Blockchain in Additive Manufacturing and its Impact on Supply Chains

Additive manufacturing (AM) appears to be a particularly attractive use case for blockchain. This research combines inductive in‐depth interviews with the Delphi method to explore what potentials blockchain technology in AM creates, which adoption barriers firms need to overcome, and how supply chains will be affected by the integration of these two potentially disruptive technologies. The results suggest opportunities that are related to intellectual property (IP) rights management, the monitoring of printed parts throughout their lifecycle, process improvements, and data security. The most important barriers for blockchain adoption in AM are an absence of blockchain‐skilled specialists on the labor market, missing governance mechanisms, and a lack of firm‐internal technical expertise. By addressing important limitations of AM, blockchain is expected to improve the competitiveness of AM in parts’ production, catalyzing the trend toward more decentralized manufacturing resulting in more agile, resilient, and flexible supply chains and reduced logistics costs. Beyond that, blockchain‐based AM platforms are expected to enhance supply chain visibility, drive supply chain digitalization, support supply chain finance, and contribute to the emergence of shared factory systems.     

Is the Retail Gasoline Market Local or National?

This paper studies the effect of station density on prices in the retail gasoline market in the Czech Republic. We estimate the impact of the number of competing stations in various driving-distance ranges around each station on prices. We find that station density has a negative effect on prices; the effect decreases with distance and is statistically significant up to six kilometers. This suggests that the retail gasoline market is local rather than national.     

Integrated bio-economic models as tools to support land-use decision making: a review of potential and limitations

Bio-economic modelling has become a useful tool for anticipating the outcomes of policies and technologies before their implementation. Advances in mathematical programming have made it possible to build more comprehensive models. In an overview of recent studies about bio-economic models applied to land-use problems in agriculture and forestry, we evaluated how aspects such as uncertainty, multiple objective functions, system dynamics and time have been incorporated into models. We found that single objective models were more frequently applied at the farm level, while multiple objective modelling has been applied to meet concerns at the landscape level. Among the objectives, social aspects are seldom represented in all models, when being compared to economic and environmental aspects. The integration of uncertainty is occasionally a topic, while stochastic approaches are more frequently applied than non-stochastic robust methods. Most multiple-objective models do not integrate uncertainty or sequential decision making. Static approaches continue to be more recurrent than truly dynamic models. Even though integrating multiple aspects may enhance our understanding of a system; it involves a tradeoff between complexity and robustness of the results obtained. Land-use models have to address this balance between complexity and robustness in order to evolve towards robust multiple-objective spatial optimization as a prerequisite to achieve sustainability goals.     

Sharing versus collaborative economy: how to align ICT developments and the SDGs in tourism?

Great hopes have been placed in the sharing economy to provide a new business model based on peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges of underutilized assets. As a model, the sharing economy has been expected to make significant contributions to sustainability, providing new opportunities for entrepreneurship, more sustainable use of resources, and consumer co-operation in tight economic networks. However, in recent years, digital platforms have turned into the most important actors in the global sharing economy, turning global corporations, such as AirBnB, Booking, or TripAdvisor into intermediaries controlling and profiting from most transactions. Focused on accommodation, this paper conceptualizes the sharing economy in comparison to the wider collaborative economy, and discusses its social, economic, environmental, and political impacts in comparison to the sustainable development goals. It concludes that the sharing economy has great potential to make very significant contributions to sustainability, though the model is increasingly being replaced by the collaborative economy, which performs as an extension and acceleration of neoliberal economic practices.     

An alternative interpretation of multiple bounded WTP data—Certainty dependent payment card intervals

This paper analyzes the multiple bounded format, in which uncertainty is directly incorporated into the WTP question. A new approach for analyzing multiple bounded uncertainty data is presented. The intuition underlying the approach is that uncertain individuals would like to state their WTP as intervals rather than precise values and that the width of the intervals is determined by the degree of uncertainty. The approach is compared to the one applied in Welsh and Poe [Welsh, M., Poe, G.L., 1998. Elicitation effects in contingent valuation: comparisons to a multiple bounded discrete choice approach. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 36, 170–185] which treats uncertainty by conditioning responses on specific verbal probability statements. We argue that the conditioning approach overestimates mean and median WTP and that conditioning WTP estimates on probability statements like “probably” and “unsure” make them “fuzzy”. To empirically compare the two approaches we use data from 2004 concerning implementation of a predator protection policy in Sweden. Our analysis show that the suggested approach: (1) is more intuitive; (2) better fits the data; (3) estimates mean and median WTP with better precision; (4) is less sensitive to distributional assumptions; and (5) it is better suited for policy analysis.     

Saving Accounts versus Stocks and Bonds in Household Portfolio Allocation

We study the structure of household portfolios of financial wealth by analyzing both the determinants of total financial wealth and the choice between risky (stocks and bonds) and riskfree assets (saving accounts). The econometric specification is a generalized trivariate Tobit model, estimated on a cross section of 3,077 households in the Netherlands in 1988. We account for endogeneity of financial wealth and for selectivity due to nonreporting. Results show that the level of financial wealth and the marginal tax rate are major determinants of the allocation between riskfree and risky assets.     

Skill Loss, Ranking of Job Applicants and the Dynamics of Unemployment

Abstract. This paper investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital. It is shown that if some fundamental factor in the economy changes, this will result in a lengthy adjustment process with substantial long-run unemployment effects. Moreover, the model is capable of generating persistence, but the amount depends on the duration of the shock itself.     

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Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The effects of debt versus equity inflows on savings and growth in developing economies

Zusammenfassung Die Wirkung von ausl?ndischer Kapitalbeteiligung und Kreditfinanzierung auf Ersparnisbildung und Wachstum in Entwicklungsl?ndern. — Zur Bew?ltigung der internationalen Schuldenprobleme von Entwicklungsl?ndern wird h?ufig vorgeschlagen, die Struktur des Kapitalimports zugunsten von Forderungsarten zu verschieben, bei denen sich die Gl?ubiger am wirtschaftlichen Risiko beteiligen, wie dies etwa bei Direktinvestitionen der Fall ist. Die Wahl zwischen Kapitalbeteiligung und Kreditfinanzierung mag jedoch Risiko-Ertrag-Konflikte zwischen Einkommensstabilit?t und erwartetem wirtschaftlichem Wachstum involvieren. Diese Hypothese wird aus einem entscheidungstheoretischen Modell auf der Basis eines Benutzer-Eigentümer Verh?ltnisses abgeleitet und mittels einer L?nderquerschnittsuntersuchung regressionsanalytisch getestet. Es zeigt sich, da\ bei nichtkooperativen Beziehungen zwischen Schuldnern und Gl?ubigern kreditfinanzierte Kapitalimporte einen vergleichsweise starken positiven Einflu\ auf die Ersparnisbildung und das Wirtschaftswachtum im Schuldnerland ausüben. Kapitalbeteiligungen k?nnen deshalb nicht ohne weiteres als vorteilhaft angesehen werden und auch nicht allen L?ndern empfohlen werden, ohne zu bedenken, wie sich soziale Gruppen gegenüber dem Risiko verhalten.

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Résumé Les effets de l’influx de la dette et du capital propre sur l’épargne et la croissance en économies développantes. — L’élément commun des beaucoup de propositions données pour faciliter les problèmes de la dette extérieure des pays développants est l’intention de changer la structure des importations de capital vers l’augmentation du rapport des créances qui basent sur quelque forme de partager les risques, p.e. la participation en capital propre. Cependant, le choix entre le capital propre ou des influx des capitaux financés par des dettes peut induire un conflit de ?rendement-risque? entre la stabilité de revenu et la croissance attendue. Cette hypothèse est dérivée d’un modèle choix-théorique basé sur l’approche agent-principal et testée empiriquement en appliquant l’analyse de régression trans-pays. Les auteurs démontrent que, dans un cadre non-coopératif des relations débiteurcréditeur, des transferts financés par des dettes ont une influence plus positive sur l’épargne et la croissance économique. La participation en capital propre ne peut pas être évaluée supérieure sans ambigu?té et c’est pourquoi elle ne peut pas être recommendée pour tous les pays, indépendant des attitudes sociales envers le risque.

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Resumen El efecto del endeudamiento sobre el ahorro y el crecimiento eneconomías en desarrollo comparado con el de las inversiones directas. — En varias propuestas para aliviar el problema de la deuda externa de los países en desarrollo se sugiere alterar la composición de las importaciones de capital en el sentido de aumentar la proportión de derechos con participación en el riesgo económico, es decir, la participación de la inversión directa. La elección entre inversión directa y deuda considera la relación inversa riesgo-beneficio que existe entre la estabilidad del ingreso y el crecimiento esperado. Esta tesis se dériva de un modelo teórico de elección basado en el enfoque agente-principal, que es sometido a un test empírico de regresión sobre una muestra de países. Se muestra que en el marco de relaciones deudor-acreedor de tipo no cooperativas las transferencias de financiamiento por deuda ejercen una influencia positiva relativamente superior sobre el ahorro y el crecimiento económico. La participación directa en el capital no resulta superior en todos casos y por ello no puede ser recomendada para todos los países, independientemente de las actitudes frente al riesgo que prevalezcan.