on the patterns and wealth effects of vertical mergers we use industry commodity flows information to measure vertical relations in completed mergers from 1962 to 1996 almost one third of the mergers display vertical relatedness vertical merger activity is more intensive in the 1980s and 1990s and less so in the 1960s and the 1970s vertical mergers generate positive wealth effects that are significantly larger than those for diversifying mergers the wealth effects in vertical mergers are comparable to those in pure horizontal mergers

a general equilibrium analysis of production subsidy in a harris todaro developing economy an application to india since 1950s india has advocated import substituting industrialization policies to promote its manufacturing sector the end result was creation of a dual economy highly favored manufacturing sector with high and rigid wages and neglected agricultural sector with low wages and poverty because of the higher wages in the manufacturing sector the rural laborers migrate to the urban sector a typical characteristic of the harris todaro developing economy realizing this crisis the indian government recently initiated policies to boost agricultural production to curb the labor migration and improve the welfare of the rural population in this study we develop a computable general equilibrium cge model for india by incorporating harris todaro economic characteristics of unemployment labor migration farm dependant population and labor intensive agriculture we use the model to analyze the effects of agricultural production subsidy policies on employment factor price output price output levels and we

enterprises compliance with government carbon reduction labelling policy using a system dynamics approach abstract a carbon reduction labelling scheme is an effective policy tool for motivating enterprises or organizations to reduce their life cycle based carbon emissions to benefit the environment this paper uses system dynamics to model enterprises compliance with a combined government policy instrument for a carbon reduction labelling scheme that is government subsidies and economic sanctions a case study of paper enterprises in china is provided to demonstrate the application of the proposed model in which two optional technological plans to reduce the enterprises carbon emissions are examined the technological plans are categorized as a low cost and high cost plan the simulation results show that both the technological plans are vulnerable to the combined policy making and the high cost plan shows superior environmental performance for carbon emissions reduction however the enterprises are more inclined to choose the low cost plan because of superior economic performance the study offers insights to help enterprises select optimal actions on carbon emissions reduction and to inform government of possible sustainable policy design to promote low carbon development the model limitations are discussed as a basis for further improvements in low carbon development

integrative capabilities vertical integration and innovation over successive technology lifecycles the analysis presented here provides a new explanation for why vertically integrated and specialized firms may continue to coexist as industries evolve especially during time periods when conditions unequivocally favor lower cost specialized firms in contrast to the common view that firms should match their organizational form to the prevailing nature of technology vertically integrated firms may rationally choose to stay integrated and bear the sunk costs of developing integrative capabilities as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining them even when they lose money during some time periods due to competition from lower cost specialized firms in particular in industries characterized by successive systemic innovations which entail interdependence across stages of production some firms may remain vertically integrated to maintain their capability to innovate over multiple cycles of technological innovation the results hinge on the sunk costs of long lived investments in integrative capabilities an extension to the analysis suggests that vertically integrated firms may retain their organizational form to pioneer systemic innovations in other industries including industries not subject to frequent technology lifecycles providing another explanation of product market diversification and market entry over time

status and outlook for thailand s low carbon electricity development thailand is facing an urgency to enhance its energy security and capacity to cope with global warming impacts as demands on fossil fuel consumption keep rising this paper reviewed the latest situation on renewable powers and developmental strategies toward low carbon electricity generation in thailand government recently has spent tremendous financial and legislative supports to promote the uses of indigenous renewable energy resources and fuel diversification while contributing in reduction of global greenhouse gas major policy challenge is on which types of renewable energy should be more pronounced to ensure sustainable future of the country regions in thailand present different potentials for renewable supply on biomass municipal wastes hydropower and wind to maximize renewable energy development in each area location is matter currently energy derived biomass is widely utilized within the country however if droughts happen more often and severe it will not only affect food security but also energy security life cycle of biomass energy production may cause other social issues on land and chemical uses meanwhile deployment of wind and solar energy has been slow and needs to speed up to the large extent in comparison with energy proportion from biomass nuclear power has already been included in the thai power development plan 2010 pdp 2010 however public acceptance is a major issue setting up strategic renewable energy zone to support power producer according to pre determined potential location may assist development direction furthermore government has to strongly subsidize research and development to lower technology cost and promote private investment on renewable energy industry in the future revision of electricity price is needed to allow fair competition between non renewable and renewable energy once subsidy programs are ended environmental tax according to fuel types could help government progressing toward low carbon electricity stimulating renewable energy development and utilization at local community is a key for thai sufficiency economy

co firing of imported wood pellets an option to efficiently save co2 emissions in europe abstract in this paper the energy and carbon footprints of pellet imports from australia west canada and russia for co firing in europe are investigated their ecologic and economic performances are proven by applying the belgian and uk co firing subsidy systems which require dedicated sustainability evaluations based on the modelling of different subsidy schemes and price scenarios the present paper identifies favourable conditions for the use of biomass co firing in germany and austria which currently do not have dedicated co firing incentives the present paper shows that under present conditions co firing has a narrow financial gap to coal with 3 to 4 cent kwh el and has low co 2 mitigation costs compared to other renewables moreover it is shown that co firing is one of the most cost attractive options to reach the eu 2020 targets for policy makers the support of co firing is found to be very efficient in terms of cost benefit ratio it is proven that the co firing subsidy schemes might direct supply chain decisions towards options with low energy and carbon impacts

finnish consumer perceptions of carbon footprints and carbon labelling of food products abstract the aim of this study was to explore how finnish consumers perceive the communication of carbon footprints for food products the study comprised five semi structured focus groups and an online survey of 1010 respondents the study showed that the term product carbon footprint is familiar to many but there is substantial misunderstanding of its meaning only 7 of the respondents linked product carbon footprint spontaneously to greenhouse gas emissions associated with the product and an additional 5 of the respondents linked it to climate change there are positive attitudes towards carbon labels 90 stated that a carbon footprint would have at least a little impact on their buying decision but the information became meaningful only when many other purchasing criteria such as price and taste were satisfied furthermore 86 preferred carbon labels that allow comparisons of carbon footprints to be made among food products but there is divergence on perceived needs for carbon label content

down with mne centric theories market entry and expansion as the bundling of mne and local assets both anderson and gatignon and the uppsala internationalization model see the initial mode of foreign market entry and subsequent modes of operation as unilaterally determined by multinational enterprises mnes arbitraging control and risk and increasing their commitment as they gain experience in the target market oli and internalization models do recognize that foreign market entry requires the bundling of mne and complementary local assets which they call location or country specific advantages but implicitly assume that those assets are freely accessible to mnes in contrast to both of these mne centric views i explicitly consider the transactional characteristics of complementary local assets and model foreign market entry as the optimal assignment of equity between their owners and mnes by looking at the relative efficiency of the different markets in which mne and complementary local assets are traded and at how these two categories of assets match i am able to predict whether equity will be held by mnes or by local firms or shared between them and whether mnes will enter through greenfields brownfields or acquisitions the bundling model i propose has interesting implications for the evolution of the mne footprint in host countries and for the reasons behind the emergence of dragon mnes

technology as a complex adaptive system evidence from patent data this paper develops a theory of invention by drawing on complex adaptive systems theory we see invention as a process of recombinant search over technology landscapes this framing suggests that inventors might face a complexity catastrophe when they attempt to combine highly interdependent technologies our empirical analysis of patent citation rates supports this expectation our results also suggest however that the process of invention differs in important ways from biological evolution we discuss the implications of these findings for research on technological evolution industrial change and technology strategy 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the energy efficiency paradox revisited through a partial observability approach the present paper examines the energy efficiency paradox demonstrated in greek manufacturing firms through a partial observability approach the data set used has resulted from a survey carried out among 161 energy saving technology firm adopters maximum likelihood estimates that arise from an incidental truncation model reveal that the adoption of the energy saving technologies is indeed strongly correlated to the returns of assets that are required in order to undertake the corresponding investments the source of the energy efficiency paradox lies within a wide range of factors policy schemes that aim to increase the adoption rate of energy saving technologies within the field of manufacturing are significantly affected by differences in the size of firms finally mixed policies seem to be more effective than policies that are only capital subsidy or regulation oriented

labor supply responses and welfare effects of tax reforms during the late 1 980s and early 1 990s taxation of wage income has undergone a change towards a proportional tax regime in many countries our analysis shows that gradual tax reforms in norway may have removed some of the distortions on worker behavior moreover we find that proportional taxes may reduce the inequality in the distribution of disposable household income yet when the distributional consequences are related to changes in individual welfare we find that rich households may benefit far more than households at the other tail of the income distribution because they earn more without any significant increase in effort

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

low carbon and clean energy scenarios for india analysis of targets approach abstract low carbon energy technologies are of increasing importance to india for reducing emissions and diversifying its energy supply mix using gcam an integrated assessment model this paper analyzes a targets approach for pushing solar wind and nuclear technologies in the indian electricity generation sector from 2005 to 2095 targets for these technologies have been constructed on the basis of indian government documents policy announcements and expert opinions different targets have been set for the reference scenario and the carbon price scenario in the reference scenario wind and nuclear technologies exceed respective targets in the long run without any subsidy push while solar energy requires subsidy push throughout the century in order to meet its high targets in the short run nuclear energy also requires significant subsidy including a much higher initial subsidy relative to solar power which is a result of its higher targets under a carbon price scenario the carbon price drives the penetration of these technologies still subsidy is required especially in the short run when the carbon price is low we also found that pushing solar wind and nuclear technologies leads to a decrease in share of ccs under the carbon price scenario and biomass under both the reference and carbon price scenarios this is because low carbon technologies compete among themselves and substitute each other thereby enhancing the need for subsidy or carbon price highlighting that proposed targets are not set at efficient levels in light of contemporary debate on external costs of nuclear energy we also assess the sensitivity of the results to nuclear technology cost we find that higher cost significantly decreases the share of nuclear power under both the reference and carbon price scenarios

economic and environmental impacts of electricity subsidy reform in kuwait a general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper examined economic and environmental impacts of reducing electricity subsidy in kuwait a social accounting matrix sam was constructed together with energy consumption with co2 emission were compiled and then calibrated with a computable general equilibrium cge model a simulation experiment was conducted by applying a 30 reduction of subsidy to the electricity sector this policy shock was applied to the model in two scenarios in scenario 1 the subsidy reduction was applied and results were compared with the baseline scenario given in the sam this yielded adverse economic effects on most endogenous variables but positive environmental benefits in terms of co2 emission reduction electricity tariff increased by three fold from 2 to 6 fils 0 7 cents to 2 cents per kwh gdp fell by 0 5 and aggregate household welfare declined by 0 8 in scenario 2 subsidy reduction was accompanied with cash transfers to compensate user losses the subsidy deducted from the electricity sector was allocated to users according to their share in base year total expenditure on electricity the results indicated that such transfers would reduce the adverse economic effects co2 emissions fell by 0 5 the gdp and household welfare effects were reversed rising by 0 4 and 0 1 respectively

scenario analysis on co2 emissions reduction potential in china s electricity sector abstract with the approach of the year 2012 a new round of international negotiations has energized the entire climate change community with this analyses on sector based emissions reduction and mitigation options will provide the necessary information to form the debate in order to assess the co2 emissions reduction potential of china s electricity sector this research employs three scenarios based on the long range energy alternative planning system leap model to simulate the different development paths in this sector the baseline scenario the current policy scenario and the new policy scenario seek to gradually increase the extent of industrial restructuring and technical advancement results imply that energy consumption and co2 emission in china s electricity sector will rise rapidly in all scenarios until 2030 triple or quadruple the 2000 level however through structural adjustment in china s electricity sector and through implementing technical mitigation measures various degrees of abatement can be achieved these reductions range from 85 to 350 million tons co2 per year figures that correspond to different degrees of cost and investment demand side management and circulating fluidized bed combustion cfbc ranked in order are employed prior to use to realize emissions reduction followed by supercritical plants and the renovation of conventional thermal power plants in the long term nuclear and hydropower will play the dominant role in contributing to emissions reduction it is also suggested that a self restraint reduction commitment should be employed to help contribute to the reduction of emission intensity an avenue that is more practical for china in light of its current development phase setting the year 2000 as the base year the intensity reduction target could possibly range from 4 2 to 19 4 dependent on the implementation effectiveness of various mitigation options

dynamic pricing of inventory capacity with infrequent price changes we consider a problem of dynamically pricing a single product sold by a monopolist over a short time period if demand characteristics change throughout the period it becomes attractive for the company to adjust price continuously to respond to such changes i e price discriminate intertemporally however in practice there is typically a limit on the number of times the price can be adjusted due to the high costs associated with frequent price changes if that is the case instead of a continuous pricing rule the company might want to establish a piece wise constant pricing policy in order to limit the number of price adjustments such a pricing policy which involves optimal choice of prices and timing of price changes is the focus of this paper we analyze the pricing problem with a limited number of price changes in a dynamic deterministic environment in which demand depends on the current price and time and there is a capacity inventory constraint that may be set optimally ahead of the selling season the arrival rate can evolve in time arbitrarily allowing us to model situations in which prices decrease increase or neither we consider several plausible scenarios where pricing and or timing of price changes are endogenized various notions of complementarity single crossing property supermodularity and total positivity are explored to derive structural results conditions sufficient for the uniqueness of the solution and the monotonicity of prices throughout the sales period furthermore we characterize the impact of the capacity constraint on the optimal prices and the timing of price changes and provide several other comparative statics results additional insights are obtained directly from the solutions of various special cases

interpreting income distributions in a welfare state the case of sweden abstract it is shown in this paper that the distribution of purchasing power and hence probably also economic well being in a welfare state like sweden is not tightly connected with the contribution of households in the production system moreover economic inequality is drastically exaggerated when income statistics are not adjusted for differences in working time and in the time profile of income over life however it is also shown that some important inequalities are not removed even by the very ambitious tax and welfare state system in sweden and that some new inequalities are in fact introduced the paper also tries to highlight the wide wedges which in an advanced welfare state are necessarily driven between factor costs for firms and factor rewards for households all this holds in particular for annual income

imperfections in the economics of public policy imperfections in markets and climate change the economics of public policy has suffered from collective amnesia we have forgotten or ignored much of the tradition of public policy in imperfect economies whose foundations were laid by james meade and paul samuelson this has been associated with a period of around two decades from the early 1980s to the early 2000s where the economics of public policy has bent to political winds and has fed arguments for government to get out of the way and leave everything to the markets to self interest and to self regulation this has manifested itself via the choice of models those which imply often directly from assumptions passive government patterns of teaching the marginalisation of public economies in imperfect economics and compartmentalisation examples in climate change where this amnesia has misled include approaches to discounting and the failure to make non marginal change central to analysis on the other hand creative application of modern public economics gives interesting results such as the possibility of making both current and future generations better off and of informed discussion complementing economic instruments there are strong formal analogies between policy on climate change and on behavioural economics indeed there seems to be great potential in the combination of these two fields jel a10 a12 d61 d62 d63

estimates of energy subsidies in china and impact of energy subsidy reform abstract for a transitional economy such as china some energy subsidies are reasonable and sometimes even necessary for achieving social goals however with rising energy prices and environmental concerns we see conflicts emerging between energy subsidies energy demand supply fundamentals and climate change considerations energy subsidies have important implications for sustainable development through their effects on energy use efficiency and the choice of fuel source this paper applies the price gap approach to estimate china s energy subsidies results indicate that china s energy subsidies amounted to cny 356 73 billion in 2007 equivalent to 1 43 of gdp subsidies for oil products consumption are the largest followed by subsidies for the electricity and coal sectors furthermore a cge model is used to analyze the economic impacts of energy subsidy reforms our findings show that removing energy subsidies will result in a significant fall in energy demand and emissions but will have negative impacts on macroeconomic variables we conclude that offsetting policies could be adopted such that certain shares of these subsidies are reallocated to support other sustainable development measures which could lead to reducing energy intensity and favoring the environment

the energy intensity of transition countries the economies of central and eastern europe and the former soviet union have traditionally been very energy intensive energy intensity defined as energy use per gdp has decreased in the course of transition but progress has been uneven and most transition countries still use several times as much energy per unit of output as their western peers this paper decomposes energy data to identify the main factors behind the improvements in energy intensity it shows that energy prices and progress in enterprise restructuring are the two most important drivers for more efficient energy use

vertical integration and firm boundaries the evidence since ronald h coase s 1937 seminal paper a rich set of theories has been developed that deal with firm boundaries in vertical or input output structures in the last twenty five years empirical evidence that can shed light on those theories also has been accumulating we review the findings of empirical studies that have addressed two main interrelated questions first what types of transactions are best brought within the firm and second what are the consequences of vertical integration decisions for economic outcomes such as prices quantities investment and profits throughout we highlight areas of potential cross fertilization and promising areas for future work

effect of floating pricing policy an application of system dynamics on oil market after liberalization abstract upon the implementation of the floating price mechanism taiwan s gasoline and diesel prices returned to market mechanism which terminated the phenomenon of the public paying for the losses of the state owned oil company chinese petroleum corporation taiwan cpc furthermore the relatively low production costs of the privately owned formosa petrochemical corporation fpcc disclosed the pricing mechanism of cpc which inspired fpcc to adopt pricing strategy in order to increase the market share this study aims to establish a system dynamics model to analyze the effects of the floating price mechanism on taiwan s gasoline and diesel markets this model is divided into four sub systems the model of this study passed several validation tests and hence is able to provide a virtual laboratory for policy makers to conduct simulation and scenario analysis the simulation results indicate a feedback mechanism of expected revenues and pricing strategy could efficiently simulate the fpcc pricing mechanism b price competition strategy could increase fpcc revenues although the effect on market share is not remarkable and c fpcc has a higher gas station growth rate scenario analyses found a lowering oil security stockpile would not change fpcc s pricing strategy and b fpcc prefers to follow cpc pricing when it has more gas stations

an evaluation of the impact of reducing energy subsidies on living expenses of households abstract a policy of subsidizing energy has been pursued in the islamic republic of iran to help the poor and to utilize the relative advantages of the country but it has been realized that energy subsidy has led to market distortion and welfare loss hence elimination of energy subsidy is considered as a crucial matter changes in energy policy are hindered by the uncertainty on the impact of reducing energy subsidy on the living expenses of population in the present article the distribution of resources through energy subsidy is evaluated and the direct and indirect effect of eliminating energy subsidies on the living expenses is estimated with the help of an analytical tool that has been developed it is then concluded that additional financial resources obtained from reduction of energy subsidies could be allocated for compensating the decrease in purchasing power of households the results of analysis reveal that more egalitarian distribution of resources and helping the poor could be achieved through implementation of a progressive policy of social security that is supported by financial resources available from elimination of energy subsidies

economists and the welfare state abstract this paper constrasts the views of the welfare state of economists in the 1940s and 1950s with those of the current generation it is argued that economists as a profession in particular in the scandinavian countries have changed from being strong spokesmen for the welfare state to becoming much more critical the reasons for this are sought both in the expansion of the public sector in recent decades and in the development of economic theory in the areas of public finance insurance and incentives and public choice an attempt is made to evaluate the importance of the empirical and theoretical developments for the changing views of the welfare state

carbon emissions trading scheme exploration in china a multi agent based model abstract to develop a low carbon economy china launched seven pilot programs for carbon emissions trading cet in 2011 and plans to establish a nationwide cet mechanism in 2015 this paper formulated a multi agent based model to investigate the impacts of different cet designs in order to find the most appropriate one for china the proposed bottom up model includes all main economic agents in a general equilibrium framework the simulation results indicate that 1 cet would effectively reduce carbon emissions with a certain negative impact on the economy 2 as for allowance allocation the grandfathering rule is relatively moderate while the benchmarking rule is more aggressive 3 as for the carbon price when the price level in the secondary cet market is regulated to be around rmb 40 per metric ton a satisfactory emission mitigation effect can be obtained 4 the penalty rate is suggested to be carefully designed to balance the economy development and mitigation effect and 5 subsidy policy for energy technology improvement can effectively reduce carbon emissions without an additional negative impact on the economy the results also indicate that the proposed novel model is a promising tool for cet policy making and analyses

vertical scope turbulence and the benefits of commitment and flexibility we address the contested state of theory and the mixed empirical evidence on the relationship between turbulence and vertical scope by studying how turbulence affects the benefits of commitment from integrated development of components and the benefits of flexibility from sourcing components externally we show that increasing turbulence first increases but then decreases the relative value of vertical integration moderate turbulence reduces the value of flexibility by making supplier selection more difficult and increases the value of commitment by mitigating the status quo bias of integrated structures both effects improve the value of integration higher levels of turbulence undermine the adaptive benefits of commitment but have a less adverse effect on flexibility making nonintegration more attractive we also show how complexity and uneven rates of turbulence moderate the nonmonotonic relationship between turbulence and integration this paper was accepted by jesper sorensen organizations

relationships among three assumptions in revenue management this note discusses the relationships among three assumptions that appear frequently in the pricing revenue management literature these assumptions are mostly needed for analytical tractability and they have the common property of ensuring a well behaved revenue function the three assumptions are decreasing marginal revenue with respect to demand decreasing marginal revenue with respect to price and increasing price elasticity of demand we provide proofs and examples to show that none of these conditions implies any other however they can be ordered from strongest to weakest over restricted regions and the ordering depends upon the region

the development of policy instruments in supporting low carbon governance in china abstract this paper examines the development of policy instruments that support the low carbon governance in china the instruments are analysed in five aspects in relation to the key policies in low carbon governance in china including energy conservation developing new energy reforestry developing circular economy and industry restructuring each aspect is discussed in three instrument groups which are 1 law and regulations 2 industry standard and 3 finance and taxation this research suggests that law enforcement for the new established laws should be further strengthened and stricter supervision systems should be in place to safeguard effective implementation of low carbon policies measures and standards especially for those energy condensed sectors more rigorous industry standards regarding energy efficiency should be considered to help eliminate outdated equipments in industries and promote the introduction of more climate friendly technologies the industrial standards should be given strong legal support in accountability in order to enforce their complete application once in operation new policies and instruments need to be introduced in order to reduce carbon print by landfill the backward law and industrial standards in china should be upgraded more regularly therefore to support the low carbon development strategy

a knowledge based theory of the firm the problem solving perspective in this paper we develop a knowledge based theory of the firm while existing knowledge based theory focuses on the efficiency of hierarchy in economizing on knowledge exchange we develop a theory of the firm that focuses on the efficiency of alternative organizational forms ingenerating knowledge or capability our theory begins with the problem as the basic unit of analysis arguing that a problem s complexity influences the optimal method of solution search and the optimal means of organizing that search the distinguishing feature that differentiates among organizational alternatives is the different way each resolves conflict over the selection of solution trials that is the way it chooses the path of search our theory predicts that efficiency demands that these governance alternatives be matched in a discriminating way to problems based on their associated benefits and costs in governing solution search thus our theory is among the first to simultaneously treat both the boundary choice i e internal versus external and the choice among alternative internal approaches to organizing

a fractiles perspective to the joint price quantity newsvendor model pricing and quantity decisions are critical to many firms across different industries we study the joint price quantity newsvendor model where only a single quantity and price decision is made such as a fashion or holiday product that cannot be replenished and where the price is advertised nationally and cannot be changed demand is uncertain and sensitive to price we develop a method for easily finding the optimal price and quantity that applies to more general cases than the usual one in which uncertainty is either additive multiplicative or a combination of the two we represent a quantity by its fractile of the probability distribution of demand for a given price we use a standard approach to approximating a given distribution with a finite number of representative fractiles and assume that these fractile functions are piecewise linear functions of the price we identify effects that are not usually seen in a joint price quantity newsvendor model for example although the optimal quantity is a decreasing function of the unit cost the optimal price can be nonmonotone in the unit cost and we shed insight into why we illustrate that using a simplified structure of demand uncertainty can result in substantially lower profits

reducing fuel subsidies and the implication on fiscal balance and poverty in indonesia a simulation analysis abstract there is an urgent need for phasing out fuel subsidies in indonesia due to a severe budget deficit and a worsening of income distribution fuel subsidies of which almost 72 are enjoyed by the 30 of the richest income groups have consumed on average 63 8 of the total subsidies between 1998 and 2013 this paper aims at evaluating the relationship between existing fuel subsidies and fiscal balance and at analysing the poverty impact of phasing out fuel subsidies applying a cge microsimulation this study found that removing 25 of fuel subsidies increases the incidence of poverty by 0 259 percentage points if this money were fully allocated to government spending the poverty incidence would decrease by 0 27 percentage points moreover the 100 removal of fuel subsidies and the reallocation of 50 of them to government spending transfers and other subsidies could decrease the incidence of poverty by 0 277 percentage points however these reallocation policies might not be effective in compensating for the adverse impacts of the 100 removal of fuel subsidies if economic agents try to seek profit through mark up pricing over the increase of production costs

the causes of government expenditure growth a survey of the u s evidence abstract the growth of government budgets can be broken down into a institutional and institutional components the former component the familiar substitution income and population public goods tax sharing effects is estimated to contribute about two fifths of the growth of u s government spending the latter component rent seeking political redistributions bureaucracy and perceptual informational impedimentia is important too but an exact imputation cannot be asserted given the state of the art in empirical public choice theory the cross effects on spending of the growth of regulation and tax preferences or tax expenditures though interesting is not pursued

closed or open innovation problem solving and the governance choice scholars have recently highlighted the promise of open innovation in this paper we treat open innovation in it s different forms and manifestations as well as internal or closed innovation as unique governance forms with different benefits and costs we discuss how each governance form whether open or closed is composed of a set of instruments that access a different types of communication channels for knowledge sharing b different types of incentives and c different types of property rights for appropriating value from innovation we focus on the innovation problem as the central unit of analysis arguing for a match between problem types and governance forms which vary from open to closed and which support alternative forms of solution search in all the goal of this paper is to provide a comparative framework for managing innovation where we delineate and discuss four categories of open innovation governance forms markets partnerships contests and tournaments and user or community innovation and compare them with each other and with two internal or closed forms of innovation governance authority and consensus based hierarchy

the rise of agile demand response enabler and foundation for change abstract the distributed resources distributed generations storage electric vehicles and smart appliances have fueled many disruptions in the conventional grid dynamics increasing tough and competitive situations at demand side have led the stakeholders of power system to reform because people are more informed and can make decisions that has given rise to turbulent and volatile electricity markets in such highly diversified and open market environment the integrated control strategy has expedited the concept of demand response currently the important questions in the area of demand response are likely to shift from whether to adopt dynamic pricing to how to achieve fast demand response by the combination of technology and a competitive retail electricity market this paper assembles the part and parcel in the light of existing technologies for the development of the concept of agility in demand response that can play a role as a service package which is designed to meet the customer satisfaction efficiently and reliably as well as improve the market responsiveness for the first time this paper encompasses the concept of agile demand response that is defined as the ability of power system to survive and prosper in the competitive retail market by reacting to the market needs fast and effectively which are driven by the customers this paper also presents the key enablers of the agile demand response which are 1 retail market 2 virtual supply demand matching mechanism 3 integrated information system and 4 stay committed the paper concludes that by bringing the enablers together agile dr improves the responsiveness to the retail market changes unambiguously

reducing subsidies on household fuels in india how will it affect the poor kerosene and lpg are widely used in households in india for lighting and cooking these fuels have historically been subsidized as part of the restructuring of the energy sector the government is committed to limiting these subsidies this paper examines the impact of reducing energy subsidies on the welfare of the poor the paper uses data from nationally representative surveys of over 100 000 households the paper concludes that the case for reducing lpg subsidies is strong although the kerosene subsidy is an inefficient means of subsidizing fuel use by the poor reduction in it will need to be supported by other policies that would limit the adverse impacts

an inventory system with demand dependent on both time and price assuming backlogged shortages abstract in this work we analyze an inventory model for items whose demand is a bivariate function of price and time it is supposed that the demand rate multiplicatively combines the effects of a time power function and a price logit function the aim is to maximize the profit per time unit assuming that the inventory cost per time unit is the sum of the holding shortage ordering and purchasing costs an algorithm is developed to find the optimal price the optimal lot size and the optimal replenishment cycle several numerical examples are introduced to illustrate the solution procedure

co2 emissions from electricity generation in seven asia pacific and north american countries a decomposition analysis abstract the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method of complete decomposition is used to examine the role of three factors electricity production electricity generation structure and energy intensity of electricity generation affecting the evolution of co2 emissions from electricity generation in seven countries these seven countries together generated 58 of global electricity and they are responsible for more than two thirds of global co2 emissions from electricity generation in 2005 the analysis shows production effect as the major factor responsible for rise in co2 emissions during the period 1990 2005 the generation structure effect also contributed in co2 emissions increase although at a slower rate in contrary the energy intensity effect is responsible for modest reduction in co2 emissions during this period over the 2005 2030 period production effect remains the key factor responsible for increase in emissions and energy intensity effect is responsible for decrease in emissions unlike in the past generation structure effect contributes significant decrease in emissions however the degree of influence of these factors affecting changes in co2 emissions vary from country to country the analysis also shows that there is a potential of efficiency improvement of fossil fuel fired power plants and its associated co benefits among these countries

introduction the welfare economics of the welfare state outsiders to economics might be forgiven for thinking that welfare economics provides the theoretical underpinnings for the welfare state but although the language is suggestive the link between theoretical welfare economics and policy recommendations concerning the role of the public sector the optimal degree of redistribution and social insurance etc is not obviously a very strong one economists who use a welfare theoretic framework for thinking about economic and social problems might be led to advocate a night watchman state which would mainly be concerned with the provision of public goods or alternatively to argue for a crucial role of the public sector as a redistributive system as in the welfare state what is the welfare state it is always tempting to avoid issues of definition but in this case it seems appropriate to point out that the concept is in fact used in at least two different ways some use it to denote a subsection of the public sector concerned with redistribution via social security and social assistance and the provision of those social goods which have a strong redistributive element like health care and education others use the term in a much wider sense to characterize the economic and social policies of a country that gives high priorities to equality and individual protection against social hazards to illustrate the difference in usage according to both definitions unemployment insurance would definitely come under the heading of welfare state policies whereas macroeconomic policies that are designed to prevent or reduce unemployment would be included in the second definition of welfare state policies but not in the first i am inclined to take the wider view of the welfare state primarily because i feel that the more narrow definition introduces a number of rather awkward borderlines between the various areas of economic policy in the following i first consider what bearing the neoclassical version of welfare economics has on the design of welfare policy i then discuss

the unequal benefits of fuel subsidies a review of evidence for developing countries summary this paper reviews evidence on the impact of fuel subsidy reform on household welfare in developing countries on average the burden of subsidy reform is substantial and is approximately neutrally distributed across income groups a 0 25 decrease in the per liter subsidy results in a 5 decrease in income for all groups more than half of this impact arises from the indirect impact on prices of other goods and services consumed by households fuel subsidies are a costly approach to protecting the poor due to substantial benefit leakage to higher income groups in absolute terms the top income quintile captures six times more in subsidies than the bottom

simulating the new british electricity market reform abstract the british government is implementing fully its novel electricity market reform gb emr its objective in line with european directives aims at replacing existing nuclear and coal plant with low carbon systems to deliver reliable and affordable power though the gb emr has proposed several policy instruments for meeting its objectives and the academic literature has discussed the main issues no known report includes a comprehensive and dynamic simulation exercise that assesses the extent of this profound and important initiative this paper presents a system dynamics model that supports analysis of long term effects of the various policy instruments that have been proposed in the gb emr focusing on environmental quality security of supply and economic sustainability using lessons learned from simulation the paper concludes that effectively achieving the gb emr objectives requires this comprehensive intervention or a similar one that includes the promotion of low carbon electricity generation through the simultaneous implementation of various direct and indirect incentives such as a carbon price floor a feed in tariff fit and a capacity mechanism

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

energy consumption and economic growth the case of oil exporting countries this paper examines the causal relationship between the per capita energy consumption and the per capita gdp in a panel of 11 selected oil exporting countries by using panel unit root tests and panel cointegration analysis the results show a unidirectional strong causality from economic growth to energy consumption for the oil exporting countries the findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning in most major oil exporting countries government policies keep domestic prices bellow free market level resulting in high levels of domestic energy consumption the results imply that the energy conservation through reforming energy price policies has no damaging repercussions on economic growth for this group of countries

a survey study of energy saving activities of industrial companies in the republic of korea abstract this study measures industrial energy saving activities esas in the republic of korea and identifies their determinant factors by a questionnaire survey to the energy intensive companies more than 90 of the samples have practiced the institutional and managerial esas requiring relatively lower costs and efforts although the companies have felt strong pressures from the governmental regulations and recognized the importance of industrial associations the externally coercive normative and mimetic factors still indicate no significant influence on their esas at present as internal factors the willingness for energy saving support from top management and internal training specific for energy saving determine a company s practice level of esas economic incentives like financial subsidies are useful for encouraging the company s involvement in esas korean government shall also provide more technical support to the companies particularly the small and medium sized ones for enhancing their capacities in promptly reacting to the newly initiated mandatory regulations on industrial energy efficiency

tax arbitrage and labor supply we examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well functioning asset markets affects the basic labor supply model we show that tax arbitrage has dramatic implications for positive normative and econometric analysis of how taxes affect work incentives

a resource based theory of the firm knowledge versus opportunism this paper develops a resource based knowledge based theory of the firm its thesis is that the organizational mode through which individuals cooperate affects the knowledge they apply to business activity we focus on the polar cases of organization within a firm as compared to market contracting there will be a difference in the knowledge that is brought to bear and hence in joint productivity under the two options thus as compared to opportunism based transaction cost theory we advance a separate yet complementary answer to the question why do firms exist our aim is to develop an empirically relevant and complementary theory of why firms are formed a theory based on irreducible knowledge differences between individuals rather than the threat of purposeful cheating or withholding of information we assume limited cognitive abilities on the part of individuals bounded rationality and assume that opportunistic behavior will not occur the latter allows us to determine whether resource based

an elasticity approach to the newsvendor with price sensitive demand we introduce a measure of elasticity of stochastic demand called the elasticity of the lost sales rate which offers a unifying perspective on the well known newsvendor with pricing problem this new concept provides a framework to characterize structural results for coordinated and uncoordinated pricing and inventory strategies concavity and submodularity of the profit function as well as sensitivity properties of the optimal inventory and price policies are characterized by monotonicity conditions or bounds on the elasticity of the lost sales rate these elasticity conditions are satisfied by most relevant demand models in the marketing and operations literature our results unify and complement previous work on price setting newsvendor models and provide a new tool for researchers modeling stochastic price sensitive demand in other contexts

combined pricing and inventory control under uncertainty this paper addresses the simultaneous determination of pricing and inventory replenishment strategies in the face of demand uncertainty more specifically we analyze the following single item periodic review model demands in consecutive periods are independent but their distributions depend on the item s price in accordance with general stochastic demand functions the price charged in any given period can be specified dynamically as a function of the state of the system a replenishment order may be placed at the beginning of some or all of the periods stockouts are fully backlogged we address both finite and infinite horizon models with the objective of maximizing total expected discounted profit or its time average value assuming that prices can either be adjusted arbitrarily upward or downward or that they can only be decreased we characterize the structure of an optimal combined pricing and inventory strategy for all of the above types of models we also develop an efficient value iteration method to compute these optimal strategies finally we report on an extensive numerical study that characterizes various qualitative properties of the optimal strategies and corresponding optimal profit values

a general equilibrium model for industries with price and service competition this paper develops a stochastic general equilibrium inventory model for an oligopoly in which all inventory constraint parameters are endogenously determined we propose several systems of demand processes whose distributions are functions of all retailers prices and all retailers service levels we proceed with the investigation of the equilibrium behavior of infinite horizon models for industries facing this type of generalized competition under demand uncertainty we systematically consider the following three competition scenarios 1 price competition only here we assume that the firms service levels are exogenously chosen but characterize how the price and inventory strategy equilibrium vary with the chosen service levels 2 simultaneous price and service level competition here each of the firms simultaneously chooses a service level and a combined price and inventory strategy 3 two stage competition the firms make their competitive choices sequentially in a first stage all firms simultaneously choose a service level in a second stage the firms simultaneously choose a combined pricing and inventory strategy with full knowledge of the service levels selected by all competitors we show that in all of the above settings a nash equilibrium of infinite horizon stationary strategies exists and that it is of a simple structure provided a nash equilibrium exists in a so called reduced game we pay particular attention to the question of whether a firm can choose its service level on the basis of its own input characteristics i e its cost parameters and demand function only we also investigate under which of the demand models a firm under simultaneous competition responds to a change in the exogenously specified characteristics of the various competitors by either i adjusting its service level and price in the same direction thereby compensating for price increases decreases by offering improved inferior service or ii adjusting them in opposite directions thereby simultaneously offering better or worse prices and service

the welfare state as provider of accident insurance in the workplace efficiency and distribution in equilibrium the welfare state provides universal insurance for workers against accidents in the workplace in equilibrium this insurance does not generate adverse safety incentives to firms noninternalized insurance makes workers sort themselves nonoptimally to firms and choose higher individual effort levels to prevent accidents as compared to insurance schemes that are internalized in the market welfare state insurance may therefore generate higher safety levels than perfect experience rating not lower an optimal income taxation scheme in the welfare state implies progressive taxation the optimal tax level increases with the extent of the welfare state copyright 1995 by royal economic society

how vertical integration affects firm innovation quasi experimental evidence although it is well established that vertical integration decisions have important consequences for firms direct evidence on how vertical integration matters to firm innovation has been scarce th

assessing emissions mitigation energy policy under integrated supply and demand analysis the colombian case the effects of greenhouse gases on climate variation set policy challenges for the energy industry the largest greenhouse gas contributor globally in this context the energy industry is being subjected to reforms focussing on the environment internalisation of emission costs and the promotion of cleaner technologies to overcome the challenges posed by the emission of greenhouse gases governments have implemented mitigation policies in the power supply industries most policy instruments include either financial incentives or goals and standards and these generate impacts on electricity prices and consumer behaviour this paper models policies effects on prices and demand through an integrated demand and supply analysis for the colombian case while simulation of carbon taxes shows important reductions of fossil fuelled power capacity a feed in tariff policy promotes clean technologies though not significantly reducing use of fossil technologies when applied simultaneously policy has a greater impact on both emission reductions and the diffusion of clean technologies while only increasing electricity prices slightly even when price elasticity of demand is low such policies may have a significant effect on the penetration of renewables and emissions furthermore this structured modelling of policy helps explain how the ultimate intended goal sustainable emissions reduction might be achieved

integrating cleaner production into sustainability strategies an introduction to this special volume abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2013 the 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns the authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies raw material replacement renewable energy technological developments product and policy changes the central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric scale some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of cleaner production into policies and practice multiple examples of successful integration of cp in national and local policy structures exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community at large the authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local regional national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well being

four formal izable theories of the firm in this essay i define and compare elemental versions of four theories of the firm these elemental theories are distilled from important contributions by hart holmstrom klein williamson and others although these contributions have been widely cited and much discussed i have found it difficult to understand the commonalities distinctions and potential combinations of these seemingly familiar contributions in this essay therefore i attempt to clarify these issues in three steps i begin with informal summaries of the theories then turn to simple but formal statements of each elemental theory and finally nest the four elemental theories in an integrative framework

a pigovian rule for the optimum provision of public goods abstract the integrated treatment of optimal taxation and public expenditure presented here is based on the dual relationship between the prices of private goods and the quantities of public goods the conditions for optimum public good provision can be expressed as a modification of the samuelson conditions with extra terms representing a the distortionary effect of taxes on the willingness to pay for the public good and b distributional effects the former captures pigou s notion of the indirect damage caused by the need to finance public expenditure out of distortionary taxes and we call this the pigou term in certain cases a very simple benefit cost ratio for public projects emerges that is equivalent to measuring benefits as if they were taxed

tax revenue and the marginal cost of public funds in sweden abstract we assess the welfare cost of raising a marginal unit of tax revenue in a balanced budget general equilibrium framework the calculated social cost of an increment of public funds is sensitive to both the specific type of tax increase and the type of public spending used on the margin best guess assumptions on labor supply elasticities yield marginal costs of public funds for different fiscal mixes of between 0 67 and 4 51 at prevailing tax rates in sweden alternative labor supply assumptions well within the range of current estimates substantially affect the results and can imply infinite marginal welfare costs marginal welfare costs are also sensitive to assumptions about both the income and substitution effects of labor supply

water subsidy policies comparison of the chilean and colombian schemes analysis of two water subsidy schemes a means tested subsidy in chile and a geographically targeted subsidy in colombia shows that the means tested system is better able to identify poor households than the geographically targeted scheme however the overall distributive impact of both schemes is quite similar at least for the three lowest income deciles because the amount of benefits per household in the geographically targeted colombian scheme are differentiated by the socioeconomic classification of household despite the relative merits of the chilean means tested scheme targeting errors are still quite large more than 60 percent of subsidies accrue to households that are above the third decile of the income distribution if the policy objective in chile is to benefit a significant proportion of households in the lowest income deciles then either the targeting mechanism must be improved or the number of subsidies has to increase to take into account these targeting imperfections in colombia almost all households receive some kind of benefit implying an unnecessarily high fiscal cost an improvement in the targeting mechanism could lower this cost without jeopardizing benefits to lower income households some suggestions for additional research and for improving both schemes are discussed

lower tax progression longer hours and higher wages the impact of tax reforms that decrease income tax progression is analysed in an equilibrium search model with wage bargaining and endogenous individual working hours working hours are either bargained together with the hourly wage case 1 or determined solely by workers after bargaining over the wage case 2 in both cases reducing tax progression increases working hours of employed and more interestingly unambiguously increases wages and unemployment wages and unemployment rise more and working hours and production less in case 1 compared to case 2 probably making case 2 countries best suited for such tax reforms

impact of energy subsidies on energy consumption and supply in zimbabwe do the urban poor really benefit abstract twenty percent of zimbabwe s urban poor households are still to be connected to the grid the majority of these households are poor there are several reasons why the zimbabwe urban poor are still not connected to the grid the most important one being the household incomes and the cost of different sources of energy in order to facilitate wider usage of electricity by the poor the policy makers have introduced a subsidy policy the objective of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which the poor urban households could afford the cost of electricity with or without subsidies this gives an indication on whether contrary to the current thinking subsidies are decisive for the affordability of electricity by the urban households the paper also examines the distribution of the subsidies amongst the different urban household income categories and other economic sectors furthermore the impact of such subsidies on the utility s finances is assessed

a note on probability distributions with increasing generalized failure rates distributions with an increasing generalized failure rate igfr have useful applications in pricing and supply chain contracting problems we provide alternative characterizations of the igfr property that lead to simplify verifying whether the igfr condition holds we also relate the limit of the generalized failure rate and the moments of a distribution

coordinating inventory control and pricing strategies with random demand and fixed ordering cost the finite horizon case we analyze a finite horizon single product periodic review model in which pricing and production inventory decisions are made simultaneously demands in different periods are random variables that are independent of each other and their distributions depend on the product price pricing and ordering decisions are made at the beginning of each period and all shortages are backlogged ordering cost includes both a fixed cost and a variable cost proportional to the amount ordered the objective is to find an inventory policy and a pricing strategy maximizing expected profit over the finite horizon we show that when the demand model is additive the profit to go functions arek concave and hence an s s p policy is optimal in such a policy the period inventory is managed based on the classical s s policy and price is determined based on the inventory position at the beginning of each period for more general demand functions i e multiplicative plus additive functions we demonstrate that the profit to go function is not necessarilyk concave and an s s p policy is not necessarily optimal we introduce a new concept the symmetrick concave functions and apply it to provide a characterization of the optimal policy

utility subsidy reform in abu dhabi a review and a computable general equilibrium analysis abstract electricity and water consumption in abu dhabi has increased substantially in recent years along with rapid economic and population growth as one of the oil producing economies located in arid regions abu dhabi s electricity and water are produced predominantly with fossil fuel based power water co generation which generate carbon emissions the consumption of electricity and water is heavily subsidized to support industrial growth lower cost of living and distribute state wealth to the population the low utility prices however may have contributed to high per capita carbon emissions for the emirate this paper reviews critical literature on energy subsidy policy for oil exporting economies we then examine the economic and environmental effects of water and electricity subsidy reduction in abu dhabi using a computable general equilibrium analysis the result shows that utility subsidy reduction alone increases gross domestic product gdp of the emirate through expanding the high value added service sector and reduces carbon emissions with decreasing carbon intensive industrial and utility productions meanwhile private consumption declines with decreasing wage electricity subsidy reduction in general has greater economic and environmental effects than water subsidy reduction the positive economic and environmental gains may incentivize utility subsidy reform in the long run when the negative wage effect is mitigated

the relationships among acquiring and acquired firms product lines this study develops detailed information on the relationships among the activities of acquiring and acquired firms at and near the time of merger for a sample of 94 takeovers undertaken between 1977 1982 we focus on takeovers for two reasons first takeovers are an important and controversial phenomenon second takeovers allow us to look at marginal changes admittedly large ones in the firm s boundaries thus they provide a useful way of examining relationships among activities of the firm without having to go into great detail regarding the historical decisions that generated the firm s current structure while the individual establishment is our basic data unit in this study we aggregate the activities of the firm to the line of business lob level each lob of an acquired firm is classified as to its relationship horizontal vertical upstream or downstream and conglomerate to the lobs of the acquiring firm using these categorizations we aggregate the lob level information to the firm level to investigate the degree to which our sample of mergers is specialized to particular types of relationships while we find a significant group of unspecialized takeovers most appear to fit a specific category we also look at the pattern of closed operations immediately following the takeover closings are generally concentrated in operations involving horizontal relationships finally we consider the pattern of relationships between hostile and friendly takeovers and whether takeover premiums vary by type of merger merger premiums are not related to the type of relationship between the acquiring and acquired firm but they are tied to whether the takeover is friendly or hostile this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

firm organization industrial structure and technological innovation abstract the formal and informal structures of firms and their external linkages have an important bearing on the rate and direction of innovation this paper explores the properties of different types of firms with respect to the generation of new technology various archetypes are recognized and an effort is made to match organization structure to the type of innovation the framework is relevant to technology and competition policy as it broadens the framework economists use to identify environments that assist innovation

economic policy institutions and entrepreneurship economists have debated the issue of state intervention in the economic process in capitalist economies intensively for decades often however without considering the effects of state intervention on entrepreneurship in this paper we undertake a critical analysis of the institutionalist theory of state intervention developed by ha joon chang he identifies two key roles for the state in facilitating structural change namely firstly to pronounce a vision for the future state entrepreneurship and secondly management of conflicts which arise during the process of structural change we also examine how well the swedish model of state intervention fits into chang s model as well as possible drawbacks with the swedish model not least in terms of reducing the incentives for entrepreneurship thirdly we examine the possibility that because of radical changes in its economic and political environment the swedish model has become less successful in carrying out the two key roles outlined by dr chang in the last three decades finally we discuss the implications of these changes for the chang style interventionalist state is there any room left for structural change management by the state in the global era if so what are the appropriate measures and policy levels for this type of intervention and in particular how can proper institutions and incentives for entrepreneurship be used to facilitate the structural change process

does giving lead to getting evidence from chinese private enterprises enterprise philanthropy is practiced in a very unique and rudimentary form in china based on a unique random survey data on 3837 chinese private enterprises conducted in 31 provinces of china in 2006 i find the significant positive relationship between enterprise philanthropy donation and enterprise profitability and the result supports the political and institutional power view of enterprise philanthropy in the latest development of china simply put chinese private enterprises carried out philanthropy activities to better protect property rights and nurture political connections which in turn leads to better enterprise profitability the result is even stronger in institutions weaker provinces

a risk averse newsvendor model under marketing dependency and price dependency abstract in this paper we analyze a single period inventory model where a risk averse newsvendor makes a joint decision on ordering pricing and marketing under the cvar risk measure criterion the newsvendor can exert marketing effort to enhance market demand we assume that the newsvendor s marketing effort affects the scale of the demand distribution and hence to model the marketing dependent demand as a multiplicative form we characterize sufficient conditions that guarantee existence and uniqueness of the optimal solutions under some mild assumptions on demand distribution expected demand function and marketing effort cost which are widely used in the related literature we show that the optimal order quantity increases in the newsvendor s marketing effort but the optimal price remains unchanged whether the demand is marketing dependent or not additionally we explore impact of exogenous parameters such as unit order cost salvage value and the newsvendor s risk aversion coefficient on the optimal decision variables and find that the optimal marketing effort always keeps the same changing direction with the optimal marketing independent order quantity as the exogenous parameters change this suggests that impact of the parameters on the optimal order quantity gets strengthened in the case of marketing dependent demand

affordability of energy cost increases for korean companies due to market based climate policies a survey study by sector this paper estimates the affordability of energy cost increases for energy intensive companies due to the introduction of market based climate policies in korea data were collected from 62 respondents from iron steel cement and petrochemical industries over 90 of which are under control of the target management scheme an ongoing mandatory system limiting the greenhouse gases ghg emissions of large energy consuming entities the affordable energy cost increase was estimated using the multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format results of which show that a mean energy cost increase of 2 6 is acceptable for all the entities sampled companies from the three sectors had similar affordability with an average acceptable energy cost increase of 2 5e2 8 the affordable policy induced energy cost in creases equate to carbon prices of 2500e4000 krw t co2 about 2 3e3 5 usd t co2 for the companies surveyed econometric analysis confirmed a strong correlation between energy price level and company ownership with cost affordability with a view to developing carbon tax policy and a domestic ghg emissions trading scheme in korea this research provides a basis from an industrial perspective for carbon pricing

a system dynamics analysis of technology cost and policy that affect the market competition of shale gas in china abstract in order to ease environment pressure and alleviate the scarce problem of energy chinese government has begun to exploit and develop shale gas sg since 2009 however the formation of competitive market is bristled with difficulties due to its infancy imperfect and lack of standardization this paper firstly analyzes the status quo of technology policy cost and competition of sg industry in china then a system dynamics sd model is built to show various trends of chinese sg industry under different scenarios which shows that technology policy and cost all have effects on competitiveness at last the simulations reveal that the number of competitors in chinese sg industry will arrive at its peak from 2019 to 2020 the corresponding recommendations have been presented chinese government should pay more attention on the perfection of laws and regulations of sg industry and competitors should focus on increasing r d investment

optimal inventory policy for a perishable item with demand function sensitive to price and time abstract we formulate a model for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for perishable items with price dependent and time dependent demand the items have a fixed shelf life and the demand rate decreases linearly in the selling price and polynomially over the time after replenishment until it vanishes either at the reservation price or at expiration time we prove that the three variable profit maximization problem can be reduced into a single variable problem in which the variable is the duration of the replenishment period we show that the profit function is strictly pseudo concave and provide means of obtaining the optimal policy three numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the model accompanied by a sensitivity analysis

kuwait s energy subsidy reduction examining economic and co2 emission effects with or without compensation abstract this paper examined economy wide impacts of reducing energy subsidy in kuwait a social accounting matrix sam was constructed and a computable general equilibrium cge model was developed the cge model was used to simulate separate and combined effects of a 25 reduction of subsidy to three energy products natural gas oil and electricity this policy shock was applied to the model in two scenarios in each round the subsidy reductions were applied to each energy product separately in turn and then finally simultaneously to all energy products in the first scenario subsidy reductions were applied and results were compared with the baseline scenario given in the sam this yielded adverse effects across a range of endogenous variables it leads to large energy price increases as high as 255 for electricity gross domestic product gdp marginally declined by 0 28 in scenario 2 the subsidy reduction was accompanied with cash transfers to energy users a compensation for welfare loss the amount of transfer was equivalent to the sum of the amount of subsidy reductions the results indicated that such transfers would reduce the adverse effects of the policy reform the effects on gdp was reversed it rose by 1 01 the price effect was slightly lower electricity price rose by 245 finally sensitivity of the model results was examined by varying the elasticity of the substitution of composite energy and capital in production greater possibility of substitution seems to cause subsidy reform to have much larger positive or smaller adverse economy wide effects the simulation experiments suggest that subsidy reform would need to be accompanied by demand side stimulus or supply side initiatives to encourage energy conservation

capabilities transaction costs and firm boundaries although the literature on firm boundaries has been greatly influenced by transaction cost economics strategy scholars often emphasize the importance of capabilities considerations in these decisions this has led to a debate that we suggest has generated more heat than light we argue that the two sets of considerations are in fact so intertwined dynamically that treating them as independent competitive explanations is fundamentally misleading we offer a theoretical synthesis of transaction cost and capabilities approaches to firm boundaries that seeks to overcome each approach s limitations and provides a unified and logically consistent understanding of boundary decisions

company s affordability of increased energy costs due to climate policies a survey by sector in china this paper estimates the affordability of chinese companies on energy cost increases due to the introduction of market based climate policies the data were collected from 170 respondents mainly from iron and steel cement and chemical industries using a multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format estimations indicate that a mean of 8 8 in energy cost increase would be acceptable for all the samples the chemical companies express a slightly higher affordability with the mean of acceptable ratios of energy cost increases being 9 9 while the cement companies show slightly lower affordability with a mean of 7 7 econometric analysis confirms that the market competition degree has a significant but negative relationship with the affordability while the company s size is significantly and positively associated with the affordability calculations indicate that the mean of affordable energy cost increases roughly equals a carbon price of 83 7 cny t co2 about 12 usd t co2 for chemical companies and around 40 cny t co2 about 6 usd t co2 for iron and steel and cement sectors this result provides a meaningful referendum for the development of carbon tax and the establishment of a domestic carbon emissions trading scheme in china especially from the perspective of surveyed industries

economic consequences of an aging population pip europe and japan are experiencing the aging of their populations aging implies a restructuring of the economy political issues which arise in an aging society include 1 a voting majority for the interests of the elderly 2 a voting majority of females 3 the domination of the decision power in corporate and similar ruling bodies and 4 unemployment or a long wait for promotion for younger people economic issues of an aging society include 1 population aging often occurs under reduced rates of growth of per capita national income 2 the relative economic status of the elderly very much depends on the currently existing tax transfer systems and 3 the income of families whose head is over age 65 has generally been more unequally distributed than the income for younger families issues concerning the labor supply of the elderly include 1 the availability of pension income and health limitations strongly influence decisions to retire and 2 older workers become disheartened and choose early retirement when facing bad reemployment prospects in general population aging is likely to have its most substantive effect on the overall level of productivity in an economy where technical knowledge is changing rapidly and strong competition necessitates a high degree of adaptability of the labor force

opportunities and challenges for renewable energy policy in china renewable energy is the inevitable choice for sustainable economic growth for the harmonious coexistence of human and environment as well as for the sustainable development government support is the key and initial power for developing renewable energy in this article an overall review has been conducted on renewable energy development policy including laws and regulations economic encouragement technical research and development industrialized support and government model projects etc in china on this basis a systematic analysis has been conducted on the disadvantages of renewable energy development policy on the point of long term effective system for renewable energy development a series of policy advice has been offered such as strengthening the policy coordination enhancing regional policy innovation echoing with clean development mechanism implementing process management constructing market investment and financing system it is expected that the above advices could be helpful to ever improvement of renewable energy development policy c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

progressive taxation redistribution and labor supply the analysis of the effect of progression on labor supply is extended to a model with many consumers the condition for progression to increase labor supply given constant aggregate tax revenue is derived and shown to depend on the income effects resulting from redistribution it is then shown that the optimal linear income tax schedule involves a degree of progression which on the margin does reduce labor supply