Biodiversity prospecting refers to the exploration of the commercial value of genetic and biochemical resources. In this chapter, we study a drug producing pharmaceutical firm (PF) that searches for potentially useful chemicals made by wild organisms in a conservation area. This PF is able to...

I analyse firms organisational choices when they face uncertainty about institutional conditions in foreign locations with heterogeneous final good producers and incomplete contracts. As firms learn about the conditions abroad, the increasing offshoring activity increases competition in the...

Blockchain technology is firmly established in the public awareness as a revolutionary new technology underpinning cryptocurrency. However, its potential applications can be found across sectors and industries in providing a novel way of producing coordination necessary to transact online,...

Digitalization is the core driving force of the fourth industrial revolution. This new era will result in paradigm shift in production and in marketing of products and services. The smarter production can make value creation easier with reducing the cost of manufacturing and with producing...

Digital advances and the emergence of disruptive technologies have dramatically changed the business models across sectors and operations economics. The scope of this paper is to contribute to analyze the current disruptive revolution in operations management in a digitalized global market...

To this day in Japan, the water supply service for agricultural use has been formed as the supply-driven system. In fact, the farmers can use the utilization volume of agricultural water and they have to pay the price of agricultural water fee decided by water supplier side. However, diverse...

Japan is faced with "the Fukushima' problem," in which a single nuclear accident has led to drastic electrical power shortages. Owing to the strong backlash of public opinion, almost all of Japan's 54 nuclear plants suspended operations. An intensive search has started for alternative forms of...

This paper develops a methodology to predict and to thus possibly mitigate the economic impacts of major catastrophes, such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The short-run impacts are assumed to be determined by the attempts of economic actors to return to the pre-catastrophe economic situation as...

This study develops an easy forecasting model using prefectural data in Japan. The Markov chain known as a stochastic model corresponds to the vector auto-regressive (VAR) model of the first order. If the transition probability matrix can be appropriately estimated, the forecasting model using...

Blockchain technology has become widely popular with the appearance of cryptocurrencies that use the decentralized nature of blockchain in order to exchange funds between their users. In order to verify various needed details during an exchange, consensus mechanisms are used which solve simple...