Industry 4.0 and circular economy: An exploratory analysis of academic and practitioners' perspectives

The union between Industry 4.0 and the circular economy (CE) appears relatively recent. In this sense, new trading zones for sharing a common scenario among academics and practitioners are needed. The paper aims to investigate the link between Industry 4.0 and the CE by understanding how Industry 4.0 can foster the impact of the CE on companies. The study proposes a broader perspective that includes thematic and content analysis gathering data on professional documents based on business cases, newspaper articles, press releases and specialised blogs, as well as scientific papers. The joint academic-practitioners view highlights how Industry 4.0 has the potential to impact on the CE through countless actions: increasing waste disposal; promoting remanufacturing; enhancing the efficiency of critical resources such as water, energy, gas and CO₂; and improving business models and the mission of companies. However, barriers still exist in its adoption, stressing the need for holistic and integrated design and a proactive environment of collaboration among stakeholders. Results lead to practical as well as research implications.     

The inoperability extended multisectoral model and the Role of Income Distribution: A U.K. Case Study

In this paper, an effort is made to enrich the current input–output (I–O) methodologies employed for studying disruptive events, by extending the I–O framework and including all the phases of the circular flow of income into the overall disaster impact. In this respect, the Inoperability Extended Multisectoral Model is created and implemented in order to estimate the higher‐order effects in terms of value added and disposable income. The social accounting matrix, referred to the United Kingdom, is constructed and proposed as a starting point for assessing the effects of a system perturbation related to the eruption of the Volcano Eyjafjallajökull, in mid‐April 2010, which affected air transport services due to the full closure of the U.K.'s airspace for several days. Finally, the ranking of those commodities and institutional sectors which are badly affected can provide guidance to policymakers in order to minimize the overall impact on the economy.     

Consumer Acceptance of the New Red-Fleshed Apple Variety

The aim of this study was to investigate consumer preference for the novel red-fleshed apple genotypes. The information presented provides us with insight into consumer propensity to accept a new variety with radical visible innovative attributes and societal demand for a more sustainable production. The survey was carried out on the population of a province in central Italy, where there is consumer demand for organic and high-quality foods. The consumers’ opinions contrasted greatly and can be divided into two groups. Over one quarter of the respondents declared that they did not like the innovative fruit. The cluster analysis and CHAID analyses were performed on the consumers’ responses to determine sample groupings. Three clusters were identified among the consumers with positive opinions, enthusiastic, health-conscious, and unmotivated illustrating how the hierarchical level of preferences of the potential consumers of the red-fleshed apple fruit are triggered by various motivations. The surveys also pointed out that most consumers of the sampled population were not biased against research activities producing innovative food products. A large number of consumers, especially women, declared that they were willing to pay a higher price considering the increased nutritional value of red-fleshed apple fruits. By examining the broad context of this study, decision-making researchers and operators of the fruit industry will be able to make informed and realistic predictions concerning possible future scenarios and to determine the possible effects and desirability.     

Exploring 3D datasets: a factorial matrices analysis of the US industry in the 1980s

In this paper a Factorial Matrices technique suitable for exploratory analysis of multivariate, disaggregated time series is presented and applied to a data set covering 19 US manufacturing industries over the years 1979 to 1990. The empirical analysis confirms that the technique is a powerful tool, allowing otherwise difficult extraction of stylized facts from multidimensional datasets. In this case: (i) there are no signs of deindustrialization induced by growing import penetration, and, (ii), employment decline has generally not been associated to substitution of capital to labour.     

Measuring the quality of work: the case of the Italian social cooperatives

Quality of work has within a short time become a major subject of study and discussion in labour economy. Its quantification is a challenging task because it implies the translation of various subjective perceptions into a single objective measure (composite indicator). In this paper, the method used to construct measures is the Rating Scale Model and the available data come from the Survey on Italian Social Cooperatives carried out in 2007. The validity of the obtained Rasch measures is tested with respect to some overall variables of the quality of work. Moreover, using inferential confidence intervals, these measures are utilized to evaluate the differences in the perception of the quality of work due to worker (gender, age and education) and cooperative (type, dimension and geographic area) characteristics, work characteristics (service area, membership, time and type of contract) and work incentives (economic, professional and learning).     

Policymakers' horizon and trade reforms: The protectionist effect of elections

This paper shows that electoral incentives deter politicians from supporting trade liberalization. We focus on all major trade liberalization bills introduced since the early 1970s in the U.S. Congress, in which House and Senate members serve respectively two- and six-year terms and one third of senators face elections every two years. We show that senators are more likely to support trade liberalization than House representatives. However, this result does not hold for the last generation of senators, who face elections at the same time as House members, suggesting that inter-cameral differences are driven by term length. Considering senators alone, we find that the last generation is less likely to support trade liberalization than the previous two. This result is pervasive and holds both when comparing the behavior of different senators voting on the same bill and that of individual senators voting on different bills. The protectionist effect of election proximity disappears for senators who are retiring or hold safe seats.     

The impact of coffee price changes on rural households in Uganda

Employing household survey data covering the periods 1992–1993, 1995–1996, and 1999–2000, this article shows for the case of Uganda that a coffee market liberalization followed by a price boom was associated with substantial reductions in poverty, which could even be sustained when prices went down again. Coffee is not planted by the richest farmers and the gains from higher coffee prices accrued to poorer and richer coffee farmers alike. Nor were poorer farmers hurt disproportionately when prices fell. In addition, we find strong spillovers from coffee production to other agriculture, which tends to favor the poor, and to nonagricultural activities. These multiplier effects are concentrated in coffee regions. In an economic environment characterized by a booming agricultural sector, coffee farmers were able to accommodate the negative price shock, in particular through agricultural diversification. General agricultural growth also cushioned possible negative multiplier effects in coffee regions. Overall, the case of coffee in Uganda thus lends support to the view that agricultural trade liberalization is beneficial for the poor.     

The Pricing of Italian Equity Returns

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between common risk factors and average returns for Italian stocks. Our research has identified the Italian stock market's economic variables by using the results from factor analyses and time series regressions. We study several multi‐factor models combining the relevant macroeconomic variables with the mimicking equity portfolios SMB (small minus big) and HML (high minus low) proposed by Fama and French (1993). The key question we want to ask ourselves, is whether the influential role of the size and book‐to‐market equity factors in explaining average stock returns can stand up well when competing with some macroeconomic factors. In other words, do stock returns carry some risk premium that is independent of either the market return or the economic forces that underlie the common variation in returns? Our empirical work estimates risk premiums using both traditional two‐pass procedures and one‐pass (full information) methodologies. We show that only the market index and variables linked to interest rate shifts are consistently priced in the Italian stock returns. The role of other factors, and in particular both the size and the price‐to book ratio, are crucially dependent on the estimation procedure. (J.E.L.: G11, G12).