Solutions to the request reassignment problem in collaborative carrier networks

The paper considers an arrangement for exchanging transportation requests to facilitate collaboration among independent carriers. The goal is to maximize the total profit without decreasing the individual profit of the carriers. Two solution approaches are developed for this problem involving decentralized control and auction based exchange mechanisms. The results are compared with those obtained without collaboration and by a centralized control. They indicate that horizontal collaboration pays off even in highly competitive environments.     

探讨香港-珠江三角洲的联系：跨界的制度多样性如何促进电子企业的竞争力

基于灵活性的假设下,香港和珠三角两地的企业问卷调查表明,为了应对商业环境变化对灵活性的需求,香港客户对珠三角供应商关系调整了管治模式,逐渐采取股权或非股权合作代替原先的完全控股。而在香港企业寻找新的客户、选择适当的生产合作伙伴方面,正式和非正式制度之间存在互补性。研究结果证实,在现有的正式制度框架内充分应用非正式因素,可提高企业更灵活应对政治和商业环境迅速变化的能力,以维持在全球市场的竞争力。     

DYNAMIC INDIFFERENCE VALUATION VIA CONVEX RISK MEASURES

The (subjective) indifference value of a payoff in an incomplete financial market is that monetary amount which leaves an agent indifferent between buying or not buying the payoff when she always optimally exploits her trading opportunities. We study these values over time when they are defined with respect to a dynamic monetary concave utility functional, that is, minus a dynamic convex risk measure. For that purpose, we prove some new results about families of conditional convex risk measures. We study the convolution of abstract conditional convex risk measures and show that it preserves the dynamic property of time-consistency. Moreover, we construct a dynamic risk measure (or utility functional) associated to superreplication in a market with trading constraints and prove that it is time-consistent. By combining these results, we deduce that the corresponding indifference valuation functional is again time-consistent. As an auxiliary tool, we establish a variant of the representation theorem for conditional convex risk measures in terms of equivalent probability measures.     

Rationalizing the Political Business Cycle: A Workhorse Model

An incumbent policymaker has incentives to expand the money supply prior to elections to stimulate the economy and thereby further her chances of re-election. In its original formulation, the Nordhaus political business cycle hypothesis relies on adaptive inflation expectations and naive retrospective voting.
This article develops a simple model of a political cycle in inflation and output growth, assuming rational inflation expectations and rational retrospective voting. Voter scrutiny of the incumbent's economic performance has policy and selection effects, with ambiguous consequences for welfare: the policymaker manipulates the money supply for electoral purposes, but an incumbent of above average quality is more likely to remain in office.     

Analysing International Tourist Flows to Estimate Energy Use Associated with Air Travel

Tourism is a major global industry and air travel is an increasingly vital component of international tourism. This paper examines the neglected relationship between tourism and aviation with regard to global environmental impacts, including energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Based on visitor arrival data collected by Statistics New Zealand, it estimates a total energy use of 27.8 PJ resulting from international passenger air travel to New Zealand, which would increase national energy use by 6% if international air travel were included in national inventories. This energy use translates into additional carbon dioxide emissions of 1.9 million tonnes. These estimates are discussed in terms of a tourist's 'energy bill', national and international climate change policies, and with regard to the concept of sustainable tourism development.     

How Tourists and Tourism Experts Perceive Climate Change and Carbon-offsetting Schemes

This study was undertaken against the background of tourism as an active contributor to climate change, to explore how tourists and 'tourism experts' perceive climate change and forest carbon sinks as a means to offset carbon dioxide emissions. Three different surveys were undertaken in Australia and New Zealand that contained the same two questions: is climate change an issue for tourism, and would tourists be willing to participate in tree-planting to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. About half of all tourists questioned a link between climate change and tourism, but the willingness to plant a tree was surprisingly high among tourists (48%), who associated much broader benefits with trees than their function as carbon sinks. The study identified five groups of tourists that require different approaches for the development of educational campaigns. The degree to which cognitive or affective factors play a role for each group will be critical for the success of such campaigns. Tourism experts saw a changing climate as a potential threat for tourism, but did not necessarily see tourism's fossil fuel consumption and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions as a contributor to climate change.     

Environmental reporting by the Fortune Global 250: exploring the influence of nationality and sector

While research on environmental reporting frequently includes large multinational enterprises, the number of surveys that systematically analyses a whole set of such firms, including the non‐reporters, is limited – and mainly focuses on the United States. This article presents the state of environmental reporting by the Fortune Global 250, all large multinationals with a potentially large impact on other firms. Of these 250 firms, 35% has a recent environmental report, with another 32% publishing other types of environmental information. Reporting frequencies between the financial and non‐financial sector differed considerably, at 15 and 44% respectively. Besides an analysis of the number and contents of environmental reports, the importance of sectoral differences and firms' nationality is also considered. A framework is developed that posits the existence of reporting legislation in firms' home countries (some in place/pending, or none) against the direct environmental impact of the sector (large or small). The results of the analysis fit partially in this framework. Only a small number of reporting firms originates from countries with some kind of legislation (particularly The Netherlands), but national societal pressure seems to play a large role (especially in the UK, The Netherlands and Germany). Many operate in sectors with a substantial direct environmental impact (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil and motor vehicles and parts); reporting in sectors with more indirect effects is getting off the ground. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment