A science-driven market-based instrument for determining the cost of environmental services: A comparison of two catchments in Australia

An auction-based approach (or MBI for “market-based instrument”) was used to purchase environmental services from landowners and to establish a long-term economic resource (forest plantations) in two catchments in the state of Victoria (Australia). The policy goal of the MBI was to encourage the conversion of cleared land to forest plantations. It was desired to achieve this while also reducing the amount of land affected by dryland salinity with minimum impact on water available for irrigation. Operationally, interested landowners identified areas on which they would be willing to establish forest plantations, and stated the amount of money they would require from the government to undertake plantation establishment; this constituted a landowner bid. The proposed planting area associated with each bid was processed through a quantitative hydrological model to estimate off-site impacts on dryland salinity and the change in water yield resulting from the conversion of individual non-forested areas to forest plantations. Landowner bids were then accepted or not based on the economic trade-offs among dollars requested by a landowner, reduction in water yield, and decrease in dryland salinity. To enable a comparison of costs, the MBI was independently trialled in two catchments. For both, the cost to government of a hectare of plantation and/or a hectare of salinity benefit was calculated a number of ways. Assuming the existence of a calibrated hydrological model, costs associated with distributing money via such an MBI were publicity, fieldwork, processing the bids through the model, probity, legal, and administration. In the Gippsland catchment, the total cost to establish forest plantations was $5340 per ha whereas it was $1635 per ha in the Corangamite catchment. No salinity benefit was obtained in Gippsland, but in Corangamite, if considered in isolation of the economic forest plantation benefit, the cost per hectare of salinity benefit was $5020.Operational aspects of the MBI are presented and discussed and a comparison is made to the expected costs of a conventional, non-science driven approach to landowner incentives.     

Treatment effect analysis of early reemployment bonus program: panel MLE and mode-based semiparametric estimator for interval truncation

We use Korean data to find the effects of Early Reemployment Bonus (ERB) on unemployment duration; ERB is a bonus that the eligible unemployed receive if they find a job before their unemployment insurance benefit expires. A naive approach would be comparing the ERB receiving group with the non-receiving group, but the ERB receipt is partly determined by the unemployment duration itself (thus, an endogeneity problem). Interestingly, there were many individuals who did not receive the ERB despite being fully eligible, and this is attributed to being unaware of the ERB scheme. Taking this as a ??pseudo randomization??, we construct treatment and control groups using only the eligible. Our data set is an unbalanced panel with the response variable interval-truncated due to eligibility requirement of the ERB. We propose a panel random-effect MLE and a semiparametric ??mode-based?? estimator for the interval-truncated response. Our empirical finding is that the effect varies much, depending on individual characteristics. As for the mean effects, whereas the MLE indicates large duration-shortening effects, the semiparametric estimator shows much weaker and mostly insignificant effects.     

国内外绿色营销研究动态比较分析

随着国际社会上对环境保护的重视,我国实践中对营销与绿色理念融合的诉求以及消费者日益增长的绿色消费意愿,针对绿色营销的理论探讨成为众多学者关注的话题。在此社会与文化背景下,本文针对国内外绿色营销的概念和评价体系进行对比分析,发现国内外针对绿色营销的研究在定义的侧重点、理论体系构建模式、评价体系、发展与转变趋势四方面具有明显的差异,且通过对比得出国内外绿色营销的研究方法与评价体系的优缺点,以期为其他研究学者提供参考与借鉴。     

Dynamic management view: logic of profit seeking based on adaptation to technological change and needs evolution through needs-focused innovation

Scrutinising well-known models/theories in strategic management, this paper proposes dynamic management view (DMV) on the premise profit comes from adaptation to technological change and needs evolution through needs-focused innovation in a dynamic world. It firstly sets up the theoretical framework of DMV by taking business model to embrace explicit needs (the ultimate source of profit) and needs-focused innovation (the ultimate driver of profit seeking) as the very causal mechanism at the micro-foundations level, and technological change and needs evolution as the direct causal mechanisms of profit at the macro-foundations level from which it draws the universal and contingency rules of needs-focused innovation, derives the propositions about the adaptive goodness between explicit needs and needs-focused innovation, shows it works as the determinant of profit with the industrial experiences, and concludes DMV provides the rationale for a firm’s sustainability, the strategic decision rules for business model innovation and the theoretical foundation to build dynamic theory of profit seeking.     

Does organizational innovation moderate technical innovation directly or indirectly?

We find a divergence in the literature regarding the treatment of how organizational innovation affects innovation and performance. One point of view suggests that organizational innovation impacts performance only, while the other suggests that it impacts technical innovation and firm performance. We use the framework of Crepon-Duguet-Mairesse (CDM) to control for endogeneity; we also use two different measures for organizational innovation. Our contributions to the literature are: the CDM framework in this context is novel; prior research either did not/could not control for endogeneity whereas the CDM framework mitigates this. To discriminate between the direct and indirect approach, we implemented AIC and BIC tests. We find that for the innovation equations in all cases and regardless of which organizational innovation variable is used the direct model is preferable. In contrast, for the productivity equations, we find that in all cases the indirect model is preferable. Thus we do not have a definitive statistical test for which model is superior. Yet, it is our contention that organizational innovation is a new routine within the firm that should impact technical innovation. Furthermore, organizational design theories deduce that organizational innovation should impact technical innovation-implying that the direct model is indeed preferable.     

An analysis of the impact of unionization on efficiency: evidence from a meta-frontier analysis

This article examines the impact of unions on the efficiency of establishments in the manufacturing industry by comparing the results from two different empirical strategies: stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and meta-frontier analysis (MFA). While SFA concludes that union establishments show higher technological efficiency, the results are the opposite when estimating production functions with MFA. In SFA, unionized establishments appear to be more efficient because they remain closer to their own production frontier; however, in MFA – where groups with heterogeneous technology can be compared – we find that nonunionized establishments are more efficient because they are closer to the meta-frontier than their unionized counterparts.     

RADIUS RESTRICTION AND FIRMS' SURVIVAL: EVIDENCE FROM THE COFFEE FRANCHISE INDUSTRY

This study investigates the effects of distance restrictions on Korean coffee shops' survival. Restrictions were implemented by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission to limit the headquarters' opening of new shops to protect franchisees' territorial rights. Using extended Cox proportional hazard regression analyses, we find that the hazard rates of all coffee shops decreased significantly under the radius restriction, with more substantial decreases for young stores, attenuating over store ages. However, selective restrictions on five big brands influencing interbrand competition might have changed the coffee franchise industry's landscape and thereby widening the gap between exempted brand coffee shops and the rest. (JEL D22, L40, L66)     

Developing scenario-based technology roadmap in the big data era: an utilisation of fuzzy cognitive map and text mining techniques

ABSTRACT

Scenario-based technology roadmaps (TRM) have been used to analyse future uncertainties in the technology planning phase. However, there is a limitation in the existing related studies that the internal and external factors of the increasing uncertainty of the future are not considered. In response, this study proposes a framework that analyses the textual big data to understand the relationship between factors that may affect future uncertainty and build a TRM through scenarios based on these relationships. To do this, Fuzzy Cognitive Map technique, which analyses causal relationships between various factors in fuzzy graph form, is incorporated into TRM. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework, an illustrative case study was conducted using real data for an unmanned aerial vehicle. This study is expected to help integrate and utilise big data effectively in the technology planning stage.