exploring the antecedents of logistics social responsibility a focus on chinese firms fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221025 2011221016 national natural science foundation of china 70802052 academic outstanding youthful research talent plan of fujian province ja10001s national research foundation for doctoral program of higher education of china 20100121120013 national ministry of education of china humanities and social science 10yjc630010 ncet 10 0712

measuring corporate sustainability management a data envelopment analysis approach despite the increased awareness of the conceptual and practical definition of corporate sustainability questions remain on how to measure performance the objective of this paper is to advance our understanding of the measurement of corporate sustainability management by introducing a data envelopment analysis dea technique and an empirical case of a korean electronics industry in particular we employ cross efficiency in the presence of dual role factors by reflecting some complexity of a real world case donations for tax benefits by employing the combined approach of cross efficiency and dual role factors we offer a new model to measure corporate sustainability management the new model and study findings contribute to the body of knowledge in corporate sustainability management and its performance measurement

the effectiveness of leniency programs when firms choose the degree of collusion abstract an antitrust authority grants leniency pre and post investigation it chooses the probability of an investigation firms pick the degree of collusion the more they collude the higher are profits but so is the probability of detection firms thus trade off higher profits against higher expected fines if firms are sufficiently patient leniency is ineffective it may even increase collusion increasing the probability of an investigation at low levels does not increase deterrence increasing the probability of an investigation at high levels reduces collusion yet never completely with bare pre investigation leniency deterrence is better than without leniency if firms are sufficiently impatient granting leniency pre and post is better than merely pre investigation

combining cartel penalties and private damage actions the impact on cartel prices abstract in many countries antitrust enforcement by competition authorities through prosecution and the imposition of penalties is complemented in price fixing cases by private damage actions which should affect both cartel deterrence and the prices set by those cartels that do form we show that the impact of combining penalties and damages on cartel prices is not clearcut and depends on both the nature of the penalty regime and the way that damages are calculated we demonstrate this by focusing on two ways of calculating damages that have been advocated in practice and two different forms of the widely used revenue based penalty regime when the simple form of revenue based penalties is in force the standard method of calculating damages worsens its harmful pricing effects whereas the proposed alternative method of calculating damages can overturn them when a more sophisticated form of revenue based penalties is in operation imposing damages will improve its beneficial pricing effects under both methods of damage calculation but the alternative method is more effective in all cases combining penalties and damages improves deterrence

research advances in environmentally and socially sustainable operations abstract consumers and governments are pressuring firms to strike a balance between profitability and sustainability however this balance can only be maintained in the long run if the firm can take a holistic approach to sustain the financial flow profit resource flow planet and development flow people for the entire ecosystem comprising poor producers in emerging developing markets global supply chain partners consumers in developed countries and the planet by considering the flows associated with different entities within the ecosystem we classify and summarize recent operations research management science or ms research developments also we identify several gaps for future research in this important area

long run equilibrium modeling of emissions allowance allocation systems in electric power markets carbon dioxide allowance trading systems for electricity generators are in place in the european union and in several u s states an important question in the design of such systems is how allowances are to be initially allocated by auction by giving away fixed amounts grandfathering or by allocating based on present or recent output investment or other decisions the latter system can bias investment operations and product pricing decisions and increase costs relative to the other systems a nonlinear complementarity model is proposed for investigating the long run equilibria that would result under alternative systems for power markets characterized by time varying demand and multiple technology types existence of equilibria is shown under mild conditions solutions for simple systems show that allocating allowances to new capacity based on fuel use or generator type can yield large distortions in capacity investment invert the operating order of power plants and inflate consumer costs the distortions can be smaller for tighter co2 restrictions and are somewhat mitigated if there is also a market for electricity capacity or minimum run restrictions on coal plants distortions are also less if allowances are allocated to plants in proportion to sales rather than capacity

design for the environment a quality based model for green product development green product development which addresses environmental issues through product design and innovation as opposed to the traditional end of pipe control approach is receiving significant attention from customers industries and governments around the world in this paper we develop a quality based model for analyzing the strategic and policy issues concerning the development of products with conflicting traditional and environmental attributes on the demand side of the problem we use the framework of conjoint analysis to structure the preferences of the ordinary and green customers on the supply side we apply the theories in optimal product design and market segmentation to analyze the producer s strategic decisions regarding the number of products introduced and their prices and qualities on the policy side we evaluate the effects of environmental standards on the economic and environmental consequences of green product development by jointly considering the interactions among the customers preferences the producer s product strategies and the environmental standards imposed by governments we present some interesting findings that can be used to manage and regulate the development of green products two major findings show that green product development and stricter environmental standards might not necessarily benefit the environment

the distortive effects of antitrust fines based on revenue in most jurisdictions antitrust fines are based on affected commerce rather than on collusive profits and in some others caps on fines are introduced based on total firm sales rather than on affected commerce we uncover a number of distortions that these policies generate propose simple models to characterise their comparative static properties and quantify them with simulations based on market data we conclude by discussing the obvious need to depart from these distortive rules of thumb that appear to have the potential to substantially reduce social welfare how competition authorities cas should set fines and how they actually do so in practice is a highly debated issue among antitrust practitioners in europe where fines are often set directly by the cas appeal courts have often slashed cas decisions precisely on the grounds of how they set the fines an illuminating example is the uk competition appeal tribunal cat decision in 2011 to cut the fines set by the office of fair trading oft for members of the construction recruitment cartel substantially on the grounds that the wrong measure of affected commerce was used

operations research for green logistics an overview of aspects issues contributions and challenges the worldwide economic growth of the last century has given rise to a vast consumption of goods while globalization has led to large streams of goods all over the world the production transportation storage and consumption of all these goods however have created large environmental problems today global warming created by large scale emissions of greenhouse gasses is a top environmental concern governments action groups and companies are asking for measures to counter this threat operations research has a long tradition in improving operations and especially in reducing costs in this paper we present a review that highlights the contribution of operations research to green logistics which involves the integration of environmental aspects in logistics we give a sketch of the present and possible developments focussing on design planning and control in a supply chain for transportation inventory of products and facility decisions while doing this we also indicate several areas where environmental aspects could be included in or models for logistics

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

inter linking issues and dimensions in sustainability reporting during the last decade sustainability reporting sr has been increasingly adopted by corporations worldwide this is evidenced by the adoption of several guidelines such as the iso 14000 series the social accountability 8000 standard and the gri sustainability guidelines sr shows promise to help corporate leaders and their employees to contribute towards achieving sustainable societies however most of the guidelines and standards address sustainability issues through comparmentalisation thereby leading to the separation of the economic environmental and social dimensions due to these divisive approaches holistic assessments of the effects of their efforts are seldom properly integrated into coporate decisions and procedures to make improvements for example through cleaner production worker health and safety consumer safety and reductions in the negative short and long term social and environmental impacts this paper analyses sr reports from three companies with the help of grounded theory s constant comparative analysis this analytical framework helped the authors to systematically assess the degree to which the companies addressed economic ecological and social issues separately or in an integrated and inter linked manner from the inter linkages found a new category is proposed to be added to future sr this new category can help corporate sr planners and researchers on sustainability reports to better understand how the company leaders understand their responsibilities with regard to sd these inter connectednesses are highly relevant in many short and long term dimensions of supply chain management global warming ecological disruption and societal equity issues especially with regard to the local national and global energy issues of fuels and oils the central themes of the conference at which this paper was originally presented it also plays a key role in real long term changes towards sustainability where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on planet earth

sustainable supply chain management a case study of british aerospace bae systems sustainability is viewed as possessing environmental economic and social dimensions the sustainability approaches adopted by individual businesses and the supply chains to which they belong must include these facets these three components of sustainability are collectively termed the triple bottom line or 3bl the idea of a triple bottom line which originated in the 1990s implies attending to the traditional financial aspects of an organisation as well as to the social and environmental criteria the economic aspect of the 3bl refers to profit making and attaining and sustaining competitive advantage through sustainability the environmental dimension involves factors relating to climate change global warming air land and water pollution or preservation and ozone layer depletion the social aspect involves health and safety issues community well being employment opportunities charities cultural sensitivities and requirements and organisational behaviour as global warming climate change and depletion of resources are on a rise alongside greater demand for improvement in business processes economic standards and technology it has become necessary to sustain processes along the value chain in order to contribute to sustainability this paper examines the drivers of sustainability and related key features based on extant literature and a case study an overview is given of the british aerospace bae systems sustainability initiatives and activities on the basis of the bae systems case study two resultant frameworks emerge that display the interdependence of the triple bottom line and the essential elements required for a sustainable supply chain

marginal and conditional probabilities of excess demand abstract this note compares and illustrates two criteria for classifying observations on a non clearing market namely the marginal probability of excess demand and the probability of excess demand conditional on the observed quantity

models and estimation of disequilibrium for centrally planned economies the planned level of output is an important variable in modelling centrally planned economies and the present paper discusses several disequilibrium models in which the plan level is an endogenous variable a key relationship in such a model is the plan adjustment equation which is the counterpart of the usual priceadjustment equation employed in models of free economies seemingly minor differences in assumptions lead to markedly different econometric models the coherency properties of these are studied and several likelihood functions are derived the most complex of the models includes both endogenous plan levels and endogenous prices

modeling the birth and death of cartels with an application to evaluating competition policy one of the primary challenges to measuring the impact of antitrust policy on collusion is that the cartel population is unobservable we observe only the population of discovered cartels to address this challenge a model of cartel creation and dissolution is developed to endogenously derive the populations of cartels and discovered cartels it is then shown how one can infer the impact of antitrust policy on the population of cartels by measuring its impact on the population of discovered cartels in particular the change in the distribution on the duration of discovered cartels could be informative in assessing whether a new antitrust policy is reducing the latent rate of cartels

a stochastic aggregate production planning model in a green supply chain considering flexible lead times nonlinear purchase and shortage cost functions in this paper we develop a stochastic programming approach to solve a multi period multi product multi site aggregate production planning problem in a green supply chain for a medium term planning horizon under the assumption of demand uncertainty the proposed model has the following features i the majority of supply chain cost parameters are considered ii quantity discounts to encourage the producer to order more from the suppliers in one period instead of splitting the order into periodical small quantities are considered iii the interrelationship between lead time and transportation cost is considered as well as that between lead time and greenhouse gas emission level iv demand uncertainty is assumed to follow a pre specified distribution function v shortages are penalized by a general multiple breakpoint function to persuade producers to reduce backorders as much as possible vi some indicators of a green supply chain such as greenhouse gas emissions and waste management are also incorporated into the model the proposed model is first a nonlinear mixed integer programming which is converted into a linear one by applying some theoretical and numerical techniques due to the convexity of the model the local solution obtained from linear programming solvers is also the global solution finally a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed model

optimal cartel pricing in the presence of an antitrust authority the dynamic behavior of a price fixing cartel is explored when it is concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed consistent with preceding static theories the cartel s steady state price is decreasing in the damage multiple and the probability of detection however contrary to those theories it is independent of the level of fixed fines it is also shown that the cartel prices higher when a more competitive benchmark price is used in calculating damages

tests of the chronic shortage hypothesis the case of poland in the analysis of econometric disequilibrium models it is common to test the n ull hypothesis of equilibrium against the disequilibrium alternat ive this paper tests the null hypothesis of all excess demand tha all observations correspond to positive excess demand against the alternative that permits excess demand of either sign the auth ors use a test due to rogers 1984 which their monte carlo experime nts suggest performs well in small samples as well as a quasi like lihood ratio test which is a suggestive heuristic procedure the da ta are from the aggregate consumption goods market in poland 1955 80 and the paper is thus a test of j kornai s assertion that chroni c shortage characterizes such cpes the results conclusively reject the all excess demand hypothesis for the polish case and the rogers test promises to be of considerable practical use copyright 1988 by mit press

optimal production planning with emissions trading emissions trading is a market based mechanism for curbing emissions and it has been implemented in europe north america and several other parts of the world to study its impact on production planning we develop a dynamic production model where a manufacturer produces a single product to satisfy random market demands the manufacturer has access to both a green and a regular production technology of which the former is more costly but yields fewer emissions to comply with the emissions regulations the manufacturer can buy or sell the allowances in each period via forward contracts in an outside market with stochastic trading prices while needing to keep a nonnegative allowance account balance at the end of the planning horizon we first derive several important structural properties of the model and based upon them we characterize the optimal emissions trading and production policies that minimize the manufacturer s expected total discounted cost in particular the optimal emissions trading pol

penalizing cartels the case for basing penalties on price overcharge yannis katsoulacos acknowledges that this research has been co financed by the european union european social fund esf and greek national funds through the operational program education and lifelong learning of the national strategic reference framework nsrf research funding program aristeia coleg

a tip of the iceberg the probability of catching cartels summary reliable estimates of crime detection probabilities could help in designing better sanctions and improve our understanding of the efficiency of law enforcement for cartels we only have limited knowledge on the rate at which these illegal practices are discovered in comparison to previous works this paper offers a more parsimonious and simple to use method to estimate time dependent cartel discovery rates while allowing for heterogeneity across firms it draws on capture recapture methods that are frequently used in ecology to make inferences on various wildlife population characteristics an application of this method provides evidence that less than a fifth of cartelising firms are discovered copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

the deterrent effect of antitrust enforcement in this paper we formulate and test a model of collusive pricing in the presence of antitrust enforcement we show that a cartel s optimal price is likely to be neither the competitive price nor the price that the cartel would set in the absence of antitrust enforcement but rather an intermediate price that depends on the levels of antitrust enforcement efforts and penalties our empirical results reveal that increasing antitrust enforcement in the presence of a credible threat of large damage awards has the deterrent effect of reducing mark ups in the bread industry

do corporate global environmental standards create or destroy market value arguments can be made on both sides of the question of whether a stringent global corporate environmental standard represents a competitive asset or liability for multinational enterprises mnes investing in emerging and developing markets analyzing the global environmental standards of a sample of u s based mnes in relation to their stock market performance we find that firms adopting a single stringent global environmental standard have much higher market values as measured by tobin sq than firms defaulting to less stringent or poorly enforced host country standards thus developing countries that use lax environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment may end up attracting poorer quality and perhaps less competitive firms our results also suggest that externalities are incorporated to a significant extent in firm valuation we discuss plausible reasons for this observation

modelling parallel markets in centrally planned economies the case of the automobile market in poland most empirical work dealing with socialist economies appears to be oriented towards macroeconomic problems or at least to the study of highly aggregated time series examples are provided by howard 1976 lacko 1975 podkaminer 1982 portes and winter 1980 portes et al 1983 1984a b 1985 welfe 1983 and charemza and gronicki 1988 only relatively infrequently has a particular market been the target of detailed empirical investigation a case in point is the study of the hungarian car market by kapitany kornai and szabo 1984 and chapter 15 of this volume

performance evaluation and a flow allocation decision model for a sustainable supply chain of an apparel industry abstract there is a growing concern that business enterprises and their supply chains focus primarily on economic activities and ignore their impact on the environment and society this paper aims to help decision makers managers and practitioners to achieve economic growth societal development and environmental protection by developing sustainable supply chain performance measures and proposes a partner selection and flow allocation decision making model survey data from 278 business organizations from the indian apparel industry supply chain network were used and an integrated method of structural equation modeling fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and fuzzy multi objective linear programming was applied to the proposed model the results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicate that the survey respondents considered sustainable production performance to be of prime importance which thus indicates its significance in developing a sustainable supply chain for the apparel industry to illustrate the use of the proposed model for partner selection and flow allocation decision making real time data from an apparel manufacturer are presented optimal results were obtained for two strategies sustainability and cost saving to show a cost benefit trade off when developing a sustainable supply chain using comparative performance a decision maker can choose an appropriate strategy based on cost benefit analysis of the presented trade offs

strategic leniency and cartel enforcement the cornerstone of cartel enforcement in the united states and elsewhere is a commitment to the lenient prosecution of early confessors a burgeoning game theoretical literature is ambiguous regarding the impacts of leniency i develop a theoretical model of cartel behavior that provides empirical predictions and moment conditions and apply the model to the complete set of indictments and information reports issued over a 20 year span statistical tests are consistent with the notion that leniency enhances deterrence and detection capabilities the results have implications for market efficiency and enforcement efforts against cartels and other forms of organized crime jel d43 l12 l13 k21 in 1993 the department of justice doj introduced a new leniency program with the intent of destabilizing existing cartels and deterring new cartels the program commits the doj to the lenient prosecution of early confessors in particular it guarantees complete amnesty from federal prosecution to the first confessor from each cartel provided that an investigation into the confes sor s cartel is not already underway it also offers discretionary penalty reductions to conspirators who confess when an investigation is already ongoing the new leniency program has become the cornerstone of cartel enforcement efforts in the united states e g scott d hammond 2004 and recently has inspired antitrust authorities in australia canada the european union japan south korea and elsewhere to introduce similar programs oecd 2002 2003 this paper tests the efficacy of the new leniency program the results have implications for market efficiency and enforcement efforts against cartels and other forms of organized crime a burgeoning game theoretical literature is ambiguous regarding the impacts of leniency a common finding is that leniency may destabilize cartels because conspirators can simultane

environmental safety stock the impacts of regulatory and voluntary control policies on production planning inventory control and environmental performance abstract this paper analyzes the impacts of different pollution control policies on a firm s decisions of production planning and inventory control based on a stochastic model with both demand and environmental uncertainties we derive the optimal policies of production planning and inventory control under both regulatory and voluntary pollution control approaches and investigate their operational and environmental effects we establish that the conventional wisdom which suggests that reduction of environmental waste at the end of a production process also decreases the stock and throughput levels of a production system is not necessarily true rather a regulatory environmental standard that limits the total amount of waste may induce the firm to raise its planned stock level which would lead to a higher expected amount of environmental wastes before the standard is enforced as well as environmental risks at other stages of the production process the additional planned stock level which is termed environmental safety stock can be reversed by using the voluntary control approach that provides the firm with the flexibility to occasionally exceed the environmental standard we also conduct numerical experiments to analyze the effects of different values of model parameters under different control approaches the analytical results provide new insights to the impacts of a firm s production and inventory decisions on the natural environment as well as to the choices of pollution control approaches by decision makers in both the private and public sectors

shared savings contracts for indirect materials in supply chains channel profits and environmental impacts there are many materials for which the quantity needed by a firm is at best indirectly related to the quantity of final product produced by that firm such as solvents in manufacturing processes or office supplies for any such indirect materials an inescapable incentive conflict exists the buyer wishes to minimize consumption of these indirect materials while the supplier s profits depend on increasing volume both buyer and supplier can exert effort to reduce consumption hence making the overall supply chain more efficient however no supplier will voluntarily participate unless contract terms are fundamentally revised this can be done through a variety of shared savings contracts where both parties profit from a consumption reduction this paper analyzes several such contracts currently in use for chemicals purchasing we show that such contracts can always increase supply chain profits but need not lead to reduced consumption we analyze equilibrium effort levels consumption and total profits and show how these change with the contract parameters we find that the goals of maximizing joint profits and minimizing consumption are generally not aligned also surprisingly a decrease in a cost parameter can lead to a decrease in profits it may be necessary but is always possible to renegotiate the shared savings contract to reap the benefits of a cost decrease

what can the duration of discovered cartels tell us about the duration of all cartels estimates of average cartel duration and the annual probability of cartel death are based on data for discovered cartels it is recognised that these estimates could be biased because the population of discovered cartels may not be a representative sample of the latent population of cartels this article constructs a birth death discovery process to investigate the source and direction of possible biases bayesian inference is used to provide bounds on the extent of the bias and deliver an improved set of beliefs on the probability of cartel death

cartel pricing dynamics in the presence of an antitrust authority cartel pricing is characterized when firms are concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed balancing concerns about maintaining the stability of the cartel with those of avoiding detection the cartel may either i gradually raise price to its steady state level or ii gradually raise price and then have it decline to its steady state level antitrust laws may have a perverse effect as they make cartel stability easier and thus allow for higher cartel prices

social issues in supply chains capabilities link responsibility risk opportunity and performance abstract social issues in the supply chain are defined as product or process related aspects of operations that affect human safety welfare and community development drawing from related literatures basic constructs related to capabilities and risk are defined and used to underpin case research in five multinational firms this data extended our understanding of three key social management capabilities monitoring collaboration and innovation moreover the field research revealed four key linkages that detail how managers actively can work toward mitigating social risks creating new opportunities and improving firm performance collectively these capabilities and linkages establish the basis for an integrative framework and five research propositions

dynamics of supply chain networks with corporate social responsibility through integrated environmental decision making in this paper we develop a dynamic framework for the modeling and analysis of supply chain networks with corporate social responsibility through integrated environmental decision making through a multilevel supply chain network we model the multicriteria decision making behavior of the various decision makers manufacturers retailers and consumers which includes the maximization of profit the minimization of emission waste and the minimization of risk we explore the dynamic evolution of the product flows the associated product prices as well as the levels of social responsibility activities on the network until an equilibrium pattern is achieved we provide some qualitative properties of the dynamic trajectories under suitable assumptions and propose a discrete time algorithm which is then applied to track the evolution of the levels of social responsibility activities product flows and prices over time we illustrate the model and computational procedure with several numerical examples

cartel overcharges an empirical analysis abstract using 406 overcharge estimates the study analyzes the impact of cartel characteristics and the market environment on the magnitude of overcharges attained by cartels in different geographic markets and during six antitrust law regimes starting from the 18th century the median overcharge achieved by cartels is 20 percent of selling price as predicted by cartel theory market structure is an important determinant of the overcharge level markets where cartels have high market shares tend to have higher overcharges the number of cartel participants and the size inequality among them are inversely related to the overcharge level international cartels impose higher overcharges than domestic cartels overcharges attained in the us and european markets tend to be lower than overcharges achieved in the asian markets and the rest of the world results on the impact of changes in the antitrust law environment over time on the size of cartel overcharges are mixed however there is some evidence indicating that the lowest overcharges are associated with the latest antitrust law period

surprises in the consumption function the life cycle hypothesis has been the dominant theoretical basis for empirical work on the aggregate consumption function for about a quarter of a century under it real consumption is proportional to real life cycle wealth where the factor of proportionality depends on real interest rate expectations and the demographic structure of the population life cycle wealth is the sum of financial and human wealth however because the latter is the present real value of the stream of labour and transfer income expected over the life cycle it is not directly observable this fact has led to a great variety of proxying devices in empirical applications and in consequence much looseness in the interpretation of very different models as being all consistent with life cycle theory indeed one can argue that this has protected the hypothesis from being seriously tested and perhaps rejected an insight associated with friedman 1957 is that the view taken by consumers of life cycle income does not alter by much from period to period since there is greater persistence in life cycle income than in current income this also explains the greater persistence of consumption than of current income intuitively this would suggest that lagged consumption being related to last period s perception of life cycle income which in turn is not much different from this period s perception should have a major role in predicting current consumption this intuition was formalised by hall 1978 using ideas familiar from the study of stock market prices and the term structure of interest rates hall showed that if the real rate of interest is constant and given a number of other assumptions including no transitory element in consumption then the life cycle hypothesis implies that

corporate optimal production planning with varying environmental costs a grey compromise programming approach abstract corporate environmental and resources management has become more strategically oriented when many pollution charges environmental taxes and resources conservation fees have been gradually imposing to the industry the need for explicit consideration and incorporation of varying environmental costs within production planning program is becoming critical to corporate management this paper attempts to assess an optimal production planning program in response to varying environmental costs in an uncertain environment the optimal production strategy concerning numerous screening of possible production alternatives of dyeing cloth in a textile dyeing firm in terms of market demand resources availability and impact of environmental costs is treated as an integral part of the multi criteria decision making framework based on the grey compromise programming approach it covers not only the regular part of production costs and the direct income from product sales but also the emission effluent charges and water resource fees reflecting part of the goals for internalization of external cost in a sustainable society in particular all the crucial variables in the model are addressed by interval expressions the same as they are frequently applied in the grey systems theory in support of a vital uncertainty assessment which is much better suited for this particular study than other approaches research results demonstrate the applicability and significance of such an approach based on a case study industry looking for the competitive advantage of environmental management must be aware of the potential benefits from such an integrated production planning program once the trend of increasing pollution charges environmental taxes and resources conservation fees remains

reforms lobbies and welfare a common agency approach citizens with heterogeneous tastes delegate to policy makers the authority to choose public policies they may try to influence legislators in various ways in this paper we assume that monetary lobbying and direct threats are the only instruments private individuals can use to influence the legislator we model the relationship between the citizens and a single policy maker as a common agency game lobbies offer a policy and a payment according to a truthful contribution schedule and the government takes the policy decision in the truthful equilibrium the government implements the social surplus maximizing policy introducing also direct threats we find that as far as both groups have an instrument to influence the legislator the efficiency result is robust we also show that when the lobby groups have asymmetric interests and political power not all groups necessarily participate in the auction in particular it turns out that one lobby or non lobby equilibria may arise and those equilibria are also efficient

macroeconomic planning and disequilibrium estimates for poland 1955 1980 the authors specify and estimate a four equation disequilibrium model of the consumption goods market in a centrally planned econo my this work is based on previous papers of r portes and d winter 1977 and w charemza and r quandt 1982 the model contains a household demand equation a planners supply equation a min condition and plan adjustment equation through which plan formation becomes endogenous the paper uses a unique new data set of time series for plans for the major macroeconomic variables in poland the overall framework is applicable to any large organization which plans economic variables coauthors are richard e quandt david winter and stephen yeo copyright 1987 by the econometric society

antitrust penalties and the implications of empirical evidence on cartel overcharges research for this paper was supported by a grant from the economic and social research council res 062 23 2211

slack shortage and discouraged consumers in eastern europe estimates based on smoothing by aggregation as a consequence of aggregation over markets the observed quantity may be less than the quantity demanded and less than the quantity supplied to deal with such situations a new technique is proposed for estimating demand and supply curves and the extent of shortage and slack the technique is applied to the consumption goods markets of czechoslovakia the german democratic republic hungary poland and yugoslavia it is found that shortage even corrected for a discouraged consumer effect is seldom as great as slack

computational controversies in disequilibrium and shortage modelling of centrally planned economies abstract most disequilibrium and shortage models of centrally planned economies fall into three categories testable excess demand the portes school disequilibrium indicators and kornai s economics of shortage these models have generated numerous controversies and conflicting empirical results however this paper argues that some disputes are not caused by the theoretical features of the models but rather by the utilisation of different estimation methods that are not directly comparable this suggests that several controversies are more apparent than real and can be resolved through the improvement of computational techniques and statistical hypothesis testing theory

international capital crunches the time varying role of informational asymmetries we examine the determinants of capital flows to four developing countries during the 1990s using an explicitly disequilibrium econometric framework in which the supply and demand for capital are not necessarily equal and the actual amount of the flow is determined by the short side of the market we are thus able to detect instances of international capital crunch where capital flows are curtailed because of supply side rationing and to relate these instances to movements in the underlying fundamentals the analysis highlights the role of asymmetric information as distinct from the traditional concern with default risk in conditioning capital flows

unemployment disequilibrium and the short run phillips curve an econometric approach the paper specifies a disequilibrium model for the aggregate labour market consisting of demand and supply functions for labour an adjustment equation for wages as well as for prices a transactions equation and finally an equation that relates measured unemployment to vacancies and to excess demand the model has a more sophisticated treatment of dynamics than earlier disequilibrium models the parameter estimates and the goodness of fit are satisfactory and the model s implications for the behaviour of several important variables are sensible in particular excess demand estimates computed in various ways are reasonable

does enforcement deter cartels a tale of two tails this paper investigates the deterrent impact of anti cartel enforcement it is shown theoretically that if enforcement is effective in deterring and constraining cartels then there will be fewer cartels with low overcharges and fewer with high overcharges this prediction provides an indirect method for testing whether the enforcement of competition law is effective using historical data on legal cartels to generate the counterfactual we find significantly less mass in the tails of the overcharge distribution compared to illegal cartels this result is robust to controlling for confounding factors and we interpret this as the first tentative confirmation of effective deterrence

quantifying the deterrent effect of anticartel enforcement this paper presents a rare attempt to quantify the deterrent effect of anti cartel policy it develops a conceptual framework which establishes the sort of information necessary for such quantification this is then illustrated and calibrated by drawing upon existing literatures and using evidence from legal cartels to approximate what would be observed absent policy measuring impact by the proportion of all potential harm that is deterred our best estimate is two thirds and even on conservative assumptions at least half of all harms or seven times the detected harm is deterred

towards supply chain sustainability economic environmental and social design and planning abstract costumers and governments are pressuring companies to become more sustainable however the lack of research on how to incorporate these issues makes this a challenging task to fill this gap a generic multi objective mathematical programming model for the design and planning of supply chains integrating the three dimensions of sustainability is presented the economic pillar of sustainability is addressed in this work considering the costs of the supply chain then recipe an environmental assessment methodology indicated in the literature and by the european commission as the most developed one currently available is for the first time applied to supply chain design optimization finally a social indicator appropriate to assess strategic decisions is proposed this social indicator considers the impact of social and political concerns on company s performance the relevance of this model as a decision support system is highlighted with its application to a real case study of a portuguese battery producer and distributor a set of strategies to select the best solution among the obtained optimal ones is presented results show that the model allows improvements in all the three dimensions of sustainability and offers important managerial insights