The boomerang returns? Accounting for the impact of uncertainties on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Recent years have witnessed companies abandon traditional open-loop supply chain structures in favour of closed-loop variants, in a bid to mitigate environmental impacts and exploit economic opportunities. Central to the closed-loop paradigm is remanufacturing: the restoration of used products to useful life. While this operational model has huge potential to extend product life-cycles, the collection and recovery processes diminish the effectiveness of existing control mechanisms for open-loop systems. We systematically review the literature in the field of closed-loop supply chain dynamics, which explores the time-varying interactions of material and information flows in the different elements of remanufacturing supply chains. We supplement this with further reviews of what we call the three ‘pillars’ of such systems, i.e. forecasting, collection, and inventory and production control. This provides us with an interdisciplinary lens to investigate how a ‘boomerang’ effect (i.e. sale, consumption, and return processes) impacts on the behaviour of the closed-loop system and to understand how it can be controlled. To facilitate this, we contrast closed-loop supply chain dynamics research to the well-developed research in each pillar; explore how different disciplines have accommodated the supply, process, demand, and control uncertainties; and provide insights for future research on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Seasonality in cocoa spot and forward markets: empirical evidence

This paper first describes the main features of supply and demand in cocoa spot markets. A state- variable model is proposed to describe the random evolution of cocoa forward curves over time, which essentially adapts to agricultural commodities, introduced by Borovkova and Geman (2006) for energy. In contrast to most of the literature on the subject, the first state variable is not the spot price, as it combines seasonal and stochastic features and may not be observable, instead, the average value of all liquid futures contracts is a quantity devoid of seasonality and conveys a robust representation of the forward curve level. The second state variable is a quantity analogous to the stochastic convenience yield, which accounts for the random changes in the shape of the forward curve. We conduct estimation procedures for the cocoa market over the period of 1980 to 2009 and exhibit an interesting result on cocoa seasonality as well as an extension of the Samuelson effect

Supply Chain Analysis of Onion and Cauliflower in Punjab

The present study was conducted in Rajpura block of Patiala district in Punjab with a sample of 50 vegetables growers. The total cost of cultivation was estimated at Rs 49563/ha for onion and Rs 34840/ha for cauliflower. The net returns were found higher for onion (Rs 74597/ha) as compared to that from cauliflower (Rs 38072/ha). Majority of these vegetables were being disposed off through commission agent/wholesaler (more than 90 per cent) followed by retailer and directly to the consumer. The efficiency of the these market channels can be enhanced through competition by organized retail chains and modernizing the vegetable market system in the state. The wholesale markets of Pune, Ludhiana and Patiala for onion and that of Shimla, Ludhiana and Patiala for cauliflower have been found integrated with price of onion and cauliflower transmitting quickly from the independent to the dependent markets. The highest elasticity of price transmission in onion has been observed between Ludhiana and Patiala markets with almost 90 per cent of the price change in Ludhiana getting transmitted to the Patiala market. Such transmission has been 100 per cent for cauliflower between Shimla and Patiala markets. The price transmission has been observed faster in cauliflower than onion. Though a long-term equilibrium relationship exists between all the studied markets in terms of weekly price of the two vegetables crops, there also exists a short-run disequilibrium between some of the market pairs with almost 15 to 25 per cent of the fluctuations usually getting corrected within a week. Greater integration in these markets may help the farmers as well as consumers of the vegetables through better price signals.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Forecasting inflation and output: comparing data-rich models with simple rules

There has been a resurgence of interest in dynamic factor models for use by policy advisors. Dynamic factor methods can be used to incorporate a wide range of economic information when forecasting or measuring economic shocks. This article introduces dynamic factor models that underlie the data-rich methods and also tests whether the data-rich models can help a benchmark autoregressive model forecast alternative measures of inflation and real economic activity at horizons of 3, 12, and 24 months ahead. The authors find that, over the past decade, the data-rich models significantly improve the forecasts for a variety of real output and inflation indicators. For all the series that they examine, the authors find that the data-rich models become more useful when forecasting over longer horizons. The exception is the unemployment rate, where the principal components provide significant forecasting information at all horizons.Inflation (Finance) ; Economic forecasting

TOWARD A PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF THE CARCASS BEEF MARKET - WEAK FORM TEST OF THE EFFICIENT MARKETS MODEL

Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Repo Market Microstructure in Unusual Monetary Policy Conditions

The financial turmoil that began in mid-2007 produced severe stress in interbank markets and prompted significant changes in central banks’ funding operations. We examine the changing characteristics of ECB official interventions through the crisis and assess how they affected the efficiency and reliability of the secondary repo market as a mechanism for the distribution of interbank funding. The limit orderbook from the BrokerTec electronic repo trading platform is reconstructed to provide a range of indicators of participating banks’ aversion to the risk of failing to fund their liquidity needs. These indicators anticipate similar variables from ECB reverse repo auctions and are also affected by surprise outcomes of auctions.Repo, Financial crisis, liquidity, market microstructure, monetary policy operations