Topsy-turvy Uranium World

MARKET STRUCTURE, BARGAINING POWER AND RESOURCE PRICE FORMATION, by Walter C. Labys WESTERN EUROPE AND THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER: REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLES OF EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES, edited by Ervin Laszlo and Joel Kurtzman TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE IN THE PEOPLE'sREPUBLIC OF CHINA, by Jon Sigurdson FUTURE MARKETS FOR CONSULTANCY: PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ABROAD, by Reginald Bidgood INTERNATIONAL DIVERSIFICATION AND THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION, by Alan M. Rugman IMPLICATIONS OF JAPAN'sEMERGING SERVICE ECONOMY, by Kazuo Nukazawa, Keidanren Paper No. 8 STRUCTURE OF THE NIGERIAN ECONOMY, edited by F.A. Olaloku UNITED STATES TAXATION AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, edited by Robert Hellawell THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST, by Irving Millman Grossack FOREIGN ENTERPRISE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, by Isaiah Frank BRITAIN'sECONOMIC PERFORMANCE, edited by Richard E. Caves and Lawrence B. Krause     

Retiree medical--round 2

The second round of changes resulting from FAS 106 will be less dramatic than the first. But employers can anticipate that overall retiree health care costs will be reduced, averting the need to increase pensions or other retiree benefits. A fixed dollar benefit design will justify a lower accounting cost.     

Does Globalization Foster Economic Growth?

This article examines the effects of globalization, by especially focusing on the relaxation of local equity requirements (LERs) in developing countries. By constructing an endogenous growth model, where profit leakage to the South through LERs plays a key role, we obtain the following results. First, the relaxation of LERs in the South drives the relocation of firms from the North to the South, yielding a U‐shaped growth rate. Second, our numerical simulations suggest that a sufficient relaxation of LERs is beneficial for the South, although the shared profit of joint ventures is maximized through the use of LERs.     

Bootstrap inference for impulse response functions in factor‐augmented vector autoregressions

In this study, we consider residual‐based bootstrap methods to construct the confidence interval for structural impulse response functions in factor‐augmented vector autoregressions. In particular, we compare the bootstrap with factor estimation (Procedure A) with the bootstrap without factor estimation (Procedure B). Both procedures are asymptotically valid under the condition , where N and T are the cross‐sectional dimension and the time dimension, respectively. However, Procedure A is also valid even when with 0 ≤ c < ∞ because it accounts for the effect of the factor estimation errors on the impulse response function estimator. Our simulation results suggest that Procedure A achieves more accurate coverage rates than those of Procedure B, especially when N is much smaller than T. In the monetary policy analysis of Bernanke et al. (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005, 120(1), 387–422), the proposed methods can produce statistically different results.     

The Impact of Product Aesthetics on the Evaluation of Industrial Products

In spite of the fact that product appearance would not seem to bear upon performance, this article provides evidence that the appearance of an industrial product may have an impact on its evaluation. Utilizing a conjoint scaling approach, Mel Yamamoto and David R. Lambert find that industrial product appearance exerts an influence, which in some circumstances exceeds the influence of certain product performance or price attributes. They suggest that attention paid to product aesthetics may have a payoff in terms of sales performance. And further, the impact of product appearance affects people in different organizational functions, across a range of technical orientations.     

Evaluating Russia’s trade patterns

This article offers empirical evidence on the major trends in the nature of Russia’s trade and on the determinants of the different types of trade: horizontal intra-industry trade (HIIT), vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT) and inter-industry trade (INT). The estimation results of gravity-type log-linear models suggest that the combined economic size of Russia and the trading partner has a positive effect, while the distance between the two countries has a negative effect for all types of trade. They also suggest that FDI has a significant effect on all types of trade; however, the effect varies according to whether the partner country is a member of the CIS/CU or not, and whether the FDI is outward or inward.     

Uniqueness of equilibrium for smooth multistage concave games

Smooth, noncooperative, multistage, concave games are formulated so that a new uniqueness condition—based on the Poincaré-Hopf theorem—can be applied. The new condition is the weakest to appear in the uniqueness literature. The uniqueness subgame perfect equilibrium is obtained and examples are given.     

Evaluating effects on the flow of electrical and electronic equipment and energy consumption due to alternative consumption patterns in China

In this paper, we evaluated the effects of consumer’s behavioural changes on usage and disposal of home appliances. With the model to estimate the product circulation, first we conducted the sensitivity analysis with the six parameters, namely urbanisation, household size, Gini coefficient, product lifetime and selection rate of used product and high energy efficiency product. Then, secondly we evaluated CO₂ emission and e-waste generation from four consumers’ different behavioural patterns, which are named as ‘Business As Usual’ (BAU), ‘Rapid Cycling’ (RC), ‘Chain of Users’ (CU) and ‘Quality and Wisdom’ (QW). As a result, the QW scenario was the best lifestyle in both criteria. Further, RC scenario had an advantage on the reduction in e-waste generation in one hand, but CU scenario reduced more CO₂ emission. During the transition era of China from materially poor to rich, it could be one of the solutions to utilise energy-efficient second-hand product to improve the living standards of the poor and replace technologically inferior product stocks in poor households.     

Tool path of lathe machine in flexible transfer lines by using genetic algorithms

In this paper, we present a new approach for tool path generation of numerical control (NC) lathe machine tools during the development of flexible transfer lines (FTL). The approach that uses a genetic algorithm (GA) can automatically generate a tool path of the NC lathe machine tools and decides the part reverse position by just giving the dimensions of a cylindrical type of the work piece. Conventionally, this reverse position is decided by an experienced operator because it was difficult to decide automatically in the FTL. The GA approach of our system adopts the moving points of the tool path as an individual. We propose two individuals expressions. The first expression is defined by adopting an absolute value of the tool path as absolute individuals expression (AIE) and the second expression is defined by adopting the incremental value of the tool path as incremental individuals expression (IIE). After some simulations, it is ascertained that our system is useful.     

The relationship between employee benefit management and employee retention

The purpose of this study is twofold. The first purpose is to investigate the hypothesis as follows: the enrichment of the employee benefit management and the improvement of job attitudes mediate the relation between the adoption of family-friendly policies and the employee retention. The second purpose is to investigate the gender gap in the above-mentioned model. The facts and conclusions presented in this paper were obtained from a study of 1228 employees. Analysis of covariance structures was adopted for testing hypothesis. About the first one, significant mediator effects of the enrichment of the employee benefit management and the improvement of job satisfaction were clarified. About the second point, there was no gender gap in the above-mentioned retention process by the employee benefit management, except for the number of the employee benefit management practices and the organizational tenure. The necessity of additional research about international comparison, investigation of organization, longitudinal investigation, etc. was pointed out.