The practical side of international trade

We've all heard stories about U.S. exporters who shipped goods, then were not paid—or importers who bought goods from abroad, then found them not up to quality or received them too late. These problems are often due to too much concentration on the glamorous side of international trade and too little attention to the practical.     

Anti‐dumping: A Growing Problem in International Trade

This paper discusses the issue of anti‐dumping (AD) proliferation. AD is used more frequently, by more countries, and against more products than ever in its history. I review AD filing patterns with an emphasis on the scope of countries and industries seeking protection. Recent trends suggest that the widespread embrace of AD protection makes the prospect for AD reform increasingly unlikely. AD is no longer being used solely by high‐income developed countries. It is increasingly being used by middle‐income and even lower‐income countries. New users have chosen to use AD very intensively. Per dollar of imports the new users have filed AD cases up to 15–20 times more frequently than the traditional AD users such as the US and EU. The evolving set of AD users complicates AD negotiations. In the near term, strong opposition by the US and EU makes reform a highly unlikely outcome. In the longer run, rising use of AD against the US and EU could conceivably weaken their support for AD; yet, the same trends that might finally cause the US and EU to realise AD is a failed policy will likely make reform impossible.     

Optimization Modeling for Logistics: Options and Implementations

Logistics optimization has significantly grown in popularity over the last few decades. Improvements in computing power, modeling software, and the willingness of companies to invest time in the modeling effort have allowed models that were once too unwieldy to solve to optimality to be solved quickly. This has led to a more wide‐spread recognition by logistics managers of the potential advantages of using optimization. The scope of logistics optimization in companies and organizations has expanded to address strategic, tactical, operational, and collaborative decision making. Spreadsheets, an analytical tool familiar to managers, have played a crucial role in the expanded modeling efforts of companies. Although optimization’s role in logistics has grown tremendously, there still are areas that remain to be explored that will allow it to achieve an even larger and more successful role in the management of companies. Additionally, there are some models that are still too large or too complex to currently solve to optimality, despite the advances in computing power and modeling/solving software.     

Constrained Morality in the Professional Work of Corporate Lawyers

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized ‘dirty work’ by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers’ work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work.

     

TAX POLICIES TO INCREASE FARM PRICES AND INCOME: A QUANTITATIVE SIMULATION

In previous periods when agricultural production was large relative to demand in North America, supply control through limitations in production and markets has been used. Large cropfalls and mammoth international purchases by the USSR during the early 1970s depleted North American grain stocks and caused major supply control programs to vanish. With more favorable worldwide weather, however, grain production and carryover have increased to levels where farmers may demand supply and market controls to improve prices and income. In contrast to conventional models, we make a quantitative analysis for the United States to three tax policies which might be used to restrain production and improve prices and farm income. All tax alternatives do so if the taxes collected by the government are returned to farmers. The tax alternatives examined include a tax on inputs, a gross sales tax, and a tax-in-kind similar to a share rent. The tax policies are applied through an econometric simulation model. Certain limitations of the tax policies are explained. Aux époques antérieures, lorsque la production agricole était grande compareée à la demande dans l'Amérique du Nord, on a contrôlé les stocks de réserve par moyen de limitations de production et de vente. Les récoltes inférieures et les énormes achats par l'URSS pendant la premiére partie des années 70 ont diminué les réserves des céréales de l'Amérique du Nord, ce qui a rendu superflus les programmes majeurs de contrôle. Toutefois, un climat global favorable a augmenté la production et l'accumulation jusqu'au point oú les agriculteurs peuvent considérer nécessaires des contrôles sur la production et la vente afin d'améliorer les prix et leurs revenus. Faisant contraste avec les modéles conventionnels, nous présentons une analyse quantitative pour les Etats-Unis de trois systémes d'impôts qui pourraient etre appliqués pour diminuer la production et pour améliorer les prix et les revenus agricoles. Tous les trois systémes sont effectifs à ce but, pourvu que les impôts perçus par le gouvernement soient rendus aux producteurs. Les alternatifs examinés comprennent un impôt sur les frais de production, un impôt en gros sur les ventes et un systéme d'impôts payables par une quantité des céréales produites, semblable au métayage. Les systémes sont appliqués par moyen d'un modéle de simulation économétrique. Certaines limitations des systémes sont presentées.     

What drives agrifood firms to register for an Environmental Management System?

This paper examines empirically which factors determine voluntaryadoption of Environmental Management System (EMS) certification(ISO 14001 or EMAS) by agrifood industries. A discrete-choicemodel of EMS certification is applied to a sample of 1,000 Frenchagrifood firms. The findings suggest that management-relatedfactors drive certification more strongly than economic incentivesand provides a new perspective on Porter's theory of the doublebenefit of certification.