globalization migration and development the role of mexican migrant remittances in this paper we present evidence suggesting that international migrant remittances generally lead to improved developmental outcomes using a cross section of mexican municipalities in the year 2000 we show that increases in the fraction of households receiving international remittances are generally correlated with better schooling and health outcomes and with reductions in some dimensions of poverty our results take into account the likely endogeneity between migration remittances and developmental outcome variables and they suggest that measures to facilitate remittance flows are desirable

balancing skilled with unskilled migration in an urbanizing agricultural economy summary in the early stages of economic development the migration of unskilled workers contributes to labor intensive manufacturing production in middle income countries however the migration of skilled workers becomes the more important factor in economic progress evaluating the skill content of migration patterns therefore is essential to understanding migration s economic implications for this purpose we investigate the determinants of skilled and unskilled migration decisions in vietnam rural higher education is shown to promote knowledge intensive production by encouraging skilled individuals to migrate to cities in complementary fashion commercial farm development helps alleviate urban overcrowding by encouraging unskilled individuals to remain at home

way forward for alternative energy research a bibliometric analysis during 1994 2013 abstract the alternative energy plays a crucial role in the sustainable energy development the alternative energy related literature had attracted a growing attention with the research outputs expanding substantially based on the science citation index expanded sci e and the social sciences citation index ssci a bibliometric analysis of the research output was carried out to depict existing research activities on alternative energy and future directions the article was the main type of publications with the english as the dominate language to explain their results with the publications increasing rapidly since 2008 the researches mostly focused on the fields of energy fuels and environmental sciences energy policy was the journal that published the largest number of research articles on the alternative energy the bioenergy and solar energy were popular items in the commonly used 20 journals among the countries the usa was leading on alternative energy related research publishing the largest number of articles tp 2368 and being the most influent h index 90 the usa played a key role in the academic collaborations with china uk canada germany italy south korea and spain the national renewable energy lab the usa contributed most in the alternative energy field and more specially the school of electrical computer engineering tp 36 was the most productive subordinate in the national technology university of athens it was interesting to note that more attention was paid to solar or wind energy during the first 5 or 10 years then turned to bioenergy subsequently except for spain canada and australia in addition bioenergy received the most attention in the 7 types of alternative energy the forest wood biomass energy crops and switchgrass were the main bioenergy resources and fermentation was the commonly used conversion technology the production of biogas biodiesel and bioethanol was most popular in the bioenergy related studies wind energy and solar energy related researches were mainly on the energy utilization approaches such as the wind generation wind farm photovoltaic and solar thermal the conversion devices such as the wind turbine and solar cell were paid most attention in order to improve the production efficiency the most cited article published in desalination in 2009 with 1562 citations until 2013 was about wind power utilization in the reverse osmosis desalination plant

effectiveness of eu biofuels sustainability criteria in the context of land acquisitions in africa abstract in recent years land is becoming an important commodity and the land sector in many developing countries has been object of growing foreign acquisitions the aim of the paper is to analyze whether the requirements set by the eu renewable energy directive introducing biofuels sustainability criteria has induced the european investors acquiring land for producing biofuel feedstocks to adopt more sustainable strategies first we review the factors that may induce a corporation to adopt sustainable behavior and corporate social responsibility csr strategies in the context of land acquisitions second the paper illustrates our original evidence on european land acquisitions in africa and on the behavior of the investors involved then we use a logistic model to estimate the variables affecting the investor s choice to certify its actions and to adopt csr strategies our evidence shows that the main factors influencing the probability that an investor chooses to certify the sustainability of its actions are the sector in which it operates the fact of acquiring land in more than one foreign country and the characteristics of origin and destination country interestingly the european economic operators involved in acquisitions for biofuel crops show significantly lower probability of being certified therefore the eu sustainability criteria seem to be ineffective in guaranteeing and verifying the sustainability of the european land investments in africa joint efforts by european union member states target countries and private sector operators are necessary to prevent the negative effects of land acquisitions on local stakeholders and the environment

evaluating the economic impact of international remittances on developing countries using household surveys a literature review abstract this literature review covers 50 recent empirical studies of the economic impact of international remittances on the developing world that are based on household survey data it begins by reviewing the considerable methodological problems confronting economic work on international remittances and then examines the strengths and weaknesses of various economic studies of the impact of remittances in the developing world on such outcomes as poverty and inequality health and education investment and savings labour supply and participation and economic growth it finds that while international remittances generally have a positive impact on poverty and health in the developing world remittances can have negative effects on labour supply education and economic growth

migration remittances and poverty in ecuador abstractwe analyse the influence of the recent wave of migration on the incidence of poverty among stayers in ecuador we draw our data from a survey that provides detailed information on migrants the analysis reveals a significant negative effect of migration on poverty among migrant households this effect is substantially smaller than the one that we find focusing on recipient households we explore the factors that account for this divergence our analysis entails that the existing empirical evidence on the relationship between remittances and poverty does not need to be informative about the size of the direct poverty reduction potential of migration

remittances bonds and bridges remittances and social capital in burundi abstractthis study explores the effects of remittances on households structural social capital in urban burundi distinctions are made between bonding and bridging social capital referring to intra versus inter network ties of family members and friends the results demonstrate that remittance receiving households invest more in bridging social capital by participating in organisations donating time but make fewer monetary contributions compared to non receiving households remittances have mixed effects on bonding social capital receiving households give significantly less gifts to family members and friends but are more likely to send internal remittances compared to non receivers the implications of these findings for post conflict development are discussed

the impact of foreign remittances on poverty in nepal a panel study of household survey data 1996 2011 abstract using data from the longitudinal panel surveys of 1996 2004 and 2011 this paper examines the dynamics of foreign remittances and their impact on poverty in nepal the intent is to explore how foreign remittances have evolved and impacted poverty and economic well being of households focusing on a consistent set of households across the three survey rounds in a balanced panel format helps examine the effect of foreign remittances with appropriate controls results from methodologically consistent random effects regressions that correct for potential attrition and heterogeneity bias support significant poverty reducing and more accurately economic well being enhancing effects of foreign remittances especially when originating in countries other than india this and other findings are valuable to the assessment of policies on utilizing foreign labor migration and remittances as a vehicle to reduce poverty in nepal

world bank lending and other financial flows is there a connection at a time when there is a serious debate about reforming the international financial architecture it is important to understand how existing multilateral agencies affect financial flows to emerging and less developed countries this paper extends past research which has focused on the international monetary fund by examining the various mechanisms through which the world bank may be associated with other financial flows and by presenting new empirical evidence based on regression analysis little support is found for a positive connection the implications of this finding for effective reform of the bank and its various activities are then discussed

how important is selection experimental vs non experimental measures of the income gains from migration measuring the gain in income from migration is complicated by non random selection of migrants from the general population making it difficult to obtain an appropriate comparison group of non migrants this paper uses a migrant lottery to overcome this problem providing an experimental measure of the income gains from migration new zealand allows a quota of tongans to immigrate each year with a lottery to choose among the excess number of applicants a unique survey conducted by the authors in these two countries allows experimental estimates of the income gains from migration by comparing the incomes of migrants to those who applied to migrate but whose names were not drawn in the lottery after allowing for the effect of non compliance among some of those whose names were drawn the authors also conducted a survey of individuals who did not apply for the lottery comparing this non applicant group with the migrants enables assessment of the degree to which non experimental methods can provide an unbiased estimate of the income gains from migration they find evidence of migrants being positively selected in terms of both observed and unobserved skills as a result non experimental methods are found to overstate the gains from migration by 9 to 82 percent a good instrumental variable works best while difference in differences and bias adjusted propensity score matching also perform comparatively well

migrants and housing investments theory and evidence from nigeria the dominance of housing may reflect limitations in the menu of investment choices available to migrants in the country of origin in many developing countries individuals face relatively few savings opportunities where productive assets such as land farm assets are associated with high risks and or low rates of return housing investments offer unique advantages in that they are durable highly visible and associated with low risk and monitoring requirements however there are some important drawbacks associated with housing investments in particular where resale and rental markets for housing are not well developed migrants housing assets may be relatively illiquid and irreversible in the next section i provide some background on general patterns of investment behavior among migrants here the evidence on housing investments is discussed for a rich set of migrant sending and receiving countries in section iii i develop the conceptual framework for understanding migrants housing investment decisions section iv provides a description of the data sources section v outlines the empirical strategy in section vi i discuss the empirical findings section vii presents conclusions excerpt

remittances and household wealth after conflict a case study on urban burundi few studies have researched the use of remittances in conflict affected contexts this study analyzes unique data from burundi testing three hypotheses relative deprivation investment and insurance derived from new economics of labor migration studies employing propensity score matching results show that remittances are common among wealthier households rejecting the relative deprivation hypothesis remittances have strong effects on non productive assets such as living conditions and food security and weak effects on productive assets such as asset ownership poorer households invest mostly in non productive assets suggesting that remittances are insurance for the poor whereas wealthier households seem largely unaffected by remittances

a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy this paper proposes a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy based on the coevolution of ecosystems technologies institutions business strategies and user practices within a multi level micro meso macro perspective this builds on and develops previous coevolutionary analyses of long term technological and industrial change and recent renewed interest within ecological economics on coevolutionary approaches previous work has analysed how the coevolution of technologies and institutions has led to the lock in of current high carbon energy systems and how the coevolution of physical and social technologies and business strategies has brought significant material and welfare benefits to the minority of the world s population living in industrialised countries the coevolutionary framework proposed here may be used to undertake 1 detailed empirical analyses at a micro meso level of the challenges relating to the innovation and adoption of particularly low carbon technologies 2 as a framework for analysing the multi level interaction of social and technological elements within potential transition pathways to a low carbon energy system 3 to assess the implications for economic growth and prosperity of a transition to a low carbon economy and 4 to assist in the development of more formal multi level evolutionary economic models

international migration and income distribution in the philippines the author uses data on remittances from migrants to determine the effects of migration on household income and its distribution in the philippines i briefly describe the evolution of household income distribution using fies the family income and expenditure survey and the characteristics of households that receive income from migrants and those that do not i discuss the analytical framework that is used and outline the changes in incomes and inequality that emigration causes excerpt

sharing norm pressures and community remittances evidence from a natural disaster in the pacific islands abstractmigrants are often subject to social pressures to remit beyond their own households to share the benefits of migration with the wider community in their home country these are community remittances we hypothesise that community sharing norm pressures are stronger in locations with more extensive home community networks we also postulate that the responsiveness of remittances to sharing pressures is subject to diminishing returns attributable to a donor fatigue effect using customised survey data from three polynesian migrant groups in metropolitan and regional australia we estimate double hurdle regression models of community remittances to identify the effects of sharing norm pressures we exploit an exogenous cyclone shock to home country incomes affecting one sub group we find strong evidence in support of the postulated responsiveness of community remittances to location related differences in sharing norm pressures and the presence of a donor fatigue effect the policy implicatio

remittances household expenditure and investment in guatemala the author uses a large household data set from guatemala to analyze how the receipt of internal remittances from guatemala and international remittances from the united states affects the marginal spending behavior of households on various consumption and investment goods contrary to other studies the author finds that households receiving remittances actually spend less at the margin on consumption food and consumer goods and durables than do households receiving no remittances instead of spending on consumption households receiving remittances tend to spend more on investment goods like education health and housing the analysis shows that a large amount of remittance money goes into education at the margin households receiving internal and international remittances spend 45 and 58 percent more respectively on education than do households with no remittances these increased expenditures on education represent investment in human capital like other studies the author finds that remittance receiving households spend more at the margin on housing these increased expenditures on housing represent a type of investment for the migrant as well as a means for boosting local economic development by creating new income and employment opportunities for skilled and unskilled workers

remittances financial development and growth abstract despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied this paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth in particular how local financial sector development influences a country s capacity to take advantage of remittances using a newly constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints this finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used and is robust to a number of robustness tests including threshold estimation we also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population

sustainability policy of construction contractors a review abstract sustainability is an issue of concern in many industrial sectors the construction industry is no exception the study described in this paper adopts a critical qualitative approach to investigate sustainability policy practices in the construction industry this approach includes a statement of principles sustainability reporting incorporated within a financial report and a stand alone sustainability reporting system the top international contractors listed by engineering news record enr were examined the results show that sustainability policy development varies from case to case in these companies but trends are emerging on common issues addressed the findings show a trend of increasingly level of disclosure of corporation s commitmnets an achievements on sustainability similarly the energy efficiency and conservation greenhouse gas emission reduction and integration of renewable energy resources into projects are among the common themes of these sustainability policies disclosed by construction contractors the construcion industry can learn from the energy sector that is advanced in sustainability reporting

emergence of green business models the case of algae biofuel for aviation emergent business models seek to take advantage of new market mechanisms driven by technological changes particularly those related to the production and delivery of clean or sustainable energy such business models often function at the intersection of various industries with global views and the resulting systems have distinct social political environmental economic technological and business dimensions such holistic systems are not only difficult to develop but also require support from a broad range of actors with effective regulations and policies in place such that the firm functions within a framework that integrates various factors this study substantiates such a framework by detailing the nascent algae based bio fuel industry that caters to the aviation sector while arguing that businesses in the energy industry can emerge as a next practice platform that drive a sixth wave of innovation the framework begins with three basic enablers innovation flexibility and sustainability and explains how value from renewable energy technologies can be created and captured sustainably and innovatively with new market mechanisms implemented by firms with green business models

darwin s invisible hand market competition evolution and the firm competition among firms has been suggested to reflect the ruthless logic of darwinian selection a free market is a struggle for survival in which successful firms survive and unsuccessful ones die this view appears to bolster three pillars of neoclassical economics 1 that economic actors are self interested 2 that self interest leads to public goods adam smith s invisible hand and 3 that together these lead to market optimization however this chain of reasoning leads to a paradox we show that the application of darwinian selection to competition among firms as opposed to among individuals invokes group selection which leads to exactly the opposite predictions notably altruism and the suppression of individual self interest we apply an alternative evolutionary model of economic competition multi level selection mls theory which integrates the effects of selection at both individual and group levels this approach reveals that while individuals may generally pursue their own self interest as in the standard evolutionary account humans also have evolved traits that as if led by an invisible hand steer our self interest to align with the good of the firm or wider society as well but it is the hand of darwin not smith

remittances liquidity constraints and human capital investments in ecuador summary over the last decade ecuador has experienced a strong increase in financial transfers from migrated workers this paper investigates how remittances via trans national networks affect human capital investments through relaxing resource constraints and facilitate households in consumption smoothing by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks our results show that remittances increase school enrollment and decrease incidence of child work especially for girls and in rural areas furthermore we find that aggregate shocks are associated with increased work activities while remittances are used to finance education when households are faced with these shocks 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

institutions foreign direct investment and domestic investment crowding out or crowding in studies of the relationship between fdi and domestic investment reach contradictory findings we argue that some of the conflicting evidence may be explained by the use of poor proxies for the theoretical concepts and questionable methodological choices we review the paper of morrissey and udomkerdmonkol published in this journal in 2012 improvements in the construction of the proxies and refinements in the estimation methodology reverse the finding of morrissey and udomkerdmonkol that fdi inflows crowd out domestic investment furthermore there is no strong evidence that good governance actually encourages domestic investment

workers remittances and the real exchange rate a paradox of gifts abstract we test the impact of workers remittances on the real exchange rate using a panel of 13 latin american and caribbean countries the analysis reveals that workers remittances have the potential to inflict economic costs on the export sector of receiving countries by reducing its international competitiveness our findings raise concerns parallel to those raised by dutch disease or resource boom models where resource discoveries result in real exchange rate appreciation and shifting of resources from the traded to the nontraded sectors of the economy

remittances and savings from international migration theory and evidence using a matched sample abstract the central question of this paper concerns the implications of remittance flows for migrants and their origin households in the country of origin this paper represents the first attempt to present a disaggregated view of international remittance flows using a matched sample of international migrants and their origin families i investigate two types of remittances transfers to the home family and savings in the country of origin the empirical evidence provides support for the altruistic model of transfer behavior wealthier origin families tend to receive lower transfers other things being equal however remittances sent to finance origin country investments are positively associated with origin household wealth the estimation strategy addresses two common problems that arise in investigating remittance behavior omitted variable bias and the measurement of origin household resources

economic effects of migration on the left behind in cambodia abstractusing propensity score matching this study examines the effects of migration on various indicators of household wellbeing in cambodia the results indicate that migration would reduce poverty headcount rate by 3 7 percentage points and decrease the depth of poverty migration is also found to reduce by 5 10 per cent the hours worked by members left behind the impact of migration on labour participation may be however vulnerable to unobservable factors nevertheless the study suggests that important heterogeneous effects which differ from the average impact exist the analysis is conducted separately by internal and international migration

the effects of imf and world bank lending on long run economic growth an empirical analysis summary the international monetary fund and the world bank frequently and often repeatedly extend loans to developing nations these loans have been blamed for generating adverse economic outcomes the growth impact of fund and bank loan programs is assessed using an empirical growth model that controls for other determinants of growth a unique feature of this study is the use of the value of loans rather than the number of programs the estimates indicate that bank lending stimulates growth in some cases primarily by increasing public investment fund lending is either neutral or detrimental to growth the channel for this effect is a negative impact of fund lending on public as well as private investment

network effects and the dynamics of migration and inequality theory and evidence from mexico international migration is costly and initially only the middle class of the wealth distribution may have both the means and incentives to migrate which can increase inequality in the sending community however the migration networks formed lower the costs for future migrants which can in turn lower inequality this paper shows both theoretically and empirically that wealth has a nonlinear effect on migration and then examines the empirical evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship between emigration and inequality in rural sending communities in mexico after instrumenting we find that the overall impact of migration is to reduce inequality across communities with relatively high levels of past migration we also find some suggestive evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship among communities with a wider range of migration experiences

on the joint consumption and labour supply effects of migration on those left behind previous literature has investigated the effect of migration on remaining household members consumption or labour supply but has rarely examined them jointly when migration increases consumption

migration networks and microenterprises in mexico are migration networks associated with lower capital costs or the alleviation of capital constraints we examine these questions with data measuring access to remittance flows among small scale entrepreneurs in mexico using a survey of more than 6000 self employed workers and small firm owners located in 44 urban areas of mexico we estimate the impact of attachment to migration networks on the level of capital investment the capital output ratio sales and profits of microenterprises the impact is identified from the geographic pattern of migration from mexico driven by the completion of rail lines in the early 1900s for the full sample of firms we find that migration is associated with higher investment levels and higher profits but not higher sales the strongest effects on investment are in the categories of automobiles tools and inventories when the sample is limited to firms in high capital sectors investment sales and profits all increase with attachment to the migration networks suggesting that attachment to the migration network alleviates capital constraints in those sectors

where did all the remittances go understanding the impact of remittances on consumption patterns in rural china we focus on the impact of migrants remittances on consumption patterns in china using a large homogenous sample of rural households surveyed in 2001 and 2004 we find that remittances are spent on nonhousing consumption expenditures at the margin virtually dollar for dollar when we instrument remittances and local employed earnings using proxies of social networks our findings are robust to intra household division of labour and to fixed effect for the county in which the respondents are registered these results imply that rural households largely take remittances as permanent income and are consistent with the prevalence of circular and repeat migration in china

do international migration and remittances reduce poverty in developing countries summary few studies have examined the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world this paper fills this lacuna by constructing and analyzing a new data set on international migration remittances inequality and poverty from 71 developing countries the results show that both international migration and remittances significantly reduce the level depth and severity of poverty in the developing world after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration and controlling for various factors results suggest that on average a 10 increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 2 1 decline in the share of people living on less than 1 00 per person per day after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international remittances a similar 10 increase in per capita official international remittances will lead to a 3 5 decline in the share of people living in poverty

the roles of destination gender and household composition in explaining remittances an analysis for the dominican sierra two non exclusive hypotheses about what motivates remittances sent by dominican migrants to their rural parents in the sierra are tested a an insurance contract taken by parents with their migrant children and b an investment by migrants in potential bequests results show that the relative importance of these two motives to remit is affected by destination us vs cities in the dominican republic gender and household composition the insurance function is mainly fulfilled by female migrants to the us only when a male is the sole migrant in his household does he play the role of insurer investment by contrast is pursued by both males and females but only among those migrating to the us d 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

evolving theories of sustainability and firms history future directions and implications for renewable energy research abstract sustainability has become a critical perspective in managing firms via a holistic approach by considering economic environmental and social dimensions of firms with the rising significance of sustainable development the theories of sustainability in firms have evolved during the past six decades this article offers a critical review of the evolving theories linking sustainability to firms and discusses their implications for future renewable energy research the relationships among different theories are critically analysed and the directions for future research are discussed the paper shows that the main theories linking sustainability to firms in a chronological order are 1 corporate social responsibility 2 stakeholder theory 3 corporate sustainability and 4 green economics currently various innovative approaches and new theories emerged such as co evolution theory and multi level perspective reflecting three directions of theory development namely 1 shifting from what to how 2 growing use of interdisciplinary approach and 3 towards broader systems renewable energy studies associated with firms and future research opportunities in this area are also critically analysed the comprehensive review offered in this paper provides a useful reference for policy makers corporate managers and researchers interested in corporate sustainability and renewable energy related studies

international migration remittances and household investment evidence from philippine migrants exchange rate shocks how do households respond to overseas members economic shocks overseas filipinos in dozens of countries experienced sudden heterogeneous changes in exchange rates during the 1997 asian financial crisis appreciation of a migrant s currency against the philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances from overseas the estimated elasticity of philippine peso remittances with respect to the exchange rate is 0 60 positive migrant shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households child schooling and educational expenditure rise while child labour falls households also work more hours in self employment and become more likely to start relatively capital intensive household enterprises

from green growth to sound policies an overview abstract green growth is an attractive slogan with a variety of possible meanings this essay critically examines several potential meanings of this slogan and provides a brief overview of some of the main implications of the other papers in this special issue taken together these papers argue for the importance of careful analysis of energy environmental policies particularly ambitious ones claiming to offer huge benefits with little or no cost

are remittances an effective mechanism for development evidence from tajikistan 1999 2007 abstract in many remittance receiving countries evidence linking remittances to household economic stability and investment is limited using three cross sectional national surveys 1999 2003 2007 we compare remittance receiving to non remittance households in tajikistan a country highly dependent on remittances exploring household perceptions of financial security wealth and entrepreneurial activity across a period of rising remittance reliance we find that households receiving remittances are not more economically stabile wealthier or entrepreneurial than non remittance households findings highlight the importance of conceptualising remittances as a process influenced by the developmental contexts within receiving countries and question previous assumptions concerning development pathways

international migration remittances and schooling evidence from el salvador abstract we examine the effect of remittances from abroad on households schooling decisions using data for el salvador following the massive war related emigration of the 1980s remittances became a significant source of household income throughout the 1990s we use the cox proportional hazard model to examine the determinants of school attendance measuring income from a source that is uncorrelated with parental schooling remittances we find that remittances have a large significant effect on school retention we estimate that while household income net of remittances has a small though significant impact on the hazard of leaving school in rural and urban areas remittances have a much larger impact on the hazard of leaving school in urban areas the effect of remittances is at its smallest 10 times the size of the effect of other income in rural areas the effect of remittances is about 2 6 times that of other income our finding is of interest in that it suggests that subsidizing school attendance particularly in poor areas may have a large impact on school attendance and retention even if parents have low levels of schooling

do the return intentions of french migrants affect their transfer behaviour abstractthis paper investigates to what extent the return behaviour of migrants affects their transfer decisions both at the extensive and intensive margins we use a unique data set collected on migrants aged 45 70 living in france with detailed information on both return intentions at retirement and on private transfers we find that the temporary nature of migration strongly influences the pattern of transfers made by migrants the probability of remitting for either personal savings or to family members in the origin country increases by more than 10 percentage points with return plans the latter having no effect on gifts to family members living in france at the intensive margin the amount of personal savings sent to the origin country is about twice as high for migrants who intend to return

migration remittances and male and female employment patterns little is known about the labor market impacts of workers remittances despite their magnitude in countries with considerable outmigration reports that families receiving international remittances severely curtail their work efforts are fairly common in the popular press e g robert frank 2001 yet we lack rigorous analyses of how male and female labor supplies respond to increases in remittance income to either support or refute these anecdotal observations according to the neoclassical model of labor leisure choice mark r killingsworth 1983 remittances a source of nonlabor income may lift budget constraints raise reservation wages and through an income effect reduce the employment likelihood and hours worked by remittance receiving individuals the receipt of remittances is usually preceded by the out migration of working aged household members however which may induce changes in the labor supply of nonmigrating household members in order to compensate for forgone income or to defray migration related expenses distinguishing the disruptive effect from the income effect of remittance inflows is problematic as most surveys do not contain detailed information on household outmigration and remittance receipt to the extent that these two effects are expected to have opposite impacts on labor supply however we can assess which effect dominates the impact of remittances on the decision to work has been previously examined by edgard rodriguez and erwin r tiongson 2001 in manila and by edward funkhouser 1992 in managua without accounting for the endogeneity of remittances with respect to labor supply they conclude that remittances reduce employment funkhouser also finds that remittances slightly increase self employment while informative these studies focus on the decision to work and do not consider that without altering employment rates remittances may change the hours worked and or the type of work performed in the receiving economy furthermore the impact may be different on male and female labor supplies and responsiveness to remittance income may vary from rural to urban areas using data from mexico a country with a large and growing remittance inflow we address the following questions how does the employment status and hours worked by men and women vary owing to international remittances do male and female labor supplies differ across various types of employment in rural versus urban areas due to higher remittance inflows

does environmental performance affect financial performance a meta analysis abstract what do we know about the impact of environmental regulations performance on firm performance after more than three decades of theoretical as well as empirical research the results seem to remain inconclusive some papers suggest that regulations harm firms while others claim that regulations may contribute positively and give an impetus to innovations therefore i examine the heterogeneity in financial environmental performance nexus empirically carrying out a meta regression analysis of 64 outcomes from 37 empirical studies to uncover the underlying factors which can influence the observed variation in the empirical results the results suggest both that the empirical method used matters for the nexus and that the likelihood of finding a negative link between environmental and financial performance significantly increases when using simple correlation coefficients instead of more advanced econometric analysis the results also indicate that the portfolio studies tend to report a negative link between environmental and financial performance this likely reflects the omitted factors in portfolio studies the positive link is found more frequently in common law countries than in civil law countries the results also point to the importance of appropriate time coverage to establish a positive link between environmental and financial performance

remittances and labor force participation in mexico an analysis using propensity score matching summary about 2 5 million mexicans migrated to the united states during 1997 2002 and 1 6 million of them sent remittances to their families did recipients change their labor force status in response to these remittances this question has been examined before unlike the previous studies we separate persistent from sporadic remittances and we use propensity score matching to measure differences in behavior we find limited evidence of labor force participation effects of persistent remittances which is broadly consistent with remittances being an integral part of household s income generation strategy

green growth from a growing eco industry to economic sustainability abstract there are many questionable assumptions in the discussion of economic growth one of them is the idea that governments are able to achieve sustained high growth another one is the believe that the solution to pressing financial and social problems centers on higher growth it is also questionalble however to say that giving up on economic growth as a paradigm is the necessary condition to tackle the environmental crisis in actuality solving such problems is about radical growth in environmental and resource saving technologies it is also about radical de growth in products and processes that undermine long term living and production conditions this paper describes some best practice cases of green growth and the conceptual generalisations given by the oecd and other established institutions in europe and asia it traces the transformation of the concept of green growth and evaluates the strategy that accompanies it

managing electric power system transition in china abstract this research studies the low carbon transition of the electric power sector in china using a multi level perspective mlp of niches socio technical regime and landscape as well as literature on innovation systems three lines of thought on transition process are integrated in the paper to probe the possible transition pathways in china a mlp analysis is presented to understand the current niches regime and landscape of china s power sector a brief analysis on the future macroscopic socio economic transition in the process of industrialization urbanization and modernization of chinese society and its implication on power landscape are depicted to prove the urgency and magnitude of transition in china and why systematic transition management is needed five transition pathways namely reproduction transformation substitution reconfiguration de alignment re alignment and reconfiguration with their possible technology options are presented the paper goes further to propose an interactive framework for managing the transition to a low carbon energy system in china representative technology options are appraised by employing innovation theory to indicate the logic of policymaking within the framework institutional gaps in realizing the transition are also addressed the work presented in the paper will be useful in informing policy makers and other stakeholders and may provide references for power sector transition management in other countries

sustainability performance disclosures the case of independent power producers abstract independent power producers ipps investing across borders represent a crucial sector that produces an adverse impact on greenhouse gas emissions ghg the main purpose of this study is to articulate issues pertinent to sustainability performance among contemporary ipps which seek funding from the capital markets a framework employing a sustainability performance scorecard is developed based on an interdisciplinary literature review that spans the fields of corporate finance financial reporting and sustainability by examining the sustainability performance as disclosed by three cross border ipps from the u s europe and the emerging economy of asia this comparative case study unveils the current weaknesses in comparability relevance and usefulness in disclosures among the ipps it points out potential information asymmetry to decision making of the primary stakeholders who seek to invest in renewable and sustainable energy while countering short termism over financial returns a concerted policy effort on disclosures about sustainability performance would be crucial to channeling effective private investments into the development of renewable and sustainable energy

regime destabilisation as the flipside of energy transitions lessons from the history of the british coal industry 1913 1997 this paper investigates a neglected aspect of the transitions literature the destabilisation of existing regimes and industries it presents an analytical perspective that integrates four existing views on destabilisation and conceptualizes the process as a multi dimensional and enacted phenomenon involving technical economic political and cultural processes this perspective is illustrated with two historical cases of the british coal industry 1913 1967 1967 1997 these cases are also used to articulate five lessons regarding the overall destabilisation process and five lessons regarding the economic and socio political environments of industries the conclusion section translates the historical lessons into insights with relevance for the contemporary challenge of climate change and transitions to low carbon energy systems

competitive and responsible the relationship between corporate social and financial performance in the energy sector abstract our key research objective in this study is to examine whether investments in corporate social responsibility csr have an effect on corporate financial performance cfp or vice versa the context is the energy industry in which sustainability issues are of vital importance our data set is compiled from the kld database and thomson one we use panel data on energy sector companies covering the years 1991 and 2009 in order to assess granger causality between csr strengths concerns and cfp we consider strengths and concerns separately and use both accounting and market based measures of cfp our findings indicate differing impacts on financial performance csr concerns granger cause both profitability and market value whereas csr strengths seem only to granger cause market value these effects appear after different delays furthermore as cfp does not seem to granger cause csp in most of the model specifications our results do not support bidirectional causality between csp and cfp

what is the impact of international remittances on poverty and inequality in latin america workers remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries however little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality using a large cross country panel dataset the authors find that remittances in latin american and caribbean lac countries have increased growth and reduced inequality and poverty these results are robust to the use of different instruments that attempt to correct for the potential endogeneity of remittances household survey based estimates for 10 lac countries confirm that remittances have negative albeit relatively small inequality and poverty reducing effects even after imputations for the potential home earnings of migrants

environmental reporting in the spanish wind energy sector an institutional view abstract the aim of this paper is to explore the relevance of institutional influences on corporate environmental reporting practices the wind energy sector in spain was chosen for analysis because of its rapid growth and significant impact on moves towards cleaner energy production a content analysis of recent sustainability reports 2005 2009 from seven main wind energy companies facilitated a longitudinal comparison of the levels of compliance with global reporting initiative indicators of sustainability results show that initial institutional pressures for reporting have been replaced by imitation by companies of each other s practices leading to a reduction in the differences between environmental disclosures results confirm the importance of examining different institutional pressures on disclosure practices to development of policy however a key finding is that the disclosures have been minimal and their lack of effectiveness and unreliability mean they are not conducive to the notion of increasing transparency in the wind generated clean energy electricity sector as a result the credibility of relying on a voluntary sustainability standard such as the global reporting initiative gri as an incentive for informative environmental reporting is challenged

remittances labour supply and activity of household members left behind abstractthis paper analyses the role of remittances on labour supply and activity of household members left behind by explicitly distinguishing between different types of self employment contrary to the existing evidence we find no dependency effect of remittances our results show that remittances received by households in tajikistan decrease the probability of wage employment and increase that of small scale self employment activities of men staying behind without affecting the number of job specific hours worked any positive effect on economic development would be however limited as self employment is in rather small scale activities that do not generate a regular income stream

migration remittances and inequality estimating the net effects of migration on income distribution this paper examines the net effects of migration and remittances on income distribution potential home earnings of migrants are imputed as are the earnings of non migrants in migrant households in order to construct no migration counterfacmals to compare with the observed income distribution including remittances the earnings functions used to impute migrant home earnings are estimated from observations on non migrants in a selection corrected estimation framework which incorporates migration choice and labor force participation decisions for a sample of households in bluefields nicaragua migration and remittances increase income inequality when compared with the no migration counterfactual 1998 elsevier science b v

are remittances insurance evidence from rainfall shocks in the philippines several facts motivate this study first life in developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as crop and income loss due to natural disasters weather insect infestations and fire and civil conflict second international migration and remittance flows are substantial and growing between 1965 and 2000 individuals living outside their country of birth grew from 2 2 to 2 9 percent of the world population totaling 175 million people in 2000 the remittances that these migrants send to their countries of origin are an important but poorly understood type of international financial flow this article examines a mechanism for coping with shocks ex post on which previous micro level studies have not focused remittances from family members overseas at the international level it is commonly posited that remittance flows from overseas buffer economic shocks in migrants home countries but there have been relatively few empirical tests of this claim with micro level household data related research on the role of domestic migration in pooling risk within extended families includes lucas and stark 1985 rosenzweig and stark 1989 and paulson 2000

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

remittance receipt and business ownership in the dominican republic using household level data from the dominican communities in the latin american migration project lamp dr7 we examine the links between remittance receipt and business ownership we find that while the existence of a family business attracts remittance inflows these monetary funds are associated with a reduced likelihood of business entrepreneurship these results are consistent with various hypotheses regarding remittances and business investments first remittances may be motivated by the availability of investment opportunities in the home community second remittances may respond to a bequest motive on the part of the emigrant who may wish to lay claim on family assets when returning home lastly remittances may cause an income effect that reduces family labour force participation and correspondingly the likelihood of family run business investments

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms

remittances and working poverty abstractthis article shows that the level and the predictability of remittances reduce working poverty in receiving economies through their effects on labour market dynamics it takes advantage of the new cross country dataset ilo kilm 7th edition containing information on the share of individuals working for less than us 2 per day to identify the main impacts the article proposes a novel approach to deal with the endogeneity of remittances and migration in addition the results are robust to the possible error in measuring working poverty to the potential attrition bias and to the presence of various control variables