co2 emissions of international freight transport and offshoring measurement and allocation abstract the growing offshoring process is the result of the fragmentation of production processes and the creation of global supply chains this process has increased final and intermediate imports but also the distance that goods travel in different stages until they reach the final consumer as well as the requirements of transport per unit of output and the volume of co 2 emissions generated in transporting them nowadays there is no generally accepted criterion for international transport pollution allocation no single country has the responsibility for emissions of international bunkers provided by ipcc in this paper we propose a new methodology for quantifying by sector the impact of international freight transport on total pollution and assigning responsibility to consumers this methodology considers the distance and the means of transport as key elements and uses input output methodology we apply this to the spanish economy combining data from input output tables import data and co 2 emission data the results show that the proportion of total co 2 emissions accounted for by emissions from international freight transportation allocated via the consumer criterion increase up to 4 16 between 1995 and 2000 as expected the industries where this offshoring process is more intense show the greatest increases in carbon emissions related to international transport these emissions are significantly higher than emissions embodied in domestic inputs in some of those industries where international fragmentation of production is relevant and increasing

co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 a structural decomposition analysis abstract this study examines the annual co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 using environmental input output analysis four driving forces including emission intensity economic production structure export composition and total export volume are compared for their contributions to the increase of embodied co2 emissions using a structural decomposition analysis sda technique although offset by the decrease in emission intensity the increase of embodied co2 emissions was driven by changes of the other three factors in particular the change of the export composition was the largest driver primarily due to the increasing fraction of metal products in china s total export relevant policy implications and future research directions are discussed at the end of the paper

spatial sustainability trade and indicators an evaluation of the ecological footprint the search for frameworks and indicators of sustainable development has taken a prominent place in this journal however some specific aspects have received little or no attention notably the spatial dimension and the role of international trade in indicator development moreover many sustainable development indicators comprise implicit valuations weighting schemes and policy objectives which are insufficiently recognised as such this contribution tries to highlight these issues by means of a review of a recently proposed indicator for ecological economic analysis namely the ecological footprint that has been developed by wackernagel and rees its concept and calculation procedure are criticised on a number of points and it is concluded that the ecological footprint is not the comprehensive and transparent planning tool as is often assumed in explaining our position we will argue that spatial sustainability and regional sustainable development have not been precisely discussed so far neither in the literature on trade and environment nor in that on sustainable development we will defend the view that trade can contribute positively and negatively to environmental unsustainability consequently indicators and models are needed that allow for analysing interactions and trade offs between such opposite effects 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

china s balance of emissions embodied in trade approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility international trade is characterized not only by the flow of capital and goods but also by the energy and emissions embodied in goods during their production this paper investigates the evolving role that chinese trade is playing in the response to climate change by estimating the scale of emissions embodied in china s current trade pattern and demonstrating the magnitude of the difference between the emissions it produces some of which are incurred to meet the consumption demands of the rest of the world and the emissions embodied in the goods it consumes estimating china s emissions on a consumption rather than a production basis both lowers its responsibility for carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 2006 from 5 500 to 3 840mtco2 and reduces the growth rate of emissions from an average of 12 5 per cent p a to 8 7 per cent p a between 2001 and 2006 the analysis indicates that a reliable consumption based accounting methodology is feasible and could improve our understanding of which actors and states are responsible for emissions for example recent emissions reductions by developed countries may lack credibility if production has merely been displaced to countries such as china moreover in the current institutional context production methodologies encourage leakages through trade that may do more to displace than to reduce emissions both equity and efficiency concerns therefore suggest that emissions embodied in trade should receive special attention in the distribution of post kyoto abatement burdens

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

a first empirical comparison of energy footprints embodied in trade mrio versus plum abstract the ecological footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country including the impacts associated with trade the national footprint accounts nfa by global footprint network gfn calculate trade embodied footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a product land use matrix plum this article compares energy footprints embodied in trade from and to the united kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the nfa plum with the results from a recently developed multi region input output model mrio for the uk although totals for imports and exports are comparable breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods the omission of trade in services especially transport services and upstream impacts of energy goods fossil fuels and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the nfa plum method are identified as the main reasons for these differences in the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input output based approach i conclude that mrio models once fully developed will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the ecological footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter industry linkages international supply chains and multi national trade flows

structural changes and sustainability a selected review of the empirical evidence abstract the paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability we focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity changes of the sectoral composition of economies trade and international fragmentation of production technological change and innovation and demand we identify several empirical facts first only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency second the long term shift from manufacturing to services has not led in all cases to the de materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity third global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the pollution haven hypothesis which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries the pursuit by developing countries of a long term strategy of trading jobs for emissions is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies the review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

embodied carbon in trade a survey of the empirical literature this paper critically reviews the literature on embodied carbon in trade and evaluates our present empirical understanding of these flows a careful comparison of quantitative results from this literature exposes significant inconsistencies for instance estimates for emission embodied in world trade in 2004 range between 4 4 gt and 6 2 gt co2 the difference corresponding to around half of europe s annual emissions a few consistent themes do nevertheless emerge from the literature most importantly emissions in trade constitute a large and growing share of global emissions uncertainty about country level embodied emissions remains large however which presents severe limitations for the practical application of embodied carbon principles in climate policy

manufactured exports and terms of trade of developing countries evidence from sri lanka terms of trade implications of diversification into manufactured exports in a traditional primary exporting country are examined in the light of the sri lankan experience over the past two decades the empirical analysis focuses on trends in both commodity and income terms of trade employing a methodology which takes care of the spurious regression problem the results suggest that contrary to the new terms of trade pessimism export diversification has brought about significant terms of trade gains for the sri lankan economy overall the study casts doubt on the robustness of results coming from analyses of price trends in aggregate manufactured exports and calls for systematic time profile analyses of the countries which have achieved significant export diversification in order to inform the policy debate

collusion exclusion and inclusion in random order bargaining this paper examines the profitability of three types of integration in a cooperative game solved by a random order value e g the shapley value collusion between players i and j is a contract merging their resources in the hands of one of them say i this contract can be represented as a combination of exclusion which lets i exclude j s resource but not use it himself and inclusion which lets i use j s resource but not exclude j from it this representation yields a third difference condition on the characteristic function that determines the profitability of collusion generalizing existing results for specific games namely collusion is profitable unprofitable when the complementarity of the colluding players is reduced increased by other players

global effects of national biomass production and consumption austria s embodied hanpp related to agricultural biomass in the year 2000 global trade of biomass related products is growing exponentially resulting in increasing teleconnections between producing and consuming regions sustainable management of the earth s lands requires indicators to monitor these connections across regions and scales the embodied human appropriation of npp ehanpp allows one to consistently attribute the hanpp resulting from production chains to consumers hanpp is the sum of land use induced npp changes and biomass harvest we present the first national level assessment of embodied hanpp related to agriculture based on a calculation using bilateral trade matrices the dataset allows 1 the tracing of the biomass based products consumed in austria in the year 2000 to their countries of origin and quantifying the hanpp caused in production and 2 the assigning of the national level hanpp on austria s territory to the consumers of the products on the national level the dataset is constructed along a consistent system boundary between society and ecosystems and can be used to assess austria s physical trade balance in terms of ehanpp austria s ehanpp trade balance is slightly negative imports are larger than exports import and export flows are large in relation to national hanpp our findings show how the ehanpp approach can be used for quantifying and mapping the teleconnections related to a nation s biomass metabolism

caloric unequal exchange in latin america and the caribbean the existence of an unequal exchange between rich and poor countries has been well studied in the literature explained by differences in labour costs that were reflected in the prices of traded goods research has also demonstrated that the failure to include environmental impacts in prices of traded goods concealed an ecologically unequal exchange this paper contributes to the discussion with the newly coined concept of caloric unequal exchange that defines the deterioration of terms of trade in food in units of calories exports and imports to and from latin america and the caribbean are analysed for the period 1961 through 2011 in volume value and calories for different groups of products the study concludes that although calories exported by the region to the rest of the world are more expensive than those imported the ratio is deteriorating over time this trend is found to be dependent of the trading partner involved the region is helping the rest of the world in supplying their diets at a lower cost a side result is that globalisation is homogenising diets over time concentrating most food consumption in a reduced number of products and therefore increasing interdependency among countries and affecting food security

will economic restructuring in china reduce trade embodied co2 emissions we acknowledge the support of the national social science foundation of china project no project no 09 zd029 and the institute for energy environment and economy at tsinghua university which is supporting tianyu qi s doctoral research as a visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology we further acknowledge the support of eni s p a icf international and shell international ltd initial sponsors of the china energy and climate project in the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change at mit none of the sponsoring organizations played a role in the study design collection analysis or interpretation of the data used for this study nor did they influence our decisions to submit the article for publication and all errors are our own we also acknowledge general industrial and government sponsors of the joint program on the science and policy of global change http globalchange mit edu sponsors all

optimal incentives for sequential production processes i study optimal incentive schemes in organizations where agents perform their tasks sequentially i consider a model in which agents effort decisions are mapped into the probability of the project s success an optimal investment inducing mechanism allocates rewards to agents so as to induce all of them to exert effort in equilibrium at minimal cost to the principal i characterize the unique optimal mechanism in several versions of my benchmark model i also address the problem of allocating individuals with diverse qualifications to different slots of the production process as well as allocating tasks of different importance across different agents copyright 2006 rand

the dynamics of willingness to consume abstract it is increasingly acknowledged that the growing consumption in the north constitutes an important part of global environmental problems to improve the possibilities of dealing with this aspect of the problems this paper explores some of the driving forces behind the growth in consumption the first section introduces the environmental debate on consumption including the relationship between final consumption and the consumption of resources the recent political acceptance of dealing with consumption and the fundamental conditions for consumption growth in the north in the following sections a cross disciplinary approach is applied in a broad search for the driving forces behind the willingness to consume throughout the exposition two questions are explored 1 why are productivity increases largely transformed into income increases instead of more leisure 2 why is such a large part of these income increases used for the consumption of goods and services with a relatively high materials intensity instead of less material intensive alternatives the explanations are divided into three groups first the economic explanations including socio economic aspects related to the institutional set up of the economy second socio psychological explanations focusing on consumption from the perspective of the human being embedded in specific social relations third historical and socio technological explanations focusing on different aspects of everyday life the paper concludes with some reflections on the political implications of the analysis

embodied pollution in trade estimating the environmental load displacement of industrialised countries abstract the present paper sets out to aid in the development of environmental load displacement indicators developing the notion of the environmental memory of physical flows we estimated embodied pollution in trade of 18 industrialized countries with a the rest of the world and b developing countries from 1976 to 1994 we found that in the last years of analysis total imports of japan usa and western europe have entailed in general larger air pollutant emissions than local exports the balance of embodied emissions in trade beet seems to follow an inverted u shape across time in japan and western europe and an n shape in the us in the period of analysis japanese and european environmental terms of trade with developing countries improved from the japanese and european point of view whereas american environmental terms of trade with developing countries deteriorated over time although there is no statistical trend between income and embodied emissions in imports in a cross section analysis there does seem to be a positive relationship between both variables at a national level the results suggest that despite many shortcomings this type of assessment may shed useful insights on the international aspects of sustainable development

incentives and discrimination optimal incentive mechanisms may require that agents are rewarded differentially even when they are completely identical and are induced to act the same we demonstrate this point by means of a simple incentive model where agents decisions about effort exertion is mapped into a probability that the project will succeed we give necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal incentive mechanisms to be discriminatory we also show that full discrimination across all agents is required if and only if the technology has increasing return to scale in the non symmetric framework we show that negligible differences in agents attributes may result in major differences in rewards in the unique optimal mechanism this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

international trade and the sustainability footprint a practical criterion for its assessment a simple and minimal criterion for sustainability is that the value of natural capital plus manufactured capital be not decreasing on the basis of any individual country or region the above simple comparison may be misleading as it does not take account of the production of goods for consumption in other countries regions via international trade in other terms the full environmental footprint of a country may not be properly assessed a method of calculating a weak sustainability criterion has been established for both a closed economy approach and an open economy approach there are significant differences between the open and closed economies measures for several regions particularly the middle east overall global sustainability on this criterion has been positive and increasing using a difference equation approach a further analysis has been made of the average proportional rate of change of global sustainability between 1980 and 1990 and its various regional and structural components have been determined these indicate that most of global sustainability growth can be attributed to western europe other asia and japan particularly through high savings ratios the usa on the other hand has made a very small net contribution to the growth in global sustainability

embedding the drivers of emission efficiency at regional level analyses of namea data abstract this paper provides new empirical evidence on regional national disparities in environmental efficiency based on analyses of namea data referring to italy and the lazio region where rome is the main city shift share analyses provide evidence on the drivers of environmental efficiency and on sector specificity our evidence shows that although the region around rome has achieved higher environmental performance compared to italy mainly thank to its being less industry based some critical points in the energy sector and in some services should be taken into account in shaping the future development of the region in addition the use of regional namea for econometric investigations of emission efficiency drivers at national level shows that though north south disparities favour northern and richer regions in accordance with development oriented dynamics environmental hot spots driven by specialisation and efficiency related issues also appear in some northern industrial regions further the role of public ad private r d is of main relevance in enhancing emission on economic value ratios environmental industrial and sector oriented policy making may derive valuable information from the evidence provided by our study that highlights how analytical exploitation of namea offers rich array of insights for regional policy making

trade in environmental goods evidences from an analysis using elasticities of trade costs negotiations on the liberalization of environmental goods egs and services within the wto doha round mandated in november 2001 are facing specific challenges conflicting interests and differing perceptions of the benefits of increased trade in egs were reflected in different approaches proposed for determining egs using import data of 34 organisation for economic co operation and development oecd member countries and from a sample of 167 countries from 1995 to 2012 we discuss the trade effect of reducing barriers on egs we analyze the lists of egs proposed by the asia pacific economic cooperation and oecd using a translog gravity model we found that removing tariff barriers for egs will have a modest impact because for the biggest importers and exporters elasticities of trade costs are very low while for most trading relationships they are very high making it difficult for exporters to maintain their markets overall our results suggest that because of their substantial effect on international trade future negotiations on egs should also address the issues of standards and nontariff barriers

less than 2 c an economic environmental evaluation of the paris agreement abstract the literature dedicated to the analysis of the different climate agreements has usually focused on the effectiveness of the aims for emissions in the light of the advance in climate change this article quantifies the variation in emissions that the intended nationally determined contributions indcs will entail and their financial allocation and policies country by country and regionally the objective is evaluating the paris agreement feasibility regarding the indcs and its economic and environmental constraints the criteria through which the 161 indcs are analysed are as follows i socio economic impact of the transition ii focus on energy management iii substitution of non renewable sources iv the role of technology v equality of the transition vi compliance with emission reductions the results obtained show that the paris agreement excessively relies on external financial support 41 4 moreover its unilateralist approach the socio economic and biophysical constraints could be the underlying cause of the ineffectiveness of the 2 c objective this way each country would emit an average of 37 8 more than in the years 2005 2015 when this is weighted the figure would be a 19 3 increase due mainly to the increases in china and india these figures would lead the temperatures up to 3 4 c

evolution and drivers of production based carbon emissions in china and india differences and similarities abstract added global carbon emissions have mainly come from china and india since 2012 which indicates importance of two countries in curbing global co2 emissions thus their respective mitigation lessons have more realistic significance in developing more effective mitigation strategy this study compared the dynamic evolution of their co2 emissions and driving factors behind changes in order to find similarities and differences of two countries and provide available policy implications to further reduce carbon emissions firstly both china s and india s carbon emissions have been increasing during 2000 14 3 4 9 9 gt and 0 9 2 0 gt respectively however tendency of two countries varied differently growth of china s co2 have slowed down after the 2008 financial crisis while india s emissions were still accelerating at a high level on account of growing share of carbon intensive energy in the whole energy structure from the national and sectoral perspectives both trends of carbon emissions from two countries have been analyzed according to structural decomposition analysis efficiency gains and slowdown of economic growth in china contributed to most decline of co2 but both production and consumption structures urged emissions up while structure effects in india slightly reduced its co2 but low emission efficiency and expansion of trade scales caused growth of emissions on this basis firstly china should optimize production structures by upgrading industries while india should promote energy transformation and improve energy efficiencies secondly strengthening cooperation and communications with developed countries with advanced technology and experience may make more progress in climate change for two countries experience and lessons of emission reduction deriving from the two would also provide references for other regions

analysing andalusian virtual water trade in an input output framework dietzenbacher e and velazquez e 2007 analysing andalusian virtual water trade in an input output framework regional studies 41 1 12 andalusian agricultural sectors are relatively small but account for 90 of annual water consumption more than 50 of the agricultural final demands is exported to other spanish regions or abroad using the concept of virtual water within an input output framework it is found that a substantial part of andalusian water consumption is embodied in its exports considering the virtual water content of its trade andalusia is a net exporter of water examining regional policy aspects a reduction in the exports abroad of agricultural products yields considerable benefits in terms of water savings while the negative effects are only moderate dietzenbacher e et velazquez e 2007 une analyse des echanges andalous d eau virtuelle dans le contexte d un tableau d echanges interindustriels regional studies 41 1 12 les secteurs agricoles andalous sont relativement petit

ecologically unsustainable trade abstract international trade although balanced in monetary terms may be unequal in terms of the exchange of biomass and sink capacity it may also be unilaterally or mutually unsustainable if it implies the overuse of the biocapacity in either one or both of the trading partners in this article the ecological footprint concept is used to distinguish different types of ecologically unsustainable trade but the issue of the possible effects of trade on the ecological footprints is also raised we distinguish four such effects an allocative effect an income effect a rich country illusion effect and a terms of trade effect since international trade can be a subtle mechanism by which ecological sustainability is preserved locally by means of importing biomass and sink capacity from other countries it can also blur the view of responsibility for the ecological effects of production and consumption at the end of this article some ethical and political dilemmas related to these issues are raised

transboundary effects of environmental policy markets and emission leakages abstract one of many explanations for environmental kuznets curves for rich countries can be that dirty production is relocated to economies with laxer abatement regimes if this is caused by national abatement policies environmental stresses are transferred to other countries further the economic costs of national abatement policies can be shared with foreigners to some extent both through a lower demand for imports and losses of market shares for foreign competitors that produce cleaner products we quantify effects internally and abroad of a growth induced unilateral carbon tax policy in a rich open economy we find that the environmental benefits fall and the economic costs rise when a global rather than a national perspective is employed

naive diversification strategies in defined contribution saving plans there is a worldwide trend toward defined contribution saving plans and growing interest in privatized social security plans in both environments individuals are given some responsibility to make their own asset allocation decisions raising concerns about how well they do at this task this paper investigates one aspect of the task namely diversification it is shown that some investors follow the 1 n strategy they divide their contributions evenly across the funds offered in the plan consistent with this naive notion of diversification it is found that the proportion invested in stocks depends strongly on the proportion of stock funds in the plan

why does the law of one price fail an experiment on index mutual funds we conduct an experiment to evaluate why individuals invest in high fee index funds in our experiments subjects allocate 10 000 across four s p 500 index funds and are rewarded for their portfolio s subsequent return subjects overwhelmingly fail to minimize fees we can reject the hypothesis that subjects buy high fee index funds because of bundled non portfolio services search costs for fees matter but even when we eliminate these costs fees are not minimized instead subjects place high weight on annualized returns since inception fees paid decrease with financial literacy interestingly subjects who choose high fee funds sense they are making a mistake

the physical dimension of international trade part 2 indirect global resource flows between 1962 and 2005 global trade is increasingly being challenged by observations of growing burden shifting in particular of environmental problems this paper presents the first worldwide calculations of shifted burden based on material flow indicators in particular direct and indirect physical trade balances this study covers the period between 1962 and 2005 and includes between 82 and 173 countries per year the results show that indirect trade flow volumes have increased to around 41 billion tonnes in 2005 the traded resources with the highest share of associated indirect flows are iron hard coal copper tin and increasingly palm oil regarding the burden balance between regions europe is the biggest shifter whereas australia and latin america are the largest takers of environmental burden due to resource extraction to evaluate the findings from a global perspective the results are analysed in terms of resource flow induced environmental pressure related to a country s land area in terms of total and per capita area resource endowment and population density seem to be more relevant in determining the physical trade balance including indirect flows than income level

capital theory and the measurement of sustainable development an indicator of weak sustainability the measurement of sustainable development is not without considerable difficulties yet this should not detract from the positive advances that can be made in this direction in this paper we present one form that a weak sustainability indicator can take derived from a simple but intuitive savings rule it incorporates the idea that the level of overall capital stock should be non decreasing although subject to qualification at this stage some interesting results emerge from the application of the rule to 18 countries

colombian international trade from a physical perspective towards an ecological prebisch thesis abstract prebisch s approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while centre countries export industrial goods the terms of trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate this approach can be extended to ecological issues the international centre periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital but also the physical exchange in which southern countries provide materials and energy so that northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism this metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods this paper aims to apply and extend prebisch s thought on unequal exchange both monetary and ecological in relation to colombian trade in the period 1970 2002 using material flow analysis

complexity and renegotiation a foundation for incomplete contracts the paper considers a hold up model where only one of n future trading opportunities will prove to be efficient and where ex post renegotiation of the ex ante contract cannot be prevented as the environment becomes more complex n the outcome under any message contingent long term contract converges to that of the incomplete contracting model where trade is contractible ex post but not ex ante when trades are costly to describe both ex ante and ex post the incomplete contracting result is extended to a broader class of environments

does ecologically unequal exchange occur the hypothesis of ecologically unequal exchange posits that low and middle income developing nations maintain an ecological deficit with wealthy developed nations exporting natural resources and high impact commodities thereby allowing wealthy economies to avoid operating ecologically impactful industries at home in this survey we assess the footprint of consumption of 187 countries using eight indicators of environmental pressure in order to determine whether or not this phenomenon occurs we use input output analysis with a new high resolution global multi region input output table to calculate each trading pair s balance of trade in biophysical terms of ghg emissions embodied water and scarcity weighted water content air pollution threatened species human appropriated net primary productivity total material flow and ecological footprint we test three hypotheses that should be true if ecologically unequal exchange occurs one the inter regional balance of trade in biophysical terms is disproportional to the balance of trade in financial terms we find this is true though not strongly so two exports from developing nations are more ecologically intensive than those from developed nations we find this is true three high income nations disproportionately exert ecological impacts in lower income nations we find this is false high income nations are mostly exporters not importers of biophysical resources

carbon dioxide emissions and trade evidence from disaggregate trade data abstract the relationship between trade and environmental quality is a major controversial issue the paper intends to provide robust evidence and new insights into the discussion specifically it examines the effect of trade on carbon dioxide emissions co2 systematically in a north north north south south north and south south context it employs a panel data instrumental variable quantile approach to control for endogeneity and account for potential quantile parameter heterogeneity some important results emerge first trade with the north increases co2 emissions whereas trade with the south mitigates co2 emissions with a relatively larger effect for less polluted host countries second for advanced countries their trade with the south or the north leads to a reduction in co2 emissions the effect that seems relatively stronger for less polluted advanced countries third for developing countries their trade with the north worsens co2 emissions whereas their trade with the south mitigates co2 emissions with a larger effect for less polluted developing countries last the environmental kuznets hypothesis is also detected across quantiles for the full sample and both developing and advanced countries subsamples the findings suggest that trade benefits the advanced countries but could hurt the developing countries when trade with high income trading partners occurs in terms of co2 emissions

energy limits on recycling abstract increasing efficiency of resource use is a major ecological economics goal opportunities for large efficiency increases have been found in every area carefully investigated what are the limits energy analysis offers powerful insights ayres has argued that even with unlimited available energy over time it becomes necessary to have ever more dilute waste reservoirs if correct this would significantly limit the potential of a hypothetical sustainable spaceship and of a spaceship economy however we know the world is self contained and long lived and that stable laboratory microcosms have been built thus this assertion appears to violate reality i argue that the alleged problem does not exist given available energy there is no concentration limit on sustainability my result is consistent with the work of georgescu roegen and others i estimate some numerical examples to show that present systems are extremely far from theoretical limits for a long time to come there will be vast opportunities to improve efficiency the paper includes a classification schema for recycling based on chemical bonding and thermodynamic considerations

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

international trade and the geographical separation between income and enabled carbon emissions abstract in this paper we study how international trade allows the geographical separation between the place where carbon emissions occur and the place where income from those emissions is derived we do so by studying the carbon emissions enabled by the primary inputs of products downstream along the production chain we find that 18 of global carbon emissions are enabled abroad and that developed economies fossil fuel exporters and asia account for 80 of the downstream emissions enabled by international trade both developed economies and fossil fuel exporters exhibit a positive trade balance of enabled emissions while for asia the opposite is true developed economies and fossil fuel exporters enable emissions mainly through the export of manufactured products 690 mt and fossil fuels 684 mt respectively while asia exhibits an outflow of enabled emissions through the import of fossil fuels 209 mt the measurement of enabled emissions allows the understanding of how a region s income is derived from carbon emissions occurring abroad

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

a trade related pollution trap for economies in transition evidence from china abstract this study argues that economic growth does not necessarily reverse the pollution haven behavior even if one economy shifts from the low income group to the high income one i e the economy in transition the economy in transition can become a convergence of trade related pollution then getting stuck in a pollution trap through investigating the case of china during 2003 2009 this study examines the features and causes of trade related pollution trap supported by the world input output database and the product specific statistics from china customs this study applies the input output analysis to trace the distribution of pollution embodied in china s foreign trade then it constructs a sector country year panel and applies the fixed effect model to examine causes of the pollution trap the results show that china s pollution terms of trade ptt with developing economies increases and exceeds one while the ptt with developed economies keeps larger than one it supports the feature of pollution trap the results also demonstrate that pollution trap is determined by the synergy of environmental regulation inter industry trade and intra industry trade 1 environmental regulations keep china from becoming pollution haven of developed economies rather than relocating pollution intensive production to other developing economies 2 the current intra industry trade of low value added products worsens china s environmental performance 3 the diluting advantage on labor and the accumulating advantage on capital keep china specializing in pollution intensive production overall the pollution trap may alert economies that applies the outward oriented growth model to prepare for sustainability transition our findings imply that going green rather than moving away is essential in response to trade environment effects more stringent regulation should improve the environmental performance of production and encourage the utilization of clean technology the increasing role of intra industry trade requires to upgrade the commodity structure towards one with higher added value

international trade and shared environmental responsibility by sector an application to the spanish economy abstract the aim of this paper is to define a shared responsibility criterion for analysing the impact of international trade on co 2 emissions applied to sectors with the approach proposed it is possible for sectors in a country to account for only a part of the emissions associated with exported and imported goods the agents considered as responsible for pollution are sectors two fold as producers and suppliers of intermediate inputs and final demand accounting for direct emissions linked to production and as consumers of intermediate inputs required for production accounting for direct and indirect emissions linked to consumption of inputs and the countries and foreign sectors that trade with these industries the responsibility of emissions is shared by all the participants along the global product chain depending on the value added of each step the criterion is applied to the spanish economy for the period 2000 to 2005 and proves useful for determining what economic policies may be suitable for mitigating anthropogenic impact on the environment and for including all the agents of the supply chain in the development of sustainable supply chain management

measuring sustainability a time series of alternative indicators for scotland this paper presents results from a time series analysis of seven alternative measures of sustainability for scotland the measures chosen are green net national product genuine savings ecological footprint environmental space net primary productivity the index of sustainable economic welfare and the genuine progress indicator these are all measures at the national or macro level we note arguments in the literature that no one single measure of sustainability is likely to be sufficient however very different messages concerning the sustainability of scotland over the period in question 1980 1993 emerge from these measures chosen we also argue that different indicators provide different insights for policy making

energy content of world trade this paper constructs a comprehensive dataset of oil and total energy embedded in world trade of manufacturing goods for 73 countries from 1978 to 2000 applying the data to debates on the dependency on foreign energy sources makes clear that achieving complete energy independence in the foreseeable future is unlikely to be feasible and may not be desirable applying it to the discussion of environmental kuznets curves ekcs highlights an important distinction between production and consumption of energy richer countries use relatively less energy in their industrial production yet still consume relatively large amounts of energy indirectly a further investigation largely excludes structural shifts of production in and out of the manufacturing sector as an explanation for the downward sloping portion of the ekc country level analyses add caveats but show tentative support for the cross country conclusions

temporal change of china s pollution terms of trade and its determinants abstract based on the world input output database wiod this study employed a revised pollution terms of trade ptt indicator to investigate the temporal change of china s environmental cost relative to its economic gains from international trade from 1995 to 2009 the results show that china has ptt larger than 1 indicating that china emits more emissions to obtain each unit of value added from exports than its trade partners over the period china s ptt first decreased from 1995 to 2001 and then increased from 2001 to 2009 the further decompositions show that improving technology is the leading driving force to decrease ptt while the change in global trade pattern is the leading force increasing ptt especially after 2001 we further decomposed the temporal change of china s ptt by income group of the trading partners the results show that the change in the global trade pattern is the crucial driving force behind the different changes of ptt by income group

hot hands in mutual funds short run persistence of relative performance 1974 1988 the relative performance of no load growth oriented mutual funds persists in the near term with the strongest evidence for a one year evaluation horizon portfolios of recent poor performers do significantly worse than standard benchmarks those of recent top performers do better though not significantly so the difference in risk adjusted performance between the top and bottom octile portfolios is six to eight percent per year these results are not attributable to known anomalies or survivorship bias investigations with a different previously used data set and with some post 1988 data confirm the finding of persistence

the pollution terms of trade and its five components abstract based on two extensions this paper proposes a re appraisal of the concept of the pollution terms of trade ptt introduced by antweiler 1996 first detailed data allows capturing the effect of differences in emission intensities across countries and over time second relying on johnson and noguera 2012 the revised ptt index controls for trade in intermediate goods and is based on value added rather than gross output figures applied to a database for so 2 emission intensities for 62 developed and developing countries over the 1990 2000 period it turns out that the first extension has a larger empirical importance than the second one the global pattern is one in which the major rich economies exhibit a ptt index below one higher pollution intensity in imports than in exports trade imbalances tend to exacerbate this asymmetry allowing rich economies to further offshore their pollution through trade

graduate education in ecological economics abstract interest in graduate education in ecological economics is increasing however no formal plan of study for a phd in ecological economics has been disseminated the lack of a formal plan is problematic as the field of ecological economics matures interest grows and new programs are being developed this paper attempts to fill a void by creating a program of study addressing the proficiencies a graduate student in ecological economics should have upon completion of his her phd based on the us educational system the plan of study presented in this paper has been developed to make the graduate of an ecological economics program as competitive on the labor market as students awarded traditional economics degrees the plan i describe is created to meet the requirements necessary for a phd in ecological economics further fields of specialization are suggested to complement the core of an ecological economics program to enhance the education process and to give the student with an ecological economics degree a higher level of marketability

the game of trading jobs for emissions following the debate on the implications of international trade for global climate policy this paper introduces the topic of the economic benefits from trade obtained by exporting countries in relation to the emissions generated in the production of exports in 2008 24 of global greenhouse gas ghg emissions and 20 of the employment around the world were linked to international trade china exported 30 of emissions and hosted 37 5 of the jobs generated by trade worldwide the european union and the united states of america were the destination of 25 and 18 4 of the ghg emissions embodied in trade the imports of these two regions contributed to the creation of 45 of the employment generated by international trade this paper proposes the idea of including trade issues in international climate negotiations taking into account not only the environmental burden generated by developed countries when displacing emissions to developing countries through their imports but also the economic benefits of developing countries producing the goods exported to developed countries

quantitative evaluation of time series ghg emissions by sector and region using consumption based accounting abstract this study estimates global time series consumption based ghg emissions by region from 1990 to 2005 including both co 2 and non co 2 ghg emissions estimations are conducted for the whole economy and for two specific sectors manufacturing and agriculture especially in the agricultural sector it is important to include non co 2 ghg emissions because these are the major emissions present in most of the regions examined the improvements in ghg intensities achieved in the manufacturing sector are larger than those in the agricultural sector compared with developing regions most developed regions have consistently larger per capita consumption based ghg emissions over the whole economy as well as higher production based emissions in the manufacturing sector differences calculated by subtracting production based emissions from consumption based ghg emissions are determined by the regional economic level while in the agricultural sector they are dependent on regional production structures that are determined by international trade competitiveness in the manufacturing sector these differences are consistently and increasingly positive for the u s eu15 and japan but negative for developing regions in the agricultural sector the differences calculated for the major agricultural importers like japan and the eu15 are consistently positive while those of exporters like the u s australia and new zealand are consistently negative

foreign trade and declining pollution in sweden a decomposition analysis of long term structural and technological effects this article examines whether there exists any causal relationship between foreign trade and declining pollution in developed countries in other words do developed countries outsource their problems to less developed countries rather than solve them the case study is the swedish economy and the two environmental indicators employed are energy consumption and co2 emissions no causal relationships are found since sweden has long been a net exporter of embodied energy and co2 and continues to be so after 1970 when energy consumption stabilizes and co2 emissions decline in addition the ratios of net exported energy and co2 to total consumption remain stable which means there were no effects on the energy intensity or co2 intensity either these results suggest that internal forces like efficiency improvements changed consumption patterns and transformation of the energy system have been crucial for relative environmental improvement in sweden while foreign trade has played no role

product level embodied carbon flows in bilateral trade as increasingly complex modelling approaches to quantifying embodied carbon in trade have become popular the lack of disaggregation has been identified as a key weakness this paper quantifies embodied carbon in bilateral trade at the product level this is done using the material balance approach by collecting product carbon intensity factors from multiple data sources and combining with bilateral trade data in physical quantities the dataset covers trades between 195 countries for 1080 products in 2006 the detailed mapping of trade embodied carbon provides detailed insights into the nature of the flows that were previously masked or under reported for example it finds that the lion s share of global trade embodied emissions are concentrated in a relatively small number of product categories of traded goods suggesting that focusing mitigation efforts and trade measures on these products would be an effective strategy to address potential carbon leakage and to decarbonise international supply chains the results also highlight that embodied carbon is focused in regional trade thus regional harmonisation of climate mitigation policy will be effective in mitigating leakage

whither the terms of trade an elaboration of the prebisch singer hypothesis movements in the prices of primary products and manufactured goods are analysed using a model that introduces differences in wage and price determination between primary production and manufacturing wages and prices in primary production are treated as competitively determined while prices and wages in manufacturing are determined by mark up pricing and union employer bargaining respectively the objective is to capture the influence of structural differences between manufacturing and primary production on the terms of trade between industrialised and developing worlds as discussed in the seminal contributions to the development literature by raul prebisch and hans singer the model is estimated using price and wage data from the post world war ii period support is found for the prebisch singer hypothesis however our estimates suggest that during periods of particularly rapid manufac turing growth there have been intervals of net improvement in the terms of trade of primary producers

ownership access and sequential investment we extend the property rights framework to allow for a separation of the ownership rights of access and veto and sequential investment parties investing first ex ante do so before contracting is possible parties that invest second ex post can contract on at least some of their investment costs along with this cost sharing effect the incentive to invest is affected by a strategic effect generated by sequential investment together these effects can overturn some of the predictions of the property rights literature for example the most inclusive ownership structure might not be optimal even if all investments are complementary

environmental support energy security and economic growth in japan this study investigates the resource consumption of japanese society since 1979 and its subsequent effects on the economic output of the nation and the environment in order to quantify resource appropriation and trends in production and consumption the concept of emergy synthesis is employed our results show a significant increase in the total amount of emergy consumed by 66 9 between 1979 and 2003 which comes hand in hand with an increase in the level of environmental stress by 93 7 quantified as the environmental loading ratio on the other hand the emergy required to produce 1 usd of economic output has been gradually decreasing which denotes an increase in the efficiency of the conversion of natural capital into economic output what is most interesting though is the growing dependence of the japanese economy on imported emergy increasingly from developing nations that severely affects the potential for unhindered economic growth this can prove to be a big barrier that could affect the resource security of the japanese economy and render it susceptible to risks associated with access to natural resources which in turn can jeopardise its long term economic sustainability

the carbon content of japan us trade we analyze the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in trade between japan and the us extending the japanese government s linked japan us input output model to include carbon emission coefficients for each sector we estimate that in 1995 japan us trade reduced us industrial emissions by 14 6 million tons of co2 equivalent and increased emissions in japan by 6 7 million tons for a global savings of 7 9 million tons these quantities are less than one percent of each country s total emissions trade with the rest of the world reduced emissions by much larger amounts roughly four percent of each country s emissions the sectoral patterns of carbon intensity are strongly correlated between japan and the us in addition greater carbon intensity has a small but significantly positive effect on net exports policies that tax or otherwise regulate carbon emissions are needed to discourage this destructive route to competitiveness however the most important policy implication may be that us industry could cut its carbon emissions by more than half if it matched the environmental performance of industry in japan r 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

technology team production and incentives incentive reversal ir is when higher rewards induce some agents to reduce their effort winter 2009 we show that ir can hold for all agents when there is an improvement in production technology and rewards are based on team output whilst ir requires at least one worker s marginal return to be decreasing in team productivity when agents invest simultaneously this is not necessary with sequential investments rather ir can occur with sequential investment when the marginal return of effort for all agents is increasing with improvements in technology

on market mediated emissions and regulations on life cycle emissions abstract we analyze the use of life cycle assessment lca as a regulatory tool using biofuel regulations as an illustrative example a regulatory context calls for a consequential lca clca of a policy as opposed to an attributional lca alca of a product in performing clca issues of scale price effects technology and policy in the counterfactual state of the world strategic behavior policy horizon etc need consideration this appears to increase both uncertainty in estimates and the cost of performing lca we suggest heuristics for determining vulnerability to harmful indirect effects at an early stage in the policy process and discuss alternative policies to limit harmful indirect effects without engaging in the full effort of computation and selection of a central estimate for uncertain outcomes

integration of environmental externalities in international commodity agreements abstract much ecological damage in third world countries is associated with commodity production for the world market competition in commodity markets prevents commodity exporting countries from making the costs of environmental preservation and reconstruction a recurrent element in pricing this article argues that an international commodity agreement ica can be the institutional locus where environmental externalities associated with commodity production can be integrated into a price system such extended or transformed icas are here labeled new international commodity agreements nicas they include a price markup for environmental preservation and reconstruction in commodity producing developing countries this price markup can be levied in the form of an export tax or in the form of a surcharge on import tariffs the conclusion of nicas maybe facilitated by the common fund for commodities which has recently come into operation

the role of co2 embodiment in us china trade abstract this study examines the influence of us china trade on national and global emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the three basic questions are as follows 1 what amount of co2 emissions is avoided in the us by importing chinese goods 2 how much are co2 emissions in china increased as a result of the production of goods for export to the us and 3 what are the impacts of us china trade on global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that during 1997 2003 1 us co2 emissions would have increased from 3 to 6 if the goods imported from china had been produced in the us 2 about 7 14 of china s current co2 emissions were a result of producing exports for us consumers and 3 us china trade has increased global co2 emissions by an estimated 720 million metric tons we suggest that the export of us technologies and expertise related to clean production and energy efficiency to china could be a win win strategy for both countries for reducing their trade imbalance and mitigating global co2 emissions improved international accounting methodologies for assigning responsibility for co2 emissions must be designed to account for the dynamic nature of international trade

socio ecological regime transitions in austria and the united kingdom we employ the concepts of socio ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization for two case studies the united kingdom and austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use land use and labour organization in a first step the coal based industrial regime co existed with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime in a second step the oil electricity based industrial regime agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio ecological transition had been completed industrialization offers an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale while today s industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global society are in midst of the old industrial transition this poses severe problems for global sustainability

us environmental load displacement examining consumption regulations and the role of nafta abstract in light of concerns that structural changes to us production may not be accompanied by similar changes to us consumption this paper provides a detailed examination of us environmental load displacement over the period 1974 2001 the forces that drive such displacement are also examined with particular attention paid to the scale and composition of us consumption the share of imports in consumption the role of environmental regulations and the potential impact of nafta it is found that the usa as a whole has experienced environmental load displacement over the period under consideration with the extent of this displacement seeming to increase over the last decade it would appear to be the increasing scale of us trade that is increasing environmental load displacement indeed the composition of us imports and exports have become significantly cleaner over the period considered however although imports from mexico have grown more rapidly than exports to mexico no evidence is found to suggest that nafta is increasing displacement to mexico with regard to us domestic consumption patterns although they have become cleaner a greater share than ever is now met via imports sectoral pollution abatement costs are found to be a determinant of this increasing share of imports in domestic consumption