China's economic growth is heavily influenced by exports, while reconciling environmental regulation and economic growth requires handling the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiven...China's economic growth is heavily influenced by exports, while reconciling environmental regulation and economic growth requires handling the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiveness well. The effects of environmental regulation on industrial competitiveness are largely subject to the institutional design of environmental regulation. Despite numerous studies on the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiveness, a consensus has yet to be reached. Aside from differences in research methodology, these studies failed to give sufficient consideration to the impact of environmental regulation on industrial competitiveness. Such effects can be negative or positive depending on the design of environmental regulatory policy. This paper has investigated the relationship between environmental regulation and the competitiveness of China's iron and steel industry and discovered that tighter environmental regulation does not diminish the competitiveness of the iron and steel industry since the policy design of environmental regulation accommodates the tolerance of advanced production capacity and includes a reasonable cost sharing mechanism. This discovery is of important reference for China to develop rational policy design to balance the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiveness.展开更多
Wal-Mart's Darwinism deserves our attention Aiming a the problems caused by Wal-Mart. this article gives a profound analysis on the concept and model of the enterprise ecosystem and expounds basic characters (such a...Wal-Mart's Darwinism deserves our attention Aiming a the problems caused by Wal-Mart. this article gives a profound analysis on the concept and model of the enterprise ecosystem and expounds basic characters (such as integrity, hierarchy, functionality, autoregalation etc.) with relevant theories and knowledge of systematology and ecology, and puts forward ecological principles for the construction of harmonious enterprises ecosystem (such as principle of interarcton, principle of co-evolution, principle of ecoflow, principle of ecological niche, principle of limiting factor and prlncipte of ecological equilibrium) in order to provide new ideas for enterpises'operation decisions and to promote the whole enterprise ecosystem to develop more healthily, harmoniously and stcstainabty.展开更多
The shipping industry is one of the biggest industries throughout the ages. Maritime transport plays a vital role in world economy; whereas competition between maritime companies is fierce [1], at the same time agreem...The shipping industry is one of the biggest industries throughout the ages. Maritime transport plays a vital role in world economy; whereas competition between maritime companies is fierce [1], at the same time agreements of co-operation have taken different forms including alliances and mergers between companies to increase their market share. But competitions still stand despite all alliances even in same market. This intense competition drives companies to attain high level of competitiveness, by monitoring ship's operating performance and operating cost, emphasis on improving performance and reduce cost. On other hand new environmental regulations come to light, expansion of ECA (emission control areas), which lead to significant higher fuel cost when using low sulfur fuel. Since the fuel cost is the largest portion of the operating cost of the vessel, a saving in fuel usage can result in considerable saving in operational costs. Furthermore, fuel saving has environmental benefits in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of trim optimization which considers one of the easiest and cheapest methods for ship performance optimization and fuel consumption reduction trim optimization.展开更多
In this paper we investigate a variant of the scheduling problem on two uniform machines with speeds 1 and s. For this problem, we are given two potential uniform machines to process a sequence of independent jobs. Ma...In this paper we investigate a variant of the scheduling problem on two uniform machines with speeds 1 and s. For this problem, we are given two potential uniform machines to process a sequence of independent jobs. Machines need to be activated before starting to process, and each machine activated incurs a fixed machine activation cost. No machines are initially activated, and when a job is revealed, the algorithm has the option to activate new machines. The objective is to minimize the sum of the makespan and the machine activation cost. We design optimal online algorithms with competitive ratio of (2s+1)/(s+1) for every s≥1.展开更多
Facing the rapid development of economy and the increasingly fierce market competition, the role of logistics control is becoming far more important. Choosing the best way to play the role of logistics, improving over...Facing the rapid development of economy and the increasingly fierce market competition, the role of logistics control is becoming far more important. Choosing the best way to play the role of logistics, improving overall efficiency of the enterprise, reducing logistics cost and coping well with market competition, these things have great important practical significances. This article take hengtong transportation company as research object, giving the present situation of logistics cost and analyzing the causes of logistics cost increased year by year. At last, putting forward the concrete measures to realize better logistic control.展开更多
Porter identifies high market share with cost leadership strategy which is based on the idea of competing on a price lower than that of the competition. However, in most consumer markets a business should serve the mi...Porter identifies high market share with cost leadership strategy which is based on the idea of competing on a price lower than that of the competition. However, in most consumer markets a business should serve the middle class by competing in the mid-price segment, offering quality better than that of the competition at a somewhat higher price. It is this path that can lead to market share leadership: a strategy that can be both profitable and sustainable. The U.S. men's shaving cream market consists of two major product-market segments: gel and foam. We test the hypothesis that the best-selling brand is very likely to be a member of the mid-price segment with a price tag that is higher than that of the nearest competition. This study is based on annual U.S. sales data for 2008 and 2007 from discount retail stores, food stores, and drug stores. We performed two separate analyses for 2008 and 2007, using cluster analysis as the main analytic tool. The results were remarkably consistent between the two years. In the gel segment--by far the most important--the price-quality segmentation analysis supported our hypothesis. An interesting finding is that, for both the gel and foam segments, we found the rank order correlation of brand unit price between 2007 and 2008 as highly significant. This means that in this market management considers the price of a brand as a strategic rather than a tactical variable. Although, technically the results for the foam segment were negative, this does not necessarily contradict our hypothesis. Finally, we discovered six strategic groups in the industry and have tried to articulate what their competitive strategy is.展开更多
The market environment and the competition characteristics between the enterprises is different from the traditional competition, the competition between individual enterprise is displaced by the comprehensive strengt...The market environment and the competition characteristics between the enterprises is different from the traditional competition, the competition between individual enterprise is displaced by the comprehensive strength of alliance supply chain which formed by upstream and downstream suppliers and customers whose main body is core enterprise, whether production enterprise or retail business are inevitably to form as chain so that to obtain the relative cost advantage and quick reaction advantage in the fierce market competition. Combining the theory and practice comparison of enterprise supply chain management at home and abroad, we can find that the theory and practice of Chinese enterprises supply chain management are falling behind developed countries In the new economic background, research and discussion of China' s enterprise supply chain management theory and practice, is helpful to promote the enterprise comprehensive competition ability and improve the economic benefit of enterprise.展开更多
Zeppelins and airplanes went into a commercial competition during the 1920s and 1930s. The Zeppelin was a very costly and high-scale technology which operated with a number of devices less than fingers a hand has. Air...Zeppelins and airplanes went into a commercial competition during the 1920s and 1930s. The Zeppelin was a very costly and high-scale technology which operated with a number of devices less than fingers a hand has. Airplanes, however, were cheap both in investment and operation and improved their cost-effectiveness rapidly during the times. Therefore, it was clear from an economic point of view to develop a fast growing net of commercial airports serving an even fast growing number of passengers. This was self-energizing. Zeppelins, however, focused on one, later two point-to-point services only, justified by a lack of capital and permanent economic losses.展开更多
It is widely recognized that each culture has a specific effect on the economic development. Based on Chinese culture which can be characterized as lack of afterlife, the pattern of Chinese economic development has di...It is widely recognized that each culture has a specific effect on the economic development. Based on Chinese culture which can be characterized as lack of afterlife, the pattern of Chinese economic development has distinctive features relative to the economy of the Western world, even to that of Japan and Korea. This paper argues that culture influences economic development through two paths: One is that some cultural factors, as certain institutions, have effects on cost, especially transaction costs. Another point is that culture forms people's preferences and influences people's choices. With the influences of Chinese culture, Chinese have a weak sense for legal obedience and strong inclination for "free riding", this would increase social transaction costs. The family centered tradition of Chinese society results in Chinese features such as being good at individual struggles but poor at cooperation, the alienation between civil society and government, a strong sense for competition and a weak sense for legal obedience, seeing material wealth as important and neglecting scientific innovation. Traditional Chinese culture also has effects on the developmental pattern of Chinese enterprises展开更多
The existence of opportunistic behavior by contractors or sub-contractors in the bidding process encouraged by the governance structure of construction companies as well as the kind of relationship that exist between ...The existence of opportunistic behavior by contractors or sub-contractors in the bidding process encouraged by the governance structure of construction companies as well as the kind of relationship that exist between contractors and clients is thought to have some bearing on the rising construction cost observed in some regions of Sweden. Three hypotheses that are intended to test the impact that long run relationship between contractors and developers, vertically integrated firms, and the increase of international competition could have on the construction cost increase levels were tested on a predetermined number of projects from six cities in different regions. The semi-structured survey produces inconclusive results. Long run and collaborative relationship was prevalent in small region though respondents in this region did not draw strong connection between construction cost increase levels and the kind of observed relationship. In Stockholm region, short-term relationship was mostly prevalent. Vertical integration and foreign competition impacts on construction costs were not significant in either region.展开更多
Based on a new panel data set covering exports of four Chinese port cities to 32 countries and Hong Kong over the period of 1997-2008, this paper extends the conventional gravity model to assess the impacts of transpo...Based on a new panel data set covering exports of four Chinese port cities to 32 countries and Hong Kong over the period of 1997-2008, this paper extends the conventional gravity model to assess the impacts of transport costs and port efficiency on China's exports. The results can be summarized as three main findings: (1) The improvements of port efficiency and reduction of road transport costs play a vital role in China's export competitiveness in the global market. The coefficient estimates on them are relatively large, around 0.72 and -0.89, respectively; (2) The effect of transport costs and port efficiency on China-to-Asia exports significantly exceeds that on China-to-Europe and China-to-America exports; (3) The overall estimated elasticity of road, railroad and port measure is 1.66, which is almost three times that of the average wage of port cities. The empirical results provide strong evidences that upgrading China's transport service networks should offer greater scope for maintaining and increasing its competitive edge in low cost productions. The findings offer some insights and priorities for government policy making.展开更多
Sexual deception involves the mimicry of another species' sexual signals in order to exploit behavioural routines linked to those signals. Known sexually deceptive systems use visual, acoustic or olfactory mimicry to...Sexual deception involves the mimicry of another species' sexual signals in order to exploit behavioural routines linked to those signals. Known sexually deceptive systems use visual, acoustic or olfactory mimicry to exploit insects for preda- tion, cleptoparasitism and pollination. It is predicted that where sexual deception inflicts a cost on the receiver, a coevolutionary arms race could result in the evolution of discriminating receivers and increasingly refined mimicry. We constructed a conceptual model to understand the importance of trade-offs in the coevolution of sexually deceptive mimic and receiver. Four components examined were: the cost of mimicry, the cost to receiver for being fooled, the density of mimics and the relative magnitude of a mimicry-independent component of fitness. The model predicts that the exploitation of non-discriminating receivers by accurate signal mimicry will evolve as an evolutionary stable strategy under a wide range of the parameter space explored. This is due to the difficulty in minimising the costs of being fooled without incurring the cost of falsely rejecting real mating opportunities. In the model, the evolution of deception is impeded when mimicry imposes substantial costs for both sides of the arms race. Olfac- tory signals that are potentially cheap to produce are therefore likely to be more vulnerable to exploitation than expensive visual ornaments展开更多
文摘China's economic growth is heavily influenced by exports, while reconciling environmental regulation and economic growth requires handling the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiveness well. The effects of environmental regulation on industrial competitiveness are largely subject to the institutional design of environmental regulation. Despite numerous studies on the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiveness, a consensus has yet to be reached. Aside from differences in research methodology, these studies failed to give sufficient consideration to the impact of environmental regulation on industrial competitiveness. Such effects can be negative or positive depending on the design of environmental regulatory policy. This paper has investigated the relationship between environmental regulation and the competitiveness of China's iron and steel industry and discovered that tighter environmental regulation does not diminish the competitiveness of the iron and steel industry since the policy design of environmental regulation accommodates the tolerance of advanced production capacity and includes a reasonable cost sharing mechanism. This discovery is of important reference for China to develop rational policy design to balance the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial competitiveness.
基金Supported by Hunan Judge Committee of Philosophy & Social Science Foundation (No. 0402003)by Science Research Item of Hainan University 2004 (No. Kyjj0409).
文摘Wal-Mart's Darwinism deserves our attention Aiming a the problems caused by Wal-Mart. this article gives a profound analysis on the concept and model of the enterprise ecosystem and expounds basic characters (such as integrity, hierarchy, functionality, autoregalation etc.) with relevant theories and knowledge of systematology and ecology, and puts forward ecological principles for the construction of harmonious enterprises ecosystem (such as principle of interarcton, principle of co-evolution, principle of ecoflow, principle of ecological niche, principle of limiting factor and prlncipte of ecological equilibrium) in order to provide new ideas for enterpises'operation decisions and to promote the whole enterprise ecosystem to develop more healthily, harmoniously and stcstainabty.
文摘The shipping industry is one of the biggest industries throughout the ages. Maritime transport plays a vital role in world economy; whereas competition between maritime companies is fierce [1], at the same time agreements of co-operation have taken different forms including alliances and mergers between companies to increase their market share. But competitions still stand despite all alliances even in same market. This intense competition drives companies to attain high level of competitiveness, by monitoring ship's operating performance and operating cost, emphasis on improving performance and reduce cost. On other hand new environmental regulations come to light, expansion of ECA (emission control areas), which lead to significant higher fuel cost when using low sulfur fuel. Since the fuel cost is the largest portion of the operating cost of the vessel, a saving in fuel usage can result in considerable saving in operational costs. Furthermore, fuel saving has environmental benefits in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of trim optimization which considers one of the easiest and cheapest methods for ship performance optimization and fuel consumption reduction trim optimization.
基金Project (No. Y605316) supported by the Natural Science Foundationof Zhejiang Province, China and the Natural Science Foundation of the Education Department of Zhejiang Province (No. 20060578), China
文摘In this paper we investigate a variant of the scheduling problem on two uniform machines with speeds 1 and s. For this problem, we are given two potential uniform machines to process a sequence of independent jobs. Machines need to be activated before starting to process, and each machine activated incurs a fixed machine activation cost. No machines are initially activated, and when a job is revealed, the algorithm has the option to activate new machines. The objective is to minimize the sum of the makespan and the machine activation cost. We design optimal online algorithms with competitive ratio of (2s+1)/(s+1) for every s≥1.
文摘Facing the rapid development of economy and the increasingly fierce market competition, the role of logistics control is becoming far more important. Choosing the best way to play the role of logistics, improving overall efficiency of the enterprise, reducing logistics cost and coping well with market competition, these things have great important practical significances. This article take hengtong transportation company as research object, giving the present situation of logistics cost and analyzing the causes of logistics cost increased year by year. At last, putting forward the concrete measures to realize better logistic control.
文摘Porter identifies high market share with cost leadership strategy which is based on the idea of competing on a price lower than that of the competition. However, in most consumer markets a business should serve the middle class by competing in the mid-price segment, offering quality better than that of the competition at a somewhat higher price. It is this path that can lead to market share leadership: a strategy that can be both profitable and sustainable. The U.S. men's shaving cream market consists of two major product-market segments: gel and foam. We test the hypothesis that the best-selling brand is very likely to be a member of the mid-price segment with a price tag that is higher than that of the nearest competition. This study is based on annual U.S. sales data for 2008 and 2007 from discount retail stores, food stores, and drug stores. We performed two separate analyses for 2008 and 2007, using cluster analysis as the main analytic tool. The results were remarkably consistent between the two years. In the gel segment--by far the most important--the price-quality segmentation analysis supported our hypothesis. An interesting finding is that, for both the gel and foam segments, we found the rank order correlation of brand unit price between 2007 and 2008 as highly significant. This means that in this market management considers the price of a brand as a strategic rather than a tactical variable. Although, technically the results for the foam segment were negative, this does not necessarily contradict our hypothesis. Finally, we discovered six strategic groups in the industry and have tried to articulate what their competitive strategy is.
文摘The market environment and the competition characteristics between the enterprises is different from the traditional competition, the competition between individual enterprise is displaced by the comprehensive strength of alliance supply chain which formed by upstream and downstream suppliers and customers whose main body is core enterprise, whether production enterprise or retail business are inevitably to form as chain so that to obtain the relative cost advantage and quick reaction advantage in the fierce market competition. Combining the theory and practice comparison of enterprise supply chain management at home and abroad, we can find that the theory and practice of Chinese enterprises supply chain management are falling behind developed countries In the new economic background, research and discussion of China' s enterprise supply chain management theory and practice, is helpful to promote the enterprise comprehensive competition ability and improve the economic benefit of enterprise.
文摘Zeppelins and airplanes went into a commercial competition during the 1920s and 1930s. The Zeppelin was a very costly and high-scale technology which operated with a number of devices less than fingers a hand has. Airplanes, however, were cheap both in investment and operation and improved their cost-effectiveness rapidly during the times. Therefore, it was clear from an economic point of view to develop a fast growing net of commercial airports serving an even fast growing number of passengers. This was self-energizing. Zeppelins, however, focused on one, later two point-to-point services only, justified by a lack of capital and permanent economic losses.
文摘It is widely recognized that each culture has a specific effect on the economic development. Based on Chinese culture which can be characterized as lack of afterlife, the pattern of Chinese economic development has distinctive features relative to the economy of the Western world, even to that of Japan and Korea. This paper argues that culture influences economic development through two paths: One is that some cultural factors, as certain institutions, have effects on cost, especially transaction costs. Another point is that culture forms people's preferences and influences people's choices. With the influences of Chinese culture, Chinese have a weak sense for legal obedience and strong inclination for "free riding", this would increase social transaction costs. The family centered tradition of Chinese society results in Chinese features such as being good at individual struggles but poor at cooperation, the alienation between civil society and government, a strong sense for competition and a weak sense for legal obedience, seeing material wealth as important and neglecting scientific innovation. Traditional Chinese culture also has effects on the developmental pattern of Chinese enterprises
文摘The existence of opportunistic behavior by contractors or sub-contractors in the bidding process encouraged by the governance structure of construction companies as well as the kind of relationship that exist between contractors and clients is thought to have some bearing on the rising construction cost observed in some regions of Sweden. Three hypotheses that are intended to test the impact that long run relationship between contractors and developers, vertically integrated firms, and the increase of international competition could have on the construction cost increase levels were tested on a predetermined number of projects from six cities in different regions. The semi-structured survey produces inconclusive results. Long run and collaborative relationship was prevalent in small region though respondents in this region did not draw strong connection between construction cost increase levels and the kind of observed relationship. In Stockholm region, short-term relationship was mostly prevalent. Vertical integration and foreign competition impacts on construction costs were not significant in either region.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.71101142 and 70903067
文摘Based on a new panel data set covering exports of four Chinese port cities to 32 countries and Hong Kong over the period of 1997-2008, this paper extends the conventional gravity model to assess the impacts of transport costs and port efficiency on China's exports. The results can be summarized as three main findings: (1) The improvements of port efficiency and reduction of road transport costs play a vital role in China's export competitiveness in the global market. The coefficient estimates on them are relatively large, around 0.72 and -0.89, respectively; (2) The effect of transport costs and port efficiency on China-to-Asia exports significantly exceeds that on China-to-Europe and China-to-America exports; (3) The overall estimated elasticity of road, railroad and port measure is 1.66, which is almost three times that of the average wage of port cities. The empirical results provide strong evidences that upgrading China's transport service networks should offer greater scope for maintaining and increasing its competitive edge in low cost productions. The findings offer some insights and priorities for government policy making.
文摘Sexual deception involves the mimicry of another species' sexual signals in order to exploit behavioural routines linked to those signals. Known sexually deceptive systems use visual, acoustic or olfactory mimicry to exploit insects for preda- tion, cleptoparasitism and pollination. It is predicted that where sexual deception inflicts a cost on the receiver, a coevolutionary arms race could result in the evolution of discriminating receivers and increasingly refined mimicry. We constructed a conceptual model to understand the importance of trade-offs in the coevolution of sexually deceptive mimic and receiver. Four components examined were: the cost of mimicry, the cost to receiver for being fooled, the density of mimics and the relative magnitude of a mimicry-independent component of fitness. The model predicts that the exploitation of non-discriminating receivers by accurate signal mimicry will evolve as an evolutionary stable strategy under a wide range of the parameter space explored. This is due to the difficulty in minimising the costs of being fooled without incurring the cost of falsely rejecting real mating opportunities. In the model, the evolution of deception is impeded when mimicry imposes substantial costs for both sides of the arms race. Olfac- tory signals that are potentially cheap to produce are therefore likely to be more vulnerable to exploitation than expensive visual ornaments