Possibility of the Implementation of the Principle of Sustainable Development in the Sphere of Coal Processing

High-sulphur coals processing generates a great number of pollutant substances in atmosphere. This study was undertaken to obtain more definite information about the composition of sulphur coal extracts, i.e., on the quality and quantity of dormant Volatile Organic Emissions （VOCs）. Analysis of the liquid products was carried out by different protocols of extraction, adsorption chromatography, and GC/MS identification. It should be pointed out that the basic components of coal extracts are polyaromatic hydrocarbons, sulfur-containing compounds and phenols act as a basic factor of environment pollution with carcinogenic products. The complex treatment of these components will permit not only to obtain some valuable chemical products, but also to improve the ecology in the industrial regions.     

Corporate reporting of intellectual capital: Evidence from UK companies

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the intellectual capital reporting practices of UK companies in four distinct sectors. It differs from prior intellectual capital reporting studies in that it analyses a wide range of corporate reports for their intellectual capital content. It finds major differences between the elements of intellectual capital reported in each sector studied. The study also finds that a range of different types of corporate reports were used for communicating intellectual capital information, and that the annual reports were not a good proxy for the proportion of disclosures across all corporate reports analysed in this study.     

Changes in Russian poverty during transition as assessed from microdata from the city of Taganrog*

The literature lacks solid assessments of poverty in Russia under transition compared to the poverty conditions at the onset of transition. This motivates us to analyse survey data from the city of Taganrog collected in similar manners for 1989 and 2000. Under all assumptions applied, we find that the extent of poverty has increased. The results also show that a large proportion of households with members in work‐active ages have fallen into poverty. While poverty in 1989 was heavily concentrated among the elderly, Russian poverty in 2000 is to a large extent a problem for people of work‐active ages and their children. Russian poverty has changed from being predictable and perhaps stable to the opposite.     

How and why transition made income inequality increase in urban Russia: A local study

Using sample surveys from the city of Taganrog in 1989 and 2000, we investigate household income, its composition, and its distribution in urban Russia. Income inequality increased greatly as real income at the lowest part of the distribution decreased considerably. Earnings are more concentrated in the upper part of the income distribution in 2000 than in 1989. For many households, public transfers, allowances, private transfers, or subsidiary earned income prevented income from falling further. However, Russia did not inherit from its Soviet past an efficient progressive tax system or programs to protect jobless workers and households facing severe drops in income. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 772–787.     

Luxury without guilt: service innovation in the all-inclusive hotel industry

With more than 500 all-inclusive resorts around the world, competition in this sector is intense and resorts are constantly trying to gain a sustainable competitive advantage through innovation. The main aim of this article is to investigate the issue of non-technological innovation in the holiday resort industry, in general, and, in particular, how such innovation has enabled the success of ultra all-inclusive concept. The article is based on the case of the Excellence group, analysing the factors behind the success of their business model and its sustainability.     

Open social innovation dynamics and impact: exploratory study of a fab lab network

The aim of this research is to explore the dynamics and impact of open social innovation, within the context of fab labs and makerspaces. Using an exploratory methodology based on 12 semi‐structured interviews of fab lab founders belonging to The Centres for Maker Innovation and Technology (CMIT) programme – a network of 170 fab labs located in Eastern Europe – this research explores the impact of an adopting an open approach in relation to the different stages of social innovation (prompts, proposals, prototypes, sustaining, scaling and diffusion, systemic change) as well as social impact. The main results of this study are that while the CMIT programme provided each fab lab with similar initial conditions (identical funding, objectives and rules), the open social innovation approached adopted enabled to give birth to a wide diversity of fab labs, each being very well adapted to the local environment, social needs and constraints and able to deliver social impact in just a matter of years; a result that would be hard to achieve with a centralised top‐down approach. The study identified three types of CMITs – Education, Industry and Residential – which could be similar or different depending on the stage of social open innovation. Furthermore, this paper discusses the main difficulties social entrepreneurs encounter as a part of the open social innovation process, as well as means to overcome them. In this respect, this study adds to the literature on fab labs by providing more comprehensive view of the challenges faced by fab labs (and makerspaces) founders, as well as suggestions of strategies enabling to ensure their long‐term sustainability.     

RELATIVE POVERTY IN TWO EGALITARIAN SOCIETIES: A COMPARISON BETWEEN TAGANROG, RUSSIA DURING THE SOVIET ERA AND SWEDEN

Relative poverty in urban Russia at the end of the Soviet era (using microdata for the town of Taganrog) is compared to relative poverty in Sweden. The results indicate that the extent of relative poverty was rather similar in the two societies, but also that differences in the structure of poverty existed. In urban Russia characteristics of the household head leading to a high risk of poverty were advanced age, a limited education and being female. Swedish poverty was concentrated to households with a young head.     

Price setting behaviour in Latvia: Econometric evidence from CPI micro data

This paper discovers the driving forces behind Latvian firms' decisions to adjust prices by using various panel logit models, which explain the probability of observing price change by a broad set of exogenous variables. The results show that the consumer price formation in Latvia is a combination of both state-dependent and time-dependent behaviours. On the one hand, frequency of price changes depends on inflation, demand conditions, and the size of last price changes. On the other hand, we observe some elements of time-dependent price setting like price truncation and strong seasonal pattern. We also find several important differences in the price setting behaviour in cases of price increases and decreases. The fact that frequency of price changes in Latvia depends on inflation as well as demand and supply conditions allows for faster price adjustment process in the event of high distortions in the economy.     

The Distribution of Economic Well-being in Urban Russia at the End of the Soviet Era

Assessing the extent of inequality and how various groups in the population were faring in the former Soviet Union is difficult. There are conceptual problems and severe data limitations. Here we analyse the distribution at the household level using unique microdata. The sample was collected for the Russian city Taganrog in 1989. We portray inequality in equivalent income terms, investigate income packaging, decompose inequality by population subgroups and relate equivalent income to household characteristics. The results indicate that inequality in living standards for urban Russia was small, but not extremely small. Public sector transfers and income taxes played a smaller role than in several advanced Western countries. The income situation of a household in the former Soviet Union was very strongly linked to its work efforts and dependency burden. Thus, aged persons and families with a newborn child were much worse off than people of active ages. Persons in households with a female head had considerably lower income than those with male head of households. The results also shows a clear positive relation between length of education and living-standard.     

The effect of VAT rate on inflation in Latvia: evidence from CPI microdata

This article evaluates the inflation effect of recent value added tax (VAT) rate changes in Latvia by using consumer price index (CPI) microdata. Our findings suggest that the pass-through of the tax rate to consumer prices is strong in case of upward tax adjustments, especially when there are no demand restrictions, while the pass-through is weaker for tax reductions. The frequency of price changes peaks at the moment of VAT adjustment, which, however, is partially compensated by lower average size of price revisions. The level of pass-through exhibits a high degree of heterogeneity with higher pass-through for goods, especially food, and lower for services.