Agriculture and climate change in global scenarios: why don't the models agree

Agriculture is unique among economic sectors in the nature of impacts from climate change. The production activity that transforms inputs into agricultural outputs involves direct use of weather inputs (temperature, solar radiation available to the plant, and precipitation). Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on agriculture have reported substantial differences in outcomes such as prices, production, and trade arising from differences in model inputs and model specification. This article presents climate change results and underlying determinants from a model comparison exercise with 10 of the leading global economic models that include significant representation of agriculture. By harmonizing key drivers that include climate change effects, differences in model outcomes were reduced. The particular choice of climate change drivers for this comparison activity results in large and negative productivity effects. All models respond with higher prices. Producer behavior differs by model with some emphasizing area response and others yield response. Demand response is least important. The differences reflect both differences in model specification and perspectives on the future. The results from this study highlight the need to more fully compare the deep model parameters, to generate a call for a combination of econometric and validation studies to narrow the degree of uncertainty and variability in these parameters and to move to Monte Carlo type simulations to better map the contours of economic uncertainty.     

A supply chain-transport supernetwork equilibrium model with the behaviour of freight carriers

This paper presents a supernetwork equilibrium model integrating supply chain networks with a transport network, namely, a supply chain-transport supernetwork equilibrium model. The model takes into account the behaviour of freight carriers and transport network users to endogenously determine the transport costs generated in the supply chain networks. The interaction between transport network and supply chain networks can also be examined. Results of the numerical tests reveal that the improvement of transport network could enhance the efficiency of supply chain networks. The paper makes contributions to modelling of supply chain networks as well as to that of transport networks.     

Qualitative and quantitative studies of leadership in multinational settings: Meta-analytic and cross-cultural reviews

Much of the research on leadership has been conducted by Western researchers and has led to a largely Western and individualistic perspective on leadership. This has led researchers to raise questions concerning the extent to which these theories apply globally. In particular, do Western theories of leadership apply to the same extent in more communal Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Indonesia, and Thailand? Based on leadership studies conducted in Japan, we argue that Japanese leadership practices often differ from the styles practiced widely in the West. These differences in behavior have their roots in Japanese cultural traditions and business practices. Our conclusion is based on the results of meta-analyses of studies of the five most popular leadership theories used in the West, an empirical study of transformational and gatekeeper leadership, and in-depth qualitative case studies of three Japanese corporate leaders. We observe that there are relatively few qualitative studies of leaderships in international contexts, and propose that in order to understand leadership phenomena in a global context, it is necessary to take a triangulation approach, employing surveys, experimental manipulations, company records, and qualitative interviews.     

Robust portfolio estimation under skew-normal return processes

In this paper, we study issues related to the optimal portfolio estimators and the local asymptotic normality (LAN) of the return process under the assumption that the return process has an infinite moving average (MA) (∞) representation with skew-normal innovations. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we discuss the influence of the skewness parameter δ of the skew-normal distribution on the optimal portfolio estimators. Based on the asymptotic distribution of the portfolio estimator ? for a non-Gaussian dependent return process, we evaluate the influence of δ on the asymptotic variance V(δ) of ?. We also investigate the robustness of the estimators of a standard optimal portfolio via numerical computations. In the second part of the paper, we assume that the MA coefficients and the mean vector of the return process depend on a lower-dimensional set of parameters. Based on this assumption, we discuss the LAN property of the return's distribution when the innovations follow a skew-normal law. The influence of δ on the central sequence of LAN is evaluated both theoretically and numerically.     

Ethical Perceptions of Business Students: Differences Between East Asia and the USA and Among “Confucian” Cultures

This paper reports the results of a survey of 842 undergraduate business students in four nations – the United States of America (the USA), the Peoples’ Republic of China (the PRC), Japan, and the Republic of Korea (the ROK). This survey asked students to respond to four scenarios with potentially unethical business behavior and a string of questions related to the importance of ethics in business strategy and in personal behaviors. Based on arguments related to differences in recent historical experiences, the authors suggest that student responses may be as different within the East Asian (Confucian) environment as they are between this environment as a whole and the USA. Survey results indicate a greater perception of ethical problems and more importance placed on ethics per se in business practices, as well as less of an emphasis on social harmony (a key distinguishing characteristic of Confucian values identified in prior research) on the part of USA students. At the same time, substantial national differences in response are also witnessed within the set of East Asian students. A priori expectations as to the manner in which these East Asian responses should vary based on differences in recent historical experiences are partially, but not fully, supported. The authors argue that the key value of the reported research rests on a demonstration that national differences within a common cultural (e.g., East Asian or Confucian) area can be as great as differences across cultural (East vs. West) areas and that practitioners of global business must fine-tune their expectations as to acceptable business and personal actions to accommodate specific national historical experiences to be effective. Professors Chung and Eichenseher are professor of accounting at their respective universities. Professor Taniguchi's primary field of study is economics.     

Assessing Mortality Risk from Heat Stress due to Global Warming

With gradually progressing climate change in the future, the frequency and scale of hot summers like those observed in various places around the world in recent years will undoubtedly increase, giving rise to strong concerns over increased risk of death due to heat stress. Based on this background, we have developed a method to assess future changes in mortality due to heat stress with the entire globe as the target, and performed trial calculations using this method. The purpose of this report is to draw people's attention to the possible severe consequences of climate change by presenting the severest estimates in the uncertainty range due to adaptation/acclimation expected in the future, so as to induce further analysis and discussion on policies and measures. For the trial calculations, future changes in temperature were derived from the results of simulation using an Atmosphere‐Ocean General Circulation Model with the highest spatial resolution in the world at the time of the study. Population densities were assumed not to alter in the future. Assuming that no adaptation or acclimation takes place, when the rates of change of excess mortality due to heat stress are examined by country, the results of our calculations show increases of approximately 100% to 1000%. It is confirmed that the burden of climate change impact is quite unequal among countries, at least from the viewpoint of heat stress mortality. When considered together with present population densities, significant increases in excess mortality density can be seen in China, India, and Europe. These regions are characterized by large losses due to climate change in absolute quantitative terms. The need to consider the adoption of adaptation measures is therefore most urgent in these regions.     

On sooner and later waiting time distributions associated with simple patterns in a sequence of bivariate trials

In this article, we study sooner/later waiting time problems for simple patterns in a sequence of bivariate trials. The double generating functions of the sooner/later waiting times for the simple patterns are expressed in terms of the double generating functions of the numbers of occurrences of the simple patterns. Effective computational tools are developed for the evaluation of the waiting time distributions along with some examples. The results presented here provide perspectives on the waiting time problems arising from bivariate trials and extend a framework for studying the exact distributions of patterns. Finally, some examples are given in order to illustrate how our theoretical results are employed for the investigation of the waiting time problems for simple patterns.     

Bi-objective decision support system for routing and scheduling of hazardous materials

This paper presents a Pareto-based bi-objective optimization of hazardous materials vehicle routing and scheduling problem with time windows and shows its application to a realistic hazardous material logistics instance. A meta-heuristic solution algorithm is also proposed, which returns a set of routing solutions that approximate the frontier of the Pareto optimal solutions based on total scheduled travel time and total risk of whole transportation process. It works in a single-step fashion simultaneously constructing the vehicle route and selecting the optimal paths connecting the routed locations from a set of non-dominated paths obtained in terms of travel time and risk value.     

Import Penetration and Domestic Process Innovation

This paper develops a model of R&D competition between domestic and foreign firms that explicitly incorporates the effect of the market structure. We focus on how differences in costs modify the effects of increases in the number of foreign firms on R&D investments of domestic firms. We show that an increase in the number of foreign firms may have a positive effect on a domestic firm's R&D investment and also show that two trade policies, tariffs or quotas, could have different effects on R&D investments of domestic firms. A welfare analysis shows that greater cost advantages increase social welfare.