Combining LCA and RA for the integrated risk management of emerging technologies

Emerging risks of innovative technologies, like for instance nanotechnology, require proactive assessments in order to guarantee that their future materials and products will not result in adverse effects on health, safety and the environment. The combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) offers a systematic approach to identify and assess potential impacts. LCA is a well-known analytical tool, standardised in ISO 14040-14044, to assess the environmental impact of the entire life-cycle of a product or service. Its strengths are the systematic approach to analyse all life-cycle stages of complex systems. Integrated risk management can benefit in various ways from LCA. Firstly, LCA offers a new dimension to the safety paradigm, exploring the principles and synergies between LCA and RA. Secondly, LCA offers a systematic approach to analyse the risks of innovative technologies along their entire life-cycle (from design, building, maintenance, operation to decommissioning). Thirdly, LCA offers an analytical tool to quantify the environmental impact of emerging technologies. In combination with RA, LCA can provide scientifically sound information for the early assessment of potential impacts on health, safety and the environment.     

Formal Participation in the IASB's Due Process of Standard Setting: A Multi-issue/Multi-period Analysis

This paper sets out to enquire about the nature of constituents' participation in the IASB's due process in terms of representation (constituents' diversity and characteristics) and drivers to participate. We choose to adopt a multi-issue/multi-period approach to investigate constituents' formal participation. An analysis of comment letters sent directly to the IASB over the period 2002–2006, reveals that preparers sent most letters followed by the accounting profession and standard setters. With regard to timing, we find that preparers concentrate their participation efforts at a later stage in the process compared to the other constituents, who react earlier. Formal indirect participation in the IASB's due process by submitting comment letters to EFRAG is infrequently used by European constituents. In those cases where constituents exert influence to both IASB and EFRAG, they often use exactly the same comment letter. Concentrating on the drivers to participate, the data reveal that preparers, accountants and standard setters react significantly more when proposals have a major impact on the accounting numbers of a company. Users, stock exchanges and their supervisory authorities write significantly more comment letters when disclosure issues are at stake. Finally, participating preparers in the IASB's due process are larger and more profitable than non-participating preparers.     

Investigating the impact of guilt and shame proneness on consumer ethics: a cross national study

Studies show that emotions of guilt and shame significantly influence how people live their daily lives when it comes to making ethical decisions. Nonetheless, individuals’ proneness toward guilt and shame has received limited attention in consumer behaviour literature. The study focuses on the impact of anticipated emotions (i.e. guilt and shame) on various consumers’ ethical and unethical behaviours. Using a combination of a panel data sample and a university sample, the overall results between the two countries (i.e. Australia and Indonesia) reveal more similarities than differences. Consumers with high guilt‐proneness are less likely to agree on those unethical behaviours. This study has important theoretical implications for understanding the similarities and differences between both nations and the impact of guilt and shame proneness on consumer ethics.     

Deciding to export: An exploratory study of Singaporean entrepreneurs

This paper confirms a mapping between a taxonomy of entrepreneurs and what triggered Singaporeans to become exporters. The study involved interviews with 47 new exporters based in Singapore. Entrepreneurs were classified as either ‘opportunity seeking’ or ‘reactive’. Export triggers were either ‘pull’, negative ‘push’, or positive ‘push’. We find that those who were opportunity seeking at start-up were more likely to have responded to export ‘pull’ forces. It was rare indeed for a reactive founder to have been ‘pulled’ into exporting. Among this group of entrepreneurs, ‘push’ forces dominated the decision to export. The paper concludes with some implications for policy targeting and suggestions for further research.     

Lenders on the storm of wholesale funding shocks: saved by the central bank?

We provide empirical evidence on banks’ responses to shocks in the wholesale funding market, using data of 181 euro area banks over the period from August 2007 to June 2013. Responses to funding liquidity shocks for both banks’ lending volumes and loan rates, to households and corporates, are analysed in a panel VAR framework. We thereby distinguish banks by country, extent of Eurosystem borrowing, bank size and capitalization. The results show that shocks in the securities and interbank markets have significant effects on loan rates and credit supply, particularly of banks in stressed countries of the periphery. The results also suggest that central bank liquidity has mitigated this effect on lending volumes. Lending to nonfinancial corporations is more sensitive to wholesale funding shocks than lending to households. Lending volumes of large banks that are typically more dependent on wholesale funding and banks with large exposure to sovereign bonds show stronger responses to wholesale funding shocks.     

High-growth entrepreneurial firms in Africa: a quantile regression approach

This article analyses the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of 11 Sub-Saharan African countries. The focus of the article is on identifying those entrepreneurs’ attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of high-growth firms in these countries. To this end, we use a quantile regression, which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes. The results indicate that firms that engage in product innovation, have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through their own website are especially characterized by higher growth rates and also display a distribution of growth rates skewed to the right, hosting a higher number of high-growth firms. The effect of the last two variables, which relate to distance-bridging modes of infrastructure, points to the self-reinforcing growth effects they generate in creating wider input and output markets. Education raises growth opportunities by affecting the lower quantiles, but it does not appear to influence the upper quantiles. The estimated conditional growth distributions for the technology-intensive machinery and electronics sectors show more extreme tails and a lower mean in comparison to the traditional industries, indicating the more risky nature of doing business in these industries.     

Toward sustainable practices in technology education

This paper discusses the problematic relationship between technology education, consumption and environmental sustainability. The emerging global sustainability crisis demands an educational response that moves beyond mere ‘tinkering’ with classroom practices, toward technology education which embraces life cycle thinking and ‘eco-innovation’. It will argue that the urgent transformation to technology education for sustainability citizenship must begin with a critical examination of existing practices and assumptions which underpin unsustainability. The initial context for this discussion will be technological education in Canada and the United States, in particular a recent national report on the assessment of technological literacy. The paper concludes by suggesting several ‘new paths’ forward to move technology education toward more sustainable practices and more relevance for young people.     

Equal-treatment policy in a random search model with taste discrimination

We consider a search model of the labor market with two types of equally productive workers and two types of firms, discriminators and non-discriminators. Without policy intervention, there is wage dispersion between and within the two worker groups, but all wage differences become negligible when the taste for discrimination is small. We analyze the effect of an equal-pay policy, both in combination with affirmative action and without. When equal opportunity of hiring cannot be enforced, wage dispersion increases and wages for minority workers fall substantially relative to laissez faire. Sometimes also the wage gap between worker groups widens in response to the policy.     

Planning and Uncovering Industrial Symbiosis: Comparing the Rotterdam and Östergötland regions

Industrial ecology is defined as the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems and as such may focus on a geographic area, resource and/or industry sector. In these types of setting, industrial ecology is also often known as industrial symbiosis (IS). The proximity of companies in industrial estates facilitates the linking of utilities and the exchange of wastes and by‐products, which may eventually be useful inputs for adjacent industrial processes. The typical model that has been applied in several regions of the world is one where an anchor‐tenant organization with energy and by‐product linkages is connected to companies physically located nearby. In the case of biomass symbiosis, however, the resource chains are not explicitly arranged by their industrial setting and the supply of waste and by‐products is able to be organized in a more scattered way. In this article, the role of industrial symbiosis is analyzed in respect of the planned industrial symbiosis activities in the Rotterdam Harbour and Industry Complex in the Netherlands and in the application of renewable energy in the Östergötland region in Sweden. The objective of this article is to discuss the similarities and differences between the planned industrial symbiosis activities in Rotterdam and the unplanned biomass and industrial symbiosis activities in the Östergötland region. By presenting this knowledge in this article, it is anticipated that further development of industrial symbiosis application processes may be achieved. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.