The Location of Foreign Direct Investment in the Central and Eastern European Countries: A Nested Logit and Multilevel Data Approach

This paper generalizes the existing empirical literature on the determinants of the location of FDI, using a nested logit (NL) model and a novel three-level dataset to examine the factors explaining 1,108 foreign investment location decisions into 13 Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) between 1997 and 2007. The NL model relaxes the multinomial logit model assumption of independence of identically distributed error terms and allows for testing if national boundaries affect the investment location choices of MNEs in the CEECs. In contrast to the existing empirical literature on the investment location choices, the Heteroskedastic Extreme Value model is used as a tool to reveal an appropriate nesting structure. The highly significant empirical results, based on a general underlying economic model of imperfect competition, show that the responsiveness of FDI in the CEECs to country-level variables differs both across sectors and across firms of different sizes and profitability. Hence the results of previous studies that used only country-level data or only industry- and firm-level data may be misleading.Nested logit model, foreign direct investment, multi-level data, heteroskedastic extreme value model

Does organic farming achieve environmental goals efficiently?

Concerns about the impact of modern agriculture on the environment have in the past few decades resulted in strict legislation concerning the leaching of nitrogen from Danish farms and their use of pesticides. An often-heard argument in recent years is that conversion to organic farming is a solution to many environmental problems. Hence, in the late 1990s several initiatives to support the development of organic farming have been taken among others permanent direct support for producing organically. This was made possible by the 1992 reform of the common European Agricultural Policy that allowed for specific subsidy for environmental friendly production. This paper discusses the cost efficiency of two alternative policy measures for obtaining an overall reduction in the use of nitrogen and pesticides in Danish agriculture. The first policy measure is a subsidy for producers who produce organically and thus reduces the use of nitrogen and abandons the use of pesticides. The other policy measure is the use of taxes levied on fertilisers and pesticides. Using an Applied General Equilibrium (AGE) model the two policies measures are compared. The paper concludes that an overall reduction in the use of pesticides and fertilisers is most efficiently obtained by taxing those agents using these inputs. The size of the organic sectors should be determined by consumers’ willingness to pay for organic products

In Search of a Rationale for Differentiated Environmental Taxes

Environmental tax schemes in OECD countries often involve tax rates differentiated across industrial, commercial and household sectors. In this paper, we investigate four potentially important arguments for these deviations from uniform taxation: pre-existing tax distortions, domestic equity concerns, global environmental effectiveness, and strategic trade policy. Our primary objective is to ascertain whether the degree of tax differentiation observed in many countries can be rationalized on economic grounds. In simulations with a computable general equilibrium model, we calculate optimal policies under various settings. Our simulation results lead us to conclude that there is little economic rationale for the common policy practice of discriminating strongly in favor of heavy industries, even when accounting for interacting taxes, distributional concerns, leakage, and international market power. --optimal environmental taxation,computable general equilibrium

Advanced Concepts for Task List Lifecycle Support

Globalization and the shift towards a knowledge-based society have increased the importance of knowledge work and in particular knowledge-intensive processes (KiPs) in highly developed countries. As a result, knowledge workers demand suitable information systems supporting their collaboration in knowledge-intensive processes. However, due to their difficult characteristics, there is still no such adequate support for KiPs. A KiP-supporting system needs to provide digital, lifecycle-based task lists to ensure sustainable support. Today, knowledge workers usually organize and manage their collaborative work in a KiP using paper-based task lists, e.g. to-do lists or checklists. Although task lists are intuitive and widely used, their current implementations tend to be ineffective and error-prone. Task lists are neither synchronized nor accessible by several knowledge workers simultaneously. In addition, no task list lifecycle support is provided and media disruptions aggravate task management. As a consequence, the efforts of knowledge workers in task management are not exploited for the optimization of future KiPs. As part of the proCollab research project, this thesis addresses advanced concepts to support the task list lifecycle. For this purpose, existing lifecycle concepts are adapted and improved in particular. To allow an adequate comparison of task lists, an approach for a similarity analysis, on which the advanced concepts are based, is proposed first. As it is not always possible to create a suitable task list in advance, an approach for the automatic generation of a task list template from completed task list instances is presented. Furthermore, an approach for optimizing existing task list templates by incorporating the most frequent changes applied to task lists in use is explained. An additional approach for analyzing and identifying nested insert operations is proposed to extend and improve the optimization of existing task list templates. The presented concepts are together implemented in the current proCollab proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate their feasibility and applicability. Therefore, various services and a central REST interface as well as a comprehensive test framework are implemented

From Bound Duties to Actual Protection: Industrial Liberalisation in the Doha Round. ENEPRI Working Paper No. 41, 2005

In the background of the Doha Round of trade negotiations, this study proposes a CGE assessment of multilateral liberalisation of market access for non-agricultural products. The scenarios considered include the so-called ‘Girard proposal’ (with alternative choices for the coefficient involved), the removal of tariff peaks and complete liberalisation. This study is the first to take into account the difference between bound and applied tariffs, while considering all the enforced preferential trade arrangements and computing tariff cuts at the detailed product level (HS-6 classification). Although the liberalisation of market access for non-agricultural products is found to be welfare-enhancing at the world level, cross-country distributive effects prove significant. A soft liberalisation would not significantly reduce applied duties in developing countries, owing to their considerable binding overhang. By contrast, a deep liberalisation would entail fierce price competition among those developing countries that are largely specialised in similar sectors and in the same product quality range

NMFS / Interagency Working Group Evaluation of CITES Criteria and Guidelines.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: At present, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) criteria used to assess whether a population qualifies for inclusion in the CITES Appendices relate to (A) size of the population, (B) area of distribution of the population, and (C) declines in the size of the population. Numeric guidelines are provided as indicators of a small population (less than 5,000 individuals), a small subpopulation (less than 500 individuals), a restricted area of distribution for a population (less than 10,000 km2), a restricted area of distribution for a subpopula-tion (less than 500 km2), a high rate of decline (a decrease of 50% or more in total within 5 years or two generations whichever is longer or, for a small wild population, a decline of 20% or more in total within ten years or three generations whichever is longer), large fluctuations (population size or area of distribution varies widely, rapidly and frequently, with a variation greater than one order of magnitude), and a short-term fluctuation (one of two years or less). The Working Group discussed several broad issues of relevance to the CITES criteria and guidelines. These included the importance of the historical extent of decline versus the recent rate of decline; the utility and validity of incorporating relative population productivity into decline criteria; the utility of absolute numbers for defining small populations or small areas; the appropriateness of generation times as time frames for examining declines; the importance of the magnitude and frequency of fluctuations as factors affecting risk of extinction; and the overall utility of numeric thresh-olds or guidelines

Competences Mapping as a Tool to increase Sustainability of Manufacturing Enterprises

Abstract Craftsman skills are often necessary in several industrial productions to realize complex processes, which are not feasible or convenient to be made by full automation. Such skills are also required, in particular in companies manufacturing luxury goods, to make unique products of high quality. Experienced workers play an important role in these cases. Therefore, it is strategic for enterprises to be aware of which competences are required for each process and of how it is possible to educate and train workers to acquire them. A mapping of the competences of workers at the leather cutting department of a famous fashion enterprise has been carried out using a method that is described in this paper. This methodology can be applied to any production area to identify the skills needed to perform the tasks necessary for the product fabrication. Knowledge deriving from the mapping is fundamental to increase the efficiency of the production, to manage human resources and to assess the contribution of craftsmanship in the industrial manufacturing, therefore to improve the product and the company sustainability