The effect of environmental regulations: a restricted cost function for Korean manufacturing industries

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
MYUNGHUN LEE

Environmental conservation requires society to consider the trade-off between allocating resources to productive activities and pollution control activities. Therefore, it is informative to measure the effect of environmental regulations on firms' productivity. This paper attempts to estimate the impact of environmental regulations on Korean manufacturing industries. Despite being key inputs in the manufacturing process, raw materials have often been excluded from the cost function due to the lack of price data. A restricted cost function is used to improve the reliability of parameter estimates. Empirical results indicate that environmental regulations caused a 12 percent decline in the average annual rate of productivity growth over the period 1982–93.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-33
Author(s):  
Godwin Emmanuel Oyedokun ◽  
Amos Olafusi TOMOMEWO ◽  
Sunday Ajao OWOLABI

Profitability in manufacturing companies in Nigeria depends on the ability of the companies to grow their earnings and tame their cost profile through cost control techniques. Many manufacturing companies seem not to understand these costs and the impact they have on profitability. This study examined the effect of cost control on the profitability of selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The population of the study was the 78 manufacturing companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange as at 31st December 2017. A sample frame of 23 companies listed on the consumer goods sector was selected out of which five companies were considered for a period of 10 years (2005 – 2017). The study adopted a judgmental sampling technique. Data were obtained from the audited financial statement, and the accounts have already validated by regulatory authorities. The study took descriptive and inferential (regression) statistics. It was found that there is a significant negative relationship between the cost of raw materials (CoRM) and profit before tax of manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The study concluded that cost control has a significant positive effect on the profitability of manufacturing companies in Nigeria for the period under review. Therefore, it is recommended adequate management and alternative sourcing of raw materials.


Author(s):  
I. Yagrushkina ◽  
M. Dyul'dina ◽  
A. Nogachev ◽  
K. Yakunin

Polymer and composite materials are becoming more and more widely used in the Russian automotive industry. The Russian market of polymer materials for automotive components is characterized by an insufficiently developed production of some types of such materials. And, as a result, the use of imported materials. Styrene plastics are one of the innovative materials for the automotive industry. Using them in a car makes the product more attractive to customers. The use of this type of plastics allows to create a new look for the car. This applies to both the interior and exterior. The aim of this work is to develop the composition of a polymer composition based on ABS plastic from domestic raw materials. In addition, the new mixed composition should replace imported mixed compositions or contain a minimum amount of imported components of the composition, which will significantly reduce the cost of products and accordingly the car. The article analyzes the polymer materials used in the automotive industry. The disadvantages of using these materials in their pure form are revealed. The selection of the components of the composition of the impact-resistant material with the development of its formulation has been made. The composition of an impact-resistant polymer composition based on ABS plastic and PC has been developed, which is not inferior in terms of the complex of properties to the imported material. The influence of the composition of ABS-plastic, various grades of polycarbonate, their ratio in the polymer composite material on the physical, mechanical and technological properties of the obtained composition has been investigated. It is shown that the best set of properties is possessed by a material based on 2020-30 ABS-plastic and PC-3S polycarbonate with a component ratio of 70%:30%.


2014 ◽  
Vol 142 (11) ◽  
pp. 3998-4016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominik Jacques ◽  
Isztar Zawadzki

Abstract In radar data assimilation, statistically optimal analyses are sought by minimizing a cost function in which the variance and covariance of background and observation errors are correctly represented. Radar observations are particular in that they are often available at spatial resolution comparable to that of background estimates. Because of computational constraints and lack of information, it is impossible to perfectly represent the correlation of errors. In this study, the authors characterize the impact of such misrepresentations in an idealized framework where the spatial correlations of background and observation errors are each described by a homogeneous and isotropic exponential decay. Analyses obtained with perfect representation of correlations are compared to others obtained by neglecting correlations altogether. These two sets of analyses are examined from a theoretical and an experimental perspective. The authors show that if the spatial correlations of background and observation errors are similar, then neglecting the correlation of errors has a small impact on the quality of analyses. They suggest that the sampling noise, related to the precision with which analysis errors may be estimated, could be used as a criterion for determining when the correlations of errors may be omitted. Neglecting correlations altogether also yields better analyses than representing correlations for only one term in the cost function or through the use of data thinning. These results suggest that the computational costs of data assimilation could be reduced by neglecting the correlations of errors in areas where dense radar observations are available.


Author(s):  
Iu. Halynska ◽  
T. Bondar

More and more companies in the world are striving to implement clean production strategies and maximize resource productivity in their operations. In the process of applying an integrated, preventive environmental strategy in production to reduce risks for both humans and the environment, stakeholders face causal effects and socio-environmental and economic interdependence in the implementation of clean production projects. All this contributes to the development and growth of scientific, methodological and methodological approaches to the implementation of clean production projects. Studying world and domestic experience in introducing of clean production can determine the ways to comprehensively solve environmental and economic problems in Ukraine and provide the prerequisites for creating an effective system of using natural resources in solving environmental and economic problems of the world, including climate change. The implementation of scientific approaches is possible through the distribution of information on the principles of clean production, the development and implementation of a set of economic and environmental factors for the development of production, the improvement of the mechanism for integrating of environmental factors of the economic development strategy, viewing environmental pollution standards and the special use of natural resources, as well as standards for their economic regulation with the goal of a gradual approximation to EU standards, the creation of a system of sustainable management of production development, stimulates environmental protection and ensures the careful use of natural resources. Therefore, the article discovers the basic principles, methods and mechanisms for creating of clean production projects. The prerequisites for creating an environmental direction in the production of goods and services, as well as the need for risk assessment in the introduction of clean production, are considered. Generalization of existing methods of introduction of clean production, taking into account the world experience, showed that despite the local prerequisites and financial and technological problems, it is profitable for enterprises to implement the concept of СР. The result is a synthesis of existing methods for introducing of clean production, taking into account international experience, which can reduce operating costs, can contribute to improving the safety of workers, as well as reducing the impact of business on the environment. It is obvious that clean production technologies are a good business for industry, as they help to reduce waste disposal costs, reduce the cost of raw materials, reduce the cost of damage to health, improve public relations, improve company productivity, and increase the competitiveness of local and international markets. Clean production is an integral part of the social process, which is in line with economic, political, ethical and cultural values. Keywords: clean production, sustainable development, environmental strategies, indicators of resource and energy intensity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mweruli Fidele Tubanambazi ◽  
Eric Ruvuna

The study entitled modeling the impacts of e-government services on corruption reduction in Rwanda: Case evidence from Nyamasheke District, Rwanda was about assessing the contribution of e-government services use on reducing corruption in the area under study. The study was guided with the objective of exploring the utilization of multinomial logistic regression (MLR) in modeling the impact of e-government services on reduction status of corruption. In this regard, the MLR model was performed using a maximum likelihood estimation method on the data set collected to find the parameter estimates of the model describing the relationship between the explanatory and the outcome variables and determine the significance of the explanatory variables that contribute significantly to the reduction status of corruption in the area under study. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect data from 381 respondents from the target population of 8041 using Solvin’s formula for sample size calculation. Data were collected using questionnaire and interview schedule techniques and analyzed using SPSS-23. In this analysis, the results show that on the total of eleven independent variables, the explanatory variables such as age, income, ownership of the devices used in applying for the local government services and the advice types were dropped from the training set of explanatory variables that contribute significantly to the reduction of corruption in the area under study. In model selection that overall fits well the data, the obtained variables that contributed significantly to the outcome variable were education, e-government services’ use status, cost of accessing e-government services and the e-government services types delivery. The parameters estimate of the selected model revealed that the variables that best predicted the probability of reducing corruption once the e-government services are delivered online were education, status of using e-government services, types of e-government services delivery online while the cost of accessing the e-government services decreased the logit (the probability) of reducing corruption. The main challenges faced by users of e-government services were the cost given while applying to these e-government services is high and lack of enough skills to cope with technological usage. Finally the study recommended that local leaders in the area under study should strengthen the online system in delivering local services to people, educate people to be aware about the use of e-government services since the more a person is educated the more is attempting to use e-government services and then reduce the cost of using e-government services while applying to the local services since this has been the only explanatory variable that decreased the logit of reducing corruption in the study area. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0790/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>


Author(s):  
Martijn H. H. Schoot Uiterkamp ◽  
Marco E. T. Gerards ◽  
Johann L. Hurink

In the resource allocation problem (RAP), the goal is to divide a given amount of a resource over a set of activities while minimizing the cost of this allocation and possibly satisfying constraints on allocations to subsets of the activities. Most solution approaches for the RAP and its extensions allow each activity to have its own cost function. However, in many applications, often the structure of the objective function is the same for each activity, and the difference between the cost functions lies in different parameter choices, such as, for example, the multiplicative factors. In this article, we introduce a new class of objective functions that captures a significant number of the objectives occurring in studied applications. These objectives are characterized by a shared structure of the cost function depending on two input parameters. We show that, given the two input parameters, there exists a solution to the RAP that is optimal for any choice of the shared structure. As a consequence, this problem reduces to the quadratic RAP, making available the vast amount of solution approaches and algorithms for the latter problem. We show the impact of our reduction result on several applications, and in particular, we improve the best-known worst-case complexity bound of two problems in vessel routing and processor scheduling from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text]. Summary of Contribution: The resource allocation problem (RAP) with submodular constraints and its special cases are classic problems in operations research. Because these problems are studied in many different scientific disciplines, many conceptual insights, structural properties, and solution approaches have been reinvented and rediscovered many times. The goal of this article is to reduce the amount of future reinventions and rediscoveries by bringing together these different perspectives on RAPs in a way that is accessible to researchers with different backgrounds. The article serves as an exposition on RAPs and on their wide applicability in many areas, including telecommunications, energy, and logistics. In particular, we provide tools and examples that can be used to formulate and solve problems in these areas as RAPs. To accomplish this, we make three concrete contributions. First, we provide a survey on algorithms and complexity results for RAPs and discuss several recent advances in these areas. Second, we show that many objectives for RAPs can be reduced to a (simpler) quadratic objective function, which makes available the extensive collection of fast and efficient algorithms for quadratic RAPs to solve these problems. Third, we discuss the impact that RAPs and the aforementioned reduction result can make in several application areas.


2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-348
Author(s):  
Gulzar Ahmed ◽  
Muhammad Arshad Khan ◽  
Tahir Mahmood ◽  
Muhammad Afzal

This study examines the impact of trade liberalisation on the industrial productivity for a panel of twenty seven 3-digit manufacturing industries in Pakistan over the period 1980-2006. Using a variant of the Cobb-Douglas production function for industrial sector, we estimated output elasticities. The results show positive output elasticities with respect to labour, capital and raw materials for the pre-trade liberalisation period (1981 –1995) as well as post-trade liberalisation period (1996-2006). For the pre-liberalisation period, we observe positive output elasticity with respect to energy, while it turns out to be negative in the post-liberalisation period probably due to energy crisis in Pakistan. In the second stage, we calculate total factor productivity (TFP) and examine the impact of trade liberalisation on TFP for pre-and post-trade liberalisation periods. The results reveal that trade liberalisation proxied by import duty has positive but negligible impact on the TFP in the pre-as well as post-liberalisation periods. On the other hand, effective rates of protection exert large negative impact on the TFP in the post-liberalisation than the pre-liberalisation period. JEL Classifications: F14, F13, O53, L60 Keywords: Trade Liberalisation, Total Factor Productivity, Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (17) ◽  
pp. 10019-10031 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Lim ◽  
S. K. Park ◽  
M. Zupanski

Abstract. Ozone (O3) plays an important role in chemical reactions and is usually incorporated in chemical data assimilation (DA). In tropical cyclones (TCs), O3 usually shows a lower concentration inside the eyewall and an elevated concentration around the eye, impacting meteorological as well as chemical variables. To identify the impact of O3 observations on TC structure, including meteorological and chemical information, we developed a coupled meteorology–chemistry DA system by employing the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) and an ensemble-based DA algorithm – the maximum likelihood ensemble filter (MLEF). For a TC case that occurred over East Asia, Typhoon Nabi (2005), our results indicate that the ensemble forecast is reasonable, accompanied with larger background state uncertainty over the TC, and also over eastern China. Similarly, the assimilation of O3 observations impacts meteorological and chemical variables near the TC and over eastern China. The strongest impact on air quality in the lower troposphere was over China, likely due to the pollution advection. In the vicinity of the TC, however, the strongest impact on chemical variables adjustment was at higher levels. The impact on meteorological variables was similar in both over China and near the TC. The analysis results are verified using several measures that include the cost function, root mean square (RMS) error with respect to observations, and degrees of freedom for signal (DFS). All measures indicate a positive impact of DA on the analysis – the cost function and RMS error have decreased by 16.9 and 8.87 %, respectively. In particular, the DFS indicates a strong positive impact of observations in the TC area, with a weaker maximum over northeastern China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-235
Author(s):  
Atsu, A. M ◽  
Thwala, W. D. ◽  
Aigbavboa, C. O.

Manufacturing waste forms part of industrial waste which is also rooted in solid waste. In Ghana, the ruling government has a flagship project known as one district one factory (1d1f). Most of these factories that are established and yet to be established are manufacturing industries. No doubt that these industries will generate lots of waste which must be managed properly. Also, the more factories are built, the more waste will be created. The main purpose of this paper is to identify and try to control the exact sources of waste generation on the production line of manufacturing industries. The method used was literature review, and interview of industry players. From the literature review, it was found that several sources of waste have been established such as municipal sources of waste, medical/clinical sources, agriculture sources, end-of-life-of automobile, industrial sources of waste, construction/demolition sources, and electronic sources of waste (eschooltoday, 2020, amauomo and baird, 2016) whiles the results from the interview session revealed that the exact point on the manufacturing line of the industry, which can be termed as sources of waste are; at the beginning, and sometimes the end of the production line. Observation on the production line also confirmed the perception of the factory hands, that at the beginning, and the end. Once the sources are identified, it is possible to control it. In conclusion, it was revealed that factory hands do not make critical observation on the production line. They agreed that if the sources are identified and controlled, it will reduce the cost of production which will increase their profit margin. It is therefore recommended that manufacturing industries should take much interest in identifying the sources of waste creation on their production lines. Also, they should take measurement seriously when feeding raw materials into the production line.


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