multi criteria group decision making method for optimal selection of sustainable industrial building options focused on petrochemical projects abstract over the past three decades sustainable development sd has gained wide recognition among decision makers and politicians today this concept aims to provide a healthier environment more improved society and developed economy in both developed and developing world communities thus to achieve a sustainable community one needs to first better understand the underlying indicators and adopt appropriate sustainable policies in different sections and sectors of the community as a vital component the construction industry plays a key role in sd which has drawn the attention of decision makers to find sustainable solutions worldwide for such an active industry industrial buildings as a large segment of the construction industry consume vast amounts of energy and financial resources and have a major role in job creation and improving the quality of life in a society therefore this paper focuses on social economic and environmental aspects of sd of industrial buildings to evaluate the sustainable indicators and to develop a combinatory multi criteria group decision making framework for optimal selection of sustainable options of industrial buildings the developed framework considers uncertainty alongside various preference orders and risk attitudes of decision makers using utility functions the decision making process consists of two stages the first stage takes the advantages of integration of utility function electre i the elimination and choice translating reality and grey theory to create the new method of grey utility electre to rank the feasible alternatives and the second stage utilizes the ordered weighted averaging owa aggregation operator to aggregate the preferences of environmental social and economic dimension as three decision makers to determine the final ranking because this research focuses on the sustainability of industrial buildings the performance and capabilities of the developed framework are demonstrated using five petrochemical buildings of a petrochemical company in iran as a case study

a fuzzy approach for supplier evaluation and selection in supply chain management abstract this paper is aimed to present a fuzzy decision making approach to deal with the supplier selection problem in supply chain system during recent years how to determine suitable suppliers in the supply chain has become a key strategic consideration however the nature of these decisions usually is complex and unstructured in general many quantitative and qualitative factors such as quality price and flexibility and delivery performance must be considered to determine suitable suppliers in this paper linguistic values are used to assess the ratings and weights for these factors these linguistic ratings can be expressed in trapezoidal or triangular fuzzy numbers then a hierarchy multiple criteria decision making mcdm model based on fuzzy sets theory is proposed to deal with the supplier selection problems in the supply chain system according to the concept of the topsis a closeness coefficient is defined to determine the ranking order of all suppliers by calculating the distances to the both fuzzy positive ideal solution fpis and fuzzy negative ideal solution fnis simultaneously finally an example is shown to highlight the procedure of the proposed method at the end of this paper this paper shows that the proposed model is very well suited as a decision making tool for supplier selection decisions

technology adoption in nonrenewable resource management technological change has played an important role in models of nonrenewable resource management since its presence mitigates the depletion effect on extraction costs over time we formalize the problem of a competitive nonrenewable resource extracting firm faced with the possibility of technology adoption based on a quadratic extraction cost function our results show that the expected net benefits from adoption increase both with the size of the resource stock and with prices a boundary that separates the region where expected net benefits are positive from the one where they are negative is derived

the impact of bse on the demand for beef and other meats in great britain indices of media coverage of bse are incorporated in a dynamic aids model of meat demand the publicity which bse has received is found to have had significant effects on the allocation of consumer expenditure among the meats a short run impact has been identified which accounts in large part for the discernible drop in the market share of beef in the early 1990s and more important there also appears to be a significant long run impact of bse which by the end of 1993 has reduced the beef market share by 4 5

a structural time series approach to modelling multiple and resurgent meat scares in italy this paper exploits a structural time series approach to model the time pattern of multiple and resurgent food scares and their direct and cross product impacts on consumer response a structural time series almost ideal demand system sts aids is embedded in a vector error correction framework to allow for dynamic effects vec sts aids italian aggregate household data on meat demand is used to assess the time varying impact of a resurgent bse crisis 1996 and 2000 and the 1999 dioxin crisis the vec sts aids model monitors the short run impacts and performs satisfactorily in terms of residuals diagnostics overcoming the major problems encountered by the customary vector error correction approach

measuring welfare effects of product contamination with consumer uncertainty abstract a methodology is developed for measuring consumer welfare loss from market demand due to contamination when information is imperfect comparison of behavior before and after awareness permits calculation of the cost of ignorance which occurs when news of contamination is withheld or undiscovered for a time as well as when excessive reporting and exaggeration cause overreaction avoidance costs are also calculated for consumers who consume less than they would with perfect information due to risk aversion the methodology is applied to analyzing the heptachlor crisis which reduced milk consumption in hawaii by over 80

a time preference measure of the social discount rate for the uk in this study the social discount rate for the uk is estimated the result compared with the treasury approved rate and the main associated policy implications considered a case is argued for reducing the official discount rate in appraisals involving all long term social projects the estimate of the elasticity of the marginal utility of consumption an important component of the discount rate is supported by plausible and statistically valid regression results the need for further work relating to other major european countries is identified so that discount rate comparisons can be made on a consistent basis

fuel tourism in border regions the case of switzerland this paper explores the issue of fuel tourism in switzerland for the period 1985 1997 a panel data model for the border regions of switzerland italy france and germany is estimated the results show a significant impact of the gasoline price differential on demand suggesting that a decrease of 10 in the swiss gasoline price leads to an increase in demand in the border areas of nearly 17 5 it is shown that fuel tourism accounted for about 9 of overall gasoline sales in the three regions during the period 1985 1997 and that the recently proposed swiss co2 tax might given current conditions eliminate net fuel tourism

no news is good news stochastic parameters versus media coverage indices in demand models after food scares we develop a stochastic parameter approach to model the time varying impacts of food scares on consumption as an alternative to the inclusion of news coverage indices in the demand function we empirically test the methodology on data from four food scares the 1982 heptachlor milk contamination in oahu hawaii and the bovine spongiform encephalopathy and two escherichia coli scares on u s meat demand over the period 1993 9 results show that the inclusion of time varying parameters in demand models enables the capturing of the impact of food safety information and provides better short term forecasts

using a multi criteria decision aid methodology to implement sustainable development principles within an organization the implementation of sustainable development sd within an organization is a difficult task this is due to the fact that it is difficult to deal with conflicting and incommensurable aspects such as environmental economic and social dimensions in this paper we have used a multi criteria decision aid mcda methodology to cope with these difficulties mcda methodology offers the opportunity to avoid monetary valuation of the different dimensions of the sd these dimensions are not substitutable for one another and all have a role to play there is an abundance of possible aggregation procedures in mcda methodology in this paper we have proposed an innovative method to choose a suitable aggregation procedure for sd problems real life case studies of the implementation of an outranking approach i e electre and of a mono criterion synthesis approach i e maut approaches based on the choquet integral were done to respectively rank 22 sd strategic actions within an expertise institute and rank 20 practical operational actions to control energy consumption of the institute s buildings

environmental costs at a canadian paper mill a case study of environmental management accounting ema abstract an environmental management accounting ema framework is applied to the 2000 year end financial report for the mackenzie paper division paper mill owned and operated by abitibi consolidated inc of montreal quebec a conventional reading of the obvious environmental costs from this financial report is cdn 2 196 838 this figure is derived from an analysis of effluent treatment costs and other line item environmental costs there is no environmental account category that breaks out either costs or the mass balance of inputs and outputs for the most part environmental costs are rolled up into overhead accounts such as administration infrastructure and materials accounts application of the ema framework is based on assigning environmental costs to one of four categories for which a tentative breakdown is as follows 1 waste and emission treatment costs 3 348 902 2 prevention and environmental management costs 270 109 3 material purchase value of non product output costs 946 799 and 4 processing costs of non product output 2 92 943 there is also a category called environmental revenues of which none were reported conservative estimates thus place the total environmental costs at 4 858 753 what is significant about this result is that the environmental costs under ema are at least twice as much as would normally be reported this supports the view that environmental costs are much higher than generally considered and makes it clear that many important environmental costs as well as benefits are hidden in other accounts more studies of a similar design are required to confirm the validity of the ema methodology reported here

alarmist decisions with divergent risk information receipt of multiple sources of risk information ideally should foster sounder decisions under uncertainty this paper s original survey results for environmental risks suggest that the learning process is reasonable in many respects bur it does not accord with a rational bayesian learning model divergent risk assessments from different sources produce extreme violations of rationality as there is inordinate weight on the high risk assessment this alarmist reaction holds for both government and industry information sources this phenomenon may account for the commonly observed phenomenon of public overreaction to highly publicised risks

the impact of fuel tourism on retailers diesel price in spanish neighbouring regions since 1986 car fuel consumption in spain has been subject to the special hydrocarbons tax and the value added tax in addition since 2002 regional governments have been able to apply a regional excise duty on hydrocarbons this article analyses the impact that such a regional tax has on the retailer s diesel price at the border of the province of lugo in the region of galicia and the province of leon in the region of castile leon only the former region has the regional tax evidence shows that variations in the price of diesel at the border of lugo are of the same sign but of lower intensity than at the border of leon the price price elasticity is 0 8060 these results suggest that service stations located in regions with higher excise duties use their price policy to lessen the negative effects generated for fuel tourism

why fuel prices differ fuel taxes differ largely between countries this paper reviews a number of considerations from the theory of public finance that may explain these differences based on a multiple regression model we find for tax competition in europe that small countries tend to be more aggressive than large countries by charging lower fuel taxes to attract customers from neighbouring countries there is strong evidence that fuel is just considered as one of the many sources for government expenditure as the share of government expenditure in gdp is higher the fuel tax tends to be higher no support is found for the hypothesis that fuel taxes are higher in countries where externality problems are more severe proxied by car density of the country in this respect the normative literature on pricing externalities has found little support in the realities of transport policy

food scares in an uncertain world we develop a model that explains the stylized facts of food scares an immediate and sharp decline in consumption of the product followed by a slow and frequently partial recovery of demand after the scare passes the model is used in conjunction with the natural experiment afforded by the mad cow crisis to elicit empirical information on decision makers perception of uncertainty our theoretical and quantitative results suggest that observed behavior is consistent with sharp changes in beliefs and the presence of knightian uncertainty as measured by the degree of imprecision in our model

the use of environmental management accounting ema for identifying environmental costs abstract the expert working group on improving the role of government in the promotion of environmental management accounting ema was set up by the united nations division for sustainable development un dsd in cooperation with a number of government agencies and non governmental experts to promote environmental management accounting ema through publications pilot projects and by establishing an international forum for discussion on the role of governments in the promotion of ema ema environmental management accounting represents a combined approach that provides for the transition of data from financial accounting cost accounting and mass balances to increase material efficiency reduce environmental impacts and risks and reduce costs of environmental protection ema is performed by private or public corporations but not by nations and has a financial as well as a physical component the core focus of environmental management accounting and of the ema un dsd methodology is assessment of total annual environmental expenditure on emission treatment disposal environmental protection and management in addition and that is new and challenging for most companies the material purchase value of all non product output and its production costs are added this total sum often provides a frightening picture of total annual costs of inefficiency and gets companies to improve their information systems and material efficiency options which is the goal in the light of cleaner production the first book published by the expert working group environmental management accounting procedures and principles jasch c united nations new york 2001 defines principles and procedures for ema with a focus on techniques for quantifying environmental expenditures or costs as a basis for better controlling and benchmarking purposes the methodology excludes costs external to the company so called externalities e g environmental and social effects that occur to the general public but focuses on comprehensive assessment of direct annual expenditure on emission treatment environmental protection and management as well as wasted material and energy input efficiency losses in production firstly total annual expenditure is assessed then improvement options savings and investment projects as well as product prices can be re calculated the method is currently applied in several case studies the following summary provides some of the core definitions and generic assessment tables

integrating information about the cost of carbon through activity based costing abstract environmental protection has been an issue of serious concern for many years it is not a trend but the responsibility of corporations this responsibility for environmental protection should be internalized into business operations prior to production in order to reflect the true cost of the final product due to the use of traditional cost accounting many organizations have not estimated their environmental costs precisely therefore environmental accounting systems such as carbon management accounting environmental management accounting and greenhouse gas accounting have attracted worldwide attention in this paper we propose an integrated concept the activity based costing approach to solve the problem of environmental and cost evaluation we include a case study of an existing pulp and paper company in taiwan to show that the activity based costing method estimates emissions of waste and the environmental costs of a final product more accurately than traditional approaches do the method can therefore provide information for use in existing environmental accounting systems and help managers incorporate environmental costs into their decision making processes

convergence in car prices among european countries this article contributes to the literature on price convergence in europe by investigating the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of car prices in the eu15 countries we apply recently developed econometric techniques that allow for multiple structural breaks to an up to date dataset we find considerable evidence of both types of convergence in our sample of countries and car models therefore suggesting a tendency for relative prices to equalize over time in addition we find evidence regarding the importance in this convergence process of both legislative changes taking place in the years 1996 and 2002 and the implementation of economic and monetary union emu

does food safety information impact u s meat demand a theoretical model of consumer response to publicized food safety information on meat demand is developed with an empirical application to u s meat consumption evidence is found for the existence of pre committed levels of consumption seasonal factors time trends and contemporaneous own and cross commodity food safety concerns the average demand response to food safety concerns is small especially in comparison to price effects and to previous estimates of health related issues this small average effect masks periods of significantly larger responses corresponding with prominent food safety events but these larger impacts are short lived with no apparent food safety lagged effects on food safety concerns in the united states have dramatically increased in the past decade with regard to incidences of contaminated meat products concerns have arisen because contaminated meat products can result in serious risk to the well being and health of consumers contamination comes from a myriad of sources including but not limited to outbreaks of listeria monocytogenes escherichia coli e coli and salmonella centers for disease control and prevention food safety problems are not isolated to the united states as other unsafe contaminates in meats have emerged across the world including highly publicized outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy bse in europe the potential impacts of publicized food safety events on consumer s demand for meat products in the united states include own effects on the demand for the contaminated meat involved as well as cross effects impacting the demand for other meats the objective of this article is to investigate whether publicized food safety concerns surrounding beef pork and poultry chicken and turkey have impacted meat consumption food safety indices are constructed separately for beef pork and poultry

estimating the speed of adjustment to target levels the case of energy prices in this paper we propose a model that estimates the speed of energy price adjustment to its target level we also explain the source of price adjustment moreover we extract energy price bubbles and show that bubbles help explain price adjustment since ours is the first paper that develops an energy price adjustment model and links it to bubbles several avenues for future research have emerged from our analysis the first is to provide a theoretical framework for the bubbles and price adjustment mechanism the second direction of research will be to continue the search for other potential determinants of price adjustment

the cost of climate policy in the united states abstract we re evaluate prospects for us economic growth and the likely costs of advanced technologies given recent developments and then apply the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model to evaluate three core ghg policy scenarios for the us that cap emissions at different levels the three policy scenarios involve allowance allocations that through 2050 are 1 constant at present emissions levels 2 linearly reduced to 50 below present 3 linearly reduce emissions to 80 below present the cumulative allowance allocations over the horizon of the policy are 287 203 and 167 gt of co 2 equivalent respectively we compare the results to previous analysis of these same policy scenarios to evaluate how the changed growth and technology prospects affect the results we focus on 203 and 167 gt scenarios because current proposals envision deep cuts in emissions from present the 167 gt scenario is closest to proposals currently being considered by congress and supported by the us administration however we do not attempt to model specific details of actual proposals we test results to alternative assumptions about program coverage and banking behavior measured in terms of changes in economic welfare the economic cost of 203 and 167 gt cases is in the range of 2 to 3 by 2050 with co 2 prices between 48 and 67 in 2015 rising to between 190 and 266 by 2050 implementation details matter when an idealized economy wide cap and trade is replaced by coverage omitting some sectors or if the credibility of long term target is weak limiting banking behavior prices and welfare costs change substantially

a definition of uncertainty aversion a definition of uncertainty or ambiguity aversion is proposed it is argued that the definition is well suited to modelling within the savage as opposed to anscombe and aumann domain of acts the defined property of uncertainty aversion has intuitive empirical content behaves well in specific models of preference multiple priors and choquet expected utility and is tractable tractability is established through use of a novel notion of differentiability for utility functions called eventwise differentiability

diesel price convergence and mineral oil taxation in europe we empirically analyse convergence of european producer and consumer prices for diesel fuel and investigate the role of excise taxation by comparing the speed of convergence of prices and taxes we find a surprisingly fast speed of convergence for consumer prices while this can in part be explained by fuel tourism the main driving force is producer price dynamics tax convergence contributes weakly to price convergence but the overall effect is to slow down consumer relative to producer price convergence

jeux sans frontieres tax competition and tax coordination when countries differ in size closer international integration is putting increasing pressure on existing national tax structures this paper uses a simple two country model to address a range of consequent policy concerns focusing particularly on the role of country size differences in size exacerbate the inefficiency from noncooperative behavior harming both countries the smaller country loses from harmonization to any tax rate between those set in the noncooperative equilibrium but both countries gain from the imposition of a minimum tax anywhere in that range the fully optimal response to freer cross border trade however may be to do nothing jel h20 h77

ambiguity made precise a comparative foundation the theory of subjective expected utility has been recently extended to allow ambiguity to matter for choice we propose a notion of absolute ambiguity aversion by building on a notion of comparative ambiguity aversion we characterize it for a preference model which encompasses some of the most popular models in the literature we next build on these ideas to provide a definition of unambiguous act and event and show the characterization of the latter as an illustration we consider the classical ellsberg 3 color urn problem and find that the notions developed in the paper provide intuitive answers journal of economic literature classification number d81

the impact of food scares on price adjustment in the uk beef market abstract this paper considers the impact of food scares predominately concerns relating to bse on uk beef prices at retail wholesale and producer levels over the 1990s acknowledging the co movement that exists between prices in the meat marketing chain we use a co integrating framework the results of which show the importance of publicity regarding the safety of food in the transmission of beef prices in the uk the food publicity index that we use has a marked negative impact on the prices at all levels a result that is consistent with the effect of an inward shift in the demand function moreover the extent of price decline varies between the marketing stages entailing that the price spreads rise in response to an increase in the negative publicity about food safety while not a formal test of market power these observations are consistent with recent theoretical results demonstrating that market power exacerbates price changes in the upstream sectors for a given change in the retail demand function the implication of these varying price changes is that the food safety concerns also cause the marketing margins between the stages to widen the uk s competition commission has recently investigated the abuse of market power in the food sector inspired largely by this specific issue