Trade barriers or trade facilitators? The heterogeneous impact of food standards in international trade

Recent research shows that the effect of food standards can be heterogeneous across sectors or countries: they sometimes act as barriers to trade, but in other cases may lead to increased trade. I present empirical evidence on Norwegian seafood exports showing that foreign food standards, measured by sanitary and phytosanitary notifications to the WTO, generally have a negative impact on total exports, the number of exporters and their average exports. However, for fresh seafood, there is a positive counteracting effect. I present a theoretical explanation for this, suggesting that food standards reduce consumer uncertainty about quality and safety and therefore increase demand.     

Fuel Efficiency Improvements: Feedback Mechanisms and Distributional Effects in the Oil Market

We study the interactions between fuel efficiency improvements in the transport sector and the oil market, where the efficiency improvements are policy-induced in certain regions of the world. We are especially interested in feedback mechanisms of fuel efficiency such as the rebound effect, carbon leakage and the “green paradox”, but also the distributional effects for oil producers. An intertemporal numerical model of the international oil market is introduced, where OPEC-Core producers have market power. We find that the rebound effect has a noticeable effect on the transport sector, with the magnitude depending on the oil demand elasticity. In the benchmark simulations, we calculate that almost half of the energy savings may be lost to a direct rebound effect and an additional 10% to oil price adjustments. In addition, there is substantial intersectoral leakage to other sectors through lower oil prices in the regions that introduce the policy. There is a small green paradox effect in the sense that oil consumption increases initially when the fuel efficiency measures are gradually implemented. Finally, international carbon leakage will be significant if policies are not implemented in all regions; we estimate leakage rates of 35% or higher when only major consuming regions implement fuel economy policies. Non-OPEC producers will to a larger degree than OPEC producers cut back on its oil supply as a response to fuel efficiency policies due to high production costs.     

The impact of patents and standards on macroeconomic growth: a panel approach covering four countries and 12 sectors

Based on the assumption that codified technological know-how contributes to economic growth, this paper presents the estimation of a Cobb–Douglas production function, pooling data from four European countries and 12 sectors. The empirical results confirm that both the stock of patents and the stock of technical standards contribute significantly to economic growth in the 1990s. Whereas the results of the country models are rather similar, we observe significant differences between the sector models, which indicate that standards are more important for growth in less R&D-intensive industries and patents in R&D-intensive industries.

Spatial dependencies and spatial drift in public transport seasonal ticket revenue data

When firms' customers are located in spatially dispersed areas, it can be difficult to manage service quality on a geographically small scale because the relative importance of service quality might vary spatially. Moreover, standard approaches discussed so far in the marketing science literature usually neglect spatial effects, such as spatial dependencies (spatial autocorrelation for example) and spatial drift (spatial non-stationarity). We propose a comprehensive approach based on spatial econometric methods that covers both issues. Based on the real company data on seasonal ticket revenue of a local public transport service company, we show that addressing such spatial effects of service data can improve management's ability to implement programs aimed at enhancing seasonal ticket revenue. In particular, the article shows how a spatial revenue response function might be specified.     

A Conflict Case Approach to Business Ethics

Departing from frequent use of moral conflict cases in business ethics teaching and research, the paper suggests an elaboration of a moral conflict approach within business ethics, both conceptually and philosophically. The conceptual elaboration borrows from social science conflict research terminology, while the philosophical elaboration presents casuistry as a kind of practical, inductive argumentation with a focus on paradigmatic examples.