The smartization of metropolitan cities: the case of Paris

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - Although the smart city literature is continuously increasing these last decades, there is still a need to better understand what make their...     

Tank failure modes and their consequences

The question of tank failure is addressed for both cryogenic (LFG) and atmospheric (Crude Oil) designs. An analysis of the consequences of an assumed axisymmetric mode of failure of a liquid storage tank is presented in an effort to answer the question.     

A new release of the ASTM CHETAH program for hazard evaluation: Versions for mainframe and personal computer

CHETAH, which stands for the Chemical Thermodynamic and Energy Release Program, was introduced in 1974. Since then, the CHETAH program has been widely used in the chemical industry for hazard evaluation. Although its chief aim is to predict deflagration/detonation potential from molecular structure, it can also be used to estimate heats of reaction, heat capacities, and entropies. One of the limitations of the original program was its rigid, punched card oriented format for data input and the lack of an overall hazard rating derived from the several hazard criteria. A new release of this program alleviates these shortcomings and includes other improvements. The main features of the new release are: 1) a totally interactive front end, 2) an interpreter subroutine which uses sophisticated pattern recognition techniques to combine the four hazard criteria into an overall hazard rating, 3) recognition of certain atomic groupings which are known to be sensitive, 4) correct handling of the symmetry number, and 5) an updated data bank. One of the most important features of this release is its availability in an IBM PC compatible version, making the program accessible to more users.     

AN ARBITRAGE INTERPRETATION OF CLASSICAL OPTIMIZATION

The paper mathematically develops the heuristic idea that the first-order necessary conditions for a classical constrained optimization problem are equivalent to a market being arbitrage-free - with the Lagrange multipliers being the arbitrage-free market prices. The arbitrage notions start with the multiplicative Kirchhoff's Voltage Law and then generalize to matrix algebra. The basic result shows the normalized arbitrage-free «market prices» (the Lagrange multipliers) resulting from a classical constrained optimizaton problem can always be obtained as a ratio of cofactors. The machinery also gives an economic interpretation of Cramer's Rule as a competitive equilibrium condition.     

El Niño,La Niña,and world coffee price dynamics

Coffee is produced in equatorial and subequatorial regions of the world, which are also most affected by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO events have a tendency to amplify weather conditions such as droughts or excess precipitation in the affected regions, resulting in production shortage or excess supply, subsequently impacting agricultural commodity prices. In this research we assess effects of ENSO events on world coffee price dynamics using the monthly data between March 1989 and December 2010. We employ smooth transition autoregression framework to examine nonlinear dynamics of ENSO and coffee prices, and illustrate the results of this research using generalized impulse‐response functions. We find that ENSO events indeed have short‐term impacts on coffee prices. The research findings are of interest to coffee producers and intermediaries in the coffee markets as well as researchers in the fields of environmental and development economics.     

Modern rice technology and regional wage differentials in the Philippines

Fear has been widely expressed that the modern rice varieties have created large disparities in regional income distribution, as the productivity gap between favorable and unfavorable rice-production environments widened due to differential technology adoption throughout South and Southeast Asia over the last two decades. Technology affects the income of farm population directly through its effects on productivity and factor use, and indirectly through its effect on factor prices. In particular, the ultimate distributional impact of modern varieties will critically depend on the interregional labor-market adjustments through migration in response to regional wage differentials created by the differential technology adoption, since labor is the main resource of the majority of the rural population. We studied favorable and unfavorable rice-growing villages in the Philippines, and found that adoption of modern varieties during the 1970s was positively related to population growth rate. Contrary to popular belief, no association was observed between wage rates and adoption of modern varieties as of 1986. These findings support the hypothesis that the differential adoption of modern rice varieties induced interregional labor migration toward equalization of wage income across different production environments.     

Identifying Key Customers for Novel Industrial Products

Managers responsible for novel industrial products seek to identify their most productive customers promptly, as a basis for deployment of marketing and development resources. Using a trial-and-adoption model, based upon invoice data from sales of novel industrial products over a five-year period, Richard Cardozo, David Smith and Madhubalan Viswanathan show that initial interpurchase interval (the time from initial purchase to first repeat purchase) identifies high-volume customers, no matter when they first purchased. In addition to demonstrating the usefulness of a trial-and-adoption model in analyzing purchases of novel industrial products, this study also describes for the first time four distinct purchase patterns for novel industrial products.     

The contribution of social tourism to sustainable tourism: a case study of seasonally adjusted programmes in Spain

Recent policy from the European Union has attempted to justify social tourism initiatives on the basis that they lead to a more sustainable tourism industry. However, the majority of latest research in the field has been focused on the benefits for participants, with the addition of some evidence on the economic impacts of such programmes on destinations, which have pointed towards sustainability outcomes including: a longer tourism season, more even spread of demand, and longer periods of employment for tourism workers. Yet there is a lack of direct evidence linking such programme to these outcomes. This paper aimed to explore this important disconnect between policy assumptions and evidence-based outcomes through an analysis of the deseasonalising effects of the Spanish social tourism programme for older people. The research found that this programme does have an effect on the seasonal nature of employment and economic activity in most regions studied, but that the huge volume of demand from international tourists in the high seasons masks the quantitative effects in the regions with the highest seasonal concentration of international tourists. Recommendations for policy and practice in sustainable tourism are made that are transferable to many countries and regions that adopt social tourism programmes.     

A method for reducing information asymmetry in destination–airline relationships

We propose a measure of business risk in air travel demand at the route level that can reduce information asymmetry during route development negotiations between tourism destinations and airlines. Aviation-exposed risk (AER) conveys information about the level of uncertainty with regard to air travel demand from an airline’s perspective. Using AER, tourism destinations and air service development teams can evaluate their risks from the perspective of the airline and its network. From there, an assessment can be made as to the value of air services in certain circumstances, including whether a direct underwrite or risk share between airlines and destinations is viable and necessary. By applying a portfolio analysis to an airline’s network, we find evidence that AER does indeed mimic the actual capacity distribution of the network. This provides support for AER as a useful risk measure to be used in practice.