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Recent decades have witnessed increasing interest in the concept of the circular economy within both the business world and political circles. The circular economy spans the entire life cycle of products from product design through production, marketing, and consumption, to waste management, recycling, and re-use, and enthusiasm for putting the concept into practice has been identified across different sectors of the economy. This exploratory case study reviews how some of the leading companies in the paper and retail industries, have publicly addressed the circular economy. The case study outlines the nature of the circular economy, provides a cameo literature review of published work on the circular economy, describes the approach adopted for the case study, reports the findings of the review of how the leading companies in the paper and retail industries have addressed the circular economy, and discusses some wider issues. Keywords: circular economy, case study, paper industry, retail industry, greenwash, economic growth

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the company's financial performance in the pulp and paper industry which was measured using the concept of Economic Value Added (EVA) and Market Value Added (MVA) during the period 2017 and 2018. Design/methodology/approach: Research data is obtained through related websites and literature review. Findings: The results of the measurement of EVA and MVA for the period 2017 and 2018 show only PT.Alkindo Naratama, Tbk. which adds to the economic value of the company and market value added (> 0). Research limitations/implications: The population in this study consisted of all pulp and paper companies that had go public and be listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), which is as many as nine companies, then do the purposive sampling selection which obtained a sample of four companies. Practical implications: While three companies, namely PT. Kedawung Setia Industrial, Tbk. PT.Suparma, Tbk. and PT. Kertas Basuki Rachmat, Tbk. experience instability in EVA and MVA. Originality/value

In the modern conditions, business requires constant rationalization of all activities and processes that occur in the logistics system. One of the preconditions for ensuring the competitiveness in the market is to manage the own performance. This paper presents research that relates to the project of centralization of the warehouse in the company of paper production. Currently, any production facility has its own warehouse that is, through executed decomposition, proved like a poor solution. Any project requires certain investment funds, which are in this case over half million EUR, because it is a large and complex logistics company that employs about one thousand workers. The focus of this paper is an economic analysis of the project of centralization of warehouse. The new centralized system gives better results in the comparison with the current system of decentralization. Considering the savings, which are realized by switching to a centralized warehouse system, and required investment funds, repayment period of the same is slightly less than five years, what is relatively a short period.

We use the data leak of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 to study whether and how the use of secret offshore vehicles affects firm value around the world. The data provide insights into the operations of more than 214,000 shell companies incorporated in tax havens by Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. Using event study techniques, we find that the data leak erases US$135 billion in market capitalization among 397 public firms with direct exposure to the revelations of the Panama Papers, reflecting 0.7 percent of their market value. Tax aggressive firms and firms with exposure to perceptively corrupt countries are more adversely affected. This is consistent with the leak (i) reducing firms’ ability to avoid taxes and finance corruption, or (ii) increasing regulatory fines for past tax evasion and violations of anti-corruption regulations. Taken together, secret offshore vehicles are used for value-enhancing but potentially illegal activities that go beyond tax avoidance. Offshore intermediaries facilitate such activities.

Purpose: Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) engaged in the business of Trading and Distribution in the United Arab Emirates are characterized by fluctuations in the business performance and growth. Even though 95% of the businesses in the UAE are SME sector, the variations in the growth pattern lead to various challenges which the owner/manager sometimes fails to handle well. The aim of this concept paper is to identify the factors contributing to the sustained growth of SME business in the UAE. Approach/Methodology/Design: The research problem for this study is “how to ensure sustained growth in business for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in the United Arab Emirates”. The other studies on SME business have focused on SME performance but have not specifically focused on sustaining the performance and growing over a long period of time. This research will specifically focus on the factors contributing to sustained growth and this will be ascertained through quantitative survey of various SMEs in the UAE. Findings: This research aims to find the success factors which can be useful to the SME sector of the UAE in order to achieve sustained growth in business. As a result of this study, a possible matrix will emerge showing a framework to be applied for sustained growth of business for SMEs. Practical Implications: Sustained growth and longevity of the business remains the most important dream of every SME owner/manager, and the final recommendations of this research will result in a framework which would help SMEs in the UAE to have a sustained growth in business. Originality/value: The specific objective of this research is to find “factors that contribute to the sustained growth in business”. This would ensure that, despite the vagaries in the business environment, the SME owner will continue to have a stable business with sustained growth over a long period of time.

Purpose\ud This paper presents a rail freight forecast for the EU27 for the period up to 2050.\ud \ud Background\ud Rail freight’s market share of the transport sector in Europe has been falling or remained stagnant since 1970. In contrast, the share of road freight has been increasing. As rail freight transport is generally considered an environmentally friendly option, various measures have been implemented for more than two decades, at national and European level, to encourage a modal shift from road to rail. In the latest EU Transport White paper policy paper of 2011, an optimistic target is set for greater use of rail freight transport, in both the near and the longer term future. Specifically: a modal shift, from road to rail, and waterway transport, of 30 % by 2030 and 50 % by 2050 - for distances greater than 300 km.\ud \ud Methodology\ud With the aforesaid policy objectives, the current research examines the possible effects of these aims in terms of future levels of rail freight demand. This research relies heavily upon the EU TRANS-TOOLS modelling tool and explores three scenarios. A Reference scenario - with no significant change to current rail freight policy, infrastructure and existing trends is considered alongside two White Paper scenarios (High and Low) which take more optimistic views of the white paper policy objectives.\ud \ud Results\ud The study finds that the Reference and White Paper Low scenarios demonstrate similar results in terms of growth and modal split. In stark contrast, the White paper High scenario results show that demand for rail freight services almost doubles compared to the Reference values.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud The rail sector is expected to attract new commodities from road transport such as foodstuffs and building and transport materials. To meet this demand, the rail industry - including operators, infrastructure managers and governments - will have to invest in technologies, infrastructure and terminals with a view to significantly increasing productivity against current levels.

In this paper, we analyse the diffusion and adoption of paper making machinery in the Indonesian pulp and paper industry, from 1923 till 2000. The two main questions in this paper are: (1) What patterns of technology diffusion can be discerned in the Indonesian paper manufacturing sector? (2) What role have industrial policies played in the diffusion of technology and the expansion of the paper industry? To address these questions, we develop a machine index (mach), which measures the technological distance of each paper machine to the world technological frontier through time. The documented trends in an aggregate version of the technology index reveal a pattern of rapid catch up. The paper argues that industrial policy has played an important role in the speed and nature of diffusion of paper making machinery in Indonesia. A more disaggregated analysis indicates that conglomerate owned mills adopted advanced paper machines close to the technological frontier, while independent and publicly owned mills installed more outdated equipment. Embodied technological catch up in paper making has thus been a highly polarised phenomenon, limited to only a few firms, which had the financial resources and the capabilities to install large-scale modern machinery. Keywords Asia, Indonesia, Pulp and paper industry, Technology diffusion, Technology adoption, Industrial policy

© 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. The production and manufacturing sector is one of the primary factors that affects the environment, which has been a very important topic of recent studies. Many approaches are employed to reduce the impact of production on the environment. More recently, carbon-abatement technology and activities have been introduced into the production processes to reduce carbon emissions, such as the implementation of emission trading programs in many industrial sectors, including the paper and pulp sector. Nevertheless, the costs of abatement activities will result in a certain level of sacrifice in productivity growth, when the inputs are reallocated from good output production to abatement activities to maintain bad output under the regulatory limit. However, how and the extent to which such technology will affect productivity remain unclear. Therefore, it is worth investigating the opportunity cost of introducing such technology. In this paper, we offer new empirical evidence by studying panel data on 17 EU member states from 1995 to 2006. Productivity changes are calculated using a data envelopment directional distance function with and without adapting the carbon-abatement technology in the paper and pulp production. The results support our concern about the potential opportunity cost of introducing carbon-abatement technology, which leads to a decline in productivity growth. In addition, industrial production is not operating efficiently; on average it moves further away from the efficient production frontier over time.

Scandinavian companies have traditionally dominated the European paper and pulp industry. Major transformations in the industry currently undermine the position of Scandinavian companies. These transformations are triggered by the increasing use of waste paper instead of pulp as raw material, the integration of European markets, the increasing demand for more sophisticated paper grades, and environmental regulations imposed on the industry. On top of these structural changes the industry is currently involved in a severe recession. In view of these developments, the biggest Scandinavian paper and pulp producers recently initiated a wave of takeovers and mergers, to which Western European companies responded with similar moves. This paper explores these changes in the European paper industry in terms of the so-called business system framework. The concept of business systems was recently introduced by Whitley (1992) in order to assess how institutional conditions affect organizations. Conventional industry analysis may benefit from the business system framework by tracking institutional sources of competitive advantage. Using the business system framework, this paper discusses several developments in the European paper and pulp industry.

Conventionally paper demand is modelled by using only gross domestic product and the price of paper as explanatory variables. However, one factor affecting the demand of printing and writing papers is presumably the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT). In this paper, the regression analysis model and large global scale panel data sets from 1990–2007 are used to analyse the effect of ICT on paper demand for three paper grades: newsprint, office paper, and magazine paper. Results show that the internet is a substitute for newsprint, and possibly for magazine paper, and mobile telephones are complementary, and a growing number of personal computers increases office paper consumption. Post-print / Final draft

Both the transparent reporting of logistics costs and the related accounting of their cost drivers present a significant factor for the successful management of material flows and the related logistics activities in production companies. These costs, which are mainly reported as part of overhead (indirect) costs in such companies, usually remain hidden or are not explicitly visible when the traditional method of accounting is applied. The aim of this research is to create a model of activity-based accounting of logistics costs in a production company, and to test its efficiency in the disclosure of logistics costs compared with traditional cost accounting. The application of the model in a production company shows that an activity-based approach discloses as much as 108% more logistics costs at the level of a group of products than the traditional cost-accounting approach. Further, detailed information on logistics costs obtained in this way enables their more efficient management. Key words: logistics costs; activity-based costing; cost allocation; cost visibility; cost management

In our research, we study the case of a pulp and paper producer who decides to establish a partnership with one buyer. Using two different types of relationship, namely a traditional system without any collaboration scheme and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment, we develop decision models describing the producer and the buyer planning processes. We also identify which approach is more profitable for each actor as well as for the network, based on real costs and parameters obtained from the industrial case. We then test how different incentives can improve the traditional system and provide higher gains for each partner. Our results show that using incentives increases the system's profit by up to 4% if parameters are well defined.

This paper characterises the conventional and the digital sector of the EU economy since the late 90s and introduces a two sector growth model which highlights structural differences between the two sectors. In contrast to conventional goods and services, digital goods and services are more easily scalable but require more upfront intangible investment. These features require consideration of fixed costs and a departure from perfect competition and raise issues about market entry. Another important dimension is the skill demand of both sectors, with the latter requiring a larger share of workers with digital skills. Since COVID-19 is expected to induce a persistent increase of demand for digital services, we use this model to estimate the likely economic impacts. We are in particular interested how the digital transition is affecting the labour market and the functional distribution of income. The paper shows how the distribution of economic rents between workers with digital skills and platforms is determined by labour supply conditions and entry barriers. This suggests that there is a role for competition policy and labour market policies to support the digital transition.

Flexibility is intuitively valued as a means of dynamically adapting to uncertainty. Historically, it has been especially prized during times of crisis. This is clearly demonstrated today as the current Coronavirus crisis is unfolding; there are many different dimensions of flexibility, ranging from versatility, agility, and resilience, to hedging, robustness and liquidity. For convenience, we fuse these terms together under the conceptual umbrella of “super-flexibility”. We define super-flexibility as a dynamic capability to simultaneously withstand turbulence AND adapt to fluid reality. Our field research has focused on how companies in Silicon Valley embrace uncertainty and drive adaptation. In this paper, we draw on the experience of a manufacturing firm facing the floods that hit Thailand in October 2011. The crisis enabled us to observe a situation in which the different nuances of flexibility collectively came into play within a compressed time-frame. In this paper, we showcase the practical application of super-flexibility in a crisis. First, we describe the conceptual foundations of flexibility and its different nuances. We then examine the chronology of the crisis as events unfolded. We conclude by distilling a number of “super-flexibility” lessons for business leaders.

Today’s European wine policy is centered on a system of appellations, implemented as geographical indications (GIs), that entail significant technological regulations—restricting the varieties that may be grown, while imposing maximum yields per hectare and other rules regarding grape production and winemaking practice. This paper outlines the historical development of European wine policy under the CAP, and presents a more detailed analysis of the economic consequences of the rules and regulations under the appellation system. The introduction of these rules and regulations was probably beneficial initially, both for their didactive effect on wine producers and consumers and as a way of overcoming a significant “lemons” problem in the market. However, those same rules and regulations are much less valuable today, given (1) the potential for alternative sources of information to solve the lemons problem, and (2) evidence that the appellation system per se might not be effectively serving that purpose as well as it once did, while some of the regulations impose significant social costs. Yield restrictions, in particular, are economically inefficient as a way of enhancing and signaling quality (their ostensible purpose) and as a way of restricting total supply to support market prices and thus producer incomes (a significant motivation). The inherent weaknesses of the policy design are compounded by failures of governance. A less heavy-handed approach to policy would allow more scope for the market mechanism to match supply and demand for this signature product from European agriculture.

In recent years and due to market demand and environmental regulations, firms have been changing their procedures regarding document production, handling, and filling. There has been a paradigm change in document sustention in order to attain such changes, from paper-based to electronic forms, resulting in the Digitization and Paperless Office Program (DPOP). The literature on digitization and paperless processes is profuse, nonetheless, it is outdated, uses only single or multiple case study approaches, and is limited to specific industries, such as healthcare or higher education. To overcome this gap, this research analyses the current implementation of the DPOP in five major sectors by using a country scale approach, consequently, this research study contributes to strengthening the literature in this area of knowledge. The methodology used is quantitative and is based on a questionnaire distributed to the most important economic sectors (education, health, trade, industry, and services) in Portugal. The results show that a DPOP positively impacts companies, as it increases profitability and, in most cases, is a sine qua non condition for negotiating with clients. Additionally, it favours companies’ image, reduces costs, and contributes to environmental sustainability. This research provides new insights into how firms using a DPOP may contribute to dematerialization and paper consumption reduction. It is also original as it covers multiple sectors using a country approach.

Infectious diseases such as SARS and COVID-19, like other natural hazards, underline the interconnectedness of the countries. Both manufacturing and services sectors in the economies of Asia have outsourced supplies from different countries in order to gain a competitive advantage through effective value chain management. The motivations for this outsourcing are to achieve technological innovations, reduce end-product prices, and strengthen strategic competitiveness. This paper applies a supply chain approach to develop the concept of a hazard-resilient healthcare system (HRHS) and to explore ways how this might be achieved. After reviewing the current international thinking on HRHS, which has narrowly focused on building national capacities with national capabilities, it argues that a supply chain approach may provide a better, more robust, and in many ways more realistic, approach to enhance the hazard resilience of national healthcare systems. Within such an approach, capabilities of the local actors (local health authorities and healthcare providers) in a pandemic or disaster-prone situation remain important and should be further strengthened, but international support and assistance in times of emergency should also be a key plank of the system. In a changing world with more frequent high-impact pandemics and disasters, such international support need not be one way, but both ways. A system of mutual support may be developed by forming an effective international common pool of capability in responding to the health needs when a major disaster occurs anywhere in a region or globally. Even though serious limitations exist in the current thinking on HRHS, significant progress has been made on the international humanitarian assistance front, especially in the ASEAN region. While developments on this front have not been a part of the purview of the current international thinking on HRHS, it is argued that they may well form an important corner stone in a typical future national HRHS.

Using two waves (2013, 2015) of the Micro, Small, and Medium sized Enterprises (MSMEs) survey of Vietnamese manufacturing firms, this paper first explores what drives firms��� decision to have a domestic standards certificate, taking into account a rich number of factors related to the cost and expected benefits of certification as well as institutional factors. It further explores the presence of a positive and significant effect of domestic certificates on firm growth, testing whether these serve as signalling devices for desirable attributes under information asymmetry. Evidence is indeed found for a signalling effect of domestic standards certification, being stronger for female-run businesses. Results hold even when controlling for international certifications.

The Chinese government has instituted a number of policies to actively promote the diffusion of new energy vehicles (NEVs). There is widespread consensus that policy mixes can drive NEV diffusion effectively. To verify this consensus, we construct a two-dimensional framework of NEV policy instruments: producer-orientation versus consumer-orientation instruments, economic in cash versus regulatory instruments and classify NEV policy mixes. Then, we analyse the impact of policy mixes on NEV diffusion among enterprises and consumers by building an evolutionary game model. And according to the concept of stable area in the evolutionary game, we propose a definition of policy effect. The results show: (1) Policy mixes can reduce the saddle point of the auto market game and accelerate the spread of NEVs. In the early stages of the NEV industry, the government should take the policy mix strategy with four policies, and economic in cash instrument should be the main policy. (2) Policy mixes composed of producer-orientation and consumer-orientation instruments have a synergy or complementarity to promote NEV diffusion effectively. (3) With the increasing rate of NEV production and consumption, the government should adopt policy mixes mainly composed of regulatory instruments and rather than economic instruments. Graphical abstract

The Covid-19 crisis has hit SMEs particularly hard. Numerous business models (BM) have been limited or rendered downright impossible due to decreased social contact. SMEs can respond to this exogenous crisis via temporary business model innovation (BMI). This empirical study investigates these temporary BMs using a multiple case study approach based on five SMEs in Austria, Germany, and Liechtenstein who within a short period of time applied their core competencies and networks to integrate new BMs, which were in some cases very different from existing ones. These had a positive effect on strategic flexibility, and if desired can also be incorporated into the firm long-term. The paper contributes to SME crisis management during the Covid-19 pandemic by pointing out and developing a successful management mechanism that allows to survive a crisis or even improve during this time. Moreover, we contribute to BMI literature by explaining temporary BMI as a new form of BMI. It also makes clear to managers that temporary BMs add value to firms and create new revenue streams.

Policymaking for science, technology, and innovation (R&D) is stepping into a new era in the twenty-first century within a highly integrated production network, making it more challenging to capture the impact of R&D investment from an evidence-based approach. To unfold the paradox of the R&D spillover effect spared in the global supply chain, we use computable general equilibrium model with the GTAP database v10 to analyze the impact of Japan’s public R&D investment to the world focus on key sectors of global supply chain, namely chemical and pharmaceutical, electronic equipment, machinery, and transportation equipment to examine its output, external trades, and welfare. The productivity parameters triggered by public R&D investment are calibrated from the SciREX Policymaking Intelligent Assistance System—Economic Simulator (SPIAS-e). The simulation results show significant increase in Japan’s output and export for chemical and pharmaceutical, electronic equipment, and transportation equipment. The GDP growth was stimulated by 0.6% and substantial welfare improvement by USD 78,000 million, while other countries such as Malaysia and Taiwan by 0.4–0.6%. In contrast, the economic indicators of China reveal a negative impact, implying a structural change in the composition of the production network. It is notable to see a higher economic integration of Oceania within the region through its vibrant production and trades. The study provides comprehensive global analysis on production networks and insights for evaluating the R&D investment spillover effects.

This paper illustrates the building procedure of a firm-level panel dataset that merges several sources of information concerning the various activities of business firms. The aim of this work is to achieve a detailed dataset able to shed light on firm demographics, in terms of survival, entry and exit processes, distinguishing between “voluntary" and “involuntary" exits. Moreover, the derived dataset allows to monitor the innovation activities of the firms and also to capture complementarities between two instruments of intellectual property rights (IPRs), namely granted patents and registered trademarks. We assess the validity of the proposed procedures resorting to the virtual universe of Italian limited liability companies as provided by Bureau van Dijk (BvD). The dataset covers more than 1 million companies operating in both manufacturing and service sectors and contain financial and economic information, as well as, among the others, the ownership structure and administrative procedures undergone by the firms, which may lead to firm exit. The main purpose of the paper is to provide a unified set of procedures to help the researcher dealing with the vast amount of information available on corporate firms and of ever increasing size. This will also facilitate the replication of empirical analyses, across researchers working on dataset with similar characteristics, although from different countries or data providers.

The German Energiewende (energy transition) started with price guarantees for avoidance activities and later turned to premiums and tenders. Dynamic efficiency was a core concept of this environmental policy. Out of multiple technologies wind and solar power-which were considered too expensive at the time-turned out to be cheaper than the use of oil, coal, gas or nuclear energy for power generation, even without considering externalities. The German minimum price policy opened doors in a competitive way, creating millions of new generators and increasing the number of market participants in the power sector. The fact that these new generators are distributed, non-synchronous and weather-dependent has caused contentious discussions and specific challenges. This paper discusses these aspects in detail and outlines its impacts. It also describes Swiss regulations that successfully launched avoidance technologies or services and asks why exactly Pigou's neoclassical economic approach to the internalization of damage costs (externalities) has rarely worked in policy reality, while sector-specific innovations based on small surcharges have been more successful. Based on the model of feed-in tariffs, a concept for the introduction of low-carbon air traffic is briefly outlined. [GRAPHICS] ., Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 23 (1), ISSN:1618-954X, ISSN:1435-2974, ISSN:1618-9558, ISSN:1436-722X

The forest-based bioproduct field has diversified into the chemical, medical, energy, nanoproduct, and construction material sectors. This paper argues that forest-based bioeconomy has kept the focus on conventional products and new bioproducts have primarily been developed as extensions to existing product portfolios due to a lock-in mechanism, i.e., a state where an economy gradually locks itself to a dominant market position due to technical interrelatedness, economies of scale, and quasi-irreversibility of investment. The study examines forest-based product transition in the context of lock-in mechanisms through narrative analysis over the past 170 years. A theoretical framework is formulated based on complex system studies and the economics of lock-in mechanisms. The relation between the lock-in mechanisms of the regime and product diversification is described for the forest-based bioeconomy in Finland. The study supports previous findings indicating that interactions occur between the lock-in mechanisms. Furthermore, lock-in mechanisms can have a neutral, adverse, or beneficial effect on product diversification. The paper extends knowledge about the role and functioning of lock-in mechanisms in changing market environments. Recent trends in network development and foreign investment, and their effects on industrial symbiosis and product diversification, is recommendable to consider in future research.

The sharing economy gains momentum and develops a major economic impact on traditional markets and firms. However, only rudimentary theoretical and empirical insights exist on how sharing networks, i.e., focal firms, shared goods providers and customers, create and capture value in their sharing-based business models. We conduct a qualitative study to find key differences in sharing-based business models that are decisive for their value configurations. Our results show that (1) customization versus standardization of shared goods and (2) the centralization versus particularization of property rights over the shared goods are two important dimensions to distinguish value configurations. A second, quantitative study confirms the visibility and relevance of these dimensions to customers. We discuss strategic options for focal firms to design value configurations regarding the two dimensions to optimize value creation and value capture in sharing networks. Firms can use this two-dimensional search grid to explore untapped opportunities in the sharing economy.

The transport infrastructure sector is facing challenges related to the decarbonisation, financing and integrated developments, which need to be overcome so it can gain a competitive advantage among the strategic economic sectors. Known as a major pollutant, with 23.3 % of the total EU-28 GHG emissions in 2014, one of the transport policy objectives is to lower this percentage, by focusing on innovative solutions and modal shift (Eurostat, 2016). The White Paper (2011) promotes a sustainable development, aiming at a reduction by 60% by 2050 of the carbon emissions generated by the transport sector and at a modal shift from road to rail or waterborne transport for freight transport over 300 km with 30% by 2030, and more than 50% by 2050. The focus on an integrated development of the transport sector at the European level was reinforced with the adoption of the EU Regulation no. 1315/2013, marking the transition from a patchwork of different projects towards a vision for the achievement of an EU transport network. Moreover, another challenge is related to the scarce availability of the public money, making it necessary to attract private parties in the development of the transport infrastructure projects (The Investment Plan for Europe, 2014). Supporting the development of the intermodal transport is a way of surmounting the obstacles that this sector is confronting with, which is being implemented in Europe. The intermodal transport is introducing a paradigm shift, allowing the integration of the different transport modes together with their own advantages, as opposed to competing stand-alone modes and it can aid in the fight against climate change, scarce financial resources and congestion This article aims at determining the potential of Romania, as a member of European Union, to develop intermodal transport projects, to identify the funding sources, the obstacles and the solutions to promote the successful implementation of such projects.

One of the major recent developments in passenger transport is the arrival of large scale ridesourcing services, such as Uber and Lyft. These actors have challenged the definitions of what private and commercial transport is, by utilizing fleets of private cars and app-technology. Ridesourcing services pose several challenges to the existing transport framework. They exist in-between commercial and private activities, are partly outside the control of governments, and partly in direct contradiction with the current regulations. This paper also looks at how ridesourcing and autonomous vehicles may reshape the market for unscheduled passenger transport. This paper combines the use of literature on regulation and the economic properties of the markets for unscheduled passenger transport with scenario analyses to look into how ridesourcing and automated vehicles affect the markets in unscheduled passenger transport. The main findings are that as underlying economic mechanisms that points towards situations that calls for regulation are similar regardless of how the services are offered, the need for regulation will remain. However, as the market properties of the market segments are different, and a shift in the relative importance of the different market segments are likely, the possible and suitable points of regulation will change. Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydney

This paper examines the governance of property rights on genetically modified (GM) soybean seeds. Specifically, the article undertakes a comparative analysis on the collection of royalties in GM soybean seeds in the U.S. and Brazil. For each country, the authors describe the regulatory framework governing the protection of biotechnology innovations in agriculture and investigate the mechanisms of royalty collection in GM soybean seeds. The paper also offers econometric evidence linking the capture of value on biotech innovations and the protection mechanisms deployed by biotech firms. The results suggest that, subject to the institutional environment, firms may choose to transact a GM attribute separated from the seed, building specialized governance structures framed around the genetic attribute and not around the seed as a whole.Este artigo examina a governança de direitos de propriedade em sementes transgênicas de soja. Especificamente, o estudo empreende uma análise comparativa sobre a cobrança de royalties em sementes transgênicas de soja nos EUA e no Brasil. Para cada país, os autores descrevem a estrutura regulatória que rege a proteção de inovações biotecnológicas na agricultura e investigam os mecanismos de cobrança de royalties em sementes transgênicas de soja. O artigo também examina evidências econométricas que relacionam a captura de valor sobre inovações biotecnológicas e os mecanismos de proteção utilizados por firmas de biotecnologia. Os resultados sugerem que, com base no ambiente institucional, uma firma pode optar por transacionar um atributo transgênico separado da semente, estabelecendo estruturas especializadas de governança que se emolduram em torno do atributo e não da semente em si.

Purpose Many firms engage in co-opetitive projects during which they have simultaneously competitive and collaborative relationships with many rivals in a complex network. A co-opetitive network offers them access to a large volume of resources and knowledge, for example, to support new markets and/or territories. So, does the network grow with the scope of the co-opetition project? The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study of 106 French boating intermediate-sized enterprises (ETIs) and small and medium enterprises provides a descriptive and explanatory analysis of co-opetitive networks. Findings The results support this definition of a complex co-opetitive network only when the objectives of a firm are part of the geographical expansion of its activities. In contrast, these relations remain simple (dyadic) when a firm favours a strategy of diversifying its activities while maintaining its unique local geographical market. Research limitations/implications First, the work is based on a quantitative methodology, so is static. It would be interesting to analyze the process of the building of co-opetitive relationships and opportunism between rival firms, for example, through a qualitative study. Second, this work focusses on boating companies in France. It may be appropriate to consider the sanctions placed on the opportunism of foreign firms in co-opetition. Third, future work could increase understanding, not only of the nature of reprisals inflicted on individualistic co-opetitors, but also on the structure, objectives and results of these reprisals. Originality/value The study deepens our knowledge of the definition, composition and determinants of co-opetitive networks.

Purpose The food industry is a well-established and complex industry. New entrants attempting to penetrate it via the commercialization of a new technological innovation could face high uncertainty and constraints. The capability to innovate through collaboration and to identify suitable strategies and innovative business models (BMs) can be particularly important for bringing a technological innovation to this market. However, although the potential for these capabilities has been advocated, we still lack a complete understanding of how new ventures could support the technology commercialization process via the development of BMs. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach To address this gap, this paper builds a conceptual framework that knits together the different bodies of extant literature (i.e. entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation) to analyze the BM innovation processes associated with the exploitation of emerging technologies; determines the suitability of the framework using data from the exploratory case study of IT IS 3D – a firm which has started to exploit 3D printing in the food industry; and improves the initial conceptual framework with the findings that emerged in the case study. Findings From this analysis it emerged that: companies could use more than one BM at a time; hence, BM innovation processes could co-exist and be run in parallel; the facing of high uncertainty might lead firms to choose a closed and/or a familiar BM, while explorative strategies could be pursued with open BMs; significant changes in strategies during the technology commercialization process are not necessarily reflected in a radical change in the BM; and firms could deliberately adopt interim strategies and BMs as means to identify the more suitable ones to reach the market. Originality/value This case study illustrates how firms could innovate the processes of their BM development to face the uncertainties linked with the entry into a mature and highly conservative industry (food).

The accepted and peer reviewed manuscript to the article The article's focus is on how companies and institutions interact and cooperate in order to develop the wood-based bioeconomy field. Based on a case study of the Finnish forest sector, the paper shows that shifting to sustainability requires processes of co-creation. As radical innovation requires complementary competences, companies have had to cooperate with a large number of actors. By interacting with multiple actors at multiple levels, both companies and institutions have engaged in new types of activities that have led to a change in their respective roles. By taking on responsibility for developing the new industrial field, both companies and institutions act as orchestrators for mobilising a large number of public and private actors. Subsequently, the paper argues that this interaction has produced a new type of complementarity between companies and institutions facilitating the development of the new industrial field.The article's focus is on how companies and institutions interact and cooperate in order to develop the wood-based bioeconomy field. Based on a case study of the Finnish forest sector, the paper shows that shifting to sustainability requires processes of co-creation. As radical innovation requires complementary competences, companies have had to cooperate with a large number of actors. By interacting with multiple actors at multiple levels, both companies and institutions have engaged in new types of activities that have led to a change in their respective roles. By taking on responsibility for developing the new industrial field, both companies and institutions act as orchestrators for mobilising a large number of public and private actors. Subsequently, the paper argues that this interaction has produced a new type of complementarity between companies and institutions facilitating the development of the new industrial field. 1, Forfatterversjon

The policies of the European Union concerning the development of biofuels can be termed a lock-in. Biofuels were initially hailed as a green, sustainability technology. However evidence to the contrary quickly emerged. The European Commission proposed to alter its policies to accommodate for these effects but met with fierce resistance from a considerable number of member states who have an economic interest in these first generation biofuels. In this paper I argue that such a lock-in might have been avoided if an experimental approach to governance had been adopted. Existing approaches such as anticipation and niche management either do not reduce uncertainty sufficiently or fail to explicitly address conflicts between values motivating political and economic support for new technologies. In this paper, I suggest to apply an experimental framework to the development of sustainable biobased technologies. Such an approach builds on insights from adaptive management and transition management in that it has the stimulation of learning effects at its core. I argue that these learning effects should occur on the actual impacts of new technologies, on the institutionalisation of new technologies and most specifically on the norms and values that underly policies supporting new technologies. This approach can be relevant for other emerging technologies.

International audience; Over the last years, courts are increasingly inclined to consider pre-contractual arrangements as binding contracts, endowing them with commitment value that can be used strategically by the party that proposes them. We study the optimal pre-contractual arrangement offers of an upstream monopolist producing an essential input that may sell to two vertically differentiated downstream firms. These arrangements concern the exclusivity and the contingency of the contracts to be signed. Once the pre-contractual arrangements have been determined, the terms of the contracts are negotiated between the upstream supplier and the downstream firm(s). The distribution of bargaining power during the contract terms negotiations is the main driving force of the monopolist’s choices. A powerful supplier always opts for an exclusive contract. By contrast, a weaker supplier offers non exclusive contracts and makes each of them contingent or non-contingent such as to guarantee the most favorable outside option in its negotiations.

An important ingredient of the deregulation of the Swedish railway system is the increased involvement of public actors on the local and regional level in the provision of railway services. The subsidized local and regional railway services show the strongest growth of all market segments in the Swedish passenger railway market. The strong growth is due both to changes in travel patterns and improved subsidized railway services. One important factor in the success of the regional public transport authorities’ (PTA) railway services is the redefinition of the scope of these railway services by expanding existing regional networks into neighbouring counties and by interconnecting regional railway networks into bigger entities. In 2016 nearly all local and regional railway services in Sweden’s most populated region, Mälardalen, became part of a network of railway services subsidized by the PTAs in the greater region. In this paper we will analyse the cooperative and competitive interactions between the stakeholders in the greater region using the key concepts in the theory of hybrid organizations. We find that despite moving towards a unified public transport market covering many counties the hybrid organizations use different governance structures and have different goal structures and principles for sharing value creation. Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydney

The optimal design of two-part tariffs is investigated in a dynamic model where two firms belonging to the same supply chain invest in R&D activities to increase the quality of the final product. It is shown that the replication of the vertically integrated monopolist's performance can be attained using a TPT in which the fee is a linear function of either the upstream R&D effort or product quality itself. The possibility of relying on R&D figures appearing in the upstream firm's balance sheet is desirable as quality enhancement might not be observable or verifiable.

This paper examines the microfoundations of the determinants of international competitiveness. It does so within the broader “technology gap” perspective whereby wide technological and organizational differences ultimately shape the patterns of trade within sectors across countries and their dynamics. First, we take stock of the incumbent evidence on the relation between cost-related and technological competition at country and sectoral level. The overall picture indeed suggests that the countries’ sectoral market shares are mainly shaped by technological factors while cost advantages/disadvantages do not seem to play any significant role. But within any sector, within any country, firms widely differ. Hence the question: does this property apply also at a micro level? Here, we first propose a heuristic model based on a generalized Polya urn process yielding such a property and, then, empirically attempt to identify the underlying dynamics at the firm level using a large panel of Italian firms, over nearly two decades. Results show that also at micro level in most sectors investments and patents correlate positively both with the probability of being an exporter and with the capacity to acquire and to increase exports, whereas labour costs show a negative effect only in some sectors. The result is reinforced when separating the short- and long-run effects, highlighting the predominant impact of technological proxies and basically the irrelevance of wage costs.

We study the role that switching costs, compatibility, and mergers and acquisitions, play in influencing the evolution of a multi-market industry. By looking at the case of the Local Area Networking industry, we propose a ‘history friendly model’ to replicate its evolution during the 1990s. Our model explains how a firm can start from a dominant position in one of the existing markets and exploit switching costs and compatibility to enter a new market when it opens. Mergers and acquisitions also play an important role as the new market is pioneered by a new start-up, which is soon acquired by the dominant incumbent. As a result of the acquisition, the acquiring firm becomes leader also in the new market.

This paper studies how the Intellectual Property Right (IPR) regime in destination countries influences the way multinationals structure the international organization of their production. In particular, we explore how multinationals divide tasks of different complexities across countries with different levels of IPR protection. The analysis studies the decision of firms between procurement from related parties and outsourcing to independents suppliers at the product level. It also breaks down outsourcing into two types by distinguishing whether or not they involve technology sharing between the two parties. We combine data from a French firm-level survey on the mode choice for each transaction with a newly developed complexity measure at the product level. Our results confirm that firms are generally reluctant to source highly complex goods from outside firm boundaries. By studying the interaction between product complexity and the IPR protection, we obtain that (i) for technology-sharing-outsourcing IPRs promote outsourcing of more complex goods to a destination country by guaranteeing the protection of their technology, (ii) for non-technology-related-outsourcing IPRs attract the outsourcing of less complex products that are more prone to reverse engineering and simpler to decodify and imitate.

The recent years have exhibited a burst in the amount of collaborative activities among firms selling complementary products. This paper aims at providing a rationale for such a large extent of collaboration ties among complementors. To this end, we analyze a game in which the two producers of a certain component have the possibility to form pairwise collaboration ties with each of the two producers of a complementary component. Once ties are formed, each of the four firms decides how much to invest in improving the quality of the match with each possible complementor, under the assumption that a firm with a collaboration link with a complementor puts some weight on the complementor's profit when making investment decisions. Once investment choices have taken place, all firms choose prices for their respective components in a noncooperative manner. In equilibrium, firms end up forming as many collaboration ties as it is possible, although they would all prefer a scenario where collaboration were forbidden. In addition, a social planner would also prefer such a scenario to the one arising in equilibrium. We show that the result that collaboration is inefficient for firms and society does not depend on whether collaboration ties are formed in an exclusive manner: in fact, exclusivity would only worsen the situation.

This paper analyzes the relationship between the performance of incumbent firms and the net entry of new firms by combining different theoretical views of entrepreneurship. It shows that new knowledge and ideas created but not commercialized by incumbents are an important source of entrepreneurial opportunities for nascent firms. Different regression models to treat dynamics and endogeneity issues are applied to test the research hypothesis that growth of incumbent firms in a region will stimulate start-up activities by creating new profit opportunities for potential entrepreneurs. Vietnam’s regional micro-data from 2000 to 2008 are used for this test. Four controlling indicators – entrepreneurial demand, market structure, regional economic environment, and market innovativeness – are found to exert a statistically significant effect on new entries.

The present paper studies incentive provision in a model where a manager can affect the firm's stock price by exerting unobservable effort and through costly, deceptive signalling and investigates the role product market competition plays in shaping shareholders' trade-off between inducing effort and fraud.

The main aim of the paper is to highlight the relation between flexibility and vertical integration. To this purpose, we go through the selection of the optimal degree of vertical disintegration of a flexible firm which operates in a dynamic uncertain environment. The enterprise we model enjoys flexibility since it can switch from a certain amount of disintegration to vertical integration and viceversa. This means that the firm never loses vertical control, i.e., the ability to produce all inputs even when it buys them in the market. This sort of flexibility makes for results which are somehow contrary to the Industrial Organization recent literature and closer to the Operations Research results. In this sense we provide a bridge between the two approaches and rescue Industrial Organization from counterintuitive conclusions.

We show that Miller and Pazgal.s (2001) model of strategic delegation, in which managerial incentives are based upon relative performance, is affected by a non-existence problem which has impact on the price equilibrium. The undercutting incentives generating this result are indeed similar to those affecting the stability of price cartels.

International audience; Even within the financial crisis Global Sourcing is gaining more and more importance. Although a lot of European companies have already a long experience with international supply markets, uncertainties about the consequences and the costs related to a specific international supplier selection still remain. The Total Cost of Ownership concept is an interesting approach in order to cope with this problem. In the present paper key requirements for a Total Cost of Ownership concept from an industrial perspective are described. In the following, a Total Cost of Ownership concept is presented which allows conducting detailed Total Cost of Ownership calculations structured in different key modules. These key modules base on macroeconomic and microeconomic aspects which can also be largely used independently.