modified ecological footprint accounting and analysis based on embodied exergy a case study of the chinese society 1981 2001 abstract the resource consumption of the chinese society from 1981 to 2001 is investigated by ecological footprint ef as an aggregate indicator based on the theory of ecological thermodynamics a modified calculation of ecological footprint termed as embodied exergy ecological footprint eeef in contrast to the conventional one is performed and related overall trends of the chinese society 1981 2001 are analyzed the annual policy for the individual sector is described in detail corresponding to the ef and eeef components comparison of the conventional ef and the eeef based on different views of ecological production is outlined the ef intensity and eeef intensity are also presented to depict the resource consumption level corresponding to unit economic output finally eeef is suggested to serve as a modified indicator of ef towards illustrating the productions of the resource environment population and thereby reflecting the ecological overshoot of the general ecological system

the effect of product introduction delays on operating performance this paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of product introduction delays on accounting based measures of operating performance based on a diverse set of 450 publicly traded firms that experienced product introduction delays we find that delays have a statistically significant negative effect on profitability depending on the method used to estimate abnormal performance the median abnormal decline in return on assets roa ranges from 2 70 to 3 44 over a three year period around the year of the delay announcement the median decline in sales over assets ranges from 5 92 to 10 99 and the median decline in return on sales ranges from 1 48 to 3 06 cross sectional regression analysis indicates that the impact of delays on abnormal roa is more negative for smaller firms and for firms that are more profitable before the delay furthermore the impact is more negative for firms that operate in industries that are larger and more profitable we also find a positive association between abnormal roa and abnormal stock price performance around the product introduction delay announcements

the role of exergy in energy policy making abstract this paper deals with the utilization of exergy as an efficient tool for energy policy making applications since exergy is a measure of quantity and quality of the energy sources unlike energy which is only about the quantity in addition energy and exergy concepts are evaluated for various actual processes and the role of exergy is discussed for energy and environment policy making activities from several key perspectives e g quality energy conservation environment economy and sustainable development the results of this study exhibit that the potential usefulness exergy in addressing and solving environmental problems as well as attaining sustainable development is crucial

valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

assessment of public acceptance and willingness to pay for renewable energy sources in crete abstract the aim of this study is to analyse and to evaluate the citizens public acceptance and willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy sources res in crete for this purpose a contingent valuation study was conducted using a double bound dichotomous choice format to elicit people s wtp and factors affecting it residents of 1440 households all over crete were interviewed face to face major conclusions can be used as a basis for sustainable energy planning for policies and the formulation of awareness campaigns and for res investment programs and projects in order to prepare implementation conditions and enhance public acceptance of renewable energy investments and programmes mean wtp per household was found to be 16 33 to be paid quarterly as an additional charge on the electricity bill larger willingness to pay was reported by those with high family income and residence size those having a higher level of energy information and awareness concerning climatic change those who have invested in some energy saving measures and those who suffer from more electricity shortages than others

does consumer sentiment forecast household spending if so why in the three months following the iraqi invasion of kuwait the university of michigan s index of consumer sentiment ics fell an unprecedented 24 3 index points to its lowest level since the 1981 1982 recession this collapse in household confidence became the focus of a great deal of economic commentary and indeed frequently was cited as an important if not the leading cause of the economic slowdown that ensued concern was fueled by the well known contemporaneous correlation between the ics and the growth of household spending figure 1 shows quarterly averages of the index 1978 1993 together with the quarterly growth in real personal consumption expenditures as measured in the national income accounts bureau of economic analysis the correlation is impressive of course it is not surprising that sentiment and the growth of spending are positively correlated this correlation may simply reflect that when economic prospects are poor households curtail their spending and also give gloomy responses to interviewers thus the contemporaneous correlation between sentiment and spending does not refute traditional life cycle or permanentincome models of consumption nor does it necessarily make the job of forecasting changes in consumption any easier from the point of view of an economic forecaster the questions of interest are first whether an index of consumer sentiment has any predictive power on its own for future changes in consumption spending and second whether it contains information about future changes in consumer spending aside from the information contained in other available indicators in section i we present evidence that the answer to the first question is a clear yes we find that lagged values of the ics taken on their own explain about 14 percent of the variation in the growth of total real personal consumption expenditures over the post1954 period further investigation shows that the answer to the second question is probably yes as well though here the margin is narrower and the evidence more murky the ics contributes about 3 percent to the r2 of a simple reduced form equation for total personal consumption expenditures in the longer of the two sample periods we examine but nothing in the shorter sample period though the latter result is heavily influenced by the observation for 1980 2 for the major subcategories of spending the contribution generally ranges between 1 percent and 8 percent overall we read the evidence as pointing toward at least some significant incremental explanatory power therefore we take as given for the remainder of the paper that sentiment forecasts spending and we turn to the issue of how that statistical relationship should be interpreted one possible interpretation is that sentiment is an independent driving factor in the economy and that changes in carroll division of research and statistics stop 80 federal reserve board washington dc 20551 fuhrer research department federal reserve bank of boston boston ma 02106 wilcox division of monetary affairs stop 71 federal reserve board washington dc 20551 we have benefited from the research assistance of stephen helwig and christopher geczy and the comments of an anonymous referee the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not of the federal reserve board the federal reserve bank of boston or the other members of the staff of either institution ithe conference board s consumer confidence index also plunged at the same time

a bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995 2014 abstract natural resource accounting plays a critical role in sustainable utilization and conservation of natural resources this paper aims to review research progress on natural resource accounting for the period of 1995 2014 the main research methods for this study include bibliometric analysis and social network analysis covering publications performances characteristics of related journals countries institutions authors and keywords the results show that the total amount of publications on natural resource accounting has increased rapidly since 2001 the most productive journal country institution and author are journal of environmental management usa university of california and dr chen respectively all of them have higher academic influence meanwhile natural resources that attract most attentions are water and energy the six main research methods in this field include mathematic modeling emergy exergy ecological footprint ef life cycle assessment lca and material flow analysis mfa reasons for the prominent performance of key countries and institutions are then discussed and uncovered as well as for six methods finally suggestions on how to further promote the development of this research field are raised

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

a conceptual exergy based framework for assessing monitoring and designing a resource efficient agri food sector the sustainable development goals sdgs are a set of global goals targets and indicators set by the member states of the united nations and which are to be followed by governments the private sector and the civil society for the next 15 years here we present a framework in the form of a comprehensive step wise procedure that will expand the tools of policy makers to develop policies for the improvement of the resource use efficiency of the agri food sector ultimately these policies will contribute in achieving goal 12 of the sdgs ensure sustainable consumption and production patters while having an indirect impact on goal 2 end hunger achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture and on goal 13 take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact we illustrate the use of the framework on assessing the exergetic performance of a theoretical milk concentration process the framework can be used to apply exergy based indicators for pinpointing the hotspots in food production chains where the irreversible consumption of natural resources is substantial and for comparing the resource use efficiency of different system designs and configurations furthermore we list a number of other exergy based methodologies that are also of relevance in resource use efficiency assessment because they capture additional aspects such as economic performance which exergy analysis alone cannot address and with the potential of being integrated in this or a different framework finally we discuss potential policy related implications

dynamic and stochastic behavior of coefficient of demand uncertainty incorporated with eoq variables an application in finished goods inventory from general motors dealerships abstract the objective of this paper is to investigate finished goods inventory in the u s automobile industry using an econometric method known as the variable mean response vmr estimation the research uses the classical economic order quantity eoq model as a starting point different from the usual form of the model here we relax certain assumptions inherent to the eoq and treat demand as uncertain rather than deterministic in this research eight models are developed and applied empirically the results of the proposed models and methodology provide inventory decision makers with different managerial implications and strategic improvements overall the empirical results demonstrate many avenues for considering new inventory policies

do inventory and gross margin data improve sales forecasts for u s public retailers firm level sales forecasts for retailers can be improved if we incorporate cost of goods sold inventory and gross margin defined by us as the ratio of sales to cost of goods sold as three endogenous variables we construct a simultaneous equations model estimated using public financial and nonfinancial data to provide joint forecasts of annual cost of goods sold inventory and gross margin for retailers using historical data we show that sales forecasts from this model are more accurate than consensus forecasts from equity analysts further the residuals from this model for one fiscal year are used to predict retailers for whom the relative advantage of model forecasts over consensus forecasts would be large in the next fiscal year our results show that historical inventory and gross margin contain information useful to forecast sales and that equity analysts do not fully utilize this information in their sales forecasts

note the newsvendor model with endogenous demand this paper considers a firm s price and inventory policy when it faces uncertain demand that depends on both price and inventory level the authors extend the classic newsvendor model by assuming that expected utility maximizing consumers choose between visiting the firm and consuming an exogenous outside option the outside option represents the utility the consumer forgoes when she chooses to visit the firm before knowing whether or not the product will be available the authors investigate both the case in which the firm s price is exogenous and the case in which price is chosen optimally the paper makes two contributions first the authors show that the firm holds more inventories provides a higher fill rate attracts more customers and earns higher profits when it internalizes the effect of its inventory on demand second the authors show that in the endogenous price case the firm s two dimensional decision problem can be reduced to two sequential single variable optimizations as a result the endogenous price case is as easy to solve as the exogenous price case

information sharing in supply chains an empirical and theoretical valuation we provide an empirical and theoretical assessment of the value of information sharing in a two stage supply chain the value of downstream sales information to the upstream firm stems from improving upstream order fulfillment forecast accuracy such an improvement can lead to lower safety stock and better service based on the data collected from a consumer packaged goods company we empirically show that if the company includes the downstream sales data to forecast orders the improvement in the mean squared forecast error ranges from 7 1 to 81 1 across all studied products theoretical models in the literature however suggest that the value of information sharing should be zero for over half of our studied products to reconcile the gap between the literature and the empirical observations we develop a new theoretical model whereas the literature assumes that the decision maker strictly adheres to a given inventory policy our model allows him to deviate accounting for private information held by the decision maker yet unobservable to the econometrician this turns out to reconcile our empirical findings with the literature these decision deviations lead to information losses in the order process resulting in a strictly positive value of downstream information sharing furthermore we empirically quantify and show the significance of the value of operations knowledge the value of knowing the downstream replenishment policy this paper was accepted by serguei netessine operations management

considering the energy water and food nexus towards an integrated modelling approach the areas of energy water and food policy have numerous interwoven concerns ranging from ensuring access to services to environmental impacts to price volatility these issues manifest in very di

norms and economic motivation in the swedish green electricity market abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide an econometric analysis of the most important determinants of swedish households choice to pay a price premium for green electricity we draw on recent developments in the literature on integrating norm motivated behavior into neoclassical consumer theory and assume that individuals have a preference for keeping a self image as a morally responsible person consumer behavior in the green market place will then be heavily determined by how purchases of different goods affect this self image the analysis is based on postal survey responses from 655 swedish households which are analyzed within a binary choice econometric framework the results indicate that the impact of choosing green on the household budget largely influences the choice between green and brown electricity as does the degree of perceived personal responsibility for the issue and the felt ability to affect the outcome in a positive way we find limited support for the notion that perceptions about others behavior in general affect individual moral norms and ultimately expressed behavior but this is also complemented by the influence of explicit social influence the difficulty in observing others purchases makes it however difficult to distinguish between social and moral norms in the case of green electricity

citizen versus consumer challenges in the uk green power market abstract this paper investigates the potential advantages and disadvantages of green power products as opposed to the traditional fossil fuel levy which was the uk s chosen tax regime as a means of developing renewable energy in the uk willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewables is investigated results indicate that willingness to pay varies with social status and income however results demonstrate that there is a significant minority in full support of some sort of fiscal initiative electricity generated from renewables is a concept supported by the majority however given the stated willingness to pay it is unlikely that any new renewable capacity will result from green tariff schemes in the near term it is concluded that the green citizen must continue to co exist with the green power purchaser if the uk is to make any significant improvement in the contribution of renewable energy to electricity demand the authors would like to acknowledge the support of irene lorenzoni and jane powell of the centre for social and economic research on the global environment university of east anglia leicester energy efficiency advice centre and leicester energy agency

what do inventories tell us about news driven business cycles there is widespread disagreement over the quantitative contribution of news shocks to business cycle fluctuations this paper provides a simple identifying restriction based on inventory dynamics that tightly pins down this contribution structural models predict that finished good inventories should fall when there is an increase in consumption and investment induced by news shocks a structural var with these sign restrictions indicates that news shocks account for at most 20 percent of output volatility since inventories comove positively with consumption and investment in the data shocks that generate negative comovement cannot account for the bulk of fluctuations

using contingent valuation to explore willingness to pay for renewable energy a comparison of collective and voluntary payment vehicles abstract this study uses a split sample dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1574 u s residents to explore willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy under collective and voluntary payment vehicles and under government and private provision of the good we also evaluate the impact of participation expectations on stated wtp we find some evidence that when confronted with a collective payment mechanism respondents state a somewhat higher wtp than when voluntary payment mechanisms are used similarly private provision of the good elicits a somewhat higher wtp than does government provision we also find that contingent valuation responses are strongly correlated with expectations for the wtp of others our results shed light on strategic response behavior and the incentive compatibility of different cv designs and offer practical insight into u s household preferences for how to support renewable energy

can renewable energy be financed with higher electricity prices evidence from a spanish region abstract in this paper we estimate the willingness to pay for mix of renewable sources of electric power by means of a discrete choice experiment survey conducted in spain in 2010 two main categories of power supply attributes are explored source of renewable power wind solar and biomass and the origin of such power the findings suggest that most consumers are not willing to pay a premium for increases in the shares of renewable in their electricity mix for two of the three renewable sources considered wind and biomass an increase of the renewable mix would require a discount instead we record positive willing to pay for increases in the share of both solar power and locally generated power however preferences for types of renewable solar and wind are found to be heterogeneous by classifying respondents in two groups according to the implied importance of the share of renewable sources in their power mix we identify a market segment consisting of 20 of respondents that could promote renewable energy in the absence of subsidies this is because such a segment shows willingness to pay higher than the current feed in tariffs

mood swings and business cycles evidence from sign restrictions this paper provides new evidence that bouts of optimism and pessimism are an important source of u s business cycles using the identification schemes based on sign restrictions we document that identified optimism and pessimism shocks account for about 30 of u s business cycle fluctuations in hours and output in addition our empirical findings are consistent with the intensive and extensive margin adjustments in the u s labor market over business cycles providing further support to optimism shocks being an important source of u s business cycles the identified optimism shocks are at least partially rational as total factor productivity is found to rise 8 12 quarters after an initial bout of optimism while this later finding is consistent with some previous findings in the news shock literature we cannot rule out that such episodes reflect self fulfilling beliefs

broader product line a necessity to achieve success strategic product line breadth decisions evoke differential responses from the manufacturing and the marketing areas manufacturing prefers keeping process disruptions to a minimum and as a result discourages product proliferation however marketing in its attempt to match products to heterogeneous consumer needs and gain market share emphasizes a broader product line we systematically investigate the market benefits and cost disadvantages of broader product lines on a large sample of over 1 400 business units our results indicate significant market share benefits and increases in firms profitability with broader product lines moreover widely held beliefs of increases in production costs are not empirically supported american manufacturing firms may indeed be flexible enough to accommodate product variety without significant detrimental effects on costs

consensus forests of corporate earnings analysts forecasts and time series methods an alternative to using a single forecasting method is to average the forecasts made by various methods in this paper we examine empirically combinations of financial analysts forecasts and forecasts from time series methods in order to predict corporate earnings per share we conclude that on average the primary forecasting advantages of analysts over time series methods based on annual data appear to occur over short forecast horizons less than a year neither analysts nor other time series methods substantially outperform a random walk prediction of no change when forecasts are made near the beginning of the fiscal year for predictions in the first half of the fiscal year there is evidence of forecasting benefits from combining time series and analysts forecasts especially if there are few analysts forecasts

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

the timing and value of forecast and recommendation revisions abstract this paper evaluates the information content of analysts one quarter ahead earnings forecast revisions and recommendation revisions at various points in event time relative to earnings announcement dates across three sets of tests we find that the revisions are least informative in the week after earnings announcements and that the information content of revisions generally increases over event time we find a sharp increase in the information content of upward forecast revisions and recommendation upgrades in the week before earnings announcements but we do not find a similar increase for downward revisions or for recommendation downgrades

inventory dynamics in process industries an empirical investigation process industry firms have thrived in recent decades but changes in the markets are currently putting both growth and profitability at risk in this context inventory management is increasingly viewed as an essential lever for creating a sustainable competitive advantage despite this many firms struggle to implement best practices because of industry specific constraints this research explores how seven fundamental characteristics of process industries drive inventory performance we empirically investigate four process industries and four peer industries using financial accounting credit rating stock market and trading data and implement a seemingly unrelated regression sur equations model our results show that capital intensity capital costs transportation costs delivery time price volatility demand uncertainty and gross margin directly affect a company s degree of freedom in terms of inventory management and illustrate that inventory management in process industries follows different dynamics this study enhances the understanding of inventory drivers and gives practitioners a tool to guide future improvement efforts

stuck between a roc and a hard place barriers to the take up of green energy in the uk abstract this paper examines the uk mechanisms for ensuring future investment in renewable energy through consumer adoption of green energy tariffs and the renewable obligation certificate roc system using a national survey and focus groups the stated willingness by uk customers to pay a premium for renewable or green energy and actual take up of such tariffs is assessed substantial differences between willingness to pay for and the adoption of green energy tariffs are reported this disparity is linked to a range of factors including consumer confusion lack of supply complexities of constructing green source tariffs under the roc system and a lack of customer trust it is concluded that the re definition of the green energy market in favour of green source tariffs greater direct compliance with the renewable obligation by addressing supply constraints and efforts in providing clearer information and choices for consumers via a compulsory green energy accreditation scheme are required if willing consumers are to contribute to investment in renewable energy

willingness to pay for renewable energy evidence from a contingent valuation survey in kenya a modern form of energy in particular electricity for household use is an important vehicle in alleviating poverty in developing countries however access and costs of connecting to this service for most poor in these countries is inconceivable policies promoting electricity connection in rural areas are known to be beneficial in improving the socio economic and health well being for households this paper examines willingness to pay wtp for rural electrification connection in kisumu district kenya using the contingent valuation method cvm a nonparametric and a parametric model are employed to estimate wtp values for two electricity products grid electricity ge and photovoltaic pv electricity the results indicate that respondents are willing to pay more for ge services than pv and households favoured monthly connection payments over a lump sum amount some of the policies suggested in this paper include subsidizing the connection costs for both sources of electricity adjusting the payment periods and restructuring the market ownership of providing rural electricity services

managing sales surprise the role of operational slack and volume flexibility abstract investors use sales surprise or revenue surprise the degree to which actual sales exceed expected sales as an important component of firm valuation rapidly scaling operations in the short run to meet higher than expected demand however could increase adjustment costs and lower efficiency thereby lowering performance operational slack excess capacity internally in the firm and longer cash conversion cycles externally in the supply chain and volume flexibility could help mitigate the negative effect of sales surprise on firm performance based on a sample of 1286 firms representing 38 473 firm quarter observations from 2003 to 2013 and using fixed effects regression the proposed relationships except for mitigating effects of internal operational slack or excess capacity measured as standardized industry adjusted sales to ppe ratio are supported for short term performance roa findings are robust to long term firm performance outcomes tobin s q and market to book ratio to controlling for autoregressive effects of past sales surprise alternate proxies for firm size squared term specification for slack an alternate forecasting method for sales surprise and controlling for inventory efficiency

revealed and stated preferences for co2 emissions reduction the missing link abstract in this paper we combine data collected from two strands of literature dealing with revealed preferences expressed by conventional vehicle drivers for fuel price variation and stated preferences expressed by consumers for alternative fuel vehicles we employ a meta analysis approach drawing data on 30 primary studies reflecting two important policy interventions which are fuel price taxation and subsidies for alternative fuel vehicles this is a new contribution in environmental and energy economics in that we rescale all primary information into a unique index which captures consumers economic attitude towards carbon dioxide co2 emission reduction in monetary terms focusing on the transport sector we compute the implicit price for the avoidance of a kilogram of co2 emissions named pco2 explaining the existing heterogeneity from several points of view the results of the meta analysis show that contextual and individual characteristics influence the implicit price for co2 emissions avoidance this implicit price is on average positive in the case of revealed preferences studies whereas it is negative in the stated preferences studies although there are some important geographical differences our results show that fuel taxes could be an important additional instrument for environmental policy

the economic order quantity model revisited an extended exergy accounting approach abstract the economic order quantity eoq model has been popular among academicians and practitioners for decades despite the many variants of the eoq that have appeared in the literature to fine tune it to reality it still has limitations a major one is that it does not take into account the hidden costs inherent in inventory systems some of these costs relate to sustainability issues including environmental social labor and economic effects this paper considers some of these costs referred to as the exergetic costs and estimates them using the extended exergy accounting eea approach extended exergy accounting assigns equivalent exergetic values to capital labor and environmental remediation costs of a system the analysis combines the classical exergy analysis with the sustainability factors which are the labor capital and environment the paper uses an exergetic model to determine the eoq inventory policies for three firms operating in the usa germany and china the results show that the eoq is different for the three firms because the equivalent exergy of capital labor and environment remediation costs is different in each country

managing global sourcing inventory performance the use of global suppliers has increased considerably over the last three decades operations management theory establishes that global sourcing requires more units of inventory but since these units are often procured at a lower cost from global suppliers the capital invested in inventory and the consequent financial burden may increase or decrease with global sourcing this study provides rigorous firm level empirical evidence that links the global sourcing practices of public u s firms and their inventory investments we process bill of lading manifests customs forms to extract information on over half a million sea shipments from global suppliers to u s public firms and link this information with quarterly financial data from the compustat database we provide stylized facts on the participation of different firms and sectors in global trade using a simultaneous equation model we find that an increase in global sourcing results in an increase in inventory investment a 10 shift in sourcing from domestic to global suppliers increases the inventory investment by 8 8 for an average firm in our sample we also find that increasing the number of suppliers can mitigate this increase in inventory investment for example going from single to dual sourcing reduces inventory investment by about 11 we illustrate the use of our estimates to identify the impact of changing global sourcing strategy on inventory investment and operational performance metrics this paper was accepted by martin lariviere operations management

willingness to pay for green power in an unreliable electricity sector part 1 the case of the lebanese residential sector abstract a willingness to pay wtp analysis for renewable based electricity is undertaken for the lebanese residential sector a survey of 600 samples was conducted based on a stratified random sampling method in which energy use and expenditures socioeconomic and demographic characteristics were collected four scenarios for wtp for green power were designed to best reflect the possibilities of integrating renewable energy re sources in lebanon s unreliable electricity sector 1 local system covering partial electricity needs 2 local system covering entire electricity needs 3 utility provided green power covering partial electricity needs and 4 utility provided green power covering entire electricity needs the results based on a tobit model highlight the importance of re options that displace completely the diesel generator sets i e options 2 and 4 other parameters such as ownership of the home age perception of trust in government institutions and awareness of re were also found significant in influencing wtp

the information content of earnings revenues and expenses in this paper we model risk adjusted returns at earnings announcements as a function of unexpected revenues and unexpected expenses in order to test for the information content of the components of earnings as well as for their incremental information content over earnings we use value line vl forecasts of earnings and revenues as a proxy for the market s expectation of these numbers and as a basis for the market s expectation of expenses we find both revenues and expenses have information content that is incremental to earnings we also model riskadjusted returns as a function of earnings and revenues to compare our findings with previous research that used a martingale model to derive expected revenues consistent with previous research we find no incremental information content in revenues in this formulation however we find information content in both earnings and revenues when expectations are taken from vl forecasts wilson 1986 found that investors used the earnings and revenues released at the preliminary announcement date to forecast the accruals and funds subsequently disclosed in the annual report or 10 k however he found no evidence of information content for revenues at this date wilson used prior periods revenues cash from operations current and noncurrent accruals and capital expenditures to predict revenues using

on the relationship between inventory costs and variety benefits in retailassortments consider a category of product variants distinguished by some attribute such as color or flavor a retailer must construct an assortment for the category i e select a subset variants to stock and determine purchase quantities for each offered variant we analyze this problem using a multinomial logit model to describe the consumer choice process and a newsboy model to represent the retailer s inventory cost we show that the optimal assortment has a simple structure and provide insights on how various factors affect the optimal level of assortment variety we also develop a formal definition of the level of fashion in a category using the theory of majorization and examine its implications for category profits

exergy analysis of the energy use in greece in this work an analysis is being done on the concept of energy and exergy utilization and an application to the residential and industrial sector of greece the energy and exergy flows over the period from 1990 to 2004 were taken into consideration this period was chosen based on the data reliability the energy and exergy efficiencies are calculated for the residential and industrial sectors and compared to the findings of a previous study concerning the exergy efficiency of the greek transport sector the residential energy and exergy efficiencies for the year 2003 were 22 36 and 20 92 respectively whereas the industrial energy and exergy efficiencies for the same year were 53 72 and 51 34 respectively the analysis of energy and exergy utilization determines the efficiency of the economy as a whole the results can play an important role in the establishment of efficiency standards of the energy use in various economy sectors these standards could be utilized by energy policy makers

stack them high let em fly lot sizing policies when inventories stimulate demand in some retail contexts stocking large quantities of inventory may not only improve service levels but can also stimulate demand for products having demand rates that increase with inventory levels we analyze the effect of stocking decisions on firm profitability to develop managerial insights regarding the structure of the optimal inventory policy and to understand how this policy differs from traditional approaches when inventories stimulate demand iteratively applying the standard economic order quantity eoq model by setting the demand rate parameter equal to the observed average demand rate in prior cycles yields an equilibrium order quantity that is robust to demand parameter misestimation but is suboptimal the profit maximizing policy orders larger quantities and can replenish inventory even before on hand stock fully depletes using an extension of a standard inventory dependent demand model from the literature we first provide a convenient characterization of products that require early replenishment we demonstrate that the optimal cycle time is largely governed by the conventional trade off between ordering and holding costs whereas the reorder point relates to a promotions oriented cost benefit perspective we show that the optimal policy yields significantly higher profits than cost based inventory policies underscoring the importance of profit driven inventory management

social acceptance of renewable energy sources a review of contingent valuation applications abstract this paper presents a literature review addressing the public acceptance of renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels in electricity production this review was motivated by the global tendency for a substitution of conventional fuels by renewable energy sources res during the global financial crisis it studies research on the preferences and attitudes of local communities towards investments in renewable energy projects and their perception of the use of new energy technologies in their daily lives through various case studies worldwide an effort is made to identify the parameters that influence consumers energy behaviour together with their interest or lack thereof in the environmental impact of using fossil fuels to produce energy and their willingness to reduce it applications of contingent valuation are examined which are employed to analyse public attitudes towards the use of res for electricity production willingness to pay is observed to be correlated to socioeconomic characteristics including education interest in environmental issues and knowledge of res finally the profile of a typical green energy consumer and appropriate policy paths for the penetration of res into the energy market are outlined

valuation for renewable energy a comparative review abstract environmental cost benefit analysis is applied for the evaluation of renewable energy projects since some benefits and costs do not have monetary values economic valuation techniques are applied to estimate them this paper reviews the literature on the valuation evaluation of renewable energy resources and summarizes the methods used in them it discerns four main streams of valuation in renewable energy the first is economic welfare oriented and comprises stated and revealed preference methods the second is the financial option analysis with a financial background the third is emergy analysis which is mostly an ecological engineering based method with capable economic links and the fourth is again economic but not welfare based the paper discusses the main directions discerned in these studies and recognizes first that proper valuation takes place only in the first method while the other methods describe only evaluation procedures and second that there is a research gap that has yet to be filled in as compared to other areas of environmental resource and energy economics

an empirical investigation of dynamic ordering policies adaptive base stock policy is a well known tool for managing inventories in nonstationary demand environments this paper presents empirical tests of this policy using aggregate firm level data first we extend a single item adaptive base stock policy in previous literature to a multi item case second we transform the policy derived for the multi item case to a regression model that relates firm level inventory purchases to firm level sales and changes in sales forecasts we focus on two research questions can the adaptive base stock policy explain cross sectional ordering behaviors under sales growth to the extent that the adaptive base stock policy fails to explain ordering behaviors under sales growth are there frictions that explain such a finding our empirical results demonstrate disparities in ordering behaviors between firms experiencing high and moderate sales growth contrary to theoretical prediction this implies that inventory purchases are a function of not only current sales and changes in sales forecast but also past sales growth as potential explanations for this departure from theoretical prediction we show that both future demand dynamics and inventory holding risks depend on past sales growth in addition we find that firms inventory holding risks may also be affected by purchasing constraints imposed by supply chain contracts our results provide managerial implications for practitioners and inform future theoretical research this paper was accepted by martin lariviere operations management

sustainability analysis of a society based on exergy studies a case study of the island of samso denmark abstract the danish island samso has since 1997 initiated a process through which the island should reach a state where it would be able to supply its own energy such a situation was reached since 2005 after having established 21 windmills and the island is now a net exporter of electricity to the danish power network at the same time the buildings in the more habituated areas were connected to 4 district heating plants which generate heat from combustion of straw in some cases combined with supplementary inputs from photo thermal devices meanwhile certain activities on the island such as running the ferries cars factories and heating in more distant areas are still dependent on significant input of fossil fuels the inhabitants have recently stated a wish to move on towards being independent of fossil fuels in 2030 and carbon neutral during the next decades as a consequence the idea came up to develop a method for the sustainability analysis of a society which would assist in governing the transitional process in the direction of increasing sustainability therefore a framework has been developed based on the concept exergy that may reveal where large consumptions are taking places such areas are likely to be sensible targets for action or at least increased attention basic methods have been developed that allows to account for infrastructure transfers inputs and outputs and consumption in terms of exergy and taking into account whether the exergy storages or flows can be considered to be renewable or not the framework has been developed for six societal sectors the energy sector the public sector the private households the agricultural sector the industry commerce and trade sector and nature nature is here considered an activity that provides the society with an exergy that may also be of value to our societies often referred to as ecosystem services based on the estimated amount of infrastructure and transfers inputs and outputs a number of sustainability indicators have been developed that may be monitored over time and which may serve to indicate whether potential measures undertaken also lead the society in the right direction an attempt to evaluate the potential importance of wastes has also been carried out as in organic waste could play an important role in acquiring the amount of bio diesel required to run the ferries in the future the results demonstrate that the already existing overhead in production of electricity leaves the island with many options and a great opportunity to be independent of fossil fuels in near future in fact it might well be that socio economical perspectives will turn out to be the more severe obstacles in the transition process adjacent to this work a carbon model has also been set up to reveal the consequence of proposed measures and strategies to the carbon budget of the island jorgensen and nielsen 2014

household willingness to pay for green electricity in slovenia abstract this paper analyses the willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewable energy sources in slovenia the results confirm that age household income education and environmental awareness play the most important role in explaining household attitudes to green electricity programmes while the willingness to participate in green electricity programmes is influenced by education and environmental awareness the willingness to pay for green electricity predominantly depends on household income the results imply that green marketing should be accompanied by awareness raising campaigns and should target younger well educated and high income households the expressed median willingness to pay is found to exceed the current level of mandatory charges for green electricity nevertheless recent increases in final electricity prices might have already exhausted the capacity for additional voluntary contributions