proposal for a methodology to monitor sustainability in the production of soft drinks in ref pet this study proposes a methodology to view and monitor the economic social and environmental impacts of operational and strategic decisions in reverse logistics rl industries factor analysis was conducted to form indexes in these three dimensions of an integrated rl process unlike other research the proposed methodology is oriented towards managers decisions on all aspects of the triple bottom line simultaneously and is adaptable to various industries the methodology was tested in a retail company in brazil that markets the world s largest carbonated soft drink brand in ref pet the results provide a holistic view of the impact of decisions on the use of economic social and environmental resources enabling direct operational decisions and strategies in the search for a better balance of the triple bottom line thus managers can seek improvements in the inputs of the rl process avoiding undesirable outputs this study contributes to the implementation of the concept and the adoption of sustainability practices in the corporate strategy improving the communication flow between operational activities and economic performance regarding the consumption of scarce resources and reducing the negative social and environmental impacts for the benefit of the company the business community society and nature

korean telecommunications development achievements and cautionary lessons abstract telecommunications in south korea have grown rapidly under an aggressive government strategy with three components massive investment in telecommunications network alliances among government research institutions business and the academic community and policy measures to foster efficiency in managing the telecommunications sector among the accomplishments are a modern network the development of time division electronic switching tdx technology and rapid growth of value added services the korean path may not be the one to replicate changes in technology mean it is now possible to do in a more decentralized way with greater private participation what previously had been undertaken through the government

performance and potential of information technology an international perspective abstract rising information content of economic activity worldwide is making the use of information technology it increasingly relevant in a broad range of countries and activities effective planning and organizational capabilities are essential to successful adoption of the new technologies authors in this issue have concluded that managerial skills and entrepreneurship are key to effective use of it in addition to human capital development it diffusion requires a strategy for generating large investments in telecommunications while proactive measures at accelerating the diffusion of it have their place they need to be complemented by reduction of barriers to the international flow of services and investment

environmental resource planning under cap and trade models for optimization abstract under the conditions of a cap and trade c t program manufacturers are restricted in total greenhouse gas emissions but allowed with options to acquire and dispose environmental resource e g certified emission quota ceq or commercialized permit for emission of certain pollutant via a market system or conduct self purification sp to reduce emission level to satisfy their overall emission needs due to production or service activities this paper analyzes the operational decisions of production systems under cap and trade conditions in which the problem is modeled as a multi stage dynamic optimization problem for each planning period the model specifically addresses the decisions on purchasing ceq reducing emission via sp and carrying over surplus emission quota seq to meet the required emission level driven by production demand for the period it also makes sure that the sum of reduced emission over the whole planning horizon meets exactly a goal of emission reduction specified at the manufacturers discretion other important problem characteristics addressed include the unit cost for reducing emission level via sp to reflect the fact that the cost increases as accumulated emission reduction increases i e the more reduced the more difficult to reduce and time related cost associated with green investment for emission reduction e g interest cost of short term loans these characteristics make the model and related analysis useful for both practitioners and researchers in this area numerical experiments were designed and carried out to verify and validate the proposed concepts

optimizing an emission trading scheme for local governments a stackelberg game model and hybrid algorithm this study investigates a policy making problem for a local government to implement an emission trading scheme by considering the interactive production decisions of firms in its administrative region the market based allowance trading price formed freely among the firms in the region is investigated by taking into account regional environmental bearing capacities under the scheme the government sets the emission reduction target of the region and allocates tradable initial allowances to firms and firms plan their production according to their allowances on hand a stackelberg game model is formulated to analyze the decisions of the government and firms aiming to maximize the social welfare of the region and maximize the profit of each firm in view of the non concavity and discreteness of the decision model for the government we propose a hybrid algorithm to solve the game model efficiently this algorithm consists of a polynomial time dynamic programming binary search and genetic algorithm results reveal that i the stackelberg game model greatly supports local governments policy making on the market driven emission allowance trading scheme and that ii the social welfare is a great metric for policy making decisions on environmental regulations the market driven emission trading scheme is an effective mechanism for local governments to induce emission reduction through green technology adoption by firms however governments should set their emission reduction targets appropriately because a tight or easy regulation policy significantly affects the environmental and economic benefits as well as the social welfare

comparisons of initial carbon allowance allocation rules in an o2o retail supply chain with the cap and trade regulation abstract this paper focuses on an o2o retail supply chain in the context of low carbon environment the decision models are constructed under three cases without cap and trade regulation cap and trade regulation based on grandfathering mechanism and cap and trade regulation based on benchmarking mechanism the emission reduction strategies of the supply chain members in the three cases are then discussed the paper compares the effects of the grandfathering and benchmarking mechanisms on the firm s decisions profits and social welfare firstly the results show that the unit carbon quota plays a decisive role in firm s decisions compared with the grandfathering methodology the benchmarking one can more effectively push manufacturers to produce low carbon products and motivate retailers to promote low carbon products secondly it is profitable for the retailer to cooperate with a manufacturer who has lower emission reduction cost simultaneously the retailer will prefer the benchmarking mechanism to the grandfathering mechanism thirdly for the government it is beneficial to use grandfathering mechanism for low carbon emission firms and use benchmarking mechanism for high carbon emission firms also the paper provides government and firms with conditions where the benchmarking allocation method is more suitable for sustainable development the government s decision on benchmarks is a critical factor in maximizing the social welfare

willingness to pay for environmental practices implications for eco labeling consumer survey data collected in former west and east berlin after the unification of germany are used to address the issue of willingness to pay wtp for foods produced with techniques consistent with environmental stewardship results show differences in the wtp between residents of the two former german states attributed to area of residence residents of eastern city districts were generally less willing to pay a premium for foods produced with environmental friendly methods which suggests that marketing of such foods will be more successful in western districts unless educational efforts can be used to bridge the gap in the stated wtp

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

the structure of open economy macro models abstract the objectives here include a rigorous investigation of a walras law in an open economy b the generality or non generality of the monetary approach to the balance of payments c the logical consistency of the traditional keynesian models of the balance of payments d the relationship if any between a government budget imbalance and the balance of payments and e perhaps most importantly the underlying cause s of a non zero balance of payments many of the conclusions differ from the conventional wisdom

climate policy instruments and industry effects and potential responses in the swedish context efficient policy instruments for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases are essential for the realization of a successful climate policy general economic policy instruments have the potential for providing efficient emission reduction as they equalise marginal costs for emission reduction between different actors they also provide incentives for a great variety of responses such as energy efficiency improvements fuel substitution and reduced consumption of carbon intensive products however as a result of the fact that it has so far been impossible to implement policy instruments on a global scale these instruments are often adapted in such a way that some of their potential advantages are eliminated in this paper the possibility of different policy instruments to contribute to reductions in industrial co2 emissions while preserving the competitiveness of industry is evaluated theoretically the consequences of increasing the cost of co2 emission in various industrial sectors are also discussed attention is directed towards carbon taxes emission trading and regulation co2 taxes without tax reductions and emission trading with allocation through auctioning have theoretical advantages in a global climate regime but may lead to significant disadvantages if implemented in a single or a small groups of countries emission trading with free intensity based allocation would in this case have a major advantage in combining incentives for emission reductions through efficiency improvements and fuel substitution with little impact on production levels less

cooking fuel choice in rural china results from microdata abstract unclean cooking fuel is widely used in the developing world and it is the main indication of energy poverty in rural china in this paper we investigate the situation transition and determination of fuel choice in china s rural household cooking using the large scale micro survey data of china health and retirement longitudinal study charls we find that there is a big gap in using commercial cooking fuels between rural and urban households 60 of the rural households adopt traditional biomass resource as their main fuel for cooking in 2011 while this figure is less than 5 in the urban we also identify a significant spatial divide in fuel choice in southeastern coastal areas about 40 of the rural households prefer solid fuels while this figure jumps to over 80 in northeastern areas the longitudinal data also reveal a significant transition from traditional to modern fuels from 2008 to 2012 moreover the distance to the most commonly used farmer s market education background coal price and female labor participation are all influential in determining the households choices

exploiting information technology a case study of singapore abstract while many developed nations and newly industrializing economies have major initiatives to promote information technology it singapore has perhaps had the most comprehensive and coordinated effort of all singapore s experience represents a good example of a very proactive government strategy elements of the government strategy include skills development state of the art telecommunications funding for small to medium sized it companies an international approach to standardization and special demonstration projects singapore s success with it could be largely attributed to its compactness however one can also take the view that singapore s highly sophisticated it infrastracture is an early indication of the infrastructure requirements in developing countries

production optimization considering environmental performance and preference in the cap and trade system abstract many countries like china are in a dilemma between economic growth and environmental deterioration e g smog weather simultaneously a growing people concern the product s environmental performance along with their improving environment awareness this paper focuses on the impacts of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the production decision of emission dependent firms in the cap and trade system the cap and trade system uses the total cap to attain environmental goals and allows trade to achieve the effective scheduling through market regulation under this mechanism through analyzing the influence of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the market supply and demand we build a production optimization model and develop the optimal decisions several interesting management insights on environmental preference and policy are concluded

the long term impacts of air pollution control policy historical links between municipal actions and industrial energy efficiency in kawasaki city japan abstract under the pressures of rapid industrialization and urbanization many asian countries are facing the challenge of reducing air pollution and co 2 emissions simultaneously while maintaining their economic growth under such a circumstance a growing attention is focused on successful implementation of co benefit policies that are designed to reduce both air pollutants and co 2 emissions however the concept of co benefit policies must be developed further in order to identify its quantitative and qualitative validity which can be assessed using a reliable methodology for the estimation of co benefits and through clarification of the importance of this approach for stakeholders in urban environmental policy making based on a systematic review of co benefit research and air pollution control policies in japan we investigated the local air pollution control policy in kawasaki city one of the industrial centers of japan and confirmed that it has contributed both to the sharp decline of atmospheric sulfur dioxide so 2 levels and to energy efficiency improvements in local industries our results suggest that preventive actions and local scale compliance enforcement tools that are uniquely designed and act as a form of agreement between government and individual firms could contribute significantly to successful implementation of co benefit policies in the long term we conclude our paper with a discussion of linkages between low carbon technology innovations and policy designs that could further nurture co benefits

the loanable funds theory and the dynamics of exchange rates the mundell model revisited abstract this paper shows that mundell s model of perfect capital mobility is logically consistent only in the framework of the loanable funds theory it then develops a loanable funds version of the mundell model and shows that exchange rate overshooting or undershooting naturally occurs in this corrected version of the mundell model

import export elasticities and exchange rate dynamics abstract this paper combines the older elasticities approach with the quantity theory of money it is shown that the sole key factor in determining whether the exchange rate overshoots or undershoots its equilibrium value is the magnitude of import export elasticities

towards a loanable funds amended liquidity preference theory of the exchange rate and interest rate abstract the objective is to develop a unified theory of the exchange rate and interest rate using a loanable funds amended liquidity preference approach in order to provide a new perspective on many puzzling facts associated with the post bretton woods international economy it is shown that i a monetary expansion can initially raise the interest rate but depreciate the home currency ii real demand shocks can cause interest rate and exchange rate overshooting iii an infinite interest elasticity for capital flows cannot cause exchange rate overshooting if an extended marshall lerner condition holds iv the home currency can appreciate when the current account is negative if the extended marshall lerner condition is not satisfied and v changes in the disequilibrium regime will cause instability in the estimates of reduced form coefficients

emergy based resource intensities of industry sectors in china abstract emergy analysis can facilitate unified system resources accounting by combining emergy method with input output modeling technology this paper developed an eco thermodynamic input output model of the 2007 china economy to account for the sector specific resource intensities the results show that the resource intensities for chinese industry sectors present a distribution with a certain pattern which may vary over three orders of magnitude measured in terms of resource consumption against economic capital generation at the scale of the entire economy the emergy intensities for the resource extraction sectors of non metallic minerals and metallic ores are the highest sectors with the smallest emergy to money ratios are service sectors which rely less on primary natural resources the sector of coal mining is found to have the largest resource intensity of 6 19e 16 sej 1e 4 cny among all sectors while the sectoral intensity of scrap and waste is only 6 44e 14 sej 1e 4 cny the least one the insight obtained by juxtaposing resource intensities as well as their structures of industry sectors is useful to identify opportunities for reducing resource intensities that could enable improvements in their ecological sustainability

the effect of allocation above emissions and price uncertainty on abatement investments under the eu ets abstract the european union emission trading scheme eu ets by far the largest in its kind has inspired several other carbon markets in the world based on interviews with plant managers from almost all belgian ceramics lime and cement producers this study describes how manager s perceptions on emission trading affected investment decisions in line with behavioural economics reference dependence is found to explain why free allocation below emissions creates a greater incentive to abatement investment compared to allocation above emissions in the ceramics sector allocation above emissions refrained managers from including carbon gains in payback times this contradicts the famous coase theorem which predicts that free allocation has no effect on abatement incentives the results indicate that auctioning part of the emission rights will reduce barriers to abatement investment carbon price uncertainty is seen as a disincentive for abatement investment by some managers and as an incentive by others intermediate levels of uncertainty add option value to abatement investments because the associated gradual learning adds flexibility in an uncertain carbon constrained future however high levels of uncertainty creating a risk of offshoring even when companies innovate creates an option value to postpone abatement investments narrow framing misperceiving the risk hedging counter cyclicality of carbon costs reinforces the option value to wait therefore policy should aim to reduce price uncertainty for very low and very high carbon prices not for an intermediary price range

spite and development in a wide variety of settings spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation trade and thus economic development this paper shows that spiteful preferences the desire to reduce another s material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one s relative payoff are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in india uttar pradesh in a one shot trust game the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects in experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another s material payoff either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status seeking it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture thus an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development

the impact of carbon policies on supply chain design and logistics of a major retailer abstract the energy used to move freight comprised about 17 of all the energy consumed in the united states in 2010 this percentage was an increase from 8 7 in 1970 even though fuel efficiency gradually improved over the period one major reason of this phenomenon is that the longer supply chains of many industries caused by globalization increase freight movement various carbon policies have been discussed and even implemented for some industry sectors in the european union to reduce carbon emissions however the emissions of surface transportation have not been well studied this paper investigates three of the most common carbon policies carbon emission tax inflexible cap and cap and trade the impact on a company may include the redesign of its supply chains and different choices of transportation modes truck rail or waterway this paper proposes optimization models for major retailers who make a huge contribution to freight movement to design their supply chains under various carbon policies the results from the models can help policy makers to predict the impact of policies on overall emissions in the freight transportation sector the model may also be incorporated into the integrated assessment models for climate change analyses furthermore a sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the impact of the policy parameters on carbon emissions and logistics cost this research uses the supply chain of a major u s retailer i e wal mart to demonstrate how to use the models and conduct the sensitivity analysis in order to realize significant emission reduction a redesign of supply chains of major retailers is necessary and will be triggered only by a high carbon tax rate a high carbon price or a very strict carbon cap which all may involve high social and or economic complexity numerical experiments show that different policies have different impacts on the costs and the effectiveness of emission reduction how to choose policy parameters is critical to the effectiveness of a carbon policy the different sensitivity also implies different challenges during the implementation of the policies such as the high cost preventing retailers from accepting any carbon taxes and the difficulty of reaching an agreement on the carbon caps between retailers and policy makers