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.     

Environmental taxes with heterogeneous consumers: an application to energy consumption in France

This paper constructs a model with four groups of households who have preferences over labor supply, consumption of polluting (energy related) and non-polluting (non-energy) goods, and emissions. It quantifies the model for the French economy and computes its optimal tax equilibria under nine second-best tax regimes. We find that the redistributive role of environmental taxes requires the polluting goods to be taxed at a rate much below their marginal social damage. These goods may even require an outright subsidy if the society values equality ‘a lot’. Secondly, if environmental taxes that have an exclusively externality-correcting role, they benefit all types—although the gains are rather modest. The gains and losses become more substantial when environmental taxes have a redistributive role as well. Third, setting the environmental tax at its Pigouvian level, rather than its optimal externality-correcting-cum-redistributive level, benefits the high-income group at the expense of the low-income groups. Fourth, nonlinear taxation of polluting goods, and nonlinear commodity taxation in general, is a powerful redistributive mechanism. Fifth, introducing environmental taxes in the current French tax system, with its suboptimal income taxes, results in substantial welfare gains for the highest income group and a sizable loss for the least well-off persons.     

Macroeconomic News and Stock Returns in the United States and Germany

Abstract. Using daily data for the January 1997 to June 2002 period, we analyze similarities and differences in the impact of macroeconomic news on stock returns in the United States and Germany. We consider 27 different types of news for the United States and 12 different types of news for Germany. For the United States, we present evidence for asymmetric reactions of stock prices to news. In a boom (recession) period, bad (good) news on GDP growth and unemployment or lower (higher) than expected interest rates may be good news for stock prices. In the period under consideration there is little evidence for asymmetric effects in Germany. However, in the case of Germany, international news appears at least as important as domestic news. There is no evidence that US stock prices are influenced by German news. The analysis of bi-hourly data for Germany confirms these results.     

Issues in the estimation and application of latent structure models of choice

Our paper provides a brief review and summary of issues and advances in the use of latent structure and other finite mixture models in the analysis of choice data. Focus is directed to three primary areas: (1) estimation and computational issues, (2) specification and interpretation issues, and (3) future research issues. We comment on what latent structure models have promised, what has been, to date, delivered, and what we should look forward to in the future.     

Protection of diffuse interests in the EEC and the perspective of “progressively establishing” an internal market

Present Community action and law is characterised by a conflict between market integration, protection of diffuse interests, and the rule-of-law principle. Community law first concentrated on negative integration which created and protected traders' freedom of market access and workers' freedom of circulation. By Court practice, these freedoms were developed into a basic right of EEC citizens to move freely within the EEC and to satisfy their demands wherever they wanted. Positive integration tried to establish common protective standards in matters relating to the environment, consumer protection, health care, and equal rights. The Single Act, ratified in 1987, amended the EEC Treaty by the objective of completing the internal market by the end of 1992. These provisions can only to a limited extent be said to have a direct effect. Positive integration has been reinforced by provisions on environmental and health policy. In his concluding remarks, the author insists on the need for an overall expansion of protective standards within the EEC in spite of tendencies towards a mere free trade approach.

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Zusammenfassung Die gegenwärtigen Aktivitäten der Gemeinschaft sowie das europäische Wirtschaftsrecht sind von einer komplexen Spannungslage zwischen Marktintegration, Schutz diffuser Interessen (Umweltschutz, Verbraucherschutz usw.) und rechtsstaatlich-demokratischen Anforderungen beherrscht. Zunächst konzentrierte sich das Gemeinschaftsrecht auf Maßnahmen der sog. Negativintegration, um dem Marktbürger Zugang zu dem Gemeinsamen Markt und Arbeitnehmern Zirkulationsfreiheit zu gewährleisten. Die Praxis des Gerichtshofes der EG hat diese Marktfreiheiten zu grundrechtsähnlichen Gewährleistungen aller Bürger i.S. einer Entscheidungs- und Aufenthaltsfreiheit ausgebaut. Die Positivintegration versuchte, gemeinsame Schutzstandards in den Bereichen Gleichbehandlung, Umwelt, Gesundheit und Verbraucherschutz durch sekundäres Gemeinschaftsrecht zu schaffen. Die 1987 ratifizierte Einheitliche Europäische Akte hat das Ziel der Gemeinschaft festgeschrieben, bis Ende 1992 den Binnenmarkt als Raum ohne Binnengrenzen zu verwirklichen.Die unmittelbare Wirkung dieser Vorschriften bleibt allerdings fraglich. Die Positivintegration ist durch Kompetenzen im Bereich Umwelt- und Gesundheitsschutz abgesichert worden. In einer Schlußbetrachtung wird auf die Notwendigkeit EG-einheitlicher Schutzstandards ungeachtet des Vorherrschens von Freihandelsvorstellungen hingewiesen.

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Norbert Reich is Professor of Civil Law, Commercial Law and European Legal Policy at the University of Bremen and Managing Director of the Centre for European Legal Policy, Universitätsallee GW 1, D-2800 Bremen 33, FRG.The article is based on a speech at the University of Helsinki on May 20, 1988, and was previously published in the Finnish legal journal Juridiska Föreningens Tidskrift. The author thanks his Finnish colleague Thomas Wilhelmsson, University of Helsinki, for stimulating discussions of previous drafts and for allowing publication in JCP.     

The competitive solution and the health care problems of today

Mark Pauly claims that a "competitive" health care system will solve the health care cost crisis. This article examines how well the competitive solution deals with the five central problems of the health care system: (1) almost universal lack of adequate health insurance for nursing homes and home care; (2) Medicaid's penurious approach to payment for health services for the poor; (3) the emergence of a dual health care system, especially for children; (4) the entrenched waste and inefficiency of the health care system; and (5) consumers' inability to judge the quality of health care. The competitive solution does not eliminate any of these problems--and may not even improve some of them.     

Immigration and the Trade of Provinces

A link between immigration, imports, and exports has been found by a number of papers that have used the gravity equation to analyze bilateral trade patterns. We discuss what this research implies about the mechanisms through which immigrants expand trade and identify strengths and weakness of the various approaches. This paper also contributes to this literature by estimating immigrant effects for Canada using cross‐province variation in international trade and immigration patterns. We derive an alternative functional form capturing the relationship between immigration and trade based on the proposition that immigrants use their connections and superior 'market intelligence' to exploit trade opportunities that non‐immigrants do not access. We find that the average new immigrant expands exports to his/her native country by $312 and expands imports by $944.