Interannual Climate Variation, Climate Prediction, and Agricultural Trade: the Costs of Surprise versus Variability

Agriculture remains sensitive to variation in rainfall and temperature. Fortunately, our ability to predict the lower frequency variation in the earth's atmosphere is increasing rapidly. While information cannot affect the underlying source of variability, it allows unexpected shocks to be anticipated and acted upon. This paper develops and analyzes an intertemporal Ricardian trade model with Bayesian beliefs. Results in this paper show that improved climate prediction reduces expected prices, but increases price variability. In addition, trade is crucial to realizing the potential benefits of climate prediction. The value of climate prediction is highest with both storage and trade, and falls by over 300% when a country is in autarky.     

在衰退中成长

如今,全球都笼罩在经济衰退之中.如果下一个就要轮到贵公司,你该怎么办?当然你要尽力保证企业财务的稳定.但更重要的是,你还必须了解公司在衰退结束后的目标设计.如果你知道企业的发展方向和如何实现这一目标,那么衰退时期是改善公司相对战略地位的好时机.     

Global economy gathering strength

Encouraged by a highly expansionary economic policy, the global economy is enjoying a rapid upturn. Utilisation of capacity is high in many sectors, particularly in the growth centres of the USA and East Asia, where China leads the field. With inflationary risks on the increase, most countries are now shifting the focus of economic policy. Fiscal policy in particular can be expected to provide little in the way of further stimulus. In addition, there has been a turnaround in interest rates in many countries. Yet how quickly can the monetary reins be tightened without jeopardising growth or endangering price stability?     

On the Ethics Behind “Business Ethics”

Ethics in business and economics is often attacked for being too superficial. By elaborating the conclusions of two such critics of business ethics and welfare economics respectively, this article will draw the attention to the “ethics behind” these apparently well-intended, but not always convincing constructions, by help of the “fundamental ethics” of Emmanuel Levinas. To Levinas, responsibility is more basic than language, and thus also more basic than all social constructions. Co-operation relations in organizations, markets and value networks are generated from personal relations and personal responsibilities. It is not sufficient to integrate ethics in an impersonal, rational system, neither in business organizations nor in the world economy. Ethics has its source not in rationality, but in the personal.     

LOGISTICS SALIENCE IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

The primary purpose of this paper was to empirically explore some of the reasons that logistics has become more important, or salient, in comparison to other functions within the firm. A survey of 296 managers across multiple industries in the U.S. found logistics becomes more important within the firm when the industry increases in uncertainty, when there is an emphasis on time‐based competition, when there is greater adoption of information technology, and when there is an emphasis on cross‐functional integration.     

THE SQUARED ORNSTEIN-UHLENBECK MARKET

We study a complete market containing J assets, each asset contributing to the production of a single commodity at a rate that is a solution to the squared Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (Cox-Ingersoll-Ross) SDE. The assets are owned by K agents with CRRA utility functions, who follow feasible consumption/investment regimes so as to maximize their expected time-additive utility from consumption. We compute the equilibrium for this economy and determine the state-price density process from market clearing. Reducing to a single (representative) agent, and exploiting the relation between the squared-OU and squared-Bessel SDEs, we obtain closed-form expressions for the values of bonds, assets, and options on the total asset value. Typical model parameters are estimated by fitting bond price data, and we use these parameters to price the assets and options numerically. Implications for the total asset price itself as a diffusion are discussed. We also estimate implied volatility surfaces for options and bond yields.     

International briefing 16: training and development in the Republic of Ireland

This paper explores the landscape of training and development in the Republic of Ireland, a country with an impressive economic record in recent years. Both the Irish economic context and business context are explored. The national system for training and development and the surrounding policy and strategy context are set down. Survey data are drawn upon to examine the nature of training and development at organizational level. Here influence on training and development, levels of expenditure, the number of days per employee category and the dominant methods employed training and development are all discussed. Finally the academic study of training and development in the Republic of Ireland is examined.     

The European high-speed train network: Predicted effects on accessibility patterns

The principal aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the future European high-speed train network on accessibility, by reducing time distance between places and modifying their relative location. We compare the current situation with that foreseen for the year 2010, according to the Outline Plan of the European High-Speed Train Network, in order to analyse which areas will most benefit from construction and improvement of the infrastructure. It is hypothesized that the high-speed train will certainly bring the peripheral regions closer to the central ones, but will also increase imbalances between the main cities and their hinterlands. A weighted average distance indicator is applied for this purpose. This measure identifies the spatial distribution of accessibility in the area of study, emphasizing the infrastructure effects, and locates accessibility changes at the European level. A Geographic Information System (GIS) has been used to carry out this study.     

The Effects of Occupational Injuries After Returns to Work: Work Absences and Losses of On-the-Job Productivity

We extend the research on postinjury employment by estimating productivity losses for workers with permanent partial disabilities (PPDs) in the first three years after injury. Our method distinguishes between productivity losses attributed to spells of work absence versus reduced earnings during spells of employment. The method is applied to data for 800 Ontario workers with PPDs. The results document large productivity losses persisting at least three years after injury, with different loss patterns for workers returning to stable versus unstable employment. Human capital investments or job accommodations can reduce productivity losses, but the significant determinants of losses differ for the stable versus unstable employment groups.