inequality resource depletion and welfare accounting applications to indonesia and costa rica abstract ahluwalia and chenery noted that the standard measures of gdp growth imply distributional weights that place greater weight on the income of richer income groups and proposed distribution neutral and pro poor alternatives more recently pilot studies by the world resources institute wri have questioned the sustainability of gdp growth and have introduced natural resource modifications to national income accounting to date no studies have undertaken both revisions concurrently creating a revised measure based on gdp but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion such a measure is derived in this paper and its impact illustrated with data from indonesia and costa rica the countries studied by the wri

energy consumption and sustainable economic welfare in g7 countries a comparison with the conventional nexus abstract this is an empirical study on the causal relationship between sustainable economic welfare growth and energy consumption for canada france germany italy japan uk and the usa using a multivariate panel framework with variables such as employment capital energy consumption and r d the short and long run relationships are compared with those produced from the commonly known so far energy gdp gross domestic product growth relationship results mainly show that in the long run g7 economies can reduce energy consumption without compromising sustainable economic welfare in the short run though both gdp and economic welfare are very much dependent on energy consumption for their materialization of growth sustainable or not the current paper follows the tendency of new economics that shift their focus therein and propagate the use of sustainable welfare in place of the criticized gdp the calculation of the index for sustainable economic welfare isew reveals that uk closely followed by usa have the largest gap on average 52 and 50 respectively between their gdp and sustainable economic welfare japan is experiencing a steadily widening gap while canada is the most sustainable country among g7

application and use of the isew for assessing the sustainability of a regional system a case study in italy abstract the index of sustainable economic welfare isew was introduced by daly and cobb in 1989 in order to integrate the information embodied in gdp since economic growth implies externalities and market failures and a portion of it can be defined as uneconomic the isew method introduces some corrections and adjustments to the gdp calculation framework the isew has been calculated for a number of nations but it has been rarely applied to sub national systems its calculation at the local level is important especially in case of administrative decentralization and autonomy and responsibility of local authorities in certain fields for this reason a more and more comprehensive knowledge of the characteristics and peculiarities of the territorial system they manage is necessary this paper presents the results of the isew calculation for tuscany a region in central italy in the period 1971 2006 this is one of the few attempts to apply the isew in time series at the regional level final results show that a discrepancy between isew and gdp appeared in the 1970s social and environmental pressures increased during the period under study making the gap equal to about 30 percent of regional gdp in 2006 the isew can be used also as a tool for evaluating policies but further adjustments in calculation of certain items are considered necessary for taking into account and evaluating punctual policies a case of energy policy is presented

the winner s curse experiments with buyers and with sellers this paper explores the winner s curse phenomena as it was studied experimentally by kagel and levin experiments with the winner s curse are complicated by the fact that subjects can lose money and the experimenter has only a limited means of collecting it from them thus subjects enjoy only limited liability which has theoretical implications for behavior in the kagel and levin experiments subjects were removed from the bidders competition after losses reached a predetermined value this experimental procedure has unknown implications for the results so ambiguity exists about whether the winner s curse was actually observed in this study their results were replicated in an environment in which subjects were not removed the case in which competitors are sellers is also studied bankruptcy cannot be a problem in sellers competition in both cases the winner s curse is observed thus the limited liability cannot be an explanation for the phenomenon reported by kagel and levin in addition the paper examines the bidding behavior of all individuals and shows that this behavior does not fit any of the tested theories either on the aggregate or individual level the winner s curse did not disappear over time during the conduct of the research

dynamic sustainability assessment the case of russia in the period of transition 1985 2008 abstract russia has experienced twenty years of economic and social change which had a substantial impact on the regional and sectoral patterns of the development of its economy infrastructure the quality of the environment and the well being of its people the current economic revival offers new opportunities and presents new challenges for the sustainable development of russia the paper employs the un sustainable development framework of indicators and assesses sustainability of russia using multi criteria evaluation methods namely the uncertainty randomization multi criteria evaluation method analysis and synthesis of parameters under information deficiency aspid the analysis covers economic environmental and social trends in russia s development in 1985 2008 and assesses sustainability of this development from the point of view of multiple criteria the results show the potential of employment of multi criteria methods for the sustainability assessment at the macro level and offer useful insights into multidimensional nature of sustainability and the role of priority setting in the evaluation process such an analysis reveals the degree of harmoniousness of sustainable development policy it shows how different sets of priorities determine the outcome of multidimensional analysis of sustainability and could potentially help in assessing progress and designing new policy instruments this paper is one of the first to apply multi criteria methods to the macro sustainability analysis in the dynamic setting

the index of sustainable economic welfare isew for a local authority a case study in italy abstract the index of sustainable economic welfare isew has been calculated for many countries but rarely at the local level this paper shows how the index has been calculated for the province of siena central italy the whole procedure is illustrated step by step including the search for the most suitable and precise methods to obtain reliable values for each item composing the index application of isew at a very local level was found to be feasible the most general difficulty encountered was the lack of an adequate institutionalised source of statistical information to support the construction of indicators other than purely economic or demographic ones this is mainly due to the still low interest for a sustainable management of natural resources and land on the part of local authorities and the related willingness to invest money and human resources on environmental research the isew gives a more realistic representation of the well being of the population than gdp since it includes environmental and social items not considered in conventional national accounting furthermore in italy the principle of administrative decentralization has been implemented in recent years to such an extent that the central government devolved part of its power to regions provinces and municipalities consequently local authorities are called to allocate more resources to pursue their policies towards sustainability an issue which modern electoral campaigns are often based on the results for the province of siena show that there is a large gap between local gdp and isew about 37 of gdp

measuring sustainable welfare a new approach to the isew abstract sustainability and welfare assessment is a contemporary theme of major scientific and policy relevance requiring the consideration of multiple dimensions and diverse perspectives the economic approach to sustainability and welfare assessment has frequently relied on alternatives or adjustments to gdp widely used as an indicator of macroeconomic performance several authors have proposed alternative indicators such as the isew which intend to measure sustainability and economic welfare in a way that avoids the limitations of gdp namely accounting for the value of externalities the distribution of income and natural resources depletion since daly and cobb 1989 there have been proposed improvements to the isew however its aptitude to represent a sound alternative to gdp is still the subject of scientific debate this paper presents a new approach to the isew named modified isew including new components and methodological changes for the estimation of the index these have the purpose of avoiding some of the index shortcomings and allow for a direct comparison with the gdp which are advantages over previous studies an application is developed for the us case taking advantage of wide data availability and the possibility of comparing the results with previous works the results obtained provide a clearer picture of the success or failure of environmental and social policies namely by avoiding the tampering effect resulting from the cumulative accounting of environmental externalities this work also emphasizes the inadequacy of gdp as a welfare indicator as well as the need to develop and adopt alternative indicators

barriers and opportunities for alternative measures of economic welfare this paper explores a number of barriers and opportunities facing alternative measures of economic welfare by conducting semi structured in depth interviews with potential users in both belgium and germany the barriers that they identified are grouped into three categories context factors are embedded in the policy context and agendas that shape the environment in which an indicator percolates indicator factors depend on specific characteristics of the indicators while user factors relate to the level of experience and expertise of the users of indicators and the institutional culture in which they operate drawing on the different barriers that are reported we identify four opportunities to increase the policy value of alternative measures of economic welfare harmonizing and updating the methodological framework extending macroeconomic models to include a wider range of welfare related items improving the communication around these indicators and promoting indicator and researcher entrepreneurship these opportunities should be regarded as recommendations to the scientific community that works on these alternative measures the process of overcoming the different barriers listed in this paper should not be insurmountable as there is clear international public support for using health social and environmental statistics as well as economic statistics to measure societal progress and human well being

unemployment insurance and male unemployment duration in canada a model of unemployment duration is estimated with weekly micro data on canadian men entitlement provisions in the unemployment insurance program and demand conditions are found to have a significant effect on the probability of leaving unemployment the probability of a worker leaving unemployment declines with the duration of unemployment holding unemployment insurance entitlement constant when entitlement is allowed to vary the probability of leaving first falls and then generally rises with unemployment duration these results are robust with respect to allowing for person specific unobserved heterogeneity and alternative specifications of duration dependence

the index of sustainable economic welfare isew as an alternative to gdp in measuring economic welfare the results of the austrian revised isew calculation 1955 1992 abstract although the inadequacy of gdp to measure economic welfare is widely accepted theoretically it is still used as the key indicator for economic policy this article s aim therefore is to give some empirical evidence to the theoretical critique economic welfare or at least its change over time is estimated by the index of sustainable economic welfare isew which takes account of gdp unpaid household labor social costs environmental damage and income distribution the concept of the isew which was originally developed by herman daly and john cobb is entirely reformulated with special regard to questions of inner consistency and clarity in structure as an illustration the methods of the calculation in the austria case study and its results are presented the main result is that gdp and economic welfare as measured by the isew differ significantly up until the 1970s gdp only slightly overestimated the growth of economic welfare but since then it has been completely misleading while gdp continues to rise sustainable economic welfare has been stagnating since the middle of the 1980s the main causes have been growing future welfare reductions increasing income inequality and a stagnation in the value of unpaid household labor as gdp neglects those aspects it systematically misinterprets economic welfare however the isew does not intend to simply replace gdp as a unique welfare measure but should form part of a more holistic social reporting system

diminishing and negative welfare returns of economic growth an index of sustainable economic welfare isew for thailand thailand has achieved remarkable levels of economic growth over the last three decades this sustained economic growth has played a major role in reducing absolute poverty levels from nearly one third of the population in 1975 to presently less than 10 thus increasing the welfare of many thais this performance ranks thailand as one of the world s most successful economies during this period however an increasing number of studies have begun to find that at a certain point achieving economic growth stops improving welfare and actually begins to diminish it due to the hidden and traditionally unreported costs of associated with this growth with one exception these new studies have focussed on high income countries this study will estimate an index of sustainable economic welfare isew for a developing country thailand over a 25 year period 1975 1999 this paper concludes that even low middle income countries are beginning to approach the point in which economic growth produces both diminishing and at times negative welfare returns as the costs of achieving economic growth begin to outweigh the benefits these results are important for policy makers and highlight the importance of implementing alternative welfare enhancing interventions that must be considered in place of simply achieving economic growth the emphasis of this paper is not on the methodology of estimating the isew for thailand but rather on the policy implications for developing countries of diminishing and negative welfare returns brought about through the achievement of economic growth

well being and or quality of life in eu countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability abstract the aim of my paper is to demonstrate that sen s theory of well being can be applied to make the concept of sustainable human development operational through the building of a multidimensional index of sustainability which takes into account at the same time economic social and environmental variables this index may be considered an alternative to the current measures of welfare sustainability since not only conventional measures such as gdp but also multi attribute indices such as human development index hdi genuine savings index of sustainable economic welfare isew etc are found to be inadequate to make the concept of sustainable development operational therefore the limitations of these measures of welfare sustainability justify the search for a new index of sustainability this index will show at the operational level how sen s theory of well being can be useful to sustainable development it was applied to eu countries using the standardised deviation methodology being the closest and most suitable methodology to be adopted for building multidimensional indices the factor analysis methodology will also be used in my paper lastly the comparison between sen s trend of sustainability and gdp trend index number which are both of them applied to italy will show how much the criticisms and the limitations directed towards the indicator of gdp are founded

super experienced bidders in first price common value auctions rules of thumb nash equilibrium bidding and the winner s curse super experienced bidders have learned to overcome the winner s curse but still earn less than 50 of nash equilibrium profits subjects deviate from the complicated nash strategy employing piecew

the genuine progress indicator methodological developments and results from australia abstract this paper is a contribution to the continuing development of the methods and results for the index of sustainable economic welfare also known as the genuine progress indicator gpi it attempts a more systematic approach to some of the components of the gpi it includes a more careful specification of types of capital and more plausible methods of estimating the costs of depletion of non renewable resources and environmental damage due to ozone depletion in addition the paper attempts a more comprehensive treatment of the value of time including the costs of unemployment and overwork results of the gpi calculations for australia over the period 1950 1996 are presented and analysed

who is behavioral cognitive ability and anomalous preferences in this paper we ask whether variation in preference anomalies is related to variation in cognitive ability evidence from a new laboratory study of chilean high school students with similar schooling backgrounds shows that small stakes risk aversion and short run discounting are less common among those with higher standardized test scores the relationship with test scores survives controls for parental education and wealth we find some evidence that elementary school gpa is predictive of preferences measured at the end of high school two laboratory interventions provide suggestive evidence of a possible causal impact of cognitive resources on expressed preferences jel j24 d14 c91

economic openness and green gdp since the early 1990s there have been several attempts to develop national income accounting systems which recognize the negative impacts of environmental degradation and income inequalities on economic welfare collectively these bgreenq gross domestic product gdp studies have generated a wealth of new time series data sets which can be used to reexamine the links between gdp and a host of factors commonly included in traditional economic growth models in this paper we develop models of green gdp growth and the gap between traditional and green gdp by using a panel data set from eight countries spanning 30 50 years in both the growth and gap models the effects of economic openness are tested we find strong and robust results suggesting a negative nonlinear correlation between openness and green gdp growth and a positive nonlinear correlation between openness and growth of the gap between traditional and green gdp while green gdp accounting systems are still in their infancy our paper nonetheless implies that once these more comprehensive measures are fully developed empirical models which explore factors contributing to the growth of economic welfare over time should be reexamined d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

indicative bidding an experimental analysis indicative bidding is a practice commonly used in sales of complex and very expensive assets theoretical analysis shows that efficient entry is not guaranteed under indicative bidding since there is no equilibrium in which more qualified bidders are more likely to be selected for the final sale furthermore there exist alternative bid procedures that in theory at least guarantee 100 efficiency and higher revenue for the seller we employ experiments to compare actual performance between indicative bidding and one of these alternative procedures the data shows that indicative bidding performs as well as the alternative procedure in terms of entry efficiency while having other characteristics that favor it over the alternative procedure our results provide an explanation for the widespread use of indicative bidding despite the potential problem identified in the equilibrium analysis

a theoretical foundation to support the index of sustainable economic welfare isew genuine progress indicator gpi and other related indexes abstract for some time now ecological economists have been putting forward a threshold hypothesis the notion that when macroeconomic systems expand beyond a certain size the additional cost of growth exceeds the flow of additional benefits in order to support their belief ecological economists have developed a number of similar indexes to measure and compare the benefits and costs of growth e g the index of sustainable economic welfare isew and the genuine progress indicator gpi in virtually every instance where an index of this type has been calculated for a particular country the movement of the index appears to reinforce the existence of the threshold hypothesis of late a number of observers have cast doubt over the validity of these alternative indexes one of the concerns commonly expressed is the supposed lack of a theoretical foundation to support the isew the gpi and other related indexes by adopting a concept of income and capital outlined by fisher nature of capital and income a m kelly new york 1906 this paper demonstrates that these alternative indexes are theoretically sound but in order to be broadly accepted require the continuous development of more robust valuation methods

an index of sustainable economic welfare isew for chile abstract chile has experienced a period of strong economic growth the gross domestic product gdp has doubled in the past 12 years however income inequality remains relatively the same as in the 1960s the economic growth is primarily attributed to the exports of natural resources which accounts for 80 of total exports however the gdp fails to account for the loss of natural capital and non marketed services the objective of this paper is to more clearly indicate the status of the chilean economy in terms of welfare using the index of sustainable economic welfare isew designed by daly and cobb 1989 the isew provides corrections to the gdp that includes income inequalities household labor and damage to natural capital this index has been applied in several case studies for developed countries in general the results show that isew runs parallel with gdp until the 1970s when a decline in welfare occurs due to a loss in natural capital this study is the first attempt to utilize the isew for the purpose of analyzing whether or not similar trends exist for chile a developing country the isew for chile grew at a much slower annual rate over the past 30 years compared with gdp 0 16 vs 2 9 the chilean isew parallels the gdp until the 1980s a decline in the isew then occurs showing that chile is not on a sustainable path and that there is a strong link between economic growth and the depletion of natural resources

consumption sustainable welfare and human needs with reference to uk expenditure patterns between 1954 and 1994 abstract this paper explores the complex relationship between economic consumption and human welfare or well being conventional economics suggests that increasing levels of economic consumption lead to increasing levels of well being however this view has been criticised on both environmental and social grounds on the one hand the material impacts of increasing consumption are environmentally unsustainable on the other hand material consumption can conflict with crucial social and psychological components of human welfare this paper develops a perspective on human welfare which is based on max neef s characterisation of human needs it discusses the implications of this alternative perspective for the conventional viewpoint and illustrates the importance of it with reference to patterns of consumer expenditure in the uk over the last 40 years the authors suggest that from this perspective modern societies may be seriously adrift in their pursuit of human well being however they also point out that addressing this situation provides far more opportunity for ecologically sustainable development than is generally recognised

a comparison of naive and experienced bidders in common value offer auctions a laboratory analysis laboratory economics experiments typically use financially motivated students as subjects an ongoing issue is whether this is an appropriate subject pool since the students are typically inexperienced in the types of decision making required of them in the lab this paper addresses this issue in the context of common value offer auctions as we compare the behaviour of experienced business executives in the construction contract industry experts with that of naive student subjects results of previous research of this sort have been equivocal in some cases experts make the same errors as novices in other cases they do not hogarth and reder i987 a series of sealed bid common value offer auctions in which bidders compete for the right to supply an item of unknown cost were conducted inherent to common value auctions cvas is an adverse selection problem which may result in below normal or negative profits the winner s curse experimental studies have documented the presence of the winner s curse with financially motivated student subjects in high price demand side auctions kagel et al i986 kagel and levin i986 the experiments reported here generalise these earlier studies from bid to offer auctions also in employing offer auctions we establish a setting with which our experts are familiar thus allowing their experience the best chance to manifest itself

the impact of being offered and receiving classroom training on the employment histories of disadvantaged women evidence from experimental data we address two questions using experimental data on disadvantaged women first what is the impact of being offered jtpa classroom training on the duration of unemployment and employment second what is the effect of actually participating in this training on the length of such spells belonging to the treatment group shortens unemployment spells but has no effect on employment spells actually participating in training has a larger positive effect on the exit rate from unemployment than the effect of simply being a member of the treatment group ignoring the endogeneity of actual training in estimation substantially underestimates its effect

learning in common value auctions some initial observations abstract inexperienced bidders in first price common value auctions suffer from a winner s curse losing money on average with experience bidders approximate the nash equilibrium the mechanisms underlying this adjustment are 1 a market selection effect as the most aggressive bidders are less likely to return for subsequent sessions and 2 players who lose money bid less experiential learning and those who would have lost money had they won the auction with the high bidder s signal bid less observational learning

selection bias demographic effects and ability effects in common value auction experiments inexperienced women along with economics and business majors are much more susceptible to the winner s curse as are subjects with lower sat act scores there are strong selection effects in bid function estimates for inexperienced and experienced subjects due to bankruptcies and bidders who have lower earnings returning less frequently as experienced subjects these selection effects are not identified using standard econometric techniques but are identified through experimental treatment effects ignoring these selection effects leads to misleading estimates of learning

the end of economic growth a contracting threshold hypothesis this paper argues that gdp growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well being this conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the genuine progress indicator gpi to a range of countries in the asia pacific region the studies conducted on seven asia pacific countries indicate that in the case of five of the seven nations more recent gdp growth has reduced the sustainable well being experienced by the average citizen residing within them moreover the threshold point at which the costs of gdp growth outweigh the benefits appears to be contracting i e occurring at a much lower per capita level of gdp this paper therefore introduces a new contracting threshold hypothesis as the economies of the asia pacific region and the world collectively expand in a globalised economic environment there is a contraction over time in the threshold level of per capita gdp as a consequence the threshold point confronting growth late comers i e developing countries occurs at a much lower level of sustainable welfare than what wealthy nations currently enjoy the consequences of this for developing countries are clearly significant and require a new approach to economic development

6 revenue effects and information processing in english common value auctions an experiment analyzing behavior in english common value auctions is reported english auctions raise more revenue than first price auctions only when bidders do not suffer from a strong winner s curse agents employ other bidders dropout prices along with their private information as nash bidding theory predicts however a simple and natural signal averaging rule which does not require recognizing the adverse selection effect of winning the auction better characterizes the data than the nash rule monte carlo simulations using fiml estimates of the signal averaging rule predict a number of data characteristics not directly employed in the estimation procedure copyright 1996 by american economic association

sustainability of nations by indices comparative study between environmental sustainability index ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices abstract the present work makes a comparison between the two most used environmental sustainability indices of nations ecological footprint and environmental sustainability index with two emergy ratios renewability and emergy sustainability index all of them are gaining space within the scientific community and government officials despite the efforts for obtaining an index that adequately represents the sustainability of a region according to the result of this research nowadays there is not yet a completely satisfactory index we consider that all of them need to be improved but the results point out the possibility of obtaining one better index of sustainability through the junction of ecological footprint with renewability emergy index

beyond gdp measuring and achieving global genuine progress article i nfo while global gross domestic product gdp has increased more than three fold since 1950 economic wel fare as estimated by the genuine progress indicator gpi has actually decreased since 1978 we synthesized estimates of gpi over the 1950 2003 time period for 17 countries for which gpi has been estimated these 17 countries contain 53 of the global population and 59 of the global gdp we compared gpi with gross domestic product gdp human development index hdi ecological footprint biocapacity gini coefficient and life satisfaction scores results show a significant variation among these countries but some major trends we also estimated a global gpi capita over the 1950 2003 period global gpi capita peaked in 1978 about the same time that global ecological footprint exceeded global biocapacity life satisfaction in almost all countries has also not improved significantly since 1975 globally gpi capita does not increase beyond a gdp capita of around 7000 capita if we distributed income more equitably around the planet the current world gdp 67 trillion yr could support 9 6 billion people at 7000 capita while gpi is not the perfect economic welfare indicator it is a far better approximation than gdp development policies need to shift to better account for real welfare and not merely gdp growth

how countries resource use history matters for human well being an investigation of global patterns in cumulative material flows from 1950 to 2010 abstract global resource use has been expanding rapidly after 1950 and improved material living conditions and human well being of large parts of the global population we here apply a cumulative long term perspective to gain broader insights into the material requirements of human well being the role of trade and the history of environmental pressures than the usual perspective of annual or most recent flows would reveal furthermore we investigate environmental pressures expressed as cumulative extraction per area over the last 60 years to both ends we utilize cumulative data on material flows on domestic material inputs dmi and domestic extraction de for 148 countries from 1950 to 2010 and the social progress index we find that a high level of well being required at least 460 t cap of cumulative material inputs from 1950 to 2010 an analysis of the relation between cumulative flows and current human well being shows statistically significant that at similar levels of cumulative material inputs biophysical export orientation of a country has a weak negative influence on well being when the sustainable development goals are to be achieved the scientific community and policy makers have to consider the history of development of resource use to better understand the future challenges ahead

a conceptual exploration and critical inquiry into the theoretical foundation s of economic welfare measures abstract economic welfare measures ewm such as the isew and the gpi are often argued to lack a sound theoretical foundation however we observe that the initial ewm were jointly inspired by hicksian and fisherian income welfare s experiential nature is fisherian inspired whereas seeing the consumption of community capital e g the ecosystem as a cost is hicksian inspired as most scholars do not recognize this double theoretical foundation two distinct welfare interpretations with different time and boundary dimensions are often conflated ewm can be seen as either capturing the benefits and costs experienced or as reflecting the benefits and costs of present economic activities bcpa the former interpretation excludes future costs costs shifted abroad and capital changes as they are not experienced in the present while the latter includes them recent developments reveal that ewm are converging toward the ex post established experiential fisherian foundation formulated by lawn 2003 yet this is not the only way forward as the bcpa view offers an alternative to account for for instance the costs of present activities shifted abroad or to the future whether they are experienced or not to avoid inconsistencies ewm s standardization would greatly benefit from making explicit in future studies which interpretation is taken

developing approaches to measuring and monitoring sustainable development in wales a review munday m and roberts a 2006 developing approaches to measuring and monitoring sustainable development in wales a review regional studies 40 534 535 under the 1998 government of wales act the welsh assembly government committed to the promotion of sustainable development in the exercise of its functions the paper examines a selection of approaches that are being explored in wales to monitor and measure progress towards sustainable development objectives these approaches are the ecological footprint the index of sustainable economic welfare the environmental satellite account and environmental input output tables the paper shows that in wales there are problems with each of the approaches outlined but that development of an environmental satellite account could be useful with this approach linked to the other approaches reviewed and with the satellite account enabling environmental factors to be connected more readily to conventional regional accounting aggregates the findings are expecte

gender effects in private value auctions abstract in a two stage auction women are significantly more likely to go bankrupt than men bidding more aggressively than the men in both phases of the auction process

public and private sector wages in the netherlands there is much debate in the netherlands about underpayment of public sector workers relative to private sector workers in this paper we analyze the wage structures in both sectors using an endogenous switching regression model unlike previous dutch studies we find that the earnings prospects of public sector workers are better in the public sector than in the private sector for private sector workers we find the exact opposite their earnings prospects are better in the private sector moreover the allocation over sectors points to comparative advantages

a summary of isew and gpi studies at multiple scales and new estimates for baltimore city baltimore county and the state of maryland this paper 1 summarizes a number of previous index of sustainable economic welfare isew and genuine progress indicator gpi studies at various scales 2 estimates the gpi for baltimore baltimore county and the state of maryland and 3 compares these results with previous and parallel studies gpi incorporates environmental social and economic information into a single metric to represent economic well being at all three scales gpi was found to grow at a slower rate than the conventional economic measure of gross domestic product gdp while at the us national scale gpi has been relatively flat since 1975 state level results match an independently calculated maryland gpi confirming that gpi methods are robust and reproducible in addition the state of maryland has recently made gpi one of their official state statistics reported annually state level gpi results were also compared with studies for the states of ohio and vermont to explore regional differences we recommend that the gpi research community develop consensus on a standardized measurement approach and seek common ground for advancing the use of improved indicators and accounting systems in official policy settings

economic growth quality environmental sustainability and social welfare in china provincial assessment based on genuine progress indicator gpi abstract in order to devise scientific and sustainable development strategy it is vital to assess the quality of economic growth as a useful complement to traditional economic indicators gpi s most reputed virtue is its great improvement in evaluating environmental and social costs in this paper we estimate the gpi for all 31 provinces in mainland china from 1997 to 2016 gpi estimation is highly sensitive to income inequality climate change damage and depletion of non renewables we address contestable methodological assumptions associated with the three items which have been usually ignored in empirical studies we use the atkinson index in place of the gini index as a measure of income inequality we avoid the problematic duplicated counting of climate change damage and the unjustified cost escalation factor in depletion of non renewables our results show that first gpi per capita has recently declined in some provinces unveiling a threat to social welfare and sustainability second the relative threshold effect the progress of social welfare promotion is slower than the expansion of economic scale has been found in many provinces third resource consumption and environmental pollution especially water pollution and carbon emissions would generate substantial welfare losses

financial decision making are women really more risk averse 40 males 33 females gain gambling gain domain loss gambling loss domain a contextual frames b abstract gambling frames studies the application of experimental methods provided stronger control of the economic environment in which decisions were made we elicited data which call into question the prevalence of stereotypic risk attitudes in financial decision making first we find that the comparative risk propensity of male and female subjects is strongly dependent on the financial decision setting second and more important we observe no gender differences in risk propensity when subjects face contextual decisions since in practice financial decisions are always contextual our results suggest that the above gender stereotype may not reflect true male and female attitudes toward financial risks i gender specific risk behavior an experimental design our experiment was designed to examine gender specific risk propensity in decisions relevant for investors and managers table 1 gives an overview of the experimental design in the main treatment we implemented risky choices in the form of investment and insurance decisions choice behavior in this treatment henceforth called the context treatment directly measures the risk behavior of male and female subjects in contextual financial decisions we also ran a control treatment in which the same risky choices were presented as abstract gambling decisions this control treatment henceforth called the abstract treatment allows us to validate the risk behavior induced by our experimental procedure in the light of the above mentioned gambling evidence in the context treatment subjects were confronted with risky choices in two different decision contexts subjects first had to complete a series of investment decisions they were then presented with a series of identical choices this time however framed as insur1 wealth effects from income differences outside the laboratory may still affect risk behavior in our experiment they are controlled for in our model 2 experimental instructions are available in german from the authors or in english from our web page www wif ethz ch publikationen htm ance decisions each investment and insurance decision incorporated a choice between a risky lottery and a certain payoff with the series of choices implemented in the two frames we elicited our subjects certainty equivalents for the same four risky lotteries l1 l2 l3 l4 in both contexts we implemented two frames in the context treatment in order to measure the risk propensity of subjects toward both perceived gains and perceived losses in both frames all possible payoffs for each decision were positive in the investment frame these payoffs were also presented as gains while in the insurance frame the same payoffs were presented as losses relative to an initial endowment therefore elicited certainty equivalents in the investment frame measure subjects risk propensities in the gain domain while certainty equivalents in the insurance frame measure risk propensity in the loss domain if in contextual financial decisions female subjects are generally more risk averse than men our results should display ceteris paribus lower female certainty equivalents in both the investment and insurance frames 3 the four lotteries l1 l2 l3 and l4 each had two possible outcomes payoffs in swiss francs 1 sfr a 0 60 and their probabilities were 30 sfr 6 10 sfr 6 30 sfr 2 10 sfr 2 30 sfr 6 10 sfr 6 and 50 sfr 2 20 sfr 2 respectively 4 experimental evidence suggests that individual risk propensity will vary systematically between the gain and loss domain daniel kahneman and amos tversky 1979 383 vol 89 no 2 gender and economic transactions 3y16 my68 mp 383 friday dec 10 08 20 am lp aer my68 figure 1 differences in mean certainty equivalents ce between male and female subjects by frame note certainty equivalents and male female differences are measured in swiss francs in the abstract treatment we confronted a different group of subjects with exactly the same risky decisions as those in the main treatment however as mentioned before all choices in this control treatment were framed as abstract gambling decisions again two frames were implemented in the gaingambling and loss gambling frames we measured the risk attitudes of subjects toward gambles in the gain and loss domain respectively subjects in both treatments were told in advance that one of their choices would determine their experimental earnings further all subjects completed a post experimental questionnaire which yielded information on each subject s disposable income this information is necessary to exclude wealth effects due to income differences outside the laboratory as an explanation of gender specific choice behavior

behavioral equilibrium in economies with adverse selection i propose a new solution concept behavioral equilibrium to study environments with players who are naive in the sense that they fail to account for the informational content of other players actions a behavioral equilibrium requires that i players have no incentives to deviate given their beliefs about the consequences of deviating ii these beliefs are consistent with the information obtained from the actual equilibrium play of all players and iii when processing this information naive players fail to account for the correlation between other players actions and their own payouncertainty i apply the framework to certain adverse selection settings and show that contrary to the received literature the adverse selection problem is exacerbated when naive players fail to account for selection more generally the main distinguishing feature of the framework is that in equilibrium beliefs about both fundamentals and strategies are jointly restricted consequently whether a bias may arise or not is determined endogenously in equilibrium jel c72 d82 a large literature presents evidence that psychological and cognitive biases aect people s be havior this evidence raises some questions what are the eects of these biases and can they persist at all in economic settings where people strategically interact with each other and have the opportunity to learn from their experience 1 in this paper i introduce a game theoretic equilibrium framework to study these questions in the context of a particular bias people s failure to take into account the informational content of other people s actions i apply the framework to a class of games that arises naturally in adverse selection settings and then show that the adverse selection

dynamic multidimensional assessment of sustainability at the macro level the case of austria abstract this paper explores the issue of sustainability at the macro scale employing multi criteria decision aid mcda methods the incommensurability of values and the essentially multi dimensional and dynamic nature of sustainability challenge the use of composite measurement indices this determined the choice of mcda methods austria was chosen as a case study due to the wide availability of data especially on indicators of strong sustainability the structure of the multi criteria problem comprised the evolution of different sustainability dimensions over time the process for selecting criteria included a critical assessment of institutional sustainability agendas un eu and austrian government and theoretical recommendations after an assessment of mcda methods the naiade method demonstrated the most suitable properties for sustainability assessment the application of this outranking approach was undertaken in three separate settings long term from 1960 to 2003 medium term 1970 1995 and short term 1995 2003 with varying numbers of criteria the response of results to the addition of evaluating criteria and periods was tested the degree of credibility for accepting preference relations was also employed for sensitivity analysis according to the results of long term and medium term assessments especially in the weak sustainability setting sustainable progress is taking place in austria in the short term in the stronger sustainability setting and especially as the number of criteria increases more incomparable periods appear and trends are less determined moreover it is shown how results crucially depend on the methodological choices this is one of the first applications of the multi criteria tools to the dynamic analysis of sustainability at the macro scale

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

on the methodology of isew gpi and related measures some constructive suggestions and some doubt on the threshold hypothesis existing country studies of the index of sustainable economic welfare isew the genuine progress indicator gpi and related measures while sharing the same basic methodological approach differ with respect to the valuation of important items this paper provides a critical but constructive discussion of the various methods used for the valuation of non renewable resource depletion and long term environmental damage and for the weighting of consumption expenditures for income inequalities several recommendations are given on how to improve the methodology for future updates of existing studies or for the construction of new measures sensitivity analysis shows that if these recommendations are followed for the valuation of resource depletion and long term environmental damage then the so called threshold hypothesis which seems to have gained empirical support from all studies undertaken so far fails to materialise this suggests that as far as factors related to the environment are concerned the widening gap between isew and gpi on the one hand and gross national product gnp on the other might be an artefact of highly contestable methodological assumptions 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the loser s curse if the value of a commodity is unknown a prospective buyer must realize that a bid based on an overestimate of its value is likely to be accepted in this situation merely finding out that one s bid is accepted may cause one to reduce the estimate of a commodity s value so winning an auction can bring a feeling of regret 1 acceptance of a bid is an informative event and failure to incorporate this contingent information into the bidding strategy can lead to excessive bids and subsequent losses a result widely known as the winner s curse 2 there is considerable anecdotal evidence that bidders for a prize of uncertain value fall prey to the winner s curse and persistent overbidding has also been observed in laboratory experiments 3 there is a second factor that can also induce overbidding the thrill of winning this raises the possibility that overbidding is due to a utility of winning instead of being the result of an irrational failure to anticipate the informational content of a bid s acceptance one way to distinguish these explanations is to examine a situation in which the winner s curse effect is neutralized to see if bids are still too high in order to neutralize the winner s curse we identify an opposing bias a situation in which a failure to anticipate the informational content of a bid s acceptance will cause one to bid below the optimal bid resulting in a loser s curse since the loser s curse produces underbidding its effect is the opposite of that arising from the winner s curse