Financial analysis of a partial manufacturing plant consolidation

Includes bibliographical references

Allocating the Burdens of Climate Action: Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting and the Polluter-Pays Principle

Action must be taken to combat climate change. Yet, how the costs of climate action should be allocated among states remains a question. One popular answer—the polluter-pays principle (PPP)—stipulates that those responsible for causing the problem should pay to address it. While intuitively plausible, the PPP has been subjected to withering criticism in recent years. It is timely, following the Paris Agreement, to develop a new version: one that does not focus on historical production-based emissions but rather allocates climate burdens in proportion to each state’s annual consumption-based emissions. This change in carbon accounting results in a fairer and more environmentally effective principle for distributing climate duties

The Complexity Dilemma in Policy Market Design

Regulators are increasingly pursuing their policy objectives by creating markets. To create a policy market, regulators require firms to procure a product that is socially useful but that confers little direct private benefit to the acquiring party. Examples of policy markets include pollutant emissions trading programs, renewable energy credit markets, and electricity capacity markets. Existing scholarship has tended to analyze policy markets simply as market-based regulation. Although not inaccurate, such inquiries are necessarily incomplete because they do not focus on the distinctive traits of policy markets. Policy markets are neither typical regulations nor typical markets. Concentrating on policy markets as a distinctive type of market brings to light common characteristics of such markets, which in turn generates insights into how they can be used more effectively to implement policy. In particular, this Article focuses on a recurring fundamental challenge in policy market design: managing complexity. Typical markets manage complexity through market forces. As a regulatory creation, however, policy markets require regulators to manage their complexity. This poses what we call the complexity dilemma, which requires regulators to balance strong pressures both toward and away from complexity. The central argument of this Article is that although policy markets are an important part of a regulator’s toolkit, they are also subject to complexity that limits their usefulness. Understanding the complexity dilemma and its crucial role in policy market design forms an essential step toward progress in improving the design and function of these markets

Getting Past the “Entrepreneurial Growth Ceiling”: A Longitudinal Study of IPO Firm Growth Through Solution Driven Strategies

In this paper we introduce a concept that we call the Entrepreneurial Growth Ceiling (EGC). We develop arguments that new venture IPOs hit the EGC prior to their IPO, and the ceiling is part of the impetus for going public. The EGC represents a set of problems, and we hypothesize that a firm’s ability to break through the ceiling quickly (within a year following the IPO) is critical for long-term performance. We argue that proceeds from the IPO will aid firms in breaking through the ceiling if the proceeds are strategically allocated. Results indicate firms that allocate proceeds to human resources and research and development (R&D) resources are more likely to break through the EGC quickly and enhance long-term stock performance

Water Governance Challenges: Managing Competition and Scarcity for Hunger and Poverty Reduction and Environmental Sustainability

human development, water, sanitation

A hierarchical approach to multi-project planning under uncertainty

We survey several viewpoints on the management of the planning complexity of multi-project organisations under uncertainty. A positioning framework is proposed to distinguish between different types of project-driven organisations, which is meant to aid project management in the choice between the various existing planning approaches. We discuss the current state of the art of hierarchical planning approaches both for traditional manufacturing and for project environments. We introduce a generic hierarchical project planning and control framework that serves to position planning methods for multi-project planning under uncertainty. We discuss multiple techniques for dealing with the uncertainty inherent to the different hierarchical stages in a multi-project organisation. In the last part of this paper we discuss two cases from practice and we relate these practical cases to the positioning framework that is put forward in the paper

Water and Development Strategy: Implementation Field Guide

This document is intended to serve as a reference tool to help USAID Operating Units understand and apply the agency's 2013-2018 Water and Development Strategy. By publicly sharing the document, USAID aims to ensure coordination of their efforts with the wider water sector. The Field Guide will be periodically updated and comments from readers are welcome