optimization of replenishment policies for decentralized and centralized capacitated supply chains under various demands abstract in this paper the optimal replenishment policies of capacitated supply chains sc operating under two different control strategies decentralized vs centralized and various demands are determined and insights useful to management are discussed the details of the system used including the underlying supply chain inventory model and the simulation based optimization framework are presented the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed optimization framework is illustrated by comparing it with brute force estimation of the true optimum on three selected scenarios the entire study was carried out by following a design of experiment covering ten demand patterns four levels of capacity constraints and two control strategies the main and two factor interaction effects were analyzed via anova detailed analyses of the ordering patterns cost distribution over the sc and internal service level were carried out to provide useful insights for demand with high variation capacity constraint may lead to significant changes in ordering patterns failing to detect those changes may lead to unnecessary cost increase overall it is beneficial to adopt centralized control and cost savings realized are dependent upon the demand patterns an incentive mechanism is proposed to coordinate the decentralized system so that each player in the sc will be better off additional experiments were also carried out to investigate the effect of using different allocation rules by the distributor

making the same mistake again or is this time different the world faces an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions but much of the policy response has certainly not lacked for precedent national governments and international organisations including the international monetary fund imf have looked to crises of the past for solutions to the present and austerity has become a familiar theme the inability to effectively resolve the current crisis however gives rise to the question is this time different this article provides a broad overview to the origins and development of the recent economic crisis and the resort to policies of austerity although there is historical precedent for the resort to austerity such as the uk treasury view during the 1920s and 1930s this time things are different many of the current problems are deeply rooted and reflect the impact of the shift towards free market economics that started in the 1970s 2 the origins of the crisis since the beginning of the 1970s the private sector finance in particular has reorganised on an increasingly global scale it has innovated in terms of both structure and products and it has experienced significant growth as tridico 2012 this issue shows this financialisation was characterised by a ballooning of stock exchanges as many firms decided not only to list their shares but also to become involved in speculative finance in response to pressures on firms to maximise shareholder value together with the progressive erosion of worker and trade union rights and influence labour markets became more flexible and real wages stagnated concurrently profits rebounded leading to burgeoning inequality in this context aggregate demand and consumption were bolstered by easy credit and the wealth effects of speculative bubbles first in stocks and shares and then in housing

a perspective on the symptoms and causes of the financial crisis abstract prior to the 2007 2008 financial crisis banking sector profits were very high but the profitability of financial intermediation was poor using a novel model of banking this article argues that the high profits were achieved through balance sheet expansion and growing default liquidity and term risk mismatches between assets and liabilities as a result large banks financial leverage rose as they became less liquid setting the conditions for a systemic banking crisis this article argues that the increase in financial leverage was possible due to misguided changes in the regulatory framework specifically the basel i capital accord and reductions in reserve requirements finally this article overviews and assesses the policy response in the aftermath of the crisis

technical change external economies and the porter hypothesis abstract michael porter introduces the idea that environmental regulations may benefit affected firms this paper derives results consistent with porter s hypothesis by employing a general equilibrium framework with a large number of agents external economies of scale in production and discrete changes in technology the model shows that endogenous technical change makes porter s hypothesis feasible however a policy that produces results consistent with porter s hypothesis is not necessarily optimal

environmental regulations innovation and firm performance a revisit of the porter hypothesis part of the research for this paper was supported by funding from nottingham innovative manufacturing research centre and the university of bedfordshire business and management research institute

wage stagnation rising inequality and the financial crisis of 2008 the most widely embraced explanations of the financial crisis of 2008 have centered upon inadequate regulation stemming from laissez faire ideology combined with low interest rates although these widely acknowledged causal factors are true beneath them lie deeper determining forces that have received less notice wage stagnation and a dramatic increase in inequality in the u s over the preceding 35 years wage stagnation and heightened inequality generated three dynamics that made the economy vulnerable to systemic dysfunction the first is that they constrained consumption reducing profitable investment potential in the real economy and thereby encouraging an every wealthier elite to flood financial markets with credit helping keep interest rates low encouraging the creation of new credit instruments and greater indebtedness and fueling speculation the second dynamic is that consumption externalities were generated forcing individuals to struggle harder to find ways to maintain the welfare of their families and maintain their relative social status the consequence was that over the preceding three decades household saving rates plummeted households took on ever greater debt and worked longer hours the third dynamic is that as the rich took larger shares of income and wealth they gained more command over ideology and hence politics reducing the size of government cutting taxes on the rich and reducing welfare for the poor deregulating the economy and failing to regulate newly evolving credit instruments flowed out of this ideology

northern ireland s property market crisis insights from minsky s financial instability hypothesis the financial crisis of 2007 has shown that standard mainstream macroeconomic models underpinned by general equilibrium theory fail to anticipate explain and provide guidance on how to respond to such events stiglitz 2011 evidence in the northern ireland context has further suggested that applying these models to property markets may be inappropriate given the underlying statistical properties of these time series gallagher et al 2015 these issues combined suggest that there may be merit in examining cases of financial crises through alternative theoretical frameworks and in adopting a more pluralist approach with this in mind this paper investigates whether minsky s 1975 1986 1992 financial instability hypothesis can assist in understanding the recent property market crisis in northern ireland which was severe by both national and international standards using qualitative evidence to analyse the behaviours of borrowers represented by property developers and lenders represented by banks over the course of the business cycle this paper assesses the relevance of minsky s arguments the findings show that minsky s financial instability hypothesis explains the incidents observed in ni s property market in recent years

taxing variable cost environmental regulation as industrial policy abstract conventional wisdom has it that a country that enacts strict environmental regulations will place its firms at a competitive disadvantage this view has been challenged recently some commentators argue that stricter regulation will enhance domestic competitiveness strict regulations induce innovation we evaluate this argument in a strategic trade model in very special cases a strengthening of regulation may result in a shift of profits from foreign to domestic firms this is not a general result however environmental regulation should of course be imposed to control externalities but it is unlikely that it will serve to generate industrial advantage

structural causes of the global financial crisis a critical assessment of the new financial architecture we are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression this crisis is the latest phase of the evolution of financial markets under the radical financial deregulation process that began in the late 1970s this evolution has taken the form of cycles in which deregulation accompanied by rapid financial innovation stimulates powerful financial booms that end in crises governments respond to crises with bailouts that allow new expansions to begin as a result financial markets have become ever larger and financial crises have become more threatening to society which forces governments to enact ever larger bailouts this process culminated in the current global financial crisis which is so deeply rooted that even unprecedented interventions by affected governments have thus far failed to contain it in this paper we analyse the structural flaws in the financial system that helped bring on the current crisis and discuss prospects for financial reform

too big to manage us megabanks competition by innovation and the microfoundations of financialization disagreements over the systemic implications the future of financialization can be traced in part to the absence of sustained attention to the role of banking firms in driving this secular shift forward that is the financialization literature lacks an adequate microfoundation accounting for the drivers of financialization processes solely at the macro level overlooks the problems of how these processes came about and whether they are sustainable this paper addresses this explanatory gap arguing that a key independent microeconomic driver of increasing financialization did exist the incessant efforts by money centre banks in the usa to break out of depression era restrictions on their size activities and markets these banks growth strategies in turbulent times led to an institutional meso shift the rise of a megabank centred shadow banking system that now shapes global financial architecture even while operating in ways that are unsustainable in short too big to manage megabanks are at the heart of the fragility and instability of the economy today

a new age based replenishment policy for supply chain inventory optimization of highly perishable products abstract a simulation optimization framework is proposed for supply chain inventory management of highly perishable products a new replenishment policy based on old inventory ratio is developed hence called oir policy it is an age based policy using only partial age information to measure the freshness of the entire inventory the efficiency of the new policy is evaluated in detail for a single vendor multi buyer platelet with a limited shelf life of 5 days supply chain the inventory objective is to minimize the expected system outdate rate under a predetermined maximal allowable shortage level the new oir policy is compared with two existing order up to policies one is the order up to policy without age consideration the other one is the ewa policy developed by broekmeulen and van donselaar 2009 the three policies are compared under both decentralized and centralized controls for different levels of the fillrate constraint the computational results show that adopting centralized control over the whole platelet supply chain greatly helps in reducing the system expected outdate rate from 19 6 down to 1 04 on average while keeping sufficiently high fill rate at each entity the two policies with age consideration are generally better than the policy without age consideration under both control strategies this is particularly true for decentralized control the new oir policy is recommended because it is the best among all three consistently yielding good results in all cases studied

credit default swaps has the gfc influenced perceptions of their utility for banks credit default swaps cdss are considered as one of the most versatile financial innovations of the 21st century since its inception the credit derivatives market has grown to a peak of 64 trillion in 2008 in terms of gross notional values cont 2010 however after the onset of the gfc this market has decreased to a large extent while there is evidence that promotes the risk reduction properties of cdss there is a growing body of research post gfc that identifies destabilising effects of these instruments in this paper i review the relevant scholarly literature and provide evidence of how the views on cdss have changed post gfc due a deeper investigation of issues such as systemic risk regulatory arbitrage information asymmetry and risk taking among others in the banking industry this paper provides a survey of the literature of views for and against the use of cdss during pre and post gfc periods and finally concludes that in comparison to the pre gfc period post gfc there is a significant increase in the literature that highlights the detrimental nature of cdss

cognition market sentiment and financial instability the purpose of this paper is to explore the role for psychology within an open system structural theory of financial instability and to consider the implications for policy while behavioural finance has drawn on ideas from psychology in order to explain evidence of behaviour that deviates from the rationality axioms it is argued that the way in which psychology is framed by this approach is unduly limiting minsky s structural theory of financial instability with its keynesian and ultimately humean roots incorporates psychology into the theoretical foundations in particular cognition and sentiment are shown to be interconnected rather than separable it is concluded that the policy implications for addressing the current crisis while apparently similar between these different approaches are in fact very different the underlying theory involves different methodology and indeed different framing from behavioural finance the way in which the crisis is understood is therefore important for policy copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control reply abstract the process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps innovation diffusion and optimal agency response firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes direct controls emission subsidies emission taxes free marketable permits and auctioned marketable permits on a relative basis emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change at times free permits generate lower incentives direct controls which are common regulatory tools usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change

joint economic lot sizing problem for a three layer supply chain with stochastic demand abstract this paper considers the joint economic lot sizing problem jelp for multi layer supply chain with multi retailers and single manufacturer and supplier the paper extends the work of ben daya et al 2013 and relaxes the assumption of deterministic demand and constant holding and ordering costs the paper proposes modifying four computational intelligent algorithms to solve mixed integer problems and compares their performance for solving the problem at hand the paper further compares between adopting a centralized safety stock policy versus a decentralized policy results showed cuckoo search to outperform other tested algorithms and also favored adopting a centralized policy

comparative studies of national incomes and prices income comparisons between persons or groups of persons in different countries are a special field of inquiry mainly because there are different currency units for the most part the other theoretical and empirical problems encountered in international income comparisons are similar to those of within nation comparisons between different persons at the same time or different groups of persons either interspatially or what is more common intertemporally e g constant price series of national income the qualifications mainly and for the most part are included because some writers hold that international comparisons are complicated or even invalidated by differences in consumption patterns sometimes differences in tastes are held to underlie these variations in consumption patterns variations that are often much larger between countries than those found between regions within a country or between different periods in the same country this essay focuses in its methodological aspects on these special problems the basic problems that are common to international and within nation comparisons are left to the standard literature on national accounts 2 we turn now to the currency unit problems and reserve the question of tastes for a later section

comparative productivity the ussr eastern europe and the west this paper compiles comparative measures of output per worker in 1975 in four socialist and seven western market economy wme countries and explores sources of observed differences between the two groups of countries in that regard such differences seem explicable only partially by reference to differences in per worker capital stock and farm land a residual disparity of 25 to 34 percent in favor of wme countries appears to testify to superior efficiency in the latter copyright 1987 by american economic association

financial globalisation and crisis institutional transformation and equity this paper comprises the long introduction to the symposium of five papers on financial globalisation published in the cambridge journal of economics volume 34 no 2 the paper discusses the impact of financial globalisation in a variety of spheres and shows how the five papers link together to provide a coherent view of the current economic and financial crisis in this paper we also examine the globalisation of finance more broadly both in historical terms as well as in relation to the current widespread failure in the financial markets we take up the policy question of how the interests of the poor in particular and developing countries in general could be safeguarded from the vagaries of financial globalisation questioning how much choice communities and countries have and what can the international community do to extend these choices

is corruption grease grit or a gamble corruption increases variance of productivity across countries the effect of corruption on economic growth has attracted interest in empirical development economics the conventional view of corruption as impediment for growth has been challenged by the grease on the wheels hypothesis we take a new perspective on the issue and suggest corruption as macro risk referred to as a gamble hypothesis using cross country data and two alternative indicators of corruption we find corruption to be a significant driver of heteroscedasticity in total productivity this supports the new gamble hypothesis we also note some misleading interpretations in the previously published frontier applications to avoid these shortcomings we apply a flexible semi nonparametric estimator

the relationship between size growth and profitability of commercial banks using a dynamic panel model for more than 15 000 banks from 148 countries from 1988 to 2010 we investigate the interaction between size growth and profitability of banks for our total sample we cannot reject the hypotheses that the variability of bank profitability and the level and variability of bank growth are independent of bank size however in high income organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries bigger banks grow slower but are more profitable than small banks while bank growth is not persistent bank profitability is persistent finally we find that bank growth and bank profitability are independent of each other

on the consistency of aggregate production frontiers abstract this paper investigates the consistency of efficiency frontier methods applied at the aggregate level we estimate eight aggregate production frontiers on a sample of 93 countries depending on three methodological choices for the specification of the frontier the choice of the approach technique stochastic frontier approach or data envelopment analysis the specification of human capital as an input and the nature of returns to scale we observe some differences on the descriptive statistics of the distributions of the efficiency scores but also a very high significant and positive correlation between scores rankings regardless of the methodological choices made our results tend then to suggest the consistency of the efficiency techniques at the aggregate level

success factors for environmentally sustainable product innovation a systematic literature review the growing awareness regarding environmental sustainability has fully reached business reality consumers and companies alike are looking for alternatives to mitigate pressing environmental demands resulting from continuous population and economic growth on the other hand companies must deal with an increasingly competitive scenario where innovation is regarded as a survival need in most markets it is thus clear that systematic academic research is paramount to guide companies to succeed in environmentally sustainable product innovation in this context this paper i consolidate extant research and aggregate findings of different studies on environmentally sustainable product innovation through an interpretative framework of published literature on the topic and ii map critical success factors that drive the success of product innovation developed in this new logic of production and consumption to achieve these objectives a systematic literature review on environmentally sustainable product innovation was conducted results show that there are four main critical success factors for environmentally sustainable product innovation market law and regulation knowledge interfunctional collaboration innovation oriented learning and r d investments the factors identified in this research and corresponding variables were subjected to a brief empirical test by professionals the test allowed a preliminary approval of the developed framework and identification of the most important variables within each factor a research agenda based on the state of the art on the topic is also proposed

the euro crisis undetected by conventional economics favoured by nationally focused polity this article interprets the initial success of the launch of the euro and its muddling through since the outbreak of the greek sovereign debt crisis two interrelated processes interacted to deliver a quite complex idiosyncratic systemic crisis first new classical macroeconomics had diffused the belief that market economies are structurally stable money is neutral financial markets are efficient and that the only culprit is public finance the euro crisis was thus inaccurately diagnosed second in the political arena monetary integration has been used by many governments as a justification for liberalisation reforms opposed by various domestic social groups at the european level most governments have been defending national interests whereas the european commission and european parliament had lost most of their expertise and legitimacy in defending a common community in line euro ambitions crisis resolution calls for leadership from a key collective actor to return coherence to the eurozone s institutional setting copyright oxford university press

limited liability and the modern corporation in theory and in practice the catastrophic consequences of a lack of public control over the operations of large private corporations have been thrown into sharp relief by two major events in the recent past the global financial crisis and the deepwater horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico while these events obviously differ in scope and nature they nevertheless turn the spotlight on a fundamental problem of contemporary capitalism an economic system that facilitates the privatisation of gains in the hands of ever smaller elites while also socialising risk losses in an anarchic manner to the detriment of the many is not politically viable in the long run this is the case in particular if a core element of this system s legitimacy is its claim to promote democracy at home and around the world based on principles of transparency and accountability both the global financial crisis and the deepwater horizon oil spill have already attained the status of watershed events mainly because the social economic and environmental risks inflicted by private actors on very large groups of people were extraordinary and the causes of failure to manage these risks were systemic rather than accidental at the heart of the systemic nature of these watershed failures lies the gradual evolution of the modern corporation into organisations with the power to re shape in their favour a changing and varied history of precarious balancing acts between public and private interests in advanced capitalist economies from its beginnings capitalism has been defined by the primacy of economic over political organisation most famously encapsulated in adam smith s metaphor of the invisible hand much later albert hirschman s insightful account of how the interests gradually came to outweigh the passions hirschman 1977 provides a detailed analysis of such early legitimisation patterns according to which the pursuit of individual freedom and economic selforganisation would be the driving force of political pacification and collective civilisation yet from the beginning such high expectations were curbed by warnings of potential conflicts between private and public interests if the former became too powerful thus adam smith himself pointed out that t o widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers to widen the market may frequently be agreeable to the interest of the public but to narrow the competition must always be against it and can serve only to enable the dealers by raising their profits above what they naturally would be to levy for their own benefit an absurd tax on the rest

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

tightening environmental standards the benefit cost or the no cost paradigm ms ff ichael porter and claas van der linde have written a paper that is interesting and to us at least somewhat astonishing it is a defense of environmental regulation indeed an invitation to more stringent regulation that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation this approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs the traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits for environmental regulation the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water quality improvements the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards from this benefit cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook porter and van der linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a static mindset in their view economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

introduction the global financial crisis there cannot now be a shadow of a doubt that the flaw in his ideology admitted by alan greenspan in response to a question by henry a waxman chairman of the us house of representatives committee on oversight and government reform whether he felt that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made is both significant and permanent the current financial and economic crisis that has forced the likes of greenspan to question the coherence of dominant conceptual frameworks is unprecedented in global reach and systemic gravity some basic figures speak for themselves according to mckinsey s mapping global financial markets october 2008 global financial assets rose from us 12 trillion in 1980 to us 196 trillion in 2007 the international monetary fund s global financial stability report imf 2009a estimate for the latter figure is considerably higher at us 241 trillion global cross border capital flows more than doubled between 2002 and 2007 with foreign investors holding one in four debt securities and one in five equities while in 2000 only 11 countries had financial assets of more than 350 of gross domestic product gdp 25 countries had deepened their financial markets to the same extent by 2007 as early as 1990 money managers had increased their control of us corporate equities from 8 in 1950 to 60 porter 1992 p 6 whalen 2002 p 402 similarly pension funds had extended their share of total business equities from less than 1 to just short of 39 and their fraction of corporate debt from 13 to 50 ghilarducci 1992 p 117 whalen 2002 p 402 in the period from 1986 to 2006 the us financial sector as a whole increased its share of corporate profits from 10 to 30 while its outstanding debts grew from 20 of gdp in 1980 to 116 in 2007 fed 2009 according to gillian tett from the financial times outstanding credit defaults swaps cds today amount to no less than us 60 trillion with the risk embodied after discounting mutually off setting contracts still as high as us 14 trillion tett 2009 p 264 as we know the curtains have now come down on this dance of the trillions palma 2009 the immediate hang over in the form of a pile of toxic debt is surreal not only in its

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

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

financialisation oil and the great recession abstract this article addresses the role of world oil price hike of 2007 08 in serving to transform the financial and banking crisis into what is commonly referred to the great recession existing literature on the global crisis of 2007 09 tends to view it as a financial or banking phenomenon with analyses focusing mainly on state policies governance mechanisms and market dynamics in transforming the banking crisis of 2007 08 into the economic recession of 2008 12 13 although often attributing the global meltdown to wider phenomenon of financialisation rarely do existing perspectives delve into the role of the commodity sector in the global credit crunch in this paper we aim to fill this gap by inquiring into the role played by oil as a financial asset class in the political economy of the global crisis

understanding sustainability innovations through positive ethical networks in this paper a positive organizational ethics poe based framework is informed by the microfinance and socially responsible investing movements to capture the process of sustainable financial innovations both of these movements are uniquely characterized by the formation of positive ethical networks pens to develop sustainability innovations in response to external crises the crisis pen innovation framework proposed makes four contributions to the poe literature 1 positions corporate sustainability through a poe lens 2 formalizes the pen construction through poe theory 3 proposes pens are mobilized to respond to external crises and 4 demonstrates how pens facilitate sustainability innovations the theoretical framework is tested using theory guided process tracing in the sustainable banking sector to understand how sustainability innovations were realized the findings are consistent with the crisis pen innovation framework proposed

dynamic incentives of environmental regulations the effects of alternative policy instruments on technology diffusion abstract we develop a framework for comparing empirically the effects of alternative environmental policy instruments on the diffusion of new technology market based and command and control approaches can he quantitatively compared by estimating the economic penalty that firms through their actions reveal to be associated with violation of standards in the context of concerns about global climate change we empirically examine the likely effects of pigouvian taxes technology adoption subsidies and technology standards we employ state level data on the diffusion of thermal insulation in new home construction comparing the effects of energy prices insulation cost and building codes

is corruption an efficient grease this paper tests whether corruption may be an efficient grease in the wheels of an otherwise deficient institutional framework it analyzes the interaction between aggregate efficiency corruption and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 69 countries both developed and developing using two measures of corruption and two other aspects of governance we observe that corruption is less detrimental to efficiency in countries where institutions are less effective it may even be positively associated with efficiency in countries where institutions are extremely ineffective we thus find evidence for the grease the wheels hypothesis in its weak and strong forms

building faith in a common currency can the eurozone get beyond the common market logic building faith in a common future which is at the core of the making of a common currency has been declining since the turn of the 1980s the economic neoliberalism that diffused worldwide after the collapse of the gold exchange standard and the economic crisis of the mid 1970s challenged the european project could a specific european model of social market economy help to forge the solidarity and discipline required to meet this challenge it turned out that members had different understandings of the european model especially regarding the role of central government meanwhile in all forced adjustments of the european union eu to a more open and competitive world be it enlargements new treaties or new institutions the german conception of social market economy prevailed mainly because germany was in a better position than its partners in most cases a rising discontent progressively eroded the faith in the eu project even in germany where a difficult reunification became a major national source of worries by the end of the 1990s when the euro was finally created the eu project had lost its momentum the relative success of the euro in the early 2000s was much linked with the weakness of the dollar answers to the 2008 financial then economic crisis that rest on harsh austerity plans can only worsen the situation a reconstruction of the eu project clearly needs a new pact of solidarity measures integration of the youths in all member countries stands as a good rallying common objective copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the revenge of the market on the rentiers why neo liberal reports of the end of history turned out to be premature starting from the perspective of heterodox keynesian minskyian kindlebergian financial economics this paper begins by highlighting a number of mechanisms that contributed to the current financial crisis these include excess liquidity income polarisation conflicts between financial and productive capital lack of appropriate regulation asymmetric information principal agent dilemmas and bounded rationalities however the paper then proceeds to argue that perhaps more than ever the macroeconomics that led to this crisis only makes analytical sense if examined within the framework of the political settlements and distributional outcomes in which it had operated taking the perspective of critical social theories the paper concludes that ultimately the current financial crisis is the outcome of something much more systemic namely an attempt to use neo liberalism or in us terms neo conservatism as a new technology of power to help transform capitalism into a rentiers delight in particular into a system without compulsions on big business i e one that imposes only minimal pressures on big agents to engage in competitive struggles in the real economy while doing the opposite to workers and small firms a key component in the effectiveness of this new technology of power was its ability to transform the state into a major facilitator of the ever increasing rent seeking practices of oligopolistic capital the architects of this experiment include some capitalist groups in particular rentiers from the financial sector as well as capitalists from the mature and most polluting industries of the preceding techno economic paradigm some political groups as well as intellectual networks with their allies including many economists and the new left although rentiers did succeed in their attempt to get rid of practically all fetters on their greed in the end the crisis materialised when markets took their inevitable revenge on the rentiers by calling their blatant bluff

solvency rule and capital centralisation in a monetary union brancaccio and fontana 2013 have suggested that the central bank influences the solvency conditions of firms and households in the economic system this solvency rule is examined here within a stylised model of a monetary union characterised by different rates of accumulation and inflation across its two member countries the rule highlights the existence of a relationship between the interest rate set by the central monetary authority and the allocation of ownership of existing physical capital among the member countries of the monetary union i e the rates of capital centralisation the paper also shows the nexus between solvency and government debt sustainability and examines the implications of deflationary or currency devaluation policies for the solvency conditions

money as meta rule buchanan s constitutional economics as a foundation for monetary stability this paper explores james buchanan s contributions to monetary economics and argues these contributions form the foundation of a robust monetary economics paradigm while often not recognized for his contributions to monetary economics buchanan s scholarship offers important insights for current debates especially the renewed interest in narrow banking in the wake of the financial crisis we argue that the post 2007 crisis milieu creates a unique opportunity to recognize as buchanan did the vital role that money plays in the market as the grammar of commerce that recognition makes the need for more fundamental reform of our monetary regimes at the constitutional level more apparent making buchanan s work on monetary constitutions more relevant than ever before we then discuss how adopting buchanan s monetary framework can improve both monetary scholarship and institutions

macroeconomic news surprises volume and volatility relationship in index futures market abstractthis paper examines the role of macroeconomic news surprises on returns volatility of indian index futures market empirical literature posits that news arrivals have an influential impact

demand driven inequality endogenous saving rate and macroeconomic instability this article examines consumption dynamics in a cambridge model of growth and distribution the model endogenises the workers saving rate and incorporates out of equilibrium dynamics explicitly the analysis identifies a new mechanism of macroeconomic instability that emerges from the interaction between the kaldorian process of demand driven inequality and the workers saving behaviour the mechanism can generate perpetual cycles where the upwards phase is characterised by a prolonged period of falling saving rate and increasing income inequality the article discusses the empirical relevance of the formal analysis the article discusses the empirical relevance of the analytic results

product innovation in response to environmental standards and competitive advantage a hedonic analysis of refrigerators in the japanese retail market abstract the purpose of this study is to determine whether environmentally friendly attributes that are innovated in response to environmental standards contribute to creating a competitive advantage because manufacturers of products with only commoditized value cannot achieve a competitive advantage they need to add differentiated value including environmentally friendly attributes through product innovation in this situation environmental standards have a potential to encourage them to undertake product innovation thus this study analyzes not only whether a product with environmentally friendly attributes that reflect environmental standards receives a price premium but also whether product commoditization that is associated with drastic price declines has occurred for the product the methodology for these analyses is a hedonic price regression using data for refrigerators sold in the japanese retail market during 1998 2012 the main findings are as follows first the fundamental value of refrigerating has been drastically commoditized in the last 15 years second products that are chlorofluorocarbon free and energy consumption efficient reflecting environmental standards have a price premium third the price premium for each attribute has specific trends during the period these findings support the view that a product s environmentally friendly attributes that reflect environmental standards more or less compensate for the commoditized value through the price premium therefore product innovation in response to environmental standards helps create a competitive advantage especially where product commoditization has occurred

government policies and financial crises mitigation postponement or prevention in the aftermath of the great recession governments have implemented several policy measures to counteract the collapse of the financial sector and the downswing of the real sector within a framework of minsky veblen cycles where relative consumption concerns a debt led growth regime and financial sector confidence constitute the main causes of economic fluctuations we use computer simulations to assess the effectiveness of such measures we find that the considered policy measures help mitigate the impact of financial crises though they do so at the cost of shortening the time between financial crises this result is due to a relatively fast recovery of solvency and confidence induced by the policy measures under study which contribute to an increase in private credit and thereby effective demand our results suggest that without the strengthening of financial regulation any policy intervention remains incomplete

integrated environmental product innovation in the region of munich and its impact on company competitiveness abstract this paper examines the impact of environmental innovations on company competitiveness of both the environment industry and related sectors in the region of munich the focus is on the drivers of these innovations and their respective effects on innovating companies not only innovations in the area of end of pipe technologies but also the development of integrated products and production methods are examined in a regional case study approach a sample of 14 manufacturing and service companies in munich southern germany was interviewed essentially environmental innovation is driven by a mixture of factors internal and external to the firm not only regulatory pressure but also cost pressure competitive advantages technological lead and customer pressure are important drivers regulatory pushed innovations contribute to the competitive performance of sample companies in a similar way as environmental innovations which are carried out voluntarily that would yield proof for the so called porter hypothesis which assumes that environmental legislation stimulates innovation and leads to win win opportunities where simultaneously pollution is reduced and productivity increased

the relative efficiencies of market and planned economies are planned economies systematically more or less productive than market economies this question provoked heated intellectual debate since the time of hayek 11 keynes 16 lange 19 lange and taylor 20 and lerner 22 the collapse of the communist systems of east europe since 1989 closed the debate planned economies were without doubt less efficient in utilizing economic resources than market economies but how much less efficient this question is of obvious scientific interest but it has not been answered some work addressing the broad question of comparative efficiency has been done by bergson 4 5 6 marer 25 26 moroney 28 and others all indicate comparatively lower efficiency in planned economies but none addresses the question by how much our contribution here is to answer this question using a novel methodology we estimate aggregate frontier production functions for two groups of countries 7 centrally planned economies in east europe and 17 predominantly market economies in west europe estimating frontier production functions enables two types of comparisons that have not

analysis of batch ordering inventory models with setup cost and capacity constraint abstract stochastic periodic review batch ordering inventory problems appear in many industrial settings however few literature deals with the optimal ordering polices for such problems no mention to the inclusion of the fixed ordering cost and the production capacity in this paper we consider a single item periodic review batch ordering inventory system with the consideration of the setup cost and the capacity constraint for each order over a finite planning horizon by proposing several new convex notions we show that a batch based s s policy is optimal for the unlimited ordering capacity case while for the limited ordering capacity case a modified r q policy is optimal for the setting with zero ordering setup cost and a batch based x y band policy for the setting with positive ordering setup cost moreover we analytically study the sensitivity of the policy parameters with respect to the capacity and batch order size and derive the bounds on the optimal policy parameters we further extend our analysis to the infinite horizon setting and show that the structure of the optimal policy remains similar finally the numerical experiments provide some insights into the impact of model parameters on the benefit of reducing the batch size and increasing the ordering capacity and indicate that ignoring batch requirement may lead to a significant cost increment

how can we explain the persistence of the great recession a balanced stability approach the great recession gr brings about a stalemate in macroeconomics on the one hand while describing the immediate effects of the gr standard models fail to account for its persistence on the other heterodox approaches do not regain consensus as they fail to devise an alternative method for capturing the deep causes of the gr that account for its persistence in a systematic way this paper fills this gap by proposing a new framework called balanced stability approach unlike standard macro which takes stability for granted it provides a balanced assessment of stability considering both threats and opportunities for phenomena such as the so called new economy ne on a par on these grounds the paper draws the conclusion that the persistence of the gr is due to a low level of aggregate demand rooted in the structural changes generated by the ne

impacts of forecast inventory policy and lead time on supply chain inventory a numerical study abstract this paper first proposes the use of metaheuristic to combine with exponential smoothing methods in forecasting future demands and in determining the optimal inventory policy values for each node in a supply chain network based on historical demand or order streams without the need of any prior knowledge about the demand distribution or distribution fitting the effects of five demand forecasting methods two inventory policies and three lead times on the total inventory cost of a 3 echelon serial supply chain system are then investigated the effect of sharing the demand information for planning the inventories is also compared with that of no sharing for testing 15 quarterly and 15 monthly time series were taken from the m3 competition and are considered as the multi item demand streams to be fulfilled in the supply chain the results indicate that 1 the damped pegel forecasting method is the best in terms of prediction errors because it outperforms others in three of five measures followed by the simple exponential smoothing that wins one of the remaining two and ties the damped pegel in one 2 the supply chain inventory cost increases with increasing lead time and echelon level of the supply chain when the s s policy is used but not the r q policy 3 the r q inventory policy generally incurs lower supply chain inventory cost than the s s policy 4 sharing demand information reduces inventory cost and the reduction is higher for s s than for r q 5 the best demand forecasting method for minimizing inventory cost varies with the inventory policy used and lead time and 6 the correlation between forecasting errors and inventory costs is either negligible or minimal

wages economic development and the customary standard of life this paper examines empirically the evolution of the customary standard of life and how this relates to real wages and economic development its starting point is sraffa s reintroduction of the classical notion of wages as the cost of reproducing labour so that they are necessarily a charge on production however when considering a production system generating a surplus sraffa offered no explanation of how the surplus might be realised and distributed rather he concentrated on the choice of technique as the profit share varied from 0 to 1 his approach was one of taking a snapshot of a productive system at a point in time in contrast this paper explores the trend in wages in the uk over the past 150 years and the evolving level and composition of what became the social necessities of worker consumption i e the customary standard of life in this process four dynamically interacting processes can be identified i a progressive increase in the productive potential of the system ii the diffusion of a greater quantity and varieties of consumer goods the growth of property ownership by consumers and their use of credit in a cumulative improvement in their customary standard of life iii the consolidation of the customary standard of life into real wages by collective bargaining and iv diffusion of improved living standards by an extension of collective bargaining coverage to include groups previously excluded and the growth of the welfare state in which the failure to achieve the customary standard of life defines poverty and triggers policy designed to alleviate it the central role played by the customary standard of life in driving real wages means that the inputs of labour power into commodity production can be represented by the commodity composition of the customary standard of life in sraffa style analyses in this the successive cross sections in the historical flow of economic development showing the commodity flows into and out of production will be ever changing like the still frames in a moving picture show moreover such a historical approach rules out the possibility that at any time changes in the rate of profit will precipitate the switching of methods of production past choices of techniques are historically embedded in the capital stock the composition of which is modified by new investment and the scrapping of old as it wears out becomes technically outmoded and or demand for its products declines nevertheless changes in the distribution of income have consequences for the future path of economic and social development and what this might be is arguably the most useful area for economic and social research copyright oxford university press

effect of global financial meltdown on the nigerian banking industry and economy the paper ascertained the effect of the global financial meltdown on the nigerian banking industry and economy the study explores the plausibility of the assumption of the research topic stated above using the nigerian banking sector and economy as a focal point the intensity of the financial crunch in nigeria was one that went through all facets of the nigeria economy the research work adopted ordinary least square method of econometric techniques to evaluate whether or not their existed a negative positive or neutral relationship among variables of interest the study covered a period of 42 quarters and employed secondary data specifically it holds that the global financial meltdown had a negative or reverse effect both on the nigerian banking sector and the economy however some quarters following the financial meltdown there were drastic changes negative in the variables that explain the financial development of the economy hence the research concluded by suggesting economic policies that could restore the economy to full stability as well as adequately insulate the economy against future financial crisis the study recommends that policy makers should evolve comprehensive measures to address the crisis at the national level and in any case to bring about a return to stability in the international financial system

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

cattle as a consistently resilient agricultural commodity this study compares a range of agricultural commodities over periods of varying economic circumstances these commodities are examined over three categories including returns risk and contributi

the macroeconomic stabilisation effects of social security and 401 k plans this paper investigates how various retirement institutions impact the macroeconomy we find that for every 1 percentage point increase in the output gap net flows of various government programmes including social security decrease by 0 34 percentage points while net flows of 401 k plans increase by 0 05 percentage points in levels for every 1 increase in real gross domestic product net flows from various government programmes shrink by 45 cents whereas net flows from 401 k plans increase by 4 6 cents in other words 401 k plans reduce the automatic stabilisation impact of government programmes by 10 15 moreover we find that social security has a net negative effect on household consumption while 401 k retirement accounts work the opposite way in fact the destabilising effect of 401 k plans on consumption is twice as strong as the one attributed to social security these results highlight a significant problem with 401 k retirement plans and any retirement plan that is dependent on financial markets copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

does financialization retard growth time series and cross sectional evidence abstractalthough financial development is essential for economic development excessive financialization of the economy is believed to exert a negative effect on output growth in this article empirical evidence is presented on the relation between economic growth and financialization as measured by the ratio of credit to gdp and the ratio of publicly traded shares to gdp the empirical results are based on annual time series data for six country groups as well as cross sectional data covering a large number of countries the model is initially specified with unobserved components and estimated in a time varying parametric framework to account for missing variables thereafter the issue of linear versus quadratic specifications is examined the results are robust with respect to model specification estimation method data type and variable definition showing in general that financialization has a negative impact on growth some evidence is also presented to support the notion of the financial kuznets

incentives for advanced pollution abatement technology at the industry level an evaluation of policy alternatives abstract in this research we evaluate the incentive effects of five environmental policy instruments to promote the development and adoption of advanced pollution abatement technology in a heterogenous industry from most to least incentive the policy instruments can be rank ordered as follows i auctioned permits ii emissions taxes and subsidies iii issued marketable permits iv performance standards including performance standards in this list necessitates the assumption that they are differentiated between heterogeneous firms before the technology adoption in a way which replicates the initial emissions control distribution of the efficient incentive based instruments with the starting point normalized in this fashion the instrument rankings are invariant with respect to the size of firms the size of the industry or the industry s abatement cost structure

contradictions of austerity the global economic and financial crisis has been marked by the following paradox a much more severe depression than the global slump of 2008 09 was prevented by determined state intervention in the form of bank bailouts and fiscal stimuli yet this bout of apparently successful keynesianism has been followed by a turn to fiscal austerity justified in terms reminiscent of the treasury view against which keynes relentlessly polemicised in the 1930s this article explores the sources of this policy shift among the factors considered are the ideology of neoliberalism the economic and political power of the banks and the relative weight of finance in individual economies the broader context of financialisation is also considered the conclusion is reached that an oscillation between bouts of austerity and laxer policies encouraging the development of asset bubbles may be built into neoliberalism as an economic policy regime the implication is that alternatives to austerity must embrace broad institutional transformation copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

technical efficiency and productivity analysis in indonesian provincial economies this article estimates inefficiency and total factor productivity tfp across indonesian provinces from 1993 to 2000 indonesia is a large emerging market economy but provinces within the country due to the island structure of the country are more distinct from one another compared to other countries we use a stochastic frontier methodology to estimate inefficiency and tfp we find that tfp fell by an average rate of 7 5 across provinces due to the decrease in technical efficiency in fact the majority of output growth within indonesia is explained by the accumulation of inputs in this sense economic growth within indonesia does not appear to be sustainable without reversing these trends

comparative evaluation of post keynesian interest rate rules income distribution and firms debts for macroeconomic performance this article investigates the macroeconomic effects of firms debts and income distribution on economic growth and inflation under three different post keynesian interest rate rules the kansas city rule the smithin rule and the pasinetti rule by setting up a dynamic post keynesian model after reviewing debates on the post keynesian interest rate policies this article evaluates the relative merits of the three rules in their relationship with economic growth regimes and inflation dynamics accordingly this article explicitly shows that i a policy rule works effectively under some economic growth and inflation patterns but not necessarily under other patterns ii a policy rule contributing to high economic growth may not always be compatible with stabilisation of economic growth and iii the macroeconomic effects of debt and income distribution on economic growth and inflation are closely related to the choice of interest rate rule

differential environmental regulation effects on electric utility capital turnover and emissions this paper tests the hypothesis that differential regulations reduced the rate of capital turnover in the electric utility industry resulting in increased emissions of sulfur dioxide based on a sample of forty four privately owned electric utilities operating over the period 1969 83 the authors results indicate that 1 regulation increased the age of capital by an average of 3 29 years 24 6 percent 2 increases in the age of capital have no statistically significant impact on emissions and 3 in the absence of regulation emissions would have increased by 3 79 tons per million kwhs 34 6 percent copyright 1993 by mit press

the potential of environmental regulation to change managerial perception environmental management competitiveness and financial performance abstract this research presents an overview of where the gaps in the literature exist in relation to the link between environmental regulation and proactive environmental management and competitiveness and incorporates them in a whole model different papers have highlighted only partial aspects of these relationships specifically this research evaluates the relationship between managerial perception and the different styles of environmental regulations command and control versus voluntary norms the mediator role of environmental management in the link between environmental regulations and competitiveness the effect of competitiveness on financial performance and the two way relationship between proactive environmental management and financial performance finally this paper uses statistical evidence to test and estimate causal relationships through a structural equation modelling of 208 firms affected by ippc law in spain there is a lack of systematic statistical evidence on this topic in the literature which mainly focuses on case studies the results show that when environmental regulation stems from command and control legislation its influence on managerial perception and proactive environmental management is not significant however when environmental regulation stems from voluntary norms its effects are positive moreover investment in proactive environmental management contributes to increasing the competitiveness of the firm cost and differentiation competitive advantage have a positive impact on financial performance finally the link between proactive environmental management and financial performance may follow different paths 1 neither direct nor single because it can depend on competitive advantage and 2 direct because there is a significant two way relationship between these variables proactive environmental management influences financial performance and financial performance influences proactive environmental management

the surface of implied firm s asset volatility abstract this paper analyzes the surface of cds implied firm s asset volatility at the aggregate market level using a sample of european investment grade firms during the 2007 2014 period the term structure of asset implied volatilities is backed out from the term structure of cds spreads while the moneyness dimension is proxied by the ratio of the default barrier to asset value we find both a downward sloping term structure and a negative skew principal component analysis on the entire volatility surface shows that the first four components interpreted as a level a term structure a skew and a moneyness related curvature mode capture 86 of the daily variation in asset implied volatility we also find that the term structure slope is related to market and funding illiquidity investors risk aversion informational frictions demand supply factors and momentum

environmentally sustainable innovation expected attributes in the purchase of green products in a capitalist economy the principles values and behaviors of a great part of the population are centered on buying things on having goods thus in order to achieve sustainable development emphasis should be given to the creation and the promotion of environmentally sustainable products in view of that the present study investigates consumers purchase decision process regarding environmentally sustainable products this study sought identifying what the green product and process expected attributes are in automobile and furniture purchases as well as what the expanded and reduced risks are in offers with these characteristics to reach these objectives a qualitative research was initially performed and subsequently a quantitative research was carried out with the aim to confirm the mapped data in summary the results obtained indicate as important green attributes for automobiles items such as economy engine and new technologies regarding furniture important green attributes design origin label and origin of the raw material were indicated as important furthermore it could be verified that the purchase of green products may increase performance and time risks and mitigate financial and social risks in short this study allowed for advances in the theoretical comprehension regarding green products and decision making processes with medium and high involvement levels however once external factors such as culture and ethnicity tend to influence buyers decision making processes and considering the fact that this study was executed in brazil distinct results may be found in other countries

determinants of environmental innovation in us manufacturing industries abstract this paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental innovation we employ panel data models to study how environmental innovation by us manufacturing industries responded to changes in pollution abatement expenditures and regulatory enforcement during the period 1983 through 1992 we find that 1 environmental innovation as measured by the number of successful environmental patent applications granted to the industry responded to increases in pollution abatement expenditures however 2 increased monitoring and enforcement activities related to existing regulations did not provide any additional incentive to innovate we also find some empirical evidence that environmental innovation is more likely to occur in industries that are internationally competitive

strategic environmental policy eco dumping or a green strategy abstract the porter hypothesis claims that a strong environmental policy best serves the interests of a nation s export industry while this hypothesis seems to be based on some form of bounded rationality this paper argues that governments may have good reasons for setting an especially strong environmental policy even though firms are fully rational if the available abatement technology turns the environment into an inferior input competitiveness is spurred by a strong environmental policy the government should take advantage of this and set an especially strict emission quota or an especially high emission tax the findings in the paper also has consequences for the desirability of international cooperation with respect to national environmental policy if a strict environmental policy spurs competitiveness the environment is better protected without cooperation

the four fallacies of contemporary austerity policies the lost keynesian legacy the contemporary wide scale austerity measures are likely to fail in most countries the first fallacy derives from the false diagnosis that the present crisis is the outcome of lax public spending policy when it is actually the outcome of a private credit led speculative boom the second fallacy assumes the possibility or even the generality of the so called expansionary fiscal contractions this neglects the short term negative effects on domestic demand and overestimates the generality of ricardian equivalence the importance of crowd in effects related to lower interest rates and the positive impact on trade balances the third fallacy one size fits all is problematic since greece and portugal cannot replicate the hard won german success their productive institutional and political configurations differ drastically and thus they require different policies the fourth fallacy states that the spill over from one country to another may resuscitate the inefficient and politically risky beggar my neighbour policies from the interwar period

institutions freedom and technical efficiency the impact of institutions on economic performance is currently the subject of much research in this study we use panel data to estimate a stochastic production frontier and the sources of inefficiency for a broad set of countries a maximum likelihood procedure is used to estimate the parameters for the stochastic production frontier and the determinants of inefficiency simultaneously our results show that institutions that promote greater economic freedom in turn promote efficiency

driving factors for the success of the green innovation market a relationship system proposal this study aims to map out the relationships that make up green innovation initiatives in brazilian industry the sample comprised 100 managers at manufacturing companies most of them operating in the business of farm machinery and equipment 45 managers and steel structures 14 managers to develop this study medeiros et al j clean prod 65 76 86 2014 study mapping critical factors that drive the success of green product innovation and the paradigm of complexity was used as a reference study based on the results it was possible to identify that the operational dynamic of the factors and variables that affect market success do not happen in an isolated or fragmented way they occur systematically with different contingencies and structured basic and intermediate skills in order to meet the expectations of consumers laws and environmental legislation initially the technological expertise factor was noted as very important for sustaining green product innovation furthermore since proactive leaders are an important factor for successfully developing environmentally sustainable products it must be added to technological expertise as the foundation for developing green innovation after defining the basis for green product innovation the intermediary conditions necessary for using the available technology appropriately were mapped out in this sense variables such as elimination of cultural barriers capacity for critical reflective analysis and experimentation are also very important in addition some of the variables of the cross functional collaboration and market knowledge factors were a part of the structure that organizations need to transform potential into developing green products which is the basis for the third level of the model the fourth level of the model has the meeting consumer expectations and following law and legislation factors which make up the main goals for developing environmentally sustainable products according to a number of surveys that were conducted

the rise and fall of money manager capitalism a minskian approach we are in the midst of a global financial crisis accompanied by a deep and probably long lasting economic downturn indeed some analysts are already calling this the first depression of the post world war ii era in this article i argue that this is a systemic crisis a crisis of what hyman minsky called money manager capitalism i link this to the analyses of hilferding and veblen of an earlier period finance capitalism and argue that this is in effect the second failure of this type of capitalism the essential characteristics of early finance capitalism are relatively small government use of external finance for investment and growing concentration of economic power in the hands of trusts or what we might today call megacorporations with varied interests and diverse affiliations across industry finance and insurance unlike the first phase the second phase of finance capitalism took place in the context of a big government neoconservative model minsky s analysis helps us to understand how the new deal and big government created a paternalistic capitalism after world war ii which favoured high consumption high employment greater equality and financial stability however that stability was destabilising because it permitted the rise of managed money over time innovation and deregulation increased fragility which generated increasingly frequent and severe financial crises while previous crises were resolved quickly enough to prevent it another debt deflation from happening again this crisis appears to be sufficiently severe that the very survival of money manager capitalism is thrown into question the article examines the contributing factors to the current crisis including the real estate boom and bust the rise of risky financial instruments such as securitised debts and credit default swaps the commodities market bubble and the fiscal squeeze the article concludes with some suggestions concerning the possible outcome of the failure of this form of finance capitalism copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

mortgage product diversity responding to consumer demand or protecting lender profit an asymmetric panel analysis abstractthis article explores determinants of mortgage product diversity for owner occupied and investment loans in the australian housing mortgage market from 2001 to 2012 65 lenders introduced 1220 mortgage products in australia we examine whether the product proliferation was a result of consumer demand or a response to pressure to lower lending rates we find that consumer demand for mortgages does not have a significant relationship with the number of mortgage products but that decreases in the policy interest rate are highly significant as an explanatory variable for product proliferation such behaviour is consistent with information obfuscation reducing the ease with which consumers can compare lending rates further the relationship between mortgage products offered and the policy interest rate is asymmetric decreases in the cash rate are associated with increased mortgage products offered but increases in the cash rate have a more muted effect on decreasing the number of products

the causes of fraud in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 evidence from the mortgage backed securities industry the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 was marked by widespread fraud in the mortgage securitization industry most of the largest mortgage originators and mortgage backed securities issuers and underwriters have been implicated in regulatory settlements and many have paid multibillion dollar penalties this article seeks to explain why this behavior became so pervasive we evaluate predominant theories of white collar crime finding that theories emphasizing deregulation or technical opacity identify only necessary not sufficient conditions our argument focuses instead on changes in competitive conditions and firms positions within and across markets as the supply of mortgages began to decline around 2003 mortgage originators lowered credit standards and engaged in predatory lending to shore up profits in turn vertically integrated mortgage backed securities issuers and underwriters committed securities fraud to conceal this malfeasance and enhance the value of other financial products our result

long waves and short cycles in a model of endogenous financial fragility this paper presents a stock flow consistent macroeconomic model in which financial fragility in firm and household sectors evolves endogenously through the interaction between real and financial sectors changes in firms and households financial practices produce long waves the hopf bifurcation theorem is applied to clarify the conditions for the existence of limit cycles and simulations illustrate stable limit cycles the long waves are characterized by periodic economic crises following long expansions short cycles generated by the interaction between effective demand and labor market dynamics fluctuate around the long waves

the ussr before the fall how poor and why this essay appraises the scholarly findings on the level of consumption and output in the ussr compared with that in the west such aggregative calculations are onerous for any country and not very surprisingly have encountered particular difficulty where such a strange society as soviet communism has been in question predictably the results have been controversial but properly viewed they still provide illuminating perspective on the extraordinary events that have lately transpired in the ussr