Semi-quantitative risk assessment method for product management

The workshop presented a semi-quantitative risk assessment technique that can be used to judge the total risk on all undesired consequences/events for a product manufacturing operation. The technique requires an experienced team to judge risk utilizing a numerical rating system that, although arbitrarily chosen, is self consistent and provides a relative assessment of product manufacturing risk. Once calculated, the risk is compared to the product's net income for making risk management and product planning decisions. The workshop included an exercise where all participants could try the technique.     

使比较研究可信

:人们在进行宏观社会现象的研究时,方法上有定性与定量之分。定量分析呈现U字形分布,对极少量的N进行研究有案例分析导向,对极大量的N进行研究不利于认识的深化,因此有必要寻找案例研究与变量导向研究之间的中间路线。组合式研究就有很多独特的优点。     

Safety and loss prevention concerns for engineers in polymer facilities

Safety related problems encountered in the production and handling of materials using monomers in water based polymerization reactions are covered. It must be noted that the author's experience is specifically in acrylic monomers.     

Digital sport entrepreneurial ecosystems

The entrepreneurial ecosystems literature has increasingly explored network relationships between different stakeholders, as well as the role of context. This article addresses the challenge of including a sport context in the entrepreneurial ecosystem literature thereby contributing to the sport entrepreneurship literature by bringing insights from entrepreneurship ecosystem research. In‐depth interviews of football stakeholders in the sport entrepreneurship ecosystem are conducted in terms of understanding the emergence of digital sport start‐ups. The issues raised help explore the changing nature of digital entrepreneurial ecosystems to take into account new sport technological advances. Mixed embeddedness theory is used as the conceptual foundation to understand sport digital entrepreneurial ecosystems. Key management practices are identified in terms of sport start‐ups participating in entrepreneurial ecosystems. The article concludes by making suggestions for future research.     

Nursing home choice,family bargaining,and optimal policy in a Hotelling economy

We develop a model of family bargaining to study the impact of the distribution of bargaining power within the family on the choice of nursing homes by families, and on the locations and prices chosen by nursing homes in a Hotelling economy. In the baseline (static) model, where the dependent parent cares only about the location of the nursing home, the markup of nursing homes is increasing in the bargaining power of the dependent parent, and nursing homes are located at the extreme periphery. We compare the laissez‐faire with the social optimum (which involves more central locations of nursing homes), and examine its decentralization in first‐best and second‐best settings. We explore the robustness of our results to introducing a bequest motive in a dynamic overlapping generations model, which allows us to study the joint dynamics of wealth accumulation and nursing home prices. If the bequest motive is strong, the markup is decreasing in the bargaining power of the dependent. However, wealth accumulation, by reducing interest rates, raises markup rates and nursing homes prices.     

Multilevel marketing: optimizing marketing effectiveness for high-involvement goods in the automotive industry

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - With a surge in communication channels increasing the complexity of today’s media landscape, companies face new challenges concerning...     

The effects of fuel prices and vehicle sales on fuel‐saving technology adoption in passenger vehicles

Although economic theory suggests that both sales and fuel costs affect technology adoption by vehicle manufacturers, there is very little empirical evidence on either effect. We document a strong connection between a vehicle's sales and its energy efficiency. Using a demographics‐driven demand shifter to isolate demand‐side changes in sales, we find that a one standard deviation increase in sales raises efficiency by 0.2%, compared with a mean improvement rate of 1.4% per year between 1997 and 2013. Higher fuel prices also increase technology adoption directly by increasing willingness to pay for fuel cost savings. The results have two implications: manufacturers will continue to focus technological improvements on top selling vehicles; and fuel taxes will have larger effects on technology adoption than fuel economy standards and feebates.     

Estimating the Enduring Effects of Fertiliser Subsidies on Commercial Fertiliser Demand and Maize Production: Panel Data Evidence from Malawi

Most studies of input subsidy programmes confine their analyses to measuring programme effects over a one‐year period. This article estimates the potential longer‐run or enduring effects of fertiliser subsidy programmes on smallholder farm households' demand for commercial fertiliser and maize production over time. We use four waves of panel data on 462 farm households in Malawi for whom fertiliser use can be tracked for eight consecutive seasons between 2003/2004 and 2010/2011. Panel estimation methods are used to control for potential endogeneity of subsidised fertiliser acquisition. Results indicate that farmers acquiring subsidised fertiliser in three consecutive prior years are found to purchase slightly more commercial fertiliser in the next year. This suggests a small amount of crowding in of commercial fertiliser from the receipt of subsidised fertiliser in prior years. In addition, acquiring subsidised fertiliser in a given year has a modest positive impact on increasing maize output in that same year. However, acquiring subsidised fertiliser in multiple prior years generates no statistically significant effect on maize output in the current year. These findings indicate that potential enduring effects of the Malawi fertiliser subsidy programme on maize production are limited. Additional interventions that increase soil fertility can make using inorganic fertiliser more profitable and sustainable for smallholders in sub‐Saharan Africa and thereby increase the cost‐effectiveness of input subsidy programmes.     

Long-Term Productivity and Factor Demand in the Canadian Pulp and Paper Industry

The long-term structure of production, factor demand and factor productivity in the Canadian pulp and paper industry was studied for the period 1956 to 1982. A four input (labor, capital, material and energy) nonhomothetic translog cost function was used for the purpose. Least-cost combinations of the four factors were obtained by imbedding an interrelated dynamic adjustment process. These least-cost paths, from which the cyclical fluctuations due to business turns were filtered out, were then used to derive the long-term productivity of each input. Long-term elasticities of substitution and demand were also computed. Long-term and short-term results were compared. Important findings of the study were: (i) the long-term structure of production of the industry can be represented by the nomothetic version of the translog cost function, (ii) the long-term technological progress in the industry is slow despite evidence of some economies of scale in production, (iii) all factors of production in the industry are long-run substitutes despite short-run complementarities between some factors of production, (iv) each input was observed to be misallocated during the period of study as compared to the least-cost allocations, (v) observed productivity growth of capital, labor and energy declined during the seventies and early eighties, as compared to growth in the sixties, but growth in their long-run productivities did not, (vi) though both observed and long-run productivities of raw material declined the rate of decline was lower on the long-run path, and (vii) price increases in the pulp and paper industry after 1971 could have been lower than what was actually experienced if the industry could change with economic circumstances more rapidly. La structure à long terme de production, de facteur de demande et de facteur de productivité dans l'industrie canadienne de putpe et de papier est étudiée pour la période de 1956 à 1982. Une fonction de coût “nonhomothetic translog” avec quatre entrées (la main-d'oeuvre, le capital, le matériel et l‘énergie) est utilisée pour cette étude. Les combinaisons les moins chères des quatre facteurs sont obtenues en incluant un ajustement dynamique du processus d'interaction. Ces chemins les moins chers, desquels les fluctuations conjoncturelles dues aux changements d'affaires sont enlevées, sont utilisés pour dériver la productivité à long terme de chaque entrée. Les élasticités à long terme de substitution et de demande sont aussi calculées. Les résultats à long terme et ceux à court terme sont comparés. Les découvertes importantes de cette étude sont: (i) la structure à long terme de production de l’-industrie peut être représentée par la version “homothetic” de la fonction de coût “translog,” (ii) le progrès technologique à long terme dans l'industrie est lent malgré l‘évidence de certaines économies par la production à grande échelle, (iii) tous les facteurs de production dans l'industrie sont des substituts à long terme malgré les complémentarités à court terme parmi les facteurs de production, (iv) chaque entrée était allouée au mauvais endroit pendant la période d’étude à comparaison des allocations les moins chères, (v) la croissance de productivité observée de capital, de main-d'oeuvre et d‘énergie a diminué pendant les années soixante-dix et au début des années quatre-vingts, à comparaison de la croissance dans les années soixante, mais la croissance de leurs productivités à long terme n'a pas diminué, (vi) bien que les productivités observées et à long terme de matières premières ont diminué, les taux de diminution sont plus bas sur le chemin à long terme, et (vii) les augmentations de prix dans l'industrie de pulpe et de papier après 1971 auraient pu être plus bas qu'on n'a expérimenté si l'industrie était capable de changer plus rapidement selon les circonstances économiques.