Customer-facing supply chain practices—The impact of demand and distribution management on supply chain success

Traditionally, distribution has been viewed as the key (physical) link between a company's internal supply chain activities and its customers. More recently, demand management has emerged as a new dimension at the customer interface. Although it has become increasing popular in industry, it has not yet been analyzed in depth with respect to its impact on supply chain performance. Both distribution management and demand management entail customer-facing processes and practices and that are interrelated and (may) jointly determine supply chain performance. In this paper we seek to extend the stream of research in supply chain management by systematically investigating the impact of customer-facing supply chain practices on supply chain performance. Specifically, the paper examines the relative impact of relevant practices associated with demand and distribution management. To this end, we collected data from 116 multi-national companies based in Europe and analyzed it using structural equation modeling techniques. Our results suggest that (i) high demand management performance has a substantial positive impact on the overall supply chain performance, (ii) this effect is stronger than that of distribution management performance, and (iii) there is no evidence that demand management might be an enabler for effective distribution management. Among the individual practices that constitute demand and distribution management, adherence to the demand and distribution management processes and demand segmentation emerged as the strongest performance levers. Based upon additional in-depth interviews conducted with selected companies from our sample, we shed light on some of the most important findings that emerged from our survey analysis.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Climate Policy in a Globalizing World - A CGE Model with Capital Mobility and Trade.</Emphasis>

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Climate Policy in a Globalizing World - A CGE Model with Capital Mobility and Trade.     

Estimating the relative efficiency of various forms of prevention at different stages of a drug epidemic

Drug use and problems change dramatically over time in ways that are often described as reflecting an “epidemic cycle”. We use simulation of a model of drug epidemics to investigate how the relative effectiveness of different types of prevention varies over the course of such an epidemic. Specifically we use the so-called LHY model (see, Discussion Paper No. 251 of the Institute of Econometrics, OR, and Systems Theory, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, 2000) which includes both “contagious” spread of initiation (a positive feedback) and memory of past use (a negative feedback), which dampens initiation and, hence, future use. The analysis confirms the common sense intuition that prevention is more highly leveraged early in an epidemic, although the extent to which this is true in this model is striking, particularly for campaigns designed to preserve or amplify awareness of the drug's dangers. The findings also suggest that the design of “secondary” prevention programs should change over the course of an epidemic.     

China’s Quest for Innovation-Driven Growth—The Policy Dimension

China looks back at three decades of rapid economic growth and has become a global trading nation. The model of growth embraced by China also incurs social costs and raises questions concerning sustainability. While China has a long way to go to catch up with the world frontier, it has built up significant capabilities in various areas of science, technology and innovation. New policies aimed at supporting a transition to a growth path that is less dependent on low-cost, resource-intensive manufacturing assign a key role to innovation. Recent policy initiatives show an increased determination to step up investment in R&D and build a high-performing national innovation system, but major challenges remain.     

Employment problems under socialism

States with socialist economic systems also suffer from employment problems, a fact which is frequently passed over in silence by the critics of our market economic order. Professor Gernot Gutmann analyses its magnitude and causes.     

Habit formation and fiscal transmission in open economies

In this paper we analyze the ability of an open economy version of the neoclassical model to account for the time-series evidence on fiscal policy transmission. Revisiting the evidence, we find that i) government spending raises output, while inducing a simultaneous decline of investment and the current account and ii) the responses of output and investment are more muted in more open economies while current account deficits tend to be larger. Turning to the model, we explore the role of habit formation for fiscal policy transmission. Specifically, we show that the model can account for the evidence if consumption behavior is characterized by habit formation and the terms of trade adjust endogenously.     

Theory of protectionism fluctuations caused by a support-maximizing government

Fluctuations of protectionism are explained in a model with a political support-maximizing government and a small group of pro-protectionist producers. Due to elections, the government changes the level of protection, though there are no variations in preferences for protection.     

Innovationen im Zuge der Digitalisierung des Personenverkehrs

The transport system is an important sector in economies, both in terms of its own share of gross national product and in its role as a presupplier, prime location and facilitator of private and occupational mobility. Like other industries, the transport system is subject to changes in technological trends, especially with regards to digitalisation. When analysing the forms and effects of digitalisation, one may be overwhelmed by the multitude of terms, such as: Industry 4.0, Physical Internet, Internet of Things, Radical Innovation, New Business Models and Digital Transformation. These terms are often interpreted in different ways because they have been specifically designed for agenda setting and thus for the enforcement of the individual interests of consultants, researchers and industries. And while transport has high hopes for digitalisation, it doesn’t necessarily apply to all parameters of the transport system. There are several relevant issues to consider including the extent to which digitalisation affects the traffic supply and demand and whether this will lead to an increase or decrease in traffic movements.     

Regional Innovation By Networking the case of southern Lower Austria

The crisis of old industrial areas has often been explained by the dominance of a few traditional industries that faced dramatic decreases in demand. For at least two reasons this demand-side explanation is inadequate. First, it does not answer the question of why there is no regional redeployment of the productive resources that are set free by the decreases in demand. Second, it is not just a few traditional industries that are affected by crisis. Even high-tech inldustries and the service sector are growing at below-average rates in old industrial areas. This article stresses the importance of specific interfirm and interindustry linkages for understanding the crisis of old industrial areas. It presents attempts to stimulate interfirm cooperation and to create an innovation support network to overcome the crisis of an old industrial area in Austria. x     

A MODEL OF AN OPPORTUNISTIC-PARTISAN POLITICAL BUSINESS CYCLE

According to political business cycle theory, separate opportunistic and partisan approaches exist. It is obvious, as seen from theoretical and empirical points of view, that politicians aim for both opportunistic as well as partisan goals. This paper presents a model of a pre‐election political business cycle that manifests an indication of competence and a post‐election political business cycle that occurs because of the uncertainty of an election's winner monetary policy. In the pre‐election period competent governments expand the economy. The post‐election cycle depends on whether a leftist or a conservative government is in power in the pre‐election period, and if they are re‐elected or not.