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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Principled discussions on the economic value of data are frequently pursued through metaphors. This study aims to explore three influential metaphors for talking about the economic value of data: data are the new oil, data as infrastructure and data as an asset.

With the help of conceptual metaphor theory, various meanings surrounding the three metaphors are explored. Meanings clarified or hidden through various metaphors are identified. Specific emphasis is placed on the economic value of ownership of data.

In discussions on data as economic resource, the three different metaphors are used for separate purposes. The most used metaphor, data are the new oil, communicates that ownership of data could lead to great wealth. However, with data as infrastructure data have no intrinsic value. Therefore, profits generated from data resources belong to those processing the data, not those owning it. The data as an asset metaphor can be used to convince organizational leadership that they own data of great value.

This is the first scholarly investigation of metaphors communicating economic value of data. More studies in this area appear urgent, given the power of such metaphors, as well as the increasing importance of data in economics.

This paper aims to propose a new blockchain system design to improve engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies’ supply chain for constructing oil and gas infrastructure, by mitigating cost and time inefficiencies.

A case study analyses the supply chain of a sample EPC company. First, a literature review is conducted to explore the subject in academic literature. Second, information flows are mapped using responsible, accountable, consulted and informed analysis and cross-functional process mapping. Third, inefficiencies are identified. Fourth, the root causes of the inefficiencies are pinpointed using fishbone and five-times-why analysis. Fifth, a comparison is made between the linear and the blockchain information system via force-field analysis. Sixth, a specific blockchain system design is identified based on three external expert interviews. Finally, the new system is designed and a cost-benefit analysis is conducted.

Major cost and time inefficiencies in oil and gas infrastructure developments are caused by a poor information flow in the supply chain. The new blockchain system design is a feasible solution, reducing cost inefficiencies by 12.4% and operation lead-times by 36.5%.

The confidentiality of the sample EPC company’s information represents a limitation.

The research introduces a new blockchain system design, reducing cost and time inefficiencies in the project-development supply chain, including implementation processes.

A tax based on land value is in many ways ideal, but many economists dismiss it by assuming it could not raise enough revenue. Standard sources of data omit much of the potential tax base, and undervalue what they do measure. The purpose of this paper is to present more comprehensive and accurate measures of land rents and values, and several modes of raising revenues from them besides the conventional property tax.

The paper identifies 16 elements of land's taxable capacity that received authorities either trivialize or omit. These 16 elements come in four groups.

In Group A, Elements 1‐4 correct for the downward bias in standard sources. In Group B, Elements 5‐10 broaden the concepts of land and rent beyond the conventional narrow perception, while Elements 11‐12 estimate rents to be gained by abating other kinds of taxes. In Group C, Elements 13‐14 explain how using the land tax, since it has no excess burden, uncaps feasible tax rates. In Group D, Elements 15‐16 define some moot possibilities that may warrant further exploration.

This paper shows how previous estimates of rent and land values have been narrowly limited to a fraction of the whole, thus giving a false impression that the tax capacity is low. The paper adds 14 elements to the traditional narrow “single tax” base, plus two moot elements advanced for future consideration. Any one of these 16 elements indicates a much higher land tax base than economists commonly recognize today. Taken together they are overwhelming, and cast an entirely new light on this subject.

This survey covers civil, electrical and electronics, energy, environment, general, materials, mechanical, and traffic and transportation engineering. Areas such as biomedical and chemical engineering will be dealt with in future issues. Readers may find that the classifications included in this survey are not mutually exclusive but do occasionally overlap with one another. For instance, the section on environmental engineering includes a review of a book on the environmental impact of nuclear power plants, which might as easily have been part of the section on energy technology. Before we go into a discussion of data bases and indexes, I would like to note in this introductory section some recent bibliographic aids published during the period surveyed. Most engineering libraries will find them very valuable in their reference and acquisition functions. Since normal review sources will cover these books, I am merely listing them below: Malinowski, Harold Robert, Richard A. Gray and Dorothy A. Gray. Science and Engineering Literature. 2d ed., Littleton, Colorado, Libraries Unlimited, 1976. 368p. LC 76–17794 ISBN 0–87287–098–7. $13.30; Mildren, K. W., ed. Use of Engineering Literature. Woburn, Mass., Butterworths, 1976. 621p. ISBN 0–408–70714–3. $37.95. Mount, Ellis. Guide to Basic Information Sources in Engineering. New York, Wiley, Halsted Press, 1976. 196p. LC 75–43261 ISBN 0–47070–15013–0. $11.95 and Guide to European Sources of Technical Information. 4th ed., edited by Ann Pernet. Guernsey, Eng., F. Hodgson, 1976. 415p. ISBN 0–85280–161–0. $52.00.

This paper aims to investigate the cyclical associations among energy prices and key macroeconomic variables for the USA.

To this end, the recently developed Hamilton filter (HF) and the oft-used Hodrick–Prescott filter (HPF) are used. The two methods produce starkly different results regarding the relationships between energy prices on the one hand and output and employment on the other.

While the HF suggests that energy prices are acyclical, the HPF suggests they are procyclical. However, the associations between energy prices and inflation are robust across the two methods, indicating that energy prices are strongly correlated with – and lead – the consumer price index (CPI). Furthermore, unlike the results produced by the HPF, those produced by the HF are robust across seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data.

Given the inherent seasonality in energy prices and the differences in the underlying processes that generate macroeconomic and energy prices, the results obtained from the HPF filter should be interpreted with caution.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that uses the recently developed HF to examine the associations between the cyclical behaviors of three key macroeconomic variables in the USA – the industrial production index, the CPI, and total nonfarm employment – and the prices of natural gas, crude oil, gasoline, diesel, and heating oil. Second, this study presents a comparison of the results produced by the two filtering techniques. Third, recognizing that energy prices are characterized by seasonality, this study tests the robustness of the results produced by the two filters across seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data.

The aim of this paper is to provide a general overview of the global oil and natural gas resources, production, technology development, energy use, emissions and costs. The activity is based on the European project “Risk of Energy Availability: Common Corridors for Europe Supply Security” (REACCESS) and the data collected was used in this project as an input to evaluate the technical, economical and environmental characteristics of the energy corridors to European Union (EU).

The paper is based on literature reviews and data collection from national authorities, oil companies, international associations and international organisations.

The work provides a general overview of oil and natural gas resources, production rates, recent technology developments, costs, losses, energy consumption and emissions on a world regional level. Main issues related to the role of conventional oil and natural gas in the energy import framework are summarised in this paper.

The present study provides information on conventional oil and natural gas resources and it is limited to primary production technologies.

An outline of oil and natural gas on a regional level is presented. The paper provides general introduction to the subject and it is a valuable input for modelling and analyses of conventional oil and natural gas in the present and in the future energy system.

The provision of information about food to consumers is well recognized to be problematic and complex. Novel approaches tend to adopt app-based services as a way for consumers to get better food information. Potentially, these services could provide relevant information to consumers because they could address particular needs by leveraging on context-awareness, ubiquity and pervasiveness. Do current app-based services actualize these potentialities? The purpose of this paper is twofold: to propose a methodological approach that can be easily adapted to conduct reviews of app-based services and provide consumers with information about food and to answer this question on a specified food information domain (namely, olive oil).

A literature review was performed to investigate characteristics of food information services under a consumer’s value perspective. Then, a qualitative framework was built, which allowed a multidimensional analysis of the food information provided by a service through a mobile app. Moreover, an application of that framework on “olive oil” mobile apps was carried out, with the twofold objective of providing an example of application of the proposed framework in a real context and analyzing the role of mobile apps in reducing consumers’ information and knowledge gap in this particular domain. The review covers commercial applications on “olive oil,” available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

A framework of multidimensional analysis of the two-way information flow in the interaction between a consumer/user and a food app-based service is proposed. The framework represents a useful tool to analyze the offer of mobile-based services in a given sector. The framework is then applied to perform a situation analysis of app-based services in the olive oil market. The analysis highlights that olive oil information providers do not seem to fully exploit recent advances in “Internet of food” technologies. Hence, results from our survey suggest some direction to conceive and develop innovative mobile olive oil apps that better exploit mobiquitous technology features.

Consumers perceive a growing need of information about food. This need is mainly due to recent cases of adulterations, allegations of fraud and subterfuges that have invested food sector (in particular, olive oil sector). This research provides a useful framework to analyze some aspects of management of food information provision through mobile apps. Such a framework represents a practical tool that provides fruitful insights for the design of a new generation of food-app based services within the so-called “internet of food” domain.

Although there are countless mobile apps aimed to assist consumers with their everyday food practices, little research has been devoted to investigate the impact of mobiquitous technologies on the management of food information provision to consumers. The available research lacks in defining an approach capable to analyze the relevance of information provided to targeted audiences by mobile food apps. This paper tries to fill this knowledge gap by proposing a framework that is based on a characterization of food information flows in terms of categorization, source and service features.

The purpose of this paper is to study the efficiency of different oil and gas markets. Most previous studies examined the issue using low frequency date sampled at monthly, weekly, or daily frequencies. In this study, 30-minute intraday data are used to explore efficiency in energy markets.

Sophisticated statistical analysis techniques such as Granger-causality regressions, augmented Dickey-Fuller tests, cointegration tests, vector autoregressions are used to explore the transmission of information between oil and gas energy markets.

This study provides evidence for efficiency in energy markets. The new information that arrives either to futures markets or spot markets is digested correctly, completely, and in a fast manner, and is propagated to the other market. The evidence indicates high efficiency.

This study is one of the first papers that uses 30-minute interval intraday data to investigate efficiency in oil and gas commodity markets.