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Regardless of the facts showing a booming Chinese cruise market, cruise operations in China are very different from the current practices of the two major cruise markets – the US and the Mediterranean Sea. This study aims to quantify pricing strategies and possible incentive mechanisms of cruise operations in China.

Using optimization in economic-based game theory, the complexity of the pricing strategies and interaction and/or possible coordination within the cruise value-added chain can be captured.

The results show that a coordinative pricing strategy with Shapley profit redistribution within the value-added chain offers benefits to both cruise passengers and service suppliers. With two subsidy scenarios, one to the passenger and the other to the travel agent, a cooperative pricing strategy outperforms other strategies and successfully increases market shares and total revenue.

The advantages of coordination between participants in cruise value chain are quantified. Effective strategies for attracting players participating in cruise value chain are designed. This paper will provide market participants with strategies to enhance their decision-making processes.

The Government of India announced its liberalization policy in the year 1991. Since then, the major ports in India introduced privatization in various forms into their operations. However, the share of total traffic (cargo) handled by major ports fell from 90 per cent in 1991 to around 70 per cent in 2015, losing share to minor ports. These major ports, except for the port of Kamarajar, are governed by the Major Port Trust Act, 1961. None of the Indian ports feature amongst the top 20 ports of the world. Interestingly, several ports in Asia, namely, seven ports from China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia are on that list. Several studies and reports have shown that privatization in India did not yield the desired results. Ports in India have adopted a hybrid mode of governance, aligned between a landlord port model and a service port model. This paper aims to address the question – What is the optimal way to mix privatisation and government control in the operations of major ports of India.

In this paper, the authors attempt to develop an optimization model for port planners to decide on the optimum mix of privatized and self-managed operations so as to maintain efficiency and maximize revenue.

The model tested on a major port in the country shows that the present privatization policy followed by the port needs revision. A similar plan to revise their policies can be carried out for other major ports in the country.

The model is generic and can be used by any port in the world operating under conditions similar to those in India.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between intensity of competition and technical efficiency of large European container ports, accounting for regional diversities and spatial aspects of inter-port competition.

The analysis consists of applying a stochastic production frontier approach to a dataset of 77 large European container ports over the period 2002-2012, with inefficiency terms simultaneously modeled as a function of (among other factors) a constructed index of competitive intensity at different spatial levels.

The results indicate that there is no significant negative effect of competitive intensity on efficiency. In fact, for competing European ports within a proximity of 300 km, a higher level of competition is found to be associated with a higher level of technical efficiency.

The originality of the paper stems from its particular focus on European port regions and its novel findings in this context, which have implications for the discussions regarding pro-competitive port policy and regulation in the European Union.

The City of Copenhagen aims to become the first carbon neutral capital in the world by 2025. Ten per cent of the total CO2-reduction target is to be achieved through energy retrofitting of existing buildings in the city. This article reports from an action research study in the urban renewal section in Copenhagen City Council where planners struggle to promote more and better energy retrofitting projects in the urban renewal scheme. The study finds that planners in fact approach green retrofitting as a ‘wicked problem’ that requires new solution strategies targeting the complexity of developing new retrofitting standards and solutions in the existing urban renewal framework. The analysis shows how planners’ strategic responses are challenged by competing worldviews concerning the role of urban renewal and the problems and potentials of green retrofitting in practice.

Adoption literature now speaks with many voices. Federal and state agencies and local advocacy groups are enthusiastic supporters of adoptions, the basic belief being kids need homes. The bottleneck is the most conservative sector, the local agency. These are the agencies one deals with if planning to adopt a child. This brief essay attempts to give some perspective to the recent literature on adoption trends and practices. The numbers in parentheses refer to the entry numbers of titles in the bibliographic listing at the end of the article.

The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the most pressing global challenges, the ongoing migrant trafficking across sea, from international trade law and policy perspective. It identifies global poverty as one of the underlying causes of such trafficking. It argues that restrictive trade in labour-intensive services of the World Trade Organization (WTO) contributes to and sustains poverty in many migrant producing countries. Chronic unemployment in poor countries with surplus manual workforce renders these workers bewildered to survive in a jobless and incomeless home markets. Non-liberalization of movements of natural persons under General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Mode 4 prevents legal cross-border delivery of labours. Restrictive trade in agriculture has but aggravated their marginalized plight. It is this poverty trap that pushes workers, lured by smugglers, to take risky migration routes for better life in countries with labour shortages.

The paper adopts a blend approach of theoretical and applied aspects of international trade law and policy, which is interpreted and applied to a fact situation of contemporary challenge of migrant trafficking by sea.

This paper establishes a nexus between restrictive Mode 4 trade and its implications for poverty-induced migration trafficking trade. It suggests a palatable trade law and policy-based reform response for the WTO to ameliorate poverty and migration trafficking trade concurrently through the creation of legal channels for the cross-border delivery of labours by liberalizing Mode 4 trade in a manner beneficial for developed countries as well.

Its value lies in its contribution to maximize multi-lateral trade liberalization for the benefit of all countries, social inclusion and economic emancipation of the disadvantaged, which would minimize global poverty.

This article describes a current dilemma of urban planning in cities of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The process of demographic shrinking, and the increasing growth of the more privileged to suburbia since the early 1990s had dramatic consequences, especially on cities with large-scale settlements (Großsiedlungen) that once had been built especially for sites based on heavy industries. This paper argues that far from the banal, grey and depressing stigma attached to them at present, some of these housing projects, particularly the one for Leipzig-Grünau represented one of the most enthusiastic experiments to realise societal utopias. The study looks particularly at the role of residents' participation in the success and development of their estate. However, at the moment when buildings are being demolished public participation in determining the fate of their urban environment, seems futile and redundant. These often random and short-sighted demolitions undermine the housing estates' cohesiveness, which in turn helps to dilute the residents' sense of pride and privilege. It seems almost as though population ‘shrinking’ was part of a plan to re-appropriate the city by erasing the ‘unfamiliar’ fabric of a competing ideology. The paper investigates how this process is played out, what form it takes and how the configuration and coherence of the urban fabric is affected by a complicated sequence of chain reactions which degrade the attractiveness of the area to such a degree that demolition appears as the only possible solution. An intentional cultural-political policy of de-familiarisation takes place and demolition is made to appear all but unavoidable.

The basis of international comparative analysis is the harmonisation of the different conceptual systems of the discipline under investigation in various countries. The enterprises, which are the spring of the economy, can be grouped in different ways in the different countries. The goal of this paper is to compare the Hungarian practice with that of the European Union (EU), the European OECD countries and the USA. Following a short overview of the terminology, this paper seeks an answer to the question of how Hungary became – in less than a decade – a country of small enterprises. Phenomena such as the breaking up of huge companies or dismantling into small and medium‐size enterprises and the increasing number of newly founded small‐size businesses sooner or later lead to changes in the policies of these enterprises and thus contribute to the development of a functioning market economy. The map of the Hungarian economy had changed significantly by the end of the 1990s. A radical shift in the size and types of companies was brought about by market economy forces, which led to a transformation. As a result, the process of accession to the EU was begun. In the preliminary and preparatory stages, the opportunities for small and medium‐size enterprises (SMEs) must be enhanced, as presently the economic significance of SMEs in Hungary is smaller than their strategic importance. All these objectives are supported by concrete and long‐term governmental strategies and measures.

Many good papers were submitted and a satisfactory pass‐rate was achieved; but students are asked to bear in mind the following comments.

An important objective of recent General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO) rounds of trade negotiations has been to urge member countries to adopt trade policies that are more transparent in their effects. One example in this regard has been the move towards tariffication of non‐tariff barriers in an effort to make the price effects of trade barriers more readily discernible. This goal remains largely unfulfilled, as many countries continue to implement barriers that are often complicated and “disguised” in their effects. Instead of adopting direct export subsidies, for example, some countries subsidize the use of a specialized input into the production of a final product. While the effect of this subsidization is similar to a direct export subsidy, the effects are not transparent in that the subsidy applies to an input and the effect that the subsidy has on trade depends on the importance of the input in the cost of producing the final product. Furthermore, there is often no way of calculating the effects of these disguised barriers in a straightforward manner.