production lot sizing and carbon emissions under cap and trade and carbon tax regulations cap and trade and carbon tax are two emission regulations widely used to curb the carbon emissions generated from firms based on economic order quantity eoq model this paper examines the production lot sizing issues of a firm under these two regulations respectively the optimal lot size and emissions under the two regulations are achieved we then investigate the impacts of production and regulation parameters on the optimal lot size and emissions furthermore we compare the firm s optimal carbon emissions under the two regulations it is found that under the cap and trade regulation the firm s decisions of the optimal emissions as well as permits trading depend on the differentiated permits trading prices if setup incurs the same cost as holding incurs per unit of generated emissions both regulations always lead to the same optimal emissions which is also equal to that without emission regulation otherwise neither regulation always leads to lower emissions than the other does

revisiting the role of education for agricultural productivity while the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity various recent cross country regressions analysing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect insignificant or even surprising negative effects of schooling in this paper we argue and show that this failure to find a positive impact of education in the international context is rather a data problem related to the use of enrolment and literacy indicators using a panel of 95 developing and middle income countries from 1961 to 2002 together with the newest version of the barro lee educational attainment dataset we show that education indeed has a highly significant positive effect on agricultural productivity which is robust to changes in the control variables and in the econometric methods applied distinguishing between different levels of education further reveals that only primary and secondary schooling have significant positive impacts while tertiary education remains insignificant finally the effect of education is estimated separately for countries with different income levels results indicate that the coefficient of the education variable remains insignificant for countries from the poorest three income quintiles while it is positive and highly significant for the richest two quintiles this finding can be interpreted as support for the prominent argument claiming that education leads to higher agricultural productivity only in the presence of rapid technical change where education will help farmers to adjust more readily to the new opportunities

the sustainable supply chain network competition with environmental tax policies abstract this paper captures different environmental tax policies in a multi tiered supply chain network competition context we derive the governing equilibrium conditions for the noncooperative game theory models for each firm and provide the equivalent variational inequality formulations the numerical examples investigate the impacts of emission tax policies and product differentiation on the competing firms and compare the effects of different environmental policies flat emission tax rates progressive emission taxes and the government command and control regulations with emission standards on equilibrium product demands prices total emissions and overall profits the computational results indicate that the implementation of environmental tax policies along with an increase in consumers environmental concerns can not only motivate the firms to perform sustainable operations but also reduce the total carbon footprint furthermore the low cost progressive emission tax policies can be as effective as the high flat emission tax rate in terms of reduction in carbon footprint therefore the model developed in this paper can be used by the policymakers and the firms to evaluate the effects of different environmental tax policies in a supply chain competition context

market entry waves and volatility outbursts in stock markets abstract we develop a simple agent based financial market model in which speculators market entry decisions are subject to herding behavior and market risk in addition speculators orders depend on price trends market misalignments and fundamental news using a mix of analytical and numerical tools we show that a herding induced market entry wave may amplify excess demand triggering lasting volatility outbursts eventually however higher stock market risk reduces stock market participation and volatility decreases again simulations furthermore reveal that our approach is also able to produce bubbles and crashes excess volatility fat tailed return distributions and serially uncorrelated price changes moreover trading volume is persistent and correlated with volatility

linking risk aversion time preference and fertilizer use in burkina faso this paper investigates whether burkinabe maize farmers fertilizer use decisionsare correlated with their risk and time preferences we conducted a survey and a se ries of hypothetical experiments on a sample of 1 500 farmers we find that morepatient farmers do use more fertilizer but it is only because they plant more maize afertilizer intensive crop rather than because they use more fertilizer per hectare ofmaize planted conversely we find no statistically significant link between risk aver sion and fertilizer use we use a simple two period model which suggests that riskaversion may indeed have an ambiguous effect on fertilizer use

production and transportation outsourcing decisions in the supply chain under single and multiple carbon policies abstract cap and trade and carbon tax are the two main policies to reduce carbon emissions different from the previous literature and practice this paper examines the production and transportation outsourcing problems of a two echelon supply chain under the cap and trade policy and joint cap and trade and carbon tax policy enterprise operations are divided into the order stage and transportation outsourcing decision stage in the order stage the retailer sets his order schedule for the manufacturing plant for fulfillment and in the transportation outsourcing decision stage the manufacturer decides the optimal freight volume based on energy consumption furthermore we construct a basic model without a carbon policy and two extended models with carbon policies and the optimal solutions of the models are solved numerical examples are provided and the three models are compared the results indicate that the extended model with carbon policies is more beneficial for emissions reduction and the effect of emissions reduction gradually becomes smooth as the carbon price increases the joint cap and trade and carbon tax policy is more effective for emissions reduction especially when the carbon price is lower these findings will be helpful to policy makers and managers

interactions between stock bond and housing markets abstract we develop a model in which investors can participate in stock bond and housing markets investors market entry decisions are subject to herding effects and depend on the markets price trends and on their mispricings the dynamics of our model is governed by a four dimensional nonlinear map and its unique inner steady state is characterized by standard present value relations between dividends rents and the bond rate amongst other things we show that endogenous stock and housing market dynamics emerge countercyclical to each other if investors react strongly to the markets price trends such a cross feedback reflects investors tendency to transfer their enthusiasm from one speculative market to another

operations research for green logistics an overview of aspects issues contributions and challenges the worldwide economic growth of the last century has given rise to a vast consumption of goods while globalization has led to large streams of goods all over the world the production transportation storage and consumption of all these goods however have created large environmental problems today global warming created by large scale emissions of greenhouse gasses is a top environmental concern governments action groups and companies are asking for measures to counter this threat operations research has a long tradition in improving operations and especially in reducing costs in this paper we present a review that highlights the contribution of operations research to green logistics which involves the integration of environmental aspects in logistics we give a sketch of the present and possible developments focussing on design planning and control in a supply chain for transportation inventory of products and facility decisions while doing this we also indicate several areas where environmental aspects could be included in or models for logistics

the roles of risk and ambiguity in technology adoption we study the impacts of risk and ambiguity aversion on the adoption of new technologies specifically genetically modified gm corn and soy seeds we conduct experiments measuring risk and ambiguity aversion with midwestern grain farmers risk aversion has only a small impact on the timing of adoption of gm soy while ambiguity aversion has a large impact speeding up farmer adoption of gm corn we hypothesize that this unusual finding is due to the fact that gm corn often contains an insect resistance trait which reduces the ambiguity of pest damages for adopters gm soy never contains this insect resistance trait this highlights the importance of distinguishing between risk and ambiguity when studying the effects of aversion to uncertainty on adoption of new technologies

imposing emission trading scheme on supply chain separate and joint implementation abstract in response to global warming it is urgent to control and reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions especially from the supply chain perspective the most often discussed topic in this domain indicates that emission trading scheme ets could be employed as one of policy instruments for supply chain emissions management via mathematical models scholars have shown that the employment of emission trading is affecting supply chain performances both environmental and economic in different levels however previous literature focus on the cost effectiveness analysis only from the mathematical aspect to provide policy makers and companies with the theoretical bases on this hot topic it is significant to discuss how ets one of market based instruments could be imposed in the context of supply chain from the mechanical point of view by incorporating ideas from relevant literature this paper generates two concepts modes in imposing ets on supply chain jointly imposed supply chain emission trading e g jointly imposed sc ets and separately imposed supply chain emission trading e g separately imposed sc ets it illustrates the working principles of both concepts modes and conducts a sandbox example to analyze the cost effectiveness of them furthermore this paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of implementing two modes from practical aspects results of quantitative analysis and discussion show that for the sake of both policy makers and supply chain companies the separately imposed sc ets allowing selling permits would be so far the better mode to manage supply chain ghg emissions compared to the jointly imposed sc ets

responsible production policies with substitution and carbon emissions trading abstract this paper considers a production model involving a manufacturer that uses two different technologies the green technology and the standard technology the green product produced by the green technology can be used as a substitute for the traditional product produced by the standard technology but not vice versa three models are considered the first model concerns with product substitution only and serves as a benchmark model for the next two models the carbon emission allowance model and the carbon emission trading model the second model extends the product substitution model by imposing an upper limit on the total carbon emission allowance for each firm the third model extends the second model to cater for carbon emission trading for the carbon emission allowance model analytical result shows that the optimal production quantity of any product depends on both its total carbon emission allowance quota and its unit carbon emission profit and the effect of substitution improves the service level the expected profit of the manufacturer and the green of product mix for the carbon emission trading model analytical result shows that whenever the production quantity of any product is optimal the marginal profit of production i e the additional profit obtained by producing an extra item should be equal to the unit price of carbon emission trading within the market moreover the optimal policy of either model reduces the total amount of carbon emission thus producing less pollution to the environment lastly the optimal profits obtained by using the carbon emission trading model are larger than the corresponding optimal profits obtained by using the carbon emission allowance model

non stationary stochastic inventory lot sizing with emission and service level constraints in a carbon cap and trade system firms worldwide are taking major initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains in response to the growing governmental and consumer pressures in real life these supply chains face stochastic and non stationary demand but most of the studies on inventory lot sizing problem with emission concerns consider deterministic demand in this paper we study the inventory lot sizing problem under non stationary stochastic demand condition with emission and cycle service level constraints considering carbon cap and trade regulatory mechanism using a mixed integer linear programming model this paper aims to investigate the effects of emission parameters product and system related features on the supply chain performance through extensive computational experiments to cover general type business settings and not a specific scenario results show that cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation have significant impacts on total cost and emission irrespective of level of demand variability while the impact of product s demand pattern is significant only at lower level of demand variability finally results also show that increasing value of carbon price reduces total cost total emission and total inventory and the scope of emission reduction by increasing carbon price is greater at higher levels of cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation the analysis of results helps supply chain managers to take right decision in different demand and service level situations

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

risk aversion and credit constraints in farmers decision making a reinterpretation in 1976 the agricultural development council sponsored a conference on risk uncertainty and agricultural development which has been summarised in a volume edited by james roumasset jean marc boussard and inderjit singh 1979 the volume provides an excellent review of the state of the art at that time however as discussed in the summary chapters of that volume there were few theoretical empirical or policy issues on which clear conclusions could be reached on the basis of knowledge then available in the intervening years progress has been made on a number of issues as a result of both empirical investigations and theoretical advances this paper concentrates on advances which have relevance to the controversy about the relative roles of risk aversion and credit constraints in limiting farmers investment levels especially for purchased inputs such as seeds or fertilizers in particular we review recent experimental studies on the extent of risk aversion among farmer populations in developing

joint production and pricing decisions for multiple products with cap and trade and carbon tax regulations abstract cap and trade and carbon tax regulations are the two main low carbon policies to curb carbon emissions this paper studies the joint production and pricing problem of a manufacturing firm with multiple products under cap and trade and carbon tax regulations and compares the effects of the two regulations on the total carbon emissions the firm s profit and social welfare the firm faces price sensitive demands and the demands for these products are independent firstly we find that the optimal number of products to be produced under cap and trade regulation carbon tax regulation is determined by the emission trading prices and the cap tax rate secondly we detect that the optimal cap tax rate is decreasing increasing or constant in the environmental damage coefficient finally we discover that the social welfare under carbon tax regulation is not less than that under cap and trade regulation although there is neither one regulation always inducing more profit and having advantages in curbing carbon emissions than the other one

low carbon production with low carbon premium in cap and trade regulation abstract manufacturers face a choice of whether to reduce their carbon emissions through employing low carbon technologies though many carbon regulations are set up to curb carbon emissions some firms choose not to take low carbon production because the additional cost of low carbon progressing is high however low carbon production would be a better alternative when we consider consumer s low carbon premium in the cap and trade system in this work we solve the manufacturer s multi product joint pricing and production problem when consumers value the low carbon product higher than the ordinary product our findings provide firms with conditions where low carbon production is profitable furthermore we find that the cap and trade would constrain the total carbon emissions and promote low carbon production simultaneously under certain conditions

design of sustainable supply chains under the emission trading scheme increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment this paper introduces a mixed integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment lca principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain indeed the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems the framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry the results suggest that current legislation and emission trading schemes ets must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy moreover the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost effective manner

global reverse supply chain redesign for household plastic waste under the emission trading scheme with increasing global resource scarcity waste becomes a resource that can be managed globally a reverse supply chain network for waste recycling needs to process all the waste with minimum costs and environmental impact as re processing of waste is one of the major sources of pollution in the recycling processes a mechanism is needed to control and reduce the emission impact in the re processing as a key to facilitate the globalized reverse supply chain and avoid spreading pollutants overseas emission trading schemes ets can function as policy instruments for controlling emissions the ets introduces a trade off between the economic efficiency and the environmental impacts ets has been implemented in europe and is developing rapidly in china too the aim of the research is to re design a reverse supply chain from a global angle based on a case study conducted on household plastic waste distributed from europe to china emission trading restrictions are set on the processing plants in both europe and china we modeled a network optimization problem using integer programing approach allowing the re allocation of intermediate processing plants under emission trading restrictions optimization results show that global relocation of re processors leads to both a reduction of total costs and total transportation emission ets applied to re processors further helps to reduce emissions from both re processing and transportation sectors carbon cap should be carefully set in order to be effective with a given carbon cap the model also shows the effective carbon price range these results give an insight into the feasibility of building a global reverse supply chain for household plastic waste recycling and demonstrate the impact of ets on the network design

farm productivity and efficiency in rural bangladesh the role of education revisited this article reassesses the debate over the role of education in farm production in bangladesh using a large dataset on rice producing households from 141 villages average and stochastic production frontier functions are estimated to ascertain the effect of education on productivity and efficiency a full set of proxies for farm education stock variables are incorporated to investigate the internal as well as external returns to education the external effect is investigated in the context of rural neighbourhoods our analysis reveals that in addition to raising rice productivity and boosting potential output household education significantly reduces production inefficiencies however we are unable to find any evidence of the externality benefit of schooling neighbour s education does not matter in farm production we discuss the implication of these findings for rural education programmes in bangladesh

evaluating renewable portfolio standards and carbon cap scenarios in the u s electric sector this report examines the impact of renewable portfolio standards rps and cap and trade policy options on the u s electricity sector the analysis uses the national renewable energy laboratory s regional energy deployment system reeds model that simulates the least cost expansion of electricity generation capacity and transmission in the u s to examine the impact of a variety of emissions caps and rps scenarios both individually and combined the generation mix carbon emissions and electricity price are examined for various policy combinations simulated in the modeling

the inflow effect trader inflow and price efficiency abstract we investigate the impact of cash and trader inflow on price efficiency in multi period experimental asset markets implementing eight treatments with 672 subjects we find that i the joint inflow of cash and traders triggers strong overvaluation and massive price run ups inflow effect remarkably the effect occurs in almost all of the 30 markets with joint cash and trader inflow and is very robust the effect even prevails in markets with complete and symmetric fundamental information we further show that ii in treatments with the joint inflow of cash and traders prices crash to fundamentals towards maturity of the asset the analysis of traders beliefs reveals that iii despite fundamental values staying constant beliefs about fundamentals co move with upwardly trending prices finally we report a speculative motive only among the optimists in treatments where we observe the inflow effect

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

a novel closed loop supply chain based on the quality of returned products abstract closing an existing real world supply chain and modelling the resultant network are challenging practices this paper investigates the possibility of closing the chain in a textile company and the effects of such a decision on the profits of the chain the paper addresses one of the common problems in modelling the return rates of backward chain since inaccuracy in estimation of such rates leads to incorrect results the present model forgoes the need for commonly used predetermined rates by proposing a conditional quality based segmentation policy addition of a secondary chain as a recovery option quality dependent incentive rates and flexibility of the model in defining quality are also among novel points of this paper first a bi objective model is proposed to formulate the chain which includes the manufacturers distributors and customers in the forward chain and remanufacturing repairing and recycling centers in the backward chain this model is applicable to industries with zero waste strategy and similar recovery facilities second an extensive sensitivity analysis is carried out on a case study from textile industry the results reveal that increase in rate of returns with low medium qualities leads to higher profits since they create more suitable environmental economical business opportunities moreover closing the supply chain of the company increases the impact of distributors collectors performance on the final profits hence managers of the company need to adopt a pricing policy in favor of the distributors collectors which equals to lower repairing remanufacturing and purchase costs from manufacturers and higher sales prices to customers manufacturers and recycling center

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

econometric estimation of producers risk attitudes general methods are proposed for the identification and econometric estimation of the parameters of the distribution of risk attitudes in a producer population the proposed methods also provide the basis for the development of statistical tests of model specification and of behavioral hypotheses econometric risk attitude estimation is shown to be possible under less restrictive conditions than previously believed a moment based version of the general model is applied to indian data and the econometrically estimated risk attitudes are presented and compared to experimental results for a similar group of producers

using stated preferences and beliefs to identify the impact of risk on poor households abstract whilst the importance of uncertainty in shaping economic behaviour of poor households is widely acknowledged empirically identifying the impact of risk is difficult by using data on risk preferences and perceptions of risk collected through hypothetical questions in combination with more traditional measures of a household s ability to deal with risk this article identifies the impact of risk on production decisions it shows both that data on stated preferences and beliefs can be usefully utilised to explain household behaviour and that risk has a significant impact on the production decisions of poor households

boom bust dynamics in a stock market participation model with heterogeneous traders abstract the boundedly rational heterogeneous agent literature can be considered to have properly started with a number of contributions in the early 90s with the impressive contribution by carl chiarella who amongst his huge field of research developed several milestone models of heterogeneous interacting agents that are able to generate a number of dynamic outcomes compatible with the empirical evidence in this paper we propose a stock market model in which participation depends upon an attractiveness measure related to the market activity and the fundamental value of the market a market maker adjusts the stock price with respect to the current endogenous excess market demand which in turn depends on the demands of the different types of agents populating the economy market participants are also allowed to switch between different strategies analytical and numerical results confirm how the participation mechanism amplifies the occurrence of endogenous booms and busts in line with empirical and experimental evidence

low carbon product selection with carbon tax and competition effects of the power structure abstract this paper considers product selection strategies of two competitive firms in the presence of carbon tax optimal strategies are developed for product selection of the firm with two game structures namely the nash game and the stackelberg game by which the paper conducts an analytical examination of the effect of power structure on the product selection strategy of the firm over various levels of carbon tax rate the critical managerial findings derived with the studies are as follows i two competitive firms will always adopt the same product strategy with the nash pricing game regardless of the carbon tax rate which is in contrast to that they will adopt a differentiated product strategy over the low carbon tax rates with the stackelberg pricing game ii two competitive firms will both select the common or low carbon product with randomness over the middle carbon tax rates with the nash product selection game which is contrast to that the randomness in their product selections is removed with the stackelberg product selection game which leads to an existence of the pure strategy stackelberg equilibrium for their product selection strategies over the middle carbon tax rates the inherent mechanisms leading to these essential differences are also discussed in the paper

a model to evaluate acquisition price and quantity of used products for remanufacturing abstract in this paper an analytical model is proposed to evaluate optimal acquisition price and quantity policy based on the quality of returned used products that are subsequently used for remanufacturing the model is developed from the perspective of a consolidation center which facilitates the collection of used products in various collection centers by offering an acquisition price based on the quality of used products receive all of the collected used products and consolidate them with replacement parts before sending the consignment to the remanufacturer it is assumed that the consolidation center receives an order from the remanufacturer for a set quantity and an associated price for used products in a quality level the consolidation center then evaluates optimal acquisition price and quantity policy for used products based on the available information on stochastic return quantity and quality and the cost of predefined set of replacement parts the policy so obtained is offered to the collection centers to initiate the collection of used products in their respective area of operation the impact of the model is studied through a numerical study the authors believe that the model developed here is the first such pricing model in a reverse logistics setting

tactical supply chain planning under a carbon tax policy scheme a case study greenhouse gas emissions are receiving greater scrutiny in many countries due to international forces to reduce anthropogenic global climate change industry and their supply chains represent a major source of these emissions this paper presents a tactical supply chain planning model that integrates economic and carbon emission objectives under a carbon tax policy scheme a modified cross entropy solution method is adopted to solve the proposed nonlinear supply chain planning model numerical experiments are completed utilizing data from an actual organization in australia where a carbon tax is in operation the analyses of the numerical results provide important organizational and policy insights on 1 the financial and emissions reduction impacts of a carbon tax at the tactical planning level 2 the use of cost emission tradeoff analysis for making informed decisions on investments 3 the way to price carbon for maximum environmental returns per dollar increase in supply chain cost

emission policies and their analysis for the design of hybrid and dedicated closed loop supply chains abstract government legislation and consumer awareness on carbon emissions have required industries to seek alternative ways to reorganize their supply chains therefore industries have to consider not only the activities in the forward supply chain but also in the reverse supply chain an integrated supply chain that combines the activities of both the forward and reverse supply chains is referred to as the closed loop supply chain clsc there are two main types of clsc structures hybrid and dedicated in this research we analyze the effect of carbon emissions consideration on the design of both hybrid and dedicated clscs in particular we develop a set of integrated mixed integer linear programming milp models to quantify and compare both of the environmental and economic impacts of carbon emissions policies carbon cap carbon tax and carbon cap and trade and market factors scale effect product return rate and the customer demand on the design of clscs with respect to both clsc structures our analysis shows that when market conditions are considered total cost and total emissions are more sensitive to customer demand than to the scale effect and the product return rate when an industry faces fluctuation on the quantity of the returned products adopting a dedicated clsc would lead to a lower total cost under cap and trade policy dedicated clsc can produce less total emissions we also observe that dedicated clsc is more cost efficient under carbon cap policy and hybrid clsc is more emissions efficient when the carbon tax is introduced

locus of control and technology adoption in developing country agriculture evidence from ethiopia abstract we investigate the implication of farmers locus of control on their technology adoption decisions our empirical analysis is based on two longitudinal surveys and hypothetical choice exercises conducted on ethiopian farmers we find that locus of control significantly predicts farmers technology adoption decisions including use of chemical fertilizers improved seeds and irrigation we show that individuals with an internal locus of control have higher propensity of adopting agricultural technologies we observe these empirical regularities in both datasets and for both revealed measures of farmers technology adoption decisions as well as farmers hypothetical demand for agricultural technology the results hold even in a more conservative fixed effects estimation approach assuming locus of control as time variant and dynamic behavioral trait these findings provide behavioral and psychological explanations for the low rates of adoption of profitable agricultural technologies in sub saharan africa our results highlight that improving farmers non cognitive skills locus of control may facilitate technology adoption and agricultural transformation more generally the results suggest that anti poverty policies that only focus on relaxing short term external constraints including physical access to markets and technologies may not sufficiently alleviate agricultural underinvestment

wealth risk and activity choice cattle in western tanzania abstract imperfect credit markets force households to use their savings for investment profitable activities often require lumpy investments limiting entry by poorer households resulting in increasing welfare differences in tanzania cattle are a profitable but lumpy investment and a liquid asset for consumption smoothing richer households own substantial cattle herds while poorer households specialize in low return low risk activities a dynamic programming model and simulations are presented to analyze entry into asset accumulation under income risk the evidence suggests that households with lower endowments are less likely to own cattle and returns to their endowments are lower

the transition of germany s energy production green economy low carbon economy socio environmental conflicts and equitable society low carbon transitions have been predominantly analysed using quantitative methods mostly building on present and forecasted data of social metabolism this paper addresses both the economic and social dimensions of low carbon emissions by analysing the presence of socio environmental conflicts in germany these conflicts appear to be a consequence of unsustainable policies targeting firms planning and behaviour mainly based on neoclassical economic thinking and various stakeholder groups that oppose carbon intensive businesses by applying a delphi method with 18 experts the authors analyse 117 socio environmental conflicts e g derived from extractive activity energy production and infrastructure projects in germany most of these conflicts include the struggle of various society groups to achieve a low carbon economy but also a more equitable society the analyses presented in this paper shows that germany provides both the best and the worse of achieving low carbon paths a significant investment into renewable energy but also a strong dependency on lignite which supplies the most polluting power stations of europe by addressing the problem from a historical perspective the authors demonstrate how carbon intensive extractive activity has been one of the major causes for environmental activism and protest in both socialist and capitalist societies

including sustainability criteria into inventory models research on sustainability performance has considerably enriched operations management literature in recent years however work with quantitative models is still scarce this paper contributes by revisiting classical inventory methods taking sustainability concerns into account we believe that reducing all aspects of sustainable development to a single objective is not desirable we thus reformulate the classical economic order quantity model as a multiobjective problem we refer to this model as the sustainable order quantity model then a multi echelon extension of the sustainable order quantity model is studied for both models the set of efficient solutions pareto optimal solutions is analytically characterized these results are used to provide some insights about the effectiveness of different regulatory policies to control carbon emissions we also use an interactive procedure that allows the decision maker to quickly identify the best option among these solutions the proposed interactive procedure is a new combination of multi criteria decision analysis techniques

a carbon market sensitive optimization model for integrated forward reverse logistics globalized supply chains volatile energy and material prices increased carbon regulations and competitive marketing pressure for environmental sustainability are driving supply chain decision makers to reduce carbon emissions enterprises face the necessity and the challenge of implementing strategies to reduce their supply chain environmental impact in order to remain competitive one of the most important strategic issues in this context is the configuration of the logistics network the decision concerning the design of an optimal network of the supply chain plays a vital role in determining the total carbon footprint across the supply chain and also the total cost therefore the logistics network should be designed in a way that it could reduce both the cost and the carbon footprint across the supply chain in this context this research proposes a quantitative optimization model for integrated forward reverse logistics with carbon footprint considerations by integrating the carbon emission into a quantitative operational decision making model with regard to facility layout decisions the proposed research incorporates carbon emission parameters with various decision variables and modifies traditional integrated forward reverse logistics model into decision making quantitative operational model minimizing both the total cost and the carbon footprint the proposed model investigates the extent to which carbon reduction requirements can be addressed under a particular set of parameters such as customer demand rate of return of products etc by selecting proper policy as an alternative to the costly investment in carbon reducing technologies to solve the quantitative model this research implements a modified and efficient forest data structure to derive the optimal network configuration minimizing both the cost and the total carbon footprint of the network a comparative analysis shows the outperformance of the proposed approach over the conventional genetic algorithm ga for large problem sizes

optimizing cooperative carbon emission reduction among enterprises with non equivalent relationships subject to carbon taxation abstract getting enterprises to reduce carbon emissions cooperatively is an effective way of sharing the burden of carbon taxation it is easier for core enterprises to promote cooperation because of their dominant positions in the supply chain the main goal of this paper is to provide a potential method for the core enterprise to organize this cooperation successfully we explore how core enterprises should allocate their reduction investments and coordinate the selection of technology upgrade strategies so as to maximize their profits without disrupting the profits of cooperating enterprises for a supply chain where there are non equivalent relationships between enterprises the main hypotheses are that each enterprise only produces one product and each production process in each enterprise can only select one production technology and the intermediate products are mainly traded among cooperative enterprises a model based on independent carbon emission reduction model i is first constructed and used to analyze each enterprises basic information when they reduce carbon emission without cooperation considering total costs profits and so on then based on this information a model including cooperation is proposed model ii in model ii the enterprises are divided into core and cooperative enterprises and both capital and technical cooperation are considered a multi agent system is presented to simulate the negotiations between the enterprises and is then used to solve model ii finally a numerical example is considered to examine the feasibility of the proposed model the results indicate that a cooperative carbon emission reduction strategy has more advantages than the independent carbon emission reduction approach a notable advantage is that it can further rationalize the emission reduction structure of the supply chain through rational allocation of reduction investments and thus further restores profits

risk attitudes and economic well being in latin america abstract a common conjecture in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient and risk averse to accumulate the resources needed to improve their well being the empirical literature however suggests that this conjecture is far from proven we sample more than 3000 participants drawn representatively from six latin american cities and find little correlation between baseline risk aversion and well being measured as an index of eight outcomes we do however find that measures of ambiguity aversion loss aversion and the willingness to take advantage of a risk pooling scheme all correlate with well being participants who are ambiguity averse loss averse and who react conservatively in the risk pooling condition all have significantly lower scores on our well being index these results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of important controls like human capital accumulation and access to credit

environmentally responsible inventory models non classical models for a non classical era abstract mathematical models of inventory typically include the three inventory associated costs of surplus shortage and ordering these classic inventory models are then analysed so as to choose inventory parameters that usually minimise the total cost of operating the inventory system being investigated unfortunately classic inventory models do not provide a meaningful basis for analysing many real and increasingly important practical inventory problems and situations it is therefore not surprising that over recent years several authors have discussed these issues in broad terms and suggested that a new paradigm needs to be developed this paper develops some specific aspects of this discussion in particular the paper identifies a range of inventory problems that are not covered appropriately by traditional inventory analysis one of these is to design responsible inventory systems i e systems that reflect the needs of the environment the paper then examines the importance of inventory planning to the environment in greater detail for example packaging is important not only because of its costs and the protection that it provides to the inventory items but also because of its eventual effects on the environment in terms of the use of resources and potential landfill for similar reasons waste which can result from poor inventory management is highly important the location of stores is important because location affects transport costs thus the influence of the secondary aspects of most inventory models packaging waste and location are important but even more important are the inter relations with the total system in particular the location of the manufacturing plants and the effect that inventory planning has on the logistics chain potentially have considerable environmental implications inventory is part of a wider system however until the cost charged for an activity reflects the true environmental cost of that activity it is likely that decisions will be made on the basis of erroneous data in that situation we are faced with either determining the environmental cost of specific actions or to use environmental costs that are somewhat contrived in which case it may be more sensible to use very different performance measures and models the paper discusses these ideas and ways in which inventory policies may reassure us with our environmental concerns

time to change what to sow risk preferences and technology adoption decisions of cotton farmers in china this paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt a new form of agricultural biotechnology in china i conducted a survey and a field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of chinese farmers who faced the decision of whether to adopt genetically modified bt cotton a decade ago in my analysis i expand the measurement of risk preferences beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory i find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt bt cotton later farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt bt cotton earlier

the role of education in facilitating risk taking and innovation in agriculture the impact of education on farmers attitudes toward endogenous risk measured using an attitude survey instrument is estimated with household data from rural ethiopia education of the household head is found to decrease risk aversion next the effects of education and risk attitudes on technology adoption are estimated schooling encourages farmers to adopt innovations whereas risk aversion reduces the probability of adoption thus we find that schooling encourages innovation a potentially risky undertaking not only directly but also indirectly through its effect upon attitudes toward risk to the extent that educated farmers are early innovators and are copied by those with less schooling as other research on the same data has shown the reduction of riskaversion not only has private benefits for those with education but also may have externality benefits

closed loop supply chain network design with multiple transportation modes under stochastic demand and uncertain carbon tax abstract we optimize the design of a closed loop supply chain network that encompasses flows in both forward and reverse directions and is subject to uncertainty in demands for both new and returned products the model also accommodates a carbon tax with tax rate uncertainty the proposed model is a three stage hybrid robust stochastic program that combines probabilistic scenarios for the demands and return quantities with uncertainty sets for the carbon tax rates the first stage decisions are facility investments the second stage concerns the plan for distributing new and collecting returned products after realization of demands and returns and the numbers of transportation units of various modes are the third stage decisions the second and third stage decisions may adjust to the realization of the carbon tax rate for computational tractability we restrict them to be affine functions of the carbon tax rate benders cuts are generated using recent duality developments for robust linear programs computational results show that adjusting product flows to the tax rate provides negligible benefit but the ability to adjust transportation mode capacities can substitute for building additional facilities as a way to respond to carbon tax uncertainty

carbon pricing versus emissions trading a supply chain planning perspective abstract carbon pricing taxes and carbon emissions trading are two globally practiced carbon regulatory policy schemes this paper presents an analytical supply chain planning model that can be used to examine the supply chain performance at the tactical operational planning level under these two policy schemes model implementation and analyses are completed using actual data from a company operating in australia where these environmental regulatory policies are practiced numerical results provide important managerial and practical implications and policy insights in particular the results show that there are inflection points where both carbon pricing and trading schemes could influence costs or emissions reductions an erratic nonlinear emissions reduction trend is observed in a carbon pricing scheme as the carbon price increases steadily whereas emissions reduction in a carbon trading scheme follows a relatively linear trend with a nonlinear cost increase overall a carbon trading mechanism although imperfect appears to result in better supply chain performance in terms of emissions generation cost and service level even though a carbon tax may be more worthwhile from an uncertainty perspective as emissions trading costs depend on numerous uncertain market conditions

nonstructural risk attitude estimation this paper presents an econometric approach to risk attitude estimation that does not require joint estimation of the structure of the firm s technology and input decision rules the nonstructural approach replaces optimal input choice with the assumption that farmers optimally manage their portfolios of productive activities by thus shifting the focus from the detailed production decisions of the farm manager to the net returns of the whole farm operation the modeling problem is simplified the nonstructural approach is used to estimate risk attitudes in three indian villages the results are compared to previous experimental and econometric estimates from the same villages

the impact of carbon pricing on a closed loop supply chain an australian case study concerns about industrial and supply chain implications on our natural environment have existed for decades climate change and greenhouse gas emissions have caused countries to implement various instruments ranging from taxes permits and voluntary incentives to required regulatory policies given this environment we develop a unified optimization model for a closed loop supply chain in which the carbon emission is expressed in terms of dollar carbon cost this study is one of the first to evaluate the forward and reverse supply chain influences on the carbon footprint a comparative analysis is completed with a decomposition of cost and environmental influences across supply chain functions we utilize data from a company located in australia where the government is currently introducing a carbon pricing scheme we find that variations in cost and environmental impacts occur over ranges of carbon pricing characteristics and patterns of the numerical results over these ranges provide insights for corporate key strategies and potential additional government policies these results and implications are analyzed along with limitations and directions for future research

the efficacy of the european union emissions trading scheme depicting the co movement of carbon assets and energy commodities through wavelet decomposition abstract environmental system thresholds have been crossed for a number of dimensions of global environmental pollution such as greenhouse gas emissions under this scenario institutions and corporations are required to implement sustainable policies as a condition for humanity staying within planetary boundaries accordingly the european union created the largest emissions trading scheme in the world with the aim of properly managing corporations carbon dioxide reductions this paper aims to contribute to the literature focused on testing the effectiveness of institutional environmental management policies specifically this research evaluates whether the objectives of the european union emissions trading scheme are partially achieved by analyzing the dynamics of carbon assets and the main energy commodities worldwide this paper provides relevant information both for policy makers and company managers so that contributions towards the common goal of developing a clean energy future and curbing climate change are ameliorated based on wavelet coherence analysis this paper proposes a model free way of estimating the time varying correlations between carbon assets and energy commodities at both high and low frequencies our central results reveal that carbon assets and energy commodities present a changing lead lag behavior at different frequencies the energy commodities lead the european union allowances returns at medium frequencies but the contrary was true for the highest investment horizons this finding should be in line with the goal of significantly reducing emissions because during long cycles if the majority of companies have not switched to cleaner industrial processes they must buy more carbon assets increasing their prices in that case energy commodities would be more expensive because of the energy commodities market behavior during long term horizons with european union allowances lead the certified emissions reductions lead in a negative way most of the energy commodities at medium frequencies thus indicating that investors handling energy commodities oriented portfolios could incorporate the mentioned carbon assets for diversification purposes these specific findings suggest that polluting activities would be more expensive which would provide an incentive to companies to implement environmentally friendly industrial processes the european union emissions trading scheme can result in significant emission reductions and compliance of the european union with the objectives of the kyoto protocol

cash inflows and bubbles in asset markets with constant fundamental values previous experimental research on asset markets has reported that the level of cash available to traders does not affect asset prices when fundamentals follow a time trajectory that is constant over time this contrasts with other research indicating that greater cash levels increase prices when fundamental values are decreasing over time we report a new experiment in which we show that greater initial cash levels are indeed associated with higher prices when fundamental values are constant over time thus high cash levels will lead to bubbles if the cash is introduced before the market opens our results reconcile the two previous sets of findings jel c90 d03 g02 g12 i introduction smith suchanek and williams 1988 initiated the experimental study of markets for multiperiod finitely lived assets a considerable subsequent literature has consistently observed price bubbles in such markets this consistency makes the smith et al paradigm a popular one for identifying and studying the factors that promote or dampen bubbles see palan 2013 for a survey of this literature it is known that some key market parameters influence prices and the tendency for bubbles to form two of these parameters are 1 the time trajectory of fundamental values and 2 the quantity of cash available for purchases compared to the quantity of assets available for sale a number of studies in this literature have contrasted the behavior of different fundamental value time paths the speed and effectiveness of price discovery the tendency of market prices to track fundamentals depend on the time path of the fundamental value trajectory breaban and noussair 2015 giusti jiang and xu 2012 noussair and powell 2010 stockl huber and kirchler 2014 a trajectory that is constant over time generates closer adherence to fundamental values than a time path that is monotonically decreasing kirchler huber and stockl 2012 noussair robin and ruffieux 2001 smith van boening and wellford 2000 1 another variable influencing market prices is the amount of liquidity traders have available for purchases it is well established that in the case of decreasing fundamentals the price level is affected by liquidity as measured by cash endowment levels greater cash endowments lead to higher prices caginalp and ilieva 2008 caginalp porter and smith 1998 2000 2001 haruvy and noussair 2006 cash and asset endowment levels are typically normalized into a measure of liquidity called the cash to asset c a ratio caginalp porter and smith 2001 this is the ratio of cash in the economy the total amount available for purchases of assets to the value of all of the units of asset in the economy evaluated at the fundamental value in period t the c a ratio is given by c a sub t summation over i c sub it summation over i q sub it f sub t where c a sub t is the c a ratio in period t c sub it is the cash available to trader i in period t q sub it is the quantity of units that trader i holds in period t and f sub t is the period t fundamental value the ratio can be interpreted as the ratio of the largest long position to the largest short position an average trader can take assuming that the market price is equal to the fundamental to date it has been shown that the cash asset ratio affects prices only for the case when fundamental values are decreasing to our knowledge only two studies have explored the effect of cash on prices when fundamentals are constant over time kirchler huber and stockl 2012 hereafter khs and kirchler et al 2015 in both of these studies the additional cash is introduced after one or more periods of trading have elapsed rather than before the market opens khs report that increases in cash endowments do not affect prices in the case of constant fundamental values because the authors interpret bubbles as a consequence of subject confusion about the experimental environment they conclude that the constant fundamental value setting leads to less confusion on the part of subjects

multi item production planning with carbon cap and trade mechanism abstract carbon emission control becomes a challenge in recent years and carbon emission trading is an effective way to curb carbon emission this paper investigates the multi item production planning problem with carbon cap and trade mechanism in which a firm uses a common capacity and carbon emission quota to produce multiple products for fulfilling independent stochastic demands and the firm can buy or sell the right to emit carbon on a trading market of carbon emission a profit maximization model is proposed to characterize the optimization problem the optimal policy of production and carbon trading decisions is analyzed and an efficient solution method with linear computational complexity is presented for solving the optimal solution the impacts of carbon price carbon cap on the shadow price of the common capacity production decisions carbon emission and the total profit are investigated the comparisons of the carbon cap and trade policy and the taxation policy are given to show the effectiveness of the policies numerical analyses are presented for illustrating our findings and obtaining some managerial insights and policy implication

stock market participation and endogenous boom bust dynamics abstract we develop a model in which stock market participation depends on current market movements and on the fundamental state of the market our model explains empirical and experimental evidence according to which increasing decreasing stock market participation amplifies bubbles crashes

analyzing the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on supplier and mode selection decisions an application to a biofuel supply chain this paper analyzes the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain we employ mathematical models for operations which integrate replenishment and supplier transportation mode selection decisions these models explicitly account for carbon emissions that may result from transportation and inventory storage activities this research is motivated by observations indicating that nearly 19 of the energy consumption and 25 of the energy related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide arise from transportation because freight transportation is expected to continue to grow we consider the impacts of different carbon regulatory mechanisms on transportation and inventory replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain a set of extensive numerical experiments uses the biofuel supply chain context to analyze the impacts of different regulatory mechanisms including carbon cap carbon tax carbon cap and trade and carbon offset on performance we use existing methodologies to calculate emissions as a function of distance traveled load weight and transportation mode used we also use publicly available data to derive representative biomass transportation costs as a consequence our numerical results are meaningful and give a realistic representation of the relationships between emissions from different transportation modes and the resulting costs the results of our computational experiments indicate that carbon regulatory mechanisms have a non trivial impact on replenishment schedules and as a consequence costs and emissions in the supply chain

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

lab and life does risky choice behaviour observed in experiments reflect that in the real world risk preferences play a crucial role in a great variety of economic decisions measuring risk preferences reliably is therefore an important challenge in this paper we ask the question whether risk preferences observed in economic experiments reflect real life risky choice behaviour we investigate in a sample representative for a rural region of eastern uganda whether pursuing farming strategies with both a higher expected profit and greater variance of profits is associated with willingness to take risks in an experiment controlling for other determinants of risk taking in agriculture we find that risky choice behaviour in the experiment is correlated with risky choice behaviour in real life in one domain i e the purchase of fertiliser but not in other domains i e the growing of cash crops and market orientation more broadly our findings suggest that economic experiments may be good at capturing real world risky choice behaviour that is narrowly bracketed