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The purpose of this paper is to estimate China's import‐demand function for steel products within the context of globalisation.

The research used the monthly data for the period 1996‐2004 and a cointegration procedure is applied in the estimation.

The results show that the price and income elasticities of China's import demand for steel are no different from those of other countries investigated by other researches. Specifically, the results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that China's import of steel products is strongly correlated with its economic activities and the fluctuation of its real exchange rate.

The empirical results obtained are important both for government policy and for employment. On the one hand, the magnitude of imports may adversely affect employment in China's steel industry. On the other hand, any changes in China's domestic macroeconomic activity and its exchange rate will generate great uncertainty in the world steel market.

This paper may be the first of its kind to apply the cointegration technique in estimating China's import‐demand function for steel products. It is important, given China's dominant position as both the biggest producer and the biggest consumer of steel products.

There are certain differences in the production products of enterprises. What are the impacts of product differentiation on the iron and steel industry? Based on the macro background of CO₂ emission reduction, this paper aims to analyze the economic benefits and environmental changes of the iron and steel industry under the dual influence of CO₂ emission reduction policy and product differentiation policy.

Taking the basic data of iron and steel industry in six regions of China as an example, this paper constructed an extended two-stage dynamic game model to analyze the impact of product differentiation and carbon tax policy on the production, economic indicators and CO₂ emission levels for the overall industry and regional enterprises.

As the CO₂ emission reduction target increased, the unit carbon tax and total tax increased, whereas the macro-environmental losses, social welfare, consumer surplus and outputs decrease. Emission reduction pressures and other economic indicators showed obvious regional differences. Differentiated products promoted various indicators of enterprises and industries; higher degrees of product differentiation resulted in greater promoting effects on economic indicators.

This paper constructed multiple emission reduction and production backgrounds, and discusses the impact of the comprehensive implementation of these policies, which has been practically absent in previous studies. The results of this study are consistent with the current industrial policy for stable production and environmental protection, and also provides a reference for the formulation of detailed policies in the future.

Expansion through mergers and acquisitions (M&As) continues to be a viable international strategy utilised by industrial firms. A striking feature of this is that global giant firms lead the M&A wave and generate an unimaginable impact on relatively small and weak firms across sectors and even nations. There seems to be a kind of ‘cascade effect’ between the industrial consolidations in these areas. A combined cascade model developed in this paper explains that, the power imbalance caused by the degree of consolidation of the players within a firm's value system determines the movement and direction of the ‘cascade effect’. With the existence of such effect, M&A will be a mutually interdependent, dynamic, reversible and endless process among industries.

In this paper, we examine the comparative advantage of Korea and China while focusing on their technology level. The three digit SITC (Standard International Trade Classification) data is classified by technology level and the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) is derived from 1992-2009 by using UN COMTRADE data. For careful interpretation of the comparative advantage and technology levels, we also examined intra-industry trade and unit values of bilateral Korea-China trade, and semi-conductor industry technology. We found that the revealed comparative advantage has moved from low technology products to high technology products in Korea. China still maintains a comparative advantage in low technology products such as textiles and clothing, but at the same time, China’s high and medium-high technology products have recently gained a comparative advantage. The perception that China only has a comparative advantage for labor intensive products with low technology should be changed based on our analysis. However, China’s advancement in technology should not be overestimated. When comparing the unit value of basic materials of Korea’s and China’s exports, we found that Korea’s export product prices are on average higher than that of China’s, although the gap is reducing. A wider technology gap between Korea and China still exists in the semi-conductor industry, which is one of the most advanced high technology industries throughout the world.

The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the energy use of Indian iron and steel industry. For this purpose, the authors have estimated a production frontier to know the best performing states. Further, the energy-saving targets are estimated to lie below the benchmark level for those states. Panel data for this purpose are extracted from the Annual Survey of Industry (an official database from the government of India) for 19 major steel-producing states over the period from 2004–2005 to 2013–2014.

The authors employed a radial and non-radial (slack-based measure) variant of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate the production frontier. Particularly, slack-based measures (SBMs) developed by Tone (2001) are used to get a more comprehensive measure of energy efficiency along with technical efficiency. Variable returns to scale technology is specified to accommodate market imperfection and heterogeneity across states. Four inputs (capital, labour, energy and material) and a single output are conceptualised for the production process to accommodate input substitution. The relative position of each state in terms of the level of energy efficiency is then identified.

The authors started by examining energy-output ratio. The average level of energy intensity shows declining trends over the period of time. States like Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Uttarakhand remain stagnant in the energy intensity level. SBM of energy efficiency shows an overall average energy saving potential of 8 per cent without reducing average output level. Considerable heterogeneity exists among states in terms of the energy efficiency scores. Further, the authors calculated scale efficiency (SE) which shows the overall average level of SE is 0.91; hence, the scale of operation is not optimal and needs to adjusted to enhance energy efficiency.

The authors demonstrate the empirical application of DEA with SBM to energy use performance. This is the first study that benchmarks Indian states in terms of the consumption of energy input to produce iron and steel by applying DEA.

This paper aims to analyse available multimodal transport route variations for iron ore shipments from northwest Australia to northeast China, focusing on a major iron and steel manufacturer.

The research is focused on a case study and uses an established cost model as a framework, for the first time, in the context of heavy bulk cargo shipments. Field interviews and a questionnaire form the principal methods of primary data collection. The characteristics of bulk iron ore transport flow are analysed against traditional criteria and an appraisal of the transport infrastructure in north east China is made, considering both road and rail options, and various possible combinations for transport being evaluated. All factors affecting modal choice in the region are examined, including cargo volume, weight, and value, transport distance, transit time, transport costs and schedule reliability.

The volumes of iron ore moved are large, with a high weight‐to‐volume ratio, and shipments are regular. The research initially confirms that sea and rail transport combinations are the most appropriate for the movement of iron ore. However, where rail transport corridors are congested, provided that the transport distances are not too great, road haulage appears to be an effective substitute and the most competitive multimodal transport route, at least in the short to medium term, is found to be a rail‐sea‐road combination via Port Bayuquan in China.

The research focuses on the delivery of iron ore to one major steel manufacturer in northeast China; so findings may not be transferable to other companies or circumstances.

The paper first demonstrates that, for heavy, high volume cargoes concentration of flows on to one corridor, perhaps under the control of one service provider, maximises scale economies, but works against competition and route/mode choice. Second, it demonstrates that, for long haul shipments of iron ore, port variations and modal differences for inland transport yield only marginal differences in overall logistics costs.

An assessment of high volume/heavy/low value cargoes such as iron ore has not previously been undertaken using this cost model. This paper therefore provides an original analysis of such supply chains.