What If You Stop and Think About It? Nutrition Logos and Product Selection Behavior

This study explores the effect of a health involvement manipulation on food choices and how food choices are influenced by front-of-pack nutrition labels. The results show that without health involvement, choice was significantly affected by both nutrition labels and product type, but the product choice with health involvement was affected only by whether the product was selected as the healthier one in the involvement manipulation stage. Moreover, selection of the healthiest product during the manipulation stage was affected by the product type but not the front-of-pack (FOP) labels, potentially because participants relied on their own knowledge or the product perception to assess the healthiness of the product rather than the label information. The implication is that consumers seem to behave differently when pushed into a “choose healthy” state of mind, and their reliance on label information to assess product healthiness may be product and context dependent.     

ISO 14001 – experiences,effects and future challenges: a national study in Austria

More than 60000 organizations worldwide have implemented environmental management systems (EMSs). About 800 of them are located in Austria. As Austria was one of the leading countries in promoting the EU scheme EMAS, and as there has been no specific study on Austrian experiences with ISO 14001, the purpose of this study is to describe the experiences with and effects of ISO 14001 in Austria. The results show that ISO 14001 often leads to reduced environmental impact, especially in the area of waste. A strong driving force behind implementation is the expected improvement of an organization's image. The average repayment time on an investment in an EMS is less than two years. Legal compliance tends to be difficult to implement, but on the other hand it works well in daily practice. To develop an EMS into a sustainability management system, the two most important challenges are to improve coordination between the EMS and the organization's strategies and to synchronize the EMS with central value chains. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Port devolution revisited: the case of regional ports and the role of lower tier governments

Most models of port governance have been developed to fit the largest ports, and tend to simplify the devolution process as one involving the transfer of jurisdiction from the State to the private sector. The devolution of smaller ports has been largely ignored as have transfers involving transfers from upper levels of government to lower tiers of public administration. Yet in many countries this has been the experience of port governance, where complex structures have arisen, many of which involve public control, in contrast to the strongly privatised process covered in the literature. The objective of this paper is to examine the process and consequences of changing port governance involving small and medium size ports where lower tiers of government are involved. It examines the recent devolution process in Canada and the decentralization policy in France. It brings to light the diversity of actors, public and private, who have come into play. The paper goes on to examine the challenges that have come about as a result of devolution that face the new port administrations. The paper concludes that existing models of port governance are incomplete and that the role of public administration in port governance is greater, albeit in a different form, than claimed in the existing literature.     

Currency restrictions,government transaction policies and currency exchange

Summary. We study how currency restrictions and government transaction policies affect the values of fiat currencies in a two country, divisible good, search model. We show that these policies can generate equilibria where both currencies circulate as medium of exchange and where currency exchange occurs between citizens of different countries. Restrictions on the internal use of foreign currency can cause the domestic currency to be relatively more valuable to domestic agents while taxes on domestic currency create an incentive for home agents to hold foreign currency. We demonstrate that some policies increase prices and lower welfare while others do the reverse. Received: September 5, 2001; revised version: March 1, 2002     

Greece in the European Union: policy lessons from two decades of membership

This paper examines the first two decades of Greece’s experience as a member of the European Union (EU). In evaluating the Greek experience within the EU, we derive three fundamental policy lessons that apply both to similar small peripheral countries now entering the EU and to the EU itself in terms of facilitating their integration in a large economic area. First, small peripheral countries that enter the EU must address the structural deficiencies of their economies before entry in order to minimize the impact of increased competition after the removal of trade protection, and follow domestic policies that maintain and promote their comparative advantage within the EU. Second, the Convergence Criteria have proven to be a successful mechanism for countries with a poor historical policy record to achieve macroeconomic stability, as shown by the case of Greece. Third, common EU policies can be very helpful in facilitating structural reforms in small peripheral economies. However, these policies must be continuously evaluated and improved so that their effectiveness is maximized.     

The state of construction training and employment in the local economy of Jersey

There is a crisis in the training and skills provision of the Channel Island of Jersey's construction industry that has similarities with the situation in Britain. The main problems relate to the unavailability, inappropriateness and narrow focus of skills, the demand-driven and task- or job-specific nature of training, the Jersey-born and male focus of recruitment, and the uncoordinated, traditional and short-term approach of the local construction firms towards promotion and financing of training provision. It is argued that a structured training policy incorporating the needs of both education and industry and holding a long-term vision should enable the construction industry of Jersey to reverse the downward spiral.