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Economic models assume public utility commissions reform utility business models with revenue decoupling mechanisms primarily to remove the disincentive for demand-side management investment, which is expected to enhance social welfare. This paper tests that widespread assumption. We find some but limited support for commission responsiveness to avoided environmental costs. Instead, we find commission responsiveness to avoided political costs resulting from high prices of residential electricity compared to the regional average and high levels of partisan competition in the state legislature. Beyond questioning the primacy of the public interest rationale for regulation, our results give reason to reevaluate economic models of utility business model reform that do not explicitly consider commission interests in minimizing political risks. Keywords Revenue decoupling, Regulation, Electric utilities, Energy efficiency, Political economy, 1. INTRODUCTION Achieving maximal performance from minimal electricity, end-use energy efficiency is expected to appeal to electricity consumers. Nevertheless, a 'gap' has emerged between actual and expected consumer investment in [...]

We examine the emerging forest bioeconomy as an integrated, multi-product industrial ecosystem, where the traditional pulp mills allocate the use of side streams to independent biochemical companies manufacturing bioproducts in the vicinity of the pulp mills. Biochemical companies benefit from the proximity by receiving wood-based side streams at lower costs, and at the same time, pulp mills benefit from having a new source of revenue from selling side streams. We focus on the economic interaction between the pulp mill and the biochemical company, and we study the impacts on the use of wood and profits under perfect and imperfect competition. We demonstrate that the new industrial ecosystem uses more wood than traditional pulp mills, but depending on the side stream, it may promote cascading use of wood-based side streams. Key words: biochemical companies, cascade use of wood, industrial ecosystem, pulp mills, tall oil. Nous examinons la bioeconomie forestiere emergente comme un ecosysteme industriel integre multiproduit, ou les usines de pate a papier traditionnelles attribuent l'utilisation des produits secondaires a des entreprises biochimiques independantes qui elaborent des bioproduits et sont situees a proximite de l'usine de pate. Les entreprises biochimiques profitent de cette proximite en obtenant les residus a base de bois a un cout moindre et, par la meme occasion, les usines de pate a papier beneficient d'une nouvelle source de revenus grace a la vente de produits secondaires. Nous mettons l'accent sur l'interaction economique entre l'usine de pate a papier et l'entreprise biochimique, et nous etudions les impacts sur l'utilisation du bois et les benefices en situations de concurrence parfaite et imparfaite. Nous demontrons que le nouvel ecosysteme industriel utilise plus de bois que les usines de pate a papier traditionnelles, mais selon le flux de produits secondaires cela peut promouvoir l'utilisation en cascade de produits secondaires a base de bois. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles : entreprises biochimiques, utilisation en cascade du bois, ecosysteme industriel, usine de pate a papier, tallol., 1. Introduction New drivers, such as climate and energy policies, technological possibilities for generating new products, industrial globalization, and megatrends of services and digitalization, are changing the business environment in [...]

Young, nascent firms face substantial challenges associated with their ability to capture knowledge from their respective competitive environments and use that knowledge to successfully develop and/or restructure their business models. The present work theorizes that stakeholder knowledge acquisition frequency--defined as the extent to which a venture engages with its customers and stakeholders to gather and/or share information about products/services--causally predicts business model adaptations within nascent firms. To test this proposition, the current study employs a Latent Growth Curve (LGC) model with 138 observations from a 24-week longitudinal sample of nascent firms. Results indicate a quadratic relationship between knowledge acquisition frequency and business model adaptation, meaning that as nascent firms engage with stakeholders, the more (or less) the firms business models change as a result. Results support the causal relationship between knowledge acquisition frequency and business model adaptation and demonstrates the influence of stakeholder knowledge acquisition frequency as an antecedent to business model adaptation for nascent firms. Keywords: business models; business model adaptation; nascent firms, knowledge acquisition, A critical area of research at the intersection of management and entrepreneurship is how nascent firms adapt to challenging environments and strive to create value with limited resources (Baker and [...]

The Near West Side Partners is a nonprofit founded by five 'anchor institutions': Aurora Health Care, Harley-Davidson, Marquette University, MillerCoors, and Potawatomi Business Development Corporation. Its mission is to revitalize [...]

The Shale Revolution and the two oil crises have overwhelmingly reshaped the petroleum industry in the last decade. Heterogeneity across companies is also a big concern as many multi-product (oil and gas) and multi-segment (upstream and downstream) firms exist, both state-owned and privately-owned. Therefore, a varying coefficient model is introduced to capture the effects of time, ownership, and business portfolio on both productivity and input elasticities to closely observe the fundamental transition, which is further interpreted using decomposition equations. The shape of the production function is indeed firm- and time-variant, which confirms the transition of the industry and the necessity of using the varying coefficient model. The average productivity achieved tremendous growth after the 2007-2009 financial crisis but lost momentum following the 2014 price crash. Finally, privately-owned, gas production and downstream activities are more productive than state-owned, oil production and upstream activities, respectively. Some policy implications are also discussed. Keywords: Stochastic frontier analysis, Varying coefficient model, Oil and gas industry, Effects of state ownership, Segment-wide and product-wide business portfolio, 1. INTRODUCTION Remarkable growth has been witnessed in the oil and gas industry due to the Shale Revolution over the past two decades (Jacoby, O'Sullivan, and Paltsev, 2012). Technical innovations, [...]