Industry 4.0 and circular economy: An exploratory analysis of academic and practitioners' perspectives

The union between Industry 4.0 and the circular economy (CE) appears relatively recent. In this sense, new trading zones for sharing a common scenario among academics and practitioners are needed. The paper aims to investigate the link between Industry 4.0 and the CE by understanding how Industry 4.0 can foster the impact of the CE on companies. The study proposes a broader perspective that includes thematic and content analysis gathering data on professional documents based on business cases, newspaper articles, press releases and specialised blogs, as well as scientific papers. The joint academic-practitioners view highlights how Industry 4.0 has the potential to impact on the CE through countless actions: increasing waste disposal; promoting remanufacturing; enhancing the efficiency of critical resources such as water, energy, gas and CO₂; and improving business models and the mission of companies. However, barriers still exist in its adoption, stressing the need for holistic and integrated design and a proactive environment of collaboration among stakeholders. Results lead to practical as well as research implications.     

The inoperability extended multisectoral model and the Role of Income Distribution: A U.K. Case Study

In this paper, an effort is made to enrich the current input–output (I–O) methodologies employed for studying disruptive events, by extending the I–O framework and including all the phases of the circular flow of income into the overall disaster impact. In this respect, the Inoperability Extended Multisectoral Model is created and implemented in order to estimate the higher‐order effects in terms of value added and disposable income. The social accounting matrix, referred to the United Kingdom, is constructed and proposed as a starting point for assessing the effects of a system perturbation related to the eruption of the Volcano Eyjafjallajökull, in mid‐April 2010, which affected air transport services due to the full closure of the U.K.'s airspace for several days. Finally, the ranking of those commodities and institutional sectors which are badly affected can provide guidance to policymakers in order to minimize the overall impact on the economy.     

Consumer Acceptance of the New Red-Fleshed Apple Variety

The aim of this study was to investigate consumer preference for the novel red-fleshed apple genotypes. The information presented provides us with insight into consumer propensity to accept a new variety with radical visible innovative attributes and societal demand for a more sustainable production. The survey was carried out on the population of a province in central Italy, where there is consumer demand for organic and high-quality foods. The consumers’ opinions contrasted greatly and can be divided into two groups. Over one quarter of the respondents declared that they did not like the innovative fruit. The cluster analysis and CHAID analyses were performed on the consumers’ responses to determine sample groupings. Three clusters were identified among the consumers with positive opinions, enthusiastic, health-conscious, and unmotivated illustrating how the hierarchical level of preferences of the potential consumers of the red-fleshed apple fruit are triggered by various motivations. The surveys also pointed out that most consumers of the sampled population were not biased against research activities producing innovative food products. A large number of consumers, especially women, declared that they were willing to pay a higher price considering the increased nutritional value of red-fleshed apple fruits. By examining the broad context of this study, decision-making researchers and operators of the fruit industry will be able to make informed and realistic predictions concerning possible future scenarios and to determine the possible effects and desirability.     

Price cap regulation and the ratchet effect: a generalized index approach

In this study we estimate a variable cost function on a panel of English and Welsh Water and Sewerage companies, observed over two full regulatory periods (1995–2004). The main aim of the paper is to investigate the presence of a ratchet effect in the cost cutting activity associated with the price cap regulatory regime. By applying the Generalized Index of Technical Change approach suggested by Baltagi and Griffin (J Polit Econ 96(1):20–41, (1988)), we provide some empirical evidence consistent with the existence of regulatory cycles. In particular, firms’ cost cutting activity tends to increase in the early phase of the regulatory cycle, while it weakens as the price review approaches. D24, L51, L95.     

Policymakers' horizon and trade reforms: The protectionist effect of elections

This paper shows that electoral incentives deter politicians from supporting trade liberalization. We focus on all major trade liberalization bills introduced since the early 1970s in the U.S. Congress, in which House and Senate members serve respectively two- and six-year terms and one third of senators face elections every two years. We show that senators are more likely to support trade liberalization than House representatives. However, this result does not hold for the last generation of senators, who face elections at the same time as House members, suggesting that inter-cameral differences are driven by term length. Considering senators alone, we find that the last generation is less likely to support trade liberalization than the previous two. This result is pervasive and holds both when comparing the behavior of different senators voting on the same bill and that of individual senators voting on different bills. The protectionist effect of election proximity disappears for senators who are retiring or hold safe seats.     

The Pricing of Italian Equity Returns

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between common risk factors and average returns for Italian stocks. Our research has identified the Italian stock market's economic variables by using the results from factor analyses and time series regressions. We study several multi‐factor models combining the relevant macroeconomic variables with the mimicking equity portfolios SMB (small minus big) and HML (high minus low) proposed by Fama and French (1993). The key question we want to ask ourselves, is whether the influential role of the size and book‐to‐market equity factors in explaining average stock returns can stand up well when competing with some macroeconomic factors. In other words, do stock returns carry some risk premium that is independent of either the market return or the economic forces that underlie the common variation in returns? Our empirical work estimates risk premiums using both traditional two‐pass procedures and one‐pass (full information) methodologies. We show that only the market index and variables linked to interest rate shifts are consistently priced in the Italian stock returns. The role of other factors, and in particular both the size and the price‐to book ratio, are crucially dependent on the estimation procedure. (J.E.L.: G11, G12).     

R&D,Innovation and Knowledge Spillovers: A Reappraisal of Bottazzi and Peri (2007) in the Presence of Cross‐Sectional Dependence

Bottazzi and Peri (Economic Journal 2007; 117 : 486–511) show the existence of a cointegrating relationship between the domestic stock of knowledge, domestic R&D and the international knowledge stock for a panel of OECD countries and interpret it as evidence supporting the semi‐endogenous versus the endogenous growth theory. We replicate the baseline specification of their study and we show that main results are robust to the use of a different estimation strategy (Bai et al., Journal of Econometrics 2009; 149 : 82–99) that duly takes into account cross‐sectional correlation: interestingly, in this case we also find a larger role for knowledge spillovers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.