the proximity of nations to a socially sustainable steady state economy abstract there has been increasing interest in new economic models that aim to improve quality of life without increasing consumption this article provides the first empirical analysis of how close modern day economies are to the concept of a steady state economy and explores whether there is any relationship between a country s proximity to such an economy and its social performance the analysis is carried out using the degrowth accounts a set of 16 biophysical and social indicators that are derived from herman daly s definition of a steady state economy and the social goals of the degrowth movement these indicators are applied to 180 countries over a 10 year period the analysis reveals that the majority of countries in the world are biophysical growth economies there are only a small number of countries where resource use is relatively constant from year to year e g denmark france japan poland romania and the us and only four countries experiencing biophysical degrowth germany guyana moldova and zimbabwe there are no countries that achieve a true steady state economy defined as an economy with a stable level of resource use maintained within ecological limits however a few countries come relatively close including colombia cuba kyrgyzstan romania and south africa in general countries with stable resource use perform better on many social indicators than countries with either increasing or decreasing resource use this finding runs contrary to conventional economic thought however social performance is also higher in countries with greater per capita resource use overall these findings suggest that a steady state economy can be socially sustainable but countries need to become much more efficient at transforming natural resources into human well being if all seven billion people on earth are to lead a good life within ecological limits

the most popular tax in europe lessons from the irish plastic bags levy there have been occasional ad hoc efforts to influence consumer behaviour by the imposition of product taxes that reflect external costs imposed by such products that are not initially included in their price in the spirit of this idea in 2002 ireland introduced a 15 euro cent tax on plastic shopping bags previously provided free of charge to customers at points of sale the effect of the tax on the use of plastic bags in retail outlets has been dramatic a reduction in use in the order of 90 and an associated gain in the form of reduced littering and negative landscape effects costs of administration have been very low amounting to about 3 of revenues because it was possible to integrate reporting and collection into existing value added tax reporting systems response from the main stakeholders the public and the retail industry has been overwhelmingly positive central to this acceptance has been a policy of extensive consultation with these stakeholders the fact that a product tax can influence consumer behaviour significantly will be of interest to many policymakers in this area this paper analyses the plastic bag levy success story and provides insights and general guidelines for other jurisdictions planning similar proposals

identifying barriers toward a post growth economy a political economy view abstract in this paper we take a political economy perspective on barriers that inhibit a transition beyond the growth paradigm that is we frame transition barriers as looming conflicts of interest specifically we investigate potential transition barriers within three case studies first unemployment represents the most commonly cited reason why economic growth is considered indispensable second alternative indicators to gross domestic product gdp have not succeeded in replacing gdp as a standard metric of economic welfare third pension schemes rely on economic growth to offset demographic change in each of these three examples we identify actor interest constellations that foster the status quo of a growth economy we conclude that compensating some of those actors who would presumably be worse off in a post growth economy may be necessary though not sufficient for a transition

efficiency effects of unit based pricing systems and institutional choices of waste collection municipal residential waste costs are rising therefore it is important to introduce measures that lower waste collection and disposal costs based on a large panel data set for the netherlands we show that unit based pricing systems are more important from a cost minimizing point of view than the institutional mode of waste collection in particular the bag based and frequency based pricing systems are preferred moreover dividing the cost effects between cost price and quantity effects we illustrate that lower administrative costs and a smaller waste quantity are the most important drivers of cost decreases it also shows that a disadvantage of the bag based system is that it is not easy to price compostable waste in addition if more general cost functions are analyzed these estimations suggest that there are economies of scale for small municipalities

the induced innovation hypothesis and energy saving technological change we develop a methodology for testing hicks s induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product characteristics model of energy using consumer durables augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the ine uence of government regulations for the products we explored the evidence suggests that i the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy prices and regulations ii the direction of innovation was responsive to energy price changes for some products but not for others iii energy price changes induced changes in the subset of technically feasible models that were offered for sale iv this responsiveness increased substantially during the period after energy efficiency product labeling was required and v nonetheless a sizable portion of efficiency improvements were autonomous

do not trash the incentive monetary incentives and waste sorting this paper examines whether combining non monetary and monetary incentives increases municipal solid waste sorting we empirically investigate this issue exploiting the exogenous variation in waste management policies experienced during the years 1999 2008 by the 95 municipalities in the district of treviso italy using a panel regression analysis we estimate that pay as you throw payt incentive schemes increase by 17 the sorted to total waste ratio and that their effect reinforces that of a door to door dtd collection system which is equal to 15 7 moreover the panel structure of our dataset allows us to find learning and spatial effects associated to both payt and dtd

clearing the air the costs and consequences of higher cafe standards and increased gasoline taxes abstract concerns about energy security and climate change have sparked legislators interest in reducing gasoline consumption by increasing corporate average fuel economy cafe standards using an empirically rich simulation model and cost estimates for anticipated fuel economy technologies we estimate annual costs of reducing long run gasoline consumption by 10 via a 3 8 miles per gallon increase in the standards and the potential cost savings from allowing manufacturers to buy and sell fuel economy credits maximum gasoline savings would be realized only after all existing vehicles were replaced or 14 years in our model a gasoline tax would produce greater immediate savings by encouraging people to drive less and eventually to choose more fuel efficient vehicles we demonstrate the advantage of a tax by comparing the cost of the higher cafe standards over the first 14 years against the cost of a gasoline tax that would save the same amount of gasoline over that time

fuel prices and new vehicle fuel economy comparing the united states and western europe abstract several recent papers have documented an effect of fuel prices on new vehicle fuel economy in the united states this paper estimates the effect of fuel prices on average new vehicle fuel economy for the eight largest european markets the analysis spans the years 2002 2007 and uses detailed vehicle registration and specification data to control for policies consumer preferences and other potentially confounding factors we find fuel prices to have a statistically significant effect on average new vehicle fuel economy in europe the effect estimated for europe is much smaller than comparable estimates for the united states

measuring the economic benefits of recycling the case of the waste agricultural film in korea recently increase of the waste agricultural film waf raises the loss of the resources and produces the environmental damage in korea the korean government has established the basic plan for increasing the recycling rate and abating the environmental damage the objective of this paper is to estimate the economic benefits attached to the policy of recycling the waf using contingent valuation method aiming to provide policy makers with useful information to make an informed public decision in recycling the waf the overall results show that the respondents well accepted the contingent market and would be willing to pay a significant amount for the proposed policy of recycling the waf the mean willingness to pay and the truncated mean willingness to pay per household were 4641 korean won us 3 6 and 5730 korean won us 4 4 respectively total economic benefits for the population amounted to approximately 14 33 billion korean won us 11 02 million per year this quantitative information can be use

searching for hidden costs a technology based approach to the energy efficiency gap in light duty vehicles abstract the benefit cost analysis of standards to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel economy by the u s environmental protection agency epa and the department of transportation dot displays large net benefits from fuel savings for new vehicle buyers this finding points to an energy efficiency gap the energy saving technology provided in private markets appears not to include all the technologies that produce net private benefits the gap exists if the costs of energy saving technologies are lower than the present value of fuel reductions and hidden costs undesirable aspects of the new technologies do not exceed the net financial benefits this study examines the existence of hidden costs in energy saving technologies through a content analysis of auto reviews of model year 2014 vehicles results suggest that it is possible to use fuel saving technologies on vehicles without imposing hidden costs for each technology examined reviews with positive evaluations outnumbered those with negative evaluations evidence is scant of a robust relationship between vehicles use of energy saving technologies and negatively rated operational characteristics such as handling or acceleration results do not provide evidence for hidden costs as the explanation of the efficiency gap for vehicle fuel saving technologies

pounds that kill the external costs of vehicle weight heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for other vehicles simple theory thus suggests that an unregulated vehicle fleet is inefficiently heavy using three separate identification strategies we show that controlling for own vehicle weight being hit by a vehicle that is 1000 pounds heavier generates a 40 50 increase in fatality risk these results imply a total accident related externality that exceeds the estimated social cost of us carbon emissions and is equivalent to a gas tax of 0 97 per gallon 136 billion annually we consider two policies for internalizing this external cost a weight varying mileage tax and a gas tax and find that they are similar for most vehicles the findings suggest that european gas taxes may be much closer to optimal levels than the us gas tax language en

nexus of fuel consumption car features and car prices evidence from major institutions in ibadan abstract this study examined the nexus of fuel consumption car characteristics and prices in ibadan it also ascertained whether car buyers undervalue fuel savings a sample of 600 car owners drawn from the six major institutions in ibadan was used in addition to the descriptive analysis the hedonic car price function was estimated using ols and iv estimation techniques the result of the iv estimations were preferred and interpreted empirical findings indicated that respondents do not undervalue fuel savings more explicitly 98 8 of the respondents indicated that they would pay additional naira to buy fuel efficient car if the additional naira is less than the present value of extra future cost of fuel for an inefficient car moreover when asked to rank the factors considered important when purchasing a car fuel consumption ranked third the estimated hedonic price model indicated that the impact of fuel consumption on car price was significantly negative implying that the respondents were willing to pay less for a fuel inefficient car moreover the security and luxury car features were found to increase the price of cars the study recommended that advocacy and orientations be carried out by the stakeholders in the car market to deepen users and potential buyers understanding on car price determinants

the sustainable welfare index towards a threshold effect for italy abstract gdp as a key parameter for macro economic policy has long been criticized one of the better known monetary alternatives to gdp is the isew a synthetic proxy of sustainable welfare theoretical and methodological limitations of this indicator have been identified and several refinements or extensions proposed gpi for example building on these approaches this article presents a new composite flow oriented indicator directly comparable with gdp the proposed sustainable welfare index swi is calculated for the italian case over the 1960 2014 period the estimate of swi over an extended period of fifty four years provides evidence for a previously undetected threshold effect in italy by means of a flow oriented indicator unlike gdp swi per capita stops increasing in 1991 empirical results show that the level of sustainable welfare in italy stops growing mainly because of a rise in income inequality a decline in non paid domestic work and a worsening of the net fixed capital formation and net international investment position

the circular economy swings and roundabouts abstract in the last few decades the circular economy has increasingly been advertised as an economic model that can replace the current linear economy whilst addressing the issues of environmental deterioration social equity and long term economic growth with the explicit suggestion that it can serve as a tool for sustainable development however despite the individual prominence of the circular economy and sustainable development in the academic and wider literature the exact relationship between the two concepts has neither been thoroughly defined nor explored the consequent result is various inconsistencies occurring across the literature regarding how the circular economy can serve as a tool for sustainable development and an incomplete understanding of how its long term effects differ from those of the linear economy a literature review was conducted to interpret the current conceptual relationship between the circular economy and sustainable development the review highlights numerous challenges concerning conceptual definition economic growth and implementation that inhibit the use of the circular economy as a tool for sustainable development in its current form the review concludes by providing suggestions for how research concerning the circular economy should proceed if it is to provide a potential approach for achieving sustainable development

garbage recycling and illicit burning or dumping abstract with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options we confirm prior results that the optimal curbside fee for garbage collection equals the direct resource cost plus external environment cost when illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option that cannot be taxed directly the optimal curbside tax on garbage changes sign the optimal fee structure is a deposit refund system a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal through either recycling or garbage collection the output tax helps achieve the first best allocation even though it affects the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure

estimating consumer willingness to supply and willingness to pay for curbside recycling we estimate the willingness to pay for curbside recycling based on a contingent valuation survey of 600 residents of a large southeastern united states city the best estimate of willingness to pay for curbside recycling is 2 29 month after adjustment for hypothetical bias we also report the results of a field experiment designed to test the effectiveness of explicit monetary incentives and communication appeals to influence the decision to recycle and the quantity of materials to recycle while households respond to the monetary cost of recycling the effects of the token ex ante incentives and appeals appear to be small jel d61 q21

is there an energy paradox in fuel economy a note on the role of consumer heterogeneity and sorting bias abstract from the previous literature it can be found that consumers tend to undervalue discounted future energy costs in their purchase decisions for energy using durables we show that this finding could in part result from ignoring consumer heterogeneity in empirical analyses as opposed to true undervaluation

the sustainable development index measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the anthropocene abstract when the human development index hdi was introduced in the 1990s it was an important step toward a more sensible measure of progress one defined less by gdp growth and more by social goals but the limitations of hdi have become clear in the 21st century given a growing crisis of climate change and ecological breakdown hdi pays no attention to ecology and retains an emphasis on high levels of income that given strong correlations between income and ecological impact violates sustainability principles the countries that score highest on the hdi also contribute most in per capita terms to climate change and other forms of ecological breakdown in this sense hdi promotes a model of development that is empirically incompatible with ecological stability and impossible to universalize in this paper i propose an alternative index that corrects for these problems the sustainable development index sdi the sdi retains the base formula of the hdi but places a sufficiency threshold on per capita income and divides by two key indicators of ecological impact co2 emissions and material footprint both calculated in per capita consumption based terms and rendered vis a vis planetary boundaries the sdi is an indicator of strong sustainability that measures nations ecological efficiency in delivering human development

on the second best policy of household s waste recycling this study analyzes the second best household s waste recycling policy if we assume the first best economy with no illegal disposal or transaction costs then unit pricing an advance disposal fee and a recycling subsidy are required in order to achieve the social optimum such that both the sum of unit pricing and an advance disposal fee and the sum of unit pricing and a recycling subsidy are equal to the marginal disposal cost furthermore the first best outcome can also be obtained by a producer take back requirement system in the real economy however various factors prevent the first best optimal outcome in this study we consider two factors one being the transaction cost associated with a recycling subsidy or refund and the other being illegal disposal by the consumer if a recycling subsidy or a deposit refund system is adopted a transaction cost associated with it will be generated alternatively if unit pricing is adopted some of the consumed goods may be disposed of illegally we show the complete trade off between unit pricing and a recycling subsidy in other words we can not adopt unit pricing and a recycling subsidy simultaneously as a result there are three candidates for the second best policy unit pricing with an advance disposal fee a deposit refund system and a producer take back requirement system which of these three policies is the second best policy will depend on the relative magnitude of the price of a recycled good and the marginal transaction cost associated with a recycling subsidy or the refund in a deposit refund system generally if the price of a recycled good is positive and the marginal transaction cost is relatively high unit pricing with an advance disposal fee is the second best policy however where the price of a recycled good is negative and the marginal transaction cost is relatively high a producer take back requirement system is the second best policy further where the marginal transaction cost is relatively low a deposit refund system is the second best policy regardless of whether the price of a recycled good is positive or negative

simpler is better predicting consumer vehicle purchases in the short run abstract when agencies such as the us environmental protection agency epa establish future greenhouse gas emissions standards for new vehicles forecasting future vehicle purchases due to changes in fuel economy and prices provides insight into regulatory impacts we compare predictions from a nested logit model independently developed for us epa to a simple model where past market share predicts future market share using data from model years 2008 2010 and 2016 the simple model outperforms the nested logit model for all goodness of prediction measures for both prediction years including changes in vehicle price and fuel economy increases bias in forecasted market shares this bias suggests price increases are correlated with unobserved increases in vehicle quality changes in preferences or brand specific changes in market size but not cost pass through for 2010 past shares predict better than a nested logit model despite a major shock the economic disruption caused by the great recession observed share changes during this turbulent period may offer upper bounds for policy changes in other contexts the largest observed change in market share across the two horizons is 6 6 for manufacturers in 2016 and 3 4 for an individual vehicle in 2010

financing a competitive recycling initiative in switzerland abstract the purpose of the paper is to enhance the understanding of different pricing systems within the real world of solid waste management first the effect on recycling behaviour of citizens and second the effect on the budget goals and third the operational logic of different economic measures will be analyzed hence it helps practitioners understand and cope with the challenge of meeting the zero profit budget goal in public solid waste management while inducing behaviour change in the regional solid waste system the question how can robust recycling strategies be financed is addressed the analysis draws on a system dynamics model for solid waste management that is based on a model framework on human behaviour and public policy that embraces an evolutionary feedback perspective the model structure was deduced from an ex post analysis of observed phenomena in solid waste management such as recurring budget deficits at the local level in switzerland the paper illustrates how the model was used as a policy lab in which various pricing and incentive strategies were tested that allowed addressing what if questions under controlled conditions the various policy experiments illustrated crucial trade offs between zero profit budget goals at the local level and the administration of a successful recycling initiative different scenario experiments show that under worst case conditions economic instrument are not sufficient in order to yield a robust policy outcome

australia s genuine progress indicator revisited 1962 2013 abstract the genuine progress indicator gpi has been proposed as an alternative to gdp as an indicator of national progress gpi includes 26 components that adjust gdp for inequality include household and volunteer work and subtract a number of social and environmental costs best seen as negatives the gpi has been estimated for over 20 countries and many states and territories this paper updates australia s gpi to determine whether australia as a nation has progressed overall since the 1960s and compares two alternative approaches that differ in some important details we find that despite these differing approaches we find that gpi remained largely stagnant from the 1960s through to the 1990s and only at the turn of the century has gpi started to increase despite increasing negative environmental costs while gpi is well placed to serve as an improved australian and global measure of national progress further work is needed to measure national well being and support its integration into political decision making and to include the full range of subjective and objective indicators ultimately this paper argues that while gpi is well placed to serve as a new australian and global measure of well being we stress the need for an alternative indicator like gpi to supplement gdp and to better inform policy decisions

short run pricing strategies to increase corporate average fuel economy short run pricing strategies to increase corporate average fuel economy i introduction in 1974 the average fuel efficiency of new automobiles sold in the united states reached a low of 14 2 miles per gallon mpg close on the heels of the arab opec oil embargo of 1973 74 and the ensuing petroleum price shocks congress passed the 1975 energy policy and conservation act the act required each manufacturer to meet sales weighted corporate average fuel economy cafe standards beginning with 18 mpg in 1978 and gradually increasing each year to 27 5 mpg in 1985 figure 1 the expressed purpose of the cafe standards was to stimulate the development of technology to improve fuel efficiency the possibility of raising the relative prices of the least energy efficient models as a strategy to meet the standards was considered but only as a last resort 1 although there continues to be intense debate as to whether fuel price increases or the cafe regulations drove the fuel economy improvements of the 1970s and 80s several studies agree that improvements in automotive engineering and design rather than pricing strategies played an overwhelmingly dominant role 2 no empirical evidence supports the effectiveness of using pricing strategies to increase the overall level of automotive fuel economy every year since 1985 automobile manufacturers have successfully petitioned the national highway traffic safety administration which determines the level of the cafe standard to reduce the target from 27 5 to 26 mpg in 1986 88 and 26 5 mpg in 1989 in each case at least one manufacturer argued that it would be unable to meet the original target with its planned product offerings and would have to resort to other strategies that would result in unacceptable economic costs this paper explores a method of estimating the costs of achieving fuel economy goals when pricing strategies are used to alter the distribution of sales the method employs the closed form equation for consumers surplus derived from the multinational logit model of discrete choice discussed by mcfadden 1973 and assumes that manufacturers must bear the full cost of meeting the fuel economy target the estimated cost represents an upper bound on the losses firms would incur by setting prices to minimize loss of profit using econometric estimates of the sensitivity of vehicle choice to vehicle price together with market shares and fuel efficiencies for 1986 i estimate the costs of short term improvements in average fuel economy using pricing strategies for general motors ford and chrysler minor adjustments of up to 1 mpg cost 1 2 percent of the price of a 10 000 car for improvements of 2 mpg or more however pricing strategies become a costly way to improve fuel economy the technique also estimates the market shares for each car line that correspond to the pricing solution it thereby identifies which car lines would be most affected the technique produces precise price changes and market shares for each car line readers should not place too much weight on the apparent precision but should consider the estimates as an approximation the usefulness of which lies in measuring the difficulty of meeting fuel economy targets via pricing strategies alone one can compare the size of these estimates to the fines for failing to meet the standards 50 per mpg per car or to typical manufacturer rebates to stimulate sales often 100 to 2 000 per car ii a formulation of the pricing problem faced with the cafe requirements a firm can respond with engineering and design improvements or by raising the prices of less efficient models and lowering the prices of those that exceed the standard technological improvements generally require a lead time of three to five years very large fluctuations in fuel prices have occurred in far shorter perids figure 1 creating the risk that a manufacturer s product offering could be out of step with the market

new vehicle characteristics and the cost of the corporate average fuel economy standard by 2016 the corporate average fuel economy cafe standard will increase by 40 this article focuses on the medium run effects of fuel economy regulation we estimate consumers willingness to pay for vehicle characteristics we employ a novel empirical strategy that accounts for the characteristics endogeneity by using variation of engine models used in vehicle models the results imply that consumers value an increase in power more than an increase in fuel economy simulations of the effects of an increase in the cafe standard suggest that regulatory costs are significantly smaller in the medium run than in the short run

economics in the anthropocene species extinction or steady state economics abstract at the dawn of the anthropocene continued economic growth carries the risk of irreversibly damaging the global carrying capacity using data from the international union for the conservation of nature red list of threatened species 2016 i present estimates of the expected extinction rates during the coming century for 557 regions i illustrate that these rates exceed the planetary boundary formulated by rockstrom et al 2009 virtually everywhere and increase with population density and gdp per capita likewise the percentage of threatened species increases with anthropogenic pressure i find no evidence in support of an environmental kuznets curve by doing so this paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the relevance of absolute versus relative scarcity for economic thought my findings suggest that the conservation of nature would benefit from degrowth or the transition to a global steady state economy

curbside recycling in the presence of alternatives we measure the extent to which curbside access affects quantity recycled we use novel data to distinguish between new recycling and material diverted from other recycling modes we find that the marginal impact of expanding curbside programs on total recycled quantities is small in part because curbside programs significantly cannibalize returns from drop off recycling centers failure to account for cannibalization from other modes may substantially over estimate the benefits of curbside programs we conclude with simple cost effectiveness comparisons results suggest that incremental expansion of curbside access may not be cost effective

the determinants of household recycling social influence public policies and environmental preferences abstractour article aims at understanding the determinants of households selective waste sorting behaviours based on data from an original survey of 694 individuals in the french provence alpes cote d azur region the applied literature focuses mainly on countries with high recycling rates we focus on a region with the lowest recycling rate in france a country that recycles less than the european country average we first apply polychoric principal components analysis to reduce the number of explanatory variables to a set of six factors in a second step we use a probit model to estimate the probability of waste sorting as a function of these factors this model tests several hypotheses emerging from the recent literature on behavioural economics applied to households selective sorting this literature pays particular attention to the social influence on recycling behaviour which has been studied mostly by sociologists and psychologists the results of our empirical analysis confirm some of the fin

household responses to pricing garbage by the bag this paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit pricing for the collection of residential garbage we gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in charlottesville virginia both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty cent sticker on each bag of garbage this data set is the first of its kind we estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material the effect on density of household garbage and the amount of illegal dumping by households we also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage in response to the implementation of this unit pricing program we find that households 1 reduced the weight of their garbage by 14 2 reduced the volume of garbage by 37 and 3 increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16 we estimate that additional illegal or at least suspicious disposal accounts for 0 42 pounds per person per week or 28 of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

greenhouse gas emissions waste and recycling policy abstract this paper examines least cost policies for waste reduction incorporating upstream greenhouse gas externalities associated with the production of consumption goods from various materials in particular we decompose the effect of deposit refund advance disposal fees and recycling subsidies on upstream greenhouse gas emissions we find that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are of the same order as or larger than the benefits of reducing solid waste disposal implying larger optimal total waste reduction than previous studies furthermore the least cost intervention levels will be material specific and vary substantially across materials finally despite the reductions in emissions implied by increased recycling rates direct recycling subsidies are more costly and generate less emissions reductions than a deposit refund or advance disposal fee

the effects of the corporate average fuel efficiency standards in the us this paper examines the effects of the corporate average fuel economy standards cafe on automobile sales prices and fuel consumption first a discrete choice model of automobile demand and a continuous model of vehicle utilization are estimated using micro data from the consumer expenditure survey for 1984 1990 next the demand side model is combined with a model of oligopoly and product differentiation on the supply side with these elements in place the effects of the cafe regulation are assessed through simulations and compared to the effects of alternative policy instruments such as an increase in gasoline tax

have countries moved towards sustainable development or not definition criteria indicators and empirical analysis abstract have countries moved towards sustainable development sd or not to answer the question first a new sd definition i e achieving higher and more equally distributed well being levels within ecological limits is proposed second based on the definition and from a global perspective four criteria are established to judge whether countries have moved towards sd which are 1 well being levels have been higher and more equally distributed 2 levels of ecological consumption have been lower 3 ecological capacities have strengthened and 4 the ultimate efficiency which is the efficiency of transforming ecological consumption into human well being has improved developing countries with ecological consumption below global average do not have to meet the second criterion third the happy and equal human development index the ecological footprint and the biocapacity are selected to measure human well being ecological consumption and ecological capacities respectively and two consistent methods are used to measure the ultimate efficiency the empirical analysis of 102 countries during 2011 2016 demonstrates that 19 countries have met the required four or three criteria and moved towards sd and that 12 countries have met none of the required criteria and moved against sd the main contribution is to provide a clear sd definition specific criteria and reliable indicators for measuring national performance and informing decision making on moving towards sd therefore whether countries have moved towards sd or not can be judged and measured continuously and regularly future research needs to detailedly explore why countries have met or not met one certain criterion

higher wages for sustainable development employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage in global apparel supply chains abstract in this paper we explore how paying a living wage in global supply chains might affect employment and carbon emissions sustainable development goals 8 and 13 previous work has advocated using wage increases for poorer workers to increase prices for wealthier consumers thereby reducing consumption and associated environmental damage however the likely effects of such an approach remain unclear using an input output framework extended with income and demand elasticities we estimate the employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage to brazilian russian indian and chinese bric workers in the western european clothing supply chain we find negligible effects on carbon emissions but a substantial increase in bric employment under 3 scenarios of consumer behaviour changes in western european consumption lead to small decreases in global carbon emissions and bric employment however the increase in bric wages increases demand in bric this increased demand increases production which largely cancels out the carbon savings and generates net increases in bric employment we conclude by arguing that paying higher wages in global supply chains represents a good but not sufficient step toward achieving the sustainable development goals

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

the effect of bottle laws on income new empirical results eleven us states have bottle laws deposit refund programs that combine a consumption tax with a recycling rebate when states set the bottle deposit low enough it becomes a tax on high wage earners for whom the opportunity cost of their time prevents them from returning containers for their deposit however this bottle deposit will still be high enough that harvesting recyclables provides employment for low wage earners using individual data on observed cash recycling behavior this paper shows that an unintended consequence of bottle laws is that they have the potential to increase the incomes of very low wage workers

dynamic product positioning in differentiated product markets the effect of fees for musical performance rights on the commercial radio industry this article predicts how radio station formats would change if as was recently proposed music stations were made to pay fees for musical performance rights it does so by estimating and solving using parametric approximations to firms value functions a dynamic model that captures important features of the industry such as vertical and horizontal product differentiation demographic variation in programming tastes and multi station ownership the estimated model predicts that high fees would cause the number of music stations to fall significantly and quite quickly for example a fee equal to 10 of revenues would cause a 4 6 drop in the number of music stations within 2 1 2 years and a 9 4 drop in the long run the size of the change is limited however by the fact that many listeners particularly in demographics that are valued by advertisers have strong preferences for music programming publication abstract

nimby taxes matter the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes this paper links the theoretical and empirical literatures on interjurisdictional tax and regulatory competition focusing on the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes it begins by demonstrating that local environmental taxes can be inefficient and that the inefficiency depends on the tax elasticity of polluters responses the paper then uses panel data from the toxics release inventory to estimate the magnitude of the tax elasticities and to demonstrate the empirical relevance of the theoretical inefficiency of local taxes 1999 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

measuring development with inequality how should aggregate indicators of development account for inequality abstract the paper analyzes how inequality is accounted for in aggregate indicators of development and whether and how it should be used the motivation behind the study stems from the renewed interest in inequality in academia public discourse and in global policy first we argue that inequality should be considered when constructing development indicators the role of distribution in development is important both because people generally prefer lower inequality and inequality tends to have negative effects on development outcomes second we analyze how ten selected development indicators account for inequality in terms of justification type of inequality measure of inequality and method of incorporation and what the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches are we found considerable diversity especially for inequality measures and methods of incorporation as for the type of inequality inequality of opportunities is considered marginally and overlapping inequalities not at all increasing data availability opens the door for inclusion especially for the latter aspect as most indicators suffer from insufficient methodological substantiation we argue for increased clarity regarding why and how inequality is accounted for in development indicators the analysis is complemented by a detailed review of treatment of inequality by the analyzed indicators annex

garbage and recycling with endogenous local policy abstract this paper estimates the impact of garbage fees and curbside recycling programs on garbage and recycling amounts without correction for endogenous policy a price per bag of garbage has a negative effect on garbage and a positive cross price effect on recycling correction for endogenous local policy increases the effect of the user fee on garbage and the effect of curbside recycling collection on recycling introducing a fee of 1 per bag is estimated to reduce garbage by 412 pounds per person per year 44 but to increase recycling by only 30 pounds per person per year

an eu recycling target what does the dutch evidence tell us the european union eu advocates a household waste recycling rate of more than 65 although the netherlands has already invested heavily in recycling policies this is still a big challenge as nowadays this rate is approximately 50 on average and very few no municipalities have a rate above 65 given this practice it is possible to learn from the dutch experience which policies are effective in increasing recycling rates based on a large panel data set for the netherlands we show that unit based pricing avoiding a duo bin for unsorted and compostable waste and reducing the frequency of collecting unsorted and compostable waste at the curbside are effective in raising the recycling rate however only a bag based pricing system has a substantial effect but this policy can have some adverse effects other unit based pricing systems have effects of less than 10 points in nearly all cases changing the frequency of collection of recyclables has no or very small effects moreover the complementarity between unit based pricing and curbside service is low overall it seems very difficult to reach the eu goal of 65 with the policies applied

a further critique of growth economics is aggregate physical growth still economic as it was in the empty world or has it become uneconomic as we have moved into the full world era first i discuss why this critical question has been ignored by mainstream economists and policy makers second i consider 11 fallacies or anomalies that confuse reasoning about economic growth and undercut the current policy presumption in its favor

linking daly s proposition to policymaking for sustainable development indicators and pathways abstract the statement that in the full world increasing the ultimate efficiency expressed as service throughput is the necessary condition for humanity to achieve high levels of well being within ecological limits is honoured as daly s proposition in this paper the purpose of this paper is to make daly s proposition effective guidance for policymaking related to sustainable development for this aim this paper puts forward the indicator ecological well being performance which is composed of the human development index and the ecological footprint to measure the ultimate efficiency furthermore by means of matrix analysis and factor decomposition analysis the respective pathways for countries at different stages of development to make the sustainable development transition were discussed the g20 countries were taken as the cases to conduct the research the empirical results show that improvements in well being and increases in throughput level are not necessarily positively related the relationship between the two depends on how countries control throughput levels and improve the ecological well being performance which also explains different performances on the sustainable development transition in a simple way this contribution provides new methods and criteria to track and evaluate national performance on sustainable development by referring to daly s original theories

the effect of vehicle fuel economy standards on technology adoption abstract many countries are tightening passenger vehicle fuel economy standards this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of fuel economy standards on technology adoption we investigate changes in the rate and direction of technology adoption that is the extent to which technology is used to increase fuel economy at the expense of other vehicle attributes we find that recent changes in u s and european standards have both increased the rate of technology adoption and affected the direction of technology adoption producers reduced horsepower and torque compared to a counterfactual in which fuel economy standards remained unchanged we estimate opportunity costs from reduced horsepower and torque to be economically significant relative to the gains from fuel savings

renewable non renewable energy consumption economic growth trade openness and ecological footprint evidence from organisation for economic co operation and development countries the purpose of this study is to examine the validity of environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for ecological footprint with the role of renewable energy use non renewable energy use and trade openness in 24 organisation for economic co operation and development countries for this purpose we investigate the period from 1980 to 2014 using with second generation panel data methodologies which allow to cross sectional dependence among countries the group mean results show that the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve hypothesis does not hold in organisation for economic co operation and development countries because we found the u shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint in addition it is concluded that increasing renewable energy consumption reduces ecological footprint and increasing non renewable energy consumption increases environmental degradation

does garbage pricing increase the immoral disposal of household waste abstractsome empirical studies have attempted to clarify the mechanism of illegal dumping by examining the degree to which per bag pricing plays a role however previous research on the behaviour of avoiding paying a charge for waste collection has tended to neglect so called immoral disposal which is less risky than illegal dumping because there is no legal penalty in this study we define immoral disposal as the dumping of waste in a manner that is immoral but not illegal to detect the existence of immoral disposal we apply a spatial econometric approach namely an extended panel spatial durbin model to identify the actual spillover effect of garbage pricing in neighbouring municipalities on immoral disposal from the total waste a major finding of this study is that immoral disposal exists in unit based pricing two tiered pricing and fixed pricing

effects of unit based garbage pricing a differences in differences approach using a unique 10 year dataset of all 458 dutch municipalities we apply a differences in differences approach to estimate the effect of unit based pricing on household waste quantities and recycling community level studies of unit based pricing typically do not include fixed effects at the local level we find that failure to do so may substantially inflate the estimated price effect we also find that unit based pricing may be endogenous and use instrumental variables to account for this our analysis shows that user fees depend on user fees in neighboring jurisdictions policy interaction our estimate of the garbage reduction per 1 user fee is lower than any previous estimate bar one the price effect depends on the pricing system weight based systems reduce garbage quantities more than volume based systems user fees increase recycling especially of paper but not nearly as much as they reduce garbage quantities we find no evidence for waste tourism or illegal dumping

heterogeneous preferences for community recycling programs this paper examines household preferences for community recycling programs which have both public and private good dimensions the data come from a survey conducted in seattle wa which elicited stated preference contingent ratings for different recycling programs relative to status quo with experimental variation in the overall community recycling rate achieved and expected household cost the recycling rate is interpreted as capturing the public benefits of recycling programs and constitutes the most common measure used by policy agencies for setting waste management objectives and evaluating policy initiatives the analysis begins with fixed parameter models that explore different ways of handling rating data and mixed logit estimations that capture household preference heterogeneity both within and across different recycling programs this analysis yields unique estimates of willingness to pay for an increase in the community recycling rate predicted individual specific utility parameters are then regressed on household background information to explicitly examine the nature of preference heterogeneity overall this paper generates interpretable policy relevant insights into the public and private good dimensions of community recycling programs

are consumers myopic evidence from new and used car purchases abstract we investigate whether car buyers are myopic about future fuel costs we estimate the effect of gasoline prices on short run equilibrium prices of cars of different fuel economies we then compare the implied changes in willingness to pay to the associated changes in expected future gasoline costs for cars of different fuel economies in order to calculate implicit discount rates using different assumptions about annual mileage survival rates and demand elasticities we calculate a range of implicit discount rates similar to the range of interest rates paid by car buyers who borrow we interpret this as showing little evidence of consumer myopia jel d12 h25 l11 l62 l71 l81

the divisive and disruptive effect of a weight based waste fee abstract the ability of economic incentives to promote environmentally friendly behavior has been questioned in the literature most studies investigating this issue are grounded in the agent based rational choice model the aim of this study is to expand our insights by applying an alternative theoretical framework combining elements from classical institutional economics and self determination theory to study incentives for waste sorting the analysis is based on data from a norwegian municipality ulstein which introduced and later terminated a differentiated waste fee there are three main findings first the important role of normative motivation for sorting household waste is confirmed second the economic incentive had a divisive effect on the motivation to sort household waste perceived autonomy linked to fundamental values about environmental concern seems to play an important role in explaining why half the sample reports no extra efforts in sorting waste as a response to the economic incentive the other half was influenced by the external logic given to them i e to save costs and hence report increased motivation to sort household waste finally an increased practice of illegal waste disposal was observed as a response to the differentiated waste fee

household behavior under alternative pay as you throw systems for solid waste disposal in 1994 residents of marietta georgia participated in a pay as you throw solid waste demonstration project rather than pay a fixed monthly fee for collection half of the resi dents paid a fee per reusable trash can and half paid for each nonreusable trash bag collected data from both a sample of households and city wide totals indicate that the programs signifi cantly reduced waste set outs even after account ingfor increases in unpriced recycling the bag program caused larger reductions 36 than the subscription can program 14 rough esti mates of the program indicate both savings for residents and social welfare increases jel q20

an economic analysis of household waste management abstract this paper provides a comprehensive model of household waste management policy incorporating the possibility of waste reduction effort by the firm and the household and of illegal waste disposal by the household when household waste reduction effort is insignificant the first best optimum can be achieved using various combinations of environmental tax on the firm and waste collection charge on the household however when household waste reduction effort is significant the first best optimum is not achievable and explicit monitoring of illegal waste disposal is needed rendering a simple pigouvian tax sub optimal this paper solves for the second best optimal policy and provides some comparative statics of the optimal policy

evaluating unit based pricing of residential solid waste a panel data analysis municipalities introduced unit based pricing ubp with the aim of achieving a decrease in household waste generation and for the replacement of unsorted waste with recycling although many studies have shown that ubp has a short run effect on recycling few works have tackled the long run effect on waste generation and recycling by using panel data for 665 japanese cities over 8 years we examine the long run effect of ubp on waste generation and recycling the estimation results in waste generation suggest that there is a rebound effect though a small one we confirm that the effect of ubp on recycling sustains for the long run we also find that the short and long run responses to an economic incentive for recycling activities differ with income groups recycling among the high income group has not been promoted by implementation of ubp but people in that group are willing to participate in recycling without an economic incentive in contrast recycling activity within the low income group is strongly motivated by ubp for many years