy under subsidy and battery recycling abstract government subsidy and battery recycling are two common practical issues in the electric vehicle ev market this study investigates a loss averse ev manufacturer s optimal production strategy under uncertain market demand in the presence of both government subsidy and battery recycling an analytical model is built and related optimal solution and numerical experiments are provided results indicate that increased subsidy promotes the manufacturer s optimal production quantity and expected utility increased battery recycling rate promotes the manufacturer s optimal production quantity however the manufacturer s expected utility decreases with the battery recycling rate if the optimal production quantity is sufficiently small this result implies that the manufacturer may prefer a relatively small battery recycling rate when the market scale is small consequently the government should establish regulations to promote battery recycling for environmental protection we find that either subsidy or battery recycling can offset the negative effects of loss aversion on the optimal production quantity and expected utility the majority of our results still hold if we consider multiple repurposing options for used batteries or an alternative subsidy mechanism in particular the manufacturer s optimal production quantity and expected utility are higher under cost subsidy mechanism than under consumer subsidy mechanism

the message and methods of ethical investment abstract this paper examines a high profile and often provocative segment of the financial industry that of ethical or socially responsible investment by offering an ethical or sustainable product which has the potential to influence so many stakeholders the financial industry is in a unique position to guide change towards corporate sustainability however what message is ethical investment really giving to companies and the financial industry are ethical investors and their rating agencies capable of effectively influencing corporations towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption and are their approaches consistent with the principles of cleaner production this paper first gives an overview some of the definitions ethical investment and the scale of activities under this umbrella term then the actual screening methods and their application is examined a typology of the different ethical mutual funds is given and two cases of ethical funds are described robur s environmental fund and sustainable asset management s sustainability rating tool each are analysed in terms of their potential to either reveal or conceal cleaner production innovations by the firms they assess in order to ascertain where ethical investment might lead companies the effects of ethical investment on companies and back on the asset management companies themselves is explored a reflexive model of corporate and finance sector learning based on the ethical screens is proposed

reserve design unintended consequences and the demise of boston s walk zones we show that in the presence of admissions reserves the effect of the precedence order i e the order in which different types of seats are filled is comparable to the effect of adjusting reser

obviously strategy proof mechanisms what makes some strategy proof mechanisms easier to understand than others to address this question i propose a new solution concept a mechanism is obviously strategy proof osp if it has an equilibrium in obviously dominant strategies this has a behavioral interpretation a strategy is obviously dominant if and only if a cognitively limited agent can recognize it as weakly dominant it also has a classical interpretation a choice rule is osp implementable if and only if it can be carried out by a social planner under a particular regime of partial commitment i fully characterize the set of osp mechanisms in a canonical setting with one dimensional types and transfers a laboratory experiment tests and corroborates the theory

economic feasibility of responsible small scale gold mining abstract artisanal mining am activities are generally seen as a source of concern owing to their illegality and the environmental pollution that they cause but in recent years it has been demonstrated that gold mining can be performed on a small scale mining ssm in a responsible way outside of the artisanal dimension a previous study by the same authors demonstrated how mineral resources and reserves can be managed to achieve a sustainable form of ssm based on the concepts of proving a minimum reserve and working with replication of the operation on subsequent small reserves it was shown that ssm can be viable with 1 100 of the reserves necessary to prove the feasibility of a large scale mining business however that work made some simplifications in terms of value of money over time and taxation the present work continues by undertaking a realistic analysis of economic feasibility through a cash flow analysis cfa on various scenarios of investment strategy for the ssm business considering the minimum reserve approach along with the traditional mining business strategy the results show that the minimum reserve approach is always more attractive from an economic point of view in terms of value of the project rate of return of investment and payback time finally the most suitable profile for investors in the ssm business is discussed and it is shown how small scale investors and large corporations can fit into this approach

loss averse newsvendor model with two ordering opportunities and market information updating abstract a fashion supply chain characterized by a long lead time and a short selling season is considered in this paper facing demand uncertainty the risk averse retailer has two opportunities to make order decisions before the demand is realized the risk aversion is modelled as a penalty to the decision maker the retailer if a target profit is not attained we derive the retailer s optimal ordering decisions and analyze the monotonicity behaviours of the critical market signal the optimal first stage order quantity and the optimal expected payoff with respect to the penalty coefficient we also examine the impact of demand forecast quality on the retailer s decisions and extend the study to the case where order cancellation is allowed

il legal assignments in school choice in public school choice students with strict preferences are assigned to schools schools are endowed with priorities over students incorporating constraints from different applications priorities are often modelled as choice functions over sets of students it has been argued that the most desirable criterion for an assignment is stability there should not exist any blocking pair no student shall prefer some school to her assigned school and have higher priority than some student who got into that school or the school has an empty seat we propose a blocking notion where in addition it must be possible to assign the student to her preferred school we then define the following stability criterion for a set of assignments a set of assignments is legal if and only if any assignment outside the set is blocked with some assignment in the set and no two assignments inside the set block each other we show that under very basic conditions on priorities there always exists a unique legal set of assignments and that this set has a structure common to the set of stable assignments i it is a lattice and ii it satisfies the rural hospitals theorem the student optimal legal assignment is efficient and provides a solution for the conflict between stability and efficiency

leveling the playing field sincere and sophisticated players in the boston mechanism empirical and experimental evidence suggests different levels of sophistication among families in the boston public school student assignment plan we analyze the preference revelation game induced by the boston mechanism with sincere players who report their true preferences and sophisticated players who play a best response we characterize the set of nash equilibrium outcomes as the set of stable matchings of a modified economy where sincere students lose priority to sophisticated students any sophisticated student weakly prefers her assignment under the pareto dominant nash equilibrium of the boston mechanism to her assignment under the recently adopted student optimal stable mechanism jel d82 i21

optimal allocation without money an engineering approach we study the allocation of heterogeneous services to agents with incomplete information and without monetary transfers agents have private multidimensional utilities over services drawn from commonly known priors the social planner s goal is to maximize a potentially complex public objective for tractability we take an engineering approach in which we solve a large market approximation and convert the solution into a feasible finite market mechanism that still yields good results we apply this framework to real data from boston to design a mechanism that assigns students to public schools in order to maximize a linear combination of utilitarian and max min welfare subject to capacity and transportation constraints we show how to optimally solve a large market formulation with more than 868 types of students and 77 schools and we translate the solution into a finite market mechanism that significantly outperforms the baseline plan chosen by the city in terms of efficiency equity and predic

evolution model with time lag effects for the coal industrial symbiosis system a case study of ordos china abstract industrial metabolism and symbiotic coupling has become the base paradigm of green low carbon development of coal mining in the coal industrial symbiosis system ciss stability is increasingly fragile because of its unique industrial links and growth environment referring to the classic lotka volterra population ecology model and synthesizing the periodicity and time lag effects of industrial development two entirely novel and more generalized ciss evolution models with time lag effects in the competitive and reciprocal scenarios are constructed respectively moreover the conditions of ciss stability are proven and discussed through mathematical analysis simulation and theorem validation were carried out by taking the largest chinese coal city ordos as the research object the main results are as follows first the time lag effect is an important factor leading to ciss instability the shorter the time lag within the ciss the better the collaboration between industries and the easier it is that the ciss will achieve a stable ecological balance second when the power of competition dominates the development of industries within ciss will be inhibited when the power of cooperation dominates the evolution of ciss will toward a positive direction third a certain degree of self inhibition will contribute to the stable development of the industrial symbiosis system at last the social service industry not only can boost the industrial diversity within ciss but also can promote the co evolution of original and exogenous industries which plays a positive role in the healthy and stable development of ciss

matching with contracts we develop a model of matching with contracts which incorporates as special cases the college admissions problem the kelso crawford labor market matching model and ascending package auctions we introduce a new law of aggregate demand for the case of discrete heterogeneous workers and show that when workers are substitutes this law is satisfied by profit maximizing firms when workers are substitutes and the law is satisfied truthful reporting is a dominant strategy for workers in a worker offering auction matching algorithm we also parameterize a large class of preferences satisfying the two conditions

reference dependent electric vehicle production strategy considering subsidies and consumer trade offs abstract in this paper we extend previous reference dependence newsvendor research by incorporating both consumer trade offs and government subsidies to evaluate the relevant influences on the optimal electric vehicle ev production decisions we present the properties of the model derive the closed form solutions for the model given the relevant constraints and use numerical experiments to illustrate the results we find that subsidies loss aversion the performance of both evs and internal combustion engine powered vehicles icevs and the coefficient of variation of demand are significant factors influencing the optimal production quantity and the expected utilities of ev production the high selling price and other high costs of icevs help offset the influence of loss aversion whereas the high costs of ev enhance loss aversion our study enriches the literature on subsidies for evs by establishing a behavioral model to incorporate the decision bias in terms of loss aversion at the firm level these findings provide guiding principles for both policymakers and ev managers for making better strategies to promote evs in the early immature market

what parents want school preferences and school choice we investigate parents preferences for school attributes in a unique data set of survey administrative census and spatial data using a conditional logit incorporating characteristics of households schools and home school distance we show that most families have strong preferences for schools academic performance parents also value schools socio economic composition and distance which may limit the potential of school choice to improve academic standards most of the variation in preferences for school quality across socio economic groups arises from differences in the quality of accessible schools rather than differences in parents preferences although more advantaged parents have stronger preferences for academic performance

sustainability as it pertains to minerals and energy supply and demand a new interpretative perspective for assessing progress this paper addresses the pressing research gap that demands an overarching framework to assess the progress of mining minerals and energy supply and demand networks towards sustainable development the framework proposes a hierarchy from sustainable development which begins at the global scale to operating sustainably which begins at the level of unit operations the two concepts overlap in the middle with a focus upon regional economies guidance is provided to assess the performance of both dynamic dimensions sustainable development is assessed in terms of equity and operating sustainably is assessed in terms of the changing states of maturity of the activities being monitored the papers from this special volume were the input sample to assess the extent to which these performance dimensions were being addressed in analysing the progress towards sustainable development it was found that papers were mainly focussed on equity within supply countries but they provided little attention to the other three equity conditions proposed demand met at a reasonable price future needs met and profitable transfer agents the transition towards operating sustainably was promising with results that revealed progress along the proposed four stage maturity journey which includes 1 solely profit maximising 2 efficiency focussed 3 integrating by connecting and 4 adaptable resilient a comprehensive definition for operating sustainably is proposed for discussion and refinement it is suggested that the definition proposed can be used for selecting appropriate indicators for measuring and documenting progress

reference dependence in multilocation newsvendor models a structural analysis we propose a behavioral theory to predict actual ordering behavior in multilocation inventory systems the theory rests on a well known stylized fact of human behavior people s preferences are reference dependent we incorporate reference dependence into the newsvendor framework by assuming that there are psychological costs of leftovers and stockouts we also hypothesize that the psychological aversion to leftovers is greater than the disutility for stockouts we then experimentally test the proposed theory in both the centralized and decentralized inventory structures using subjects motivated by substantial financial incentives consistent with the proposed theory actual orders exhibit the so called pull to center bias and the degree of bias is greater in the high profit margin than in the low profit margin condition these systematic biases are shown to eliminate the risk pooling benefit when the demands across store locations are strongly correlated because the proposed model nests the standard inventory and ex post inventory error minimization theories as special cases one can systematically evaluate the predictive power of each alternative using the generalized likelihood principle we structurally estimate all three theories using the experimental data and the estimation results strongly suggest that the proposed behavioral theory captures actual orders and profits better we also conduct two experiments to validate the behavioral model by manipulating the relative salience of the psychological costs of leftovers versus that of stockouts to alleviate the pull to center bias

on responsiveness of top trading cycles mechanism to priority based affirmative action abstract in school choice priority based affirmative action favors minority students by means of promoting their priority ranking at schools this paper investigates the responsiveness of the top trading cycles mechanism to priority based affirmative action when schools priority structure satisfies a certain acyclicity condition when schools priority under the problem without affirmative action satisfies virtual homogeneity condition a weak responsiveness result is obtained

the newsvendor problem review and directions for future research in this paper we review the contributions to date for analyzing the newsvendor problem our focus is on examining the specific extensions for analyzing this problem in the context of modeling customer demand supplier costs and the buyer risk profile more specifically we analyze the impact of market price marketing effort and stocking quantity on customer demand how supplier prices can serve as a coordination mechanism in a supply chain setting integrating alternative supplier pricing policies within the newsvendor framework and how the buyer s risk profile moderates the newsvendor order quantity decision for each of these areas we summarize the current literature and develop extensions finally we also propose directions for future research

structural estimation of a model of school choices the boston mechanism vs its alternatives we model household choice of schools under the boston mechanism bm and develop a new method applicable to a broad class of mechanisms to fully solve the choice problem even if it is infeasible

how to control controlled school choice we characterize choice rules for schools that regard students as substitutes while expressing preferences for a diverse student body the stable or fair assignment of students to schools requires the latter to regard the former as substitutes such a requirement is in conflict with the reality of schools preferences for diversity we show that the conflict can be useful in the sense that certain unique rules emerge from imposing both considerations we also provide welfare comparisons for students when different choice rules are employed

a normative empirical analysis of state duties and corporate responsibilities related to adverse human rights impacts on the amazonian minerals energy frontier abstract the article probes the existence of a minerals energy complex mec a concept developed in south africa to describe the strong interlinkages between the mining and energy sector in the brazilian amazon within the framework of the mec the authors conduct a normative analysis based on the united nations guiding principles for business and human rights ungps of the state duties and corporate responsibilities for adverse human rights impacts in the complex the authors use a single in depth case study approach focussing on the case of the belo monte hydroelectric dam in the amazonian state of para the mec proves to be a useful framework for studying the advancement of hydroelectricity and mining projects on the amazonian frontier the analysis indicates that the brazilian minerals and energy sectors are mutually dependent and have overlapping interests and decision making structures applying the mec framework to the belo monte case serves to clarify and detangle the relationships between the various actors associated with the dam s adverse impacts this provides a foundation for the normative analysis of the responsibilities and actions required of each actor based on the internationally accepted standards in the ungps by applying the mec as an analytical research framework and drawing on the ungps for normative guidance the present study contributes to the academic literature on corporate responsibility as well as providing policy and decision makers with a normative empirical analysis that can be drawn upon to improve policy and ensure that corporate activity contributes to sustainable development

decision bias in the newsvendor problem with a known demand distribution experimental evidence in the newsvendor problem a decision maker orders inventory before a one period selling season with stochastic demand if too much is ordered stock is left over at the end of the period whereas if too little is ordered sales are lost the expected profit maximizing order quantity is well known but little is known about how managers actually make these decisions we describe two experiments that investigate newsvendor decisions across different profit conditions results from these studies demonstrate that choices systematically deviate from those that maximize expected profit subjects order too few of high profit products and too many of low profit products these results are not consistent with risk aversion risk seeking preferences prospect theory preferences waste aversion stockout aversion or the consequences of underestimating opportunity costs two explanations are consistent with the data one subjects behave as if their utility function incorporates a preference to reduce ex post inventory error the absolute difference between the chosen quantity and realized demand two subjects suffer from the anchoring and insufficient adjustment bias feedback and training did not mitigate inventory order errors we suggest techniques to improve decision making

are cleaner production innovations the solution for small mining operations in poor regions the case of padua in brazil abstract mining in santo antonio de padua a city located in the underdeveloped northeast area of the rio de janeiro state in brazil is currently the most important economic activity in the region unfortunately companies lag behind technologically and use rudimentary production methods which cause serious environmental problems social implications and poor competitiveness in order to seek sustainable solutions for the padua mining region local support organizations have created initiatives to develop endogenous cleaner production innovations to enhance the industry s sustainability performance during this process some barriers for mining companies to adopt these developed technologies have emerged this research draws on the cleaner production sustainability and innovation literature and uses a qualitative research with multiple sources of evidence to understand the dynamics behind the padua mining region more specifically this research explores how initiatives to improve the sustainability performance led by local support organizations took place analyzes their outcomes i e cleaner production innovations and identifies some of the barriers to technology adoption this paper offers three key research contributions first we claim that cleaner production approaches alone cannot create sustainable mining regions in emerging and developing countries but they are definitively a step in the right direction since they provide the base for expanding the scope towards sustainability second we argue that technology cannot be understood as the panacea for sustainability because it will never represent the complete solution for companies sustainability problems third we claim that companies can face a managerial trap if they pursue enhanced sustainability performance solely through the adoption of cleaner production innovations

resolving conflicting preferences in school choice the boston mechanism reconsidered the boston mechanism is among the most popular school choice pro cedures in use yet the mechanism has been criticized for its poor incentive and welfare performances which led the boston public schools to recently replace it with gale and shapley s deferred acceptance algorithm henceforth da the da elicits truthful revelation of ordinal preferences whereas the boston mechanism does not but the latter induces participants to reveal their cardinal preferences i e their relative preference intensities whereas the former does not we show that cardinal preferences matter more when families have similar ordinal preferences and schools have coarse priorities two common features of many school choice environ ments speci cally when students have the same ordinal preferences and schools have no priorities the boston mechanism pareto dominates the da in ex ante wel fare the boston mechanism may not harm but rather bene t participants who may not strategize well in the presence of school priorities the boston mechanism also tends to facilitate a greater access than the da to good schools by those lack ing priorities at those schools these results contrast with the standard view and cautions against a hasty rejection of the boston mechanism in favor of mechanisms such as the da

barriers to the development of china s shale gas industry abstract shale gas has become a promising onshore energy prospect in china as much as the country aspires for greater energy independence through the use of its shale gas reserves this process is slowed down by the combined weight of relative inexperience lack of technology geographical complexity a hostile economic environment a disincentive pipeline regime and a complex land ownership system to foster a better understanding of the current circumstances of the country s shale gas sector a panel of scholars and experts shared their perspectives and insider knowledge on china s shale gas industry it was found that some of the country s man made institutional barriers are factors that have been hindering shale gas development in china in addition to natural conditions such as water concerns and the complex geography of shale fields resolving this situation necessitates breaking the monopoly that major state owned oil companies have over high quality shale gas resources opening pipeline network access providing geological data developing the domestic oil service market creating conditions for fair competition between service providers and improving the water management system

responsible mineral and energy futures views at the nexus societal prosperity is underpinned by access to the increasingly interdependent resources of minerals and energy in an era of mineral resource constraints and radical transition in the energy sector this paper reviews the extent to which a long term view of production and use is adopted in both fields a long term view including the mineral energy nexus is deemed to be necessary although not sufficient for managing future resource constraints and energy transitions alarmingly it identifies that the future of minerals resources and production is generally considered 5 10 years ahead rather than several decades or more as for energy additionally the sectors are generally studied independently rather than with a focus on the nexus with these findings as evidence of an unaddressed problem the paper then focusses on the current forces for change in the minerals industry namely community drivers regarding social licence to operate new technologies and consumer and government drivers on responsible minerals as discussions of sustainable development become displaced by the emerging discourse of responsible minerals what is adopted and discarded whilst responsible minerals considers chain of custody it does not adopt a long term view and overlooks the mineral energy nexus using three illustrative cases at the nexus of i rare earths renewables ii coal steel and iii uranium nuclear we extend the theoretical discussion on responsible with a range of contemporary examples from the perspectives of producing australia and consuming countries japan switzerland and propose a research agenda for an expanded notion of responsible minerals which recognises the complexity of the mineral energy nexus and connects it to progressing sustainable futures