Environmental taxes in a differentiated mixed duopoly

Beladi and Chao (2006) and Bárcena-Ruiz and Garzón (2006) considered the role of environmental policy on the decision whether to privatize a public firm in different market structures. This paper re-examines whether privatization improves (or deteriorates) the environment in a mixed duopolistic framework with differentiated product and pollution abatement. It is shown that, due to privatization, less attention is paid to pollution abatement by all the firms coupled with less environment taxes levied by the government in a differentiated duopoly, and the environment is more (less) damaged when the product is less (more) substitutable. When the product is highly substitutable, industry profits increase because this softens the intensity of the product market, but social welfare deteriorates accompanied with the path of privatization because the loss of consumer surplus and tax revenue exceeds the increases in profits, even if the environment is less damaged.     

An assessment and ranking of barriers to doing environmental business with China

The transfer of environmental goods and services to China will increasingly be of importance to developed nations as the demand for environmental management services increases in China. A review of the literature on technology transfer to China revealed a range of well recognized and commonly known constraints to transferring technologies to China. There were gaps in the literature in relation to the concerns that environmental professionals have regarding technology transfer to China, as there is limited information on the transfer in environmental goods and services to China. A survey of the non‐trade barriers and their practical impact on the transfer of environmental technologies and goods and services to China, focusing on Australian suppliers, was undertaken to address these gaps. The survey, which was developed from barriers to technology transfer already described in the extensive research addressing the wider issues of technology transfer to China, targeted environmental professionals but also included other professionals with interests in transferring environmental goods and services to China. From the survey, the highest priority barriers to transferring environmental goods and service to China were identified, and those that are most likely to limit Australian vendors of environmental goods and services in their technology transfers to China were protection of intellectual property (IP), limitations of the rule of law, fragmentation and bureaucracy of the Chinese government and establishing appropriate level of ownership (of environmental goods and services providers in China). Examples of Australian experience were also examined, which confirmed these barriers to providing the needed technology and innovation to manage China's increasing environmental impacts. The research also shows that the barriers identified do not appear to be unique to transfer of environmental goods and services but rather generic to the transfer and adoption of Australian technology into China. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Market power and fiscal policy in OECD countries

We compute average markups as a measure of market power throughout time and study their interaction with fiscal policy and macroeconomic variables in a VAR framework. From impulse-response functions, the results, with annual data for a set of 14 OECD countries, show that the markup (i) depicts a pro-cyclical behaviour with productivity shocks and (ii) a counter-cyclical behaviour with fiscal spending shocks. We also use a PVAR, increasing the efficiency in the estimations, which confirms the country-specific results.     

Disruption management in distributed enterprises: A multi-agent modelling and simulation of cooperative recovery behaviours

Disruption management in industrial areas consists in dealing with unanticipated events that get the plans deviate from their intended course. The solution results from the design and the maintenance of an operating mode ensuring a relevant deployment of individual recovery behaviours.The paper proposes an approach to minimize the impact of disrupting events on the whole system. It is based on an analysis of disrupting events and the characterization of the recovery process, and on a cooperative repair method for distributed industrial systems. This method is based on a cooperative distributed problem solving approach supported by a multi-agent system framework.     

Espoused drum-buffer-rope flow control in serial lines: A comparative study of simulation models

This paper documents an investigation of drum-buffer-rope (DBR) scheduling and flow control methodology in single-product serial production lines. In particular, DBR flow control is reviewed and the importance of correctly representing this type of flow control mechanism in serial lines is discussed. Departures from valid DBR conceptual and simulation modeling are illustrated. It is shown that the model of a previously published paper is a push system not a DBR system, and that related conclusions regarding protective capacity and constraint location are unsupported. Correct modeling of DBR flow control is shown using discrete simulation experiments that compare the DBR model and a similar push model. Suggestions for additional research are offered.     

Schedule evaluation in unstable manufacturing environments

This paper provides a new approach to validate the feasibility of schedules of multiple-step mixed-model unstable manufacturing environments with different changeover times. Traditionally, continuous lines in a manufacturing process run the same sequence in order to minimize WIP inventory and lead time. Nevertheless, multiple reasons such as different product mixes or setup times can lead managers to run different sequences in continuous lines. Unfortunately, lack of reliability of supply and demand in these environments makes it difficult to manage product inventories and often leads to starvation due to the discoordination between the schedules of both lines. This approach is based on a new type of visual representation of schedules and an estimate the probability of starvation. It assumes stochastic supply and demand and a predefined schedule sequence based on batches of different sizes.     

近岸装置实施以风险为基础的综合检查(RBI)

企业在进行管理安全和风险时,以风险为基础的方法用于管理检查和维修工作是最近十年出现的一种优化资产费用的工具。这个较先进的量化方法有可能预知装置风险程度的检查结果,并且有助于开发优化的检查计划。这些方法,由于综合软件解决方法的开发,现在已经开始变得成熟。综合软件解决方法能够与设备数据库交换信息,能够管理检查计划和维修计划的实施,以及永久保持资产和检查的数据。本文介绍中东地区对近岸装置实施这种综合RBI和检查系统的情况。根据详细的RBI分析和过去的检查记录,对所选择的设备进行现场无损检测技术（NDT）的检测。资产数据、检查记录和文档集中保存在计算机化的系统中。该系统有能力存储和审查各种类型的文档和图样。这个系统还可能生成和监测检查和维修工作单,并且能够与其他企业系统进行交流。知识数据库对全部资产的活动很有用处。与MS Exel输入输出功能进行数据交换也很方便。     

Financial distress,financial constraint and investment decision: Evidence from Brazil

This paper analyses the presence of financial constraint in the investment decisions of 367 Brazilian firms from 1997 to 2004, using a Bayesian econometric model with group-varying parameters. The motivation for this paper is the use of clustering techniques to group firms in a totally endogenous form. In order to classify the firms we used a hybrid clustering method, that is, hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering techniques jointly. To estimate the parameters a Bayesian approach was considered. Prior distributions were assumed for the parameters, classifying the model in random or fixed effects. Ordinate predictive density criterion was used to select the model providing a better prediction. We tested thirty models and the better prediction considers the presence of 2 groups in the sample, assuming the fixed effect model with a Student t distribution with 20 degrees of freedom for the error. The results indicate robustness in the identification of financial constraint when the firms are classified by the clustering techniques.