Integrating ecosystem services into conservation assessments: A review

A call has been made for conservation planners to include ecosystem services into their assessments of conservation priority areas. The need to develop an integrated approach to meeting different conservation objectives and a shift in focus towards human wellbeing are some of the motivations behind this call. There is currently no widely accepted approach to planning for ecosystem services. This study contributes towards the development of this approach through a review of conservation assessments and the extent to which they include ecosystem services. Of the 476 conservation assessments identified by a set of search terms on the Web of Science, 100 were randomly selected for this review. Of these only seven had included ecosystem services, while another 13 had referred to ecosystem services as a rationale for conservation without including them in the assessment. The majority of assessments were based on biodiversity pattern data while 19 used data on ecological processes. A total of 11 of these 19 assessments used processes, which could be linked to services. Ecosystem services have witnessed an increase in attention received in conservation assessments since the year 2000, however trends were not apparent beyond this date. In order to assess which types of ecosystem services and how they have been accounted for in conservation assessments, we extended our review to include an additional nine conservation assessments which included ecosystem services. The majority included cultural ecosystem services, followed by regulatory, provisioning and supporting services respectively. We conclude with an analysis of the constraints and opportunities for the integration of ecosystem services into conservation assessments and highlight the urgent need for an appropriate framework for planning for ecosystem services.     

Learning for Innovation and the Skill Premium

The computer revolution took very long to pay off in productivity growth in the computer-using sectors. The relative wage of skilled workers, however, has risen sharply from the early days of the computer revolution onward. As skilled workers wages reflect their productivity, the two observations together pose a puzzle.This paper provides a micro-based explanation for the long diffusion period of the computer revolution. The general equilibrium model of growth zooms in on the research process and provides an explanation for sluggish growth with booming relative wages of the skilled. Technological progress in firms is driven by research aimed at improving the production technology (innovation) and by assimilation of ideas or principles present outside the firm (learning). A new General Purpose Technology (GPT) like the computer revolution generates an initial slowdown in economic growth and an increase in the skill premium.Acknowledgement I am indebted to Theo van de Klundert for suggestions and encouragement. Suggestions by Jan Boone, Bas Jacobs, Patrick Francois, Henri de Groot, Lex Meijdam, Niek Nahuis Sjak Smulders, Harald Uhlig and anonymous referees have contributed to the paper.     

Deposit insurance and bank regulation in a monetary economy: a general equilibrium exposition

Summary. It is commonly argued that poorly designed banking system safety nets are largely to blame for the frequency and severity of modern banking crises. For example, underpriced deposit insurance and/or low reserve requirements are often viewed as factors that encourage risk-taking by banks. In this paper, we study the effects of three policy variables: deposit insurance premia, reserve requirements and the way in which the costs of bank bailouts are financed. We show that when deposit insurance premia are low, the monetization of bank bailout costs may not be more inflationary than financing these costs out of general revenue. This is because, while monetizing the costs increases the inflation tax rate, higher levels of general taxation reduce savings, deposits, bank reserves, and the inflation tax base. Increasing the inflation tax rate obviously raises inflation, but so does an erosion of the inflation tax base. We also find that low deposit insurance premia or low reserve requirements may not be associated with a high rate of bank failure.Received: 2 January 2002, Revised: 1 March 2003JEL Classification Numbers: D5, E5, G1.B. D. Smith: Sadly, our co-author, colleague and dear friend, Bruce D. Smith, died on July 9, 2002.     

基于产品生命周期的物流系统动态规划研究

由于在产品不同生命周期阶段市场竞争具有不同的特征,因此企业采取的市场战略也有较大的差别。应用物流系统的动态评价方法,研究了有效支撑企业产品市场竞争战略的物流系统应该具有的关键性特征,并在此基础上分析了如何组织企业内外部的物流资源,使得物流系统成本最小化的动态规划问题。     

基于循环经济理念的珠江三角洲环境保护规划战略探讨

环境保护规划的可持续发展需要有先进理念的指导,应用循环经济理论框架来指导环境保护规划对区域可持续发展具有重要意义。本文通过分析循环经济的内涵、原则及其层次性,并结合我国珠江三角洲地区环境保护规划目标和对策进行了深入研究和探讨。分析得出,应用循环经济理念框架来指导环境保护规划是一种适宜的选择,与传统环境保护规划相比,基于循环经济理论框架指导下的区域环境保护规划更强调污染废气物排放减量化、企业生产清洁化、工业生态化以及区域固体废物的循环再利用。     

基于网络规划的道路系统设计

针对物流系统设计，基于网络规划法提出了一种在物流中心已经确定的条件下，进行道路系统的新的设计方法。通过合理但设把道路系统的设计转变为网络规划中求解最短路径的问题．通过统计每个路段的最短路径通过率．得出路段的运量负担情况，从而为道路的功能和等级设计提供依据。在此基础上．以宁波化工区的物流系统为例，建立了宁波化工区道路系统的网络模型，对宁波化工区的道路系统进行了功能设计。结果表明，该方法在区域物流系统设计中有良好的应用前景．     

循环经济理论在都市圈规划中的应用

针对当前都市圈规划实践中存在的问题,尝试将循环经济理论引入到都市圈规划中.在充分论证其可行性和必要性的基础上,提出了都市圈规划中发展循环经济的对策与建议.     

Linking performance drivers in production planning and inventory control to process choice

This study investigates how process choice relates to production planning and inventory control decisions. We empirically examine the validity of deductively derived patterns about these types of decisions. More importantly, we look for normative insights by exploring how production planning and inventory control decisions affect operations performance. Our findings show that production line and continuous flow plants use more of a level production strategy, and carry less raw material and work-in-process inventory. The performance drivers for these plants, through which the operations function excels, are effective utilization of equipment, reduced finished goods inventory, and reduced setup down time. To gain forward demand visibility and batching economies, job and batch shops rely much more on backlogs in their planning process. These plants use more of a production chase strategy and position inventory lower in the bills of materials. Four performance drivers for top-performing job and batch shops are to find ways that better anticipate customers' orders, have a more responsive chase strategy, carry less raw material or purchased inventory, and shorten production planning horizon, partly through less reliance on backlogs. It is intriguing that top-performing plants not only do the expected things, given their choice of process, but also excel in selected dimensions—some of which fit the profile normally associated with a different process choice. To monitor and continuously improve operations, evaluation ‘scorecards’ should pay particular attention to performance drivers, which change depending on the plant's process choice.     

How to invest over the life cycle: Insights from theory

We analyse the state of the art in the field of life cycle portfolio choice, a recent strand of the literature on intertemporal portfolio selection. Life cycle models are designed to identify optimal savings and portfolio policies over the lifetime of investors. They can help to improve pension schemes by showing how these could be specifically tailored to the individual employee’s circumstances to overcome the ‘one-size-fits-all’ philosophy still prevailing in parts of the mandatory retirement savings system. To facilitate comparison, we first describe set-up, solution method and characteristic results for a basic model and then derive a general framework to classify existing contributions. We highlight the models’ strengths and weaknesses and assess their ability to resolve existing portfolio puzzles. Lessons from the literature are summarized and promising areas for further research identified. JEL classifications G11, D14, D91, H55     

我国大城市区域空间规划与建设的思考

在当前全球经济一体化与城市化高速发展的新时代,由于城市的空间区域不断扩大、城镇连绵迭加、资源要素的集聚、产业集群转型与重组及其交通信息网络化等等因素的汇合与相互依存,给我国许多大城市地区带来新的问题与新的现象。如何规划与建设这些大城市的区域空间是21世纪"城市时代"越来越突出的大问题。文章就我国大城市区域的空间规划与建设形势、有关理论与创新理念及其策略性问题,进行深入的有益的探索,期望相关的学术争论。