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Exploring the Source of the Productivity Convergence between Chinese and Taiwanese Commercial Banks

The Establishment in 2010 of cross-strait financial supervision memorandum of understanding (MOU) and Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) provides the opportunity for Chinese and Taiwanese banks to offer financial service to companies of each other. As the different technologies between Taiwan and China, this paper attempts to introduce a profit metafrontier Luenberger productivity indicator to measure the profit productivity gap and its convergence. The proposed model is further decomposed into components of changes in technical inefficiency, allocative inefficiency, technology, and price effect. The results show that there exists profit productivity improvement for both banks, such outperforming of profit productivity can be mostly attributed to the fast growth in price effect.

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Environmental Regulation Is a Win-win for Energy Technology Acquisition and Social Welfare Improvement

This research challenges the traditional wisdom that stringent environmental regulation weakens a firm's competitiveness via lower profit and also decreases social welfare. We employ theoretical and empirical analyses to inject new insight into the Porter hypothesis. Our research result supports the Porter hypothesis that strict environmental regulation (i.e., a high pollution tax rate in this study) improves a firm's competitiveness via seeking new technology licensing. We further supplement that the pollution tax rate may bring a win-win result in the economy and environment by upgrading a firm's competitiveness, raising its profit, lowering environmental damage, and improving social welfare.

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A Historical Retrospect of the Software As A Service Business Model: Implications for the Future of Software

"Software as a service" (SaaS) is a novel business model that rejuvenates the definition of software. In this paper, we conduct a historical review on the evolution of the SaaS business model. We first examine how the business model morphed from the first-generation application service providers (ASPs) to the second-generation proprietary SaaS firms. Then we elaborate the driving factors of the prevalence of SaaS, compare the two generations of the SaaS model, and describe the phenomenon of business model isomorphism-not only did ASPs and proprietary SaaS firms proliferate, but other companies in the IT industry have also adjusted their business models to exploit post-Internet technologies, moving toward the common notions of subscription pricing and the nature of "use-it-when-needed". Finally, we discuss implications of this new business model and its impacts on the future of software and the IT industry as a whole. We conclude that the SaaS business model connotes a reshuffling of user operations, computing algorithms, and data storage. Each part will thus be offered or managed by different business actors, including vendors and customers. Moreover, once the SaaS business model reaches the mainstream, the economic nature of software will shift toward the service end on the service-product continuum. Companies of all sorts in the IT industry need to prepare in advance for the paradigm shift so they can sustain in the long run.

• 期刊

Food Efficiency of European Union Countries by Considering Ammonia Emission and Food Waste

This study uses the two-stage dynamic undesirable data envelopment analysis model by considering global warming as an exogenous condition to assess the agricultural performance of European Union countries. The two stages are food production and consumption. The first stage explores the concept of food security for the food production efficiency of the relationship between fertilizer use and ammonia air pollution. In contrast, the second stage analyzes the idea of food loss and waste for the food consumption efficiency that issues of population growth and food waste. According to the empirical results, the efficiency of the general agricultural production stage is poor, and the efficiency of the food consumption stage is affected by general food waste. In over half of the countries, first-stage fertilizer utilization efficiency is less than 0.5, suggesting that fertilizers are overused in response to food production corresponding to European food demand. Moreover, if we do not consider the exogenous conditions of global warming and discuss the agricultural efficiency of European countries, then bias in the underestimation of efficiency appears.