the corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis this short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the global financial crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis the paper presents a theory of the global financial crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations in particular have had a major part in causing the crisis this paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses significant ways in which corporate psychopaths may have acted recently to the detriment of many further research into this theory is called for

international comparisons of domestic energy consumption abstract governments of many industrialized countries have committed themselves to substantially reduce their domestic emissions of greenhouse gases emission reductions can be achieved through technology and or sector specific policies to decide which part of the economy environmental policy should be concentrated at insight must be gained into the relative importance of the various factors determining domestic aggregate fossil fuel consumption by applying structural decomposition analysis sda across nations the factors causing per capita energy use to differ between countries can be identified which sheds light on where potential energy saving options can be found to demonstrate the usefulness of between country sda we apply the technique to a set of 8 oecd countries

analysis of energy efficiency and its influencing factors in china s transport sector abstract with the rapid development of the chinese economy demand for transportation has increased dramatically which cause high energy consumption in the transport sector energy conservation and emission reduction is currently a long and arduous task for china thus it is of great significance to study the inter provincial energy efficiency and its influencing factors in china s transport sector we use the new energy efficiency model that integrates output growth and energy conservation to measure provincial energy efficiency in china s transport sector the results show that energy efficiency shows a distinctly ladder like distribution with the eastern province having the highest level followed by the central and western provinces and the energy efficiency gap among the provinces is narrowing in addition we use the censored model and truncated model to analyze the relevant factors impacting energy efficiency and propose relevant policy recommendations on how to improve energy efficiency

energy efficiency in china s iron and steel industry evidence and policy implications abstract currently the iron and steel industry isi accounts for more than 16 of china s total energy consumption improving energy efficiency ee and promoting energy savings in this industry have vital significance for china s further sustainable development using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2014 and meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper investigates ee and the energy saving potential ep of china s isi by considering regional technology heterogeneities the results show that 1 from 2001 to 2014 ee in china s isi achieved significant improvement technological progress is the most powerful driving factor while the declines in scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency are two obstructive factors 2 the sources of energy inefficiency ei show distinct spatial difference characteristics ei in the eastern region mainly stems from scale inefficiency and pure technical inefficiency while that in the central and western regions stems from three aspects of scale inefficiency pure technical inefficiency and technology gap and 3 there is considerable ep in china s isi which represents nearly 80 of isi s current total energy consumption because the sources of ep vary across regions the focus of future work for china s regional isi should also vary

energy efficiency and congestion assessment with energy mix effect the case of apec countries abstract to save energy and improve the environment has become a general consensus in the whole asia pacific economic cooperation region this study focuses on the issue of energy congestion which has been considered as one of the key factors influencing energy efficiency we employ a two stage data envelopment analysis model to assess the energy efficiency and congestion of asia pacific economic cooperation countries from 1995 to 2013 it is worth pointing out that the model takes undesirable outputs into account and is able to recognize energy mix effect on energy congestion there are some discussions which based on the empirical results it indicates that energy congestion has led to almost 20 percent of energy waste in asia pacific economic cooperation countries the conclusions are as follows in general energy efficiency of developing countries is lower than that of developed countries besides energy congestion mainly comes from fossil energy use however the congestion of non fossil energy shows a rising trend in recent years in addition a multiple liner regression analysis indicates that energy consumption and industry value added per gdp have positive effects on energy congestion and gdp per capita has negative effect on energy congestion at last we promote several policy recommendations to improve energy efficiency

does environmental regulation affect energy efficiency in china s thermal power generation empirical evidence from a slacks based dea model abstract data envelopment analysis dea has gained much popularity in performance measurement of power industry this paper presents a slack based measure approach to investigating the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and the environmental regulation of china s thermal power generation we first calculate the total factor energy efficiency without considering environmental constraints an environmental performance indicator is proposed through decomposing the total factor energy efficiency the proposed approach is then employed to examine whether environmental regulation affects the energy efficiency of china s thermal power generation we find that the environmental efficiency plays a significant role in affecting energy performance of china s thermal generation sector decreasing the discharge of major pollutants can improve both energy performance and environmental efficiency besides we also have three main findings 1 the energy efficiency and environmental efficiency were relatively low 2 the energy and environmental efficiency scores show great variations among provinces 3 both energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are of obvious geographical characteristics according to our findings we suggest some policy implications

a theory of collective reputations with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality the paper is a first attempt at modelling the idea of group reputation as an aggregate of individual reputations a member s current incentives are affected by his past behaviour and because his track record is observed only with noise by the group s past behaviour as well the paper thus studies the joint dynamics of individual and collective reputations and derives the existence of stereotypes from history dependence rather than from a multiplicity of equilibria or from the existence of a common trait as is usually done in the literature it shows that new members of an organization may suffer from an original sin of their elders long after the latter are gone and it derives necessary and sufficient conditions under which group reputations can be rebuilt last the paper applies the theory to analyse when a large firm can maintain a reputation for quality 1 collective reputations collective reputations play an important role in economics and the social sciences countries ethnic racial or religious groups are known to be hard working honest corrupt hospitable or belligerent some firms enjoy substantial rents from their reputations for producing high quality products some departments are reported to treat their faculty or students fairly the paper is a first attempt at modelling the idea of group reputation as an aggregate of individual reputations a member s current incentives are affected by her past behaviour and because her track record is observed only with noise by the group s past behaviour as well the paper studies the joint dynamics of individual and collective reputations in a model in which current generations are progressively replaced by new ones and derives the existence of stereotypes from history dependence rather than from a multiplicity of equilibria or from the existence of a common trait as is usually done in the literature see section 2 for a detailed comparison with the literature it shows that new members of an organization may suffer from an original sin of their elders long after the latter are gone and it derives necessary and sufficient conditions under which group reputations can be rebuilt last the paper applies the theory to analyse when a large firm can maintain a reputation for quality let us spell out the building blocks of our theory in more detail a a group s reputation is only as good as that of its members each member is characterized by individual traits such as talent diligence or honesty past individual behaviour conveys information about these traits and generates individual reputations

public procurement and innovation resurrecting the demand side abstract demand is a major potential source of innovation yet the critical role of demand as a key driver of innovation has still to be recognised in government policy this article discusses public procurement as one of the key elements of a demand oriented innovation policy the paper starts by signaling the new significance of public procurement for innovation policy strategies at the eu level and in a range of european countries it then defines the concept of public procurement and embeds this concept within a taxonomy of innovation policies the rationales and justifications of public procurement policies to spur innovation are discussed followed by a consideration of the challenges and potential pitfalls as well as appropriate institutional arrangements and strategies including some recent empirical examples of good practice it concludes by confronting the public procurement approach with two of the most common objections to it and by considering future prospects

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

efficiency evaluation and dynamic evolution of china s regional green economy a method based on the super pebm model and dea window analysis abstract given the current circumstances of increasingly serious resource consumption and environmental pollution the development of china s green economy will profoundly impact the nation s future economic prosperity and even global economic development based on panel data from 2008 to 2017 this paper measures the green economic efficiency gee of chinese regions and analyzes its dynamic evolution using time series based on a novel data envelopment analysis dea model using environmental dea techniques this paper introduces the super pebm ebm based on pearson correlation coefficient model which is developed from the epsilon based measure ebm model and combines super pebm with the window analysis method firstly environmental dea technology is used to analyze gee at the regional level in china secondly based on panel data the window analysis method is used to analyze the regional differences of china s regional gee finally the development trend of china s regional gee in different time windows is obtained by combining the super pebm model and window analysis the empirical analysis results using panel data for regions in china from 2008 to 2017 show that 1 the overall gee of china is slowly increasing and the regional differences are still significant and 2 the improvement of gee can help to reduce regional differences

efficient energy saving targets for apec economies abstract energy saving target ratios estr for 17 apec economies during 1991 2000 are computed in a total factor framework all nominal variables are transformed into real variables by the purchasing power parity ppp at the 1995 price level the data envelopment analysis dea approach is used to find the energy saving target est for apec economies without reducing their maximum potential gross domestic productions gdps in each year energy labor and capital are the three inputs while gdp is the single output our major findings are as follows 1 china has the largest est up to almost half of its current usage 2 hong kong the philippines and the united states have the highest energy efficiency 3 the energy efficiency generally increases for apec economies except for canada and new zealand 4 chile mexico and taiwan have significantly improved their energy efficiency in the last 5 years 5 an inverted u shape relation exists between per capita est and per capita gdp 6 estr has a positive relation with the value added percentage of gdp of the industry sector and a negative relation with that of the service sector

energy efficiency and policy in swedish pulp and paper mills a data envelopment analysis approach the paper provides an empirical assessment of the electricity efficiency improvement potential in the swedish pulp and paper industry by employing data envelopment analysis dea and mill specific input and output data for the years 1995 2000 and 2005 the empirical results are discussed in relation to the reported outcomes of the swedish voluntary energy efficiency programme pfe the estimated electricity efficiency gap is relatively stable over the time period it equals roughly 1 twh per year for the sample mills and this is three times higher than the corresponding self reported electricity savings in pfe this result is largely a reflection of the fact that in the pulp and paper industry electricity efficiency improvements are typically embodied in the diffusion of new capital equipment and there is a risk that some of the reported measures in pfe simply constitute an inefficient speed up of capital turnover the above does not preclude though that many other measures in pfe may have addressed some relevant market failures and barriers in the energy efficiency market overall the analysis suggests that future energy efficiency programs could plausibly be better targeted at explicitly promoting technological progress as well as at addressing the most important information and behaviour related failures

science technology and innovation policies in small and developing economies the case of central america in the last decade there has been an increasing recognition among central american policy makers of the central importance of science technology and innovation sti for inclusive and sustainable economic growth based on higher productivity this paper aims to study current sti policies in those countries and explore whether this increasing acknowledgement has come along with new and more active policies empirical evidence collected through questionnaire based interviews with high level government officials in each country shows that central american governments have built public organisations and institutions to support sti such as laws national plans and a wide variety of policy instruments yet available science and technology indicators illustrate that the results are still meagre this paper identifies eight barriers faced by these governments when designing and implementing sti policies

safety culture in financial trading an analysis of trading misconduct investigations high profile failures in financial trading have led to interest in how the culture of the industry produces risky and unethical behaviours among traders yet there is no established theoretical framework for studying this we apply safety culture theory to examine ten recent high profile trading mishaps investigated by the uk financial regulator the results show that the dimensions of safety culture e g management commitment to safety systems and procedures used to understand organisational accidents in domains such as aviation also explain failures in risk management within financial trading organisations this counters narratives focusing on traders who are unethical rule breakers and emphasises the value of a systemic approach whereby safety culture theory is used to explain why risky behaviours in financial trading occur safety culture therefore provides a conceptual basis for further research on risky and unethical behaviours in financial trading alongside providing insights for possible intervention

ecological total factor energy efficiency of regions in china most existing energy efficiency indices are computed without taking into account undesirable outputs such as co2 and so2 emissions this paper computes the ecological total factor energy efficiency etfee of 30 regions in china for the period 2005 2009 through the slack based model sbm with undesirable outputs we calculate the etfee index by comparing the target energy input obtained from sbm with undesirable outputs to the actual energy input findings show that china s regional etfee still remains a low level of around 0 600 and regional energy efficiency is overestimated by more than 0 100 when not looking at environmental impacts china s regional energy efficiency is extremely unbalanced the east area ranks first with the highest etfee of above 0 700 the northeast and central areas follow and the west area has the lowest etfee of less than 0 500 a monotone increasing relation exists between the area s etfee and china s per capita gdp the truncated regression model shows that the ratio of r d expenditure to gdp and the degree of foreign dependence have positive impacts whereas the ratio of the secondary industry to gdp and the ratio of government subsidies for industrial pollution treatment to gdp have negative effects on the etfee

decomposing the change of co2 emissions a joint production theoretical approach this paper presents an alternative decomposition method to explore the driving forces of change in carbon emissions by using distance functions estimated by data envelopment analysis the proposed approach can isolate the effects of changes in gdp composition and energy supply composition on the change of carbon emissions in addition it is capable of identifying the effects of changes in different input ratios which may be very important if there are substitution effects among different inputs moreover the proposed model can measure the effects of changes in good and bad output technical efficiencies consequently this decomposition technique allows a change of carbon emissions to be decomposed into contributions from ten factors which provides more insights for policy makers we apply this model to decompose carbon emissions in 25 oecd counties and china for the sample countries as a whole the empirical results indicate that the economic growth is the crucial driver to carbon emissions increase while the changes in gdp composition and capital energy ratio are two main drivers to carbon emissions reduction in particular we discuss in detail the driving forces of china s carbon emissions change in order to propose some valuable policy implications for china from an international perspective

changes in energy intensiveness of hong kong economy 1995 2007 abstract the growth of primary energy requirements per slackened appreciably since the late 1990s in hong kong while final energy requirements fer actually declined yet gdp continued to grow at a respectable average annual growth rate during the period leading to a drastic drop in the energy intensiveness of the economy the article analyzed the factors that contributed to the emergence of the above phenomena and discussed its consequences the factors that led to the drop in energy intensiveness with respect to fer includes the rising electrification of the fuel mix improvements in energy end use efficiency partly induced by government policy and changes in the structure of the hong kong economy with respect to the decline in per energy intensiveness the following aspects are pertinent the share of electricity consumption accounted for by nuclear imports the efficiency of electricity generation in hong kong partly determined by the type of fuels used and losses due to transmission and distribution as well as station consumption system losses the decline in energy intensiveness is good to hong kong both in terms of the economy and the environment its ramifications will be briefly discussed

margin call using film to explore behavioural aspects of the financial crisis the aim of this article is to show how the critically acclaimed and award winning film margin call may be used in business ethics teaching set in a fictional investment bank at the dawn of the financial crisis the film zooms in on the motivations and decision making of people who had much to lose from the crash of the hitherto very profitable mortgage backed securities market the film offers rich material for analysis of behaviours that contributed to the crisis the article will set out topics for classroom discussion including the impact of incentives and power structures contextual factors that distance people from the consequences of their actions and considerations of how the banking industry may be transformed

development of national innovation policy in small developing countries the case of cyprus abstract this paper analyses the concept of national innovation policy nip and puts forward arguments supporting the need for a nip for small developing economies like cyprus a brief outline is given of the science technology infrastructure and current innovation related policies in cyprus while the attitudes of owners managers of private manufacturing firms towards these policies based on a research survey are examined the survey reveals an ambivalent attitude towards nip which is probably due to unrealistic expectations as well as inefficiency in design and implementation of innovation policy measures case research confirms these conclusions and highlights the importance of nip for private firms despite the rhetoric of their managers against it the formulation of a specific nip for cyprus is then considered from which lessons for other developing countries are drawn

renewable energy and macroeconomic efficiency of oecd and non oecd economies abstract this article analyzes the effects of renewable energy on the technical efficiency of 45 economies during the 2001 2002 period through data envelopment analysis dea in our dea model labor capital stock and energy consumption are the three inputs and real gdp is the single output increasing the use of renewable energy improves an economy s technical efficiency conversely increasing the input of traditional energy decreases technical efficiency compared to non oecd economies oecd economies have higher technical efficiency and a higher share of geothermal solar tide and wind fuels in renewable energy however non oecd economies have a higher share of renewable energy in their total energy supply than oecd economies

energy efficiency of selected oecd countries a slacks based model with undesirable outputs this paper presents an efficiency assessment of selected oecd countries using a slacks based model with undesirable or bad outputs sbm undesirable in this research sbm undesirable is used first in a two stage approach to assess the relative efficiency of oecd countries using the most frequent indicators adopted by the literature on energy efficiency besides in the second stage glmm mcmc methods are combined with sbm undesirable results as part of an attempt to produce a model for energy performance with effective predictive ability the results reveal different impacts of contextual variables such as economic blocks and capital labor ratio on energy efficiency levels

energy efficiency evolution of china s paper industry abstract china s paper industry accounts for a larger proportion of the global paper industry and consumes large amounts of energy energy conservation and pollution reduction of the industry have become the focus of china s national development strategy energy efficiency is an important index which directly determines the amounts of energy consumption and pollution emissions to understand the energy efficiency evolution of china s paper industry this paper establishes an input output data of the paper industry for 29 provinces in china and applies dea method and econometric models to estimate and comprehensively discuss the energy efficiency issues based on the framework of total factor efficiency our results indicate that china s paper industry has a large energy saving potential even though its energy efficiency has improved during the period 1990 2013 the saving potential is about 65 under the meta frontier and 44 under the group frontier moreover there are significant differences between different regions in production technology and energy efficiency the performance of eastern china is better than other regions but the technology gaps between the different regions are shrinking and converging over time finally some policy recommendations are proposed to improve the energy efficiency of the industry

energy use and output growth in canada a multivariate cointegration analysis using a neo classical one sector aggregate production technology where capital labor and energy are treated as separate inputs this paper develops a vector error correction vec model to test for the existence and direction of causality between output growth and energy use in canada using the johansen cointegration technique the empirical findings indicate that the long run movements of output labor capital and energy use in canada are related by two cointegrating vectors then using a vec specification the short run dynamics of the variables indicate that granger causality is running in both directions between output growth and energy use hence an important policy implication of the analysis is that energy can be considered as a limiting factor to output growth in canada

energy efficiency and the slump in labour productivity in the usa energy consumption is included in an aggregate cobb douglas production function for the usa the data suggest that energy conservation has not reduced the growth rate for real gnp by more than 0 3 percentage points and that less than one fifth of the overall slump in labour productivity since 1973 should be attributed to higher energy prices

using data envelopment analysis for estimating energy saving and undesirable output abatement a case study in the organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries abstract environmental protection is one of the main concerns of the international community countries show meticulous attention to environmental issues by considering eco efficiency the eco efficiency evaluation of countries is a complex and multidisciplinary topic data envelopment analysis has widely been applied to measure the eco efficiency of organization for economic co operation and development countries in previous studies energy inputs have not been contemplated the subject becomes more important when there are non discretionary factors in this paper the eco efficiency of countries in the organization for economic co operation and development is assessed given energy inputs undesirable outputs and non discretionary factors to this end slack based and range adjusted measures are extended also new environmental indices are introduced the relationship between consumption of energy inputs and production of undesirable outputs can be addressed by two new environmental indices spearman correlation test indicates a direct and positive relationship between potential of energy saving and potential of undesirable output abatement france germany luxemburg norway sweden and the united kingdom are recognized as eco efficient countries south korea and italy have the highest and lowest potential for energy saving respectively poland and iceland are countries with the highest and lowest potential for undesirable output abatement respectively it can be concluded that countries producing high undesirable outputs may not operate eco efficiently and thus have an extreme potential to save the optimum energy moreover countries consuming low energy may operate eco efficiently and have a low potential to reduce undesirable outputs

measuring energy use and co2 emission performances for apec economies abstract this study proposes environmental dea based models to measure energy use efficiency co2 emissions efficiency and an environmental economic efficiency eee for the asia pacific economic cooperation apec economies for the period of 2006 2010 in our models population and total primary energy consumption are the two inputs while gdp and co2 emissions represent the desirable and undesirable outputs respectively empirical results from 20 apec economies showed that australia brunei hong kong and singapore were identified as efficient countries for five consecutive years from 2006 to 2010 in terms of energy use efficiency as for co2 emission efficiency brunei hong kong and singapore were identified as efficient countries for the five consecutive years from 2006 to 2010 as far as eee is concerned most countries in apec exhibited higher economic efficiency than environmental efficiency moreover both energy use efficiency and co2 emission efficiency were found to be significantly related to the eee value p

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

optimization of energy required and greenhouse gas emissions analysis for orange producers using data envelopment analysis approach abstract data envelopment analysis is a non parametric method for multi criteria decision and performance measurement this approach has two models including constant returns to scale and variable returns to scale model the main objective of this study was to analyze the efficiency of orchardists discriminate efficient orchardists from inefficient ones and identify wasteful uses of energy using data envelopment analysis for orange production in guilan province of iran also another purpose of this paper was to determine greenhouse gas emissions for efficient and inefficient orange producers this method was used based on single output of orange yield and seven energy inputs including human labor machinery diesel fuel chemical fertilizers farmyard manure chemical and electricity the technical pure technical scale and cross efficiencies were calculated for orange orchardists using ccr and bcc models the results indicated that out of the total number of orchardists the share of efficient and inefficient units were 73 3 and 26 7 based on bcc model respectively also the results revealed the average of technical pure technical and scale efficiencies of orchardists were 0 894 0 965 and 0 922 respectively energy saving for target ratio was calculated about 13 for orange production in guilan province of iran the energy use efficiency energy productivity and net energy were improved by 14 7 14 4 and 15 4 using optimization of energy the results illustrated the difference of greenhouse gas emissions between efficient and inefficient units it was calculated about 19 6 also the electricity has the highest difference of greenhouse gas emissions between efficient and inefficient orchardists for orange production generally the application of data envelopment analysis method can improve energy efficiency and ghg emissions in orange production significantly

the congestion total factor energy efficiency of regions in taiwan abstract this study applies the congestion total factor energy efficiency model to analyze the energy efficiency of 20 administrative regions in taiwan from 2004 to 2013 by studying four kinds of energies amount of electricity for manufacturing industry use amount of electricity consumed for lighting amount of gasoline sales and amount of diesel sales the main findings are that i in terms of these four energies only taipei city taitung county and penghu county among the 20 administrative regions exhibit no phenomenon of energy input congestion during the whole data period ii more attention should be put on energy efficiency improvement in diesel use than on electricity for manufacturing industry use electricity consumption for lighting and gasoline usage and iii the energy efficiency outcomes in taiwan correlate to the country s regional development features such as its tourist regions including taitung county and penghu county which have nature green and environmental protection characteristics

china s regional sustainability and diversified resource allocation dea environmental assessment on economic development and air pollution abstract environmental protection including the prevention of air pollution and health hazard materials such as pm2 5 and pm10 is now a very serious policy issue in china after attaining the rapid economic growth and development the pm stands for particular matter indicating the size of both solid particles and liquid droplets found in air unfortunately the economic development has produced a serious healthcare problem in not only china and other surrounding nations to enhance people s healthcare and appeal a good national image to the world china is recently looking for the new industrial and environmental policy direction to attain social sustainability in terms of economic development and environmental prevention to discuss policy implications on the new policy direction this study utilizes data envelopment analysis dea for assessment on its regional performance by incorporating pm2 5 and pm10 as undesirable outputs along with two disposability concepts i e natural disposability and managerial disposability no previous dea study has incorporated the amount of pm2 5 and pm10 in empirical investigation using a simulated data set for the period of 2013 2014 this study measures the efficiency of municipality cities under four different types of regional classifications the empirical results indicate that the chinese government should distribute its economic resources to cities which locate in the northwest region including lanzhou xining yinchuan and urumqi and reinforce more strict regulation on energy consumptions for environmental prevention in major cities e g beijing tianjin shanghai and chongqing the industrial policy change from the economic growth to the environment protection is essential for the future of china which is currently the second largest economic power in the world the environmental protection can enhance the china s image of contributing in economics industry and environmental protection to all other nations it can be envisioned that the new policy effort reduces the regional imbalance and increases the social sustainability in china the empirical findings and policy implications discussed in this study are applicable to not only china but also other industrial and developing nations and those are useful in guiding their industrial and environmental policy development

the global financial crisis and the values of professionals in finance an empirical analysis the idea that the ethical values of professionals in finance pifs e g stockbrokers and fund managers have played a role in the global financial crisis gfc is widespread the crisis of ethics debate is important concerning one of the main policy challenges of our times but is based on popular lore and anecdotes rather than systematic evidence we analyze the self enhancement and self transcendence values of pifs vis a vis the general population and test for patterns of variation that are consistent with the idea of a crisis of values meaning patterns of variation that would implicate pifs values in the gfc employing pre crisis data allows for an unbiased assessment results reveal only minor differences in values between pifs and the general population too small to support the idea of a crisis of ethical values by objective standards extensive robustness checks confirm these findings sometimes actually revealing values differences counter to the crisis of ethical values idea we conclude that the financial system would not have fared better had we had a different breed of pifs rather situational forces can induce severe disregard for the welfare of others also in people with ordinary decent values hence if anything the gfc shows that the financial services industry has been providing an environment highly conducive to unethical behavior the practical implication is that fixes to the financial system can only come from improved regulatory design

policy progress in mitigation of climate change in taiwan abstract to make an active contribution to the global effort in mitigation of climate change taiwan government has implemented the frameworks for sustainable energy policy an energy saving and carbon reduction action plan in june 2008 it has made a commitment of a stepwise reduction of nationwide greenhouse gas ghg emissions which returns the nationwide ghg emission to 2008 levels by 2020 then reduces to 2000 levels by 2025 and finally cuts 50 of 2000 levels by 2050 the fundamental strategy is to reduce the ghg emission under acceptable economic development and energy security to achieve generation spanning triple win in energy environment and economy the major policy instruments such as statute for renewable energy development ghg reduction law draft regulation for energy tax draft and energy management act have been either implemented or scheduled for legislative reviewing the purpose of this paper is to present an updated review of the outcomes of ghg emission reduction in taiwan in addition the progress and priority of policy instruments in ghg emission reduction are analyzed as well

estimating the linkage between energy efficiency and productivity abstract many analyses have referred to industrial productivity benefits associated with energy efficiency that are at least as great or larger than the energy benefits if plants with higher energy intensity also tend to have lower productivity then energy policy needs to consider this this study examines this issue for two segments of the glass industry using plant level data from the census bureau productivity is defined by the difference in best practice production efficiency as measured by data envelopment analysis dea this study uses regression analysis to estimate how differences in plant level electricity and fossil fuel intensity i e energy use per unit of production are attributable to differences in plant level productivity and other economic variables like energy prices and cumulative production in every case productivity differences between plants are statistically significant in explaining differences in plant energy intensity the coefficient that links productivity to energy efficiency yields a less than proportional impact for only one industry and fuel type for others the relationship is implies that a 1 increase in productivity increase energy efficiency by more than 1 this effect is statistically significant for flat glass but not container glass the estimates of the price and learning by doing coefficients seem reasonable but without imposing the assumption that all plants in the industry are equally productive this lends further credence to a significant relationship between productivity and energy efficiency

total factor energy efficiency in developing countries this paper uses a total factor framework to investigate energy efficiency in 23 developing countries during the period of 1980 2005 we explore the total factor energy efficiency and change trends by applying data envelopment analysis dea window which is capable of measuring efficiency in cross sectional and time varying data the empirical results indicate that botswana mexico and panama perform the best in terms of energy efficiency whereas kenya sri lanka syria and the philippines perform the worst during the entire research period seven countries show little change in energy efficiency over time eleven countries experienced continuous decreases in energy efficiency among five countries witnessing continuous increase in total factor energy efficiency china experienced the most rapid rise practice in china indicates that effective energy policies play a crucial role in improving energy efficiency tobit regression analysis indicates that a u shaped relationship exists between total factor energy efficiency and income per capita

regional energy efficiency evaluation in china a super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs abstract with the rapid development of global economy the demand for energy has increased significantly therefore energy efficiency improvement is essential for global energy and economic transformation in the chinese context study on the energy efficiency of various provinces can contribute to better understand china s energy utilization status and provide policy implications for improving china s energy utilization efficiency in this study based on the super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs the energy efficiency of china s 30 provinces in 2013 and 2014 was investigated then the energy efficiency of the eastern central and western china was compared and further discussed finally according to the results the relevant policy implications were put forward the results showed that china s overall energy efficiency had decreased while taking the undesirable outputs into consideration in addition eastern china had the highest energy efficiency and the energy efficiency of western china was relatively low the energy efficiency gap among china s provinces was still large therefore it was necessary to improve china s overall energy efficiency by developing targeted policies considering regional conditions

appropriate intellectual property protection and economic growth in countries at different levels of development this paper examines how the role of patents and utility models in innovation and economic growth varies by level of economic development using a panel dataset of over 70 countries we find that patent protection is an important determinant of innovation and that patentable innovations contribute to economic growth in developed countries but not in developing instead in developing economies a minor form of intellectual property rights iprs namely utility models is conducive to innovation and growth controlling for other factors using korean firm level data as a case study we find that utility model innovations contribute to firm performance when firms are technologically lagging and that those minor innovations can be a learning device and thus a stepping stone for developing more patentable inventions later on upon reaching higher levels of technological capabilities firms become more reliant upon patents and less on utility models thus the lesson here is that patent protection enhances innovation and economic growth in countries where the capacity to conduct innovative research exists where this capacity is weaker a system that provides incentives to conduct minor incremental inventions is more conducive to growth the significance of this paper is to emphasize the importance not just of the strength of iprs but of the appropriate type of iprs for economic development

energy consumption in china past trends and future directions abstract in 2003 china s energy consumption amounted to 1678 million tonnes coal equivalent mtce making china the world s second largest consumer behind only the united states china is now also one of the largest oil importers in the world with an economy that is expected to maintain a rate of growth of 7 8 for decades china s role in the world energy market becomes increasingly influential this makes it important to predict china s future demand for energy the objective of this paper is to apply the bayesian vector autoregressive methodology to forecast china s energy consumption and to discuss potential implications the results of this paper suggest that total energy consumption should increase to 2173 mtce in 2010 an annual growth rate of 3 8 which is slightly slower than the average rate in the past decade the slower growth reflects expected slower economic growth and a decline in energy consumption due to structural changes in the chinese economy

energy demand economic growth and energy efficiency the bakun dam induced sustainable energy policy revisited abstract in embarking on a dynamic course of economic development and industrial modernism malaysia sees the need to increase its electricity generation capacity through the development of a mega dam project the bakun dam although hydroelectricity generation offers one of the benign options in accommodating the increasing energy consumption per capita in malaysia it is argued that the construction of bakun s dam which involves a complete and irreversible destruction of 69 640 ha of old forest ecosystem remains a difficult and uncertain endeavour it is further argued that apart from mega dam technology there are also other means to orchestrate a sustainable energy system in malaysia these include the implementation of demand and supply initiatives such as the deployment of energy saving technology or influencing behavioral change towards a sustainable energy consumption pattern

environment adjusted total factor energy efficiency of taiwan s service sectors this study computes the pure technical efficiency pte and energy saving target of taiwan s service sectors during 2001 2008 by using the input oriented data envelopment analysis dea approach with the assumption of a variable returns to scale vrs situation this paper further investigates the effects of industry characteristics on the energy saving target by applying the four stage dea proposed by fried et al 1999 we also calculate the pre adjusted and environment adjusted total factor energy efficiency tfee scores in these service sectors there are three inputs labor capital stock and energy consumption and a single output real gdp in the dea model the most energy efficient service sector is finance insurance and real estate which has an average tfee of 0 994 and an environment adjusted tfee eatfee of 0 807 the study utilizes the panel data random effects tobit regression model with the energy saving target est as the dependent variable those service industries with a larger gdp output have greater excess use of energy the capital labor ratio has a significantly positive effect while the time trend variable has a significantly negative impact on the est suggesting that future new capital investment should also be accompanied with energy saving technology in the service sectors

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

organizational culture in the financial sector evidence from a cross industry analysis of employee personal values and career success we assess the organizational culture in the finance industry in relation to the global financial crisis gfc and consider the potential of cultural change to improve the financial sector to avoid response biases we build on the person organization p o fit literature and develop a novel indirect method for assessing organizational culture that revolves around relationships between employees personal traits and their career success in the industry or organization under study we analyze personal values concerning the pursuit of private gain self enhancement values versus personal values concerning caring for others self transcendence values and consider whether employees that value self enhancement more and self transcendence less enjoy more career success relative to their peers when working in finance than when working in other industries results do not reveal any sort of cross industry differences that would implicate the finance industry s culture in the financial crisis instead we find the opposite namely that strong self enhancement values and weak self transcendence values go together with less career success in the finance industry compared to other industries hence if anything the culture in the finance industry does not seem to resonate well with professionals that seek to pursue personal gain at the expense of clients welfare implication is that cultural change has little potential to improve the financial system meanwhile the method for assessing organizational culture indirectly by analyzing relationships between employees traits and their career outcomes has wider applicability particularly when relying on scores or measures obtained directly from the people concerned is likely to render biased evidence

analysis of energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors abstract because industrial sectors in china are energy intensive improving energy efficiency and promoting energy savings in these sectors are of great importance for the further sustainable development of china s economy using a proposed meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper analyzes the total factor energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors for the years 2000 2014 from three perspectives namely the technology gap management and scale the results indicate that 1 driven by technological progress energy efficiency during the sample period was greatly improved though the expansion of technology gaps between regions and the decline in scale efficiency represented two significant handicaps 2 the current energy efficiency in china s industrial sectors remains extremely low indicating that there is considerable potential for energy efficiency improvement and energy savings and 3 the sources of energy inefficiency and energy savings potential in china s industrial sectors exhibit spatially distinct characteristics accordingly it is determined that most of china s eastern provinces should focus on improving scale and management efficiency whereas most of its central and western provinces should concentrate on three factors narrowing the regional technology gap improving management efficiency and optimizing the industrial scale