which industry is greener an empirical study of nine industries in oecd countries abstract this study analyzed the relationship between the co2 emissions of different industries and economic growth in oecd countries from 1970 to 2005 we tested an environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and found that total co2 emissions from nine industries show an n shaped trend instead of an inverted u or monotonic increasing trend with increasing income the ekc hypothesis for sector level co2 emissions was supported in the 1 paper pulp and printing industry 2 wood and wood products industry and 3 construction industry we also found that emissions from coal and oil increase with economic growth in the steel and construction industries in addition the non metallic minerals machinery and transport equipment industries tend to have increased emissions from oil and electricity with economic growth finally the ekc turning point and the relationship between gdp per capita and sectoral co2 emissions differ among industries according to the fuel type used therefore environmental policies for co2 reduction must consider these differences in industrial characteristics

international trade and energy intensity during european industrialization 1870 1935 the study was conducted in the research project who did the dirty work energy embodied in european and global trade 1800 1970 funded by the swedish research council 421 2013 1110 vetenskapsradet

trade policy and mixed enterprises this paper demonstrates that the degree of state ownership affects neither the level of socially optimal activities nor welfare if the government chooses optimal trade policy instruments in the case of rivalry in the home market the optimal import tariff is independent of the degree of state ownership and the optimal production subsidy decreases with state ownership if the optimal tariff is positive for the case of cournot rivalry in a third market the optimal export subsidy increases with state ownership while in the case of bertrand rivalry with differentiated products the optimal export tax increases

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

trade ecologically unequal exchange and colonial legacy the case of france and its former colonies 1962 2015 abstract the role of trade in global environmental change is receiving increasing attention and there is a lively debate about ecologically unequal exchange eue little is known however about the role of colonial legacy for the evolution of physical trade patterns this study provides empirical evidence on the basis of a systematic evaluation of global trade data we quantify in physical and monetary terms the development of trade relations between france its former colonies and the rest the world from the immediate post colonial period until 2015 we use a set of physical trade indicators including physical trade balance and terms of trade to analyse differences in trade patterns and eue the results indicate that colonial ties were very strong in the 1960s but thereafter quickly diminished we find strong evidence for eue between france and its former colonies in the post colonial period and that the colonial factor explains eue between centre and peripheries better than income differences until the 1970s in recent decades colonial legacy increasingly vanished our findings corroborate that socio political factors and in particular colonial legacy play an important role for eue relations and that they deserve more attention in quantitative empirical research on trade

finance and politics the wealth effects of special interest group influence during the nationalisation and privatisation of conrail conrail nationalised in 1976 and privatised in 1987 was the most significant nationalisation and privatisation by the us government in recent years it was created from six bankrupt railroads under the pressure of interest groups formed by customers existing claimants employees and related companies we document the gains and losses to these special interest groups at key points in the nationalised and privatised time periods over this period the us government had outlays of 6 59 billion and cash inflow of 6 15 billion and internal return of 6 4 the paper provides evidence that a state owned firm with good governance could deliver superior performance

long term changes in social metabolism and land use in czechoslovakia 1830 2000 an energy transition under changing political regimes abstract industrialisation goes along with sweeping changes in society s interrelations with its environment the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society leads to fundamentally new patterns in social metabolism a process which has been described as socio metabolic transition this paper investigates this transition for the case of the current czech and slovak republics and presents a dataset on the development of key variables related to social metabolism during the last 170 years the dataset includes time series data on the extraction of biomass and fossil fuels energy consumption and land use combining data on bohemia and moravia 1830 1915 with data on czechoslovakia 1918 1992 and the czech and slovak republics 1993 2002 the study covers a period of consecutive political and institutional changes it includes the feudal regime of the late period of the habsburg empire and its disintegration with wwi the short period of the czechoslovak republic in the interwar period the era of a planned economy under a communist regime the collapse of this regime and the subsequent turn towards a market economy and european integration in the 1990s the period was characterized by economic and physical growth it saw a doubling of population and a growth in gdp by a factor 20 domestic energy consumption dec increased by a factor 10 and the share of biomass in dec declined from more than 98 to less than 20 all in all the observed changes closely resemble the characteristic path of the socio metabolic transition as observed in other western european economies major political and economic changes did not result in fundamental alterations of the socio metabolic transition until the mid 20th century the communist era 1945 1989 was characterized by rapid physical growth and changes in the energy and land use system very similar to those of other western european economies in the same period however leading to dec values substantially higher than those of other european countries at around 300 gj cap in the mid 1980s the disturbances caused by the velvet revolution resulted in short term turbulences in social metabolism and structural adaptations and around the year 2000 the czech and slovak republics show biophysical features very similar to those of other western european countries

negotiated block trades and corporate control we identify negotiated trades of large percentage blocks of stock as corporate control transactions when a block trades and the firm is not fully acquired cumulative abnormal returns average 5 6 and 33 of the chief executives are replaced within a year stock price increases are larger when control passes to the new blockholder when management does not resist the blockholder s effort to influence corporate policy and when the block purchaser eventually fully acquires the firm these findings suggest that the specific skills and expertise of blockholders and not just the concentration of ownership are important determinants of firm value we examine 106 negotiated trades of at least 5 of the common stock of new york stock exchange nyse and american stock exchange amex listed corporations our primary objective is to assess the impact of these transactions on the firms whose shares are traded we also investigate the importance of active block investor s specific managerial expertise and incentives for firm value the emerging literature on concentrated ownership focuses on how the level of ownership affects a blockholder s incentives to undertake a variety of corporate decisions although it has been recognized that a blockholder s identity also can be important less attention has been paid to this issue several recent studies however provide evidence that blockholders incentives and expertise are not homogeneous for example holderness and sheehan 1985 find that the stock market reacts more favorably to initial block accumulations by six controversial investors who are often portrayed in the press as raiders than to initial accumulations by a random sample of investors morck shleifer and vishny 1988 find that firm value tends to be lower when the firm is run by a member of the founder s family than when it is run by an officer unrelated to the founder brickley lease and smith 1988 document that institutional blockholders are less willing to vote against management on antitakeover amendments when they are likely to have business dealings with the firm when a block trades the concentration of ownership typically does not change but the blockholder s identity does

the government as a shareholder a case from the united states we study a sample of u s corporations in which the federal government held 35 100 percent of the outstanding common stock for between 1 and 23 years during and following world war ii we find that although the firms experienced abnormally high turnover among corporate board members the tenure of senior management was relatively stable moreover the performance of the government owned companies was not significantly different than that of private sector firms in the same industry hence the interim government custodianship of the firms in our case does not have the effects normally attributed to government ownership

is the tendency to variation a chief cause of progress this paper briefly reviews the sources of the diversity of innovative activity within industries and interprets the literature to suggest that there are three ways in which such diversity may stimulate technological progress including a selection effect a breadth effect and a complementarity effect using industry level data from the yale survey administered in the 1980s the paper presents preliminary empirical results on the relationship between the diversity of r d activities within industries and their rate of technical advance this exploratory exercise finds that controlling for industry r d intensity greater diversity in innovative activity is associated with a more rapid pace of technological change policy implications are considered copyright 2001 by oxford university press

aggregation and the role of energy in the economy methods for investigating the role of energy in the economy involve aggregating different energy flows a variety of methods have been proposed but none has received universal acceptance this paper shows that the method of aggregation has crucial effects on the results of the analysis we review the principal assumptions and methods for aggregating energy flows the basic heat equivalents approach economic approaches using prices or marginal product for aggregation emergy analysis and thermodynamic approaches such as exergy we argue that economic approaches such as the index or marginal product method are superior because they account for differences in quality among fuels we apply various economic approaches in three case studies in the us economy in the first we account for energy quality to assess changes in the energy surplus delivered by the extraction of fossil fuels from 1954 to 1992 the second and third case studies examine the importance of energy quality in evaluating the relation between energy use and gdp first a quality adjusted index of energy consumption is used in an econometric analysis of the causal relation between energy use and gdp from 1947 to 1996 second we account for energy quality in an econometric analysis of the factors that determine changes in the energy gdp ratio from 1947 to 1996 without adjusting for energy quality the results imply that the energy surplus from petroleum extraction is increasing that changes in gdp drive changes in energy use and that gdp has been decoupled from between aggregate energy use all of these conclusions are reversed when we account for changes in energy quality 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

share issue privatizations as financial means to political and economic ends abstract this study examines how political and economic factors affect the offer price share allocation and other terms governments choose when they privatize state owned enterprises via a public share offering using a 59 country sample of 630 share issue privatizations sips with total proceeds of over 446 billion during the period 1977 1997 we find that governments consistently underprice sip offers tilt their share allocation patterns to favour domestic investors impose control restrictions on privatized firms and typically use fixed price offers rather than book building or competitive tender offers all to further political and economic policy objectives

keep searching and you ll find what do we know about variety creation through firms search activities for innovation this article critically reviews and synthesizes the contributions found in theoretical and empirical studies of firm level innovation search processes it explores the advantages and disadvantages of local and non local search discusses organizational responses and identifies potential exogenous triggers for different kinds of search it argues that the initial focus on local search was a consequence in part of the attention in evolutionary economics to path dependent behavior but that as localized behavior was increasingly accepted as the standard mode studies began to question whether local search was the best solution in all cases more recently the literature has focused on the trade offs being created by firms having to balance local and non local search we account also for the apparent variety paradox in the stylized fact that organizations within the same industry tend to follow different search strategies but end up with very similar technological profiles in fast growing technologies the article concludes by highlighting what we have learnt from the literature and suggesting some new avenues for research

the financial and operating performance of newly privatized firms an international empirical analysis this study compares the pre and postprivatization financial and operating performance of 61 companies from 18 countries and 32 industries that experience full or partial privatization through public share offerings during the period 1961 to 1990 our results document strong performance improvements achieved surprisingly without sacrificing employment security specifically after being privatized firms increase real sales become more profitable increase their capital investment spending improve their operating efficiency and increase their work forces furthermore these companies significantly lower their debt levels and increase dividend payout finally we document significant changes in the size and composition of corporate boards of directors after privatization the last fifteen years have witnessed a significant global shift away from state socialism towards entrepreneurial capitalism one of the most important and visible aspects of this trend has been the enthusiasm with which governments of all political persuasions have sold their state owned enterprises soes to private investors in hopes that the generally unsatisfactory economic performance of these firms can be improved by the discipline of private ownership this denationalization process given its current title of privatization by the conservative government of margaret thatcher in

organizational form share transferability and firm performance abstract the alaska native claims settlement act of 1971 ancsa established thirteen diffusely held profit seeking corporations that were saddled with unusual organization restrictions the most important of which is that stock cannot be traded we find that these firms are characterized by poor financial performance a high incidence of control contests and high turnover among directors and managers these and other findings about ancsa firms are consistent overall with the theory of the firm the results illustrate the importance of organizational form in accomplishing productive activities and particularly the importance of freely transferrable shares for organizational efficiency in diffusely held corporations

the physical economy of france 1830 2015 the history of a parasite abstract this article explores long term trends and patterns of material use in france for a 185 year period it is the first long term study of material flows for france with national and yearly data for most of the period based on a material flow analysis mfa that is fully consistent with current standards of economy wide mfas and covers domestic extraction imports and exports of materials we investigated the evolution of the french metabolism from industrialization to financialized capitalism over the whole period there is a 9 fold increase in domestic material consumption an expansion of material use per capita and a spectacular addition of abiotic resources fossil fuels and minerals to biotic materials using a world ecology framework we exhibit a specific metabolic path that of a state benefiting from successive world systems for its economic development through massive material imports

trade off analysis between embodied energy exports and employment creation in china moving towards sustainable consumption in china must factor in the drivers of production china s domestic energy demand is affected not only by domestic demand but also by foreign trade the accounting of energy embodied in china s international trade has attracted much attention in recent years in fact embodied energy imports exports are a part of the normal pattern of economic phenomena occurring through international trade with exports of embodied energy contributing significantly to china s economic development this research suggest that china s net embodied energy exports remained relatively stable before 2002 and then increased dramatically from 73 mtoe in 2002 to 502 mtoe by 2007 with an average annual growth rate of 47 2 over that period the total employment creation reliant on these exports is 191 3 million people including direct employment of 44 1 million people and indirect employment of 147 2 million people in 2007 and the total employment creation increased quickly between 2002 and 2007 with an average annual growth rate of 9 1 the share of employment created by exports in china s total employment increased from 16 5 in 1997 to 18 6 in 2002 and a more dramatic increase can be observed in 2007 of 28 1 the exports oriented sectors in china are energy intensive from the perspective of embodied energy consumption and the energy intensive exports are located in nearly the same sectors as the labor intensive exports china will find it difficult to sustain the trade off in costs due to unemployment if it wishes to reduce embodied energy exports china needs to exercise patience and long term reform to change the current development model because of its large economy and population base

state owned and privately owned firms an empirical analysis of profitability leverage and labor intensity for some it is an article of faith that governmentowned firms must be less efficient or at least less profitable than privately owned firms maxim boycko et al 1996 argue that politicians cause government owned firms to employ excess labor inputs anne o krueger 1990 suggests that such firms may be pressured to hire politically connected people rather than those best qualified to perform desired tasks more generally government owned firms are thought to forgo maximum profit in the pursuit of social and political objectives such as wealth redistribution in addition the residual cash flow claims of these firms are not readily transferable like the shares of a private corporation this impairs residual claimant incentives to monitor managers and ultimately degrades firm performance as a consequence one expects government owned firms to be technically less efficient and therefore less profitable than private firms the implication is that in competitive markets without significant externalities private ownership is the superior organizational form the view that government firms are inherently less efficient than private ones however remains controversial among economists john vickers and george yarrow 1991 among others point out that agency problems arise in private firms as well as public ones in most large private corporations managers own little of the stock because monitoring managers is costly a divergence arises between their objectives and those of private shareholders private shareholders typically hold a small stake in any one firm and it may not pay any shareholder to bear the cost of monitoring management it follows from this discussion that whether government firms are more or less efficient than private firms is primarily an empirical issue to date the body of empirical evidence is mixed in this paper we report further empirical evidence on the relative efficiency of public and private enterprises we build on previous work by studying larger samples over longer time periods and by allowing for additional factors that influence firm performance in particular our analysis controls for time series variation in the general level of economic activity that may otherwise confound performance comparisons between government and private firms 2 we approach the issue in two different ways first using accounting numbers we conduct a large sample cross sectional comparison of government owned and privately owned corporations this comparison is similar in design to that of boardman and vining 1989 but our sample is three times the size of theirs and includes three

location decentralization and knowledge sources for innovation when firms seek to innovate they must decide where to locate their innovation activity this location choice requires firms to make a simultaneous choice about the organizational structure of innovation activity almost by definition multiple locations per firm imply some degree of decentralization we compare predictions of the knowledge based view with the predictions of organizational economics regarding the location and decentralization of r d using firm level data on r d locations in finland we examine the conditions under which firms with multiple r d locations also have greater innovation output our results indicate that multilocation of r d activity is positively associated with imitative innovation output and is strongly correlated with greater external knowledge sourcing we also find that the positive association between multiple r d locations and innovative output does not apply to new to the market innovations the results are consistent with the interpretation that multilocation of r d enables firms to access a broad set of external sources of knowledge in pursuit of imitative rather than new to the market innovation moreover these findings imply heterogeneity in r d strategies between firms pursuing new to the market innovation and firms pursuing imitative innovation it is thus important to distinguish between new to the market and imitative innovations because their determinants may differ

ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy evidence from china we examine innovation performance of firms in a transition economy from an ownership perspective we focus specifically on the relationship between ownership structures and firm innovation performance drawing on data from 548 chinese firms we find volume of patent registration to be most strongly influenced by foreign ownership in the firm along with firm affiliation within a business group the influence of state and institutional ownership on innovation performance is positive but lagged contrary to expectations insider ownership leads to lower innovation performance and concentrated ownership has no significant impact our study has two principal contributions firstly we utilize a comprehensive treatment of ownership characteristics overcoming weakness in previous studies that have used a more narrow focus on ownership type secondly we contribute to understanding of how firms in transition economies build indigenous capabilities for innovation by drawing attention to the interplay of foreign and domestic control of agents innovation

food regimes and their trade links a socio ecological perspective abstract the concept of food regimes has become a prominent theory in political economy we here provide socio ecological underpinning of the food regimes theory and thereby connect it closer to an ecological economics perspective we quantify physical trade with main agricultural commodities between world regions from the mid 19th century to 2016 and ask how trade patterns relate to issues of resource use in particular to land use soil fertility and the energetic basis of agriculture agricultural exports rose from a few million t yr around 1870 to 1 4 billion t yr in 2016 growth in trade and production did not follow a continuous trend periods of accelerated growth alternating with phases of relative stability can be distinguished rather than directed modernization we observe shifts in unequal relations of power physical exchange and environmental pressure between changing centers and peripheries the periods of growth in trade match with the periodization of food regimes we find that regime shifts are closely related to changes in societies energy metabolism in the resource base of agricultural production and also to agro ecological crisis our analysis emphasizes that food regimes not only reflect changes in power relations in the world system but also changes in societies natural relations

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

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

the comparative advantage of public ownership evidence from u s electric utilities studies of the performance effects of public vs private ownership have found mixed evidence this paper draws on theory suggesting that public enterprise may have an advantage in producing goods and services whose quality attributes are difficult to specify a priori using a comprehensive data set of u s electric utilities to estimate cost functions we find that while privately owned systems achieve lower costs in generation public systems generally have an advantage in the end user oriented distribution function with its more non contractible quality attributes other evidence on quality differences by ownership type and by enterprise size supports this distinction jel classification l33 l94 l avantage comparatif de la propriete publique resultats pour la production d electricite auxetats unis les etudes de la performance des entreprises publiques et privees ont produit des resultats qui ne sont pas determinants ce memoire se fonde sur la theorie qui suggere que l entreprise publique peut avoir un avantage dans la production de biens et services dont la qualite est difficile a definir a priori a partir de donnees extensives sur les producteurs d electricite aux etats unis on definit des fonctions de couts il appert que quand ils sont entre des mains privees les systemes de production reussissent a obtenir des couts de generation plus bas d autre part les systemes publics ont un avantage pour ce qui est de la fonction de distribution orientee vers les besoins de l usager a cause des attributs de qualite plus difficiles a contractualiser d autres resultats quant aux differences de qualite par types de propriete et par tailles d entreprises viennent confirmer l importance de cette distinction

the modest environmental relief resulting from the transition to the service economy a service transition is supposed to lead to the decline of energy intensity energy gdp we argue that this interpretation is overly optimistic because the shift to a service economy is somewhat of an illusion in terms of real production several recent studies of structural effects on energy intensity have made the error of using sector shares in current prices combined with gdp in constant prices which is inconsistent and ignores the different behaviour of prices across sectors we use the more correct method of sector shares in constant prices and make an attempt to single out the effect from the real service transition by using two complementary methods shift share analyses in current and constant prices and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi for 10 developed and 3 emerging economies a service transition is rather modest in real terms the major driver of the decline in energy intensity rests within the manufacturing sector meanwhile the transition to a service sector had a small downward impact on energy intensity in 7 of the developed countries and no impact in the others for emerging economies like brazil mexico and india it is the residential sector that drives energy intensity down because of the declining share of this sector as the formal economy grows and as a consequence of switching to more efficient fuels less

vertical integration and dis integration of computer firms a history friendly model of the co evolution of the computer and semiconductor industries in this article we present a history friendly model of the changing vertical scope of computer firms during the evolution of the computer and semiconductor industries the model is history friendly in that it attempts at replicating some basic stylized qualitative features of the evolution of vertical integration on the basis of the causal mechanisms and processes which we believe can explain the history these factors are identified in the coevolution of capabilities the size of markets and the structure of industries in particular the basic assumption is that the principal force behind the patterns of vertical integration and disintegration of computer firms was the differential development of capabilities for designing and producing semiconductors among firms on this basis the changing boundaries of firms are analyzed in the context of dynamic and uncertain technological and market environments characterized by periods of technological revolutions punctuating periods of relative technological stability and smooth technical progress the model illustrates how the patterns of vertical integration and specialization in the computer industry change as a function of the evolving levels and distribution of firms capabilities over time and how they depend on the coevolution of the upstream and downstream sectors specific conditions in each of these markets the size of the external market the magnitude of the technological discontinuities the lock in effects in demand exert critical effects and feedbacks on market structure and on the vertical scope of firms as time goes by copyright 2008 oxford university press

the nature of co2 emission kuznets curve this paper reveals that co2 emission kuznets curve merely reflects the peak theory of energy intensity the situation of real energy use should be used as a fundamental stone for both energy and environmental policy making

changes in the united kingdom s natural relations in terms of society s metabolism and land use from 1850 to the present day abstract in this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the course of history in terms of society s metabolic interchange with the biophysical environment presenting a theoretical model we begin by focusing on the interface between society and nature society s natural relations as conceptualized by the idea of metabolism which draws upon marxist theory complemented by a systems approach the concept of metabolism portrays society as a system which has to establish and maintain a permanent throughput of energy and matter to produce and maintain society s material components the amount of resource flow is operationalized by using material and energy flow accounting methods empirically these methods are applied to the uk s economy in a time series approach from 1850 to the present day we discuss different aggregates of inputs such as domestic material extraction foreign trade of materials energy input and additionally give an account of land use change obviously these changing natural relations are linked to socio economic activities hence we make a first attempt to discuss different periods of socio economic development by drawing from a regulation approach and try to link them to physical indicators such as direct material and energy input and domestic material consumption dmc thereby we hope to contribute to a historical understanding of socio economically driven environmental change within the framework of ecological economics

the price of government ownership a study of the domtar takeover abstract this paper presents an analysis of how government ownership of an enterprise may affect its profitability in august 1981 two quebec crown corporations announced that they had gained control of domtar a private canadian corporation upon receipt of this information the stock s market value dropped significantly over six trading days domtar s shareholders suffered cumulative abnormal returns of minus 25 percent which is equivalent to a reduction in market value of approximately 150 million much of this loss can be attributed to government control and the anticipated pursuit of non profit objectives

the relative efficiency of public and private firms in a regulated environment the case of u s electric utilities abstract the relative efficiency of privately owned and publicly owned electric utilities is investigated using theoretical and econometric models that allow for the effects of both ownership type and regulation the estimation results indicate that the two types of firms are equally cost inefficient in the united states the average effect of inefficiency is to increase the cost of production by 2 4 percent holding output constant inefficiency increases the average quantities demanded of capital and labor and decreases the average quantity demanded of fuel