Reparations and the competitive advantage of inner cities

Summary Michael Porter adds weight to disparate attempts to stimulate and accelerate investment, business development, and job creation in chronically distressed urban areas. But his discussion of the problems and his proposed alternative policy have two important defects. First, the paper fails to appreciate the powerful role of nationalism in promoting economic development as a collective enterprise with overarching goals. Second, it fails to acknowledge the full thrust of economic history in white-black relations. Hence, it misunderstands the fundamental problem that gives rise to the economic stagnation described. That means the paper avoids the issue of reparations. And it shows no grasp of the restitution principle. Without that, public policy on race-related distributive justice issues will continue to stumble.     

重庆印象

<正>今年7月1日,我与其他89名美中友谊和平志愿者一起来到中国,虽然有点疲劳,但还是对即将开始的培训非常期待。我们花了很多时间学习中文,学习中国文化和如何在中国教学。我们一直都在焦急地期待着自己会被安排到哪,终于在8月份确定下来。也正是这一天,我知道了在未来两年我将在重庆工作和生活。老实说,最初我还是不太确定。对于生活在这样一个大城市有点紧张。但是不管怎样,来到重庆的第一天感觉非常舒服,就像在自己家一样,这是一个美好的开始。     

Using eye-tracking to model attribute non-attendance in choice experiments

We investigate revealed attribute attendance in discrete choice experiments using eye-tracking. A simple theoretical framework is proposed in which choices are a function of visual attention. Consistent with the existing literature, the assumption that participants use all the available information to make their decisions does not hold. The results also illustrate that model fit and predictive power are greatly increased by using visual attendance measures as regressors. The use of eye-tracking technology has value for measuring revealed attention and to benchmark with existing choice models.     

The Effect of Customer‐Centric Green Supply Chain Management on Operational Performance and Customer Satisfaction

This study explores the links of implementing customer‐centric green supply chain management (GSCM) with its antecedent factors (i.e. customer pressure) and performance outcomes (i.e. operational performance and customer satisfaction). Data for this study were obtained through a survey of 126 automobile manufacturers in China. Results suggest that customer pressure has a positive effect on the implementation of customer‐centric GSCM, which, in turn, leads to multiple operational performance improvements (i.e. flexibility, delivery, quality and cost). While production flexibility and cost appear to have no significant impact on customer satisfaction, product quality and delivery are significantly and positively associated with customer satisfaction. On the practical front, this paper provides guidelines for managers in implementing customer‐centric GSCM to respond to customer pressures and improve firm performance, and for policy‐makers to encourage partner‐focused GSCM efforts in environmental policy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Analysing Production Technology and Risk in Organic and Conventional Dutch Arable Farming using Panel Data

This paper compares the production technology and production risk of organic and conventional arable farms in the Netherlands. Just–Pope production functions that explicitly account for output variability are estimated using panel data of Dutch organic and conventional farms. Prior investigation of the data indicates that within variation of output is significantly higher for organic farms, indicating that organic farms face more output variation than conventional farms. The estimation results indicate that in both types of farms, unobserved farm‐specific factors like management skills and soil quality are important in explaining output variability and production risk. The results further indicate that land has the highest elasticity of production for both farm types. Labour and other variable inputs have significant production elasticities in the case of conventional farms and other variable inputs in the case of organic farms. Manure and fertilisers are risk‐increasing inputs on organic farms and risk‐reducing inputs on conventional farms. Other variable inputs and labour are risk increasing on both farm types; capital and land are risk‐reducing inputs.     

A quantitative analysis of trade policy responses to higher world agricultural commodity prices

The worldwide spike in prices of agricultural commodities in 2007–2008 elevated food security and social stability issues to the forefront, especially in many food-deficit countries. In order to mitigate the global food commodity price pressure on domestic markets, several major exporting and importing countries, mostly developing economies, adopted trade policy changes such as export bans (or raising export restrictions) or reducing import tariffs during the same period. This paper estimates the potential impacts of these policies on the world prices and trade of major agricultural commodities using a set of multi-country, multi-commodity, and partial-equilibrium models. Our findings suggest that over all, the trade policy responses in various countries increased the prices of all agricultural commodities, although the impact on the total net trade varies by commodity. The simulation results show that the overall impact of trade policy distortions on the world rice price is most significant at 24%, followed by wheat (14%) and barley (9%). In general, the poorer food-deficit countries/regions, which have limited power to manipulate their trade policies, experienced higher price increases compared to those major trading countries that adopted policy interventions. Also, the developing countries that are net importers which did not implement trade policy interventions experienced significant welfare losses resulting from interventions implemented by other major trading countries.