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The manufacturing industry in Iraq has faced, during the time stages, several obstacles that have had devastating effects on the Iraqi economy. These obstacles are represented by political events and wars that have led to the depletion of most human and material resources and the suspension of most vital industrial facilities from working, And the occurrence of this major deviation in the process of economic development, For the same reasons, the contributions of the manufacturing sector to the gross domestic product varied fluctuatingly, indicating instability in the growth rates of this sector, On the other hand, the supremacy of the belief that the dominance of oil resources as a main source for creating economic growth and achieving a high level of prosperity placed the manufacturing sector a place of great neglect. The result is that growth in this sector has become distorted in light of the heavy dependence on the oil sector. This study aims to estimate the production functions in the manufacturing industry in Iraq. Through which the existing production relations in this industry can be analyzed, And the extent of the possibility of substituting the factors of production, and measuring the flexibility of production for the factor of labor and capital, and marginal productivity.

Informal and formal institutions coexist, interacting in a complex and dynamic manner. We examine whether informal institutions can still function without official recognition and how they impact formal institutions. Drawing on a quasi-natural experiment involving the private land system in rural China known as “ancestral land”, and using trust change to represent institutional outcomes, this paper discusses the dilemma of informal institutions. The results indicate that ancestral land induces the transition of rural residents’ interpersonal trust to contract-based trust and increases the marketization of land rentals, which is one goal of China’s current land reforms. However, ancestral land reduces rural residents’ institutional trust and perceived security of tenure, and even hinders the new round of land titling. Our analysis implies that, although induced institutional innovations optimize the governance of the commons and increase the efficient allocation of production factors, the lack of official recognition is an obstacle to its potential.

In the development stages of any country, poverty reduction, increase in income balance, social welfare, and the reduction of unemployment are the most important factors which should be improved to implement development programs more successfully. Agricultural cooperatives (ACs) can play a significant role in the economic and social development of rural areas. ACs established 85 years ago in the Garmsar region of Iran for the first time; however, its form gradually changed from traditional form to a new one. They are social, economic, and ethical organizations that can play a very important role in creating employment in rural areas by attracting the participation of members, raising small capital, and providing agricultural extension training, infrastructures, and production factors. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the effect of various functions of ACs on sustainable rural employment. In this regard, 356 samples were selected from the study area (i.e. Garmsar, Iran). A survey study was conducted to collect data through field interviews. Modeling based on structural analysis showed that the social, educational, economic and production functions had positive and significant effects so that they were able to predict and explain 66% of changes in sustainable rural employment.

The widespread use of machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence algorithms has highlighted the strategic role of data. To acquire data for training algorithms and eventually empowering the digital transformation, data marketplaces are often required to support and coordinate cross-organizational data transactions. However, the prior industry practices have suggested that the transaction costs in the data marketplaces are severely high, and the supporting infrastructure is far from mature. This paper proposes a data attributes-affected data exchange (DADE) conceptual model to understand the challenges and directions for developing data marketplaces. Specifically, our model framework is built upon two dimensions, data lifecycle maturity and data asset specificity. Based on the DADE model, we propose four approaches for developing data marketplaces and discuss future research directions with an overview of computational methods as potential technical solutions.

The global population is increasing and technical efforts have to be put in place to assure food security especially for the much needed animal protein for the growing human population. Several efforts are focused on fish production to cope with the demand. Research has been done in aquatic ecosystems by installing fish production infrastructures as well as floating cages. This review aims to examine the information available on floating cages in terms of density, feeding mode, economic profitability, socio-economic impact and load capacity determination model. Some keywords related to the topic were considered when using the scientific databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus and in the Researchgate database as well as Agora. A total of 65 important scientific manuscripts as material were used. From the review, it appears that the loading density in a floating cage depends on the species, the loading weight and on the water body. Feeding is based on food intake, while the optimization of natural food would significantly reduce the cost of production. Caged aquaculture contributes to food security and reduces youth unemployment. Economic profitability is a function of production factors, water quality and is strongly influenced by feed costs. It should be noted that any ecosystems awaiting exploitation for cage aquaculture must be subjected to carrying capacity determination and the best model for this determination is Dillon and Rigler (Dillon & Rigler, 1974). Therefore, studies on each species in a given ecosystem and research on the rate of ration and the appropriate frequency of feeding (due to the contribution of the natural food) are necessary to optimize fish yield at the level of each country.

As one of the most important transportation infrastructure between cities, high-speed rail (HSR) not only had a huge economic effect on the cities along the route, but also had a certain effect on the economic disparity between cities. Based on the panel data of 40 prefecture-level cities along the main railway in China from 2001 to 2017, the economic effect of HSR is investigated by synthetic control methods (SCM) in this paper. The results show that HSR had the strongest significant positive economic effect on the city with higher economic development level and speed, had significant negative economic effect on the city that facing a negative economic growth, had insignificant weak positive economic effect on the city with lower economic development level and speed. Thus the economic effect of HSR had strong disparity. In addition, in order to explore the reasons for the economic effect disparity of HSR, this study further analyzed the mechanism of the disparity. It is found that the indirect economic effects (accelerating the flow efficiency of factors of production and changing the distribution of factors of production) brought by HSR had positive economic effects in certain cities, but had negative economic effects in some others. And it was the main reason for the economic effect disparity of HSR. By contrast, the direct economic effects of HSR (promoting the development of traffic consumption and tourism industry) often only had positive economic effects, and showed strong consistency in different cities.

Thresholds of heat stress are identified by determining the values of thermal comfort indices with significant change of animal responses. However, published thresholds may lead to inaccuracy when dealing with specific climate conditions, animal breeds and production factors. Thus, determining dynamic thresholds might provide better assessment of heat stress, with self-calibration capabilities. In this study, a large dataset of individual age, body mass (BM), days in milk (DIM), daily milk yield (DMY) and milk temperature (MT) of 126 lactating Holstein cows was collected from a robotic dairy farm over five years. The ambient temperature data was collected from a local weather station and processed as daily minimum and mean temperature (Tmin and Tmean). For the whole herd, a new series of heat stress thresholds with stages were defined as comfort stage, milk heat stress, effective heat stress and critical heat stress. The definition was based on the cow's responses in DMY and MT, which provides a potential approach to accurately alert for heat stress in robotic farming systems by using the existing data source. For the specific individuals, dynamic thresholds of heat stress were identified and categorised using the decision tree machine learning model. The categorisation achieved 79–94% overall accuracy, and demonstrated the importance of cooling cows during their early lactation period.

Manufacturing agglomerations are among the most important urban economic activities. The spatial agglomeration of production factors not only drives the growth of urban economy, but also affects its ecological environment. This study investigates the mechanism through which manufacturing agglomerations affect urban smog pollution from the aspects of economies of scale, technology spillovers, and spatial spillover effects. Based on an STIRPAT model, we employ panel data from 2003 to 2013 of 283 Chinese cities to estimate the impact of manufacturing agglomerations on smog pollution. We find that manufacturing agglomerations decrease smog pollution in local city as well as in neighboring cities, due to technology spillovers. Furthermore, cities with different scales witness different improvement effects—only when the city scale is within a certain range can smog pollution be improved by manufacturing agglomerations. Additionally, the larger the scale of the city, the greater the improvement.

We build a variation of the neoclassical growth model in which households increased desire to save generate recessions. Our economy features three departures from the standard model: (1) goods markets (for nontradables) require active search from households wherein increases in consumption expenditures increase measured productivity; (2) adjustment costs make it difficult to expand the tradable goods sector by reallocating factors of production from nontradables to tradables; (3) labor markets have Nash bargaining wage setting and Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching frictions labor markets. These departures provide a novel quantitative theory to explain recessions like those in southern Europe without relying on technology shocks.

While the accumulation of factors of production, both physical and human capital, has helped Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to narrow the income gap with developed economies, aggregate productivity is still relatively low. Although there are numerous determinants of aggregate productivity, it is largely based on the underlying productivity of all firms in the economy. Using firm-level data from several waves of the World Bank Enterprise Survey and Chile's National Manufacturing Survey, we explore the ‘what’ question on productivity dispersion in LAC. We document three stylized facts: (i) there are significant differences in firm productivity within industries – the firm at the 90th percentile of the productivity distribution produces almost seven times as much output (using the same measured inputs) as the 10th percentile firm; (ii) productivity differences persist over time – regressing a firm's current productivity on its one-year lagged productivity yields an autoregressive coefficient of around 0.9; and (iii) most of the growth in aggregate productivity comes from improvements in the productivity of existing firms.

This paper examines the feasibility of environmentally sustainable growth in a competitive market economy assuming various types of technological changes affecting pollution emissions and ultimately climate change. We consider two final outputs and two factors of production, accounting for both pollution flow and stock effects. If the initial level of pollution emissions satisfies certain boundary conditions, a Pigouvian pollution tax may assure sustainable growth without any further government intervention. This is true even if exogenous technological change is assumed to benefit exclusively the pollution-intensive industries (the “dirty” sector). A consumers’ composition effect (often neglected in the literature), driven by an endogenous change in the relative prices between clean and dirty final goods under an optimal pollution tax, plays a critical role in the structural transformation process to achieve long-run sustainable economic growth.

Although the supply situation of the Swiss population is sufficient in terms of food security, contributions to security of food supply have been made since 2014 as part of the country’s current agricultural policy. Amounting to around CHF 1.17 billion, such contributions account for more than a third of Switzerland’s total direct payments budget. The effectiveness and the efficiency of this policy in terms of both calorie production and income transfer were analysed. With the help of an agent-based model approach, the extent to which the achievement of targets is guaranteed in the long term was examined. Possible gains in efficiency become visible alongside a stepwise reduction in the levels of the contributions. If the current policy is continued, Switzerland will barely achieve its actual operationalised calorie production targets. A focus on demand during times of supply shortages and a stronger focus on maintaining production factors could release the resources necessary to close existing gaps in relation to meeting targets. With an income ratio of about 0.3, the payments have a high income transfer effect and, therefore, make a major contribution to securing agricultural income. This fact is not evident in either the formulation of targets or the labelling of the policy. The present study contributes to the discussion concerning the possible reasons and likely impacts for the mislabelling of this policy measure.

Land consolidation has become a massive organized activity and is widely implemented in rural areas. However, research remains somewhat scarce on the contributing mechanism of land consolidation with production factors to regional rural economies. In this study, we sampled 4710 land consolidation projects during the year of 2006–2016 and recorded their benefits to the rural economies within the project area, in the mountainous and hilly rural areas in Southeast China. A random forest (RF) model was used to explain the variation of rural economic indicators quantitatively and partition the relative importance of each factor from land consolidation projects. The results showed that land consolidation contributed to the promotion of rural economies. The R2 of the RF models were 66.55% (for grain production increment), 55.19% (for net agricultural income increment), 37.01% (for land rental income), and 42.60% (for labor income) respectively. Despite the direct input factors especially newly added cropland area and total investment of land consolidation project dominant across the study area, the most important factors varied over the years and across counties considerably. Noteworthily in specific years and several counties (e.g. those in the north of study area), factors reflecting technological efficiency such as the mechanized agricultural area and the land-leveling area could also make primary contribution to grain production increment and net agricultural income increment. Moreover, the marginal returns law and the scarcity of land resources in the mountainous and hilly areas were also suggested. The results revealed the significance of engineering measures for technological efficiency. The study highlights the importance of land consolidation to regional rural economies in mountainous and hilly areas, and provides valuable insights for promoting the efficiency of regional rural land consolidation arrangements in the future.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution poses significant challenges to manufacturing companies from the technological, organizational and management points of view. This paper aims to explore how top executives interpret the concept of Industry 4.0, the driving forces for introducing new technologies and the main barriers to Industry 4.0. The authors applied a qualitative case study design involving 26 semi-structured interviews with leading members of firms, including chief digital officers and chief executive officers. Company websites and annual reports were also examined to increase the reliability and validity of the results. The authors found that management desire to increase control and enable real-time performance measurement is a significant driving force behind Industry 4.0, alongside production factors. Organizational resistance at both employee and middle management levels can significantly hinder the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies, though these technologies can also transform management functions. Multinational enterprises have higher driving forces and lower barriers to industry 4.0 than small and medium-sized companies, but these smaller companies have good opportunities, too.

Market-oriented reforms on production factors in China are far lagged behind that of the commodity market, remaining the problem of price distortion in production factor markets. In this paper, we measure the degree of relative price distortion among capital, labor and energy focusing on China's secondary industry. Then, we take the own-price and cross-price elasticities as the link to estimate the demand changes of the three production factors in three cases. At last, we estimate the influence of relative price distortion elimination on the total factor energy efficiency. The main findings are: relative price distortions among the three factors exist. No matter taking the prices of capital, energy or labor as the benchmark, the prices of the other two kinds of production factors should be changed. Second, the own-price elasticities of the factors are negative, while the cross-price elasticities between the factors are positive, indicating the substitutability among the factors. Finally, correcting the relative price distortion can serve for the improvement of total factor energy efficiency of China's secondary industry. Therefore, if taking improvement of total factor energy efficiency as the goal, eliminating the price distortion in the factor market is necessary.

Developing countries, which contribute 90% of global aquaculture production, are considered global climate risk hotspots. However, no study focuses on measuring district- or sub-national-level aquaculture vulnerability to climatic hazards or disasters. This study has measured the level of aquaculture vulnerability to climate variability and change in all 64 districts of Bangladesh using a composite vulnerability index approach (using 19 climatic, environmental and socio-economic indicators) and geographical information system (GIS). The results reveal that aquaculture in 12 districts namely Satkhira, Mymensingh, Panchagarh, Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Thakurgaon, Sunamganj, Dinajpur, Kurigram, Noakhali, Lakshmipur, and Cox's Bazar have very high vulnerability (in order of highest to lowest vulnerability), which are explained by their higher level of exposure, moderate level of sensitivity, and lower to moderate level of adaptive capacity. Among these, 8 districts belong to inland and 4 districts to coastal regions of the country. Three districts, namely Dhaka, Chittagong, and Bandarban, have the lowest level of aquaculture vulnerability (in order of lowest to highest vulnerability) mainly because of very high adaptive capacity and moderate or low level of sensitivity and exposure. This study will punctuate the vulnerability of inland aquaculture and develop and prioritize actions to reduce the climatic impacts. Keywords: Aquaculture, Coastal, Inland, Vulnerability, Climate change, Bangladesh, Developing country

We replicate Stern (1993), who argues and empirically demonstrates that it is necessary (i) to use quality-adjusted energy use and (ii) to include capital and labor as control variables in order to find Granger causality from energy use to GDP. Though we could not access the original dataset, we can verify the main original inferences using data that are as close as possible to the original. We analyze the robustness of the original findings to an alternative estimation approach, alternative definitions of variables, and alternative model specifications for both the (almost) original time span (1949–1990) and an extended time span (1949–2015). p-values tend to be substantially smaller if energy use is quality adjusted rather than measured by total joules and if capital is included. Including labor has mixed results. These findings tend to largely support Stern's (1993) two main conclusions and emphasize the importance of accounting for changes in the energy mix in time series modeling of the energy-GDP relationship and controlling for other factors of production. We also discuss how the inclusion of the original author in designing the replication study using a pre-analysis plan can help to counterbalance the incentive of replicating authors to disconfirm major findings of the original article to increase the probability of getting published.

In recent years, the constant advancement of market reform in China improves the market allocation efficiency of production factors and further promotes the rapid growth of economic aggregate output in the country. Additionally, the CO2 emitted in China also constantly increases. Based on panel data pertaining to 30 provinces from 1998 to 2015 in China, the CO2 emission efficiency and marketisation level of China were separately measured using a super Slacks-based measure approach and generalised principal component analysis. On this basis, by utilising a dynamic panel regression model and a panel smooth transition regression model, the influence of market reform on CO2 emission efficiency was explored. The results show that the marketisation level exerts a significantly positive effect on CO2 emission efficiency in both models and the results are robust. On the condition of taking energy price as a threshold variable, the influence of process of marketisation is significantly greater than that when taking technological progress as a threshold variable. It implied that although energy price and technological progress both significantly promote the marginal effect of market reform on CO2 emission efficiency, the energy price shows a greater influence than technological progress. Infrastructure construction and urbanisation can inhibit the improvement of CO2 emission efficiency. Additionally, the proportion of secondary industries can delay the improvement of CO2 emission efficiency.

The overarching goal of this research was to provide sound strategies to further the development of rapeseed farming and to increase the sustainability and productivity of rapeseed production systems. Progress toward this goal was made by assessing subsistence and commercial rapeseed production systems in Khorramabad, Iran during the 2017–2018 crop year using both emergy and economic indices. The total emergy supporting the systems was estimated to be 4.13E+16 and 2.47E‏+16 sej ha−1 yr−1 for the commercial and subsistence rapeseed production systems, respectively. The calculated values of the modified environmental sustainability index, renewable emergy ratio, environmental loading ratio, and modified environmental loading ratio showed the higher ecological sustainability of the subsistence farming system compared to the commercial system for rapeseed production. According to these indices, the main reason for the lower sustainability of the commercial rapeseed production system was the large amount of soil organic matter that was lost per unit of nonrenewable resources used. A large emergy exchange ratio in favor of the buyer (EERYield); increased environmental sustainability, when the market impact is considered (Emergy Index of Sustainable Development, EISD); lower emergy required per unit of output (Unit Emergy Value, UEV) and the higher productivity of the production factors (Total Factor Productivity); all reflect the relative advantage of the commercial system over subsistence farming. Our findings revealed that the ecological sustainability of the commercial rapeseed production system can be improved by employing scientific solutions for comprehensive management of the ecosystem, especially through the amelioration of soil organic matter and prevention of its loss. Besides improving the farmers’ technical knowledge, the integration of small lots into the overall production system is recommended for improving the economic sustainability of the subsistence farming systems.

Using the monthly Producer Price Index (PPI) of 37 different industries in China from 2007 to 2017, this study established a Markov regime -switching model to analyze the regime differences and industry heterogeneity of the transmission of volatility from energy price to PPI. The results showed that volatility in energy prices within a given regime has a relatively high “inertia”. Regardless of being in a high- or low-volatility regime, volatility in energy prices was found to have a positive transmission effect on the PPI. In addition, the transmission coefficients of the low-volatility regime tended to be higher than the transmission coefficients of the high-volatility regime. Further analysis revealed that the impact of the volatility in energy prices on the PPI of factors of production was significantly greater than the impact on the PPI of consumer products. Furthermore, in terms of industry heterogeneity, the transmission coefficients of energy and resource industries were found to be the greatest, followed by energy- and resource-intensive industries, and labor-intensive industries; the transmission coefficients of technology- and capital-intensive industries were the lowest.

We propose a framework for evaluating alternative approaches for recovering products and materials from capital goods that are no longer in use. It calls for deepening the existing collaborations between input-output economists and industrial ecologists to develop scenarios for the future and databases to support the analysis of global strategies for resource management. Our formulation offers the endogenous choice among technologies subject to resource constraints to minimize economy-wide use of factors of production in satisfying final demand. The determination is made on the basis of comparative advantage for a single economy and for the global setting. We develop an illustrative database for three regions characterized by different resource profiles for natural resource endowments and for the accumulation of built capital; they are roughly modeled on Japan, Guinea, and India. The material and economic consequences for each region, and for the world as a whole, are then calculated under alternative recovery scenarios. Sharp contrasts in region-specific outcomes are evident, and clear impacts of actions in one region on outcomes in other regions demonstrate the need for a global context. Next steps include making dynamics explicit by incorporating lifetimes of durable goods and infrastructure, varying production duration periods, and resource stock-flow relationships. The final section addresses the corresponding development challenges, in particular those surrounding jobs and livelihoods. These concerns need to inform design priorities for the scale and degree of decentralization of future technological systems, which are readily represented as technological alternatives.

Community-supported agriculture (CSA), a model associated with the movement of Alternative Food Networks (AFN), is gaining increasing attention from citizens and in policy. Many studies have identified the economic benefits of CSA for farmers. Some of them explain the economic benefits by closer social ties and the reciprocal relationship between consumers and producers. Up until now, a systematic study taking into account all social and institutional features of the relationship between consumers and producers and assessing their relevance for farm economic stability has been missing. The objective of our research is to investigate, which consumer-producer interactions (CPI) are most relevant for economic stability of a farm. In our study, we extend and implement an analytical framework of CPI, describing areas of interaction (CPI domains) as well as organisational procedures and rules of relationship (CPI properties). We apply this framework to use CPI as independent rational criteria in an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). An AHP is a mathematical method where experts evaluate different variables in pairs for each level of the hierarchical design. Our results show that CPI can be considered a key factor in CSA farm economic stability, because it could be seen as ways in which consumers empower the producer economically. In addition to consumer-producer interactions regarding classical production factors such as capital (‘financing’) and land, the surveyed experts identified the consideration of consumer needs regarding qualities and quantities of produce as a relevant stabilizing factor. From these results, we conclude direct collaboration with the consumers allows CSA farmers to gain greater independence from volatile markets, but increases their dependency on the shareholder group of consumers.

Although the macroeconomic consequences of short-term fiscal stimulation packages have been thoroughly analysed in the literature, still relatively little is known about their environmental effects. We discuss an important channel through which short-run expansionary fiscal policy influences greenhouse gas emissions. We show that fiscal policy exerts its impact not only by increasing general level of economic activity, but also by changing the composition of factors of production – capital and labour. Using the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of economy, we demonstrate that fiscal expansion results in a shift from capital-intensive to more labour-intensive technologies. Our panel study proves that the latter tends to be associated with lower emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of production. Hence, our analysis demonstrates that an extensive use of fiscal stimulus during recessions can significantly reduce the environmental burden of the additional units of GDP.

The aim of this study was the evaluation of the efficiency of dairy cow farms in Greece using the nonparametric method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). To achieve the aim of this empirical analysis, two basic models were developed: one using the hypothesis of Constant Return to Scale (CRS) and the other using Variable Return to Scale (VRS). The models were output oriented (milk yield) at a constant level of technology and production factors used (nutritional value of procured or home grown animal feed, hours of human labour, value of livestock, average invested capital – including land). The results have shown that 87.2% of the farms in the sample were inefficient with an inefficiency scale between 22.09% and 100% with an average of 82.73% and a standard deviation of 19.90%. It is obvious from the results’ analysis that the farms, at the level of inputs used, can increase their output (milk yield), therefore improving their competitiveness.

Cameroon currently produces 230,000 tons/year of palm oil making it the 3rd largest African and 13th largest global palm oil producer. The country's 193,860 ha of mostly non-industrial oil palm plantations, which are often characterized by archaic production methods, will likely expand significantly along with the anticipated increase of the annual palm oil production by 2025. Their continued expansion represents a threat to forest landscapes, wildlife biodiversity and the environment. Using the example of the Ngwei forest area, one of the hot spots of oil palm growing in Cameroon, this study evaluates the social welfare created by undertaking this activity and the land area that could be spared from deforestation through increasing productivity of non-industrial oil palm plantations. The field survey results indicated that, small-scale non-industrial producers used only between 1 and 30 percent of the inputs used by large-scale producers (skilled labour, mineral fertilizer, high-yield variety seedling, pesticide) and recorded only a quarter oil palm yield (5 tons of fresh fruit bunches per ha as compared to 19.3 tons/ha). The Cobb-Douglas production function showed a higher factor productivity for small-scale plantations. The baseline results from the non-linear programming model indicated a negative social welfare and revealed land and patch of traditional forest trees retained on farms as the most important production factors. Using the counterfactual of land sparing through non-industrial oil palm intensification as a reference scenario, the social welfare became positive and 75% of oil palm area could be reforested. The results also showed that a positive social welfare would be generated if a modest rebound effect occurred. However, as private and social benefits of intensified non-industrial oil palm cultivation exceeded the opportunity cost of forest conversion, improving the adoption of more productive inputs by farmers could prove to further increase pressure on the remaining primary forest areas. Hence, effective environmental governance and complementary policies will be essential in enforcing a reduction of oil palm area and the afforestation of abandoned lands.

Our paper presents a new approach to estimating the macroeconomic growth energy rebound effect. Utilizing data envelopment analysis, our suggested methodology, unlike the standard macroeconomic growth rebound effect estimation, considers other factors of production. Through an output-oriented data envelopment analysis, optimal economic growth is derived considering all factors of production. The difference between the optimal economic growth and actual economic growth represents information on energy overspending. This overspent energy directly equates to the macroeconomic growth energy rebound effect. For the empirical case study, time-series data of economic growth and factors of production, demonstrated by energy supply, capital stocks, and labor force, are collected for the period of 1971 to 2012 in Korea. While the energy rebound effect results using the standard approach to estimating macroeconomic growth energy rebound effect are in the vicinity of 100%, our empirical results show that there is a 1% rebound effect in most of the years. Our method is plausible since our results show that the energy rebound effect is high when the economy is in recession or energy prices are shocked. That is, energy, one of the factors of production, is wasted from an economic viewpoint, which is consistent with the definition of energy rebound effect.

Aggregate productivity can be largely determined by how efficiently production factors are allocated across heterogeneous establishments. This paper estimates aggregate productivity losses from factor misallocation using a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms. We analyze the institutional background and provide some stylized facts on factor misallocation of capital and labor in China. Using an approximation method based on the estimation of input gaps, we find that aggregate productivity losses reach an average rate of 11.18 percentage points per year. On average, capital and labor misallocation account for 6.73 and 4.45 percentage points, respectively. State ownership plays an important role in generating factor misallocation and productivity losses. Our results imply that factor misallocation have become a major obstacle preventing China from moving to a more efficient economy.

Fisheries account for one-third of the total jobs in the world's ocean economies. In the European Union (EU), small-scale fleets account for over 40 % of employment in the fisheries sector. Given this marine employment source, it is important to analyse SSF productivity growth. This is done here using Total Factor Productivity (TFP), defined as the portion of output not explained by the traditionally measured inputs of labour, energy and capital used in production. Calculating TFP is relevant to understanding the development of technology in fisheries. It is calculated for SSF in two main EU sea areas: the Mediterranean (FAO area 37) and the North-East Atlantic (FAO area 27). Constant elasticity production functions are used to analyse the intensity of the use of production factors and how they are substituted or complemented when producing. Additionally, TFP is corrected by stock evolution indices to assess EU conservation policy. The results show that there is complementarity between capital and energy and external factors affecting them and that the productivity increase observed in the Atlantic can be attributed mainly to stock recovery and resource availability rather than to production factors. This suggests that technological development has been limited and that the use of production factors should be decreased in the coming years. It is concluded that in the North-East Atlantic the EU conservation policy is fulfilling the objective of restoring fish stocks and contributing to a productivity growth of 4 % per year. In the Mediterranean, stocks are not being restored, so they do not contribute to growth as a production factor. Finally, it is concluded that the conservation policy does not suffice in either area to provide positive productivity trends.

Ireland’s ambitious plan to expand primary agricultural production and its commitment to reduce its non-ETS GHG emissions by 20% compared with 2005 emission levels constitute a considerable challenge for Irish farmers. Nitrous oxide emissions produced as a result of the application of artificial fertiliser accounts for 16% of Ireland’s agricultural GHG emissions (Teagasc, 2017a). The use of urea combined with NBPT has the potential to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture when compared with conventional fertilisers. This paper presents a farm level model which maximizes farm gross margin subject to constraints on production factors (labour, land etc.) as well as agronomic constraints (stocking rate, fertilisers, feed, etc.). The aim of this paper is to compare the farm gross margin of two dairy farm types under a base scenario with the results of five other scenarios which consider varying levels of emissions reduction targets and the potential of urea combined with NBPT as an abatement technology. Results inferred that there is a potential for urea combined with NBPT to offset nitrous oxide emissions from fertiliser application and hence contribute to Ireland’s GHG reduction target.

Entrepreneurship is one of the main factors of production and hence, it plays a key role in determining the level of production and employment. Together with the globalization process entrepreneurship has become a fundamental determinant of economic growth and development. Thus, establishing the drivers of entrepreneurship is crucial for determining the necessary policies in order to increase the level of economic growth and development of a country. This paper investigates the determinants of entrepreneurship in Turkey by using individual level data taken from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor [1]. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor [2] provides a rich dataset with regard to the entrepreneurial behaviour and attitudes of individuals and how the national context of countries affect entrepreneurship. By considering the current economics literature demographic and economic features of individuals are used as potential determinants of becoming an entrepreneur. Moreover, similar to Arenius and Minniti [3]’s study perceptual variables are taken into account as explanatory variables of entrepreneurship in the empirical analysis. The results of our empirical study put forward the determinants of entrepreneurship in Turkey at the individual level. Hence, we contribute to the existing literature by presenting new evidence with regard to the determinants of entrepreneurship in Turkey. The results of our analysis will be helpful for policy makers in designing new policies in order to increase the number of entrepreneurs in Turkey.

Presented in the paper is an analysis of the pure land allocation when a land use change affects the prices paid for goods and production factors in different ways. Three different models are presented: a fully open economy, a closed economy and an economy where selected prices are exogenously determined. The reaction in terms of land allocation occurs in an intuitive manner only in the case of certain market conditions. In more complex situations, no general prediction of the land use change is possible. The introduction of policy programmes to boost forestry has different effects in open and partially open economies. Therefore, the different channels by which the prices of goods and factors determine the allocation of land are identified. This approach allows for the formulation of specifications permitting a grouping of economies with different market structures into classes with equal land allocation patterns.

Foreign trade is one of the main sources of China’s carbon emissions. Carbon productivity has become an important approach to measure the level of low carbon development, because it can integrate the goals of economic development and carbon reduction. Therefore, it is of great significance to understand the influencing mechanisms of foreign trade on China's carbon productivity to improve trade quality and low carbon development. This research measured China’s carbon productivity and analyzed the effect of foreign trade on carbon productivity through applying spatial lag model with the data of 30 provinces from 2000 to 2014. The results show that China's carbon productivity had obviously positive spatial spillover effect. Export-import significantly improved China's carbon productivity and mainly through import. As for the regional regression results, foreign trade of the western region contributed the most to enhance China’s carbon productivity, while the eastern and central regions were at the stage that the foreign trade inhibited carbon productivity. Policy recommendations were put forward in terms of the emphasis of import trade, the optimization of trade structure, the customized measures in different regions to improve carbon productivity. Furthermore, provinces should coordinate with each other and eliminate inter-regional barriers to promote the market-oriented distribution of production factors, in order to realize the spillover effect of carbon productivity.

Capital intensity is an important indicator for reflecting the relative changes of production factors of an industry. The facilitating effect of capital deepening, i.e., the positive impact of the augment of capital intensity, towards the structural transformation of the industry is definite. Therefore, the accurate prediction of capital intensity of the new energy industry is of great significance in facilitating the structural transformation and upgrading of the industry. Based on the Cobb-Douglas production function, an industry-level capital-labour ratio (KLR) model is established to describe the dynamic characteristics of the capital intensity. Then, by combining the estimation and prediction method of the nonlinear grey Bernoulli model (NGBM(1, 1)) with the KLR model, a new hybrid grey model, i.e., NGBM(1, 1)-KLR model is proposed. In this way, the economic meaning of the KLR and the advantage of the NGBM(1, 1) model in solving small-sample and nonlinear problems are complemented with each other, which enables one to more favourably predict the capital intensity of the industry. To verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed model, the NGBM (1, 1)-KLR model is used to predict the capital intensity of the new energy industry in China, and the model is compared with the GM(1, 1) and the NGBM(1, 1) models in the prediction performance. The empirical results show that the NGBM(1, 1)-KLR model can more accurately predict the capital intensity of the industry in China than the GM(1, 1) and the NGBM(1, 1) models. Moreover, the new hybrid grey model is used to carry out the out-of-sample prediction for the capital intensity of the new energy industry in China in the period of 2017–2020. The predicted results demonstrate that the structure of the industry in China will further transform and upgrade towards the capital deepening.

In a general equilibrium model with two periods and a finite fossil resource, I analyze the non-cooperative climate policies of symmetric countries that are in competition for mobile factors of production (capital and fossil energy). The paper shows that countries that want to slow down climate change but are also concerned about tax revenues from mobile tax bases have a rationale to supplement environmental taxes on fossil fuels with source-based capital taxes (or subsidies). More specifically, countries find it beneficial to subsidize capital in period one and tax it in period two. The first-period subsidy on capital facilitates a higher environmental tax by counteracting its adverse effects, and increases national and global welfare in equilibrium. By contrast, the capital tax in period two induces inter- and intratemporal distortions that lead to lower welfare. The rate of resource extraction is inefficiently high in equilibrium, no matter which tax portfolio is at the governments' disposal. Furthermore, unintended (‘Green Paradox’) effects of demand-side policies are shown to arise even in general equilibrium with factor mobility. Finally, factor mobility does not necessarily lead to a higher rate of extraction and lower welfare compared to autarky.

Energy has been heavily subsidized in Iranian economy for decades. Due to low oil prices, and, thus, budget limit, fossil fuel prices are under gradual liberalization. This will result in higher cost of production in all fuel consuming activities including agriculture. So it seems that farmers will plan to substitute fossil fuels by non-fossil alternatives. This study aims at modeling and prediction of energy demand (as a key factor of production) in Iranian agriculture. Box–Jenkins methodology is applied to model agricultural consumption of four major sources of energy including: gasoline, kerosene, gasoil and electricity for the period spanning from 1988 to 2014. Also same data are predicted for 2015–2026 in order to check model adequacy and provide information regarding status of energy demand in Iranian agriculture in the future. Main results indicate a downward trend in consumption of four energy types except electricity which is predicted to go up. This implies that, as far as energy consumption is concerned, Iranian agriculture is approaching to a more sustainable situation. Rearrangement of fuel price support policy from nonrenewable to renewable sources and provision of more governmental support for switching to lower-carbon and environment-friendly energy sources is recommended. Keywords: Energy consumption, BJ methodology, Modeling, Agriculture, Iran

As the space carrier of the construction of ecological civilization, land’s green and efficient utilization is an important guarantee for realizing national sustainable development. Based on traditional land evaluation, this paper scientifically defines the green land use, puts land as one of the production factors, and brings energy consumption, environmental pollution, etc. into the input-output system to measure the green land utilization efficiency of the urban construction land of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration from 2006 to 2016. The study shows that the overall efficiency variation of the urban agglomeration is related with the land and environment policies. Efficiency of 2016 is higher than that of 2006, and energy and environment are the principal factors affecting the green land use. The efficiency of each city is positively correlated with its economic development, negatively correlated with the construction land expansion. Efficiency gaps in different cities are expanding. Th...

Based on general theoretical analyses of the integration of scientific and technological resources and polarization effect, we proposed a research model to explore the relationship between the integration of scientific and technological resources, polarization effect, and enterprise's innovation ability in emerging economies, specifically using the data from Chinese enterprises. We empirically found that polarization effect can be used as the intermediary variables between the integration of scientific and technological resources and enterprises' innovation ability. The results provided important insights to enterprises in emerging economies about utilizing the polarization effect of the integration of scientific and technological resources to improve innovation capability.

This study was inspired by the literature of the hypothesis of the curse of natural resources, but particularly in authors such as Castelo-Branco (2010), Tiess (2011), Sigam and Garcia (2012), Obiri (2014), Halland et al. (2015) and Addison and Roe (2018).These authors deal with the issue of natural resources from the perspective of the extractive industry. So, the objective of this study was to estimate the impact of the extractive industry of natural resources on the economic growth of Mozambique in the context of the SADC countries. To carry out the study, an econometric model of economic growth based on panel data was estimated, more specifically the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) using data from 11 SADC countries between 1980 and 2017. The main results of the study indicate that, taking into account all 11 SADC countries, in the long-run the extractive industry rents have a negative and statistically significant impact on economic growth. In the short-run the extractive industry has no impact on the economic growth of the SADC countries. In the context of Mozambique, the results show that, in the short-run extractive industry rents has a negative but statistically insignificant effect, i.e. have no impact on Mozambique's economic growth. These results suggest that extractive industry rents in Mozambique and in SADC, in general, are not used as a factor of production applied in other sectors to directly raise the national product. It’s leased for the remuneration of production factor and/or for consumption. Thus, for the short run the study recommends policies for allocating the rents of extractive industries in productive and economically efficient investments in the detriment of political efficiency and the creation of sovereign wealth funds. For such policies to have results, in the short run, Mozambique must improve the quality of the institutions which at long run will be the antibiotics against the voracious and rentist effects of local elites and bureaucrats

Carbon emissions from German manufacturing have increased over the past decade, while carbon intensity (emissions per Euro of gross output) has declined only slightly. We decompose changes in emissions between 2005 and 2017 into scale, composition (changes in the mix of goods produced) and technology (emission factors of production) effects. We find evidence that the production composition in the German manufacturing sector is increasingly shifting towards less carbon intensive products. However, we also find evidence to suggest that the energy intensity of production has increased. These results are largely driven by a few energy intensive sectors.

Strategy in a global setting involves competition in industries that extend across national boundaries and among firms with different national home bases that may tap into strategic resources in more than one location. The resources that the firm accesses from its home country provide it with international competitive advantage only if they are relevant in other markets, if they are transferable in those markets, and if the value created from international expansion is appropriable. These resources include tangible assets and factors of production, but importantly also the capabilities the firm develops. Similarly, the resources that it taps from other contexts provide it with further competitive adnate only if these resource are more complementary to the firms exiting resources, transferable to the locations where it can exploit them, and appropriable. The resulting RAT and CAT tests provide a framework for international strategic decisions with an emphasis on developing, acquiring, and transferring capabilities.

The study investigated the impact of stagflation on stock market returns under two Control variables that economic policies and the characteristics of the stock market. The study included nine countries (Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, and Turkey) during the period from 2005 to 2018. We found that for the economic policies within the lag period under stagflation, the characteristics of each economy and stock market within and outside of the lag period were between 25.74% and 16.20% of the returns of stock markets, respectively. The current study explains the different results according to the different methods of study, in particular with regard to the use of the lag period, which was beneficial for the economic policy but not beneficial with stagflation. In addition, the different abilities of each economy created value-added from production factors with the different levels of efficiency of the stock exchanges. Finally, rational investment in stock exchanges requires the ability to classify the policies and economic variables and determine the extent of their time contributions to caret stock return within/outside the lag period. This area is a fertile field in financial economics research, particularly to develop theories and models.

The transformations generated by Industry 4.0 are interwoven with economic, social, and environmental developments. Yet this connection has only slightly been examined by the literature. Thus, the current research adopts a holistic view to understand the dynamics of the changes at play in Industry 4.0. The study presents the results of an open foresight study on the theme of “Uberization and Industry in 2030,” which was conducted with a working group of 22 members from academia and practice. Four scenarios and related action plans were produced. The results underline that uberization is not necessarily a process to be suffered by manufacturers, but it could be chosen or even co-constructed with different actors. These actors can choose (and not only endure) disruption by developing strategies, such as rethinking their business model and adapting their factors of production. The scenarios also indicate that the dynamics of uberization are contingent not only on technological developments, but also on industrial policy choices, changes in consumer behavior, and access to multiple funding sources of finance. The study also provides practical implications regarding the dynamics of collaboration between SMEs and large groups, on the one hand, and between manufacturing companies and platforms, on the other hand.

Performance analytics are commonly used in managerial decision making, but are vulnerable to an omitted variable bias issue when there is incomplete information on the used production factors. In this paper, we relax the standard assumption in efficiency analysis that all input quantities are observed and develop a nonparametric methodology that is robust to endogeneity issues. Our methodology extends Cherchye et al. (2021) by introducing cost inefficiency in the nonparametric framework to recover unobserved heterogeneity of cost minimizing firms. Our main contribution is that we bridge the OR/MS literature and the economic literature by addressing the general critique of Stigler (1976) on the concept of inefficiency (Leibenstein, 1966), which argued that found inefficiencies reflect unobserved inputs rather than waste. As such, we are the first to differentiate between cost inefficiency (i.e. waste; deviations from optimizing behavior) and unobserved input usage (i.e. optimally chosen input factors that are unobserved to the empirical analyst). We show the applicability of the approach by studying both cost efficiency and endogenous automation in a real-world and purpose-built dataset on Belgian railway traffic management control rooms. Our findings cast doubt on Stigler's argument showing instead the existence of meaningful inefficiencies that cannot be attributed to use of unobserved inputs or environmental factors. In addition, we document how the omitted variable bias impacts cost efficiencies of individual observations in a dissimilar way in case the use of unobserved inputs is not controlled for.

This paper examines the economic activities of Esan people from earliest times to 1906. It problematises entrepreneurship as an elastic factor of production and development in Esanland. Its elasticity made the pre-colonial economy of Esan responsive to the economic forces of change and continuity. And it contextualised the Esan people as the means and beneficiaries of development in Esanland within the period. The paper finds that economic survivalismin Esan did not take place in vacuum. It was triggered by the adaptation of Esan people to their environmental milieu and responsiveness to the forces of economic change. Hence, using historical research methodology, the paper employs primary and secondary materials to demonstrate this historical fact. From the patterns of economic development in Esan during the period, the paper finds that its economy was neither subsistent nor static. It was dynamic and viable because of the dynamism of Esan people as entreprenuers. Consequently, the pre-colonial Esan economy was able to satisfy economic needs in Benin Kingdom and beyond through Benin agents. Therefore, after the conquest of Benin in 1897, the British were attracted to Esanland, prompting a shift in economic emphasis to Esan in 1906. This paper concludes that the continued responsiveness and adaptation of Esan people to their environmental milieu and emergent forces of demand and supply made Esan economy relevant to the British.

China’s recent coal capacity cut policies are expected to promote an energy supply-side revolution. However, their real impacts are still uncertain, especially for coal resource-based regions. Based on a dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model, this is the first study to investigate the effects of output-controlled and investment-controlled coal capacity cut policies on macroeconomy and the environment (including carbon emissions) in Shanxi province, the most typical representative of coal resource-based regions in China. The results show that the output-controlled coal capacity cut policy not only can reduce sulfur emissions and carbon emissions, but also can promote long-term economic growth and households’ income. Moreover, although the output-controlled coal capacity cut policy reduces financial revenues, this kind of policy can weaken the excessive inflow of production factors in coal industry and promote the development of non-coal industries. On the other hand, the investment-controlled coal capacity cut policy does not cause labor outflow from coal industry. This kind of policy can also reduce sulfur emissions and carbon emissions, though it shows a negative impact on macroeconomic factors, such as gross domestic product and welfare. We find that only the output-controlled coal capacity cut policy can effectively moderate the resource curse effect in coal resource-based regions, and therefore, this kind of policy should be the first choice of the Chinese government.

Historically, agricultural production in the Amazon has been painted as the most environmentally impacting activity. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the increase in agricultural efficiency and the slowdown of deforestation rates in the past decade, correlating these data with municipalities’ agricultural specialization. With the data from the 2006 and 2017 Brazilian Agricultural Census we classified municipalities according to its vegetal or animal specialization and estimated a production frontier using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), considering a set of production factors and technological variables. Our results demonstrated that most part of municipalities have no specialization or are based in cattle ranching activities, and the overall agricultural efficiency in the Amazon municipalities grew from 69.5% in 2006 to 74.1% in 2017. The new institutional path in the 21st century contributed to slow deforestation in agricultural activities through an increase in productivity (yield/ha) in the last decade, mainly for vegetal production. Cattle ranching also increased output and efficiency, but it remains the most environmental impacting activity. However, several municipalities could not develop their agricultural production value relative to the most productive areas, suggesting that some factors —technological and productive— that could lead to output increase are not being efficiently allocated, which results in concentrating deforestation in inefficient systems and limiting the effectiveness of current policies. Technological diffusion, especially for small farmers, and private support in environmental issues could contribute to slowdown deforestation without loss of agricultural output.

The Northwest is the second largest milk producing region of Cameroon. In Bamenda, the region’s capital, the shutdown of the only milk processing plant in mid-2016 and political unrest later that year disrupted its dairy supply chain. Producers had to decide whether to continue selling milk, to momentarily stop selling milk, or to quit the dairy business entirely. We investigate the approaches considered by producers in response to the supply chain disruption using household survey data from 2017 with 320 active and inactive dairy market participants. By means of binary and multinomial logit models, we examine household characteristics, farm resources, and institutional factors that may have driven producers’ responses one year after the disruption. Our analysis reveals that pastoral and sedentary milk producers should be examined separately. Results show that livestock diversity, land titles, and dairy-focused trainings are helpful to sedentary producers to continue milk sales, whereas pastoral sellers are encouraged by greater access to production factors, and by being members of cooperatives. Generally, younger producers in non-urban areas are most likely to remain milk sellers, regardless of production system. This study sheds light on producers’ different approaches after supply chain disruptions and highlights farm-level factors that help them stabilize and maintain their livelihoods. This knowledge can contribute to the design of more appropriate mitigation strategies against the repercussions of such events in the future, particularly for cattle and dairy development programs.

This paper predicts the adjustments in energy sources in Canada entering a free trade agreement FTA with China in an applied specific factors model including agriculture, manufacturing, services, and nonrenewable energy sectors. FTA price change scenarios lead to adjustments in sector outputs and capital returns, wages for five skill groups, and the price of electricity. Electricity is tied to renewable energy and treated as a factor of production. Increases in outputs, capital returns, and wages gains are offset by declines in manufacturing and the operator-handler wage. The declining demand for electricity will favor the nonrenewable sector over renewable energy.

Pecuniary externalities in models with financial friction justify macroprudential policies for preventing economic agents’ excessive risk taking. We extend the Diamond and Rajan (2012) model of banks with the production factors and explore how a pecuniary externality affects a bank’s leverage. We show that the laissez-faire banks in our model take on excessive risks compared with the constrained social optimum. Our numerical simulations suggest that the crisis probability is 2--3 percentage points higher in the laissez-faire economy than in the constrained social optimum.

We study how financial frictions amplify labor supply shocks in a macroeconomic model with occasionally binding financing constraints. Workers supply labor to entrepreneurs who borrow to purchase factors of production. Borrowing capacity is restricted by the value of capital, generating a pecuniary externality when financing constraints bind. Additionally, there is a distributive externality operating through wages. The planner’s allocation can be decentralized with two instruments: a credit tax/subsidy and a labor tax/subsidy. Labor shocks, such as the COVID-19 shock, amplify the policy responses, which critically depend on whether financing constraints bind or not.