brazilian energy efficiency and energy substitution a road to cleaner national energy system abstract recognizing the need to increase energy efficiency across various sectors of the economy the brazilian government through the national energy efficiency plan adopted in 2011 seeks to avoid 30 million tons of co2 emissions through a reduction in electricity consumption of about 10 by 2030 notwithstanding we believe that a complete realization of such initiative will be dependent on the level of substitutability between different production factors and fuel types using the translog production function method this paper first provides insight on the economic impact of both factor and fuel inputs in brazil most importantly we examine the possibility of substitution among capital labor petroleum and electricity the ridge regression technique was used to estimate the parameters after our data depicted the existence of multicollinearity our results show that capital and labor are positively linked to output however petroleum and electricity contribute negatively to economic output in brazil of which corruption is a plausible reason again all variable inputs are substitutes with their relative technological progress depicting features of convergence this implies that brazil can achieve a cleaner energy system without much challenges due to the possibility of switching from greenhouse gas ghg emitting petroleum to a cleaner energy electricity our findings also highlight the importance of policies that advance merger of enterprises and renewable energy use

analysis of energy intensity in japan this study discusses the causes of the increase in japan s energy intensity defined as energy consumption divided by gdp since the early 1990s the significant reduction in japan s energy intensity ceased in the early 1980s and has even slightly increased since the early 1990s indicating that japan seemingly stopped taking aggressive action to improve energy use however further analysis at prefecture level and sector level provides additional insight on energy intensity trends to analyze the causes of the increase in japan s energy intensity energy intensity is decomposed into energy efficiency improvements in energy efficiency and energy activity structural changes from the secondary sector to the tertiary sector of the economy our result indicates that the non uniform energy intensity trends between prefectures are attributed to a high variability in energy efficiency at sector level we estimate the income elasticity of energy consumption in each sector and find that a structural change in energy consumption behaviors occurred in all sectors at different time points the industrial sector and commercial sector became less energy efficient after 1981 and 1988 respectively which is presumably responsible for the deterioration of japan s energy intensity since the early 1990s

assessing regional environmental efficiency in china with distinguishing weak and strong disposability of undesirable outputs abstract china has developed a remarkable economic growth in the past 30 years by accompanying with undesirable outputs the assumptions of weak and strong of undesirable outputs have become the focus discussion in data envelopment analysis dea models to have a comprehensive environmental efficiency measurement this paper proposes three dea models considering weak disposability strong disposability and distinguishing weak and strong disposability of undesirable outputs respectively we further combine with the malmquist luenberger productivity index to assess the environmental efficiency and the dynamic change trend of 30 provinces in china from 2005 to 2014 the results show that distinguishing technical features of undesirable outputs makes a significant difference to final environmental efficiency score at different regions the environmental efficiency of the whole nation however does not show any increasing trend during the ten years enhancing environmental efficiency of central and west area is an urgent task for chinese government the change trend of malmquist luenberger productivity index and technological change shows a similar shape technical progress is the main driving force to enhance the environmental efficiency relevant suggestions are presented for improving the regional environmental efficiency in china in the future

energy efficiency in the japanese transport sector abstract we examine energy efficiency in the japanese transportation sector since the 1970s comparisons with the united states and other developed economies illustrate that japan primarily stands out due to low activity levels and modal structure rather than modal energy intensity on road automobile energy intensity has shown little improvement albeit from a low base over the past four decades we also consider policy measures undertaken by the japanese government political arrangements in japan after world war ii made it attractive for politicians to pursue energy conservation by making transportation particularly by automobile expensive for the average japanese citizen the revenues raised from various fees and taxes on automobile transportation were redistributed to core supporters of the ruling liberal democratic party these political arrangements have come under fire in recent years calling into question japan s traditional approach towards transportation sector energy efficiency

interfirm relationships and informal credit in vietnam trading relations in vietnam s emerging private sector are shaped by two market frictions the difficulty of locating trading partners and the absence of legal enforcement of contracts examining relational contracting we find that a firm trusts its customer enough to offer credit when the customer finds it hard to locate an alternative supplier a longer duration of trading relationship is associated with larger credit as is prior information gathering customers identified through business networks receive more credit these network effects are enduring suggesting that networks are used to sanction defaulting customers

contractibility and the design of research agreements we analyze how contractibility affects contract design a major concern when designing research agreements is that researchers may use their funding to subsidize other projects we show that when research activities are not contractible an option contract is optimal the financing firm obtains the option to terminate the agreement and in case of termination broad property rights the threat of termination deters researchers from cross subsidization and the cost of exercising the termination option deters the financing firm from opportunistic termination we test this prediction using 580 biotechnology research agreements contracts with termination options are more common when research is non contractible

political representation and public contracting evidence from municipal legislatures abstract this study examines how partisan representation in multiparty legislatures affects direct expenditures contract allocation design and selection of politically connected firms as suppliers in public procurement for identification i exploit quasi random variation in partisan electoral outcomes near the effective representation thresholds in czech proportional municipal elections my regression discontinuity estimates suggest that partisan representation matters for public procurement for instance if local level political parties barely enter legislatures at the expense of the national parties municipalities decrease their direct procurement spending and allocate fewer contracts to the corporate donors of the national parties fewer contracts are awarded especially in pre election years and in auctions restricting competition among procurement suppliers the results are not associated with higher government fragmentation or selection of more competent candidates but rather with reduced political power of the national parties

what does reputation buy differentiation in a market for third party auditors we study differences in quality in the market for third party environmental auditors in gujarat india we find that despite the low overall quality auditors are heterogeneous and some perform well we posit that these high quality auditors survive by using their good name to insulate select client plants from regulatory scrutiny we find two pieces of evidence broadly consistent with this hypothesis i though estimates are not precise higher quality auditors appear to be paid more both in their work as third party auditors and in their complementary work as consultants and ii plants with high quality auditors incur fewer costly penalties from the regulator

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

regional environmental efficiency in china an empirical analysis based on entropy weight method and non parametric models abstract while vigorously developing its economy china is attaching more and more importance to environmental protection and pollution control in different regions of china however there are great differences in economic development and the degree of environmental pollution in this study we use the entropy weight method to calculate the pollution indexes of different regions from 2015 to 2017 then we evaluate the chinese regional environmental efficiency based on a new non parametric frontier model moreover a new set of ranking interval models that treat the undesirable outputs as inputs is proposed to further describe the regional disparities of the environmental efficiency between different regions with robustness finally we conduct an empirical analysis by combining the stepwise regression and principal component analysis to identify the most influential variables that may affect regional environmental efficiency according to the results the southeast region of china performs best in environmental efficiency followed by the northeast region then the southwest region and the worst is the northwest region for managerial implications we find that the investment of high education and the development of the it industry can significantly increase regional environmental efficiency more importantly the results of the principal component analysis provide the government with a set of variables to strategically select the most appropriate strategy

factors influencing renewable energy consumption in china an empirical analysis based on provincial panel data abstract the development of renewable energy is the key to deal with climate change and low carbon economy development in china here based on a balanced panel dataset of 30 provinces in china cover the period of 1996 2013 this paper explores the effect of economic growth co 2 emissions foreign trade exports or imports and urbanization on renewable energy consumption at the national and regional levels by using a dynamic system gmm panel model the empirical results show that the influence of economic growth co 2 emissions foreign trade and urbanization on the renewable energy consumption is heterogeneous across regions first economic development has an important positive impact on renewable energy consumption in the four panels we consider and the impact is the greatest in the eastern region follows by the national central and western regions second co 2 emissions have a significant positive impact on renewable energy consumption in the central and national regions however co 2 emissions have a weak negative impact on the consumption of renewable energy in the eastern region and have no impact in the western region third per capita exports are found to have a positive effect on the renewable energy consumption with the greatest impact in the central region followed by the eastern and national regions and have a weak negative impact in the western regions fourth per capita imports have a negative effect on renewable energy consumption in the eastern western and national regions and have a weak positive effect in the central region finally the changes in the urbanization level significantly affect the renewable energy consumption in the four panels we consider and the impact is the greatest in the eastern region with high level of urbanization follow by the central and western regions on the basis of this study we put forward the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions to achieving sustainable development in china

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

the measurement and influences of china s urban total factor energy efficiency under environmental pollution based on the game cross efficiency dea abstract in recent years urban energy efficiency has received much attention from researchers however ignorance of the competitive relationships among regions results in inaccurate energy efficiency game cross efficiency data envelopment analysis dea which can account for the competitive relationships is a reliable method to measure energy efficiency first this paper applies game cross efficiency dea to analyze the urban total factor energy efficiency utfee of 26 chinese prefectural level cities from 2005 to 2015 under environmental constraints then a comparative analysis and a concrete analysis are conducted based on the urban energy efficiency finally a tobit model is used to examine the effects of 10 potential influence factors the measurement results show that the urban energy efficiency considering the competitive relationship is lower than the traditionally calculated efficiency additionally the urban energy efficiency did not improve during the research period furthermore regression analysis suggests that economic development and city scale can promote urban energy efficiency while government expenditure industrial structures energy prices foreign investments research investments and production endowment have negative impacts on urban energy efficiency according to our results some implications of theory and practice are discussed for researchers and policy makers

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 intensity a decomposition and counterfactual exercise for latin american countries abstract this paper investigates trends in energy intensity over the last 40 years based on a sample of 75 countries it applies the fisher ideal index to decompose the energy intensity into the relative contributions of energy efficiency and economic structure then the determinants of these energy indexes are examined through panel data regression techniques special attention is lent to latin american countries lac by comparing its performance to that of a similar set of countries chosen through the synthetic control method when analyzed by income level energy intensity has decreased in a range between 40 and 54 in low and medium income countries respectively efficiency improvements drive these changes while the structural effect does not represent a clear source of change the regression analysis shows that per capita income petroleum prices fuel energy mix and gdp growth are main determinants of energy intensity and efficiency while there are no clear correlations with the activity component in the case of lac the energy intensity decreased around 20 which could be interpreted as an under performance however the counterfactual exercise suggests that lac has closed the gap with respect to its synthetic control

globalization and convergence in corporate governance evidence from infosys and the indian software industry in contrast to the much studied role of capital markets in fostering convergence in corporate governance practices worldwide we argue that the globalization of product and talent markets has affected corporate governance of firms in the indian software industry we model several possible reasons why a particular firm infosys has emerged as the exemplar of good corporate governance in india traditionally a backwater of corporate governance practices we further analyze the manner in which infosys has attempted to shape corporate governance practices in india more generally and why these attempts have had limited effects thus far

economic and welfare influences of an energy excise tax in jiangsu province of china a computable general equilibrium approach abstract in recent years although china s energy intensity has gradually decreased the total consumption of energy commodities has increased sharply levying an excise tax on energy commodities is one of the keys to control energy consumption this paper constructed a computable general equilibrium model to simulate levying an energy excise tax in jiangsu province which is one of china s strong economic provinces with lower endowments of energy resources the results show that the energy excise tax is beneficial for energy saving while levying energy will cause economic and welfare declines when at a level tax rate of 5 10 and 15 the loss of gdp will reach 0 27 0 66 and 1 13 respectively and the incomes of inhabitants and enterprises alike will decrease when the energy tax revenue used to compensate for the welfare losses suffered by inhabitants or enterprises there is a double dividend effect energy saving and increasing income moreover the simulation indicated that a 5 improvement of energy efficiency brings about a backfire phenomenon with an increase of 142 in energy consumption however when considering the cost of energy efficiency improvements the rebound effect will be significantly decreased policy suggestions are further recommended to help improve the energy policy in regard to reducing energy consumption

endogenous verifiability and relational contracting for contracting parties it will often be uncertain whether a legal court is able to enforce the real intents of their contract the strict requirements of verifiability make it costly if not impos sible for parties to arrange their transactions and design their contract in a way that makes it completely protected by the court a way out is then to rely on self enforcing relational con tracts through repeated transactions the parties can make it costly for each other to breach the contract by letting breach ruin future trade but the self enforcing range of contracts is limited so the court s ability to enforce a contract is not without consequence for the contracting parties if possible the parties may thus have incentives to take costly actions that affect the ability of the court both ex ante preparations in terms of detailed contracting and ex post revelation of informa tion can increase the probability of fair court enforcement in this paper we focus on the former assuming that the parties are able to improve the verifiability of the contracted actions by care ful ex ante contract specifications we assume that careful contracting can improve the court s ability to verify whether an action conforms to the one described in the contract then we ask what happens to the self enforcing contract equilibrium if a party takes actions ex ante that affect the probability of verification in order to provide some answers we analyze a simple repeated principal agent game where the verifiability of the agent s actions is endogenously determined by the principal s investments in drafting an explicit contract pertaining to the quality of the agent s output the model makes it possible to identify some subtle effects of two key enforcement devices legal courts and repeated interaction note that by endogenizing verifiability we also endog enize the degree of contractual incompleteness and the equilibrium level of incompleteness will depend on the verification technology i e the resource costs that are necessary to achieve various verifiability levels this verification technology will be influenced in an essential way by the quality of courts in fact we can use the model to study relationships between two distinct aspects of courts namely their ability which influences the verification technology and their predictability which manifests itself in the equilibrium level of verifiability i e the probability with which the court in fact will verify the relevant action the repeated game approach formalizes an economic concept of trust and trustworthiness since a party honors trust if the present value of honoring exceeds the present value of abusing it the discount factor is then a proxy for the trust level in the relationship by studying the effect of variations in verification technology and the discount factor we can gain insight into the rela tionship between court ability explicit contracting trust and relational contracting below we summarize the results

nutritional classification study of peru who and where are the poor abstract in peru in 1984 approximately 60 of the households with malnourished children were engaged in agricultural production or wage work these nutritional problems were associated with insufficient incomes inadequate diets low levels of schooling poor housing quality inadequate access to safe water unsanitary conditions and high levels of childhood morbidity from diarrhoeal disease for the long run the solution is to reverse the longstanding bias against agriculture and labour particularly in the highlands direct nutritional interventions must be undertaken urgently to assist the households with severe malnutrition this article identifies these households by occupational group and geographical locale

the impact of industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency in china abstract regional disparity in terms of industrial energy efficiency is noticeable in china due to the unbalanced economic progress in past decades analyzing the provincial industrial energy efficiency and its influencing factors is of great significance to formulate differentiated policies to date the influence of many social economic factors on the industrial energy efficiency have been examined but the impact of the inter industry structure has almost been ignored in this paper the slacks based measure model incorporating undesirable output is applied to evaluate the industrial energy efficiency both at the provincial level and the sectoral level in china for the period 2010 to 2016 then industrial structure efficiency is introduced which reflects the inter industry structure and takes the sectoral level energy efficiency into consideration and the impact of the industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency is tested by tobit regression model the results show that huge discrepancies of provincial industrial energy efficiency exist and the industrial structure efficiency is confirmed to be a determinative factor to the provincial industrial energy efficiency with the coefficient of 0 525 policy recommendations are provided for adjusting the provincial inter industry structure and improving the industrial energy efficiency

the paradox of indian growth a comment on kochhar et al the paradox of india s current success we learn from kochhar et al 2006 is that it is rooted in what were once seen as some of its most egregious policy failures in particular in the 1980s and even the 1990s one always heard complaints about how india invested so much more in tertiary education compared to countries at similar levels of development and how primary education by comparison was under funded and not enough of a priority and it did look like the critics were right highly qualified engineers educated at great public expense worked as bank officers or sales representatives for large multinationals or cooled their heels as minor functionaries in the overfilled bureaucracies of large public companies if they were exceptionally brilliant or fortunate they won a scholarship to do an advanced degree somewhere in the west few came back if there was one thing that has worse press in the community of economists today than india s education policy it was its policy of self reliance this meant making everything at home often behind gargantuan walls of tariffs and quotas this created an industrial sector that was enormously diversified at least compared to other economies at the same level of development and probably in many ways quite inefficient yet according to kochar and company it was the combination of these two policy errors that were instrumental in shaping the indian economy of today the two things that distinguish india from any other economy at its level of development are the skillintensity of its exports and the diversity of what it produces indeed 15 years after liberalization began the indian economy seems to be even more diversified than it used to be

competition and relational contracts in the rwanda coffee chain how does competition affect market outcomes when formal contracts are not enforceable and parties resort to relational contracts difficulties with measuring relational contracts and dealing with the endogeneity of competition have frustrated attempts to answer this question we make progress by studying relational contracts between upstream farmers and downstream mills in rwanda s coffee industry first we identify salient dimensions of their relational contracts and measure them through an original survey of mills and farmers second we take advantage of an engineering model for the optimal placement of mills to construct an instrument that isolates geographically determined variation in competition conditional on the suitability for mills placement within the catchment area we find that mills surrounded by more suitable areas i face more competition from other mills ii use fewer relational contracts with farmers and iii exhibit worse performance an additional competing mill also iv reduces the aggregate quantity of coffee supplied to mills by farmers and v makes farmers worse off competition hampers relational contracts directly by increasing farmers temptation to default on the relational contract and indirectly by reducing mill s profits

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

information processing moderators of the effectiveness of trust based governance in interfirm r d collaboration it is generally assumed that improved outcomes accompany the use of trust as a governance mechanism in an interfirm relationship briefly trust is a social lubricant that reduces the friction costs of existing trade and or serves to increase the scope of trade in contrast to this universalistic view we posit that the performance of trust based governance is contingent on the ability of trading partners to read each other and learn about counterpart behavior these information processing abilities allow firms to assess partner trustworthiness better which reduces the risk of misplaced trust the increased efficacy of communication and learning from one another also enables them to better capitalize from the adaptation and revision possibilities uncovered through trust based governance during the task execution phase given the central role of these cognitive requirements we assess these contingent effects with data from a knowledge intensive task setting using a sample of 129 firms that have engaged outside contractors on client sponsored r d projects we find strong support for our thesis specifically we find that trust based governance has a larger positive impact on task performance when the client is more skilled at understanding the outsourced tasks at hand the task itself requires skills that are relatively more readily taught less tacit and the task itself is organized in parallel with work being done at the contractor as well as the client as a corollary we also find that firms adopt trust based governance to a greater extent as these information processing abilities increase as well as with the colocation of the contractor and client suggestions for engineering trust based governance are offered

development and the interaction of enforcement institutions we examine how formal and informal contract enforcing institutions interact in a competitive market with asymmetric information where consumers do not observe quality before purchase firm level incentives for producing high quality can be achieved with an informal enforcement mechanism reputation the efficacy of which is enhanced by consumers investing in connectedness or with a formal mechanism legal enforcement the effectiveness of which can be reduced by means of bribes we show that formal and informal enforcement mechanisms do not necessarily substitute each other while high levels of judicial efficiency decrease consumers incentives to connect higher consumers connectedness leads to higher levels of judicial efficiency we then look at how the equilibrium institutional mix evolves with the level of development in doing so we show the presence of a new physical channel that can affect institutions i e the frequency of bad productivity shocks that in less developed settings can impact on firms incentives to cheat c 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

governance and contract choice theory and evidence from groundwater irrigation markets abstract this paper examines the role governance institutions play in the adoption of contracts we develop a simple model of the contracting relationship in a setting where unverifiable outcomes exist and use it to interpret data on groundwater irrigation contracts in bangladesh a distinguishing feature of this market is the variety of village level institutions which impose different degrees of punishment for contract violation consistent with the model we find households adopt contracts that rely on unverifiable outcomes which are not formally contractible when punishment for contract violation is weak conversely households adopt contracts that rely on formally contractible and verifiable outcomes when punishment is severe this evidence is consistent with contract terms being chosen optimally given what is or is not formally contractible

dynamics of social trust and human capital in the learning process the case of the japan garment cluster in the period 1968 2005 abstract this paper examined the ways and the extent to which human capital and social trust are associated with the learning process of a manager in making operations decisions through experience to this end using a data set originally and purposively constructed by the author i investigated the development and transformation of the garment industry cluster region of kojima japan the major findings through statistical estimations are as follows 1 in the cluster development stage the social trust of an enterprise and its manager s experiences in firm operations could be regarded as forming a complementary association 2 in the stage following cluster development however a manager s human capital as accumulated through schooling and personal experience instead of social trust become complementary

does relationship specific investment depend on asset ownership evidence from a natural experiment in the housing market the classic hold up model grossman and hart 1986 predicts that allocations of asset ownership which expose a party to expropriation reduce relationship specific investments by this party in the empirical context of t he housing market i show that the hold up model predicts more relationship specific investments such as bathroom renovations in owner occupied housing than in rental housing i confirm this prediction for the german housing market to ob tain an exogenous variation of asset home ownership i use the natural experiment of the german reunification under the communist regime ownership exist ed but was economically meaningless it was a quasi random by product of dwelling choice yet after reunification ownership unexpectedly reacquired legal fo rce

energy efficiency analysis of g7 and brics considering total factor structure abstract energy is the driving force of world economy with the increase in the world s population and consumption additional efforts must be made to guarantee energy availability for all economies and consequently to avoid a number of serious problems related to its scarcity therefore measures to ensure energy efficiency are now a priority for any nation willing to develop its economy given the fast economic development seen in the brics group which has played an important role in the global economy the objective of this study is to measure and analyze energy efficiency in the countries that comprise the brics group brazil russia india china and south africa and the g7 group canada france germany italy japan united kingdom and united states considering the total factor structure for this data envelopment analysis was used with slacks based measure model and the window analysis and the total factor energy efficiency index was calculated from the slacks provided by this tool for the countries analyzed the model used as inputs gross fixed capital formation and workforce and energy consumption additionally two outputs were used carbon dioxide emissions undesirable output and gross domestic product desired output moreover the factors that lead to better energy efficiency measures were sought using an econometric model the results indicate that the brics and g7 are statistically different groups and therefore justify being analyzed separately energy efficiency in brics ranged from 23 54 to 99 95 with brazil as the country which had the highest total factor energy efficiency index in the analysis performed for the g7 group every country had a total factor energy efficiency index above 95 the tobit model was used and the results show that patents are significant for energy efficiency in the brics countries while in the g7 countries the gross domestic product per capita measured by purchasing power parity life expectancy and years of schooling are significant these findings indicate that in the brics countries the results of energy efficiency measures are more related to investments in low energy consumption technologies while in the g7 countries the energy efficiency tends to be better when countries have better social conditions which in addition to high life expectancy ensures a fair income distribution the results of this study are important in terms of being useful for public policies related to energy efficiency especially 1 to contribute to the discussions related to evaluating the countries energy use helping to identify those with the best practices with regard to environmental and economic aspects in each group and 2 to guide policy decisions regarding government incentives to promote the development of efficient countries in terms of economic growth with minimal use of resources capital labor energy without harming the environment

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

contracts hold up and exports textiles and opium in colonial india trade and export it is argued spur economic growth this paper studies the microeco nomics of exporting we build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to east india company operations in colonial bengal our model and the historical record stress two difficulties the exporter and its agents might not uphold payment agreements and producers might not honor sales contracts the model shows when procurement succeeds or fails highlighting the tension between these two hold up problems we analyze several cases including the east india company s cotton textile venture the famous opium monopoly and present day contract farming

a comprehensive analysis of china s regional energy saving and emission reduction efficiency from production and treatment perspectives abstract energy and environmental issues have recently aroused increasing interest in china and many approaches are used to evaluate energy and environmental performance in this paper a two stage network dea framework is applied to evaluate the efficiency of energy saving and emission reduction in china during the period of the eleventh five year plan from 2006 to 2010 in this study economic activities are divided into production and treatment processes this is different from previous research which generally focused on either environmental efficiency or energy efficiency omitting the integration of energy and environmental measures today energy saving and emission reduction are both parts of the basic state policy of china and are equally important the empirical results in this study show that i eastern china has the best energy saving and emission reduction efficiency performing is better than western and central china ii the efficiency of the production process in central china is better than that in western china while the western area performs better than the central area in term of treatment efficiency iii integrated efficiency of energy saving and emission reduction of china was relatively stable in the five years and the pollution treatment efficiency maintained a rising trend

reputation effects and the limits of contracting a study of the indian software industry this paper examines evidence of the role that reputation plays in determining contractual outcomes we conduct an empirical analysis of the indian customized software industry using a data set we collected containing detailed information on 230 projects carried out by 125 software firms we propose a model ofthe industry where reputation determines contractual outcomes the evidence supports the view that reputation matters ex ante contracts as well as the outcome after ex post renegotiation vary with firms characteristics plausibly associated with reputation this holds after controlling for project client and firm characteristics

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

complementarity and evolution of contractual provisions an empirical study of it services contracts an increasing volume of business activity appears to be occurring via alliances or other interfirm arrangements in which complex contracts are featured yet there has been relatively little study of contract design in the strategy or management literatures the economics literature on contracting has been extensive but it has been less concerned with learning and evolution phenomena in which strategy and organization scholars are deeply interested in this paper we investigate the relationship between two types of contractual provisions that are important in high technology contracts or contracts for which environmental uncertainty or technological complexity are significant namely contingency planning and task description previous research suggests that contracts can vary significantly in the degree of detail with which such key provisions are written and that they are each subject to learning in this paper we find evidence from a sample of 386 contracts that contingency planning and task description behave as complements in contractual design we argue that this complementarity reflects patterns of learning to contract we also find that repeated exchange between two firms leads to greater effort at contingency planning in subsequent contracts a finding that is also consistent with learning effects but not with frequently made claims that contracts and trust are substitutes