The main purpose of this paper is to define indicators of sustainable development which take into account the economic constraints imposed by the laws of thermodynamics. Firstly, a survey of some essential work about the relationships between economics and thermodynamics is proposed. Secondly,...

With less than 2% of new renewable energy production, Switzerland is a poor performer in international comparison. A study carried out for the Swiss Federal Office of Energy showed constraints explaining this low number. One of these is a need for companies to optimize their sales process....

With less than 2% of new renewable energy production, Switzerland is a poor performer in international comparison. A study carried out for the Swiss Federal Office of Energy showed constraints explaining this low number. One of these is a need for companies to optimize their sales process....

The environmental accounting literature covers both public and private, or corporate, fields. The needs of private firms differ from public organisations in that environmental accounting systems must pay for themselves. Stakeholder analysis and the so-called triple bottom line forget that...

We examine under what conditions setting up a captive insurance company with reinsurance is an optimal solution for risk-averse firms when the insured firm, the insurer and the reinsurer do not know the probability distribution of some risks, and have conflicting estimates of this distribution.

In this paper, we investigate the presence of economies of scale in the global iron-making industry for integrated steel plants, iron-making being the first stage in the steel-making process. Iron-making depends on basic commodities, such as iron ore, coke and various forms of energy, required...

Theoretical and empirical evidence is presented to show that inefficient power firms in China are subsidised by the state through the ability to charge high electricity prices and the creation of a “soft price constraint†on costs. This cost inefficiency challenges the merits of...