Energy price reform and food markets: the case of bread supply chain in Iran

Reforming energy price is the core of Iranian economic reform plan during 2010–2014. However, increasing price of energy may have adverse effects on the agricultural and food markets. This study was conducted to address these problems in the most important food of Iranian people “bread” by developing a spatial supply chain model. Results show that consumers’ welfare would experience a sharp decrease though the impacts on farmers are trivial. Also, results indicate that the key to success the reform without political backlash in the short‐run is the cash transfer program under which the government redistributes part of the reform's benefits among consumers. Per capita compensation payments would be equal to 51.50 and 46.09 US$ per year for a typical rural and urban person, respectively. Moreover, the results provide more detailed information about the market characteristics and the payments both in nationwide and regional scale as well as in different income groups.     

Improving Consumer Satisfaction in Water Distribution Networks Through Optimal Use of Auxiliary Tanks (A Case Study of Kashan City,Iran)

Temporal and spatial variations in pressure may lead to consumer dissatisfaction and distrust of water distribution networks when it comes to reliable performance. Pressure management is a set of programs and operations conducted in water distribution networks to adjust the pressure. Constructing new auxiliary tanks in proper locations at the best height for the area they serve minimizes the pressure fluctuations. Additionally, chlorine is often injected in the reservoirs and tanks to improve the water quality. The goal of this research was to improve the condition of the network by adding auxiliary tanks with appropriate locations, heights and chlorine concentration. An optimization model is prepared to optimize consumer satisfaction, water quality and the relevant costs as objective functions. The performance of the models are evaluated by a selected case study; and the objectives are optimized in three scenarios. Using the proposed model in a water distribution network, a trade-off diagram of reliability and costs is obtained, that lets the decision makers select the proper options considering the available fund. A new indicator, the consumer satisfaction index, is also proposed as a way to evaluate the performance of water distribution networks.     

Building the future: Undertaking proactive strategy for national outlook

Future studies should provide the means to forecast potential crisis in order to avoid them or limit their effects [Masini, E. 2006, Rethinking futures studies, Futures 38, 1158-1168]. Recognizing and realizing the future events from past up to the present have been the main concern of the rulers and policy makers from the very beginning of civilization. Future studies are a decisive part of the public decision process which plays a very distinctive role in the desirable future of a society. The role of elites in future studies and scenario building is notable; they design national policies and strategies and have a significant impact in general public. Although future cannot be foretold by anyone, the interactions of advanced nations seem to be counter productive; they try to depict the futures. In this case, the futures are built, not predicted. The interactions of two or more systems at the level of international relations have been discussed in this paper. The imaginations of general public toward the futures are given in each society by using these analogies: railroad, river, sea and game. Therefore, the intervention of advanced nations may confront passive, harmonic, active, proactive and chaotic reaction in the other nations. We have discussed that undertaking proactive strategy is the best way to design national perspective.     

On the monitoring of multi-attributes high-quality production processes

Over the last decade, there have been an increasing interest in the techniques of process monitoring of high-quality processes. Based upon the cumulative counts of conforming (CCC) items, Geometric distribution is particularly useful in these cases. Nonetheless, in some processes the number of one or more types of defects on a nonconforming observation is also of great importance and must be monitored simultaneously. However, there usually exist some correlations between these two measures, which obligate the use of multi-attribute process monitoring. In the literature, by assuming independence between the two measures and for the cases in which there is only one type of defect in nonconforming items, the generalized Poisson distribution is proposed to model such a problem and the simultaneous use of two separate control charts (CCC & C chats) is recommended. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to monitor multi-attribute high-quality processes in which not only there exist more than one type of defects on the observed nonconforming item but also there is a dependence structure between the two measures. To do this, first we transform multi-attribute data in a way that their marginal probability distributions have almost zero skewnesses. Then, we estimate the transformed mean vector and covariance matrix and apply the well-known χ² control chart. In order to illustrate the proposed method and evaluate its performance, we use two numerical examples by simulation and compare the results. The results of the simulation studies are encouraging.     

Self-Sufficiency Versus Free Trade: The Case of Rice in Iran

The dilemma of free trade and self-sufficiency for the case of rice in Iran justifies continuous governmental intervention in this market. Among all policy instruments, import tariffs have been extensively used to achieve self-sufficiency; however, the results of this policy are quite controversial and remain as a main question for researchers and policymakers. Hence, this article examines the economic impacts of increasing import tariff policy applying a multimarket spatial price equilibrium model. The results suggest that pursuing the goal of self- sufficiency by restricting rice import would be detrimental. Social welfare as well as real and per capita income are adversely affected by increasing import tariffs both in nationwide and regional scale except for 1 region, which is characterized as the largest net exporter region in Iran. Also results show that adopting free trade policies and improving rice yield may be the well-advised strategy in the case of rice in Iran.     

Implementing a model for identifying organizational complications for the purpose of increasing productivity in hydropower plant

The present economical conditions on today＇s world require specific point of view and policy making in business agencies. In this competitive world to achieve competence, competitive advantages in order to better governance, organizations have to increase their competitive powers through promotion and productivity. One of the fundamental approaches to elevate the productivity level is finding the complications and obstacles, and arise planning to remove them. In order to understand organizational complication, we have tried to take critical factors of success and continue improvement into consideration to demonstrate a model to find the main and radical problems and complications and recognize the recoverable areas in the business agencies. In order to verify and validate the performed research, he planned model has been accomplished in the Hydropower Plant Department, positive and acceptable results were obtained and organizations total factor productivity improvement was achieved which was appreciated by the organization.     

Water Resources Sustainability and Optimal Cropping Pattern in Farming Systems; A Multi-Objective Fractional Goal Programming Approach

Water resources sustainability has the main contribution to the existence and durability of the farming systems and strongly depends on the cropping pattern practices. A comprehensive cropping pattern planning takes in to account the high level of interrelation of the environmental, economic and social aspects of farming systems. In order to assess the sustainability of water resources and determine an optimal pattern of cropping in a rural farming system, this paper introduces two ratios of “net return/water consumption” and “labor employment/water consumption” and attempts to simultaneously optimize them as the sustainability indicators. To this purpose, a multi-objective fractional goal programming (MOFGP) procedure is considered as the main approach of the study to be accomplished by several other single and multi-objective linear and fractional programming models. The results show that the FP models are more significant to contribute in assessing the sustainability indicators compared to the LP models, and the MOFGP solution is considered better, compared to the single objective FP solutions. The results will be illustrated quantitatively.     

Investigating the impact of excess zeros on hurdle‐generalized Poisson regression model with right censored count data

Typically, a Poisson model is assumed for count data. In many cases, there are many zeros in the dependent variable, thus the mean is not equal to the variance value of the dependent variable. Therefore, Poisson model is not suitable anymore for this kind of data because of too many zeros. Thus, we suggest using a hurdle‐generalized Poisson regression model. Furthermore, the response variable in such cases is censored for some values because of some big values. A censored hurdle‐generalized Poisson regression model is introduced on count data with many zeros in this paper. The estimation of regression parameters using the maximum likelihood method is discussed and the goodness‐of‐fit for the regression model is examined. An example and a simulation will be used to illustrate the effects of right censoring on the parameter estimation and their standard errors.