Cooperative Wool Marketing Pools and Warehouses: Industry Update, Issues and Options

In 1981, there were 158 cooperative wool marketing pools and 9 cooperative warehouses. Pools operate a few days each year to assemble and sell wool. Warehouses operate daily and also grade, store, and blend wool to buyer specifications. Pools frequently sell without knowledge of grade and clean fiber content. Producer bargaining power is also limited by declining wool production, large variation in pool membership and volume, and overlapping marketing territories among warehouses. Processing, consolidating pool and warehouse marketing, and changing pool pricing to reflect clean fiber content are options to lower marketing costs and better market power.Wool, cooperative, pool, Agribusiness,

Status of Mexican Trucks in the United States: Frequently Asked Questions

In the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect in January 1994, the United States and Mexico agreed to allow each other’s trucks to carry goods across the border to make deliveries anywhere inside their respective countries. This provision was controversial in the United States, and a trial program begun in September 2007 by the George W. Bush Administration was defunded by Congress in March 2009. Mexico imposed tariffs on certain U.S. goods in response to the program’s termination, as permitted by NAFTA. After bilateral negotiations, the Obama Administration announced a new pilot program to allow long-haul Mexican trucks into the United States in April 2011. The first Mexican truck with long-haul operating authority crossed the border in October 2011. This report answers frequently asked questions about the pilot program permitting Mexican trucks into the United States

Ownership structure and accountability: the case of the privatization of the Spanish tobacco monopoly, 1887–96.

This paper analyses the case of the privatization of the Spanish tobacco monopoly, focusing on the period between 1887 and 1896, which corresponds to the first leasing contract between the state and the Spanish Tobacco Company and it is concerned with two different issues. First, it deals with the effects of privatization on accountability.The main question examined is whether public and private ownership entail different approaches to the way in which managers are accountable to owners, and the impact this issue had on corporate reporting. Second, it is concerned with exploring the determinants of accounting disclosure. Here, the basic issue is to understand the factors shaping changes in corporate reporting during the period of study.Accounting history; Corporate Reporting; Privatization; Tobacco Monopoly; Spain;

Logistics outsourcing and 3PL selection: A Case study in an automotive supply chain

Outsourcing logistics functions to third-party logistics (3PL) providers has been a source of competitive advantage for most companies. Companies cite greater flexibility, operational efficiency, improved customer service levels, and a better focus on their core businesses as part of the advantages of engaging the services of 3PL providers. There are few complete and structured methodologies for selecting a 3PL provider. This paper discusses how one such methodology, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), is used in an automotive supply chain for export parts to redesign the logistics operations and to select a global logistics service provider

A Warehouse Social and Environmental Performance Metrics Framework

To improve the supply chain performance in all three aspects of sustainability (social, economic, and environmental), a comprehensive sustainable performance measurement system that captures all the supply chain partners’ efforts and commitments is required. Warehouse, as the second largest logistics source of environmental pollution in the supply chain has been almost completely overlooked and ignored in the past studies. To fill this gap, a warehouse performance metrics framework for environmental and social performance measures was proposed using a novel Fuzzy Delphi and Best-worst methodological approach. The method is less time-consuming than the Analytic Hierarchy Process or Analytic Network Process, it does not address whether criteria are dependent or independent, requires fewer comparisons of criteria, but still produces reliable and credible results. The presented framework consists of 32 equally formulated environmental and social performance indicators, including formulas and measurement units. The 14 most important indicators are ranked according to the requirements of different stakeholders.</p

The Contribution of Ethiopia Commodity Exchange for Promoting Exports of Agricultural Products

Commodity exchange can play a major role for agricultural development as an instrument to bring efficient agricultural market by providing lower transaction cost, efficient and transparent means for price discovery, managing risks related with prices volatility and provide a forum for exchanging information about supply and demand condition. The objectives of the present study are to examine the contributions of ECX for exports, to identify the respective gainers and losers in using ECX for exporting agricultural products, to assess the effect of ECX for generating foreign exchange and to address the feeling of exporters towards the contribution of ECX. The primary data were collected through distributing questionnaire for exporters and interview with executive officer of the company, while secondary data collected from journals, market bulletin, articles and company website. In order to achieve the stated objectives, the focus of the study was on the contribution of ECX in providing market information, grade and standard, contract enforcement, storage, ordering the market, and price discovery. The study employed cross sectional survey design. Even though 148 structured questionnaires distributed to the exporters, only 84.5% of the questionnaires are returned. The sampling design of the study was census survey. Moreover, semi-structured interview conducted with executive officer of the company. Data collected through questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics with the help of SPSS version 16; whereas data collected through interview were analyzed qualitatively. The research result indicated that the grading and sampling system of the company has a problem of bias, lack of knowledge and equipment; there is distrust between the seller, buyer and the exchange; there is high penalty cost imposed by ECX for delaying of withdrawing the commodities on time; problem of intolerable fee for membership seat and also there is a problem of dispute resolution mechanism. Finally, to enhance complete contribution to the exporters the researcher recommended to make grading free from corruption and bias by avoiding the problematic behavior through training and behavioral change of its employees, providing fair  membership seat price, avoidance of  imposing exaggerated penalty cost and creating acceptable dispute resolution mechanism to the exporters. Keywords: Exchange (ECX), contribution, Agricultural Products, Promoting, export

Data pre-processing for database marketing

To increase effectiveness in their marketing and Customer Relationship Manager activities, many organizations are adopting strategies of Database Marketing (DBM). Nowadays, DBM faces new challenges in business knowledge since current strategies are mainly approached by classical statistical inference, which may fail when complex, multi-dimensional and incomplete data is available. An alternative is to use Knowledge Discovery from Databases (KDD), which aims at automatic extraction of useful patterns by using Data Mining (DM) techniques. When applied to DBM, the identified patterns can be used for the efficient characterization of the customers. This paper focus several problems that arose in the data pre-processing step (e.g. data cleaning), which is necessary for the success of the DM approach to a DBM project