The Costs of Coexistence Measures for Genetically Modified Maize in Germany

We estimate the perceived costs of legal requirements (‘coexistence measures’) for growing genetically modified (GM) Bt maize in Germany using a choice experiment. The costs of the evaluated ex‐ante and ex‐post coexistence measures range from zero to more than €300 per measure and most are greater than the extra revenue the farmers in our survey expect from growing Bt maize or than estimates in the literature. The cost estimates for temporal separation, the highest in our evaluation, imply that the exclusion of this measure in Germany is justified. The costliest measures of the ones that are currently applied in Germany are joint and strict liability for all damages. Our results further show that neighbours do not cause a problem and opportunities for reducing costs through agreements with them exist. Finally, we find that farmers’ attitudes towards GM crops affect the probability of adoption of Bt maize. Our results imply that strict liability will deter the cultivation of Bt maize in Germany unless liability issues can be addressed through other means, for example, through neighbours agreements.     

The roles of stakeholder support and procedure-oriented management on asset recovery

As the management of returned products is fast becoming a business trend caused by pressure for compliance, asset recovery is increasingly viewed as a fertile area for firms to reduce cost and improve quality. Environmental management is a viable approach for Chinese manufacturers to respond to the escalating international quest for conserving the environment, to tackle the problem of rising raw material costs, and to improve product quality by analyzing returned products. To reach the goals of cost reduction and product quality improvement, manufacturers need to understand how asset recovery can be leveraged through procedure-based practices and stakeholder support to enhance performance. Product type, characterized by different levels of demand uncertainty and time-to-market, may affect the outcomes of asset recovery adoption and should also be taken into account. Drawing on the environmental management and business logistics literature, we provide empirical insights on asset recovery adoption using survey data collected from export-oriented Chinese manufacturers. We find that asset recovery and stakeholder support are complementary in strengthening manufacturers' financial performance regardless of product type. In addition, the performance impact of asset recovery can be substantial when manufacturers' environmental management practices are less procedural, allowing flexibility in the logistics management of product flows.     

Measuring the development impact of a proposed transportation system

This paper introduces a methodology of measuring economic development impact incident to a proposed transportation system and provides an empirical result of such estimation. As the methodology, a Multi-Regional Variable Input-Output (MRVIO) model is introduced, and as a case study, the proposed Coosa River Navigation project is discussed. The Coosa River project when completed is expected to reduce the cost of shipping commodities from origin to destination, and such reduction in shipping costs will stimulate the economy of the Coosa River Corridor, the Gulf-Coast Region, the Rest of Alabama, and the Remainder of the U.S. The empirical measurement was done in terms of industrial outputs, personal income, and employment of each of 31 industries in four regions in decennial years starting in 1990 and ending in 2039     

Pollution-related variable input-output model: The Tulsa SMSA as a case study

Regional planners face conflicting goals of promoting regional growth and maintaining a cleaner environment since such growth usually causes polluted air. To help understand this complex relationship, pollution-related variable input-output model is developed. An interesting feature of this model is its ability to respond to both income and substitution effects. The pollution may be created not only by an increase in final demand (income effect) but also by a change in input cost (substitution effect). The conventional pollution related input-output model ([2.]) fails to capture the pollution effect associated with the substitution effect. Using the Tulsa SMSA as a case study, the operational impact of entry of a bicycle industry in the area to observe the development potential of other industries and resulting impact on air quality is simulated. Industrial impact was measured in terms of industrial output, personal income, employment, and regional import and export. The pollution impact was measured in terms of particulates, sulfur oxides, hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. The simulation analysis of antipollution control measures emphasized the substitution effect of the pollution-related variable input-output model. As input cost is increased due to antipollution control measures, equilibrium prices are increased, and technical coefficients are changed as a result of substituting behavior of firms. A change in technical coefficients affects both the output and the pollutants.     

Demand chain management in the container shipping service industry

The growing service sector in the global economy signifies the need for applying service science to study the interdisciplinary nature of services. In particular, container shipping service is considered a key enabler of international trade and global economic development. To strengthen the role of shipping in supporting global seaborne trade, it is highly desirable to identify the determinants that influence the total capacity of the shipping industry, explain how the related business activities (e.g., demand for shipping service, vessel price, fleet size, etc.) are linked to the demand for container shipping service, and empirically verify the findings. This study builds on the demand chain management paradigm to analyze the service capacity of the container shipping industry. We establish a path-analytic model to explain how shipping demand affects such shipping-related variables as vessel price and to evaluate their effects on the service capacity of the industry. The empirically-tested model provides managers and researchers with insights on how to enhance the coordination and integration of a series of shipping-related variables from shipping demand to capacity management in the container shipping service industry.     

THE IMPACT OF FEATURE SELECTION: A DATA‐MINING APPLICATION IN DIRECT MARKETING

The capability of identifying customers who are more likely to respond to a product is an important issue in direct marketing. This paper investigates the impact of feature selection on predictive models which predict reordering demand of small and medium‐sized enterprise customers in a large online job‐advertising company. Three well‐known feature subset selection techniques in data mining, namely correlation‐based feature selection (CFS), subset consistency (SC) and symmetrical uncertainty (SU), are applied in this study. The results show that the predictive models using SU outperform those without feature selection and those with the CFS and SC feature subset evaluators. This study has examined and demonstrated the significance of applying the feature‐selection approach to enhance the accuracy of predictive modelling in a direct‐marketing context. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time series test of nonlinear convergence and transitional dynamics

This paper revisits the income convergence hypothesis by using the nonlinear unit root test of Kapetanios et al. [Kapetanios, G., Shin, Y. and A. Snell, 2003. Testing for a unit root in the nonlinear STAR framework. Journal of Econometrics 112, 359–379.]. Out of the 12 OECD income gaps in which nonlinearity has been detected, two cases of long-run converging and four cases of catching up are found.     

Impact of Trade Liberalisation on a Multi-Region Economy within an Inter-Regional Game Theoretic Framework

The aim of this paper is to analyse the general equilibrium effects of tariff changes in a multi-regional model that has inter-government strategic interactions, where central and regional governments react to policies of one another by implementing counter strategies to maximise their own welfare. The motivation for this paper arises from observing inter-provincial and provincial-central government competitive money creation behaviour in China and in the former Soviet Union. By engaging in competitive money creation, governments are able to cushion the impact of tariff changes on national and regional absorption. However, it is also shown that as the marginal rate of substitution of absorption for inflation increases, the impacts of tariff changes with and without competitive money creation tend to converge.