Search

The natural rubber (NR) processing industry plays a critical role in the economies of many developing countries, particularly in Asia. Among the different types of NR, crepe rubber holds a significant position, as it is used to produce pharmaceutical and surgical rubber items, and also articles that are in contact with foods. At present, the crepe rubber manufacturing has been challenged by low productivity, rising cost of production, and environmental issues. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess the feasibility in the adoption of sustainable manufacturing practices in the crepe rubber production as a case study in Sri Lanka. This study consisted of three steps: 1) quantification of material and economic losses and global warming potential (GWP) via material flow analysis (MFA), material flow cost accounting (MFCA), and life cycle assessment (LCA) on a gate-to-gate basis, 2) developing proposals of improvement options with the help of Pareto and What-if analyses, field interviews, and the existing literature; and 3) validation of suggested improvement options through the re-execution of MFA, MFCA, and LCA. For 1 MT of rubber input, the underlying economic losses and GWP impact in the current manufacturing process were identified as LKR 19,585 and 279.3 kg CO2e with the values of 7% and 13% for Relative Standard Deviation, respectively. As improvement options, reduction options of water, chemicals, electricity, milling duration were proposed. It revealed that adoption of these reduction options could mainly reduce 32,064 kg of water and 30.1 kWh of electricity resulting in 5.3% of cost savings and a 4.3% of GWP impact reduction. Other implications associated with improvement options and their limitations are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper advances our understanding of complex interdependence among countries. Existing research has found that total factor productivity (TFP), the residual from the economic growth function, is hindered in the absence of a country's strong political and legal institutions or if a country does not already have a sufficiently high level of TFP. We also know that regional efforts to eliminate pollution are complex. Bridging these two areas while focusing on a high polluting yet high innovating region, the following research questions are posed: Are Northeast Asian countries key collaborators in pursuit of green R&D? Are Northeast Asian countries collaborating extensively with each other? What are the implications for other regions 'attempts to establish these kinds of relations? To answer the above questions, biofuels-related technology as defined in the International Patent Classification's "green inventory" of environmentally sound technologies is examined. Patent data is drawn from the USPTO and inventors' country origin as the unit of analysis. For the 1990-2013 period, the Northeast Asian countries are in the core of a small set of collaborating countries. There is evidence that their centrality has increased in recent years. Most importantly, East Asia is becoming a singular research hub in terms of biofuels-related R&D, offering a counter in the foreseeable future to the dominance of the American and European research network hubs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid expansion of international trade, a distinctive feature of the contemporary container terminal industry is that competition has become more intense, If container terminal managers can gain a proper appreciation of their various productivity factors, they may be able to identify which factors have a more positive influence on productivity. The core of sensitivity analysis for evaluating terminal productivity is to remove input variables one by one, then re-estimate the correlation between productivity and investment. From this perspective, sensitivity analysis provides a more appropriate benchmark for identifying which factors are more critical for productivity improvement. This analysis has been variously studied utilizing either Data Envelopment Analysis or Regression Analysis. Given the strengths associated with these two analyses, this paper applies both approaches to the same set of data for 28 major East Asian container terminals and compares the results of the efficiency. The results of this study can provide a useful reference to port managers for developing improvement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of the domestic research and development stock and foreign knowledge spillovers on total factor productivity for six Asian miracle economies over the period from 1955 to 2006. The productivity effects of international knowledge spillovers through the following channels are considered: imports, exports, inward foreign direct investment, patents, geographical proximity, and the general channel. The general channel is a transmission mechanism where knowledge spillovers occur automatically and do not pass through any specific channel. The estimates show that knowledge has been transmitted through all the channels considered but that the import channel and the general channel have probably been the most important ones for the Asian miracle economies. ( JEL O10, O30, O40) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To continue Asia's economic growth the focus for expansion and improvement must move from export manufacturing to the services sector -- primarily to cross-border trade in such modern services as finance, information and communication, and professional business services. As the Asian services-sector economies have historically been dominated by personal services rather than by more information-intensive services, serious concerns exist about their ability to rapidly and successfully grow these modern services. While Asia does have some well-known services-sector success stories -- such as in India and the Philippines -- most Asian services economies have a history of relatively slow developmental change. Removing internal and external policy and structural constraints will be key to productivity growth in modern crossborder services trade. Improving educational opportunities and strengthening infrastructure and capital and labor markets will all be needed complements to regulatory reform if Asia is to grow new and innovative service providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that trade and FDI are beneficial to countries' economic development. This paper builds on the literature, and analyzes the ef fects on total factor productivity (TFP) through three channels of openness-imports, inward FDI and international call traf fic (ICT) for a set of developing countries in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Using data from the period of 1980 to 2000, I find that imports, FDI and international call traf fic all significantly promote TFP growth in developing countries, and that human capital enhances the ef fects of imports on TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper identifies emerging trends in the world economy during the next decade. The first is that China will overtake the U.S. in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), ending more than a century of U.S. leadership as the world''s largest economy. The second is that Developing Asia, excluding Japan, will overtake the G7, a group of the seven largest industrialized economies established in 1975–76. Finally, India will overtake Japan, Russia will overtake Germany, and Brazil will overtake the U.K., leading to a New World Economic Order: China, the U.S., India, Japan, Russia, Germany, and Brazil. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Growing airport capacity constraint, airports' increasing attention to profits, and regional hub formation in Northeast Asia suggest a need to study efficiency performance of the region's major airports. This article empirically evaluates the level and change of efficiency (productivity) of Tokyo (Narita), Osaka (Kansai), Seoul (Incheon and Gimpo), Beijing Capital, Shanghai Hongqiao, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong airports. We apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) to new panel data covering the 1994-2007 time period. We find that all the sample airports have recorded an increase in productivity over the period. Given the initial low productivity level of Chinese airports, this finding suggests that a series of deregulatory measures adopted by the Chinese government may have worked in improving airport productivity. On the other hand, no sample airports have experienced consistent growth in productivity. To improve productivity, the airports in Northeast Asia need not only technological revolutions at the industry level, but also technical improvements, such as better airport management, operations, and investment, at an airport level. Alternatively, the region may need to adopt more aggressive liberalization measures to stimulate further traffic growth. A number of future research areas are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Using panel data from the Indonesian manufacturing industry during the Suharto era (1975–95), we assess the impact of plant-level corruption on output and productivity growth. In support of the “grease the wheels” hypothesis and the view of an Asian paradox, we find that corruption, measured as bribes and indirect tax payments, has a positive and statistically significant effect on individual plant growth. This effect persists over the entire period, which suggests improvements in the efficacy of the bribe system and a strengthening of the long-term contract between firms and the government. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Asia is becoming a centre of gravity for global business. As a result of this, there is a growing interest in investment in this area, and pharmaceutical companies are not an exception. The old research and development investment model of the Western Big Pharma companies is starting to fall apart with the well-publicised reduction of new chemical entities productivity. Big Pharma is rethinking its business opportunities. Today, 88 per cent of the world's pharmaceuticals are shared between only 18 per cent of the world's population, which means that 82 per cent of the world's population has access to only 12 per cent of the world's pharmaceuticals. This presents a unique business opportunity for those that can seize the moment. Within this context, we are witnessing the use of different strategies by pharmaceutical companies. Some Big Pharma companies have a generic strategy, some have a developing world strategy, some have an outsource strategy and others have all three. The current mergers and acquisitions of pharmaceutical companies in India portray these structural profound changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge Management (KM) has played a critical role in innovation and technology management-related fields over the past decades. Most KM studies investigate related issues from the perspectives of an organisational or firm-to-firm level. Many firms create and sustain their innovativeness and capability via their counterparts within and across the industry, and their KM activities occur at the industrial level. The members of the KM activities may include firms, research and academic institutes, governments, and even their competitors and clients. This study takes industry as the knowledge base and explores the content of Industry-based Knowledge Managements (IKM) and how it is practiced in Asia. IKM is classified as four modes — knowledge clustering, enlarging, exchanging, and initiating. Some practical IKM cases in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan are reviewed to verify the model and to clarify the IKM contents of each mode. Suggestions and directions toward IKM practices and research for the future are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This process of productive and organizational flexibility, as well as increased productivity for factories and their workers, have been central to the organizational learning trajectory for certain export maquiladoras. This article analyzes some Asian and U. S. Firms operating in Tijuana, to show how, in an underdeveloped country, they have been able to create companies that are highly competitive internationally. The potential and challenges for achieving more sustainable development are also examined. The first section explains the importance of the maquiladora industry in the Mexican context, emphasizing the dynamism of the main economic variables for Asian companies and their impact on Mexico. The second section discusses the evolution of technology and labor in the maquiladoras, emphasizing Asian involvement to demonstrate that these companies may reflect enormous development potential. The third section presents types of technological learning trajectories in order to show various paths and scenarios that may take shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the annual report of the Japan Powder Metallurgy Association (JPMA) on production activity in 2011. It says that the overall productivity in powder metallurgy has decreased by 5% after a strong recovery in 2009 and 2010 due to damage from earthquake and tsunami in northeast area in March 2011. Meanwhile, all countries in Asia except Japan and Malaysia have experienced growth in volumes of iron based production while copper based production has shown slow growth of 1.3%.

The article offers information on the 2012 annual report of the Japan Powder Metallurgy Association (JPMA) which includes statistics for the powder metallurgy (PM) industries in Japan and Asia. It mentions that production of electrical contacts and PM fiction materials decreased by 17% and 13%, respectively. Moreover, a total of 109 972 (t) ton of iron powder shipments for PM apllications.