Choice experiment,multiple programmes contingent valuation and landscape preferences: How can we support the land use decision making process?

The promotion of cost–benefit analysis for social and environmental policy choices is much debated. Then, the conception of a valuation method for the non-market benefit of these policies is still of a main research interest. Among direct valuation methods, the choice experiment method (CEM) becomes a highly attractive valuation procedure, in giving at the same time the economic value of the impacts of the different components of the policy as well as the global impact of a policy package. However, the main-effect designed protocol aiming to limit the cognitive burden of scenarios’ evaluation disregards the important question of the existence of substitution or complementary relation between these programmes for their main beneficiaries. Furthermore, the independent valuation and summation strategy developed in CEM opens to overvaluation or under valuation of the willingness to pay values. The aim of this article is to conduct testing of the additivity bias with CEM results. The distribution of the willingness to pay values for possible combinations of landscape programmes aiming to maintain two agricultural landscape attributes as well as one moorland attribute inferred from the earlier CEM survey is compared to results obtained with the sequential contingent valuation procedure for multidimensional policy suggested by Hoehn (1991). Our empirical results suggest that the additivity bias is not statistically significant in our case, even if specific relation between landscape attributes due to what we call the composition effect is of concern for the population we interviewed. Furthermore, landscape preferences derived from our empirical investigation support the need for more integration of agricultural issues with the local land-use issues.     

International Procurement as a Signal of Export Quality

In 1996, the British Government was accused of a protectionist 'buy British' campaign when it awarded a contract for army ambulances to Land Rover. We present a model where the procurement decision of the government affects the perception of consumers in the rest of the world about the quality of the domestic firm's product relative to that of a foreign rival's product. The model compares the outcome when the government's only concern is value for money with the outcome when the government takes account of the effect of its decision on export sales of the domestic firm.     

A composite indicator model to assess natural disaster risks in industry on a spatial level

In the event of natural disasters, industrial production sites can be affected by both direct physical damage and indirect damage. The indirect damage, which often exceeds the direct ones in value, mainly arises from business interruptions resulting from the impairment of information and material flows as well as from domino effects in interlaced supply chains. The importance of industry for society and the domino effects often result in severe economic, social, and environmental consequences of industrial disasters making industrial risk management an important task for risk managers at the administrative level (e.g. civil protection authorities). Since the possible industrial disaster damage depends not only on hazard and exposure but also on the vulnerability of a system, an effective and efficient industrial risk management requires information about the system’s regionalized vulnerability. This paper presents a new methodology for structural industrial vulnerability assessment based on production factors that enables to assess the regional industrial disaster vulnerability. In order to capture industry-specific vulnerability factors and to account for the processes underlying regional industrial vulnerability, a two-stage approach is developed. This approach combines a composite indicator model to assess sector-specific vulnerability indices (V_s) with a new regionalization method. The composite indicator model is based on methodologies from the field of multicriteria decision analysis (MultiAttribute Value Theory) and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Method is applied to correct the (V_s) for interdependencies among the indicators. Finally, the developed approach is applied to an exemplar case study and the industrial vulnerability of 44 administrative districts in the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg is assessed.     

New product development process and time-to-market in the generic pharmaceutical industry

Generic pharmaceutical companies tend to improve their market position by being first in the market when a patent on an original product elapses. The time-to-market of new products is an important source of their comparative advantages. In our study we investigate the organizational and managerial factors lying behind time-to-market in four generic pharmaceutical companies in Central and Eastern Europe. Our research also supports some results found in other studies on the lead-time of new product development. However, we find some factors specific to generic pharmaceutical companies. Our findings are incorporated into a diagnostic model of new product development in generic pharmaceutical companies, which is an important practical result of our research.     

Agricultural support in selected Eastern European and Eurasian countries

The goal of this article is to assess the agricultural policies of eight countries from the former Soviet Union. They hold great potential for agricultural production, and some are relatively unanalysed from the point of view of agricultural policy. The analysis was conducted using qualitative and quantitative evidence. The key challenges facing the region are food security and competitiveness. Policy approaches range from strong interventionism to almost complete liberalisation. Budgetary support is relatively low compared to EU and OECD averages. Transfers to producers dominate (especially input subsidies and on-farm investment support) in all countries, and support to rural development and general services is weak. While prices for crops are near world prices, prices for animal products are fairly high in some countries, indicating high developmental needs. It is possible to discern four broad clusters of countries.     

Der Kunde als Innovationsmotor bei Henkel

Zusammenfassung  Viele Unternehmen tun sich nach wie vor schwer, neue Produkte und Leistungen zu entwickeln und sie erfolgreich im Markt einzuführen. Die Folge: hohe Flopraten. Eine konsequente Kundenorientierung kann den Erfolg von Innovationen deutlich steigern. Lesen Sie, wie es dem Markenartikler Henkel gelingt, durch kundenorientiertes Innovationsmanagement nachhaltig Innovationspotenziale zu heben. Prof. Dr. Thomas Müller-Kirschbaum Corporate Senior Vice President Laundry & Home Care, Henkel AG, KGaA & Co. Dr. Juan Carlos Wuhrmann Director Laundry & Home Care, Henkel AG, KGaA & Co. Tina Burkhart PhD candidate Laundry & Home Care, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA