Indian textile suppliers' sustainability evaluation using the grey approach

Textile supply chains consist of multinational garment retailers (customers), garment manufacturers (suppliers), and ancillary suppliers (suppliers to manufacturers). This paper evaluates suppliers' within the Indian textile and clothing industry (both garment manufacturers and ancillary suppliers) using sustainability criteria. Examining a sample of sixty-three suppliers and six sustainability criteria (i.e. discrimination, abuse of human right, child labor, long working hours, unfair competition, and pollution), we categorize suppliers into the three categories of ‘good performer’, moderate performer’, and ‘performance not up to expectation’. Since all the criteria are potentially subjective, we have employed the grey approach for analysis. The results indicate that the criterion of long working hours is a critical one for both categories of suppliers; in the case of garment manufacturers, we found that pollution and unfair competition were the most important criteria. In addition, employing child labor was found to be a critical criterion in the case of ancillary suppliers.     

Status of development,regulation and adoption of GM agriculture in Africa: Views and positions of stakeholder groups

The use of genetically modified (GM) crop technology in tackling food security problems and poverty reduction in Africa continues to generate debates over its benefits and safety. Only four countries, South Africa, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Egypt have commercialized GM crops in Africa but controversy surrounds current cultivation of GM maize in Egypt. Our study provides new perspectives on the status, development and regulation of GM crops through examining the views of 305 stakeholders in six African countries across four regions: South Africa, Kenya (East Africa), Egypt and Tunisia (North Africa), Ghana and Nigeria (West Africa), supplemented by interviews with relevant international organizations. The study revealed the challenges leading to the development of biosafety regulatory frameworks and the role of individual stakeholders in the facilitation of GM crops across African countries. This study also revealed that some countries may go through a Fiber–Feed–Food (F3) approach to adopt GM crops where Bt cotton will be adopted first followed by GM crops for livestock feed while undergoing all the necessary assessments before producing GM foods for human consumption. An overwhelming majority of stakeholders placed emphasis on risk analysis (risk assessment and management) in view of limited capacity, lack of scientific expertise and public concern, and encouraged a centralized approach to risk assessment similar to the European Union model of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).     

The organisation for economic cooperation and development

The global financial and economic crisis has prompted some scholars to suggest that a fundamental regulatory shift away from neoliberalism will take place – both in general and in the field of EU competition regulation. This paper shows that so far no radical break with the neoliberal type of competition regulation is heaving into sight. It sets out to explain this from the vantage point of a critical political economy perspective, which identifies the circumstances under which a crisis can result in a regulatory paradigm shift. Contrasting the current situation with the shift in EC/EU competition regulation after the crisis in the 1970s, the paper argues that the preconditions for a fundamental shift in this issue area are not present this time around. Several reasons account for this: the current crisis has been construed by economic and political elites as a crisis within and not of neoliberal capitalism; the social power configuration underpinning the neoliberal order remains unaltered; no clear counter-project has surfaced; the European Commission has been (and remains) in a position to oppose radical changes; and finally, there are no signs of a wider paradigm shift in the EU's regulatory architecture.     

Human resource management approaches in Spanish hotels: An introductory analysis

Although Spain is one of the most important tourism destinations in the world, Spanish tourism firms need to be more competitive in order to continue attracting citizens from other countries and human resource strategies can help. The present study aims to identify the specific human resource practices applied by hotels. The variables of interest are those related to human resource profile (number of employees, nationality and sex) and to human resource strategies (recruitment, hiring and training strategies). A survey of the hotel establishments in the Valencian Autonomous Region shows that a hard human resource approach prevails and that hotels apply the same human resource strategies regardless of their category or competitive strategy (universalistic approach).     

Co-breaking,cointegration, and weak exogeneity: Modelling aggregate consumption in Japan

This paper aims to estimate a parsimonious data-congruent model for aggregate real consumption in Japan using quarterly data over the past two decades. Testing co-breaking, cointegration and weak exogeneity plays an important role in pursuing the model reduction. It is demonstrated that co-breaking removes a deterministic shift caused by the collapse of the bubble economy in Japan in the early 1990s. Multivariate cointegration analysis then reveals that inflation plays a critical role in accounting for the long-run behaviour of the aggregate consumption. Further analysis finds that inflation and aggregate income are weakly exogenous with respect to a set of parameters of interest. Finally, a parsimonious data-congruent model for the aggregate consumption is estimated conditional on the set of weakly exogenous variables.     

水域巡视中现场执法方式及取证多样化初探

本文通过对海事水域巡视中现行执法模式及取证方法进行分析,得出其存在的不足。并在此基础上,结合实际提出了改进方案。     

PDE approach to valuation and hedging of credit derivatives

This paper presents a PDE approach in a Markovian setting to hedge defaultable derivatives. The arbitrage price and the hedging strategy for an attainable contingent claim are described in terms of solutions of a pair of coupled PDEs. For some standard examples of defaultable claims, we provide explicit formulae for prices and hedging strategies.     

China's search for the future: A genealogical approach

This paper is a dialectical inquiry, presenting a genealogy of, China futures discourses and visions from ancient times through to the, present. It uses both structural and macrohistorical based approaches. The identified worldviews are placed in their broader historical, epistemes; asked why change has occurred, how it fits within patterns of, history and what kind of futures are offered. It is unique in that I use, the futures triangle methodology to discuss the “pulls” of the future in, each historical era with the corresponding “pushes” of the present and, “weights” of the past. The article concludes with a theory of futures in, Chinese history and looks at which philosophies are likely to play a role, in the possible futures of China. The aim is to highlight which visions, and images have been victorious is affecting the present and influencing, the future.     

Beyond Regulation: Towards a Cultural Political Economy of Complexity and Emergence

Drawing on and contributing to materialist state theory, the regulation approach and institutional economics for more than three decades, Bob Jessop can certainly be considered one of the foremost Marxist political economists of our time. Recently, he has taken on board the cultural turn in social analysis by developing a highly original cultural political economy of the knowledge-based economy. As a contribution to the further development of a cultural political economy that is sensitive to the cultural dimensions of social life while retaining an emphasis on capital accumulation and state regulation, this article directs attention to the limits of Jessop's approach and suggests possible amendments to the theory. In particular, the article highlights the need to move beyond a concern with regulation towards a cultural political economy of complexity and emergence.