WorldFish Center report on the opportunities and constraints to improved fisheries exploitation and management in the Maringa – Lopori – Wamba landscape

The WorldFish Center was contracted by Africa Wildlife Foundation to conduct a preliminary survey of the role of fisheries in livelihoods, and opportunities and constraints to improved fisheries exploitation and management, in the Maringa-Lopori-Wamba Landscape. In May 2007, a three person WorldFish Center team, supported by AWF staff, visited the landscape to explore how the fishery operates to meet local needs and identify scope for interventions that might improve fisheries livelihood opportunities without undermining its sustainability. It is clear that although fishing is important for both income and subsistence in the areas visited, profits are nonetheless modest and somewhat unpredictable. Moreover, fisherfolk should not be considered a homogeneous group: there are different sub-groups, using different gears and skills, involving women and men in both fishing and post-harvest activities, groups who are more or less dependent on farming, and who fish, on balance, more either for cash or subsistence needs. Thus the findings here need to be set within this context of different sub-groups, fishing for generally very modest remuneration, with the latter subject to considerable variability and uncertainty.

Etude de la chaine de commercialisation du poisson: Lac Ntomba, section du fleuve Congo (Ngombe) et marchés de Mbandaka et Kinshasa

Cette étude a été réalisée par le WorldFish Center dans le cadre de sa collaboration avec le WWF et le projet CARPE de l’USAID. La chaîne de commercialisation du poisson a été suivie des zones de production jusqu’au principal marché final. La région au centre de cette étude est le lac Ntomba ainsi qu’une partie du fleuve Congo. Ceci correspond à la partie nord de la section du Paysage Lac Télé - Lac Tumba de la République Démocratique du Congo. Toutes les étapes de la chaîne de commercialisation du poisson ont été prises en compte dans cette étude. Les stratégies des acteurs présents à chaque étape ainsi que les dynamiques les associant à la chaîne ont été utilisées pour refléter le fonctionnement de la chaîne de commercialisation du poisson et identifier ses spécificités. La pêche est une activité saisonnière de grande importance dans la région du lac Ntomba et la partie proche du fleuve Congo. La majorité des habitants de la région constituent leurs moyens d’existence d’un panachage d’activités, dont la séquence semble être rythmée essentiellement par l’opportunité et le climat. Presque aucun service n’est offert dans cette région où les activités économiques sont réduites et n’ont le plus souvent qu’une faible productivité. Cependant, la chaîne de commercialisation du poisson supporte un large éventail d’acteurs différents et représente un secteur d’une grande importance pour la région. Cette région périphérique est reliée au reste de l’économie nationale par une série de marchés et de nombreux différents types d’acteurs. Assurer ce lien représente de sérieuses difficultés et comporte des risques importants tandis que les marges de profits sont le plus souvent minces. Cependant, il semblerait que, de manière générale, le marché se développe et les liens se renforcent, même si cette évolution est plus discrète dans les lieux les plus isolés.

Coordinated pricing and inventory management

This dissertation mainly focuses on coordinated pricing and inventory management problems, where the related background is provided in Chapter 1. Several periodic-review models are then discussed in Chapters 2,3,4 and 5, respectively. Chapter 2 analyzes a deterministic single-product model, where a price adjustment cost incurs if the current selling price is changed from the previous period. We develop exact algorithms for the problem under different conditions and find out that computation complexity varies significantly associated with the cost structure. %Moreover, our numerical study indicates that dynamic pricing strategies may outperform static pricing strategies even when price adjustment cost accounts for a significant portion of the total profit. Chapter 3 develops a single-product model in which demand of a period depends not only on the current selling price but also on past prices through the so-called reference price. Strongly polynomial time algorithms are designed for the case without no fixed ordering cost, and a heuristic is proposed for the general case together with an error bound estimation. Moreover, our illustrates through numerical studies that incorporating reference price effect into coordinated pricing and inventory models can have a significant impact on firms' profits. Chapter 4 discusses the stochastic version of the model in Chapter 3 when customers are loss averse. It extends the associated results developed in literature and proves that the reference price dependent base-stock policy is proved to be optimal under a certain conditions. Instead of dealing with specific problems, Chapter 5 establishes the preservation of supermodularity in a class of optimization problems. This property and its extensions include several existing results in the literature as special cases, and provide powerful tools as we illustrate their applications to several operations problems: the stochastic two-product model with cross-price effects, the two-stage inventory control model, and the self-financing model.

A study on the effect of functional distribution of income on aggregate demand

In this thesis, we study the causal relationship between functional distribution of income and economic growth. In particular, we focus on some of the aspects that might alter the effect of the profit share on growth. After a brief introduction and literature review, the empirical contributions will be presented in Chapters 3,4 and 5. Chapter 3 analyses the effect of a contemporaneous decrease in the wage share among countries that are major trade partners. Falling wage share and wage moderation are a global phenomenon which are hardly opposed by governments. This is because lower wages are associated with lower export prices and, therefore, have a positive effect on net-exports. There is, however, a fallacy of composition problem: not all countries can improve their balance of payments contemporaneously. Studying the country members of the North America Free Trade Agreement, we find that the effect on export of a contemporaneous decrease in the wage share in Mexico, Canada and the United States, is negative in all countries. In other words, the competitive advantage that each country gains because of a reduction in its wage share (to which is associated a decrease in export prices), is offset by a contemporaneous increase in competitiveness in the other two countries. Moreover, we find that NAFTA is overall wage-led: the profit share has a negative effect on aggregate demand. Chapter 4 tests whether it is possible that the effect of the profit share on growth is different in the long run and in the short run. Following Blecker (2014) our hypothesis is that in the short run the growth regime is less wage-led than it is in the long run. The results of our empirical investigation support this hypothesis, at least for the United States over the period 1950-2014. The effect of wages on consumption increases more than proportionally compared to the effect of profits on consumption from the short to the long run. Moreover, consumer debt seem to have only a short-run effect on consumption indicating that in the long run, when debt has to be repaid, consumption depends more on the level of income and on how it is distributed. Regarding investment, the effect of capacity utilization is always larger than the effect of the profit share and that the difference between the two effects is higher in the long run than in the short run. This confirms the hypothesis that in the long run, unless there is an increase in demand, it is likely that firms are not going to increase investments even in the presence of high profits. In addition, the rentier share of profits – that comprises dividends and interest payments – has a long-run negative effect on investment. In the long run rentiers divert firms’ profits from investment and, therefore, it weakens the effect of profits on investment. Finally, Chapter 5 studies the possibility of structural breaks in the relationship between functional distribution of income and growth. We argue that, from the 1980s, financialization and the European exchange rate agreements weakened the positive effect of the profit share on growth in Italy. The growth regime is therefore becoming less profit-led and more wage-led. Our results confirm this hypothesis and also shed light on the concept of cooperative and conflictual regimes as defined by Bhaduri and Marglin (1990).

Interpreting Poland

The paper aims to interpret the political situation in Poland after 2015 double elections in terms of non-Marxian historical materialism. According to presented interpretation the taking power by Law and Justice Party not only limits the scope of influence of the previous ruling party but can lead to significant redistribution of political power, economic profits and intellectual influence. In the last part of paper, the prognosis about future development of situation in Poland is proposed

ESSAYS IN ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

This dissertation studies technological change in the context of energy and environmental economics. Technology plays a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Chapter 1 estimates a structural model of the car industry that allows for endogenous product characteristics to investigate how gasoline taxes, R&D subsidies and competition affect fuel efficiency and vehicle prices in the medium-run, both through car-makers' decisions to adopt technologies and through their investments in knowledge capital. I use technology adoption and automotive patents data for 1986-2006 to estimate this model. I show that 92% of fuel efficiency improvements between 1986 and 2006 were driven by technology adoption, while the role of knowledge capital is largely to reduce the marginal production costs of fuel-efficient cars. A counterfactual predicts that an additional $1/gallon gasoline tax in 2006 would have increased the technology adoption rate, and raised average fuel efficiency by 0.47 miles/gallon, twice the annual fuel efficiency improvement in 2003-2006. An R&D subsidy that would reduce the marginal cost of knowledge capital by 25% in 2006 would have raised investment in knowledge capital. This subsidy would have raised fuel efficiency only by 0.06 miles/gallon in 2006, but would have increased variable profits by $2.3 billion over all firms that year. Passenger vehicle fuel economy standards in the United States will require substantial improvements in new vehicle fuel economy over the next decade. Economic theory suggests that vehicle manufacturers adopt greater fuel-saving technologies for vehicles with larger market size. Chapter 2 documents a strong connection between market size, measured by sales, and technology adoption. Using variation consumer demographics and purchasing pattern to account for the endogeneity of market size, we find that a 10 percent increase in market size raises vehicle fuel efficiency by 0.3 percent, as compared to a mean improvement of 1.4 percent per year over 1997-2013. Historically, fuel price and demographic-driven market size changes have had large effects on technology adoption. Furthermore, fuel taxes would induce firms to adopt fuel-saving technologies on their most efficient cars, thereby polarizing the fuel efficiency distribution of the new vehicle fleet.

Applying Platform Design to Improve Product-Service Systems Collaborative Development

Part 3: Product-Service Systems

O marketing e a atuação social das empresas: uma relação possível?

The present work is about a study of multiple cases with exploratory and descriptiveperspective and qualitative emphasis. Its field of study is constituted by three local companieswith description of social performance, with emphasis in the personal interview with thecontrollers. Its main objective consists of understanding as it has occurred the marketingrelation with the enterprise social performance in the context of these companies located inthe State of the Rio Grande do Norte who carry out social investments. For this, it hassearched to analyze the types and characteristics of the developed social actions, to evaluatethe motivations and objectives of the accomplishment of social actions, to verify theimportance and influence of the social performance in the dynamics of the companies, toverify the level of specific knowledge and information in the areas of marketing and socialperformance in the companies and to evaluate the process of communication (promotion andspreading) of the social performance carried out by the companies. It has been verified thatthe company A directly associates it its social and ambient activities with differentiationbenefits, competitiveness, creation of value, loyalty, relationships, image, prestige,positioning of the company, sale and financial return, beyond benefits in the internal level asbigger motivation of its employees and retention of talents, not existing rejection to theinterlacement of the concepts related to the marketing and the social one. Already in companyB rejection in relating its practical social to the marketing, being observed after posteriorquestionings, that the relation of direct and indirect form exists and those divulgations of theseactions are carried out, contradicting the arguments of the controllers of that the actions wouldnot be carried out to generate media. In company C, it been verified rejection andcontradiction with relation to the concepts related to the marketing, alleging itself that theimage of the harnessed company to its social performance is not used in proper benefit,evidencing itself that this company divulges its action and is marketable benefited, even so isnot this the main objective of its social programs. It has concluded that the association ofthese two concepts is positive and favorable to the development of the businesses and thesocial actions of the companies, legitimizing them and benefiting the involved company,groups in the actions and the society that profits socially from the private social involvement in the social matters

Drivers of revenues and expenses in higher-education non-profit institutions

Double Degree

Iterated responsive threshold search for the quadratic multiple knapsack problem

International audience

Andamos - Agência de Marketing Digital para Micro Empresas e PMEs

Nos últimos anos, tem sido evidente o crescimento exponencial das novas tecnologias e da utilização frequente de plataformas digitais. A tendência de mercado é a continuação deste aumento, contribuindo para que cada vez mais, surjam prestações de serviços e vendas de produtos no âmbito digital. As agências ocupam um lugar de destaque neste tipo de oferta, no entanto, as mais pequenas tem por vezes dificuldade em subsistir, devido à maioria do seu target serem pequenas e médias empresas. Tendo em conta esta realidade, foi criado o projeto Andamos, que consiste na criação de uma agência de marketing digital, adequada à realidade portuguesa, sendo o seu target micro, pequenas e médias empresas, mas que consiga criar uma estrutura de custos muito reduzidos, potenciando um negócio viável e lucrativo. Nesse sentido, foi desenvolvido uma descrição de projeto, que pretende detalhar o mercado através de benchmark, desenvolver o planeamento estratégico, o plano de marketing e comunicação e o modelo de negócio. Com o intuito de sustentar a validade do projeto, foi efetuado numa primeira fase um estudo, utilizando um questionário segundo o método Delphi, que demonstrou com base nas respostas apuradas, que existe necessidade no mercado, justificando a existência da Andamos. Numa segunda fase foi estudada a viabilidade do projeto, através de um planeamento financeiro, utilizando o modelo FINICIA, do IAPMEI. Por conseguinte, foi possível analisar os indicadores mais importantes, como a TIR, VAL, cash flow e payback period, entre outros, que suportaram a exequibilidade do negócio e a sua capacidade de gerar lucro.

Essays on Supply Chain Finance

I study how a larger party within a supply chain could use its superior knowledge about its partner, who is considered to be financially constrained, to help its partner gain access to cheap finance. In particular, I consider two scenarios: (i) Retailer intermediation in supplier finance and (ii) The Effectiveness of Supplier Buy Back Finance. In the fist chapter, I study how a large buyer could help small suppliers obtain financing for their operations. Especially in developing economies, traditional financing methods can be very costly or unavailable to such suppliers. In order to reduce channel costs, in recent years large buyers started to implement their own financing methods that intermediate between suppliers and financing institutions. In this paper, I analyze the role and efficiency of buyer intermediation in supplier financing. Building a game-theoretical model, I show that buyer intermediated financing can significantly improve supply chain performance. Using data from a large Chinese online retailer and through structural regression estimation based on the theoretical analysis, I demonstrate that buyer intermediation induces lower interest rates and wholesale prices, increases order quantities, and boosts supplier borrowing. The analysis also shows that the retailer systematically overestimates the consumer demand. Based on counterfactual analysis, I predict that the implementation of buyer intermediated financing for the online retailer in 2013 improved channel profits by 18.3%, yielding more than $68M projected savings. In the second chapter, I study a novel buy-back financing scheme employed by large manufacturers in some emerging markets. A large manufacturer can secure financing for its budget-constrained downstream partners by assuming a part of the risk for their inventory by committing to buy back some unsold units. Buy back commitment could help a small downstream party secure a bank loan and further induce a higher order quantity through better allocation of risk in the supply chain. However, such a commitment may undermine the supply chain performance as it imposes extra costs on the supplier incurred by the return of large or costly-to-handle items. I first theoretically analyze the buy-back financing contract employed by a leading Chinese automative manufacturer and some variants of this contracting scheme. In order to measure the effectiveness of buy-back financing contracts, I utilize contract and sales data from the company and structurally estimate the theoretical model. Through counterfactual analysis, I study the efficiency of various buy-back financing schemes and compare them to traditional financing methods. I find that buy-back contract agreements can improve channel efficiency significantly compared to simple contracts with no buy-back, whether the downstream retailer can secure financing on its own or not.

INFLUENCE OF A NATIVE INSECTARY PLANT, CHAMAECRISTA FASCICULATA (MICHX.) ON ORGANIC FIELD CORN AND ARTHROPOD COMMUNITIES

Increasing plant diversity in conventionally monoculture agrosystems has been promoted as a method to enhance beneficial arthropod density and efficacy, suppress herbivory and provide a range of ecosystem services. I investigated the pest suppressive potential and economic impact of plant diversification in organic field corn. The experiment consisted of two treatments, corn grown in monoculture (C) and bordered by strips of partridge pea (PP). Pest and natural enemy populations, corn damage, yield, and profits were compared among treatments. Natural enemy and herbivore arthropod populations were affected by treatment and distance from plot border. Corn damage due to pests was also affected by treatment and location, but did not significantly affect yield. Yield in monoculture plots was generally greater than in PP but did not result in greater profit. Pest and natural enemy arthropod abundances were elevated in partridge pea treatment borders, but these populations did not consistently diffuse into plot interiors. The potential causes and implications of findings are discussed.

Plano de marketing para a produtora "Music"

Mestrado em Marketing

Impacto da prevenção quaternária no envelhecimento bem sucedido

"Quaternary prevention is more than a Philosophy , it is a concrete answer and a solution to many complex problems that affect Medicine. In 1981, Illich recognized iatrogenic complications, as clinical, social and cultural. The first, gained such a dimension that has become the third leading cause of death in the U.S. , in 2000 as referred by Starfield. When you live more, much more, you want quality of life and not just life subject of increasing comorbidities, with all the parade of treatments, medications that we already know are not without riscs, far from it, we know that over five drugs per day represent the 50% probability of drug-drug interactions and seven drugs 100 %. In elderly attending the reduction of functional reserve, there is a greater risk of iatrogenic problems, adverse reactions and drug interactions, truly unpredictable , these highly medicalized societies in which are accounted diagnoses instead of investigating patterns of disease. So quaternary prevention reminds us that both preventive and curative care in excess behave as risk factors for health , reaching in the case of using preventive medications, millions of individuals who are confident in Medicine. The idea of extending the use of drugs to healthy populations, as preventive actions, expands the pharmaceutical market, which accounts simultaneously increasing profits and losses in economies around the world. Quaternary prevention itineraries in health and disease, may contribute to successful aging about witch many important authors have spoken on."