from shadow to green linking environmental fiscal reforms and the informal economy in the past few decades many papers have analysed in some depth different environmental tax reforms and the double dividend hypothesis i e the possibility of improving not only the environment but also the economy through the reduction of distortions in the tax system recently more stress has been placed on testing empirically what effects a reduction in labour taxes may have on unemployment when accompanied by a carbon or other environmental tax however such studies have not modelled the effects of the presence of a shadow economy even though informal markets account for a significant and growing part of gdp in many developed economies this paper analyses this link using an applied general equilibrium model for the case of spain which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and one of the biggest informal economies of any wealthy country we conclude that our analysis strengthens the case for an environmental tax reform in spain if revenues from a co2 tax are recycled via a labour tax reduction

co2 emissions and income dynamics what does the global evidence tell us this paper analyzes the co evolution of two major determinants of social welfare namely income and carbon emissions in particular by using a distribution dynamics approach based on markov chains we investigate the shape and behavior of the joint distribution of per capita income and carbon dioxide emissions we arrive at several interesting conclusions especially in the context of international negotiations on climate change first evidence does not support theoretical models predicting the existence of a poverty environment trap specifically in the long run two main groups of countries will emerge poor versus polluting countries second the typical development path leads initially to high emission levels and subsequently to high income third the convergence process towards the stationary distribution is very slow finally for carbon emissions whenever it is observed the environmental kuznets curve seems to be only a transitory phenomenon

has work sharing worked in germany industry by industry basis in an attempt to raise employment whether this work sharing works is theoretically ambiguous i exploit the cross industry variation in standard hours reductions to examine their impact on actual hours worked wages and employment analysis of industry level data suggests that work sharing may have reduced employment in the period 1984 1994 using individual data from the german socio economic panel i substantiate the union claim of full wage compensation the hourly wage rose enough to offset the decline in actual hours worked

identifying barriers toward a post growth economy a political economy view abstract in this paper we take a political economy perspective on barriers that inhibit a transition beyond the growth paradigm that is we frame transition barriers as looming conflicts of interest specifically we investigate potential transition barriers within three case studies first unemployment represents the most commonly cited reason why economic growth is considered indispensable second alternative indicators to gross domestic product gdp have not succeeded in replacing gdp as a standard metric of economic welfare third pension schemes rely on economic growth to offset demographic change in each of these three examples we identify actor interest constellations that foster the status quo of a growth economy we conclude that compensating some of those actors who would presumably be worse off in a post growth economy may be necessary though not sufficient for a transition

work sharing during the great depression did the president s reemployment agreement promote reemployment the president s reemployment agreement pra of 1933 directed firms to reduce workweeks during the great depression so existing jobs could be spread into additional employment opportunities similar work sharing policies have recently been implemented across europe in hopes of reducing unemployment i find that ceteris paribus the work sharing aspects of the pra created nearly 2 5 million new employment opportunities in around four months however the programme also required firms to raise hourly wage rates offsetting close to half of these gains furthermore most of the remaining employment gains were wiped out after cartel oriented industry specific codes of fair competition supplanted the pra

green goals and full employment are they compatible abstract two empirical correlations are studied one between economic growth and environmental impacts and the other between the lack of economic growth and unemployment it is demonstrated that at a global level economic growth is strongly correlated with environmental impacts and barriers to fast decoupling are large and numerous on the other hand low or negative growth is highly correlated with increasing unemployment in most market economies and strategies to change this lead to difficult questions and tradeoffs the coexistence of these two correlations which have rarely been studied together in the literature on green growth degrowth and a growth justifies ambivalence about growth to make key environmental goals compatible with full employment the decoupling of environmental impacts from economic output has to be accompanied by a reduction of dependence on growth in particular strategies to tackle unemployment without the need for growth several of which are studied in this article need much more attention in research and policy

panel tests of okun s law for ten industrial countries donald g freeman i introduction okun s law describes an empirical regularity between unemployment and real output growth each extra percentage point in the unemployment rate above four percent i e full employment has been associated with about a three percent decrement in real gnp okun 1962 9 1 okun s law has proved to be one of the more durable relationships in modern macroeconomics and is now often presented as an element of core beliefs as in textbooks by hall and taylor 1993 77 and in policy discussions by blinder 1997 durability and simplicity being relatively scarce commodities in macroeconomics okun s law is appealing as a shorthand guide to policy outcomes whether okun s law travels well is another question cross country comparisons of the relationship between unemployment and output have been estimated for other countries by knoester 1986 paldam 1987 and moosa 1997 among others but magnitudes vary depending on country and time period estimates in these papers of the increase in output growth associated with unemployment reduction of one percent range from a low of around two percent in the u s and canada to three to five percent in europe to more than 10 percent in japan with estimates for europe tending to be higher for more recent time periods because of the way that okun s law is framed tests of its proposition involve two imposing empirical problems first as usually stated the law refers to the relationship between departures of real gdp 2 and unemployment from their long run or equilibrium trends often referred to as potential gdp and the natural rate of unemployment respectively these equilibrium trends must be estimated either by time series methods as in moosa 1997 or by construction using a modified production function approach in which potential output is estimated using fully employed inputs as in gordon 1984 or adams and coe 1989 either of these fapproaches invites considerable criticism of assumptions and methods see for example the comments of clark 1984 and of baily 1984 on gordon 1984 second in formulating his law okun seems clearly not to be referring to a ceteris paribus relationship between changes in the unemployment rate and changes in real gdp writing later okun posited that other factors and inputs would be changing pari passu with employment the 3 percent result from a reduction of one percent in the unemployment rate implies that considerable output gains in a period of rising utilization rates stem from some or all of the following induced increases in the size of the labor force longer average weekly hours and greater productivity okun 1970 p 140 thus a complete specification of the effect of changing unemployment rates on output would include factors such as capital inputs labor hours and participation rates all measured as deviations from long run trends this article addresses these two obstacles by using a recent trend cycle decomposition developed by baxter and king 1999 to measure gaps in output unemployment capital stock and the labor force the baxter king bandpass filter extracts the trend component of economic time series by eliminating both high frequency those less than two years and low frequency more than eight years components it is both flexible and easy to implement by using the bandpass filter to filter all the time series using the same methodology this paper departs from previous research of prachowny 1993 and attfield and silverstone 1997 incorporating capital and labor to augment estimates of okun s law additionally using the bandpass filter allows the estimates in this article to incorporate more timely data reflecting the shift to lower levels of unemployment in the u s and higher levels of unemployment in europe and japan during the 1990s the latest year of observation for the constructed data sets of gordon and of adams and coe used for example by prachowny 1993 and attfield and silverstone 1997 is 1988

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

okun s law theoretical foundations and revised estimates okun s law has been accepted as an empirical regularity that predicts a 3 percentage point increase in output for every 1 point reduction in the unemployment rate but only because other facts such as weekly hours induced labor supply and productivity tend to rise as well when output gaps are estimated for the u s economy with a production function approach using two different data sets for potential output and nairu it is found that the marginal contribution of a 1 point reduction in unemployment is only about two thirds percent increase in output changes in weekly hours and capacity utilization have independent effects on the output gap copyright 1993 by mit press

okun s law and productivity innovations a long tradition in macroeconomics dating back to arthur okun 1965 and walter oi 1962 regards cyclical productivity fluctuations as an artifact a residual generated from the incomplete and lagged response of employment and labor hours to demand driven fluctuations in real output in okun s version a one percent decline in output relative to trend is divided up into a reduction of 1 3 point in productivity and 2 3 point in aggregate hours the latter is further subdivided into a reduction of 1 3 point in the employment rate with the remaining adjustment taking the form of lower hours per employee and in the labor force participation rate hereafter lfpr yet this tradition of regarding cyclical productivity fluctuations as a byproduct of demand driven output cycles has been almost forgotten over the past three decades as a result of widespread adoption of the real business cycle rbc model in which productivity shocks are treated as exogenous as unexplained as unrelated to aggregate demand and as the sole driver of business cycles even in the more enlightened modern macro work on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models aggregate demand and sticky prices have reappeared but most recent papers still include an autonomous technology shock as one of several causes of short term business cycle fluctuations revisiting and rethinking the business cycle

global land use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets recently an active debate has emerged around greenhouse gas emissions due to indirect land use change iluc of expanding agricultural areas dedicated to biofuel production in this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the iluc effect and further address the issues of deforestation irrigation water use and crop price increases due to expanding biofuel acreage we use globiom an economic partial equilibrium model of the global forest agriculture and biomass sectors with a bottom up representation of agricultural and forestry management practices the results indicate that second generation biofuel production fed by wood from sustainably managed existing forests would lead to a negative iluc factor meaning that overall emissions are 27 lower compared to the no biofuel scenario by 2030 the iluc factor of first generation biofuels global expansion is generally positive requiring some 25 years to be paid back by the ghg savings from the substitution of biofuels for conventional fuels second generation biofuels perform better also with respect to the other investigated criteria on the condition that they are not sourced from dedicated plantations directly competing for agricultural land if so then efficient first generation systems are preferable since no clear technology champion for all situations exists we would recommend targeting policy instruments directly at the positive and negative effects of biofuel production rather than at the production itself

environment versus growth a criticism of degrowth and a plea for a growth in recent debates on environmental problems and policies the strategy of degrowth has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth this new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it one conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept another is that degrowth may not be an effective let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure it is subsequently argued that a growth i e being indifferent about growth is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth given that gdp per capita is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare in addition focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic political support than an ex ante explicit degrowth strategy in line with this a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters

technological learning and renewable energy costs implications for us renewable energy policy abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between current renewable energy technology costs and cumulative production research development and demonstration expenditures and other institutional influences combining the theoretical framework of learning by doing and developments in learning by searching with the fields of organizational learning and institutional economics offers a complete methodological framework to examine the underlying capital cost trajectory when developing electricity cost estimates used in energy policy planning models sensitivities of the learning rates for global wind and solar photovoltaic technologies to changes in the model parameters are tested the implications of the results indicate that institutional policy instruments play an important role for these technologies to achieve cost reductions and further market adoption

should degrowth embrace the job guarantee degrowth should consider the right to work a job guarantee jg as a way of making a smaller economy more just and socially sustainable economic shrinkage in richer countries is accompanied by increased unemployment a bad enough problem in itself but also a barrier to voters acceptance of the degrowth path since being out of work is distinct from being poor anti poverty income policies should be approached separately the jg is one of several paths to full employment including reduced working time this essay only briefly mentions some real world jg programs and some technical objections the main suggestion is to move employment from being a matter of economics particularly economic growth to being a political right a right to work is necessarily effective and would avoid sacrificing the ecological and social goals of degrowth on the altar of full employment

the okun curve is non linear abstract this paper presents cross country evidence on a non linear okun curve the analysis is based on a simple error correction model of unemployment the model is estimated using a threshold model estimator evidence from 20 oecd countries for the period 1960 1997 provides support for the existence of non linearities in terms of the output growth effects output growth has a strong effect on unemployment when unemployment is low and output is high and vice versa thus in bad times the effect of output growth on unemployment can be close to zero

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

modeling supply response in a multiproduct framework the paper models multiproduct supply response in agriculture and tests key assumptions traditionally maintained in supply response studies the technology is approximated by a restricted profit function the properties of the restricted profit function are imposed during estimation the hypothesis that maintains the existence of output price and quantity indexes that satisfy the adding up property is rejected the existence of individual production functions for each output is also rejected unless joint production is permitted the estimates of responsiveness of a particular commodity to changes in own price or prices of competing outputs are likely to be considerably understated

a learning curve model with knowledge depreciation abstract empirical studies in several industries have verified that unit costs decline as organizations gain experience or knowledge in production which is referred to as the learning curve effect in the past two decades there has also been analytical work on the relationship between a firm s learning curve effects and its pricing and output decisions learning rates differ significantly across firms in the same industry and recent empirical evidence has shown that knowledge depreciation may be an important reason for these differences we propose and analyze a learning curve model with knowledge depreciation and provide several new insights first we show that there exists a steady state where knowledge level and unit cost remain constant over time and there exists an optimal path to this steady state many empirical researchers have observed this plateau phenomenon whereby unit costs decline but reach saturation after some time while this has been traditionally modeled exogenously in the learning curve literature by assuming that cost reduction stops at some level of knowledge through a convex decreasing unit cost function we provide an alternative endogenous explanation we are also able to show that unlike in the model without knowledge depreciation the production rate along the optimal path to the steady state may decrease over time also the knowledge level along the optimal path may actually decline over time finally we show that the optimal production rate decreases at higher interest rates and increases at higher knowledge depreciation rates in turn this implies that a high interest rate environment discourages firms from achieving high knowledge levels and results in higher prices on the other hand higher knowledge depreciation rates result in higher production rates and lower prices

separability testing in production economics the implications of separability in production are examined using duality restrictions on the profit function implied by separability of the production function and vice versa are derived in a simple way these restrictions are then calculated for commonly used classes of functional forms then the method is used to test separability of the profit function using experimental production data the hypothesis that the profit function was separable plant nutrients from spacing unit costs could not be rejected this implies that an aggregate price index for nutrients is appropriate

marketing production decisions in an industrial channel of distribution this paper presents a model that considers the interface between marketing and production decisions in a channel of distribution of industrial goods comprised of a manufacturer and a distributor the key issue investigated is the nature of the coordination within the channel in light of an unstable pattern of seasonal demand the investigation which focuses on dynamic issues considers production activities such as product delivery and inventory policy and their link to marketing strategies such as pricing policies the focus here is on the dynamic nature of the coordinational aspects of the various policies for example the following questions are addressed what is the distributor s pricing strategy throughout the season what is the nature of the contractual price in the channel under what conditions should the distributor carry no inventory throughout the seasonal period under what conditions should the manufacturer carry no inventory what is the impact of the seasonal parameters and differing h

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

an analysis on the structural stability of okun s law a cross country study okun s law postulates an inverse relationship between movements of the unemployment rate and the real gross domestic product gdp this article investigates okun s law for 15 oecd countries and checks for its the structural stability by using data on employment and the labour force whether structural instability is caused either from the demand side or supply side is inferred

research and productivity in mexican agriculture partial and total factor productivity tfp measures of mexican agriculture are calculated for 1960 90 the long run effects of research and international transfer of technology on tfp are examined over the 1940 90 period using cointegration procedures tfp increased at an average annual rate of 2 5 exceeding the corresponding growth in the united states 2 1 tfp grew particularly fast in the 1960s and 1970s a 1 rise in research investment increased tfp by 0 13 and a 1 increase in u s tfp translated into a 1 11 increase in mexican tfp the average annual rate of return to research investment is about 64

aggregation without separability a generalized composite commodity theorem this paper provides general conditions for aggregating commodities without separable utility these conditions impose weaker and more empirically plausible restrictions on price movements than the currently existing alternative to separability the hicks leontief composite commodity theorem the idea is to allow departures from hicks leontief that take the form of well behaved error terms utility functions that permit generalized composite commodity aggregation include the aids model the translog all homothetic utility functions and any utility function when demands are aggregated to two groups of goods implications of empirical nonstationarity of relative prices for aggregation and demand estimation are considered copyright 1996 by american economic association

okun s law asymmetries and jobless recoveries in the united states a markov switching approach abstract prevailing markov regime switching approaches to asymmetries in okun s law assume either asymmetry between unemployment and output across regimes or asymmetry within a regime we combine both approaches and give an insight into the 1991 and 2001 united states jobless recoveries

re spending rebound a macro level assessment for oecd countries and emerging economies abstract it is well known that energy conservation can lead to rebound effects that partly offset the original energy savings one particular rebound mechanism is re spending of money savings associated with energy savings on energy intensive goods or services we calculate the average magnitude of this re spending rebound for different fuels and countries and for both energy and carbon co2 emissions we find that emerging economies neglected in past studies typically have larger rebounds than oecd countries since such economies play an increasingly important role in the global economy the re spending rebound is a growing concern the re spending effect is generally larger for gasoline than for natural gas and electricity paradoxically stronger financial incentives to conserve energy tend to increase the rebound this suggests that with climate regulation and peak oil the re spending rebound may become more important we discuss the policy implications of our findings

growth in global materials use gdp and population during the 20th century the growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change we present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting mfa on the grounds of published statistical data data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass fossil energy carriers metal ores industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005 this period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth the paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy population growth and primary energy consumption we show that during the last century global materials use increased 8 fold humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons gt of materials per year in particular the period after wwii was characterized by rapid physical growth driven by both population and economic growth within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy but faster than world population as a consequence material intensity i e the amount of materials required per unit of gdp declined while materials use per capita doubled from 4 6 to 10 3 t cap yr the main material groups show different trajectories while biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace we show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions so far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development

challenges in assessing public opinion on economic growth versus environment considering european and us data abstract the enduring scientific debate about economic growth versus the environment has recently received new impetus nonetheless there is virtually unanimous support for growth in politics this may partly be due to an assumed social consensus about the desirability of growth here we examine public perceptions relevant to the growth debate by using data from a large number of representative surveys conducted in europe and the us the main findings are i a relative majority of respondents seem to believe that economic growth and environmental protection are compatible even though a fraction of the population might have unstable opinions ii when people have to choose environmental protection is prioritized in most surveys and countries and iii the public has limited factual knowledge of relevant concepts and data such as the meaning of economic growth and past gdp growth rates these findings are discussed and further qualified we highlight the importance of methodological aspects such as question wording and format in the interpretation of the results and draw implications for political debate and future research on economic growth and the environment

trade liberalization and agricultural chemical use united states and mexico to anticipate the likely effects of recent trade agreements with mexico on the environment and food safety this paper examines changes in agricultural chemical use econometric estimation and simulation suggest that the combined effects of the north american free trade agreement nafta economic growth research investment and farm policy are expected to increase chemical usage substantially in the united states and undoubtedly lead to greater groundwater contamination in mexico the expected effects are a substantial increase in fertilizer use but a decrease in pesticide use increases in private research investment are expected to increase the use of both types of chemicals but increases in public research investment in the united states are not

the learning curve and optimal production under uncertainty this article examines the implications of the learning curve in a world of uncertainty we consider a competitive firm whose costs decline with cumulative output because the price of the firm s output evolves stochastically future production and cumulative output are unknown and are contingent on future prices and costs we derive an optimal decision rule that maximizes the firm s market value produce when the price exceeds a critical level which is a declining function of cumulative output we show how the shadow value of cumulative production the total value of the firm and the decision to produce depend on the volatility of the price and other parameters uncertainty increases the critical price required for the firm to produce but also increases the value of thefirm thus during periods of high volatility firms facing a learning curve ought to be producing less but are worth more

okun s law in panels of countries and states this article contributes to the empirical literature of okun s law in three respects first in contrast to the limited data used in the existing studies we employ two extensive across countries and across states i e within a country panel data sets to investigate the validity of okun s law second the use of the pooled mean group pmg estimator permits us not to pre filter the data as often done in the current literature and can take into account the possibility of cointegration between unemployment and output third in addition to the short run relationship or cyclical components between unemployment and output we also estimate the long run linkage between these two important variables empirical results show that unemployment and output are long run cointegrated irrespective of using country or state level data moreover the unemployment output linkages are found to be negative and highly significant both in the short and long run our results not only confirm the validity of okun s law

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

ghg emissions gdp growth and the kyoto protocol a revisit of environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the kyoto protocol attempts through political negotiations to guide participating industrialized countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions from a positive growing trend to reach a peak point or turning point and then be reduced to a negative growth that means the relationship between decreasing ghg emissions and economic growth may be described by an inverted u curve or called a bell shaped curve which is consistent with the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis this research observed that the economic development and ghg emissions in economies in transition eits exhibit a hockey stick curve trend or called quasi l shape curve that also generates a lot of hot air which is significant to the implementation of the kyoto protocol in addition through the analysis of single country time series data and gdp data this research demonstrated that statistical data for most of the annex ii countries do not possess evidence that supports the ekc hypothesis for ghg emissions the results from this study also indicated that the 38 industrialized countries are unable to meet their targets under the kyoto protocol within the specified time period which are probably caused by the econometric method s inability to predict accurately the extents and development of innovative technologies and clean development mechanism cdm projects if the international community truly wants to reduce the ghg emissions the effectiveness of the existing international framework for emissions reduction needs to be reconsidered seriously and the global cooperation mechanism also needs to be greatly enhanced

degrowth taking stock and reviewing an emerging academic paradigm degrowth has evolved within a decade from an activist movement into a multi disciplinary academic paradigm however an overview taking stock of the peer refereed degrowth literature is yet missing here we review 91 articles that were published between 2006 and 2015 we find that the academic degrowth discourse occupies a small but expanding niche at the intersection of social and applied environmental sciences the discourse is shaped by authors from high income mainly mediterranean countries until 2012 articles largely constitute conceptual essays endorsed by normative claims more recently degrowth has branched out into modelling empirical assessments and the study of concrete implementations authors tend to agree in that economic growth cannot be sustained ad infinitum on a resource constraint planet and that degrowth requires far reaching societal change whether degrowth should be considered as a collectively consented choice or an environmentally imposed inevitability constitutes a major debate among degrowth thinkers we argue that the academic discourse could benefit from rigid hypotheses testing through input output modelling material flow analysis life cycle assessments or social surveys by analyzing the potentials for non market value creation and identifying concrete well being benefits the degrowth discourse could receive wider public support and contribute to a paradigmatic change in the social sciences

mexican agricultural trade under the gatt expected effects from partially lifting tariff barriers on the mexican agricultural sector are investigated using a restricted profit function rpf approach short run and intermediate run effects of the implementation of gatt minimum tariff provisions on mexican agricultural trade are examined specification tests reveal the appropriateness of the rpf approach that exports should not be aggregated with non traded production into a single output and that the farm sector behaves as an almost price taking profit maximizing firm policy simulations suggest important short run changes in agricultural trade and chemical use and intermediate run changes in agricultural trade labour wage chemical use capital investments and net farm income

an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration this paper investigates the effect of product substitutability on nash equilibrium distribution structures in a duopoly where each manufacturer distributes its goods through a single exclusive retailer which may be either a franchised outlet or a factory store static linear demand and cost functions are assumed and a number of rules about players expectations of competitors behavior are examined it is found that for most specifications product substitutability does influence the equilibrium distribution structure for low degrees of substitutability each manufacturer will distribute its product through a company store for more highly competitive goods manufacturers will be more likely to use a decentralized distribution system this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 2 pages 161 191 in 1983

the relationship between production and unemployment in japan okun s law in comparative perspective abstract this paper studies the question whether the celebrated okun s law a relation between excess capacity and unemployment applies to the postwar japanese economy though the fitness of estimation is weak the coefficient that measures the responsiveness of the output gap to the unemployment rate is very large reaching 28 this large coefficient can be attributed to the elastic response in the female participation ratio to flexible working hours to the slow adjustment in employment and to changes in industrial structures the results are compared with those in the united states

conflicts between theory and practice in production economics nomic relationships allows multiple theoretical models to explain essentially the same behavior at the same time indirect measurement places great demands on data to test theory for example using parametric tests for profit maximization requires estimating second order curvature parameters to ascertain whether parameters exhibit certain properties it may be difficult to determine second order substitution effects using related price data which in practice are often highly collinear as technical demands placed on data for testing underlying theory increase conflicts between theory and empirical evidence should also be expected to rise

is the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a threatened theory a meta analysis of the literature abstract although widely studied deforestation remains a common research topic the relationship between economic development and deforestation is still in question this paper presents a meta analysis of environmental kuznets curve ekc studies for deforestation using 69 studies offering 547 estimations we shed light on why ekc results differ we investigate the incidence of choices made by authors such as econometric strategy measure of deforestation geographical area and presence of control variables on the probability of finding an ekc after a phase of work corroborating the ekc we find a turning point after the year 2001 building on our results we conclude that the ekc story will not fade until theoretical alternatives are provided

a cross country analysis of the okun s law coefficient convergence in europe the paper examines whether or not evidence is consistent with convergence of the okun s law coefficient olc among several alternative groupings of european economies a two step empirical strategy is employed the first step obtains rolling regression estimates of the olc for individual european countries the second step examines how the cross country variance of the olc evolves over the decade until 2002 in the selected country groupings evidence is found consistent with convergence of the olc among northern european countries and among countries with centralized wage bargaining but an absence of convergence in other country groups

is there a core of practical macroeconomics that we should all believe with emphasis on the adjective practical and the normative verb should my answer to the question of this session is a resounding yes indeed i spent a good deal of time between january 1993 and january 1996 acting on the belief that there is such a core macro model so i certainly hope it exists this believable core model falls well short of perfection leaves many questions unanswered and is subject to substantial stochastic errors nonetheless it is both useful and extensively used in policy analysis where contact with reality is a necessity and you cannot beat something with nothing it also closely resembles but does not quite match the way macroeconomics is taught to beginning and intermediate but not to graduate students in this short presentation i will describe briefly the main practical elements that i think we should agree on without worrying too much about their theoretical underpinnings then i will turn to two critical failings of the standard macro model which cry out for theoretical and empirical repair my organizing principle is the textbook exposition that has been standard though not universal in teaching intermediate macroeconomics for years the question is how does it differ from the core model used in policy analysis

sustainability in a post keynesian growth model for an open economy the paper expands the bop constraint growth model and kaldorian regimes productivity and demand regimes in order to include some of the concerns raised by ecological economics in post keynesian models for open economies the demand regime is modified by taking into account porter s hypothesis which suggests that environmental innovations spurred by environmental policies can foster competitiveness as a result the equilibrium bop constrained rate of growth increases leading to a different version of thirlwall s law which opens room for analyzing the impact of environmental innovations on convergence between developing and developed economies the productivity regime in turn considers the growth and employment implications of innovations in labor productivity standard innovations and environmental efficiency environmental innovations it is argued that the fiscal policy and composition of public expenditure matter for long run growth employment and sustainability

the impact of tfp growth on steady state unemployment theoretical predictions of the impact of total factor productivity tfp growth on unemployment are ambiguous and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs we evaluate a model with embodied and disembodied technology capitalization and creative destruction effects in econometric estimates with a panel of industrial countries we find a large negative impact of tfp growth on unemployment which implies that embodied technology and creative destruction play no role in the steady state dynamics of unemployment capitalization effects explain some of the estimated impact but a part remains unexplained

asymmetry in okun s law in this paper we support the proposition that the output unemployment relationship as represented by okun s law is asymmetric okun s coefficients are defined based on a dynamic model that allows for asymmetry in the relationship between cyclical output and unemployment using data from the united states for the post war period our results show that the short run effects of positive cyclical output on cyclical unemployment are quantitatively different from those of negative ones and the data are consistent with the proposition that cyclical unemployment is more sensitive to negative than to positive cyclical output several theoretical

a nonparametric analysis of agricultural technology u s agricultural technology and technical change are analyzed nonparametrically under cost minimization and profit maximization based on annual data for 1948 83 various separability hypotheses concerning the aggregate production function for u s agriculture are investigated the proposed nonparametric approach also provides some insights into the nature of technical change

can the share economy conquer stagflation this paper analyzes weitzman s contention that a share economy will significantly improve the unemployment inflation tradeoff it is shown that the argument rests on a critical proposition that share contracts lead to labor s being in perpetual excess demand the basis of this proposition is challenged using a wide variety of models of the labor market the paper concludes that the microeconomics of share economies differs little from that of wage economies and that a widespread introduction of share contracts is unlikely to improve macroeconomic performance

cyclical output cyclical unemployment and okun s coefficient a new approach estimates of okun s coefficient are obtained using new estimates of cyclical gnp and cyclical unemployment rates for the post war usa empirical estimates of the coefficient are near 0 25 somewhat smaller in magnitude than other recent estimates obtained applying similar econometric techniques to different estimates of cyclical output and unemployment tests fail to reject the hypothesis of parameter stability across an hypothesized break between the third and fourth quarters of 1973 suggesting similar relationships between cyclical output and unemployment both before and after the supply shocks of the 1970s

taking the u out of kuznets a comprehensive analysis of the ekc and environmental degradation unlike most environmental kuznets curve ekc studies which focus on narrow measures of pollution as proxies for environmental quality we test the validity of the ekc using the ecological footprint ef a more comprehensive measure of environmental degradation we find no empirical evidence of an ekc relationship between the ef and economic development and only limited support for such a relationship among the components of the ef in addition we discover that energy is largely responsible for the lack of an ekc relationship and that energy consumption levels would have to be cut by over 50 in order for a statistically significant ekc relationship to emerge from the data overall these results suggest that growth alone will not lead to sustainable development

a further critique of growth economics is aggregate physical growth still economic as it was in the empty world or has it become uneconomic as we have moved into the full world era first i discuss why this critical question has been ignored by mainstream economists and policy makers second i consider 11 fallacies or anomalies that confuse reasoning about economic growth and undercut the current policy presumption in its favor

more leisure or higher pay a mixed methods study on reducing working time in austria working time reduction has become a central topic in the debate on social ecological transformation as it has the potential to mitigate unemployment improve well being and reduce environmental pressures this article analyses which groups of employees want to reduce their working time and for which reasons a novel working time policy in austria the leisure option provides a unique possibility to examine this question this policy enables employees to choose between a wage increase and more leisure time we use a mixed methods approach to analyse employees preferences and the decision to reduce working time with two empirical parts run in parallel a binary logit regression based on austrian microcensus 2012 data investigates factors associated with a preference for reduced working time qualitative interviews are conducted among employees at a firm in the electronics industry that offers the leisure option our results suggest that working time preferences are to a large extent shaped by social norms such as the full time working norm and gender roles we also find that the desire to work less is strongly moulded by personal values placed either on leisure and family time or on financial security

profit maximization returns to scale and measurement error a nonparametric analysis of agricultural production behavior was conducted for each of the contiguous forty eight states for the period 1956 82 under the joint hypothesis of profit maximization convex technology and nonregressive technical change tests were conducted in each state for profit maximization and for constant returns to scale although considerable variability was observed among states measurement errors of magnitudes common in secondary data yielded test results fully consistent with the profit maximization hypothesis in all states with complete output and input data copyright 1992 by mit press

a non parametric analysis of productivity the case of u s and japanese manufacturing a nonparametric analysis of technology technical change and productivity is presented in the context of cost minimizing behavior a number of nonparametric tests concerning the existence and nature of technical change are applied to u s and japanese manufacturing data nonparametric measures of technical change are presented copyright 1990 by american economic association

quality improvement and goodwill accumulation in a dynamic duopoly abstract this paper analyzes optimal advertising and quality improvement decisions by duopolist firms competing in a dynamic setting an extended version of the lanchester model is formulated where conformance quality and goodwill are both involved in competition for market share each competitor s new customer attraction rate depends on its own goodwill while the disloyalty rate for current customers is influenced by the proportion of defective items the search for a non cooperative solution by qualitative as well as numerical means leads to definition of the optimal path for advertising and improvement efforts for each competitor examined under a wide range of configurations

aggregation of data and profit maximization in mexican agriculture nonparametric support for two important hypotheses relevant to econometric model specification is examined results of various nonparametric tests for behavioural objective and aggregation level of mexican agricultural production data are reported the evidence does not refute the hypothesis that producers behave collectively as though they are a price taking profit maximizing firm the empirical results also support exhaustive aggregation of input categories aggregation possibilities among outputs are fewer and are highly sensitive to the rejection criterion