Search results for "ECONOMICS"
showing 10 items of 14389 documents
Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence
2017
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non-significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very lim…
Shelf life-based inventory management policy for RF monitored warehouse
2018
Post-harvest losses of perishable products strongly depend on inefficiencies of the entire supply chain. In particular, these inefficiencies can be reduced by optimizing the warehouse management, taking into account the remaining shelf life of the product, and matching it to the requirements of the subsequent part of the handling chain. The replacement of First In First Out picking rule with Last Shelf Life First Out policy has been proved to improve the overall performance of the supply chain. The practicability of such approach is related to the possibility of monitoring the deterioration rate of the products and of predicting the residual shelf-life, that is mainly influenced by harvesti…
Exploring the application of blockchain to humanitarian supply chains: insights from Humanitarian Supply Blockchain pilot project
2021
PurposeSome studies and reports have recently suggested using blockchain technology to improve transparency and trust in humanitarian supply chains (HSCs). However, evidence-based studies to display the utility and applicability of blockchains in HSCs are missing in the literature. This paper aims to investigate the key drivers and barriers of blockchain application to HSCs and explore whether evidence could support that the application of blockchain improves transparency and trust in HSCs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper puts forward a two-stage approach to explore the blockchain application in HSCs: an initial exploration of humanitarian practitioners and academicians interested in b…
Pricing Sovereign Contingent Convertible Debt
2016
We develop a pricing model for sovereign contingent convertible bonds (S-CoCo) with payment standstills triggered by a sovereign's credit default swap CDS spread. One innovation is the modeling of CDS spread regime switching which is prevalent during crises. Regime switching is modeled as a hidden Markov process and is integrated with a stochastic process of spread levels to obtain S-CoCo prices through simulation. The paper goes a step further and uses the pricing model in a Longstaff-Schwartz. American option pricing framework to compute state contingent S-CoCo prices at some risk horizon, thus facilitating risk management. Dual trigger pricing is also discussed using the idiosyncratic CD…
Grading investment diversification options in presence of non-historical financial information
2021
Modern portfolio theory deals with the problem of selecting a portfolio of financial assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. The forecast of the expected individual assets’ returns and risk is usually based on their historical returns. In this work, we consider a situation in which the investor has non-historical additional information that is used for the forecast of the expected returns. This implies that there is no obvious statistical risk measure any more, and it poses the problem of selecting an adequate set of diversification constraints to mitigate the risk of the selected portfolio without losing the value of the non-statistical information owne…
Applying System Dynamics Modelling to Strategic Management: A Literature Review
2016
System dynamics (SD) has been proved to be a useful methodology to support both understanding and learning processes of complex systems and phenomena. Since its origin, SD has been successfully applied to many different fields of studies (e.g. climate change, physics, engineering, environmental sciences, economics, management, etc.). Among these, strategic management (SM) has a particular relevance as testified by several streams of research that originate from the combination between SD modelling and SM. The aim of this paper is to explore and discuss the theoretical and empirical development of SD in the SM field through a systematic analysis of the literature in order to highlight the ma…
Tabu Search to Plan Schedules in a Multiskill Customer Contact Center
2006
International audience; We have studied a realistic case of scheduling problem in a customer contact center, dealing with multiskill agents. Our model combines the last two steps of the standard approach by determining shifts and by assigning them to agents at the same time (scheduling and rostering). Moreover, we have considered realistic vacations, according to legal constraints and preferences of agents. We have envisioned entire weeks of work, with variable meal times and meal durations, without overtime. In this paper, we define the problem and describe a Tabu search based solution.
Measuring Social Responsibility: A Multicriteria Approach
2016
In this chapter we present a portfolio selection model for Socially Responsible Investment. The model, following the spirit of Socially Responsible Investment, consists of two different steps. Firstly, a social screening is applied in order to obtain the feasible set of assets accomplishing the socially responsible investment policy of the assets’ manager. In this step, an indicator is obtained for the measurement of the social responsibility degree of an asset. Assets are then ranked using this indicator from the most socially responsible to the less socially responsible. In a second step, once the feasible set is obtained, composed of those socially responsible assets verifying the screen…
Model Co-creation from a Modeler’s Perspective: Lessons Learned from the Collaboration Between Ethnographers and Modelers
2018
This paper reports on the authors’ ongoing collaboration on model co-creation, a process that involves not only the reconciliation of methodologies (qualitative vs. quantitative), but also of epistemologies (empirical vs empirical/rationalist) and ontologies (observable referent vs. abstracted referent). The co-creation process has taken place over several months, from early 2017, both in person, teleconferencing and via email. The result was an ethnographic model of the refugee situation in Lesbos, Greece. The qualifier “ethnographic” means that the simulation’s purpose was to capture the problem situation described by ethnographers in a manner that resembles their observations, not to ans…
The Integration of the Supply Chain as a Dynamic Capability for Sustainability: The Case of an Innovative Organic Company
2018
Numerous research projects have demonstrated that a firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competencies to adapt to changes in its environment is a key capability for its competitiveness. However, in the case of developing the capabilities needed to implement innovation, we have found that the ability to integrate knowledge into the supply chain is also crucial since it is an essential requirement for bringing in technological change and product innovation. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the role of supplier integration in the implementation of radical innovation. First, we propose a theoretical model to connect supplier integration as a dyna…