中国和国际林产品贸易对森林保护和人民生计的影响

分析了中国林产品进出口的总量、结构、变化、增长趋势及对相关国家和地区人民生计的影响,提出了作为进口国消费国、生产国和加工国应采取的措施。1997年到2005年间,中国林产品进口总量折合原木材积增长了两倍多,从0.40亿m3增长到1.34亿m3,进口额也翻了一番。2005年,俄罗斯、马来西亚、印尼、泰国、巴布新几内亚列中国总木质林产品进口前5名,进口额占71.6%;加拿大、印尼、俄罗斯、智利、美国列纸浆进口前5位,进口额占77.6%;美国、日本、香港、欧盟是中国林产品出口的主要目的地。中国迅速增长的林产品贸易对国际社会也有消极影响,导致不可持续采伐、非法采伐等问题,但中国只是全球产业链上的一环,来自美国、欧盟和日本的购买者和零售商也负有不可推卸的责任。中国应认清其在国际林产品贸易中的关键地位,加快其林业部门的改革步伐,推动本国的林产品生产和供给,实现可持续的林业发展。     

Open all hours: spatiotemporal fluctuations in U.K. grocery store sales and catchment area demand

Conventional population estimates do not account for spatiotemporal fluctuations in populations over a diurnal timescale at the level of retail store catchments. This presents challenges for the retail location-based decision making process which seeks to predict sales volumes and their temporal characteristics prior to new store construction. We present a novel analysis of the temporal fluctuations of store sales, evidencing links between the spatiotemporal distribution of specific population subgroups and temporal store sales. Previous research linking spatiotemporal populations and store sales is limited owing to the fact that commercial data are not openly available to academic research. However, this research has unprecedented access to store level temporal sales data and an established loyalty card scheme from a major UK grocery retailer making these analyses possible for the first time. Additionally, we demonstrate that current store classifications were inadequate for grouping stores with similar sales profiles and propose four new clusters of stores based on the times of the day that they generate revenues. This development has clear academic and commercial benefits, aiding our understanding of consumer behaviours and a novel solution for improved location modelling. We lay the foundations for further research building spatiotemporal demand fluctuations into retail location models.     

用Web2.0优化管理流程

Web2.0不仅是一种社交网站的概念,它本质上具备一种强大的自下而上元素,对内还能够广泛吸引员工参与,为企业内部管理的优化带来深远影响。     

Information Uncertainty and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift Anomaly: Insights from REITs

This is the first study to examine the post-earnings-announcement drift anomaly in a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) context. The efficient markets hypothesis suggests that unexpected earnings should be fully incorporated into asset prices soon after being publicly announced. We hypothesize that publicly announced earnings signals may be more certain for REITs due to the presence of a parallel (private) asset market, suggesting less drift for REIT stocks. However, we find a large REIT drift component that is both statistically and economically significant. Furthermore, while the initial earnings surprise response is more muted for REITs, we find that the magnitude of the drift is significantly larger for REITs than for ordinary common stocks (NonREITs). Thus, information does not appear to move between the private and public asset markets in such a way as to render REIT earnings signals more certain than NonREIT earnings signals.     

Investigating a revised service transition concept

This paper seeks empirical validation of a revised conceptual framework of ‘service transition’ that re-interprets the adoption of advanced services by manufacturing firms as a progressive expansion, rather than a shift or migration, of the offering. Using cluster analysis and logistic regression, three groups of firms are identified with respect to the offering of four categories of services, ranging from basic to highly advanced services. Results indicate that advanced services predominantly complement, rather than replace, basic or less advanced services, supporting the revised conceptual framework. In doing so, the paper responds to the call for empirical research that quantitatively validates the conceptual foundations of the field of servitization. Nevertheless, the clusters identified provide a reference scheme to scrutinise potential synergies between sets of services that can complement and leverage each other.     

Institutional Capital Flows and Return Dynamics in Private Commercial Real Estate Markets

This article examines the short- and long-run dynamics among institutional capital flows and returns in private real estate markets. At the aggregate U.S. level, we find evidence that lagged institutional flows significantly influence subsequent returns. When disaggregating by property type at the national level, we find that capital flows predict subsequent returns in the apartment and office sectors, but not in the retail and industrial markets. At the metropolitan level, we find that the flows help explain subsequent returns in a limited number of core business statistical areas (CBSAs), although these CBSAs collectively represent about 30% of institutional capital. We find no evidence that institutional returns are predictive of future capital flows at the national or CBSA level, suggesting that institutional investors are not chasing returns.     

THE SMALL-FARM PROBLEM IN AUSTRALIA*

The nature of the small-farm problem in Australia is discussed from a welfare point of view. The situation is examined industry by industry where data are available. It is suggested that while the average level of farm income in Australia compares well with non-agricultural earnings, there are some industries with very significant numbers of low income farms.     

The New Generation of Trade Union Leaders and Prospects for Union Revitalization

The year 2003 was widely perceived as the year of the ‘awkward squad’— a group of recently elected union leaders more prepared than their predecessors to challenge New Labour. It was also a year in which unions were perceived to have experienced the beginnings of a recovery. In this review I argue that both of these perceptions are misplaced. The new generation of union leaders are a more disparate bunch than the ‘awkward squad’ label implies. The unions they lead remain seriously weakened by a harsh and inhospitable environment. Union recovery is unlikely unless the environment changes or the new union leaders can succeed against the odds in changing the environment through political activity.