crowding in of complementary contributions to public goods firm investment into open source software abstract we present a fairly general model in which firms are competitors in a commercial market segment and can invest into a complementary public good like open source software we show that contrary to standard predictions additional contribution to the public good by the government or a new market entrant can lead to higher investments of all incumbent firms that is a crowding in effect this result occurs if the investment cost function is superadditive we find that government contribution leads to larger crowding in effects than subsidizing market entry if the price elasticity of demand with respect to the private good is large relative to the one with respect to the public good our results are robust to extensions in the timing and the mode of competition

the futile quest for a grand explanation of long run government expenditure this paper carries out a critical reappraisal of the two contending theories purporting to explain long run government spending wagner s law and different variants of the ratchet effect we analyze data spanning from the early 19 th century until the present day in sweden and the united kingdom hence in contrast to previous studies we evaluate the validity of wagner s law and the ratchet effect hypothesis over a very long time period starting at the beginning of industrialization cointegration analysis is used to investigate the long run relationships between government expenditure and gdp focusing on sub periods and structural breaks moreover we test the ratchet effect hypothesis by estimating models which allow for asymmetric adjustment according to our main results wagner s law does not hold in the long run although the data are consistent with wagner s law between roughly 1860 and the mid 1970s this can be traced to the formation of the modern public sector including the introduction of public education health care and so forth yet wagner s law did not hold during the initial industrialization phase before 1860 and in recent periods gdp only affects the government spending share when we control for population age structure finally we find some evidence of asymmetric adjustment in the uk particularly in the post wwii period however the ratchet effect is not a general cause of the growth of government spending

production lot sizing and carbon emissions under cap and trade and carbon tax regulations cap and trade and carbon tax are two emission regulations widely used to curb the carbon emissions generated from firms based on economic order quantity eoq model this paper examines the production lot sizing issues of a firm under these two regulations respectively the optimal lot size and emissions under the two regulations are achieved we then investigate the impacts of production and regulation parameters on the optimal lot size and emissions furthermore we compare the firm s optimal carbon emissions under the two regulations it is found that under the cap and trade regulation the firm s decisions of the optimal emissions as well as permits trading depend on the differentiated permits trading prices if setup incurs the same cost as holding incurs per unit of generated emissions both regulations always lead to the same optimal emissions which is also equal to that without emission regulation otherwise neither regulation always leads to lower emissions than the other does

wagner s hypothesis evidence from kuwait using cointegration tests this paper investigates the relationship between public expenditure and a number of socioeconomic variables including the level of income in kuwait a general form of the public expenditure function is formulated and recent developments in time series econometrics including unit roots and cointegration tests and an error correction model are used given the characteristics of the economy alternative measures for each variables are used the analysis in the paper is based on time series data covering the period from 1969 70 to 1994 95 in general the findings lend little support to the existence of long run equilibrium relationship between public expenditure and the socioeconomic variables and the evidence does not lend support to the validity of wagner s law in kuwait

a test of the wagner s hypothesis for the fiji islands in this article we examine wagner s law for fiji for the period 1970 to 2002 using the johansen 1988 test for cointegration we find one cointegration relationship between national output and government expenditure using five different long run estimators we find robust results on the impact of national income on government expenditure the elasticity ranges from 1 36 to 1 44 implying that a 1 increase in income leads to a 1 36 1 44 increase in government expenditure moreover we find that in the long run national income granger causes government expenditure while these results are consistent with wagner s law we warn policy makers that because fiji s total debt stands at around 69 of gdp in future the bulk of expenditure will go towards debt financing at the expense of productive sectors

the performance of agricultural market advisory services in corn and soybeans the purpose of this article is to evaluate the performance of market advisory services for the 1995 2003 corn and soybean crops a new database from the agricultural market advisory services agmas project is used in the evaluation this database should not be subject to survivorship and hindsight biases overall the results provide little evidence that advisory services as a group outperform market benchmarks particularly after considering risk the evidence is more positive versus the farmer benchmarks even after taking risk into account results also suggest that it is difficult to predict the pricing performance of advisory services across crop years

the sustainable supply chain network competition with environmental tax policies abstract this paper captures different environmental tax policies in a multi tiered supply chain network competition context we derive the governing equilibrium conditions for the noncooperative game theory models for each firm and provide the equivalent variational inequality formulations the numerical examples investigate the impacts of emission tax policies and product differentiation on the competing firms and compare the effects of different environmental policies flat emission tax rates progressive emission taxes and the government command and control regulations with emission standards on equilibrium product demands prices total emissions and overall profits the computational results indicate that the implementation of environmental tax policies along with an increase in consumers environmental concerns can not only motivate the firms to perform sustainable operations but also reduce the total carbon footprint furthermore the low cost progressive emission tax policies can be as effective as the high flat emission tax rate in terms of reduction in carbon footprint therefore the model developed in this paper can be used by the policymakers and the firms to evaluate the effects of different environmental tax policies in a supply chain competition context

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

computing welfare losses from data under imperfect competition with heterogeneous goods abstract we study the percentage of welfare losses pwl yielded by imperfect competition under product differentiation when demand is linear even if prices outputs costs and the number of firms can be observed pwl is arbitrary in both cournot and bertrand equilibria if in addition the elasticity of demand resp cross elasticity of demand is known we can calculate pwl in a cournot resp bertrand equilibrium when demand is isoelastic and there are many firms pwl can be computed from prices outputs costs and the number of firms we find that price marginal cost margins and demand elasticities may influence pwl in a counterintuitive way we also provide conditions under which pwl increases or decreases with concentration

conglomerates and regulation conglomerates operating integrated productions in different regulated and unregulated sectors may benefit of scope economies however the precise size of these synergies is often unknown to both rival firms and regulators we show that the conglomerate s private information on scope economies may negatively affect both the regulated and the unregulated sectors depending on the precise nature of competition strategic substitutes or complements we also unveil a novel effect of regulation that involves an informational externality to the conglomerate s rivals notwithstanding these complications and independently of the nature of competition we show that in our model it is desirable as for welfare to let the firm run integrated productions unless diseconomies of scope may realize jel l51 l43 l52

environmental tax on products and services based on their carbon footprint a case study of the pulp and paper sector the main aim of this work is to define an environmental tax on products based on their carbon footprint we examine the relevance of life cycle analysis lca and environmentally extended input output analysis eio as methodological tools for identifying the emission intensities on which the tax is based the price effects of the tax and the policy implications of considering non co2 greenhouse gases ghg are also analyzed the results from the case study on pulp production show that the environmental tax rate based on lca 1 8 is higher than both eio approaches 0 8 and 1 4 for product and industry respectively but they are of the same order of magnitude although lca is more product specific and provides a more detailed analysis we recommend eio as a more relevant approach to applying an economy wide environmental tax if an environmental tax were applied to non co2 ghg instead to co2 alone the tax would greatly affects sectors such as agriculture mining of coal extraction of peat and food therefore it is worthwhile for policy makers to pay attention to the implications of considering either a co2 tax or a global ghg emissions tax in order to make their policy measures effective and meaningful

the effects of competition on the r d portfolios of multiproduct firms we investigate the r d portfolio choices of multiproduct firms when a firm increases cost reducing r d investment in a given product its rivals will modify their entire r d portfolios by reducing r d investments in that particular product and increasing r d investments in other competing products our analysis demonstrates that r d portfolios will be more specialized when firms face greater competition which will be the case if products become closer substitutes a monopolist begins to face competition from a rival firm or firms compete on price rather than quantity r d cooperation allows firms to internalize the negative externalities of their r d investments in two ways by reducing such investments across all products and by increasingly focusing their r d portfolios on different products firms may completely shut down a subset of their r d projects under r d cooperation if the products concerned are sufficiently close substitutes

an optimization approach for managing fresh food quality throughout the supply chain one of the most challenging tasks in today s food industry is controlling the product quality throughout the food supply chain in this paper we integrate food quality in decision making on production and distribution in a food supply chain we provide a methodology to model food quality degradation in such a way that it can be integrated in a mixed integer linear programming model used for production and distribution planning the resulting model is applied in an illustrative case study and can be used to design and operate food distribution systems using both food quality and cost criteria

production and transportation outsourcing decisions in the supply chain under single and multiple carbon policies abstract cap and trade and carbon tax are the two main policies to reduce carbon emissions different from the previous literature and practice this paper examines the production and transportation outsourcing problems of a two echelon supply chain under the cap and trade policy and joint cap and trade and carbon tax policy enterprise operations are divided into the order stage and transportation outsourcing decision stage in the order stage the retailer sets his order schedule for the manufacturing plant for fulfillment and in the transportation outsourcing decision stage the manufacturer decides the optimal freight volume based on energy consumption furthermore we construct a basic model without a carbon policy and two extended models with carbon policies and the optimal solutions of the models are solved numerical examples are provided and the three models are compared the results indicate that the extended model with carbon policies is more beneficial for emissions reduction and the effect of emissions reduction gradually becomes smooth as the carbon price increases the joint cap and trade and carbon tax policy is more effective for emissions reduction especially when the carbon price is lower these findings will be helpful to policy makers and managers

human capital producer education programs and the adoption of forward pricing methods using a sample of 509 kansas producers we evaluate factors affecting adoption of forward pricing methods we focus on producers human capital accumulation and its effect on adoption of forward pricing techniques probit models are employed to evaluate producers participation in educational programs and their forward pricing adoption decisions tobit models are employed to evaluate individual levels of adoption of these techniques in the marketing of wheat corn grain sorghum soybeans and cattle

did rabuka s military coups have a permanent effect or a transitory effect on tourist expenditure in fiji evidence from vogelsang s structural break test abstract the central aim of this paper is to investigate whether the military coups instigated by major general sitiveni rabuka in 1987 had a permanent effect or a transitory effect on tourist expenditures in fiji to accomplish this aim we use the vogelsang econ theory 13 1997 818 test for one break in linear trending data the vogelsang test reveals 1988 as the year of the break and based on a suite of test statistics recommended by vogelsang we reject the unit root null leading to the conclusion that rabuka s coups had a transitory effect on tourist expenditure in fiji

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

imposing emission trading scheme on supply chain separate and joint implementation abstract in response to global warming it is urgent to control and reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions especially from the supply chain perspective the most often discussed topic in this domain indicates that emission trading scheme ets could be employed as one of policy instruments for supply chain emissions management via mathematical models scholars have shown that the employment of emission trading is affecting supply chain performances both environmental and economic in different levels however previous literature focus on the cost effectiveness analysis only from the mathematical aspect to provide policy makers and companies with the theoretical bases on this hot topic it is significant to discuss how ets one of market based instruments could be imposed in the context of supply chain from the mechanical point of view by incorporating ideas from relevant literature this paper generates two concepts modes in imposing ets on supply chain jointly imposed supply chain emission trading e g jointly imposed sc ets and separately imposed supply chain emission trading e g separately imposed sc ets it illustrates the working principles of both concepts modes and conducts a sandbox example to analyze the cost effectiveness of them furthermore this paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of implementing two modes from practical aspects results of quantitative analysis and discussion show that for the sake of both policy makers and supply chain companies the separately imposed sc ets allowing selling permits would be so far the better mode to manage supply chain ghg emissions compared to the jointly imposed sc ets

non stationary stochastic inventory lot sizing with emission and service level constraints in a carbon cap and trade system firms worldwide are taking major initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains in response to the growing governmental and consumer pressures in real life these supply chains face stochastic and non stationary demand but most of the studies on inventory lot sizing problem with emission concerns consider deterministic demand in this paper we study the inventory lot sizing problem under non stationary stochastic demand condition with emission and cycle service level constraints considering carbon cap and trade regulatory mechanism using a mixed integer linear programming model this paper aims to investigate the effects of emission parameters product and system related features on the supply chain performance through extensive computational experiments to cover general type business settings and not a specific scenario results show that cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation have significant impacts on total cost and emission irrespective of level of demand variability while the impact of product s demand pattern is significant only at lower level of demand variability finally results also show that increasing value of carbon price reduces total cost total emission and total inventory and the scope of emission reduction by increasing carbon price is greater at higher levels of cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation the analysis of results helps supply chain managers to take right decision in different demand and service level situations

a century of research on agricultural markets this article provides a perspective on major innovations in research on agricultural markets over the past century we review research on market structure and performance vertical coordination arrangements and institutions for producer collective action contributions to empirical modeling of agricultural price determination and marketing margins are also evaluated as are innovations in research on spatial market relationships and the role of storage finally we discuss contributions to understanding market information systems and the functioning of market based mechanisms for agri

responsible production policies with substitution and carbon emissions trading abstract this paper considers a production model involving a manufacturer that uses two different technologies the green technology and the standard technology the green product produced by the green technology can be used as a substitute for the traditional product produced by the standard technology but not vice versa three models are considered the first model concerns with product substitution only and serves as a benchmark model for the next two models the carbon emission allowance model and the carbon emission trading model the second model extends the product substitution model by imposing an upper limit on the total carbon emission allowance for each firm the third model extends the second model to cater for carbon emission trading for the carbon emission allowance model analytical result shows that the optimal production quantity of any product depends on both its total carbon emission allowance quota and its unit carbon emission profit and the effect of substitution improves the service level the expected profit of the manufacturer and the green of product mix for the carbon emission trading model analytical result shows that whenever the production quantity of any product is optimal the marginal profit of production i e the additional profit obtained by producing an extra item should be equal to the unit price of carbon emission trading within the market moreover the optimal policy of either model reduces the total amount of carbon emission thus producing less pollution to the environment lastly the optimal profits obtained by using the carbon emission trading model are larger than the corresponding optimal profits obtained by using the carbon emission allowance model

entrepreneurial innovations and taxation stimulating entrepreneurship is high on the policy agenda of many countries we study the effects of tax policies on entrepreneurs choice of riskiness or quality of an innovation project and on their mode of commercializing the innovation market entry versus sale limited loss offset provisions in the tax system induce entrepreneurs innovating for entry to choose projects with inefficiently little risk the same distortion does not arise when entrepreneurs sell their innovation in a competitive bidding process to an incumbent before the uncertainty is revealed tax systems which systematically favor market entry of entrepreneurs can thus lead to welfare losses due to inefficient quality choices despite leading to more competition in the product market

an econometric test of wagner s law for six countries based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the present study empirically examined five different versions of wagner s law by employing annual time series data on six countries over the period 1951 1996 three countries are part of the emerging industrialized countries of asia south korea taiwan thailand and three are industrialized countries japan usa and the united kingdom the analysis is an advance over previous work in two ways first the stationarity propertities of the data and the order of integration of the data are empirically investigated using the augmented dickey fuller adf and the kwiatkowski et al journal of econometrics 1 1992 kpss tests and second the hypothesis of a long run relationship between income and government spending is tested using bivariate cointegrated systems and employing the methodology of cointegration analysis as suggested by johansen journal of economic dynamics and control 12 1988 and johansen and juselius oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 52 1990 the results indicate that

carbon emissions and energy effects on a two level manufacturer retailer closed loop supply chain model with remanufacturing subject to different coordination mechanisms abstract this paper presents two models classical and vmi cs coordination for a two level closed loop supply chain with a manufacturer and a retailer with a facility to remanufacture used items the paper considers three critical environmental issues which are the energy used in production manufacturing and remanufacturing processes ghg emissions from production and transportation activities subject to a penalty tax and the number of times to remanufacture recover a used item numerical results show that the traditional optimization approach which minimises the sum of inventory related costs suggested less remanufacturing fewer recovery times and more ghg emissions and energy usage a result of operating at high production rates the vmi cs model was shown to be more economical than the classical model for a wide range of manufacturing rates but not necessarily a more environmentally responsible choice an extensive numerical analysis was conducted to enrich the discussion and to draw some managerial insights on how to make environmentally conscious decisions

joint production and pricing decisions for multiple products with cap and trade and carbon tax regulations abstract cap and trade and carbon tax regulations are the two main low carbon policies to curb carbon emissions this paper studies the joint production and pricing problem of a manufacturing firm with multiple products under cap and trade and carbon tax regulations and compares the effects of the two regulations on the total carbon emissions the firm s profit and social welfare the firm faces price sensitive demands and the demands for these products are independent firstly we find that the optimal number of products to be produced under cap and trade regulation carbon tax regulation is determined by the emission trading prices and the cap tax rate secondly we detect that the optimal cap tax rate is decreasing increasing or constant in the environmental damage coefficient finally we discover that the social welfare under carbon tax regulation is not less than that under cap and trade regulation although there is neither one regulation always inducing more profit and having advantages in curbing carbon emissions than the other one

low carbon production with low carbon premium in cap and trade regulation abstract manufacturers face a choice of whether to reduce their carbon emissions through employing low carbon technologies though many carbon regulations are set up to curb carbon emissions some firms choose not to take low carbon production because the additional cost of low carbon progressing is high however low carbon production would be a better alternative when we consider consumer s low carbon premium in the cap and trade system in this work we solve the manufacturer s multi product joint pricing and production problem when consumers value the low carbon product higher than the ordinary product our findings provide firms with conditions where low carbon production is profitable furthermore we find that the cap and trade would constrain the total carbon emissions and promote low carbon production simultaneously under certain conditions

design of sustainable supply chains under the emission trading scheme increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment this paper introduces a mixed integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment lca principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain indeed the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems the framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry the results suggest that current legislation and emission trading schemes ets must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy moreover the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost effective manner

inventory management under joint product recovery and cap and trade constraints abstract the influence of environmental legislation in inventory control policies is explored previous work on product recovery is extended using the introduction of a cap and trade mechanism in an infinite horizon inventory system in which demand and returns are uncertain demand is met through two different sources namely manufacturing and remanufacturing which differ in cost and greenhouse gas emissions the main contributions of this paper are 1 comparison of system operation in terms of cost and environmental performance under conventional and green inventory policies and 2 managerial insights into the structure of green inventory policies to illustrate the impact of a cap and trade scheme a numerical example is used we solved the problem as a markov decision process and characterized the inventory policies based on the optimal replenishment strategy we also conducted a sensitivity analysis to examine the effect of underlying environmental parameters such as the emission cap and the allowance price in the policy structures the results indicate that decisions are sensitive to carbon prices the inventory policy could play an important role in compliance with environmental legislation although there is threshold carbon price beyond which the company must focus on strategic decisions rather than tactical decisions

do carbon taxes work analysis of government policies and enterprise strategies in equilibrium abstract to achieve the goal of carbon emission reduction a number of countries have implemented carbon tax policies and carbon pricing has become an important tool this paper discusses the interactions between a government and an enterprise for implementing carbon taxes over time or by level of tax considering greenhouse gas emission we examine the impacts of various carbon tax policies on enterprises investments in new technology their reductions in production quantity and governments tax remittances a case study of the strategic responses of three firms in taiwan s electronics cement and steel industries to two carbon emission policies promulgated by government shows that appropriate levels of tax can induce an enterprise to alter its production processes to achieve emission reduction as part of a long term business strategy

a note on price and quantity competition in differentiated oligopolies abstract in this note we show that the results developed in n singh and x vives 1984 rand j econ 15 546 554 are sensitive to the duopoly assumption if there are more than two firms prices may be higher under price competition than under quantity competition this will be the case if quality differences are large and goods are complements if goods are substitutes high quality firms may earn higher profits under price competition than under quantity competition hence it is not evident which kind of competition is more efficient journal of economic literature classification numbers d43 l13

evaluating renewable portfolio standards and carbon cap scenarios in the u s electric sector this report examines the impact of renewable portfolio standards rps and cap and trade policy options on the u s electricity sector the analysis uses the national renewable energy laboratory s regional energy deployment system reeds model that simulates the least cost expansion of electricity generation capacity and transmission in the u s to examine the impact of a variety of emissions caps and rps scenarios both individually and combined the generation mix carbon emissions and electricity price are examined for various policy combinations simulated in the modeling

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

sustainable fashion supply chain management under oligopolistic competition and brand differentiation abstract in this paper we developed a new model of oligopolistic competition for fashion supply chains in the case of differentiated products with the inclusion of environmental concerns the model assumes that each fashion firm s product is distinct by brand and the firms compete until an equilibrium is achieved each fashion firm seeks to maximize its profits as well as to minimize its emissions throughout its supply chain with the latter criterion being weighted in an individual manner by each firm the competitive supply chain model is network based and variational inequality theory is utilized for the formulation of the governing nash equilibrium as well as for the solution of the case study examples the numerical examples illustrate both the generality of the modeling framework as well as how the model and computational scheme can be used in practice to explore the effects of changes in the demand functions in the total cost and total emission functions as well as in the weights

delay in payments a strategy to reduce carbon emissions from supply chains abstract the purpose of this paper is to study the effects of various scenarios of delay in payments a form of trade credit by a buyer after receiving items while including various costs such as fuel cost the costs of carbon emissions from manufacturing and transportation activities order cost and setup cost in a two echelon coordinated supply chain the model developed optimizes the environmental and economic performance of a supply chain the study presents a comparison of different scenarios through numerical examples and sensitivity analyses the main contribution of this paper is the joint consideration of delays in payments and the costs of transportation cost and carbon emissions the model has been tested with numerical examples and sensitivity analyses the findings showed that adopting delays in payments improves both environmental and economic performance of a supply chain the analyses also showed that optimizing one of the parameters from the production rate the length of delay in payments or the lot size provides the optimal solution for carbon emissions and the system cost of a supply chain this flexibility makes the model easy to use by practitioners

should farmers follow the recommendations of market advisory services a hierarchical bayesian approach to estimation of expected performance a bayesian hierarchical approach is employed to estimate individual expected performance of agricultural market advisory services skeptical beliefs based on market efficiency are incorporated as prior information for a skeptical decision maker who is willing to follow an advisory program only if it is expected to increase price received by more than 1 one of the corn programs most of the soybean programs and a few wheat programs may be valuable marketing alternatives the expectation under this model from following the single top ranked program are price increases of 1 4 and 3 for corn soybeans and wheat respectively

welfare effects of taxation in oligopolistic markets this paper discusses how marginal costs of public funds are related to various market characteristics under imperfect competition under a quite general tax scheme these costs turn out to be lower the wider the firms product ranges the lower the degree of market concentration and the lower the degree of product differentiation moreover marginal costs of taxation are lower in bertrand markets compared to cournot markets in cases when marginal costs of public funds cannot easily be assessed we ask if pass through rates can provide useful information for policy makers the market characteristics that we analyze are shown to have opposite effects on pass through and marginal costs of public funds it is also demonstrated that the marginal cost of public funds is generally lower for ad valorem taxes than for unit taxes the main results are based on a linear demand system but a number of extensions confirm that our main results are reasonably robust

production optimization considering environmental performance and preference in the cap and trade system abstract many countries like china are in a dilemma between economic growth and environmental deterioration e g smog weather simultaneously a growing people concern the product s environmental performance along with their improving environment awareness this paper focuses on the impacts of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the production decision of emission dependent firms in the cap and trade system the cap and trade system uses the total cap to attain environmental goals and allows trade to achieve the effective scheduling through market regulation under this mechanism through analyzing the influence of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the market supply and demand we build a production optimization model and develop the optimal decisions several interesting management insights on environmental preference and policy are concluded

certification of corporate social responsibility activities in oligopolistic markets we investigate the impact of alternative certifying institutions on firms incentives to engage in costly corporate social responsibility csr activities as well as their relative market and societal implications we find that the csr certification standard is the lowest under for profit private certifiers and the highest under a non governmental organization ngo with the standard of a welfare maximizing public certifier lying in between yet regarding industry output this ranking is reversed certification of csr activities is welfare enhancing for consumers and firms and should be encouraged finally the market and societal outcomes o f csr certification depend crucially on whether certification takes place before or after firms csr activities

low carbon product selection with carbon tax and competition effects of the power structure abstract this paper considers product selection strategies of two competitive firms in the presence of carbon tax optimal strategies are developed for product selection of the firm with two game structures namely the nash game and the stackelberg game by which the paper conducts an analytical examination of the effect of power structure on the product selection strategy of the firm over various levels of carbon tax rate the critical managerial findings derived with the studies are as follows i two competitive firms will always adopt the same product strategy with the nash pricing game regardless of the carbon tax rate which is in contrast to that they will adopt a differentiated product strategy over the low carbon tax rates with the stackelberg pricing game ii two competitive firms will both select the common or low carbon product with randomness over the middle carbon tax rates with the nash product selection game which is contrast to that the randomness in their product selections is removed with the stackelberg product selection game which leads to an existence of the pure strategy stackelberg equilibrium for their product selection strategies over the middle carbon tax rates the inherent mechanisms leading to these essential differences are also discussed in the paper

the effects of environmental quality misperception on investments and regulation abstract this paper analyzes whether consumers misperception on the quality of the product influences firms investment choices we examine a setup with horizontal and vertical green differentiation where consumers are heterogeneous in the exogenous perception of environmental quality demands true qualities and profits are increasing in the perception of higher quality while the investment in green quality is high for high and low degrees of product substitutability we further consider the introduction of either an emission tax or an environmental standard both interventions increase the investment in green quality we show that for low marginal damages the environmental standard increases quality while taxation is more effective when the environmental damage is large

style and performance of agricultural market advisory services this article develops measures of marketing style for advisory programs in corn and soybeans and estimates the relationship between style characteristics and pricing performance style is measured by the intensity of futures and options use degree of activeness in marketing and seasonality of sales the data set consists of advisory programs tracked by the agmas project at the university of illinois between 1995 and 2004 results indicate that active programs making large bets on price movements obtain a higher average price than more conservative programs this is consistent with active advisors possessing superior information and or analytical skills rather than being overconfident however estimates of the relationship between pricing performance and activeness are sensitive to the inclusion of a single high performing program

testing wagner versus keynes using disaggregated public expenditure data for canada this paper attempts to test wagnerian versus keynesian hypotheses by examining the relationship between national income and total public expenditure as well as its various components for canada during the period 1950 1995 engle and granger s two step cointegration and error correction techniques are employed to test these two hypotheses the results of this study support both the hypotheses when tested with broader aggregate expenditure data i e total government current expenditure ce and total current expenditures on goods and services cegs although the results of this study do not support the existence of any long run relationship between gdp and the disaggregated public expenditure variables they do support the existence of short run causation implying that national income may be causing or caused by a component of the total government current expenditure in the short run

technical note a comparison of bertrand and cournot profits in oligopolies with differentiated products we compare equilibrium profits of bertrand price and cournot quantity competition in oligopolies with an arbitrary number of nonsymmetric firms offering differentiated substitutable products under an affine demand function we provide a precise characterization of the profit relationship in terms of 1 the number of firms 2 their relative quality and cost differences and 3 the competition intensity defined as the maxiumum absolute value of total change in competitors demand over change in own demand due to a unit change in own price we first examine the case where firms have the same demand sensitivity to own price and the same demand sensitivity to competitor prices but different cost and quality parameters for this case we prove that the total profit of the industry under cournot competition is at least as high as the total profit under bertrand competition if the number of firms is less than 28 or if the competition intensity is less than 0 909 or if the differences in quality and cost competitiveness between firms are small we also prove that for each firm the profit achieved under cournot competition is at least as high as the profit achieved under bertrand competition if the number of firms is less than eight or if the competition intensity is less than 0 739 we then provide numerical and analytical results that qualitatively support the same conclusions for general affine demand functions with variable demand sensitivities to prices

tactical supply chain planning under a carbon tax policy scheme a case study greenhouse gas emissions are receiving greater scrutiny in many countries due to international forces to reduce anthropogenic global climate change industry and their supply chains represent a major source of these emissions this paper presents a tactical supply chain planning model that integrates economic and carbon emission objectives under a carbon tax policy scheme a modified cross entropy solution method is adopted to solve the proposed nonlinear supply chain planning model numerical experiments are completed utilizing data from an actual organization in australia where a carbon tax is in operation the analyses of the numerical results provide important organizational and policy insights on 1 the financial and emissions reduction impacts of a carbon tax at the tactical planning level 2 the use of cost emission tradeoff analysis for making informed decisions on investments 3 the way to price carbon for maximum environmental returns per dollar increase in supply chain cost

emission policies and their analysis for the design of hybrid and dedicated closed loop supply chains abstract government legislation and consumer awareness on carbon emissions have required industries to seek alternative ways to reorganize their supply chains therefore industries have to consider not only the activities in the forward supply chain but also in the reverse supply chain an integrated supply chain that combines the activities of both the forward and reverse supply chains is referred to as the closed loop supply chain clsc there are two main types of clsc structures hybrid and dedicated in this research we analyze the effect of carbon emissions consideration on the design of both hybrid and dedicated clscs in particular we develop a set of integrated mixed integer linear programming milp models to quantify and compare both of the environmental and economic impacts of carbon emissions policies carbon cap carbon tax and carbon cap and trade and market factors scale effect product return rate and the customer demand on the design of clscs with respect to both clsc structures our analysis shows that when market conditions are considered total cost and total emissions are more sensitive to customer demand than to the scale effect and the product return rate when an industry faces fluctuation on the quantity of the returned products adopting a dedicated clsc would lead to a lower total cost under cap and trade policy dedicated clsc can produce less total emissions we also observe that dedicated clsc is more cost efficient under carbon cap policy and hybrid clsc is more emissions efficient when the carbon tax is introduced

implications of commodity price behavior for marketing strategies prices of agricultural commodities have systematic dynamic components and many agricultural economists have thought that forecasts of this behavior ought to aid marketing decisions thereby raising producers returns but if commodity markets are pricing efficient then noncompetitive profit opportunities should be quickly arbitraged away thus a debate exists about the magnitude of the likely benefits of various marketing strategies herein we address the question what does the literature about commodity price behavior contribute to our understanding of the expected outcomes from alternative marketing strategies our brief answer is as follows spot prices in u s commodity markets typically behave in a way that is consistent with efficient markets systematic behavior persists because of the costs of arbitrage hence price forecasts in the public domain cannot be used to produce returns which are consistently above the competitive norm although low cost strategies to manage price risk exist evaluating the evidence on these topics is not easy however because the price generating processes are complex sometimes prices seem to behave as if a market is inefficient advice based on analyses using short samples should be used with great caution the remainder of the article elaborates

modeling an inventory routing problem for perishable products with environmental considerations and demand uncertainty the transition to sustainable food supply chain management has brought new key logistical aims such as reducing food waste and environmental impacts of operations in the supply chain besides the traditional cost minimization objective traditional assumptions of constant distribution costs between nodes unlimited product shelf life and deterministic demand used in the inventory routing problem irp literature restrict the usage of the proposed models in current food logistics systems from this point of view our interest in this study is to enhance the traditional models for the irp to make them more useful for the decision makers in food logistics management therefore we present a multi period irp model that includes truck load dependent and thus route dependent distribution costs for a comprehensive evaluation of co2 emission and fuel consumption perishability and a service level constraint for meeting uncertain demand a case study on the fresh tomato distribution operations of a supermarket chain shows the applicability of the model to a real life problem several variations of the model each differing with respect to the considered aspects are employed to present the benefits of including perishability and explicit fuel consumption concerns in the model the results suggest that the proposed integrated model can achieve significant savings in total cost while satisfying the service level requirements and thus offers better support to decision makers

the transition of germany s energy production green economy low carbon economy socio environmental conflicts and equitable society low carbon transitions have been predominantly analysed using quantitative methods mostly building on present and forecasted data of social metabolism this paper addresses both the economic and social dimensions of low carbon emissions by analysing the presence of socio environmental conflicts in germany these conflicts appear to be a consequence of unsustainable policies targeting firms planning and behaviour mainly based on neoclassical economic thinking and various stakeholder groups that oppose carbon intensive businesses by applying a delphi method with 18 experts the authors analyse 117 socio environmental conflicts e g derived from extractive activity energy production and infrastructure projects in germany most of these conflicts include the struggle of various society groups to achieve a low carbon economy but also a more equitable society the analyses presented in this paper shows that germany provides both the best and the worse of achieving low carbon paths a significant investment into renewable energy but also a strong dependency on lignite which supplies the most polluting power stations of europe by addressing the problem from a historical perspective the authors demonstrate how carbon intensive extractive activity has been one of the major causes for environmental activism and protest in both socialist and capitalist societies

managing carbon footprints in inventory management abstract there is a broad consensus that mankind must reduce carbon emissions to mitigate global warming it is generally accepted that carbon emission trading is one of the most effective market based mechanisms to curb the amount of carbon emissions this paper investigates how firms manage carbon footprints in inventory management under the carbon emission trading mechanism we derive the optimal order quantity and analytically and numerically examine the impacts of carbon trade carbon price and carbon cap on order decisions carbon emissions and total cost we make interesting observations from the numerical examples and provide managerial insights from the analytical results

a dynamic analysis of investment in process and product innovation with learning by doing this paper investigates the optimal control problem of a monopolist s investments in process and product innovation under learning by doing in a dynamic setting we show that i there exists the saddle stable steady state under monopolist optimum and social optimum ii the learning rates of product and process innovation affect not only the monopolist s process or product innovation investments but also the complementarity substitutability relationship between product and process innovation iii the social incentive towards both product and process innovation is always larger than the private incentive characterizing the profit seeking monopolist these results are valuable complement and development to the results drawn from the standard product and process innovation model

more reasons why farmers have so little interest in futures markets the use by farmers of futures contracts and other hedging instruments has been observed to be low in many situations and this has sometimes seemed to be considered surprising or even mysterious we propose that it is in fact readily understandable and consistent with rational decision making standard models of the decision about optimal hedging show that it is negatively related to basis risk to quantity risk and to transaction costs farmers who have less uncertainty about prices and those with a diversified portfolio of investments have lower optimal levels of hedging if a farmer has optimistic price expectations relative to the futures market the incentive to hedge can be greatly reduced and finally farmers who have low levels of risk aversion have little to gain from hedging in terms of risk reduction in that the certainty equivalent payoff at their optimal hedge may be little different than the certainty equivalent under zero hedging these reasons are additional to the argument of simmons 2002 who showed that if capital markets are efficient farmers can manage their risk exposure through adjusting their leverage obviating the need for hedging instruments

assessing the impact of cost optimization based on infrastructure modelling on co2 emissions traditionally logistics design is driven by a need to reduce costs and improve customer service recently the environmental concerns from transport have been increasingly discussed the traffic levels and associated energy consumption are influenced by supply chain structure modal split and vehicle utilization this paper aims to assess the impact of the traditional cost optimization approach to strategic modelling on overall logistics costs and co2 emissions by taking into account the supply chain structure number of depots and different freight vehicle utilization ratios 90 75 and 60 the simulation model based on a european case study from the automotive industry considers strategic and operational level decisions simultaneously the analysis shows that the optimum design based on costs does not necessary equate to an optimum solution for co2 emissions therefore there is a need to address economical and environmental objectives explicitly as part of the logistics design

keynes versus wagner public expenditure and national income for three african countries the public expenditure income hypothesis has long been debated in economics following keynes public expenditure is seen as an exogenous factor to be used as a policy instrument to influence growth on the other hand wagner argues that expenditure is an endogenous factor or an outcome not a cause of growth in national income the purpose of this paper is to apply both the granger and holmes hutton statistical procedures to test the income expenditure hypothesis for three african countries ghana kenya and south africa we find that the hypothesis of public expenditure causing national income is not supported by the data for these african countries

closed loop supply chain network design with multiple transportation modes under stochastic demand and uncertain carbon tax abstract we optimize the design of a closed loop supply chain network that encompasses flows in both forward and reverse directions and is subject to uncertainty in demands for both new and returned products the model also accommodates a carbon tax with tax rate uncertainty the proposed model is a three stage hybrid robust stochastic program that combines probabilistic scenarios for the demands and return quantities with uncertainty sets for the carbon tax rates the first stage decisions are facility investments the second stage concerns the plan for distributing new and collecting returned products after realization of demands and returns and the numbers of transportation units of various modes are the third stage decisions the second and third stage decisions may adjust to the realization of the carbon tax rate for computational tractability we restrict them to be affine functions of the carbon tax rate benders cuts are generated using recent duality developments for robust linear programs computational results show that adjusting product flows to the tax rate provides negligible benefit but the ability to adjust transportation mode capacities can substitute for building additional facilities as a way to respond to carbon tax uncertainty

cointegration and wagner s hypothesis time series evidence for canada it is argued that wagner s hypothesis is essentially a proposition about the secular comovement of income growth and public spending using the engle and granger cointegration tests and time series data from canada the long run validity of wagner s hypothesis is maintained

short and long term relation between economic development and government spending the role of quality of institutions abstractthis paper tests the wagner s assumption of the one sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending considering an international database over the 1996 2012 period by

on stackelberg games in a homogeneous product market abstract in a homogeneous product duopoly with concave demand and strictly convex costs we bring together all the standard results of quantity stackelberg games provide some new results with price stackelberg games and compare the equilibrium configuration of the quantity games with the price games in the price stackelberg game we show there is a unique spne where the leader chooses a lower price than the follower but both get equal payoffs we prove that generally quantity stackelberg games are less competitive than price stackelberg games however we also demonstrate the possibility of a reversal of this result

a time domain transfer function model of wagner s law the case of the united kingdom economy the dynamic relationship which is implied by wagner s law is well established in the literature however the methodology which has been applied to investigate this dynamic relationship has tended to avoid a dynamic specification this paper investigates wagner s law employing transfer function methodology in the time domain for the uk over the period 1946 85

carbon pricing versus emissions trading a supply chain planning perspective abstract carbon pricing taxes and carbon emissions trading are two globally practiced carbon regulatory policy schemes this paper presents an analytical supply chain planning model that can be used to examine the supply chain performance at the tactical operational planning level under these two policy schemes model implementation and analyses are completed using actual data from a company operating in australia where these environmental regulatory policies are practiced numerical results provide important managerial and practical implications and policy insights in particular the results show that there are inflection points where both carbon pricing and trading schemes could influence costs or emissions reductions an erratic nonlinear emissions reduction trend is observed in a carbon pricing scheme as the carbon price increases steadily whereas emissions reduction in a carbon trading scheme follows a relatively linear trend with a nonlinear cost increase overall a carbon trading mechanism although imperfect appears to result in better supply chain performance in terms of emissions generation cost and service level even though a carbon tax may be more worthwhile from an uncertainty perspective as emissions trading costs depend on numerous uncertain market conditions

how to compete cournot versus bertrand in a vertical structure with an integrated input supplier we study whether a quantity or a price contract is chosen at equilibrium by one integrated firm and its retail competitor in a differentiated duopoly using a similar vertical structure arya et al 2008 show that bertrand competition is more profitable than cournot competition which contrasts with conventional wisdom in this article we first demonstrate that such a result is robust to the endogenous determination of the type of contract second by introducing managerial incentives in the model we find that delegation to managers may lead each firm to choose a quantity contract and as long as products are sufficiently differentiated entails conflicting choices causing nonexistence of equilibrium in pure strategies significantly high product substitutability reconciles firms objectives under delegation leading unique or multiple equilibria with symmetric types of contracts to arise

the procompetitive effect of demand enhancing check off programs this article explores demand enhancing check off programs and how such programs may influence both private programs as well as industry market structure under duopoly a firm may increase its sales through privately funding product quality improvements however such endogenous sunk costs may also be used to exclude a rival industry funded check off programs affect firms strategies and can be procompetitive the rationale lies not only in how the check off enhancement is perceived by consumers but also in the way the check off s crowding out effect reduces the ability of a firm to use its private expenditures to bar a rival s market access

carbon tax emission standards and carbon leak under price competition we consider a two country model of price competition with one polluting firm in each country and differentiated products assuming away to simplify abatement efforts and input substitution we compare the impact on output leakages and trade volumes of a carbon tax versus an emission standard policy unilaterally enacted by the home country under the tax the two firms set their prices simultaneously in a bertrand game under the standard the home firm s price is conditioned on the price of the foreign firm so as to abide the emission constraint as a result the tax leads to higher leakages and global emissions than the standard the standard also implies a better trade balance for the home country than the tax

the efficacy of the european union emissions trading scheme depicting the co movement of carbon assets and energy commodities through wavelet decomposition abstract environmental system thresholds have been crossed for a number of dimensions of global environmental pollution such as greenhouse gas emissions under this scenario institutions and corporations are required to implement sustainable policies as a condition for humanity staying within planetary boundaries accordingly the european union created the largest emissions trading scheme in the world with the aim of properly managing corporations carbon dioxide reductions this paper aims to contribute to the literature focused on testing the effectiveness of institutional environmental management policies specifically this research evaluates whether the objectives of the european union emissions trading scheme are partially achieved by analyzing the dynamics of carbon assets and the main energy commodities worldwide this paper provides relevant information both for policy makers and company managers so that contributions towards the common goal of developing a clean energy future and curbing climate change are ameliorated based on wavelet coherence analysis this paper proposes a model free way of estimating the time varying correlations between carbon assets and energy commodities at both high and low frequencies our central results reveal that carbon assets and energy commodities present a changing lead lag behavior at different frequencies the energy commodities lead the european union allowances returns at medium frequencies but the contrary was true for the highest investment horizons this finding should be in line with the goal of significantly reducing emissions because during long cycles if the majority of companies have not switched to cleaner industrial processes they must buy more carbon assets increasing their prices in that case energy commodities would be more expensive because of the energy commodities market behavior during long term horizons with european union allowances lead the certified emissions reductions lead in a negative way most of the energy commodities at medium frequencies thus indicating that investors handling energy commodities oriented portfolios could incorporate the mentioned carbon assets for diversification purposes these specific findings suggest that polluting activities would be more expensive which would provide an incentive to companies to implement environmentally friendly industrial processes the european union emissions trading scheme can result in significant emission reductions and compliance of the european union with the objectives of the kyoto protocol

the impact of carbon pricing on a closed loop supply chain an australian case study concerns about industrial and supply chain implications on our natural environment have existed for decades climate change and greenhouse gas emissions have caused countries to implement various instruments ranging from taxes permits and voluntary incentives to required regulatory policies given this environment we develop a unified optimization model for a closed loop supply chain in which the carbon emission is expressed in terms of dollar carbon cost this study is one of the first to evaluate the forward and reverse supply chain influences on the carbon footprint a comparative analysis is completed with a decomposition of cost and environmental influences across supply chain functions we utilize data from a company located in australia where the government is currently introducing a carbon pricing scheme we find that variations in cost and environmental impacts occur over ranges of carbon pricing characteristics and patterns of the numerical results over these ranges provide insights for corporate key strategies and potential additional government policies these results and implications are analyzed along with limitations and directions for future research

public expenditure growth in greece and portugal wagner s law and beyond in the tradition of wagner s law this study examines the relationship between aggregate income and public expenditures in greece and portugal during the years 1958 85 unlike more conventional specifications our analysis focuses on the movement of different componenets of public expenditures permanent income relative prices stabilization policy and socio political factors emerge as thomain determinants of public expenditures while the results reveal significant difference in responses to these determinants across components of expenditures and between the two countries

modelling food logistics networks with emission considerations the case of an international beef supply chain intrinsic characteristics of food products and processes along with growing sustainability concerns lead to the need for decision support tools that can integrate economic considerations with quality preservation and environmental protection in food supply chains in this study we develop a multi objective linear programming molp model for a generic beef logistics network problem the objectives of the model are i minimizing total logistics cost and ii minimizing total amount of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation operations the model is solved with the ee constraint method this study breaks away from the literature on logistics network models by simultaneously considering transportation emissions affected by road structure vehicle and fuel types weight loads of vehicles traveled distances return hauls and product perishability in a molp model we present computational results and analysis based on an application of the model on a real life international beef logistics chain operating in nova andradina mato grosso do sul brazil and exporting beef to the european union trade off relationships between multiple objectives are observed by the derived pareto frontier that presents the cost of being sustainable from the point of reducing transportation emissions the results from the pie chart analysis indicate the importance of distances between actors in terms of environmental impact moreover sensitivity analysis on practically important parameters shows that export ports capacities put pressure on the logistics system decreasing fuel efficiency due to the bad infrastructure has negative effects on cost and emissions and green tax incentives result in economic and environmental improvement

supply chain design for efficient and effective blood supply in disasters abstract the emergency supply of blood in natural and anthropogenic disasters has proved challenging this article presents a stochastic bi objective supply chain design model for the efficient cost minimizing and effective delivery time minimizing supply of blood in disasters the blood supply network under investigation is comprised of blood donors mobile blood facilities local and regional blood centers and demand points a hybrid solution approach combining the e constraint and lagrangian relaxation methods is developed to solve the proposed model our numerical experiments and subsequent discussions focus on 1 investigating the utility of the proposed model in solving different size problems 2 exploring possible tradeoffs between supply chain cost and delivery time 3 identifying the areas along the supply chain where investments can be made to improve supply chain efficiency and effectiveness and 4 performance benchmarking of the proposed stochastic programming approach

on the markovian efficiency of bertrand and cournot equilibria we characterize and compare closed loop feedback price and quantity strategies within a full fledged dynamic model of oligopolistic competition in which production requires exploitation of a renewable productive asset unlike previous papers on the strategic exploitation of productive assets we allow for imperfect product substitutability which enables us to deal with price competition we show that the traditional result that the bertrand equilibrium is more efficient than the cournot equilibrium does not necessarily hold in a markovian environment either in the short run or at the stationary equilibrium or using the discounted sum of welfare as a criterion for relative efficiency

price vs quantity competition in a vertically related market this paper demonstrates that the standard conclusions regarding the comparison of cournot and bertrand competition are reversed in a vertically related market with upstream monopoly and trading via two part tariffs in such a market downstream cournot competition yields higher output lower wholesale prices lower final prices higher consumers surplus and higher total welfare than bertrand competition

facility location and capacity acquisition under carbon tax and emissions limits to centralize or to decentralize abstract we investigate the effect of environmental regulations in the form of a carbon tax and command and control legislation on plant capacity and location decisions of a firm in this context command and control involves a limit on the total emissions and penalties for any polluter exceeding this environmental limit while carbon tax involves a variable cost for emissions we also propose two novel policy options that should be considered by policy makers for transportation emissions 1 a per unit per mile transportation penalty and 2 a collective transportation emissions policy with a limit on total transportation emissions that encourages emission and cost efficient facility networks we devise an exact algorithm to solve the arising discontinuous nonlinear integer problem we also consider simplified versions of the problem to gain analytical insights on factors driving the solutions for the more accurate yet complex scenarios we develop a realistic dataset from the auto industry gleaned from publicly available sources to highlight key results of the model through analysis of this representative data we identify the environmental limits and penalties that would drive the company to compliance we find that stricter regulations without high penalties would not assure compliance as the benefits of increased scale associated with a centralized plant frequently outweigh the regulatory penalties at the strategic level a production emissions tax does not encourage companies to reduce production emissions however high lump sum penalties with intermediate limits reduce both regional production and total transportation emissions we find that for regional production emissions while a command and control scheme with a high lump sum emissions penalty is effective in reducing emissions a per unit carbon tax has no effect interestingly the opposite is true for total transportation emissions where we observe that the per unit per mile transportation emissions tax is more effective than a command and control scheme finally we also find that companies with low production pollution low demand or high transportation costs should consider decentralization to comply with the environmental regulations

doubling fish exports or garment exports which would benefit the fijian economy most evidence from a computable general equilibrium model the need to diversify fiji s export base has been identified as an important avenue for reducing fiji s vulnerabilities in international trade this paper poses the question doubling fish exports or garment exports which would be most beneficial for the fijian economy to achieve the goal of this paper the computable general equilibrium model is used this being at the forefront of research on impact studies the main finding is that when garment exports and fish exports are doubled the benefits to the fijian economy are greater from garment exports suggesting that the latter has stronger linkages with the rest of the economy on the basis of this finding policymakers should divert resources towards sustaining the garment industry whose future is uncertain due to expiring trade agreements and unstable economic policies

cash marketing styles and performance persistence much agricultural economics research has been dedicated to determining the best time for producers to sell their commodities unlike this past research we look at how producers actually sell commodities the extent to which producers display an active or mechanical marketing style is measured using individual farmer sales the activeness of a producer s marketing strategy is measured by how much the timing of their strategy varies from year to year results show no relationship between activeness and net prices received furthermore the results show no evidence of performance persistence by individual producers

the impact of carbon policies on supply chain design and logistics of a major retailer abstract the energy used to move freight comprised about 17 of all the energy consumed in the united states in 2010 this percentage was an increase from 8 7 in 1970 even though fuel efficiency gradually improved over the period one major reason of this phenomenon is that the longer supply chains of many industries caused by globalization increase freight movement various carbon policies have been discussed and even implemented for some industry sectors in the european union to reduce carbon emissions however the emissions of surface transportation have not been well studied this paper investigates three of the most common carbon policies carbon emission tax inflexible cap and cap and trade the impact on a company may include the redesign of its supply chains and different choices of transportation modes truck rail or waterway this paper proposes optimization models for major retailers who make a huge contribution to freight movement to design their supply chains under various carbon policies the results from the models can help policy makers to predict the impact of policies on overall emissions in the freight transportation sector the model may also be incorporated into the integrated assessment models for climate change analyses furthermore a sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the impact of the policy parameters on carbon emissions and logistics cost this research uses the supply chain of a major u s retailer i e wal mart to demonstrate how to use the models and conduct the sensitivity analysis in order to realize significant emission reduction a redesign of supply chains of major retailers is necessary and will be triggered only by a high carbon tax rate a high carbon price or a very strict carbon cap which all may involve high social and or economic complexity numerical experiments show that different policies have different impacts on the costs and the effectiveness of emission reduction how to choose policy parameters is critical to the effectiveness of a carbon policy the different sensitivity also implies different challenges during the implementation of the policies such as the high cost preventing retailers from accepting any carbon taxes and the difficulty of reaching an agreement on the carbon caps between retailers and policy makers

integrated economic and environmental models for a multi stage cold supply chain under carbon tax regulation abstract the elevated level of public and organizations awareness concerning sustainability has necessitated the adoption of environmentally conscious practices in the management of supply chains as such classical inventory models wherein the sole measure of performance is cost minimization are no longer appropriate to handle such emerging and pressing issue this paper assesses the impact of accounting for carbon emissions resulting from transportation and storage activities of a cold item in the context of a multi stage supply chain comprised of a plant warehouse a distribution center dc and a retailer we present an operational cost minimization model a carbon footprint minimization model and a hybrid economic and environmental minimization model where all models seek to determine the optimal lot sizing and shipping quantities alongside the number of trucks to be used in the upstream and downstream directions of the supply chain as well as the number of freezer units utilized at the dc which is owned by a third party logistics provider the structural properties for the optimal solution of the three models are identified and solution algorithms are also proposed upon conducting computational experiments it turns out that the incorporation of carbon related costs through carbon tax regulation may call for adjusting the adopted operational policy which results in a minor increase in the operational cost however this increase is outweighed by the savings resulting from the carbon related costs numerical results of the sensitivity analysis on the carbon tax policy indicate that as the tax rate increases substantial reductions in the amount of carbon footprint emitted are realized and cost savings are also achieved when adopting the lot sizing and shipping policy of the third integrated model over the operational cost minimization model

on the determinants of corporate hedging finance theory indicates that hedging increases firm value by reducing expected taxes expected costs of financial distress or other agency costs this paper provides evidence on these hypotheses using survey data on firm s use of forwards futures swaps and options combined with computstat data on firm characteristics of 169 firms in the sample 104 firms use hedging instruments in 1986 the data suggest that firms which hedge face more convex tax functions have less coverage of fixed claims are larger have more growth options in their investment opportunity set and employ fewer hedging substitutes

government expenditure and economic growth evidence from g7 countries this paper examines wagner s law of public expenditure which emphasizes economic growth as the fundamental determinant of public sector growth using time series data drawn from the g7 industrialized countries over the sample period 1960 1993 it presents evidence on both the short and long run effects of growth in national income on government expenditure by resorting to recent developments in the theory of cointegrated processes an attempt is also made in this study to examine if wagner s law holds between certain key components of government expenditure and income