Sustainable operations of industrial symbiosis: an enterprise input-output model integrated by agent-based simulation

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a key for implementing circular economy. Through IS, wastes produced by one company are used as inputs by other companies. The operations of IS suffers from uncertainty barriers since wastes are not produced upon demand but emerge as secondary outputs. Such an uncertainty, triggered by waste supply-demand quantity mismatch, influences IS business dynamics. Accordingly, companies have difficulty to foresee potential costs and benefits of implementing IS. The paper adopts an enterprise input-output model providing a cost–benefit analysis of IS integrated to an agent-based model to simulate how companies share the total economic benefits stemming from IS. The proposed model allows to explore the space of cooperation, defined as the operationally favourable conditions to operate IS in an economically win-win manner. This approach, as a decision-support tool, allows the user to understand whether the IS relationship is created and how should the cost-sharing policy be. The proposed model is applied to a numerical example. Findings show that cost-sharing strategies are dramatically affected by waste supply-demand mismatch and by the relationship between saved and additional costs to run IS. Apart from methodological and theoretical contributions, the paper proposes managerial and practical implications for business strategy development in IS

Quantifying the effect of machine translation in a high-quality human translation production process

This paper studies the impact of machine translation (MT) on the translation workflow at the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT), focusing on two language pairs and two MT paradigms: English-into-French with statistical MT and English-into-Finnish with neural MT. We collected data from 20 professional translators at DGT while they carried out real translation tasks in normal working conditions. The participants enabled/disabled MT for half of the segments in each document. They filled in a survey at the end of the logging period. We measured the productivity gains (or losses) resulting from the use of MT and examined the relationship between technical effort and temporal effort. The results show that while the usage of MT leads to productivity gains on average, this is not the case for all translators. Moreover, the two technical effort indicators used in this study show weak correlations with post-editing time. The translators' perception of their speed gains was more or less in line with the actual results. Reduction of typing effort is the most frequently mentioned reason why participants preferred working with MT, but also the psychological benefits of not having to start from scratch were often mentioned

On the possibility and driving forces of secular stagnation: a general equilibrium analysis applied to Belgium

This paper investigates the possibility of today’s OECD economies entering into a very long period of poor per capita economic growth and very low real interest rates. We construct a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of heterogeneous individuals, differing in ability and human capital, and with genetic and financial transfers from parents to children. Our model allows to study within one coherent framework the effects of those factors that are most often mentioned in the literature as possible drivers of secular stagnation: demographic change, a slowdown in the rate of technical progress, rising inequality, borrowing constraints, and downward rigidity in the real interest rate. We calibrate our model to Belgium and find that its predictions match key facts in Belgium in 1950-2009 very well. We then simulate projected future changes in technical progress and demography. In alternative scenarios we additionally impose rising inequality, borrowing constraints and/or a lower bound to the real interest rate. When we assume unchanged public policies and a modest future rate of technical progress, our conclusions about future per capita output and growth are rather pessimistic. Demographic change is by far the most influential cause of low growth. If a lower bound to the real interest rate is binding, it could considerably aggravate the problem of stagnation

Urban Fellows Gain Experience and Knowledge on Best Practices in Urban Redevelopment Through the CUREx Program

Presents a three-year evaluation of the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania (CUREx) program's evolution; impact on fellows' career goals, host nonprofit organizations, and the field; success factors; and challenges

Policy Announcements and Welfare

In the presence of idiosyncratic risk, the public revelation of information about uncertain aggregate outcomes such as policy choices can be detrimental to social welfare. By announcing informative signals on non-insurable aggregate risk, the policy maker distorts agents’ insurance incentives and increases the riskiness of the optimal allocation that is feasible in self-enforceable arrangements. As an application, we consider a monetary authority that may reveal changes in the inflation target, and document that the negative effect of distorted insurance incentives can very well dominate conventional effects in favor for the release of better information.Social value of information, policy announcements, monetary policy, transparency