in defence of historical accountability for greenhouse gas emissions abstract this commentary argues in defence of equal per capita emissions with historical accountability as a general rule for allocating the right to emit greenhouse gases historical accountability takes into account historical inequalities in per capita emissions implicitly it gives every human being an equal share of the global resource atmosphere independent of place or time three reasons are put forward to argue why historical accountability should be the guiding principle for an international agreement allocating rights of emissions in addition as it has been dismissed by many scholars six arguments are given to refute objections against historical accountability

the manufacturing base under energy price uncertainty this paper provides empirical and methodological analysis under a very important source of uncertainty energy price uncertainty in so doing we show the impact of the energy price instability on the u s manufacturing output and the manufacturing sector s demand for energy in addition our method enables us to easily derive empirical comparative statistics results that can be compared to the theoretical results

recent applications of theory of the firm under uncertainty this paper provides a comprehensive synthesis and analysis of the current and recent empirical implementations of the theory of the firm under uncertainty including multiple sources of uncertainty in so doing it identifies the major estimation obstacles and it offers the future empirical researcher ways to derive simple estimation procedures under multiple sources uncertainty

using state pension shocks to estimate fiscal multipliers since the great recession has government spending raised income and employment since 2008 i use new data on state pension returns during the great recession to recover exogenous changes in spending instrumenting with these return shocks i estimate that each dollar of windfall financed spending raised local incomes by 1 43 and every additional 22 011 of spending created one contemporaneous job these estimates are similar to those found in shoag 2010 despite the non overlapping datasets unlike shoag 2010 however the bulk of the employment increase post 2008 stems from decreases in unemployment rather than increased labor force participation

distinguishing between whole farm vs partial farm participation in the conservation reserve program by distinguishing between the decision to participate in the conservation reserve program crp and the decision for whole farm vs part farm participation we model participation as separate binary decisions our results suggest the farm characteristics and other factors affect the decision to participate in crp differently than the decision regarding whole farm vs part farm participation this model formulation also helps to clarify the conditions under which the effect of crp payments on the acreage enrolled in the program is positive or negative

ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

how can market mechanisms for forest environmental services help the poor preliminary lessons from latin america summary market mechanisms for forest environmental services are a new approach for conservation but there is also an increasing interest in the derived developmental benefits of these mechanisms we first propose a conceptual framework for future research on the livelihood impacts of environmental service markets we then review eight latin american case studies on carbon sequestration and watershed protection market initiatives finding positive local income effects in most cases more land tenure security and socioinstitutional strengthening in some cases but some negative effects also we recommend pro poor policy measures such as reducing smallholders transaction costs and removing inappropriate access restrictions

equity based natural resource allocation for infrastructure development evidence from large hydropower dams in africa and asia abstract large hydropower infrastructure development is a key energy priority in low and middle income countries as a means to increase energy access and promote national development nevertheless hydropower dams can also negatively impact people s livelihoods by reducing access to local natural resources such as land water and food this paper analyses equity based resource allocation from an ecological economics perspective by looking at local resource use competition between different uses food energy livelihoods and users villagers urban settlers local government and dam builders in selected case studies in asia and africa it also illustrates from a political ecology approach divergences between national priorities of energy production and growth and local development needs

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

measuring the impacts of production risk on technical efficiency a state contingent conditional order m approach this article studies the influence of risk on farms technical efficiency levels the analysis extends the order m efficiency scores approach proposed by daraio and simar 2005 to the state contingent framework the empirical application focuses on cross section data of catalan specialized crop farms from the year 2011 results suggest that accounting for production risks increases the technical performance a 10 increase in output risk will result in a 2 5 increase in average firm technical performance 2014 elsevier b v all rights reserved

washington biofuel feedstock crop supply under output price and quantity uncertainty abstract subsidized development of an in state biofuels industry has received some political support in the state of washington usa utilizing in state feedstock supplies could be an efficient way to stimulate biofuel industries and the local economy in this paper we estimate supply under output price and quantity uncertainty for major biofuel feedstock crops in washington farmers are expected to be risk averse and maximize the utility of profit and uncertainty we estimate very large washington price elasticities for corn and sugar beets but a small price elasticity for a third potential feedstock canola even with the large price elasticities for two potential feedstocks their current and historical production levels in the state are so low that unrealistically large incentives would likely be needed to obtain sufficient feedstock supply for a washington biofuel industry based on our examination of state and regional data we find low likelihood that a washington biofuels industry will develop in the near future primarily using within state biofuel feedstock crops

equity effects of alternative assignments of global environmental rights abstract through a thought experiment in which members of different generations trade with each other in a virtual market we examine the effects of alternative assignments of global environmental rights on prices interest rates and the global distribution of income the model is semi calibrated to current and projected levels of the output of produced goods and to present and future quantities of global environmental goods income classes in each country are disaggregated to the quintile level multiple equilibria are possible for some rights assignments with implications for intergenerational equity the model projects bounds on the degree of future economic inequality depending on how the environmental rights are assigned a policy that assigns the environmental rights in such a way as to leave the present day distribution of income unchanged while moving in the direction of equal per capita endowments of environmental rights can result in future inequality comparable to today s average within country inequality

estimating state contingent production frontiers chambers and quiggin 2000 use state contingent representations of risky production technologies to establish important theoretical results concerning producer behavior under uncertainty unfortunately perceived problems in the estimation of state contingent models have limited the usefulness of the approach in policy formulation we show that fixed and random effects state contingent production frontiers can be conveniently estimated in a finite mixtures framework an empirical example is provided compared to conventional estimation approaches we find that estimating production frontiers in a state contingent framework produces significantly different estimates of elasticities firm technical efficiencies and other quantities of economic interest

the environment and the ethics of discounting an empirical analysis abstract this paper examines the application of discount rates by individuals and by governments when they make decisions about environmental resource use the paper is presented in the context of ethics as determined by what is good and also by what is right for society since in this instance there appears to be no conflict between the two perspectives in addition the paper assesses whether ethical considerations are included in decision making frameworks at the individual and community levels consistency of discount rate applications between individuals and governments is also investigated since consistency is an element of ethical arguments empirical data from a study of soil conservation adoption by philippines upland farmers are used in the analysis individual discount rates are assessed in relation to income and poverty interest rates paid on debt purpose of borrowings land tenure income inequality and soil conservation adoption some of the results appear to be counter intuitive and reasons for this phenomenon are sought the overall results have policy implications and suggestions are made about how an ethical perspective might be developed by governments to help ensure that decision making criteria are more consistent with the practices of individuals within the communities they serve it is suggested that this approach would lead to greater intergenerational and intragenerational equity and better environmental quality

discounting and distributional considerations in the context of global warming the economics of global warming is reviewed with special emphasis on how the cost depends on the discount rate and on how costs in poor and rich regions are aggregated into a global cost estimate both of these factors depend on the assumptions made concerning the underlying utility and welfare functions it is common to aggregate welfare gains and losses across generations and countries as if the utility of money were constant but it is not if we assume that a e co2 equivalent dlubling implies costs equal to 1 5 of the income in both high and low income countries a pure rate of time preference equal to zero and a utility function which is logarithmic in income then the marginal cost of co2 emissions is estimated at 260 590 usd ton c for a time horizon in the range 300 1000 years an estimate which is large enough to justify significant reductions of co2 emissions on purely economic grounds the estimate is approximately 50 100 times larger than the estimate made by nordhaus in his dice model and the difference is almost completely due to the choice of discount rate and the weight given to the costs in the developing world as well as a more accurate model of the carbon cycle finally the sensitivity of the marginal cost estimate with respect to several parameters is analyzed

what lessons have been learned in reforming the renewables obligation an analysis of internal and external failures in uk renewable energy policy abstract despite operating a delivery programme for res e since 1990 uk targets and policy goals have not been achieved in response the government reformed the ro this article re examines uk renewable energy policy by analysing the internal and external failures of the various mechanisms to determine if government has learnt from previous experience in reforming the ro government did not learn from their own actions during the nffo ro transition evidenced by high levels of similarity in internal external failures the reformed ro is expected to significantly increase deployment has provided a renewables package by comprehensively addressing both internal external failures but major internal failures price financial risk still remain resulting in contiguous failures over two decades and two mechanism changes nffo ro ro reformed ro success will again be heavily dependent on a select few technologies and new untested measures to combat external failures mechanism extension to 2037 is probably the single most important factor underlying potential deployment increases however introducing a fit like system via the sheer number of bolt on reforms to counter policy failures indicates loss of direction and clarity overall although government appears to have learnt some of its lessons from the past two decades significant doubt remains whether renewable energy policy objectives will be met via the latest mechanism change

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

a just and efficient reduction of resource throughput to optimum abstract resource throughput in the economy e g of energy or materials must be progressively reduced by at least one order of magnitude to achieve an optimal level although this would solve the resource distribution conflict between the generations it would also aggravate the resource distribution conflict between persons of the same generation it is shown here that a solution to these two conflicts and efficient resource allocation are only possible if resource certificates are distributed to consumers free of charge and traded between them this paper builds on and integrates ideas developed in h daly s daly h e 1992 allocation distribution and scale towards an economics that is efficient just and sustainable ecological economics 6 185 193 article on allocation distribution and scale adding insights from the ecological footprint concept to propose a mechanism for facilitating intergenerational equity and drastically reducing resource throughput basically the mechanism involves rationing throughput equitably internalizing environmental and social externalities and substituting labour for resource use this can be achieved almost without a drop in prosperity both unemployment and dependence on scarce resources decline

the interaction between food prices and oil prices this paper provides a statistical methodology to estimate the impact of oil price uncertainty on food prices in doing so it examines the joint impact of oil price and food price uncertainties and their correlation on the food price also the theoretical model was applied to the oil based trinidad and tobago and the empirical results confirm the theoretical predictions the empirical results indicate that a higher oil price increases food price also a higher oil price volatility yields a higher food price moreover an increase in the oil supply reduces the food price

parameters measuring bank risk and their estimation the paper develops estimation of three parameters of banking risk based on an explicit model of expected utility maximization by financial institutions subject to the classical technology restrictions of neoclassical production theory the parameters are risk aversion prudence or downside risk aversion and generalized risk resulting from a factor model of loan prices the model can be estimated using standard econometric techniques like gmm for dynamic panel data and latent factor analysis for the estimation of covariance matrices an explicit functional form for the utility function is not needed and we show how measures of risk aversion and prudence downside risk aversion can be derived and estimated from the model the model is estimated using data for eurozone countries and we focus particularly on i the use of the modeling approach as a device close to an early warning mechanism ii the bank and country specific estimates of risk aversion and prudence downside risk aversion and iii the derivation of a generalized measure of risk that relies on loan price uncertainty moreover the model provides estimates of loan price distortions and thus allocative efficiency

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

promise and shortcomings of a green turn in recent policy responses to the double crisis abstract the paper analyses six international scale responses to the financial and climate change double crisis in order to review how they define problems and solutions analyse what underpins the policy choices revealed in these responses the green turn reflect on the implications of the proposed solutions in terms of sustainability and global environmental justice and to suggest three elements for a paradigm shift towards an alternative turn embedded in ecological economics theory the analysis reveals that responses by leading international organisations continue to appeal to the precepts of neoclassical economy we argue that from an ecological economics perspective policy responses under the various labels of green economy green growth sustainable growth green new deal fall well short of what is needed to fight the environmental crisis and rising inequality across and within countries the idea of justice and equity that underpins the mainstream approach seems inadequate in terms of sustaining our environmental base and global environmental justice based on this critical review we propose an alternative turn centred on three elements of a paradigm shift leading to a new economy where the environmental base and global environmental justice are at the centre of the discourse

specification and estimation of production risk risk preferences and technical efficiency this article deals with specification and estimation of risk preferences production risk and technical inefficiency it makes contribution in three separate areas of production economics first we model producers attitude toward risk and derive risk preference functions without assuming any parametric form of the utility function and any distribution of the error term representing production risk when risk arises from production uncertainty and technical inefficiency second the standard production risk model is extended to accommodate technical inefficiency and producers attitude toward risk finally the technical efficiency model is generalized to accommodate production risk and producers attitude toward risk copyright 2002 oxford university press

humans environment and economies from vicious relationships to virtuous responsibility abstract the debates questioning the meaning of growth point to a need for a more holistic understanding of human beings and of the economic actor fundamental to economic theory and practice this contribution turns to virtue ethics in order to reframe the self in more reflexive relational and environmental terms we explore the significance of understanding humans sense of responsibility that is quintessentially relational and of their capacity and need to relate to nature as well as community and society we begin by reviewing the main arguments in the thriving debate in ecological economics around what the characteristics of the human being can contribute to implement an ecologically sustainable development our aim is then to draw a link between this debate and that of virtue ethics that leads to a different understanding of the human being of what can contribute to individual wellbeing and a good life responsibility we argue is not only a value but a virtue that enables individuals to find meaning in acting responsibly towards the environment emphasising the multiple benefits that arise from framing good lives in active terms we conclude reflecting on the challenges to and implications of our proposition for government institutions particularly education

macroeconomic effects from government purchases and taxes for u s annual data that include world war ii the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0 4 0 5 contemporaneously and 0 6 0 7 over 2 years if the change in defense spending is permanent gauged by ramey s defense news variable the multipliers are higher by 0 1 0 2 since all estimated multipliers are significantly less than 1 greater spending crowds out other components of gdp particularly investment the lack of good instruments prevents estimation of reliable multipliers for nondefense purchases multipliers in the literature of two or more likely reflect reverse causation from gdp to nondefense purchases increases in average marginal income tax rates measured by a newly constructed time series have significantly negative effects on gdp when interpreted as a tax multiplier the magnitude is around 1 1 the combination of the estimated spending and tax multipliers implies that the balanced budget multiplier for defense spending is negative we have some evidence that tax changes affect gdp mainly through substitution effects rather than wealth effects

heteroscedasticity or production risk a synthetic view two veins of literature namely production risk literature and stochastic frontier analysis are examined both fields are concerned of output variation the former due to exogenous shocks the latter due inefficiency by covering the literature from both the fields this review suggests that the concept of heteroscedasticity can be utilized to build a synthesis between these mainly separate branches of literature however the synthetic approach brings a challenge how to differentiate between different sources of output variation this challenge is identified as the main obstacle to meaningfully combine the two approaches

a cup runneth over fiscal policy spillovers from the 2009 recovery act this article studies the effects of interregional spillovers from the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009 the recovery act using cross county commuting data we cluster us counties into local labour markets each of which we further partition into two subregions we then compare differential labour market outcomes and recovery act spending at the regional and subregional levels among pairs of subregions we find evidence of fiscal policy spillovers according to our benchmark specification 1 of recovery act spending in a subregion increases its own wage bill by 0 64 and increases the wage bill in its neighbouring subregion by 0 50 during the first two years following the act s passage the spillover effect occurs in the service sector whereas the direct effect occurs in both the services and goods producing sector

on the conceptual foundations of ecological economics a teleological approach abstract nature is characterised by the emergence and continued existence of far from equilibrium self organizing dissipative structures ffesods which can be described in terms of their genotypes potentialities and phenotypes realizations if a ffesods genotype is contained within its phenotype we call it an organism we can describe the behaviour of organisms as being teleological we offer three tele for organisms first telos self maintenance development and self realization second telos replication and renewal third telos service to other organisms to other species or to the whole of nature sustainability of an ecosystem requires a balance and harmony between these mutually supporting tele we define the related concepts of stock store and fund we can interpret all living activity be it natural or economic in terms of relationships between funds through the three tele we can characterise the environmental problems in the first world as stemming from too great an emphasis by humans on the first telos through consumerism and too little emphasis on the third telos in the third world we can identify environmental problems with an imbalance towards the second telos reproduction leading to a de emphasis of the third telos the long run solution to global environmental problems must lie in the re establishment of global harmony between the three tele of both humans and non humans

fiscal policy in an unemployment crisis this paper shows that large scal multipliers arise naturally from equilibrium unemployment dynamics in response to a shock that brings the economy into a liquidity trap an expansion in government spending increases output and causes a fall in the unemployment rate since movements in unemployment are persistent the eects of current spending linger into the future leading to an enduring rise in income as an enduring rise in income boosts private demand even a temporary increase in government spending sets in motion a virtuous employment spending spiral with a large associated multiplier this transmission mechanism contrasts with the conventional view in which scal policy may be ecacious only under a prolonged and committed rise in government spending which engineers a spiral of increasing ination

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

economic efficiency adjusted for risk preferences abstractthis study investigates the impact of risk preferences on cost and revenue efficiency for a sample of farms risk preference scores were used to measure risk aversion cost and revenue efficiency were estimated using traditional input and output measures and then re estimated including each farm s risk preference score comparisons were made between farms with and without a change in efficiency when each farm s risk preference was included in the analysis as expected risk preference plays an important role in explaining farm inefficiency failure to account for risk preferences overstates inefficiency particularly for slightly risk averse and risk neutral farms

allocation distribution and scale towards an economics that is efficient just and sustainable abstract the practical policy of issuing tradeable permits for depletion and pollution requires for its implementation the clear separation of the three basic economic goals of efficient allocation equitable distribution and sustainable scale economic theory needs to catch up with policy in recognizing that scale issues cannot be reduced to either allocation or distribution

the greenhouse effect and intergenerational transfer abstract the scientific basis for understanding the economic issues involved in the greenhouse effect is outlined four important aspects of the problem are identified and discussed irreversibility international and institutional constraints uncertainty and intergenerational equity attention is focused upon the intertemporal choice problem a model describing the potential for intergenerational transfers under the uncertainty of climatic change due to fossil fuel combustion is presented we conclude intergenerational compensation can be achieved by investment in capital or technology or by bequest and is ethically required regardless of any other action

testing expected utility maximization under price and quantity risk with a heterogeneous panel refutable implications based on the curvature properties of the indirect utility function for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty are extended to the case of both price and quantity uncertainty using unit roots and cointegration tests for heterogeneous panels a model of us agricultural production is developed based on the time series properties of a panel of state level data most refutable hypotheses under output price and output quantity risk are not rejected but symmetry conditions implied by a twice continuously differentiable indirect utility function are rejected the same test conclusions are obtained from a traditional model that presumes stationarity in all variables

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

a review of the stern review on the economics of climate change the stern review calls for immediate decisive action to stabilize greenhouse gases because the benefits of strong early action on climate change outweighs the costs the economic analysis supporting this conclusion consists mostly of two basic strands the first strand is a formal aggregative model that relies for its conclusions primari ly upon imposing a very low discount rate concerning this discount rate aspect i am skeptical of the review s formal analysis but this essay points out that we are actual ly a lot less sure about what interest rate should be used for discounting climate change than is commonly acknowledged the review s second basic strand is a more intuitive argument that it might be very important to avoid possibly large uncertain ties that are difficult to quantify concerning this uncertainty aspect i argue that it might be recast into sound analytical reasoning that might justify some of the review s conclusions the basic issue here is that spending money to slow global warming should perhaps not be conceptualized primarily as being about consump tion smoothing as much as being about how much insurance to buy to offset the small change of a ruinous catastrophe that is difficult to compensate by ordinary savings

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

agreeing to pay under value disagreement reconceptualizing preference transformation in terms of pluralism with evidence from small group deliberations on climate change abstract plural values contribute to multiple arrays of expressed preferences conventionally preference convergence toward consensus among initially disagreeing decision makers is understood in terms of diminishing value differences a cogent account of consensual decision that respects non diminishing value plurality is lacking instead there is a theoretic expectation for categorical consistency between subjective values and expressed preferences valuing agents in social interaction are expected to indicate identical preference orderings only if they hold correspondingly identical categories of values this expectation precludes meaningful conceptualization of preference convergence under divisive normative dispositions an alternative framework is proposed and illustrated by results from a designed deliberative forum on australia s climate change policy data were analyzed based on q methodology results show that small group deliberations enabled effective communication between distinctive subjective positions and broadened understandings between individuals while a consensual decision gained progress no identified value discourse diminished below a significant degree observed changes in values did not run parallel to the converging preferences suggesting a decline in value preference consistency these changes nonetheless are amenable to the principle of value pluralism an alternative rationality concept is needed to account for this moral ideal within economics

production risk risk aversion and the determination of risk attitudes among spanish rice producers agricultural production is subject to risk and the attitudes of producers toward risk will influence input choices insofar as these affect production risk risk attitudes in turn may be affected by certain socioeconomic characteristics of producers using 2004 survey data from a cross section of 130 spanish rice farms we estimate risk aversion coefficients of farmers and investigate the influence of a series of socioeconomic variables on their risk attitudes our results show that farmers exhibit risk averse behavior and that risk attitudes are related to a series of socioeconomic characteristics in particular the belief that the farm will continue after the producer retires is found to increase the degree of risk aversion while age is found to have nonlinear effects on risk aversion off farm income especially from nonagricultural activities is found to reduce risk aversion neither the educational level of the producer nor the presence of dependents on the household is found to have an effect on risk preferences regarding the production technology we find that land labor and fitosanitary products are risk reducing inputs whereas capital seeds and fertilizer all increase risk

ecology and valuation big changes needed abstract ecological economics has developed as a transdisciplinary science but it has not taken significant steps toward a truly integrated process of evaluating anthropogenic ecological change the emerging dominance within ecological economics of the movement to monetize ecological services when combined with the already well entrenched dominance of contingent pricing as a means to evaluate impacts on amenities has created a monistic approach to valuation studies it is argued that this monistic approach to evaluating anthropogenic impacts is inconsistent with a sophisticated conception of ecology as a complex science that rests on shifting metaphors an alternative pluralistic and iterative approach to valuation of anthropogenic ecological change is proposed

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

decentralized payments for environmental services the cases of pimampiro and profafor in ecuador abstract few payment for environmental services pes schemes in developing countries operate outside of the central state s umbrella and are at the same time old enough to allow for a meaningful evaluation ecuador has two such decentralised consolidated experiences the five year old pimampiro municipal watershed protection scheme and the twelve year old profafor carbon sequestration programme we describe and compare the two cases using a common pes definition and methodology drawing on both primary interview based information and secondary data we find that both schemes have been relatively effective in reaching their environmental objectives in terms of having probably high additionality levels and low leakage effects a strong focus on the targeted environmental service and a strong degree of conditionality seem to be two key factors explaining these achievements although neither scheme has targeted poverty alleviation or other side objectives both are likely to have improved pes recipients welfare mostly through higher incomes we highlight several observations with more generalised relevance and lessons for the design of pes schemes

can payments for environmental services help reduce poverty an exploration of the issues and the evidence to date from latin america summary this paper examines the main ways in which payments for environmental services pes might affect poverty pes may reduce poverty mainly by making payments to poor natural resource managers in upper watersheds the extent of the impact depends on how many pes participants are in fact poor on the poors ability to participate and on the amounts paid although pes programs are not designed for poverty reduction there can be important synergies when program design is well thought out and local conditions are favorable possible adverse effects can occur where property rights are insecure or if pes programs encourage less labor intensive practices 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

profiting from agglomeration evidence from the salmon aquaculture industry asche f roll k h and tveteras r profiting from agglomeration evidence from the salmon aquaculture industry regional studies even though most celebrated clusters seem to be in high cost areas many econometric studies represent agglomeration externalities as increased primal productivity or reduced cost while this certainly can be consistent with some observed agglomeration effects it may be insufficient for the growth of a cluster the key condition for this is that profitability is higher the paper tests for agglomeration effects using a profit function approach this may be particularly important for firms in high cost clusters where revenue effects can be as important as productivity and cost effects the paper tests for both intra and inter industry agglomeration externalities using firm level data

social equity issues in the distribution of feed in tariff policy benefits a cross sectional analysis from england and wales using spatial census and policy data abstract the feed in tariff has become a popular policy instrument globally for deploying clean energy often involving substantial public spending commitments yet relatively little attention has been paid to how payments made under this policy type get distributed across socioeconomic groups this paper links information on individual domestic photovoltaic pv installations registered under the feed in tariff for england and wales to spatially organised census data this makes it possible to observe which socioeconomic groups are benefitting most and least under the policy comparing the observed benefit distribution to a counterfactual distribution of perfect equality a moderate to high level of inequality is found cross sectional regressions suggest that settlement density home ownership status physical dwelling type local information spillovers and household social class shaped this outcome greater sensitivity to these factors in policy design could improve distributional outcomes under feed in tariff policies in england and wales and beyond

macroeconomic effects of government spending the great recession was really different we estimate the effect of government spending shocks on the u s economy with a time varying parameter vector autoregression the recent great recession period appears to be characterized by uniquely large impulse responses of output to fiscal shocks moreover the particularity of this period is underlined by highly unusual responses of several other variables the pattern of fiscal shock responses neither completely fits the predictions of the new keynesian model of an economy subject to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates nor does it suggest regular variation of fiscal policy effects depending on the state of the business cycle rather the great recession period seems special in that government spending shocks had a strongly negative effect on the spread between corporate and government bond yields and a strongly positive effect on consumer confidence and private consumption spending

economic inefficiency and environmental impact an application to aquaculture production abstract in industries characterized by frequent innovation and high productivity growth substantial variation in produced quantity and input use may occur leading to increased costs an effect that has received little attention is that inefficiency can exacerbate environmental impacts this effect is particularly important if environmentally damaging inputs are overused in addition to increasing firms costs such inefficiency can also increase the environmental impact of the firm s activity this makes the degree of inefficiency in an industry an issue for environmental regulators in this paper we estimate technical and allocative efficiency for a sample of norwegian salmon farmers our results show that both technical and allocative inefficiency on average are significant in explaining the level and variation in farm costs and that the main environmental impact due to inefficiency from the norwegian salmon aquaculture industry has its origin in technical inefficiency

the economic effects of public financing evidence from municipal bond ratings recalibration we show that the supply of local public financing can have important effects on local economies we identify these effects by exploiting exogenous variation on municipal bond ratings due to moody s recalibration of its scale in 2010 we find that local governments increase expenditures and employment due to an expansion of their debt capacity following an upgrade these increases in local government spending lead to multiplier effects on non tradable employment and income our findings suggest that debt financed increases in government spending can improve economic conditions during recessions

beyond homo economicus evidence from experimental economics environmental policies are generally based on a model of the human actor taken from neoclassical economic theory this paper reports on laboratory experiments suggesting weaknesses in this model and describes alternative models correcting these weaknesses one finding is that economic actors tend to be hyperbolic as opposed to exponential discounters who discount the immediate future at a higher rate than the more distant future another finding is that economic actors are not self regarding but rather in many circumstances are strong reciprocators who come to strategic interactions with a propensity to cooperate respond to cooperative behavior by maintaining or increasing cooperation and respond to free riders by retaliating against the offenders even at a personal cost and even when there is no reasonable expectation that future personal gains will flow from such retaliation we discuss some implications for policy analysis 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

biofuel as social fuel introducing socio environmental services as a means to reduce global inequity the increasing cultivation of energy crops for biofuel production has significantly altered the focus of the agricultural sector but the impact of biofuel production and use is not merely an agricultural one even more importantly it is an issue which likely promotes inequitable conditions and the social conflict of different basic needs within this context the dominant argument criticizes the growing demand for biofuels in the north to compromise food security and sovereignty in the south in order to address these trade offs and conflicts the objective of this paper is the introduction of a conceptual framework of socio environmental services by expanding the construct of environmental services to explicitly include the social dimension it shall accommodate for the fact that the provision of environmental services is often embedded in a complex system of global economic ecological as well as social interdependencies recently the concept of payments for environmental services pes has received much attention with respect to its potential contribution to both environmental sustainability and the economic alleviation of poverty by linking the idea of payments for socio environmental services pses to the three functions of justice its beneficial impact may be more fully tapped

exploring the links between equity and efficiency in payments for environmental services a conceptual approach this paper addresses the relationship between equity and efficiency in pes schemes from a conceptual point of view emphasis is placed on the role of the institutional setting social perceptions about economic fairness or distributive justice of the payments uncertainty and interactions between agents including power relations we introduce the heuristic concept of the efficiency equity interdependency curve to illustrate potential combinations between equity and efficiency that may be theoretically possible the paper argues that different types of institutional factors determine which equity efficiency combinations may be potentially feasible influence the actual combination that will be achieved on the ground and condition possible changes in that combination due to exogenous factors by stressing the role of institutional aspects in shaping the equity efficiency relationship the paper attempts to go beyond the dominant coasean vision of pes

values ideology and politics in ecological economics abstract ecological economics is built on a value commitment to study environmental issues and to contribute constructively to a more sustainable development path however many ecological economists still hesitate it appears to depart too much from other scholars by openly addressing issues of values and ideology in this essay the role of the scholar s orientation with respect to values and ideology is addressed it is observed that not only scholars but also actors in society are guided by their ideological orientation this leads to the idea that some of the weaknesses of economic man and profit maximising firm assumptions can be mitigated by introducing a political economic person and a political economic organisation

microfoundations for stochastic frontiers the purpose of the paper is to propose microfoundations for stochastic frontier models previous work shows that a simple bayesian learning model supports gamma distributions for technical inefficiency in stochastic frontier models the conclusion depends on how the problem is formulated and what assumptions are made about the sampling process and the prior after the new formulation of the problem it turns out that the distribution of the one sided error component does not belong to a known family moreover we find that without specifying a utility function or even the cost inefficiency function the relative effectiveness of managerial input can be determined using only cost data and estimates of the returns to scale the point of this construction is that features of the inefficiency function u z can be recovered from the data based on the solid microfoundation of expected utility of profit maximization but the model does not make a prediction about the distribution

the evolution of hog production and potential sources for future growth in china abstract following reforms to the market china s hog industry has developed rapidly however with social and economic transitions china s hog industry is facing challenges which might restrict long term growth in production this paper analyzes the changes in regional scale organization input factors and technological progress for china s hog production over the last few decades the paper seeks to reveal the sources of hog production growth and provide some suggestions for future development of the hog industry to achieve these aims the paper uses stochastic frontier production functions and the malmquist index to measure total factor productivity tfp in the hog industry and decompose tfp into technical efficiency technological progress scale efficiency and allocative efficiency using data for 25 provinces from 1980 to 2008 the results show firstly that the tfp of hog production increased by 64 3 from 1980 to 2008 and allocative efficiency and scale efficiency improvements played a key role in this tfp growth in contrast technical efficiency and technical progress have changed little over this period secondly tfp s contribution to output was 39 7 it being less than that of factor inputs to output thirdly the results suggest that the growth of china s pork production depends mostly on the increase in the quantity of factor inputs especially feed as a consequence the key to ensuring long term and stable development of china s hog production would seem to involve focusing on enhancing total factor productivity and changing the pattern of production growth

joint estimation of risk preferences and technology flexible utility or futility a thought experiment is designed to investigate whether the structure of risk aversion i e the changes in absolute or relative risk aversion associated with changes in wealth can be estimated with reasonable precision from agricultural production data findings strongly suggest that typical production data are unlikely to allow identification of the structure of risk aversion a flexible utility parameterization is found to slightly worsen technology parameter estimates results also indicate that even under a restricted utility specification utility parameter estimates are biased further their quality is much worse when shocks are not large or samples are small

microeconomic degrowth the case of community supported agriculture in this paper we attempt to build a new microeconomic approach that could be considered as a basis of the degrowth macroeconomic view as degrowth is a critique of the dominant macroeconomic model of the endless search for economic growth its microeconomic foundations can be built by searching a relevant grass root economic initiative to theorise our approach is based upon the case study research of a self harvesting community supported agriculture in belgium the mainstream microeconomic model is based on the well known homo economicus assumption of individual self interest and competitive behaviour by contrast our model is based on a holistic approach of producers and consumers based upon trust cooperation and ecologically responsible behaviours this contribution participates to the flourishing literature on degrowth in ecological economics we begin by reviewing the debate on degrowth and economic behaviour we discuss the case study and its accounting expression that departs from the capitalist profit seeking model we conclude by explaining the limits and challenges of our model that implements degrowth on a small scale and in a capitalist environment

are we consuming too much this paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive we consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness or insufficiency of current consumption one is an intertemporal utility maximization criterion actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility the other is a sustainability criterion which requires that current consumption be consistent with non declining living standards over time we extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change in applying this formula we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion in these regions genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital

differential uncertainties and risk attitudes between conventional and organic producers the case of spanish arable crop farmers the growing importance of economic factors in farmers decision to go organic has raised interest in characterizing the economic behavior of organic versus conventional farms published analyses so far have not considered differential uncertainties and farmers risk preferences between conventional and organic practices when comparing these techniques our article attempts to assess this issue we use a model of farmer decision under risk to analyze the differential values between spanish cop organic and conventional farms and to assess the incentives for adoption of organic practices results show that organic and conventional farms do have different abilities to control production risk as well as different risk preferences organic price premiums and subsidies are found to be powerful instruments to motivate adoption of organic techniques

heterogeneous government spending multipliers in the era surrounding the great recession abstract we use novel quarterly data of u s states to examine the dynamics of relative spending multipliers in the decade surrounding the great recession while multipliers were around 1 in expans

class racial conflict intolerance and distortions in urban form lessons for sustainability from the detroit region in this qualitative analysis into the equity conditions of urban sustainability an examination is presented into the complexity of one particular aspect of intra generational equity racial and class discrimination and its role in distorting urban form and in generating resource inefficient and environmentally destructive human activity patterns the article therefore focuses on the role of discrimination itself in encouraging ecological degradation the detroit region shows that racial and class conflicts can facilitate the shaping of the urban built environment as one population sub group largely white and upper income attempts to distance itself from another sub group that is largely black lower income and considered a threat the outcome is not only disinvestment and decline in the urban core but also excessive suburbanization as whites seek homogenous urban environments and use space to increase the distance between themselves and the black population the study shows that the lack of cooperation and tolerance across ethnic racial and class subgroups facilitates inefficient low density and scattered developments and excessive degradation of natural ecological systems

economic behavior under uncertainty a joint analysis of risk preferences and technology a method is developed to estimate jointly risk preferences and technology under general conditions the approach is illustrated in an application to the analysis of u s corn soybean acreage decisions over time the results provide useful information on the nature of farmers risk preferences and on the influence of price risk and production risk on acreage allocation and farmers welfare copyright 1996 by mit press

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

local and aggregate fiscal policy multipliers abstract using a newly constructed panel of state level defense contracts this paper studies the effect of defense spending on the u s macroeconomy summing observations across states we estimate aggregate income and employment multipliers comparing these to local multipliers estimated with the panel provides evidence that local multiplier estimates may be reliable indicators of fiscal policy s aggregate effects furthermore evidence of small positive spillovers is found across several specifications we estimate income and employment multipliers between zero and 0 5 this result is reconciled with the greater than one multipliers found in nakamura and steinsson 2014 by analyzing the korean war years impact on the estimation

property relations and economic development the other land reform abstract continued concern for development has led to the suggestion that private property rights should be created to stimulate economic development this suggestion derives from an incomplete understanding of the property relations on the public domain lands in the arid tropics and from a confusion of cause and effect between property and economic productivity a model of the private public boundary in land is developed that challenges the view that wealth would increase if land at the extensive margin were privatized the various types of property regimes in land are defined and explained

a consumption based approach to environmental kuznets curves using the ecological footprint indicator recent research suggests that consumption based measures offer an insightful perspective on the debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment in this article we deepen the

environmental sustainability as the first principle of distributive justice towards an ecological communitarian normative foundation for ecological economics abstract the ecological economic concern with environmental sustainability embodies the normative orientations of the field this concern is foremost a matter of distributive justice the definition of which determines the relevance of the appropriate scale and efficient allocation criteria yet it would appear that the discipline lacks a shared internally consistent set of ethical premises by which this concern might be legitimized various authors have embraced a rawlsian conception of liberal justice as the appropriate banner for ecological economics in place of the consequentialist libertarian foundations of neoclassical economics including environmental economics it is argued here that this is insufficient in so far as it is premised on a vision of a discrete self sufficient economic actor instead it is posited that an ecological economic ethic must proceed from an understanding of the economic actor as community member a recognition implicit in recent ecological economic contributions focused on discourse ethics and deliberative democracy an ecological communitarian conception of distributive justice which views the well being of the individual as inseparable from the integrity of its implicate mutually constituting human and non human natural communities is advanced as the appropriate basis for the ecological economic world view in this light the thermodynamic foundations of ecological economics are seen to provide the necessary departure point for normative decision making oriented towards ensuring sustainability in economic organization

technical efficiency of kansas arable crop farms a local maximum likelihood approach this study uses local maximum likelihood lml methods recently proposed by kumbhakar et al 2007 to assess the technical efficiency of arable crop kansas farms lml techniques overcome the most relevant limitations associated to mainstream parametric stochastic and nonparametric frontier models lml allows deriving farm level frontier parameter estimates the relevance of using localized estimates is evidenced by the observed heterogeneity in production technologies technical efficiency scores derived from the lml approach 0 905 are higher than those of the dea model under crs 0 808 and sfa 0 804 and close to dea vrs 0 917 ratings deriving reliable information about farm efficiency performance is relevant to identify inefficient farms and define adequate policy and management strategies the use of refined methods has thus important implications

the story of the moment risk averse cypriot farmers respond to drought management this article illustrates the importance of estimating risk preferences when evaluating water policy using agricultural production data from the kiti region of cyprus we estimate farmers risk preferences a la antle journal of business and economic statistics 1 192 201 1983 american journal of agricultural economics 69 509 22 1987 and show sensitivity to higher order moments of profit such as skewness we show that farmers in the kiti region are risk averse with risk premiums in the region of 20 of expected profit we use these estimates to analyse the impact of a water quota from the perspective of three policy makers who differ only in their understanding of farmers risk preferences we show in the case of kiti that policy makers who model risk preferences incorrectly that is either a assume risk neutrality or b ignore down side risk wrongly predict the magnitude and direction of input responses and therefore the magnitude of welfare changes this highlights the importance of accomm

distributive fairness in paying for clean energy infrastructure despite the rapid rise in public expenditure on clean energy infrastructure there has been little discussion about what constitutes a fair distribution of this new spending burden we examine four ethical principles that speak to different notions of fairness in the way this burden can and should be shared and use them to produce three normative criteria for pursuing fairness in the clean energy fiscal policy context we use these criteria to examine the extent to which fairness is being achieved in large clean energy roll out programs in australia california and the united kingdom maintaining a close focus on providing practical guidance for decision makers in similar policy contexts we find that fairness is more achievable when program design explicitly considers which households should pay for the program and which should be exempt when the idea of proportionality guides the distribution of the cost across paying households and when the interests of low income households are protected by ensuring that they share in the benefits of the program for example

diet and the distribution of environmental impact abstract this paper examines the relationship between scale and distribution issues it is argued that since achieving a sustainable scale requires economic activity to stay within biophysical limits considerations of equity should not be limited to the distribution of monetary measures such as income but should include the distribution of scarce environmental services as well in order to make this point this paper examines how differences in diet across populations lead to inequality in the distribution of environmental impact first the distribution of food consumption across the world s population is examined using national data next ecological footprints are estimated in order to ascertain how differences in diet affect the distribution of environmental impact the results show that the meat intensive diet enjoyed by many in the industrialized world leads to a greater degree of inequality in the use of environmental services than is apparent from examination of the distribution of food consumption across countries

off farm work technical efficiency and rice production risk in taiwan this article investigates the differences in yield production production efficiency and yield risk for farmers both with and without off farm work using a nationwide survey of rice farmers in taiwan we estimate two stochastic production frontier models that accommodate technical inefficiency and production risk simultaneously for farmers both with and without off farm work the stochastic dominance criterion is then applied to compare the differences in the distributions of the estimated technical efficiency and yield risk between groups the empirical results indicate that these two groups of farmers use resources in different ways and off farm work is not necessarily associated with lower technical efficiency for farmers in the lower percentiles of the efficiency distribution those with off farm work are more efficient than their counterparts without off farm work in addition farmers with off farm work face higher production risk and this result is robust for the entire distribution

fairness stewardship and sustainable development abstract the welfare economic concept of fairness offers an attractive axiomatic foundation for the popular notion of stewardship fairness emphasizes the ex ante equal standing of all persons across and within generations this highlights the inextracability of poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability especially in the agrarian tropics where biodiversity loss deforestation and desertification are growing global concerns

intergenerational equity and environmental decisions a model using rawls veil of ignorance abstract four general strategies for resource use exploitationism conservationism naturalist preservationism and extensionist preservationism are sketched and a two step model for deciding resource policy issues is proposed the model based on a modification of rawls hypothetical rational decision model posits a self interested chooser who decides the rules constituting a fair society in the first stage the chooser places pre emptive constraints on each generation s use of resources these constraints embodying leopold s conception of whole ecosystem health limit the options available to individuals of any generation in the pursuit of economic welfare in the second stage each generation may choose a strategy of resource use from those possibilities fulfilling the first stage constraints it is argued that a exploitationism is not in general an acceptable strategy because it violates constraints that would be imposed on all generations by a chooser who is ignorant regarding the generation he will inhabit b extensionist preservation which recognizes values inherent in wild species and natural ecosystems provides no operationalizable guide for environmental policy c conservationism fails to protect the biotic heritage of future generations because applications of the sustainable yield criterion can cause simplification and eventual breakdowns of natural ecosystems and therefore d a broadly naturalist preservationist strategy which imposes constraints on the pervasive exploitation of ecological systems and thereby protects biological diversity in the long run would be chosen by the rational chooser who is ignorant of the generation he will inhabit