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

do individual investors treat trading as a fun and exciting gambling activity evidence from repeated natural experiments we hypothesize that individual investors treat trading as a fun and exciting gambling activity implying substitution between this activity and alternative gambling opportunities to examine this hypothesis we study the lottery jackpots and the trading of individual investors in taiwan when the jackpots exceed 500 million taiwan dollars the trading volume decreases between 5 2 and 9 1 among stocks preferred by individual investors and between 6 8 and 8 6 among lottery like stocks the decline in individual buy volume is statistically indistinct from the decline in sell volume large jackpots are associated with less trading in options with high sensitivity to volatility

questioning the empirical basis of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 new evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross dependence abstract this paper investigates the time series properties of per capita co2 emissions and per capita gdp levels for a sample of 86 countries over the period 1960 2000 for that purpose we employ a state of the art panel stationarity test which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope thereby controlling for cross sectional dependence through bootstrap methods our analysis renders clear cut evidence that per capita gdp levels are nonstationary for the world as a whole while per capita co2 is found to be regime wise trend stationary the analysis of country groups shows that for africa and asia per capita co2 is best described as nonstationary while per capita gdp appears stationary around a broken trend in addition we find evidence of regime wise trend stationarity in both variables for the country groups consisting of america europe and oceania the results of our analysis carry important implications for the statistical modelling of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 since the differing order of integration in both variables for the world as a whole and for africa and asia calls into question the validity of panel cointegration techniques which assume that both variables are nonstationary and cointegrated with one another cointegration techniques would not be appropriate either for the case of america europe and oceania which are characterised by per capita gdp and co2 emissions being stationary around a broken trend similar conclusions are reached when we analyse country groups based on levels of development failure to properly characterise the time series properties of the data by not controlling for an unknown number of structural breaks and for cross sectional dependence could be responsible for the fragility and lack of robustness surrounding the estimation of environmental kuznets curves

losing money on the margin abstract margin trading is popular with retail investors around the world to limit the scale of these investors potential losses regulators impose a system of collateral requirements and margin calls we show in this paper however that the collateral requirement imposed by margin calls results in negative expected returns for these traders whilst also inducing positive skew in the returns distribution investments in assets with symmetric returns when traded on margin instead offer limited losses and a small chance of a large gain much like lottery stocks and other gambles we demonstrate this theoretically and then show empirically using a unique database of account data from a chinese retail brokerage that the realized losses of margin traders are often substantial this leads us to question whether current regulation is appropriate

planning for sustainability as a learning concept abstract the major theme of the following discussion is the importance of a transdisciplinary approach to guide sustainability related planning and management activities the proposed approach involves much more than the usual interaction between partners from different disciplines a revised process is needed to allow real cooperation in sustainability planning this process will require a more open recognition of the subjective priorities that become the framework of sustainable development issues of various interest groups and disciplines the sustainable development agenda should be more geared towards learning processes than projected future outcomes learning is enhanced through a participatory framework inclusive of stakeholder interests insights from a broad range of disciplinary areas including the science of complexity sociology philosophy law economics and management are presented to support this position the conventional stranglehold of disciplinary thinking in policy circles limits the capacity of our decision makers to unravel the complexity of all real world environmental policy and management problems policy making needs to embody respect for that complexity and allow flexibility to promote perpetually evolving learning as a fundamentally transdisciplinary framework ecological economics has some prospect to represent these interests in a purposeful and necessarily pragmatic way

economics and sustainability balancing trade offs and imperatives the concept of sustainability has been increasingly invoked in scholarly and public policy debates discussion has been hampered however by uncertainty and lack of uniformity in the meaning of sustainability this paper seeks to identify some common ground among economists ecologists and environmen tal ethicists two issues seem salient require ments for intergenerational and the defi nition of social capital to be provided to future generations a concept of safe minimum standard which has received at least some recognition in the ecology philosophy and eco nomics literatures may provide the beginnings of a common ground for debate about sus tainability jel q2

critical natural capital a socio cultural perspective abstract critical natural capital cnc is commonly defined as that part of the natural environment which performs important and irreplaceable functions so far the challenge to determine the criticality of natural capital nc has mainly been taken up by the natural sciences and the critical functions of nature mainly associated with its life support and ecological services little attention has been paid to the socio cultural functions of nc and to their values for the health and well being of human societies the aim of this paper is to encourage a more complete accounting of the critical functions of nc and its associated values by highlighting the importance of the information functions health recreation amenity education heritage etc for the quality and sustainability of human life it is argued that despite their immaterial and often intangible nature these functions provide many socio economic benefits which might be assessed through both qualitative and quantitative valuation methodologies integration of ecology sociology and economics is essential to operationalize the concept of cnc as a tool for more balanced environmental planning and decision making

a framework for the practical application of the concepts of critical natural capital and strong sustainability this paper develops a methodology for identifying that natural capital called critical natural capital cnc the maintenance of which is essential for environmental sustainability by consideration of the characteristics of natural capital of the environmental functions that these characteristics enable natural capital to perform and of the importance of these functions to humans and the biosphere it shows how sustainability standards in respect of these environmental functions may be derived the difference between the current situation and these standards is termed the sustainability gap the methodology that emerges from bringing these ideas together into a single analytical framework enables policy makers to identify the extent of current unsustainability the principal causes of it the elements and processes of natural capital the cnc which need to be maintained or restored to close the sustainability gap and the costs of so doing the framework should therefore be of use in identifying priorities and policies for moving towards environmental sustainability

niche diversification in environmental ecological economics abstract this paper is devoted to the identification and comparison of the niches of neoclassical environmental economics nee and ecological economics eco it is presented in four sections section 1 argues that the existing literature does not make the differences and relations between the sister disciplines neatly transparent section 2 critically examines the antecedents of the subjects with reference to three structural dimensions such as scarcity perception problem solving orientation and range of integration section 3 collates the elements and reformulates the definitions section 4 is coda on the essay the divide between the paradigms which came to the surface during the 1960s became prominent through the growth controversy of the subsequent decade the controversy over the need for change of economic theory to cope with the growing intensity of environmental uncertainty makes the disciplines sore about each other the neoclassical paradigm comprising of elements like relative scarcity allocative approach market correction and technological optimism characterises nee the distinguishing characteristics of eco include thermodynamic irreversibility absolute scarcity economy ecosystem symbiosis biophysical approach ecological stewardship and prudent pessimism the niches are competitive and complementary in some respects and thus provide a unique example of fruitful niche diversification within environmental ecological economics we have a feeling that the economics profession can trace out the interface of the disciplines in some policy areas and raise the effectiveness of prescriptions so that this academic species diversity can serve humankind to its full potential

limits to economic growth as shown by a computable general equilibrium model abstract economic growth is distinguished from commercial growth and is defined in this article as the growth of the value a society puts in monetary terms on all commercial and non commercial goods and values it possesses during a certain period a computable general equilibrium model is used to show the impact of changes in the endowments preferences and production possibilities on economic income which in the model comprises all wealth besides land with its natural resources and labor energy is the key endowment to drive an economy the model leads in an intuitive way to the following conclusions 1 societies should start to use appropriate indicators for true economic growth rather than just for commercial growth as measured by gross national product 2 all types of economic growth are limited no matter if based on endowment growth production efficiency growth or changes in preferences 3 economic growth should be oriented more towards increasing production efficiency and less towards using more natural resources 4 human population growth puts at risk the possibilities for average economic growth per person 5 we should get better prepared to use solar energy in the future 6 besides economic growth there exists pure utility growth which is not measurable in monetary terms it includes much of scientific progress in the long run and is of great importance even though it cannot be included in an indicator of economic growth

entrepreneurship social mobility and income redistribution in south india development economists have been preoccupied with the problem of increasing the size of the gnp pie to the relative neglect of its distribution despite the recent disenchantment with the viewpoint that all classes share in the benefits of industrial growth empirical data on the distribution of income business opportunity and economic power are in short supply many of the studies on entrepreneurship and economic development when they are not apologetics for ruthless capitalist exploitation as paul baran suggests extol the achievements of the capitalist entrepreneur without examining class origins and monopoly advantage joseph schumpeter sees entrepreneurs irrespective of class origin as heroic figures with the dream and will to found a private kingdom to conquer adversity to achieve success for its own sake and to experience the joy of creation for gustav papanek 1967 the private entrepreneur who is frugal diligent far sighted remarkably able and willing to take political risks is in large part responsible for the success of pakistan in achieving rapid industrialization

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

production and environmental resources a prelude to an evolutionary framework the paper advances a framework to study the evolution of technology and institutions it is based on two simple tenets first the quality and quantity of environmental resources are defined and constrained by the regime of technology and institutions second the character and extent of innovations are informed and limited by the regime as well the framework is contrasted with neoclassical and ecological economics while the framework assimilates ideas from both paradigms it departs from them by stressing the importance of the technological institutional regime tir the two views ignore in different ways the significance of tir 46 the neoclassical program conceives the flow of innovations as tir independent while the ecological agenda regards the fund of resources as tir independent 1 consequently both camps fail to provide an endogenous account of the observed punctuated character of the evolution of tir neoclassical economists maintain that as a resource depletes its price rises which induces switching to a cheaper one encourages exploration or spurs invention harold barnett and chandler morse 7 11 state that nature imposes particular scarcities not an inescapable general scarcity the responses to environmental resource limitation are supposedly singular activities stripped from any underpinning regime the neoclassical disregard of tir heuristically resembles the fable of marie antoinette s folly in response to the scarcity of bread at the eve of the french revolution she advised according to legend buying cake instead ecological economists offer a different view of resource limits 48 for herman daly 21 8 nature really does impose an inescapable general scarcity while neoclassical economists emphasize relative limitation scarcity pricing ecological economists stress malthusian general limitation for ecological economists substitution can solve relative allocation but cannot solve general limitation general limitation can be avoided only if economic activity proceeded within certain boundaries or as put by martin o connor 69 within appropriate cyclical structure of resource transformations under the motto sustainable development a low pace production activity supposedly enables a population to replicate indefinitely ecological economists conceive

grazing the commons an empirical analysis of externalities subsidies and sustainability abstract an empirical means of measuring externalities in the fifty states of the us is presented and the relationship between externalities subsidies and sustainability is investigated firms seeking to maximize profits create externalities thus securing implicit internal subsidies the subsidies are generally supported by those less well off and the socioeconomic energy and environmental indicators of the public sector worsen as externalities and subsidies increase implicit subsidies due to externalities in pollution control energy consumption and taxes are quantified the amount of subsidy is calculated by state and statistically compared to socioeconomic energy environmental and economic variables poverty unemployment and income disparity are found to increase significantly while income economic development attractiveness energy efficiency and environmental quality decline with increasing externalization across states an empirical method of operationalizing sustainability is presented and the relationship of sustainability to subsidies is investigated and found to be significant and negative recommendations are presented for minimizing the effects of externalities

the concept of weak sustainability abstract this paper surveys the links between growth theory with exhaustible resources and the concept of weak sustainability it examines the underlying assumptions behind this concept and questions the usefulness of the weak sustainability index as an indicator of sustainable development

evolutionary policies for sustainable development adaptive flexibility and risk minimising abstract an evolutionary perspective on policies to foster sustainable development is presented it is argued that policies suggested by the traditional economic theory of environmental policy can stimulate unsustainable socio economic structures and patterns in addition they are unable to remove undesired locked in systems and technologies drawing on evolutionary thinking characterised by diversity selection innovation path dependence and bounded rationality an alternative partly complementary theory of environmental policy is suggested specific attention is given to the role of strategies that are aimed at increasing diversity and adaptive flexibility and at reducing risk

nonlinear budget constraints and consumer demand an application to public programs for residential housing abstract this study presents a methodology for exploiting the nonlinear hedonic nature of housing prices to estimate the compensated demands of households for particular housing attributes the methodology is employed to provide hicksian benefit measures of a particular housing subsidy program typical of those undertaken recently in developing countries

ecosystem prices activity analysis applied to ecosystems abstract in this paper a method is developed to derive prices for natural goods from information about material and energy flows within ecosystems the derivation is based on an analogy between ecological and economic systems both systems are characterized by flows of material and energy to derive ecosystem prices the mathematical structure of koopman s economic linear production model his activity analysis is applied to a material flow model of ecosystems the ecological interpretation of these prices is discussed and the uniqueness of the price system is investigated an algorithm for price calculation is derived and demonstrated with a numerical example finally it is discussed whether ecosystem prices may be suitable as surrogates for economic valuations of natural goods

margin requirements price fluctuations and market participation in metal futures margin requirements in metal futures contracts have a negative impact on market participation that seems causal because it is absent from a benchmark group of metals that do not undergo similar margin changes it is less clear whether margins restrict primarily rational or irrational investors the stronger positive relation between margins and future target metal volatility than benchmark metal volatility can simply be attributed to the selection rule of the exchanges as they increase margins in those metals for which they anticipate a comparatively higher future volatility copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

a model of casino gambling we show that prospect theory offers a rich theory of casino gambling one that captures several features of actual gambling behavior first we demonstrate that for a wide range of preference parameter values a prospect theory agent would be willing to gamble in a casino even if the casino offers only bets with no skewness and with zero or negative expected value second we show that the probability weighting embedded in prospect theory leads to a plausible time inconsistency at the moment he enters a casino the agent plans to follow one particular gambling strategy but after he starts playing he wants to switch to a different strategy the model therefore predicts heterogeneity in gambling behavior how a gambler behaves depends on whether he is aware of the time inconsistency and if he is aware of it on whether he can commit in advance to his initial plan of action this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

an analysis of the demand for housing attributes this paper uses a two step approach to estimate a system of structural demand equations for housing attributes estimation of a hedonic price regression in the first step yields implicit prices for housing attributes for the toronto metropolitan area in 1978 which are then used to estimate the expenditure share equations derived from the indirect translog utility function empirical results indicate that the composite housing attributes used in the second stage model are own price elastic while an examination of cross price relationships reveals that these attributes are reasonably substitutable

the asymmetric relation between initial margin requirements and stock market volatility across bull and bear markets higher initial margin requirements are associated with lower subsequent stock market volatility during normal and bull periods but show no relationship during bear periods higher margins are also negatively related to the conditional mean of stock returns apparently because they reduce systemic risk we conclude that a prudential rule for setting margins or other regulatory restrictions is to lower them in sharply declining markets in order to enhance liquidity and avoid a depyramiding effect in stock prices but subsequently raise them and keep them at the higher level in order to prevent a future pyramiding effect copyright 2002 oxford university press

limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption a neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics abstract there are many methodological approaches within ecological economics one of the principal modes of analysis is a modified version of the standard neoclassical model this paper examines the parallels which emerge between the ideas of some ecological economists concerning production and the ideas of others concerning consumption when these ideas are interpreted in the neoclassical paradigm it is well known that ecological economics is characterized by arguments concerning limits to substitution between inputs energy natural capital etc vs manufactured capital labor etc in production and the implications these have for sustainability however various authors have also expressed concerns regarding limits to substitution in consumption either between environmental assets and other goods or between basic needs commodities and other goods though the specific reasons for non substitution are different in the production and consumption cases the underlying theme is that individual commodities and other inputs have unique physical or other properties which make them poor substitutes ideas about irreversibility in production and economic development are also prominent in ecological economics likewise many authors have argued for similar irreversibilities in consumption behavior in analogy to the term technological change i coin the term preferential change to describe these phenomena the linking themes in this case are that the economy environment system is evolutionary in character and that external effects intended and unintended consequences of actions or processes imposed on other parties or resources are all pervasive

regional industrial dynamics under the environmental pressures in china abstract this study investigates how air pollution affects industrial path creation and industrial dynamics in china moving beyond existing literature that pays more attention to environmental effects of industrial development this paper focuses on how industrial development path changes due to environmental pollution using the data from chinese customs trade statistics ccts which covers the export trade data of prefecture level cities in china during 2002 2006 and 2012 to 2016 this paper probes into the effect of air pollution on industrial dynamics econometric model and instrumental variable iv regression are used in empirical analysis given the potential endogeneity issue results suggest that the interaction term between air pollution and density is negatively related to new industries entry it means that air pollution can reduce the effect of relatedness on industrial diversification and lead to path breaking further a channel for how air pollution affects industrial dynamics is examined in order to respond to air pollution local government conducts environmental regulation to lower the negative influence of air pollution which can lead to path breaking during industrial diversification process finally this paper seeks to bridge two strands of literature environmental economic geography and evolutionary economic geography

intergenerational equity and sustainability abstract this paper explores the limitations of conventional economic analysis of intergenerational problems and examines some of the alternatives suggested in the literature it is argued that proper consideration of future generations has at least three requirements first when future costs and benefits are considered it should be taken into account that they are to be enjoyed by different generations second the sustainability requirement should be adopted this represents an equity commitment to the future and implies the recognition that future generations have the right to nondeteriorated ecological and economic capacity the paper studies the ways in which the recognition of these rights might be incorporated into economic evaluation and management third an appropriate institutional network to enforce the recognition of these rights in decision making processes should be constituted its design and necessary functions are also analyzed

material flows vs natural capital what makes an economy sustainable abstract in the discourse about sustainable development constant natural capital is frequently referred to as a criterion for ecological sustainability but what is natural capital the concept will be analyzed by presenting arguments in favour of using the term and different versions of sustainability strong and weak subsequently a critique of the natural capital concept is brought forward from an ecological as well as from an economic perspective following this critique the use of material inputs and the material input per unit of service mips as a measure for the environmental impact potential is suggested dematerialisation is understood to be an alternative management rule for sustainability in conclusion a change of perspective is proposed due to the conceptual and measurement problems associated with the constant natural capital criterion which refers to a stock it seems more reasonable from a scientific as well as from a practical perspective to add flows i e material inputs to a decision criterion for whether a development is sustainable or not

religious beliefs gambling attitudes and financial market outcomes this study investigates whether geographic variation in religion induced gambling norms affects aggregate market outcomes we conjecture that gambling propensity would be stronger in regions with higher concentrations of catholics relative to protestants consistent with our conjecture we show that in regions with higher catholic protestant ratios investors exhibit a stronger propensity to hold lottery type stocks broad based employee stock option plans are more popular the initial day return following an initial public offering is higher and the magnitude of the negative lottery stock premium is larger collectively these results indicate that religion induced gambling attitudes impact investors portfolio choices corporate decisions and stock returns

specification of hedonic regressions non nested tests on measures of neighborhood quality abstract the j test a non nested test is used to determine which set of neighborhood variables best explains the variation in housing prices the results indicate that characteristics of neighbors race and socio economic descriptors are more important than the quality of public services

inefficient dynamic portfolio strategies or how to throw away a million dollars in the stock market a number of portfolio strategies followed by practitioners are dominated because they are incompletely diversified over time the payoff distribution pricing model is used to compute the cost of following undiversified strategies simple numerical examples illustrate the technique and computer generated examples provide realistic estimates of the cost of some typical policies using reasonable parameter values the cost can be substantial and should not be ignored by practitioners a section on generalizations shows how to extend the analysis to term structure models and other general models of returns this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

regulatory schemes and self protective environmental risk control a comparison of insurance liability and deposit refund systems abstract there has been an increasing interest in considering non traditional regulatory instruments for control of environmental risks traditional regulation has relied on liability in various forms after risky events have actually occurred there is concern that traditional instruments do not provide adequate signals to firms regarding social costs of risks this paper considers two important alternatives to traditional liability instruments insurance and deposit refund systems the purpose of the paper is to determine whether there is any theoretical superiority of these non traditional instruments in controlling environmental risk and safety a relatively simple model designed to capture the essential features of liability insurance and deposit refund instruments is developed and used to compare the resulting control levels under pure risk and pure uncertainty the paper shows how risk aversion limited liability afforded through bankruptcy and differences between social and private discount rates can affect the ranking of control levels under each of the three primary instruments the paper shows that under reasonable assumptions deposit refund systems such as input or discharge deposits or performance bonds will result in higher levels of controls than the other instruments results also suggest that it may be necessary to tailor regulatory instruments to specific firm situations such as requiring deposits from small firms in competitive industries

aggregate estimate of environmental degradation for zimbabwe does sustainable national income ensure sustainability abstract standard measures of economic growth do not adequately reflect changes in aggregate welfare over time sustainable national income is therefore defined as net national product with adjustments for the degradation of renewable and non renewable capital productivity loss rather than replacement cost is the most theoretically correct way to value resource depletion modified net product is estimated for the agriculture and forestry sectors of zimbabwe by valuing the loss of forest stock and soil erosion the results show that traditional measures overstate the value of the agricultural sector s product by approximately 10 in 1989 it is argued that indicators of sustainable national income do not ensure sustainable development as with all macroeconomic indicators they do not account for distributional and equity issues which are at the crux of sustainable development nor do they point to mechanisms that would ensure sustainable resource management rising sustainable income over time is therefore a necessary but not sufficient condition for the achievement of sustainable development

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

efficiency and the bear short sales and markets around the world we analyze cross sectional and time series information from 46 equity markets around the world to consider whether short sales restrictions affect the efficiency of the market and the distributional characteristics of returns to individual stocks and market indices we find some evidence that prices incorporate negative information faster in countries where short sales are allowed and practiced a common conjecture by regulators is that short sales restrictions can reduce the relative severity of a market panic we find strong evidence that in markets where short selling is either prohibited or not practiced market returns display significantly less negative skewness

the building blocks of international ecological footprint inequality a regression based decomposition this paper carries out an empirical decomposition of international inequality in the ecological footprint with a view to quantifying the extent of the contribution of explanatory variables such as countries affluence economic structure demographic characteristics climate and technology using data for the period 1993 2007 the regression based inequality decomposition methodology we use allows us to extend the results obtained in standard environmental impact regressions stirpat models and to deal with an often neglected aspect of such models that of equity within generations the results obtained point towards the prioritization of policies which take into account both future and present generations in this regard economic redistribution should be considered as a primary environmental policy

changing concepts of land in economic theory from single to multi disciplinary approaches abstract the role of land in economic theory is surveyed both from a conceptual and historical perspective land has been incorporated in economic theories in various ways originally land used by agriculture was the main motivation for an economic treatment of land this was gradually extended with various other land use categories neoclassical economic theory gave less attention to land use generally regarding land as a production factor of relatively little importance nevertheless specialized sub fields within economics such as regional and urban economics met the demand for explicit spatial analysis including land use considerations attention for environmental and resource problems has stimulated new perspectives on and conceptualizations of land in economic analysis this involves the interaction with other disciplines as well as the use of spatially disaggregated methods of analysis awareness of the richness of ideas on land in economic theory can contribute to enhanced environmental research

applying the concept of natural capital criticality to regional resource management this paper applies the concept of natural capital stock and identifies its critical elements in a regional sustainable development context in order to assess its conceptual and practical relevance assessment of the physical stock of natural capital was undertaken for central region in scotland it was found that the concept can be a useful way of assessing and giving greater recognition to natural resources at a regional or local level however identification of critical levels of resources was less straightforward the lack of clear guidelines relating to criteria of criticality natural capital category aggregation issues and conflicts between types of critical natural capital were encountered as major issues the application of an absolute preservation rule was found to suffer from the same general disadvantages as any absolute rule nevertheless the assessment of natural capital and identification where possible of critical elements were thought to be a useful adjunct to sustainable development work

what to show on the wine labels a hedonic analysis of price drivers of sicilian wines unlike previous literature we construct a hedonic model of wine price that incorporates all the main categories of variables simultaneously to enable a better evaluation of their importance on wine price formation a comprehensive model has the advantage of providing more reliable estimates of the attributes implicit prices thereby facilitating firms pricing and improving effectiveness of wine production and marketing decisions we utilize two different datasets of sicilian wines collecting data from influential wine guides our results suggest that wine price strongly depends on objective features such as vintage alcoholic content geographical origin grape variety producer size and cellaring potential in addition use of containers like tonneaux and barrique positively affects prices whereas use of concrete containers has a negative influence no univocal indications emerge with regard to the effect of the type of company type of viticulture and firm age as for sensorial characteristics our a

short selling margin trading and price efficiency evidence from the chinese market abstract china launched a pilot scheme in march 2010 to lift the ban on short selling and margin trading for stocks on a designated list we find that stocks experience negative returns when added to the list after the ban is lifted price efficiency increases while stock return volatility decreases panel data regressions reveal that intensified short selling activities are associated with improved price efficiency short sellers trade to eliminate overpricing by selling stocks with higher contemporaneous returns following a downward trend and their trades predict future returns in contrast we find intensified margin trading activities for stocks with lower contemporaneous returns and these trades have no return predictive power

managing without growth abstract there are three main arguments why developed countries should consider managing without growth 1 continued economic growth worldwide is not an option owing to environmental and resource constraints and so developed countries should leave room for growth in developing countries where the benefits of growth are evident 2 in developed countries growth has become uneconomic in the sense that it detracts more from well being than it adds and 3 economic growth in developed countries is neither necessary nor sufficient for meeting specific policy objectives such as full employment no poverty and protection of the environment this paper explores various growth scenarios for canada over the medium range to 2020 using lowgrow a dynamic simulation model after describing lowgrow a scenario is presented that shows conditions under which the rate of unemployment in canada could be reduced to historically low levels poverty eliminated and greenhouse gas emissions reduced to comply with canada s commitment under the kyoto protocol without relying on economic growth this is not to say that zero growth should itself become a policy objective rather that the dependence on and defence of economic growth should not be an obstacle to fulfilling more specific welfare enhancing objectives of full employment eliminating poverty and protecting the environment the paper concludes with some policy implications for managing without growth followed by an annex which provides a technical description of lowgrow

the early history of modern ecological economics abstract this paper provides a historical perspective for the discussion on ecological economics as a special field of research by studying the historical background of ecological economics the present discussions and tensions inside the field might become easier to understand and to relate to the study is inspired by other studies of the emergence of new research areas done by sociologists and historians of science and includes both cognitive and social aspects macro trends and the role of individuals the basis for the paper is a combination of literature studies and interviews with key researchers from the field the story opens with the emergence of the new environmental agenda in the 1960s which was influenced by the scientific development in biology and ecology then it is outlined how the environmental challenge was met by economics in the 1960s around 1970 the basic ideas of ecological economics were given modern formulations but it took a long gestation period from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of the 1980s before ecological economics took shape during this gestation period the personal relationships between the actors were formed and the meetings that were decisive for the formal establishment of ecological economics took place

environmental management in development the evolution of paradigms in the past quarter century environmental management has increasingly become a concern of governments more recently the traditional split between developers and conservationists has begun to break down conceptions of what is economically and technologically practical ecologically necessary and politically feasible are rapidly changing this report discusses the implications of five paradigms of environmental management in development the author notes that the remedial legalistic approach of environmental management is breaking down instead interest in the more economically integrated approach of resource management has recently taken hold several interdependent forces indicate that improving the economic management of pollution and resources may be a necessary but insufficient measure to create the conditions for sustainable development the perception of tradeoffs between development and environmental quality persists in the present debate but its necessity is greatly exaggerated according to this paper finally it is noted that paradigms may be impervious to evidence and institutions and societies too difficult to change whether when and how these issues are resolved may be modern civilization s most significant test

trading as gambling this paper offers evidence from three different samples consistent with investors substituting between playing the lottery and gambling in financial markets in the united states increases in the jackpots of the multistate lotteries powerball and mega millions are associated with significant reductions in small trade participation in the stock market california based discount brokerage clients and german discount brokerage clients are significantly less likely to trade during weeks with larger lottery prizes in the california and german lotteries respectively variation in lottery prizes affects speculative trading in more lottery like securities such as individual stocks and options but not trading in bonds and mutual funds trading that is likely associated with long term savings motives such as trading in retirement accounts does not respond to lottery jackpots either the negative relation between trading activity and jackpots is stronger for individuals who are more likely to play the lottery this paper was accepted by brad barber finance

managing cattle grazing under degraded forests an optimal control approach abstract in this paper aspects of knowledge generation and administration concerning management of a rural enterprise in the argentine chaco region are analyzed the deterioration of natural resources and human living conditions show that forest cattle interaction and the ecological economics of the system are poorly understood or not properly taken into account a methodological solution to a typical decision making problem is proposed here and illustrated by a worked example extracted from a real feasibility study the introduction provides a summary of the natural history and of the human interventions in the region arguments on the roke of silvopastoral systems in reverting forest and soil degradation into sustainable productive undertakings are also exposed the mathematical treatment of the problem follows a system theoretic approach a basic nonlinear model for the dynamics is designed first its simplest version includes three state variables livestock units forest biomass and forage availability and two manipulated variables percentage of female calves sold each year and percentage of the cows that did not give birth during the past period and went for sale states and controls are related by coupled differential difference equations selected results from simulation are shown foundations are also laid for taking into account impulsional controls selective and massive wood extractions forage implantation cattle additions and sales the objective function reflects sustainable development principles it evaluates the process in terms of usual economics and introduces ecological components of the management strategy the total cost is expressed as the accumulation of net expenses made for a fixed number of years minus the sale value of the firm at the end then a dynamic programming scheme is developed for finding optimal trajectories with respect to the basic setup shadow prices for the states are derived from the solution progress towards the building of a decision support system with the preceding elements is reported

margin requirements speculative trading and stock price fluctuations the case of japan an increase in margin requirements in the first section of the tokyo stock exchange is followed by a decline in margin borrowing trading volume the proportion of trading performed through margin accounts the growth in stock prices and the conditional volatility of daily returns the nonmarginable second section stocks show a smaller change in volatility and only a delayed weak price response the hypothesis that margin requirements restrict the behavior of destabilizing speculators can explain these correlations but cannot explain the observation that individuals the most active users of margin funds appear to be good market timers

natural versus manufactured capital win lose or win win a case study of the finnish pulp and paper industry abstract the effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win win rhetoric specifically in micro level analysis on the macro level the win win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital intensive industry over time the paper shows that rather than generalise the existence of win win situations or the substitutability of capital these positions are determined by purely situational factors as a result in the assessment of substitutability the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account this implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment

material flows and economic models an analytical comparison of sfa lca and partial equilibrium models abstract the growing concern for environmental problems in the current economy has spurred the study of the way materials and substances flow through the economy resulting in many different types of analysis since all of these have their merits and shortcomings much of the present theoretical research seems to be focusing on combining the best aspects of each model type into an integrated model the aim of this paper is to make a first step in bridging the gap between the various types of analysis of material flows in the economy by discussing the main differences and similarities of three often employed model types substance flow analysis life cycle assessment and partial economic equilibrium analysis instead of submitting each model to a lengthy theoretical discussion we apply them to a single hypothetical example of a pollution problem by doing so we are able to evaluate the differences and similarities of the methods and results of the model in a practical way it appears that the results of the three models are complementary rather than contradictory each of them puts an emphasis on different aspects of the real world a sequential application of a number of limited models may therefore be an approach that provides more useful information than the tedious construction and application of an encompassing model that integrates these models

economy and environment a theoretical essay on the interdependence of economic and environmental systems preface notation guide 1 introduction part i the physical economy environment system 2 closed physical systems a model 3 structure and time in the physical system 4 technological change and the environmental constraints to physical growth part ii the economic system 5 the price system 6 prices property and the environment 7 economic conflict and environmental change part iii environmental strategies in an evolutionary economy environment system 8 time uncertainty and external effects 9 the market solution 10 the stationary state 11 conclusions references index

regulation school and environment theoretical proposals and avenues of research abstract the article explores the relevance of a particular approach of the institutionalist movement regulation theory to deal with the relationship between the economy and the environment regulation theory which appeared in france at the end of the 1970s is mainly interested in macroeconomic issues in contrast until now it has tended to neglect environmental questions by taking several key concepts of this theory accumulation regime mode of regulation institutional forms we have sought to assess its significance vis a vis the environmental field more precisely from the perspective of establishing an environmental regulationist theory we propose considering the economic relation to the environment as the articulation of three forms a transhistorical form a general capitalist form and a specific capitalist form the latter being variable in capitalist time and space we give several illustrations of the variability of the relation to the environment depending on the different accumulation regimes and the different modes of regulation two principal avenues of research are proposed historical analyses for given economic areas and comparative analyses relating in particular to different capitalist areas

ecological economics in china origins dilemmas and prospects abstract this paper is a first step towards articulating a chinese version of ecological economics over the last decade ecological economics has attracted increasing attention in the west similarly since the early 1980s scholars in china have undertaken specific research on existing ecological economic issues in accordance with chinese political economic socio cultural and ecological conditions however this endeavor is hardly known in the west and little attention has been given so far to the potential role of chinese attitudes in the international ecological economics movement this paper is designed to make up for that neglect and attempts to address the following questions what social and cultural traditions are required for chinese ecological economics to operate what are the political and institutional implications of ecological economics in china will chinese ecological economists feel comfortable in a society where open debate is viewed as unacceptable behavior in order to clarify the chinese interpretation of ecological economics and its impact on the policy making process a preliminary overview of its emerging background evolutionary history key viewpoints and theories nature and policy influence is presented three major intellectual sources of chinese ecological economics are identified and the theoretical applications are emphasized then some theoretical and practical issues that may arise in future research are discussed along with implications of chinese ecological economics for the international community in addition to biophysical functions and ecological conditions socio political structures and processes need to be explicitly addressed in extending the research agenda of ecological economics

weak sustainability and viable technologies abstract the context of the concept of weak sustainability is examined using a three tier hierarchy of value we argue that weak sustainability is relevant only in the context of market exchange at a particular point in time it offers an inadequate guide to the sustainability of social institutions and of the natural world on the other hand georgescu roegen s concept of a viable technology recognizes that the integrity of the social and environmental systems surrounding market activity must be maintained if the human species is to persist through time the concept of viability recognizes that market activity depends not only upon the sustaining functions of the environment but also upon the social sustaining functions of human institutions

margin requirements volatility and the transitory component of stock prices official margin requirements in the u s stock market were established in october 1934 to limit the amount of credit available for the purpose of buying stocks since then higher or rising margin requirements are associated with lower stock price volatility lower excess volatility and smaller deviations of stock prices from their fundamental values the results hold throughout the post 1934 period and are not very sensitive to the exclusion of the turbulent depression years from the sample thus margin requirements seem to be an effective policy tool in curbing destabilizing speculation jel 313 520 federal regulation of securities margins was mandated by congress in the securities exchange act of 1934 the stock market experience of the late 1920s led congress to the conclusion that credit financed speculation in the stock market might create excessive market volatility through a pyramidingdepyramiding process congress reasoned that the imposition of margin requirements could constrain the amount of borrowing and prevent excessive market volatility and subsequently gave the federal reserve jurisdiction over the level of margin requirements since 1934 the federal reserve

leverage and beliefs personal experience and risk taking in margin lending what determines risk bearing capacity and the amount of leverage in financial markets using unique archival data on collateralized lending we show that personal experience can affect individual risk taking and aggregate leverage when an investor syndicate speculating in amsterdam in 1772 went bankrupt many lenders were exposed in the end none of them actually lost money nonetheless only those at risk of losing money changed their behavior markedly they lent with much higher haircuts the rest continued as before the differential change is remarkable since the distress was public knowledge overall leverage in the amsterdam stock market declined as a result

price convexity and skewness this paper develops a model in which investors who are prohibited from short selling agree to disagree on the precision of a publicly observed signal the model implies that the equilibrium price is a convex function of the public signal the model predicts that 1 the stock price reacts more to good news than to bad news 2 the skewness of stock returns is positively correlated with contemporaneous returns but negatively correlated with lagged returns 3 short sale constraints increase rather than decrease skewness and 4 disagreement about information precision increases skewness empirical tests conducted find supportive evidence for all these predictions

hedonic prices demands for urban housing amenities and benefit estimates abstract this paper uses a rosen two step hedonic price trait demand approach to estimate demand functions for a vector of urban amenities to ascertain whether this theoretically preferred approach yields benefit estimates which differ from the oft used ridker henning one step hedonic approach we conduct a sensitivity analysis we find that the two step approach does yield different benefit estimates and that the differences are large for some amenities the estimates are sensitive to the functional form of the hedonic equation when the forms are significantly different according to modified box cox results but are not particularly sensitive to specification of the amenity demand equation

the kenneth e boulding memorial award 2014 ecological economics a personal journey abstract this speech was delivered at the meeting of the international society for ecological economics at reykjiavik iceland on the 13th of august 2014 at the presentation of the 2014 kenneth e boulding memorial award in the speech peter victor pays tribute to kenneth boulding one of the pioneers of ecological economics and then describes his own principal contributions to ecological economics over a period of 45 years these contributions include environmental applications of input output analysis the problematic extension of the concept of capital to nature the definition and analysis of green growth and his research on ecological macroeconomics and the challenge to economic growth

is energy cost an accurate indicator of natural resource quality abstract the use of energy cost as an indicator of natural resource quality is examined energy cost is the direct and indirect energy used to produce a unit of a resource commodity different approaches to the role of energy in the economy are discussed and it is demonstrated theoretically that energy cost can give false indications of changes in resource quality this is because energy cost is only an accurate indicator of resource quality if either energy is the single primary factor of production and the economy can be represented by an input output model or if there is substitutability between the factors of production then marginal products must be proportional to the factors embodied energy these conditions are tested empirically using data from the us agricultural sector the results show that there is substitutability and marginal products are not proportional to embodied energy however the strong neoclassical assumption of price taking profit maximization can be rejected at a 5 level of significance though not at the 3 5 level the generality of the empirical results may be restricted due to data limitations but the theoretical framework can be applied to other data sets other resources and even other indicators

what does it really mean to be a strongly sustainable company a response to nikolaou and tsalis abstract in a recent issue of this journal nikolaou and tsalis 2018 published a paper titled a framework to evaluate eco and social labels for designing a sustainability consumption label to measure strong sustainability impact of firms products in their paper the authors n t develop a method for identifying strongly sustainable companies as a basis for consumer communication n t test their method on a case study of five chemical companies and conclude that two of these are strongly sustainable essentially because they had obtained a higher number of eco labels than the average across the five companies while we agree with n t on the relevance of applying a strong sustainability perspective in the assessment of companies we are afraid that their method can lead to misguided consumer communication at the root of this concern is that n t 1 use a market average as reference to decide whether a company has a strong or weak sustainability performance and 2 use the number of eco labels as an environmental indicator we lay the foundation of this response by briefly accounting for the academic origin of the weak strong sustainability dichotomy we then present our argument against the method presented by n t this is followed by a proposal for how to improve the method finally we discuss state of the art in strong sustainability assessments of companies taking into account other existing methods that draw on the planetary boundaries concept and life cycle assessment

the inclusive wealth index a critical appraisal abstract among recent high profile propositions to revise national accounts and to provide new indicators of sustainability and well being the inclusive wealth framework and the related inclusive wealth index iwi undoubtedly stand out as one of the most promising endeavours built up at the confluence of welfare development and sustainability economics the indicator has been designed to bring information about the wealth of nations and their sustainability in a comprehensive way the inclusive wealth framework is nevertheless fraught with limitations due to questionable theoretical assumptions gaps in data availability unrealistic assumptions about the future and inability to account for distributional issues we propose a non exhaustive critical appraisal of the index and its underlying framework we conclude that these limitations undermine its capacity to fulfil the requirements of a satisfactory sustainability indicator we argue that most problems lie in the substantial discrepancy between the inclusive ambition of the indicator and the scarce means to implement it whereas the interconnectedness of the various assets that constitute wealth as well as their complex evolution through time are acknowledged by the proponents of inclusive wealth the way the iwi is computed is rather a mere addition of layers of actuarial like monetary values for a not inclusive yet range of capital assets caution is thus warranted while using such an approach and shorter range alternatives to pursue similar goals are proposed

the effects of a new subway line on housing prices in metropolitan toronto an analysis by means of using the estimation results of a modal choice model and the hedonic price regressions model is conducted in order to identify the effects of a subway line in toronto on the values of housing units the modal choice model is used for the estimation of the direct benefits from the improvement in transportation and the hedonic price equations for the identification of subway effects on housing prices empirical results indicate that the direct savings in commuting costs have been capitalized into housing values

information order and knowledge in economic and ecological systems implications for material and energy use abstract ecological and economic systems are open systems that require energy to change the thermodynamic states of materials from naturally occurring to more valued forms these changes are accompanied by information flows and changes in the order of systems and their surroundings in this paper thermodynamics is used to assess these system changes and relate them to the knowledge present in a system particular emphasis is given to 1 the fundamental relationships among material energy and information flows and changes in order and knowledge 2 the role of equilibrium and non equilibrium thermodynamics in assessing system change 3 the increasing role of material and energy flows through economic systems and 4 the necessity for improved societal valuation of these flows

resource use institutions and sustainability a tale of two pacific island cultures this paper examines two pacific island cultures easter island and tikopia and the relationship between natural resource systems human made capital population growth and institutional change easter island followed a preindustrial society pattern of overshoot and collapse however tikopia evolved cultural practices leading to zero population growth and sustainable resource use using a modified lotka volterra predator prey model we find 1 investment in human made capital does not necessarily eliminate the boom and bust cycles of economic activity and population observed in many past societies and 2 institutional adaptation and resource conservation can be critical in achieving population stability

environmental accounting useful to whom and for what abstract the development of statistics as with any other tool can only be understood in relation to their particular uses this is confirmed by the development of national income estimates and of the national accounts proposals to integrate environmental costs and benefits into the national accounts can similarly only be evaluated by considering them in the context of their likely policy use the most important potential use is as a general measure of welfare or progress for policy to aim to maximise environmentally adjusted national accounts correspond to a very weak view of sustainability the use of adjusted national income as a measure of welfare essentially assumes complete substitutability between manufactured and natural capital problems of monetary valuation are likely to lead to huge underestimation of environmental costs issues of inequality and poverty essential to a more robust view of sustainability are ignored policy targeting a revised national income will continue to aim for ever higher output while making very limited concessions to environmental concerns adjusting the national accounts for environmental costs is not the only way to ensure they are allowed for in policy making an alternative approach more appropriate if sustainable development in the stronger sense is to be achieved is the construction and use of a set of social and environmental indicators

trader leverage and liquidity does trader leverage drive equity market liquidity we use the unique features of the margin trading system in india to identify a causal relationship between traders ability to borrow and a stock s market liquidity to quantify the impact of trader leverage we employ a regression discontinuity design that exploits threshold rules that determine a stock s margin trading eligibility we find that liquidity is higher when stocks become eligible for margin trading and that this liquidity enhancement is driven by margin traders contrarian strategies consistent with downward liquidity spirals due to deleveraging we also find that this effect reverses during crises

a synthetic analysis of market efficiency and constant resource stock for sustainability and its policy implications abstract economic efficiency and ecological sustainability reflect different understandings and requirements for natural and environmental resource management these two approaches can conflict in principle but at the same time they can be complementary a synthesis is suggested so that ecological sustainability could be realised with economic efficiency with the introduction of a resource enhancement function an optimal control model is constructed to investigate the efficient implementation of sustainability criteria further discussions are made on the policy implications arising from the synthesis and the transformation between physical capital natural resources in situ and capital gains economic surplus in a market control process

why people choose negative expected return assets an empirical examination of a utility theoretic explanation using a theoretical extension of the friedman and savage 1948 utility function developed in bhattacharyya 2003 we predict that for assets with negative expected returns such as state lottery games expected return will be a declining and convex function of skewness that is lottery players trade off expected return for skewness using two samples of lottery game data we find that our theoretical conclusions are supported by the empirical results the findings obtained here not only contribute to the literature on why individuals may participate in unfair gambles the framework could be extended to an analysis of the stock market where higher returns cannot be solely explained by risk variance

indicators of sustainable development some lessons from capital theory abstract interest in sustainable development has prompted a search for suitable indicators that might complement or supplant the traditional measures of economic success although there is no agreement about the precise meaning of sustainable development one idea which is increasingly in good currency is that sustainable development requires that the stock of capital that one generation passes on to the next be maintained or enhanced further this stock of capital is seen by some to comprise two elements manufactured capital and natural capital the extent to which these are believed to be substitutes or complements is one factor which separates the neoclassical school from some of its critics a premise of this paper is that if capital theory is relevant to sustainable development then it should also be helpful in developing indicators however even within the normal confines of economics capital theory is not a homogeneous body of analysis therefore an exploration of capital theory and its relevance to sustainable development can be expected to generate various perspectives on those measures most useful for gauging the sustainability of economic activity it is these linkages between capital theory in various schools of thought and possible indicators of sustainable development that are the subject of this paper

toward consilience between biology and economics the contribution of ecological economics abstract during its ten year history ecological economics has made a real difference in the way economists look at the natural world and in the way biologists look at the economy in this survey article we examine the contributions to the journal in terms of e o wilson s concept of consilience that is his argument that the methods and assumptions of any field of study should be consistent with the known and accepted facts in other disciplines in particular we examine the contributions of ecological economics to reconciling the economic theory of the consumer and producer with biophysical reality

genuine savings and sustainability genuine savings gs has emerged as the leading economic indicator of sustainable economic development at the country level it derives from the literatures on weak sustainability wealth accounting and national income accounting we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of gs focusing on the relationship between changes in a nation s extended capital stock and the future path of consumption the indicator has entered widespread use propelled by the world bank s publications despite its varying performance as a predictor for future consumption notwithstanding the extensive body of literature reviewed promising future research avenues are identified

measuring incoordination adjusted sustainability performance during the urbanization process spatial dimensional perspectives abstract urbanization sustainability is intrinsically against incoordination in two distinct forms incoordination across sustainability dimensions and geographical spaces in sustainability performance however the rapid urbanization particularly in those developing countries such as china has been bringing along the problems of dimensional incoordination and spatial incoordination to date existing studies do not address these two forms of incoordination while assessing the sustainable urbanization this paper therefore introduces a measurement model to evaluate the incoordination adjusted sustainability performance during the urbanization process the proposed model is established based on the examinations of the weak strong sustainability perspective and the principle of spatial justice theory the atkinson measure is employed to develop the model a case study of the chongqing city is conducted to illustrate the process of applying the proposed model the outcomes from the case study reveal that the model proposed is effective in gauging and monitoring the status and trajectories of sustainability incoordination during the urbanization process

prudent margin levels in the finnish stock index futures market futures market officials are confronted with the difficult task of setting appropriate margin levels that must balance the costs of trader default and the benefits of increased market liquidity one way to guard against default is prudent margin setting practices designed to protect futures positions from extreme price movements the objective of this research is to extrapolate the probabilities of encountering extreme price movements by applying statistical extreme value theory to the finnish stock index futures market the extreme value technique is found to be appropriate since it generates theoretical margin violation probabilities that closely follow the empirical probability distribution the extrapolated results provide decision makers information on extreme events that have not yet occurred

some issues in agrarian and ecological economics in memory of georgescu roegen abstract ecological critics of economics have argued for over one hundred years that economists should study the flow of energy and materials in the economy the services nature offers to the human economy cannot be adequately valued in the accounting system of neoclassical environmental and resource economics today s ecological economics does not only critizice it also tries to provide physical indicators in order to judge whether the economy is ecologically sustainable beyond its decisive role in strengthening such ecological economics georgescu roegen s work currently still holds sway in two additional fields consumption theory as analysed by gowdy 1993 and agrarian economics are there relations between such fields of study and ecological economics in this article i shall first focus on the agrarian question and then on intra and inter generational ecological distribution

ecology sustainability and environment as capital abstract the idea of environment as capital has found widespread support in both the economic and ecological literature it is often suggested in a related sustainability literature that natural capital should remain intact if possible the popularity of this approach to exploring the human environment relationship is due in part to the way it is seemingly legitimised by ecological theory and practice this legitimation is important for emerging areas of human environment study such as ecological economics because ecology and other natural sciences have often dismissed economic constructions of the environment however a closer examination of the state of contemporary ecology suggests that there are problems with an ecological legitimation of the environment as capital approach first ecology itself is a troubled discipline and its ability to provide a comprehensive theory of human environment interactions is limited second emerging ecological discourse tends to undermine the ecological rationale for many natural capital related resource management recommendations this does not mean that the environment as capital concept is without considerable heuristic power it does imply however a need to return to a social construction of the environment in which different environmental possibilities are valued in terms of their potential contribution to human well being

the irrelevance of margin evidence from the crash of 87 following the crash of 1987 one contentious regulatory issue has been whether margin activity exacerbated the decline in equity values we contrast the crash behavior of nasdaq securities eligible for margin trading with the behavior of ineligible ones consistent with the hypothesis that margin eligible securities were more frequently subjected to margin calls and forced sales we find that abnormal volumes were uniformly larger for eligible securities however there is no evidence that this activity provoked additional price depreciation margin eligible securities actually fell by one percent less than the ineligible securities over the period

literature survey on the relationships between energy environment and economic growth abstract the aim of this study is to exhibit an exhaustive survey which is related to the great flight of the literature of energy environment growth nexus at the individual and regional scale studies covering the period from 1978 to 2014 the survey takes into consideration the sample country region etc periods covering econometric strategies and conclusions our survey is based on the causality direction among i the energy use variables electricity nuclear renewable and non renewable and output growth ii between economic growth and environment and between the three variables at the same time globally these surveys provide paradoxical and not conclusive results which energy consumption can boost economic growth through the productivity enhancement and it can boost also the environmental damages through the enhancement of pollutant emissions our survey sheds more the lights on the energy environment growth literature by giving an extensive listing 1978 2014 of these causal linkages among the energy use variables environment and economic growth for both individual and collective cases there is a unanimous consensus about the importance of dealing with such dynamic relationship which is seems to be a cornerstone element in setting any ambition strategies energy ecological and economics

trends in natural resource commodity prices an analysis of the time domain abstract this paper attempts to reconcile the theoretical predictions of increasing real prices for nonrenewable natural resource commodities obtained from hotelling style models with the empirical findings of falling prices for these commodities a theoretical model for relative price movements is derived for the case of exogenous technical change and endogenous change in the grade of ores mined the model suggests a u shaped time path for relative prices the implied price movements are tested for all the major metals and fuels and the model parameters are found to be statistically significant for 11 out of the 12 commodities tested

trading as entertainment among 1 000 german brokerage clients for whom both survey responses and actual trading records are available investors who report enjoying investing or gambling turn over their portfolio at twice the rate of their peers including entertainment attributes as additional explanatory variables in cross sectional regressions of portfolio turnover on objective investor attributes more than doubles the fraction of the total variation of portfolio turnover that can be explained the results are robust to controlling for gender and proxies for overconfidence constructed from survey responses nonpecuniary benefits of trading thus appear to offer a straightforward explanation of the excessive trading puzzle

entropy structure and organisational change abstract the paper sets out a basis for rigorous thermodynamic characterisation of structural change and of organisational interdependencies between economic and environmental processes many attempts have been made to exploit entropy as a generic explanatory variable it has widely been proposed that entropy is a measure of the level of dis order of a system of how mixed up things are then as organisation is often thought synonymous with some notion of order it has been a small step to propose that increasing organisation is the converse of increasing entropy another suggestion has been that social system structure and change can be explained in terms of a tendency towards maximum entropy production the lotka principle of maximum energy dissipation all these notions must be rejected the putative entropy order connection has its inspiration in boltzmann s probabilistic interpretation of thermodynamic entropy as a measure of microscopic disorder this order principle is simply not applicable under conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium prigogine conditions which prevail for all important economic and ecological processes under such conditions the relationship between entropy production and changes in structure or organisation is multi faceted and situation specific attempts to account for the specificity of societal activities in terms of a generic scalar measure of organisation or dissipation are largely after the fact and in no way do away with the need for analysis of institutional and ethical dimensions of human action in their own right when properly allied to institutional analysis however the far from equilibrium thermodynamics furnishes a rich impetus for a coevolutionary perspective in ecological economics with promise of incisive treatments of in particular issues of system environment codependency and of the time in determinacies of economy environmental change