Slow Demand Growth Research Articles

The impact of information acquisition ability on consumers' trust in eco-labels in China: insight of food sustainability

IntroductionThe lack of trust in eco-labels is a significant reason for the slow growth in demand for sustainable food, and reducing the information gap between relevant parties is a crucial means to improve consumer trust in eco-labels.MethodsIn order to investigate the influence and driving pathways of consumers' information acquisition abilities on their trust in eco-labels, a total of 1,072 urban and rural consumers in Inner Mongolia, China were surveyed in this study, with an analysis conducted using the structural equation model.ResultsIt was found that information acquisition ability, institutional trust, and label knowledge have significant direct impacts on eco-label trust, with impact effects of 0.270, 0.351, and 0.357, respectively. Additionally, information acquisition ability has indirect effect of 0.085 and 0.127 on label trust through institutional trust and label knowledge. Furthermore, information discernment awareness has a significant negative moderating effect between information acquisition ability and label trust.DiscussionTherefore, when publicizing the certification system and label knowledge, cultivating consumers' information acquisition ability effectively enhances eco-label trust. Moreover, strengthening media supervision to ensure the authenticity and objectivity of information transmission is an important measure to protect trust in eco-labels. This study enriches relevant research in the field of food sustainability and provides valuable recommendations to promote sustainable food consumption.

The future development of the use of wood in Russia and its potential impacts on the EU forest sector

Several uncertainties are associated with the future development in Russia. The aim of this study is to analyse the effects of some of them on the forest sectors in Russia and the European Union. In particular, we examine the impacts of increasing prices set on atmospheric CO2 emissions and the changing investment climate in Russia on the use of forests in the EU and Russia as well as on the export of forest products from Russia to the EU. In the analysis, we use a numerical forest sector model, EUFASOM. The results suggest that a more intensive utilisation of the vast forest resources in Russia call for rapid improvements in the investment climate. Otherwise, the growth of pulp and paper production in Russia would mainly be directed at satisfying the domestic demand. It is hard to penetrate the EU markets which are suffering from excess capacity and a slow demand growth. Russia's importance as a supplier of energy wood to the EU is likely to increase, unless for instance export tariffs or tighter climate policies in Russia hinder such a development. The results demonstrate large differences in the harvesting and use of wood in the EU and Russia across the alternative future scenarios.

Foreign Market Conditions and Export Performance: Evidence from Italian Firm-Level Data

A large body of literature in International Economics has analysed the impact of increased import competition on domestic firms. The link between firm-level exports and changes in the competitive environment on foreign markets is less well understood, however. This is despite the fact that exports make up a significant and growing share of total manufacturing production in most countries. We derive a theory-based econometric specification linking destination-specific exports to foreign demand and the degree of competitiveness or “crowdedness” of a foreign market. The latter is a summary measure of the number and productive efficiency of firms competing in a given market and the barriers impeding their access, such as tariffs or physical distance. We estimate this specification on a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms in 1992-2003 and use the results for a series of counterfactual experiments. Our findings indicate that increased numbers and efficiency of foreign firms and improvements in their access to destination markets have reduced Italian exports by around 0.2-0.4% per year. This is similar to the effects of tariff reductions for Italian firms (+0.3%/year) but smaller than the impact of higher unit labour costs (-1.4%/year) and less favourable exchange rates (-2.0%/year). By far the most important determinant of export performance was foreign demand growth, however, raising Italian exports by up to 5.3% per year or almost 60% over the sample period. Our results also indicate that China’s impact on Italian export performance is small and if anything positive. Much more important in explaining the loss of export market shares in recent years has been the relatively slow demand growth in Italy’s main export market, the EU15.

Meeting Energy Challenges: Technology and Policy

Effectively addressing today’s energy challenges requires advanced technologies along with policies that influence economic markets while advancing the public good.

Strategic joint ventures with developing country in battles for technical standards

As technical standards become important in the network industry based on high technologies, advanced countries are actively seeking coalition for compatibility with developing countries, to win in the competition for technical standards. However, developing countries, in comparison with advanced countries, have a little interest in the international compatibility and a slow demand growth of network products. This paper examines what conditions are needed, under this constraint, to attract developing countries' early support for technical standards, and to design a sequential joint venture which is more Pareto-efficient than independent technology development.

World Oil Prices Flat to Declining

The OPEC cartel failed to keep prices above the competitive level because, among other reasons their market sharing mechanism failed. Their best future seems to indicate a trade-off-by relinquishing some market share for a higher price. Slow demand growth and expansion of the natural gas market should restrict OPEC sales. Non-OPEC is likely to expand but the price will be under downward pressures.

Economic and Technological Determinants of the Material Intensity of Use

Slow demand growth has been a major problem facing the steel industry in the U.S. Compared with aluminum and plastic materials, growth in apparent steel consumption has been far less, averaging one percent per annum from 1960 to 1985 (Considine 1989). This changing mix of material use suggests that substitution may be just as important as the well-known link between material consumption and goods production. The reasons for this substitution-economic and technological-have implications for U.S. trade and regulatory policy. Trade restrictions may provide the steel industry with short-term relief in the form of higher prices but possibly at the cost of a long-term erosion in material market shares. Other forms of government intervention, such as energy efficiency and product safety regulations, may induce technical change and, thereby, change the mix of material utilization in our economy. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to examine the role of technical change and relative prices in material consumption. Material substitution can be analyzed at several stages of the production process. For instance, steel firms combine scrap, iron ore, and metal alloy inputs in the production of various steel products. Similarly, automobile manufacturers select steel, aluminum, plastics, and other material inputs. Hence, can refer to raw inputs or to semi-finished materials depending upon the stage in the production process under examination. This study examines the determinants of the level and mix of finished material inputs. The focus here is on sheet, strip, pipe, and wire products made from steel, copper, and aluminum alloys, and thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic resins. These materials are used in the production of a wide array of manufactured goods including containers, automobiles, machinery, and computers. The production of these materials involves the single largest use of metallic minerals and the second largest use of energy in U.S. manufacturing. Substitution between metallic and plastic inputs in manufacturing is an example of compositional shifts in economic activity that can alter the level and mix of energy and mineral consumption. Hence, material substitution could have some major implications for the structure of the industrial economy. Given the focus of this study on material substitution, a partial equilibrium framework is adopted. Hence, the effects of material prices on the output of material intensive goods are not explicitly measured. Lower real spending on material intensive durable goods since 1973 has been identified as one factor leading to the slowdown in U.S. steel consumption (Considine 1987). Another popular explanation is that imports of automobiles and other steel-containing goods displaced domestic steel consumption indirectly. This hypothesis, however, is really a corollary of the first. Competition from imported goods affects the level of domestic goods production, which in turn affects domestic material consumption. Hence, redefining apparent steel consumption to include steel embodied in the net trade of goods is unnecessary. In addition to relative material prices;

Ethylene Oxide/Glycol Profitability In Doldrums

The ethylene oxide and derivative ethylene glycol businesses are in a slump. Supplies are already excessive and planned additions will bring even more capacity on stream during the next three years or so. Behind the current slump is slow growth in demand, but, as is often the case, consumers of antifreeze, polyester, and other products derived from these chemicals are benefitting from much lower prices. However, lower prices mean smaller margins and thus lower profitability for producers of these major volume ethylene derivatives. Those in the industry generally expect profitability to remain above the low levels of late 1988 and early 1989. Most ethylene oxide is consumed captively in making derivatives, especially monoethylene glycol. Merchant sales account for only about 10% of production. Almost 60% of the ethylene oxide produced in the U.S. is converted to the glycol. In addition, diethylene and higher glycols and the various ethoxylates account for almost a quarter of ethylene ...

Build-1: A disaggregate model of the U.S. electric utility industry

We present a linear programming model of the U.S. electric utility industry which explicitly represents each of the nation's 300 electric utilities and the options each has for meeting demand for electric energy. The model has been designed to estimate how the utility industry would respond to changes in policy or energy markets, especially in the present period of slow growth in demand and limited opportunities for expansion. By estimating the use, upgrading, retrofitting, and retirement of individual generating facilities with known geographical coordinates, the model provides the geographically detailed results needed by models of pollutant transport and other regional environmental impacts.

Structural Retardation and the Modernization of French Agriculture: A Skeptical View

The structural retardation hypothesis locates the source of stagnation in French agriculture primarily within agriculture — inthe economic, political, and sociological consequences of a peasant system of agricultural production. It is argued in this paper that the poor performance of French agriculture from the 1870s to the 1940s is to be found in the limited opportunities for agricultural growth provided by the French economy. Evidence suggests that the slow growth in demand for agricultural output, the slow growth in demand for labor by the non-agricultural sector, and the limited investment in the institutional infrastructure to support agricultural development were the primary sources of stagnation.

The Diffusion of the New Husbandry in Northern France, 1815–1840

This article deals with agricultural innovation in early nineteenth-century France. The core of the argument advanced is that the diffusion of the new intensive mixed husbandry in northern France was delayed by the slow growth in demand for meat and dairy products before 1840, which reduced the advantages to be gained from adopting forage-intensive crop rotations. Because the climate of southern France precluded large-scale adoption of the northern varieties of mixed husbandry, this study confines itself to the part of France lying north of the Loire, and east of the Breton peninsula. This region contained 39 percent of France's people in 1840, raised 48 percent of its wheat and 64 percent of its fodder, and produced more than 75 percent of the value of its animal production. It was already the most industrialized and wealthy section of the country.

Vinyl acetate turns in solid performance

Name a leading industrial organic chemical that does not feature overcapacity, price weakness, import troubles, or slow demand growth in 1977. There aren't many. You can count them on your fingers. One of these select organics is vinyl acetate, a building block chemical that frequently passes unnoticed among its larger, better known relatives such as styrene and vinyl chloride. Although these other headline monomers struggle through a decidedly mixed year (C&EN, Aug. 15, page 9), vinyl acetate is putting on a notably solid performance. Vinyl acetate's success is due largely to the very characteristic that gives the chemical its low profile—a bewildering use pattern of various polymers and specialty formulated products. These specialty formulated products, spread largely through the adhesives and coatings fields, become so intimately tied to larger products such as automobiles and construction items that vinyl acetate's identity is effectively hidden. But vinyl acetate's very tie to highgrowth specialties ...