The Monetary Value Of Meat Authenticity And Food Safety In Ready To Heat Lasagne: Implications Of The ���Horse Meat Scandal��� Across Europe

The recent ���horse meat scandal��� in Europe has sparked huge concerns among consumers, as horse meat was found in beef lasagne ready to be consumed. Within STARTEC, a European funded project, this study investigates consumers��� preferences, attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) towards characteristics of ready to heat (RTH) fresh lasagne, including origin of the meat, tested for meat authenticity, safety of the lasagne, and nutritional value, using Discrete Choice Experiments in six countries - Republic of Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Norway. Our representative sample of 4,598 European consumers makes this the largest cross country study of this kind. The questionnaire was administered online in January 2014. Results from models in WTP-space show that, on average, consumers are willing to pay considerable amount (about ���4-9) for food authenticity; on this Irish and Italian are the least concerned while Spanish are the most concerned. As expected from discussing with stakeholders, food safety claims and nutritional value of the RTH lasagne are relatively less important. Consumers also value knowing the origin of ingredients preferring locally sourced meat. Primarily, the results of this study present strong evidence that consumers in Europe are highly concerned about authenticity of the meat in ready meals and strongly prefer to know that the meat is national. This evidence suggests that there is great value in providing information on these attributes, both from a consumer perspective and where this leads to an increased consumer confidence has benefits for the food industry.

Britain and the threat to stability in Europe 1918-45

After the horrors of the First World War a dialogue began between European statesmen seeking some form of European integration as a way of achieving lasting peace. During the inter-war period this idea started to attract support in Britain even though Britain's strategic and economic interests remained focused outside Europe. This book explores Britain's relations with the continent between 1918 and 1945, focussing on diplomatic and military responses to the major crises and examining attitudes to the idea of Europe in the broader context of relations with the Empire, Commonwealth and the USA.

Religion and returns in Europe

Drawing on social identity and social impact theory, this paper is the first to investigate the impact of religious preferences on share prices and expected returns at the country level. Using data from 12 European countries, our findings suggest that religion has a significant effect on the share price of companies whose activities are considered unethical, i.e., tobacco manufacturers and alcohol producers. The share price of these companies (called sin stocks) is depressed when they are located in a predominantly Protestant environment (relative to a Catholic environment). With investors in Protestant countries being more sin averse than in Catholic countries, they insist upon higher expected returns on sin stocks. Conversely, religious preferences do not have the same impact on the performance of other companies, e.g. socially responsible companies. Our results are robust to various methodologies and controlling for several firm-specific, industry-specific and country-specific characteristics.

Impact of the financial crisis on cross-border mergers and acquisitions and concentration in the global banking industry

The global banking industry has seen dramatic changes in the past 40 years. Most recently, the financial liberalization of emerging markets and the global financial crisis have significantly impacted the market share of banks worldwide. This article investigates the impact of the 2007���2008 financial crisis on cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the banking sector and emphasizes the role of emerging-market banks in the postcrisis consolidation trend. Using M&A data and concentration data over the period 2000���2013, our analysis indicates that the financial crisis had a significant impact on worldwide M&As, especially on the direction of the transactions. Emerging-market banks appear to be major acquirers in the postcrisis period, targeting both neighboring countries and developed economies in Europe. We also observe an increase in bank concentration in developed markets most hit by the financial crisis, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, whereas bank concentration decreased in emerging markets.

Exploraty Multivariate Statistical Methods Applied to Pharmaceutical Industry CRM Data

Disserta����o apresentada como requisito parcial para obten����o do grau de Mestre em Estat��stica e Gest��o de Informa����o

How to increase profitability of Golf Industry in Lisbon?

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA ��� School of Business and Economics

Pratiques et usages de l'Europe dans le maintien de la paix : la coop��ration franco-irlandaise au Tchad

Th��se r��alis�� en cotutelle avec l'Universit�� libre de Bruxelles (Belgique)

Development of Total Quality Management System in Seafood (Freezing) Industry in Kerala

Quality related problems have become dominant in the seafood processing industry in Kerala. This has resulted in the rejection of seafood sent from India to many destinations. The latest being the total block listing of seafood companies from India from being exported to Europe and partial block listing by the US. The quality systems prevailed in the seafood industry in India were outdated and no longer in use in the developed world. According to EC Directive discussed above all the seafood factories exporting to European countries have to adopt HACCP. Based on this, EIA has now made HACCP system mandatory in all the seafood processing factories in India. This transformation from a traditional product based inspection system to a process control system requires thorough changes in the various stages of production and quality management. This study is conducted by the author with to study the status of the existing infrastructure and quality control system in the seafood industry in Kerala with reference to the recent developments in the quality concepts in international markets and study the drawbacks, if any, of the existing quality management systems in force in the seafood factories in Kerala for introducing the mandatory HACCP concept. To assess the possibilities of introducing Total Quality Management system in the seafood industry in Kerala in order to effectively adopt the HACCP concept. This is also aimed at improving the quality of the products and productivity of the industry by sustaining the world markets in the long run.

Benefits of Implementing Lean Practices and the Impact of the Lean Aerospace Initiative in the Defense Aerospace Industry and Government Agencies

In the 1980���s, many United States industrial organizations started developing new production processes to improve quality, reduce cost, and better respond to customer needs and the pressures of global competition. This new paradigm was coined Lean Production (or simply ���Lean���) in the book The Machine That Changed The World published in 1990 by researchers from MIT���s International Motor Vehicle Program. In 1993, a consortium of US defense aerospace firms and the USAF Aeronautical Systems Center, together with the AFRL Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, started the Lean Aircraft Initiative (LAI) at MIT. With expansion in 1998 to include government space products, the program was renamed the Lean Aerospace Initiative. LAI���s vision is to ���Significantly reduce the cost and cycle time for military aerospace products throughout the entire value chain while continuing to improve product performance.��� By late 1998, 23 industry and 13 government organizations with paying memberships, along with MIT and the UAW were participating in the LAI.

An��lisis del efecto de engranaje generado por la entrada en vigor del Tratado de Lisboa el 1 de diciembre de 2009 en el marco de la Pol��tica Com��n de Seguridad y Defensa (PCSD) en la Uni��n Europea

El proceso de integraci��n en Uni��n Europea se caracteriza por la incorporaci��n de los asuntos de seguridad exterior y defensa, tras el Tratado de Lisboa se enmarcaron en la PCSD. Dicha pol��tica por un proceso de integraci��n progresiva, Spillover, ha tenido periodos de reactivaci��n y de letargos.

Conceptualizing change in the Portuguese footwear industry: regional voices and cognitive spaces of agency

Expanding national services sectors and global competition aggravate current and perceived future market pressures on traditional manufacturing industries. These perceptions of change have provoked a growing intensification of geo-political discourses on technological innovation and ���learning���, and calls for competency in design among other professional skills. However, these political discourses on innovation and learning have paralleled public concerns with the apparent ���growth pains��� from factory closures and subsequent increases in unemployment, and its debilitating social and economic implications for local and regional development. In this respect the following investigation sets out to conceptualize change through the complementary and differing perceptions of industry and regional actors��� experiences or narratives, linking these perceptions to their structure-determined spheres of agent-environment interactivity. It aims to determine whether agents��� differing perceptions of industry transformation can have a role in the legitimization of their interests in, and in sustaining their organizational influence over the process of industry-regional transformation. It argues that industry and regional agent perceptions are among the cognitive aspects of agent-environment interactivity that permeate agency. It stresses agents��� ability to reason and manipulate their work environments to preserve their self-regulating interests in, and task representative influence over the multi-jurisdictional space of industry-regional transformation. The contributions of this investigation suggest that agents��� varied perceptions of industry and regional change inform or compete for influence over the redirection of regional, industry and business strategies. This claim offers a greater appreciation for the reflexive and complex institutional dimensions of industry planning and development, and the political responsibility to socially just forms of regional development. It positions the outcomes of this investigation at the nexus of intensifying geo-political discourses on the efficiency and equity of territorial development in Europe.

NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949-2000

This is vol. I of my two-volume study of the nuclear strategies/strategy preferences of NATO collectively, and individually of Britain, France, and West Germany in the Cold War. It shows that NATO strategy was a fragile compromise, and that these three countries, all within range of Soviet medium/intermediate range nuclear missiles and thus with less geostrategic difference than in previous military threat contexts, had wildly divergent strategies/preferences which cannot be explained merely by geography. It raises the question of what made them so different, addressed in Volume II "Nuclear Mentalities" (q.v.)

Military competition and the emergence of nationalism: putting the logic of political survival into historical context

This essay aims to make a contribution to the conversation between IR and nationalism literatures by considering a particular question: What is the relationship between interstate military competition and the emergence of nationalism as a potent force in world politics? The conventional wisdom among international security scholars, especially neorealists, holds that nationalism can be more or less treated like a ���technology��� that allowed states to extract significant resources as well as manpower from their respective populations. This paper underlines some of the problems involved with this perspective and pushes forward an interpretation that is based on the logic of political survival. I argue that nationalism���s emergence as a powerful force in world politics followed from the ���mutation��� and absorption of the universalistic/cosmopolitan republican ideas that gained temporary primacy in Europe during the eighteenth century into particularistic nationalist ideologies. This transformation, in turn, can be best explained by the French Revolution���s dramatic impacts on rulers��� political survival calculi vis-��-vis both interstate and domestic political challenges. The analysis offered in this essay contributes to our understanding of the relationship between IR and nationalism while also highlighting the potential value of the political survival framework for exploring macrohistorical puzzles.

Strong armies, slow adaptation: civil-military relations and diffusion of military power

Why are some states more willing to adopt military innovations than others? Why, for example, were the great powers of Europe able to successfully reform their military practices to better adapt to and participate in the so-called military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while their most important extra-European competitor, the Ottoman Empire, failed to do so? This puzzle is best explained by two factors: civil-military relations and historical timing. In the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of an institutionally strong and internally cohesive army during the early stages of state formation���in the late fourteenth century���equipped the military with substantial bargaining powers. In contrast, the great powers of Europe drew heavily on private providers of military power during the military revolution and developed similar armies only by the second half of the seventeenth century, limiting the bargaining leverage of European militaries over their rulers. In essence, the Ottoman standing army was able to block reform efforts that it believed challenged its parochial interests. Absent a similar institutional challenge, European rulers initiated military reforms and motivated officers and military entrepreneurs to participate in the ongoing military revolution.