Search results

Begins with the Staff Report to the National Commission on Terrorist Attack on the United States, which indicates the methods used to trace, seize and freeze terrorist assets, and the informal methods used by al‐Qaeda to transfer money. Questions the amount of progress made since September 11 to freeze funds. Focuses on encryption technology and how it allows illegal use of the Internet in the form of cyber laundering and e‐cash, and on the move by terrorists into narcotics production and trafficking ‐ which is defined as nacre‐terrorism. Describes efforts to proscribe cyber crime, including cyber laundering and cyber terrorism, including controls on privacy and encryption. Shows how business corporations can become involved with terrorism, including a case study on tanzanite.

Argues in this wideranging paper that the legitimacy of international law depends on the principle that pacts should be respected, reviewing the issues of self‐preservation, proportionality and human rights in relation to this. Focuses on the economic war against terrorism by the USA preeminently, as expressed in the PATRIOT Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Anti‐Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Concludes that the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act give the Executive branch of government extraordinary and warlike powers: but wars have an end whereas terrorism does not. Looks at the role of the US Federal courts in the context of national security, proportionality and human rights concerns, and finds them deficient; reports specific cases concerning Iranian resistance movements and their status as regards terrorism, and the Bajkajian, Austin and Alexander cases as regards proportionality.

The purpose of this study is to examine the welfare effects of product standards (which fall under Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs)) on an exporting country when the country by its own choice prefers to follow the null standard for the domestic market, which is not possible due to high set up cost at two different standards. The model has used a theoretical framework to analyze the effects and has derived some important results. If the standard is not linked with a true negative externality, the exporting country, given the assumptions of the model will always prefer to be discriminated by “tariff” and the importing country will prefer to protect its market by “tariff” rather than going for NTB. The typical assumptions taken here resemble the trade between developed and developing countries when the developed country imposes some minimum standard on a product but becomes relatively “costly” for the developing country to comply with. As the importing country is not free to set tariffs, it will use NTB as a minimum standard (as it is welfare-improving than free trade). However, the minimum standard also affects the exporting country's local producers and consumers. So NTB leads to a worse situation for both countries and definitely worst for the exporting country. Using a game theoretic framework, the study shows that the imposition of standards which does not address any real externality can be an optimum response for an importing country leading to a loss in the global welfare compared to a free trade situation.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how to introduce a financing scheme to tackle the manufacturer's capital constraint problem, discuss the effects of data-driven marketing (DDM) quality, cross-channel-return (CCR) rate and financing interest rate on the members' pricing and delivery-lead-time decisions and optimal performances, and analyzes `how to achieve the coordination within a dual-channel supply chain (DSC) by contract coordination.

This work establishes a DSC model with DDM, and the offline retailer can provide internal financing to the capital-constrained online manufacturer. The demand under the price is determined based on DDM quality, customer channel preference and delivery lead time. Then, combined with the Stackelberg game, the optimal pricing and delivery-lead-time decisions are discussed under the inconsistent and consistent pricing strategies with decentralized and centralized systems. Furthermore, it designs a manufacturer-revenue sharing contract to coordinate the members under the two pricing strategies.

(1) The increase of DDM quality will reduce the delivery-lead-time under the inconsistent or consistent pricing strategy and will push the selling prices; (2) The growth of the CCR rate will raise selling prices and extend the delivery-lead-time under the decentralized decision; (3) Under price competition, the offline selling price is higher than the online selling price when customers prefer the offline channel and vice versa; (4) The retailer and the manufacturer can achieve a win-win situation through a manufacturer-revenue sharing contract.

This paper contributes to the studies related to DSC by investigating pricing and delivery-lead-time decisions based on DDM, CCR, internal financing and supply chain contract and proposes some managerial implications.

Recycling and reuse of the electric vehicle (EV) batteries are ways to extend their limited lives. If batteries can be traced from production to recycling, it is beneficial for battery recycling and reuse. Using blockchain technology to build a smart EV battery reverse supply chain can solve the difficulties of lack of trust and data. The purpose of this study is to discuss the behavioural evolution of a smart EV battery reverse supply chain under government supervision.

This study adopts evolutionary game theory to examine the decision-making behaviours of the government, EV manufacturers with recycled used batteries and third-party EV battery recyclers lacking professional recycling qualification.

On the smart reverse supply chain integrated by blockchain technology, a cooperative recycling strategy of the third-party EV battery recycler is the optimal choice when the government tends to actively regulate. The probability of the EV manufacturer choosing the blockchain adoption strategy exceeds (below) the threshold, and the government prefers negative (positive) supervision. According to numerical analysis, in the mature stage in the EV battery recycling industry, when the investment cost of applying blockchain is high, EV manufacturers' willingness to apply blockchain slows down, the government accelerates adopting a negative supervision strategy and third-party EV battery recyclers prefer cooperative recycling.

The results of this study provide opinions on the strength of government supervision and the conditions under which EV manufacturers and third-party EV battery recyclers should apply blockchain and cooperate. On the other hand, this study provides theoretical analysis for promoting the application of blockchain technology in smart reverse supply chain.

Compared with previous research, this study reveals the relevance of government supervision, blockchain application and cooperation strategy in smart EV battery reverse supply chain. In the initial stage, even if the subsidy (subsidy reduction rate) and penalty are high and the penalty reduction rate is low, the EV manufacturer should rather give up the application of blockchain technology. In the middle stage in the EV battery recycling industry, the government can set a lower subsidy (subsidy reduction rate) combined with a penalty or a higher penalty (penalty reduction rate) combined with a subsidy to supervise it. The third-party EV battery recycler is advised to cooperate with the EV manufacturer when the subsidy is low or the penalty is high.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the value added of exports of services, which increasingly involve intermediate inputs to manufacturing and are indirectly embodied in intermediate and finished good exports to the global market earned by Taiwan and South Korea.

This paper uses the World Input-Output Database to examine and compare the competitiveness of service industry between Taiwan and South Korea in China from 1995 to 2011. The author measures the value added of export in two ways: value added in trade (VAiT) and trade in value added (TiVA).

The proportion of domestic (intermediate and final demand) VAiT was created by Taiwanese and South Korean exports to China. The services amount share of value added embodied in Taiwanese electrical and optical equipment (ELE) exports to China increased gradually (38.0–45.7 percent) from 1996 to 2011, that was more than that of South Korea (26.7–23.3 percent). Taiwanese financial and business (F&B) service contributed to Taiwanese ELE production exported to China. In service sectors, the proportion of VAiT of Taiwanese F&B service embodied in ELE exports to China increased annually (9.8–11.5 percent), that was similar to that of South Korea (12.2–11.3 percent). Thus, F&B sector played an increasingly important role in service sectors. Taiwanese F&B promotes the ELE export to China with higher efficiency than South Korea does.

Over the past two decades, the development of information technology and the growth of international specialization and fragmentation of production processes have brought about a global value chains (GVCs) phenomenon in services, which has already been taking place in manufacturing for a long time. Intangible value added of services increasingly involved intermediate inputs from manufacturing and were indirectly embodied in intermediate and finished goods exported to the global market. The focus of this paper is to analyze how the service industry participates in the development of the GVC, with emphasis on the export of ELE production to China in the bilateral trade of Taiwan and Korea with China. In addition to the value-added components, the exports of F&B intermediate products to China have been increasing year by year, and Taiwanese is higher than South Korean. In the bilateral trade between Taiwan or Korea and China, for ELE production exported to China, double counted part of intermediate products is increasing year by year. In terms of the value added of the double counting of F&B exports to China, Taiwan is higher (PDC, 31.23–17.26 percent) than South Korea. (PDC, 8.7–15.12 percent). South Korea and China are not as closely related as Taiwan and China.

The study aims at evaluating the most appropriate transport project which is one of the critical concerns of transport infrastructure scheduling. This process will be applied considering a set of criteria and discussed alternatives with sustainable perspectives.

In this paper, a complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) framework is discussed to handle the sustainable transport investment project (STIP) assessment problem within a single-valued neutrosophic set (SVNSs). To form the procedure more useful in handling with uncertain features, a SVNS is applied as a valuable procedure to handle uncertainty. First, a new discrimination measure for SVNSs is introduced and discussed some elegant properties to determine the significance degree or weight values of criteria with the sustainabality perspectives. Second, an integrated approach is introduced based on the discrimination measure and the COPRAS method on SVNSs and named as SVN-COPRAS.

A case study of an STIP evaluation problem is used to confirm the practicality and effectiveness of the SVN-COPRAS framework. Lastly, comparative discussion and sensitivity investigation are illustrated to prove the strength and solidity of the proposed framework.

The SVNSs enrich the essence of linguistic information when a decision expert (DE) vacillates among different linguistic values (LVs) to measure a sustainable transport project alternative problem. The utilization of SVNSs provides a more stable procedure to describe DEs' evaluations. So, an elegant methodology is developed to incorporate the DEs' awareness and experience for electing the desired STIPs. The introduced methodology has higher operability than the single-valued neutrosophic set technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (SVN-TOPSIS) procedure during the larger numbers of attribute(s) or option(s). For the SVN-COPRAS methodology, there is no need to estimate the single-valued neutrosophic ideal solution (SVN-IS) and single-valued neutrosophic anti-ideal solution (SVNA-IS). The outcomes are calculated with handling the realistic data, which elucidates that the introduced model can tackle more intricate and realistic multi-criteria decision-making issues.

The purpose of this article is to determine the optimal use of collateral in order to maximize the borrower's wealth by reducing the interest rate payments. This analysis is to shed light on the fundamental question whether good or bad borrowers pledge more collateral.

The analysis bases on a simple firm value model similar to Merton's but with the additional feature that the borrower can bring in collateral. This article not only presents the case with perfect information between borrowers and lenders but also regards the consequences arising from asymmetric information.

A bad borrower, who is characterized by higher bankruptcy costs, riskier projects, and a lower contribution to the project value, typically pledges more collateral than a good borrower. These relationships base on the existence of perfect information between borrowers and lenders. If asymmetric information in terms of the project's riskiness or the contribution of the borrower to the project is present, these relationships invert and good borrowers tend to pledge more collateral. As a result, the allocation of information between a borrower and a lender is crucial for the optimal choice of collateral.

This research underlines the potential for firms to add firm value by pledging collateral because collateral reduces interest rates and therefore results in more attractive terms of the loan. On the other hand, further empirical research can be done to verify our theoretical finding that under perfect information bad borrowers pledge more collateral, while under asymmetric information primarily good borrowers use collateral.

This paper introduces a new motive for the use of collateral and explains – in contrast to many other theoretical models – why bad borrowers tend to pledge more collateral.