environmental efficiency evaluation of industry in china based on a new fixed sum undesirable output data envelopment analysis national natural science funds of china for innovative research groups 70821001 national natural science funds of china 70901069 71222106 71203186 research fund for the doctoral program of higher education of china 20133402110028 fundamental research funds for the central universities wk 2040150007 china scholarship council

international business research past present and future the editors of the journal of international business studies jibs always try to publish the best international business research unfortunately there will probably never be a simple response to the question what constitutes excellent international business research we might make some progress however if we first attempt to define international business research and then identify several noteworthy examples

measuring the efficiency of energy intensive industries across european countries abstract this study evaluates the energy efficiency trends of five energy intensive industries in 23 european union eu countries over the period 2000 2009 in particular the performance of the construction electricity manufacturing mining and quarrying and transport sectors is examined the analysis is based on data envelopment analysis dea combined with the malmquist productivity index mpi which allows for distinctions between efficiency and technology changes over time at the second stage of the analysis cross classified multilevel modelling is applied to analyse the main drivers behind efficiency performance using a number of sector and country characteristics based on dea results an overall improvement in efficiency is observed in all sectors over the period the decomposition of the mpi indicates that technology change is primarily responsible for the improvements achieved in most sectors the results obtained by the cross classified model show among other things that the high electricity prices energy taxes and market share of the largest generator in the electricity market have a negative effect on industrial energy efficiency

the management of greenhouse gas emissions and its effects on firm performance abstract climate change is a reality and the dramatic reduction of greenhouse gas ghg emissions by developed countries is a moral obligation it represents also a unique opportunity to modernize the economy and to improve the competitiveness of firms the purpose of this study is to analyze how greater consideration to the impact of their activities on the environment as well as the control and reduction of co2 emissions can improve the economic performance of firms a modern and efficient approach to the management of emissions helps to identify the activities with high energy consumption which can lead to potential savings and also to maximize image return to customers sensitive to environmental issues an econometric model that quantifies these effects is here applied to a sample of large italian firms and evidence demonstrates that the adoption of an ems environmental management system together with an appropriate control of emissions could lead to profits through an increase in demand and productivity however the improvement of productivity is weaker than the increase in demand suggesting that there is a delay between the start of the environmental efforts and the realization of economic performances

a note on the inventory models for deteriorating items with ramp type demand rate abstract in this research we study the inventory models for deteriorating items with ramp type demand rate we first clearly point out some questionable results that appeared in mandal b pal a k 1998 order level inventory system with ramp type demand rate for deteriorating items journal of interdisciplinary mathematics 1 49 66 and wu k s ouyang l y 2000 a replenishment policy for deteriorating items with ramp type demand rate short communication proceedings of national science council roc a 24 279 286 and then resolve the similar problem by offering a rigorous and efficient method to derive the optimal solution in addition we also propose an extended inventory model with ramp type demand rate and its optimal feasible solution to amend the incompleteness in the previous work moreover we also proposed a very good inventory replenishment policy for this kind of inventory model we believe that our work will provide a solid foundation for the further study of this sort of important inventory models with ramp type demand rate

a multi criteria decision analysis model for carbon emission quota allocation in china s east coastal areas efficiency and equity abstract the allocation of carbon emission quotas is recognized as a fundamental and critical step towards the establishment of an effective nationwide carbon emissions trading cet market in china this paper aims to examine the quota allocation pertaining to china s east coastal areas these regions are pioneers in reformation and the domestic heavy emitters in this paper a multi criteria decision analysis model is proposed this model is based on the principles of efficiency and equity in order to reflect the true efficiency of carbon emissions a weighted russell direction distance model is employed three criteria namely capacity responsibility and potential are used to evaluate the degrees of equity furthermore different situations are set to evaluate the related indicators the results indicate the following 1 industrial provinces have less carbon emission quota increments 2 the yangtze river delta economic zone has notably improved energy efficiency and future quota increments correspond with the zone s current carbon emissions 3 circum bohai sea economic zone will be a major buyer of carbon emission quotas while pan pearl river delta economic zone currently receives surplus quota 4 the overall allocation of quotas converts from uneven to even as a result of gdp growth these results provide a reference for collaborative regional reductions in carbon emissions and for the construction of a cet market

resource allocation based on efficiency analysis the purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to a resource allocation problem that typically appears in organizations with a centralized decision making environment for example supermarket chains banks and universities the central unit is assumed to be interested in maximizing the total amount of outputs produced by the individual units by allocating available resources to them we will develop an interactive formal approach based on data envelopment analysis dea and multiple objective linear programming molp to find the most preferred allocation plan the units are assumed to be able to modify their production in the current production possibility set within certain assumptions various assumptions are considered concerning returns to scale and the ability of each unit to modify its production plan numerical examples are used to illustrate the approach

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

technical efficiency of economic systems of eu 15 countries based on energy consumption in the present study data envelopment analysis is used to determine the technical efficiency index of eu 15 countries from 1980 to 2008 using cross country comparison technical efficiency index represents the capacity of an economy to produce a higher level of gross domestic product for a given level of total energy input the level of the technical efficiency index is determined from the energy mix fossil fuels non fossil fuels nuclear energy of each country and depends on the maximization level of the production of the gross domestic product of the economic system without waste of energy resources the current study is applied in the case of the eu15 countries its scope is to highlight the differentiations of country classifications before and after the integration of nuclear energy in the energy mix of each country the main result is that the integration of nuclear energy as an additional input in the energy mixture affects negatively the technical efficiency of countries also when an economy achieves a decrease of the energy consumption produced from fossil fuels and a better exploitation of renewable energy sources clearly improves its capacity to produce more output with the given levels of inputs

cost based modelling of optimal emission quota allocation abstract given that a fixed national emission reduction target could be achieved by imposing emission quotas among multiple decision making units under administration a novel nonlinear programming approach is proposed in this paper to obtain an optimal emission quota allocation in a least cost way marginal emission abatement cost curves are simulated based on the environmental performance and marginal emission abatement costs measured in a set of parametric directional output distance functions with multi inputs and multi outputs further the proposed model is applied to empirically investigate the optimal carbon emission quota allocation for china s building construction industry among thirty three provinces in three different regions the results indicate that the relatively developed eastern region in china has higher marginal emission abatement cost and can be imposed with more emission quotas while the central and western regions can undertake more emission reduction approximately 74 million rmb can be saved by implementing the optimal emission allocation proposed in this paper as compared to a uniform emission quota allocation the findings are of great theoretical methodological and practical significance for policymakers and social science researchers in terms of climate change mitigation

efficient allocation of co2 emissions in china a zero sum gains data envelopment model abstract the appropriate allocation of co 2 emission quotas can build up a solid foundation for future emissions trading building co 2 emissions allocation mechanism has significant practical implications based on radial zero sum gains data envelopment zsg dea allocation model this paper uses a non radial zsg dea model to allocate co 2 emissions between different chinese provinces unlike previous studies treating co 2 as the input variable we treat co 2 as the undesirable output variable the modified model can better reflect macro production process while earlier relevant models treated co 2 emissions as inputs this paper contributes to the existing resource allocation method and allocates china s provincial co 2 emissions from the view of technical efficiency the results of our paper reveal that 1 between 2006 and 2010 the cumulative optimal amounts of co 2 emissions were higher than the actual amounts in 12 provinces and lower in other 18 provinces 2 several energy abundant provinces such as shanxi and inter mongolia need to take more responsibilities in co 2 emissions reduction 3 after the zsg dea allocation all provinces co 2 emissions are on zsg dea frontier which reflects the overall pareto optimality

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

integrated weighting approach to carbon emission quotas an application case of beijing tianjin hebei region abstract the coordinated development of beijing tianjin hebei region has been included in the chinese 12th five year plan as a national strategy accordingly the cooperation of energy saving and environmental protection is an important part at the present stage establishing carbon emission trading market in china is regarded as an effective measure to reduce and control carbon dioxide emission meanwhile it is an important task for government to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions in order to explore the cross provincial carbon trading market mode of china this paper aims to construct a comprehensive index and use the integrated weighting approach to simulate the carbon quota allocation of beijing tianjin hebei region the results show that firstly the indicator of responsibility which is about 0 56 is given relatively more weight among the three indicators by comparison the weights of capacity and potential are 0 13 and 0 30 secondly the provinces with strong economic ability and lower carbon reduction potential may get fewer proportions of carbon emission quotas such as beijing thirdly since undertaking the function transfer and dispersal of beijing and tianjin hebei should have a relatively high carbon emission quotas in the future carbon trading market these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in beijing tianjin hebei region of china

undesirable outputs in efficiency valuations abstract efficiency measurement is usually based on the assumption that inputs have to be minimized and outputs have to be maximized in a growing number of applications however undesirable outputs are incorporated into the production model which have to be minimized in this paper various approaches for treating such outputs in the framework of data envelopment analysis dea are discussed and the resulting efficient frontiers are compared new radial measures are introduced which assume that any change of the output level will involve both undesirable and desirable outputs

measuring macroeconomic performance in the oecd a comparison of european and non european countries abstract we study the macroeconomic performance of 19 oecd countries over the period 1970 1990 performance is defined in terms of the ability of a country s macroeconomic managers to provide four services to their citizens a high level of real gdp per capita a low rate of inflation a low rate of unemployment and a favorable trade balance we use linear programming techniques to construct a best practice macroeconomic performance frontier and to measure the performance of each country in each year relative to the frontier we then add two environmental disamenities carbon and nitrogen emissions to the service list and repeat the analysis to see if the performance rankings change throughout the analysis emphasis is placed on a comparison of the performance of 14 european oecd countries with that of five non european oecd countries we find that performance rankings do change and that the relative performance of the european countries declines when the environmental disamenities are added to the service list

pareto improvement through a reallocation of carbon emission quotas abstract this article presents a methodology that discusses a reallocation of carbon emission quotas based on the zsg dea model also introduces the process of solving the zsg dea model in extensive detail and derives theorems 1 and 2 theorem 1 shows the equivalence in competition and the cooperation case while theorem 2 indicates the correlation between quota adjustment and efficiency change through this zsg dea model the determination of carbon emission quotas is no longer subjective and reasonable carbon emission quotas among countries can be obtained the reallocation of carbon emission quotas can not only ensure that all countries have 100 efficiencies but also help all countries gain through pareto improvement the conclusions of this paper are that most developed countries should increase their carbon emission quotas and that most less developed countries need to reduce theirs including the two most populous countries of china and india the reallocation process should be paid by selling the quotas of low efficient countries so that they can obtain funds to support their development while at the same time high efficient countries can produce more due to relaxation of environmental constraints thus achieving global pareto improvement

the international entrepreneurial dynamics of accelerated internationalisation the initial stages of internationalisation prior to firms having established their definitive sources of advantage remain the relatively unexplored area of the international business ib literature at these early stages where firms are seeking to establish themselves and new multinational firms are appearing to exploit new opportunities created by globalisation the entrepreneurial aspects of internationalisation come to the fore in this paper we aim to delineate an emerging field of ib scholarship we use the appearance of international new ventures and the phenomenon of accelerated internationalisation that they feature to identify a set of issues that has slipped through the net of some of the existing ib frameworks we propose that the salient features of accelerated and early internationalisation by the newly internationalising firm are best captured in a framework that is found at the intersection of entrepreneurial and internationalisation perspectives which we propose be known as international entrepreneurial dynamics we discuss such a framework in terms of entry points and pathways mapped by firms as they probe the ib arena and the key factors that impinge on behaviour and strategic choices in line with recent developments in the entrepreneurship literature these are grouped into three milestones of entrepreneurial processes that extend across national boundaries 1 the discovery of new opportunities 2 the deployment of resources in the exploitation of these opportunities and 3 the engagement with competitors implications for mne and internationalisation theory are discussed

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

international versus domestic entrepreneurship new venture strategic behavior and industry structure abstract international entrepreneurship is defined in this study as the development of international new ventures or start ups that from their inception engage in international business thus viewing their operating domain as international from the initial stages of the firm s operation one hundred and eighty eight new venture firms in the computer and communications equipment manufacturing industries are classified according to the percentage of their sales in the international market ventures with no sales derived from international activities are considered domestic new ventures and ventures with sales from international activities comprising greater than 5 of total sales are considered international new ventures the strategy and industry structure profiles of international new ventures are significantly different from domestic new ventures the internationals pursue much broader market based strategies seeking a strategy of broad market coverage through developing and controlling numerous distribution channels serving numerous customers in diverse market segments and developing high market or product visibility the internationals also emphasize a more aggressive entry strategy building on outside financial and production resources to enter numerous geographical markets on a large scale securing patent technology is also an important component of their strategy this suggests that the internationals compete by entering the industry on a large scale seeking to penetrate multiple markets with the recognition that external resources are necessary to support such an entry whereas both the domestics and the internationals characterize domestic competition as being relatively intense the international new ventures compete in industries with higher levels of international competition it is not clear from this research whether the new venture selects an industry with a high degree of international competition and therefore responds with an international orientation or because the new venture has an international orientation it perceives or recognizes a higher degree of international competition another industry structure difference is the internationals perceived higher degree of restrictiveness due to government regulation it is unclear whether this restrictiveness motivates new ventures to seek less regulated international environments or if it indicates that when competing internationally the new venture is confronted with increased regulatory requirements domestic new ventures are distinguished by their emphasis on a production expansion strategy and customer specialization strategy the production specialization strategy consists of focusing on limited geographical markets maintaining excess capacity and pursuing forward integration the customer specialization strategy incorporates the production of a specialty product that is purchased infrequently thus for both of the domestic strategies a consistent closeness between the producer and consumer is implied this may be an important basis underlining the new venture s decision to compete in an exclusive domestic context this study offers initial support for the notion of international entrepreneurship by its findings that there are significant differences between new venture firms competing domestically and new ventures choosing to also enter international markets

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

regional allocation of co2 emissions allowance over provinces in china by 2020 the mitigation efforts of china are increasingly important for meeting global climate target since the rapid economic growth of china has led to an increasing share in the world s total co2 emissions this paper sets out to explore the approach for realizing china s national mitigation targets submitted to the unfccc as part of the copenhagen accord that is to reduce the intensity of co2 emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 by 2020 as well as reducing the energy intensity and increasing the share of non fossil fuel consumption through regional allocation of emission allowance over china s provinces since the realization of china s mitigation target essentially represents a total amount emission allowance allocation problem an improved zero sum gains data envelopment analysis optimization model which could deal with the constant total amount resources allocation is proposed in this study by utilizing this model and based on several scenarios of china s economic growth co2 emissions and energy consumption a new efficient emission allowance allocation scheme on provincial level for china by 2020 is proposed the allocation results indicate that different provinces have to shoulder different mitigation burdens in terms of emission intensity reduction energy intensity reduction and share of non fossil fuels increase

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

econometric estimation of technical and environmental efficiency an application to dutch dairy farms in this article we estimate the technical and environmental efficiency of a panel of dutch dairy farms nitrogen surplus arising from the application of excessive amounts of manure and chemical fertilizer is treated as an environmentally detrimental input a stochastic translog production frontier is specified to estimate the output oriented technical efficiency environmental efficiency is estimated as the input oriented technical efficiency of a single input the nitrogen surplus of each farm the mean output oriented technical efficiency is rather high 0 894 but the mean input oriented environmental efficiency is only 0 441 intensive dairy farms are both technically and environmentally more efficient than extensive farms

the knowledge network of international entrepreneurship theory and evidence the knowledge network associated with the young and emerging field of international entrepreneurship is defined through a bolean search progression of key words on the ssci data bases from 1992 to 2000 the knowledge network of an applied field portrays and usually follows the actual developmental path of its corresponding field some 287 articles document the early emergence of international entrepreneureship as a field of scholarly inquiry when a field is young and in need of theoretical foundations the knowledge networks of other fields may provide for those early needs this is the case of international entrepreneurship the rich theoretical foundations of the two fields of international business and entrepreneureship among others have nourished and accelerated the internationalization process of entrepreneurship a detailed analysis of 7 651 citations contained in the contributions of the 287 documents reported here traces international entrepreneurship s rich yet young developmental path this analysis reveals a wealth of information for example the lists of highly cited books articles authors and their affiliated institutions presented here

allocating fixed costs and resources via data envelopment analysis abstract in this paper we show that data envelopment analysis dea can be viewed as maximising the average efficiency of the decision making units dmus in an organisation building upon this we present dea based models for a allocating fixed costs to dmus and b allocating input resources to dmus simultaneous to allocating input resources output targets are also decided for each dmu numeric results are presented for a number of example problems taken from the literature

allocation of carbon dioxide emission permits with the minimum cost for chinese provinces in big data environment abstract the environmental problem and global warming have drawn many governments attention in order to solve the problem reasonable allocation of carbon dioxide emission cde permits is an important issue because it sets the targets for the decision making units to control the amount of carbon dioxide emission in this paper a new data envelopment analysis approach is proposed to evaluate the efficiency of decision making units in a big data environment and set the carbon dioxide emission permits for each decision making unit with the minimum costs comparing with the previous works on carbon dioxide emission permits allocation we firstly allocate the amount of carbon dioxide emission permits taking account into the cost each decision making unit should take to achieve its target moreover two kinds of linear programming problems are developed under efficiency invariance principle and efficiency changeability principle respectively as the allocation of carbon dioxide emission permits causes the minimum cost the decision making units are more easily to accept the allocation alternative finally our approach is applied to the carbon dioxide emission permits allocation among chinese provinces the results show that the approach can well allocate the cde permits with the minimum cost and also reveal the relationship between the marginal cost of reducing cde permits and the adjustment on them

a generalized dea model for centralized resource allocation abstract in this paper we introduced a new generalized centralized resource allocation model which extends lozano and villa s and asmild et al s models to a more general case in order to uncover the sources of such total input contraction in the generalized centralized resource allocation model we applied the structural efficiency to further decompose it into three components the aggregate technical efficiency the aggregate allocative efficiency and re transferable efficiency components the proposed models are not only flexible enough for the central decision maker to adjust the inputs and outputs to achieve the total input contraction but also identify the sources of such total input contraction thereby giving rise to an important interpretation and understanding of the generalized centralized resource allocation model finally an empirical example is used to illustrate the approach

identifying the big question in international business research buckley 2002 argues that the international business ib research agenda may be running out of steam because no big research question has currently been identified buckley also asks whether the field needs a big question and if so challenges ib scholars to discover it buckley and ghauri 2004 elaborate on the third question of globalization discussed in buckley 2002 as a possible candidate for the big question in response this article is written to take up buckley s challenge and also to comment on buckley and ghauri s more recent work i agree that ib needs a big question the pursuit of which can serve to unite and energize scholars make scientific progress and enhance the status and prestige of the field toward that end i argue that what determines the international success and failure of firms has always served as a fundamental research question which has permeated ib research in the past and present and is likely to propel its progress in the future therefore i am of the opinion that the ib research agenda is not likely to run out of steam because focusing on this question will leverage ib s comparative advantage and keep the field engaged in generating exciting and disciplined theories and findings in the 21st century

network linkages and location choice in foreign direct investment this paper shows that network linkage is an important determinant of location choice in foreign direct investment fdi network linkages are divided into internal intra firm and external inter firm linkages external linkages are further separated into strategic and relational linkages we found that taiwanese firms are keen on making external linkages but are indifferent to or incapable of making internal linkages through fdi strategic linkages motivate taiwanese fdi in the united states while relational linkages facilitate taiwanese fdi in southeast asia and china small firms are more sensitive to relational linkages than large firms in their choice of fdi location

a new frontier approach to model the eco efficiency in european countries abstract this study aims to evaluate the resource and environment efficiency problem of european countries we specify a new stochastic frontier model where gross domestic product gdp is considered as the desirable output and greenhouse gases ghg emissions as the undesirable output capital labor fossil fuels and renewable energy consumption are regarded as inputs gdp ghg ratio is maximized given the values of the other four variables the study is divided into two distinct periods 2000 2004 and 2005 2011 this division is related to the implementation of the kyoto protocol in 2005 and will allow us to evaluate the difference between the levels of efficiency before and after the establishment of environmental targets since stochastic frontier models are typically ill posed a new maximum entropy approach to assess technical efficiency which combines information from the data envelopment analysis and the structure of composed error from the stochastic frontier approach without requiring distributional assumptions is presented in this work

olympic ranking based on a zero sum gains dea model abstract it is usual to rank the participant countries in the olympic games in accordance with the number of medals they have won an alternative ranking is suggested in this paper this ranking is based on each country s ability to win medals in relation to its available resources this is an efficiency that can be measured with the help of data envelopment analysis dea for which two models exist the traditional dea model that takes into account variable returns to scale and a dea model based on the premise that the sum of the gains is zero constant sum of outputs it is the latter that is developed in this paper

assessment of the environmental efficiency of the electricity mix of the top european economies via data envelopment analysis abstract moving towards a more sustainable energy system is a major goal of modern societies that aim to minimize the dependence on fossil fuels and the associated anthropogenic impacts in this article the combined use of life cycle assessment lca and data envelopment analysis dea is applied to analyse the environmental performance eco efficiency of the electricity mix of the top european economies this approach allows identifying environmentally efficient and inefficient countries considering as undesirable inputs several environmental impacts associated with the production of 1 kwh regarded as output the method provides as well targets for the inefficient countries that if attained would make them efficient our results provide valuable insight for governments and policy makers that aim to satisfy the electricity demand while minimizing the associated environmental impact

is the lithuanian economy approaching the goals of sustainable energy and climate change mitigation evidence from dea based environmental performance index abstract even though lithuania has seen extensive social and political transformations there is still a gap in the literature on environmental performance of lithuanian economy specifically the environmental pressures stemming from economic activities have never been analysed in lines with the principles of production economics this paper therefore aims to estimate the environmental performance index epi for lithuanian economic sectors the paper presents the underlying trends in greenhouse gas emissions in lithuania the environmental performance index is estimated by employing the data envelopment analysis in the spirit of the hicks moorsteen indices the present analysis is based on the data from the world input output database specifically the environmental technology is defined in terms of the value added carbon and nitrous oxide emissions labour capital and energy results of the analysis imply that the analysed economic sectors can be grouped into the four clusters with respect to the mean epi and its rate of growth pulp paper and agricultural sectors fall into the best performing group featuring the highest mean epi and the highest growth rate petroleum production and air transport sectors are those featuring the lowest environmental performance therefore the latter sectors should be given an especial importance when developing strategies for increase in sustainability

small firms as international players in this paper using aggregate data from the u s bureau of economic analysis the author explores the strategies small u s based foreign investing firms follow in their international activities the aggregate study supports the findings of an earlier study of a few small firms with international activities these firms have a lower than expected tendency to form minority owned affiliates abroad an analysis of the industries in which these small foreign investing firms operate supports the notion that these firms follow specific strategies uncovered in the small scale study finally the paper ties the findings to alliance strategies of small firms

models of the multinational enterprise flexibility is identified as the hallmark of recent modelling of the multinational enterprise the focus on flexibility is a response to the rationalization and restructuring of international business which has occurred since the end of the golden age of western economic growth flexibility has been south in factor markets intermediate product markets and markets for final products it has been sought by both governments and firms flexible firms are attracted to locations with flexible host governments this article contrasts the modern research agenda based on flexibility with the more traditional research agenda which predominates in the literature reviewed by caves 1996

explaining the formation of international new ventures the limits of theories from international business research abstract international new ventures invs represent a growing and important type of start up an inv is defined as a business organization that from inception seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries oviatt and mcdougall 1994 their increasing prevalence and important role in international competition indicates a need for greater understanding of these new ventures oviatt and mcdougall 1994 logitech as described in a case study by alahuhta 1990 is a vivid example of an inv its founders were from two different countries and had a global vision for the company from its inception the venture which produces peripheral devices for personal computers established headquarters in both switzerland and the u s manufacturing and r d were split between the u s and switzerland and then quickly spread to taiwan and ireland the venture s first commercial contract was with a japanese company using 24 case studies of invs we found that their formation process is not explained by existing theories from the field of international business specifically neither monopolistic advantage theory product cycle theory stage theory of internationalization oligopolistic reaction theory nor internalization theory can explain the formation process of invs these theories fail because they assume that firms become international long after they have been formed and they therefore highlight large mature firms they also focus too much on the firm level and largely ignore the individual and small group level of analysis i e the entrepreneur and his or her network of business alliances we propose that an explanation for the formation process of invs must answer three questions 1 who are the founders of invs 2 why do these entrepreneurs choose to compete internationally rather than just in their home countries and 3 what form do their international business activities take who are the founders of invs we argue that founders of invs are individuals who see opportunities from establishing ventures that operate across national borders they are alert to the possibilities of combining resources from different national markets because of the competencies networks knowledge and background that they have developed from their earlier activities following the logic of the resource based view of the firm we argue that the possession of these competencies is not matched by other entrepreneurs only the entrepreneur possessing these competencies is able to combine a particular set of resources across national borders and form a given inv why do these entrepreneurs choose to compete internationally rather than just in their home countries the founders of invs recognize they must create international business competencies from the time of venture formation otherwise the venture may become path dependent on the development of domestic competencies and the entrepreneur will find it difficult to change strategic direction when international expansion eventually becomes necessary as the founder of one inv explained the advantage of starting internationally is that you establish an international spirit from the very beginning mamis 1989 38 what form do their international business activities take founders of invs prefer to use hybrid structures i e strategic alliances and networks for their international activities as a way to overcome the usual poverty of resources at the time of start up this study has important implications for the practice of management in financing decisions relating to invs venture capitalists and other venture financiers should look for entrepreneurs who have a global vision international business competence and an established international network when entrepreneurs start invs they should create hybrid structures to preserve scarce resources finally given the path dependence of competence development founders of new ventures should consider whether establishing a domestic new venture with plans to later internationalize will be as successful a strategy as establishing a new venture that is international from inception

efficiency and allocation of emission allowances and energy consumption over more sustainable european economies abstract efficient use of energy reduction in fossil fuel dependence and control of co2 emissions are all fundamental to development of a sustainable economy competitiveness in energy use saves imports of oil and gas increases gross domestic product and creates new jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors this study identifies the more or less competitive european union member states in terms of sustainable growth using data envelopment analysis dea model and proposes new allocations of country greenhouse gas limits and energy consumption using a zero sum gains dea model the analysis of european countries fills a gap in the existing literature and contributes to the discussion on the 2020 2030 european strategy proposing an efficiency based indicator which measures country performance in terms of economic social and environmental factors gdp represents the economic factor population represents the social factor and emissions final and renewable energy consumption are the environmental factors the numerical results show that the initial allocations are inefficient applying the modelled reallocation the most efficient countries are rewarded by potential increases in emission and energy consumption while the least efficient countries must bring about decreases to achieve full efficiency

a dea approach for estimating the agricultural energy and environmental efficiency of eu countries this study attempts to evaluate the energy and environmental efficiency of the primary sectors of the eu member state countries the evaluation is based on a non radial data envelopment analysis dea model which allows for non proportional adjustments to energy inputs and undesirable outputs and thus it provides different estimations for energy and environmental efficiency scores the 2001 2008 time period was selected for this research one of the most important findings is that countries like germany sweden or austria with strong environmental protection standards appear to be less energy and environmentally efficient compared with countries like denmark belgium spain france or ireland in addition a series of eastern european countries achieve low efficiency scores which can be characterized as expectable due to low technology level being implemented in the primary production process there are also two sub periods for this research the first one 2001 2006 covers the fully coupled with specific cultivations period for subsidy administation and the second 2007 2008 where the new decoupled subsidy scheme was implemented there are significant hints for considerable changes of energy and environmental efficiency after the implementation of the the new cap with the new member states siginificantly differ of both energy and environmental efficiency copmared with the older ones

a study of allocative efficiency of pm2 5 emission rights based on a zero sum gains data envelopment model abstract it is an urgent task for china to control haze emission in environmental treatment emission right trading is a feasible way to achieve the reduction of pollutant emission on the premise that the total pollutant emission amount is under control and the allocation of initial emission rights based on the target total amount is the key to emission right trading in this paper via the input oriented zsg dea model the inter provincial allocative efficiency of pm2 5 emission rights is investigated under the condition that the target total amount is fixed the results showed that 1 after initial emission rights were allocated in accordance with the zsg dea model pm2 5 emission amounts of all provinces would be in a new common dea frontier so as to realize the overall pareto optimality with a set total amount 2 two factors namely land areas and atmospheric environmental capacities of all provinces were considered in the actual allocation to avoid the homogenization of all evaluated units found in the previous evaluation literature on allocative efficiency thereby making the evaluation results more in line with the actual situations in all provinces such an investigation approach can provide guidance on the allocation of initial emission rights in emission right trading and the research results can offer empirical support for haze reducing work load conducted by central and local governments of china

a more scientific allocation scheme of carbon dioxide emissions allowances the case from china abstract efficient allocation of carbon dioxide co2 emissions allowances is essential to the realization of the emissions reduction goal using china as an example this study applies a zero sum gains data envelopment analysis zsg dea model to translate the country s reduction target into provincial goals based on the chinese government s 2020 reduction goal to evaluate efficiency scores we employ the epsilon based measure model that combines radial and non radial characteristics different from prior studies we emphasize the effect of industrial structure on co2 emissions and calculate a composite gross domestic product gdp index as one of the output variables by utilizing the zsg dea model and based on china s provincial co2 emissions allowances as the input variable the composite gdp index and the population as the output variable we obtain an optimal reallocation scheme after four iterations a comparison between the results and official reduction goals shows that the government should increase co2 emissions allowances appropriately for most provinces with high proportions more than 40 of second industry increment in gdp thereby carrying implications for policymakers with china as an example these findings have global implications as regards developing a more scientific allocation scheme especially for regions with unbalanced industrial structures