investigating environmental kuznets curve from an energy intensity perspective empirical evidence from china abstract this study pioneers investigating the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and its possible regional differential characteristics in china based on 2003 2017 years of provincial panel data this research employs panel smooth transition auto regression pstr model to analyze the impact of income levels on environmental pollution and identify the ekc threshold of energy intensity then 30 chinese provinces were categorized by energy intensity to examine the inter provincial and interregional differences in the ekc threshold of energy intensity rather than the traditional threshold of income the results indicate that china s pollution emissions and energy intensities show a stepwise decreasing pattern from the western region to the eastern region in addition the impact of income levels on pollution emissions is non linear and the critical value of energy intensity is 0 9168 between the high and low regimes an inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve is accepted for energy intensity with 0 7670 as its threshold value when the energy intensity is higher lower than the threshold value the income elasticity of pollution emission is positive negative the more developed provinces and municipalities mainly in the eastern region are proved to exceed the threshold than the provinces in the central and western regions within the sample period given these findings this study further divides china s provinces into eco friendly low pollution and high pollution provinces and accordingly the most important policy recommendations were discussed for policy makers and researchers this research can provide a new insight to investigate countries with unbalanced development levels within and a reference for environmental governance policies in sub regions

decoupling of emissions and gdp evidence from aggregate and provincial chinese data abstract we provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between greenhouse gas ghg emissions and gdp in china using both aggregate and provincial data the trend or kuznets elasticity is about 0 6 for china higher than that in advanced countries but below that of major emerging markets the elasticity is somewhat lower for consumption based emissions than for production based emissions providing mild evidence consistent with the pollution haven hypothesis the kuznets elasticity is much lower for the last three decades than for the three previous decades suggesting a longer term trend toward decoupling as china has become richer further evidence of this comes from provincial data richer provinces tend to have smaller kuznets elasticities than poorer ones in addition to the trend relationship we find that there is a cyclical relation also holding in china

trades unions market concentration and income distribution in united states manufacturing industry this paper uses three and four digit cross sections of united states manufacturing industries in 1972 in order to test a kaleckian degree of monopoly theory of income distribution various measures of labour share are regressed on the four firm concentration ratio the advertising sales ratio a measure of capital intensity and a unionisation variable in contrast to earlier studies for the u s strong evidence is found of a negative relationship between in particular production worker wage share and concentration and advertising intensity and evidence of a positive relationship between wage share and the level of unionisation

goal programming data envelopment analysis godea for target based multi level planning allocating central grants to the greek local authorities abstract in this paper we develop an interface between goal programming and data envelopment analysis godea in order to integrate target setting and resource allocation in multi level planning problems data envelopment analysis dea has been traditionally used for assessing the performance of individual decision making units and therefore necessary extensions are needed to apply dea principles to the global organisational level without however losing its attractive features the method was originally developed as an aid to the reorganisation of the allocation of central funds to local authorities in greece

empirical study of the environmental kuznets curve and environmental sustainability curve hypothesis for australia china ghana and usa abstract this study examines environmental kuznets and environmental sustainability curve hypotheses for australia china ghana and the usa from 1971 to 2013 in order to examine the factors contributing to adverse greenhouse gas emission and economic impacts relative to their development the study revealed that the decline of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries can be attributed to a paradigm shift and structural change from high energy intensive and carbon intensive industries to services and information intensive industries the increasing levels of carbon dioxide emissions in developing and least developing countries can be attributed to the economy driven by agriculture transport and services environmental policies and regulations in developing and least developing countries are weaker compared to developed countries as such they become a haven for high energy and carbon intensive industries the high awareness of environmental sustainability technological advancement stringent environmental regulations and policies in developed countries result in a decline in energy intensity and a decline in carbon dioxide emissions the environmental sustainability curve hypothesis shows that the affecting factors include economic growth energy consumption patterns and carbon dioxide emissions the study reveals electric power consumption as the main contributor of energy intensity in the selected countries decoupling economic growth from electric power consumption and improving energy efficiency in china ghana australia and the usa will enhance energy security and decline the economic related dynamics and activities on the environment

resource allocation based on efficiency analysis the purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to a resource allocation problem that typically appears in organizations with a centralized decision making environment for example supermarket chains banks and universities the central unit is assumed to be interested in maximizing the total amount of outputs produced by the individual units by allocating available resources to them we will develop an interactive formal approach based on data envelopment analysis dea and multiple objective linear programming molp to find the most preferred allocation plan the units are assumed to be able to modify their production in the current production possibility set within certain assumptions various assumptions are considered concerning returns to scale and the ability of each unit to modify its production plan numerical examples are used to illustrate the approach

evaluating the environmental efficiency of a two stage system with undesired outputs by a dea approach an interest preference perspective abstract in this study we propose a new dea model to evaluate the environmental efficiency of a two stage system with undesired outputs the two stage system consists of two parts a production subsystem and a pollution treatment subsystem different choices for allocating resources to each subsystem represent different interest preferences of decision makers with the production subsystem corresponding to short term interests and the pollution treatment subsystem corresponding to long term interests based on a proposed new dea model three theorems are established to show the relationships between the interest preference parameter and the change of efficiency scores an empirical analysis was conducted using the data of 30 provinces and municipalities eight regions of china the empirical results show the effectiveness of the proposed model and the usefulness of the theorems for the real world data optimal efficiency rankings of the eight regions are provided and the efficiency rankings truly reflect the current environmental situations of these eight regions to examine the economic impacts and facilitate sustainable development we also analyze the shadow prices for undesired outputs corresponding implications of the empirical analysis are also discussed

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

efficient resource allocation via efficiency bootstraps an application to r d project budgeting resource allocation decisions are crucial for the success of an organization this paper proposes an integrated approach to resource allocation problems in which decision makers have one observation of the multiple input output criteria of candidates we offer important improvements over existing approaches based on the widely used data envelopment analysis dea which has two major limitations in its application to resource allocation first traditional dea models compute efficiency scores by optimizing firm specific shadow prices of inputs and outputs this could be problematic because in practice stakeholders would usually require unanimously agreed upon trade offs among evaluation criteria second previous allocation approaches based on dea do not allow for controlling the risk exposure of allocation portfolios to tackle these problems we propose an efficiency measure based on equilibrium shadow prices of different criteria and we use the bootstrap efficiency distributions to gather information regarding efficiency variations and correlations through our methodology decision makers can obtain the risk minimizing allocation portfolio we illustrate the proposed approach through an empirical r d project budgeting problem in which we allocate funding according to the projects efficiency distributions

is there an ekc between economic growth and smog pollution in china new evidence from semiparametric spatial autoregressive models abstract although china has achieved rapid economic growth it suffers from severe smog conditions determining how to promote cleaner production and environmental sustainability is of great significance in clarifying the relationship between income and pollutants within an extension of the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework the effects of economic growth on pm2 5 contamination are explicitly investigated based on a recent large sample of 249 chinese cities in 2015 from a nonlinear spatial perspective this study marks the first attempt at comprehensively exploring the nexus between the selected variables and pm2 5 emissions using semiparametric spatial autoregressive models which overcome the misspecification issues of conventional parametric models to avoid the limitations of a single method this study also applies different estimation techniques such as the spatial lag model slm the spatial autoregressive model with spatial autoregressive disturbances sarar two stage least squares regression 2slsr quantile regression qr and nonparametric regression npr the results reveal that pm2 5 pollutants show strong positive characteristics of spatial spillover the results also suggest that there is a significant inverted u shaped relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 concentrations which confirms the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis additionally the empirical findings highlight the influence that the population density industrialization urbanization and traffic development factors have on increasing pm2 5 emissions in contrast technological innovation and green coverage do not play important roles in reducing pm2 5 concentrations the distribution of pm2 5 concentrations displays apparent geographical features to provide an in depth understanding of these impacts marginal analysis is performed to distinguish the local and neighbouring effects of determinants on pm2 5 pollution

testing the kuznets curve hypothesis for qatar a comparison between carbon dioxide and ecological footprint abstract this paper explores the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc using two different environment indicators the carbon dioxide emissions co2 and the ecological footprint ef in qatar over the 1980 2011 period to this end we investigate the impact of real gross domestic product rgdp the square of rgdp the energy use the financial development and the trade openness on the co2 emissions and the ef we employ the autoregressive distributed lag ardl model with the presence of unknown structural breaks in order to study short run and long run elasticity between the variables the findings infer that there is a long run relationship among the selected variables with a shift in the cointegration vector in 1991 and 2000 the empirical result indicates that the inverted u shaped hypothesis is not valid in qatar when we use the co2 emissions whereas the inverted u shaped held when using the ef furthermore the error correction results confirm that the convergence towards the long run equilibrium will mostly occur within one year after a short run shock generally the findings suggest that qatar should invest more in efficient energy and continue sustained its growth moreover more efforts are needed for diversification particularly in technology intensive and environment friendly industries to improve environmental quality

income effect or policy result a test of the environmental kuznets curve abstract taipei municipal city tmc began implementing a policy of a plastic bag based disposal fee for household solid waste treatment in july 2000 while other counties kept their same charge of a disposal fee based on potable water consumption taiwan s epa has highly valued the outcome of tmc s new policy and has thus required all counties to follow tmc in employing a policy of a plastic bag based disposal fee accompanied by a compulsory sorting system we attempt to verify whether the new policy implemented by tmc is successful in the reduction of general waste collected and then we seek to identify what other factors contribute to such a successful result this paper provides a general overview of household waste management practices employed in taiwan and the changes of household waste collected over time through simple statistical analysis and management practices including evaluating waste recovery and recycling initiatives the authors employ statistical analysis to verify tmc s new policy and to examine the factors that affect its success in addition to the policy changes through a test on the environmental kuznets curve ekc we separate the data into three groups tmc non tmc regions and the pooled data combination of tmc and non tmc the results show that 1 the policy of a plastic bag based disposal fee is significantly effective in the reduction of general waste collected and 2 the per capita household solid waste collected in both regions tmc and non tmc is significantly related with household incomes in an ekc relationship however the test of ekc relationships on the pooled data is not significant

interactions between economic growth and environmental quality in shenzhen china s first special economic zone the relationship between economic development and environmental quality is a debated topic environmental kuznets curve ekc is one prominent hypothesis positing an inverted u shaped development environment relationship here we test this hypothesis using data from shenzhen people s republic of china established in 1980 as the first special economic zone in china shenzhen has developed from a small village into a large urban industrial agglomeration with the highest income level in the country the enormous expansion of infrastructure industrial sites and urban settlements has profoundly changed the local environment we utilize environmental monitoring data from shenzhen on concentration of pollutants in ambient air main rivers and near shore waters from 1989 to 2003 the results show that production induced pollutants support ekc while consumption induced pollutants do not support it c 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

on the dynamics of profit led and wage led growth this paper examines how variable output and profit share jointly determine investment and saving while the difference between investment and saving drives the changes in output and profit share analysis of the resulting pair of differential equations yields novel implications for the multiplier process in this more general framework a number of separate strands of the keynesian inspired literature can be understood in particular the model incorporates both forced saving and profit squeeze to analyse the stability of the dynamical system and brings out the complex relation between in and out of equilibrium profit led and wage led regimes

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

does income inequality facilitate carbon emission reduction in the us abstrct considering the short and long term impacts of income inequality on carbon emissions as well as the heterogeneity of the emission distribution this paper employs panel ardl and quantile regression models to analyze the effect of income inequality on carbon emissions across us states the findings suggest that higher income inequality increases us carbon emissions in the short term whereas it promotes carbon reduction in the long term furthermore we find that the absolute values for the coefficients on income inequality in the states from the 70th to the 90th quantiles are larger than those from the 10th to the 40th quantiles this indicates that income inequality reduces more carbon emissions in states with higher per capita carbon emissions the results provide important insights for policy makers to improve the quality of economic development and address climate change

fire department demand and supply in large cities the purpose of this study is to estimate demand and production functions for fire fighters provided in major cities several factors including the level of fire losses in the communityper capitaincome relative wages of fire fighters population density city size and poverty are used in the analysis this study differs from earlier ones in two ways first multiple measures of community fire losses instead of the usual one are used in the analysis second in contrast with earlier studies of fire protection which have typically relied on ordinary least squares regression analysis ols to study either demand or production this study employs two stage least squares regression analysis 2sls to simultaneously estimate demand and production relations evidence is found that demand for fire fighting is affected by both fire losses and relative size of per capitaincome to fire fighter wages losses in turn are affected by fire fighting hours by poverty and by density there is some evidence for econo

a machine learning analysis of the relationship among iron and steel industries air pollution and economic growth in china abstract the aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship among iron and steel industries air pollution and economic growth in china using monthly time series from 2000 to 2017 we adopt a long short term memory lstm approach the empirical results show that the relationship between economic growth and steel production is very strong in the first stage furthermore in our model we can see that the reduction of polluting emissions is linked to the principle of sustainable development in particular this phenomenon lies in the economic growth model responsible for the future generation

heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution a partial survey heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution are surveyed focusing on major theories and recent contributions first a general framework for examining growth and distribution is discussed in terms of which classical marxian and post keynesian kaleckian and other theories are presented since this framework examines how variables are determined in equilibrium second dynamics behind equilibria are examined focusing on goods market and labor market changes third the framework is extended in a variety of ways to examine additional models addressing productivity growth and technical change money and inflation finance and debt additional distributional considerations multisector issues open economy questions and the environment it is concluded that the literature on heterodox theories of growth and distribution is vibrant large and growing and addresses many issues that are ignored or neglected in orthodox theories including power unemployment and aggregate demand

the circular economy an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context there have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development the circular economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way this set of ideas has been adopted by china as the basis of their economic development included in both the 11th and the 12th five year plan escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and ngos this paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the circular economy tracing its meanings and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology and discusses how the circular economy has been operationalized in business and policy the paper finds that while the circular economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials which may contribute to more sustainable business models it also encapsulates tensions and limitations these include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions and some unintended consequences this leads us to propose a revised definition of the circular economy as an economic model wherein planning resourcing procurement production and reprocessing are designed and managed as both process and output to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well being

an economic instrument for zero waste economic growth and sustainability if global problems such as climate change and waste remain unresolved society can choose either to continue attempting to incrementally reduce wastes and lessen impacts or to consider a more ambitious approach that paradoxically may be easier to implement this paper suggests how an approach designed to prevent waste and other global impacts could be based upon the established practices of precycling circular economic policy and recycling insurance a new economic instrument called precycling insurance is proposed so that decision making can be led by the market rather than by prescriptive regulation or educational campaigns the approach gains relevance now that china is developing a national law on the promotion of the development of circular economy 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

stagnation income distribution and monopoly power the deceleration in the rate of industrial growth in the indian economy since the middlesixties initially interpreted by some as a temporary downward deviation from trend hasnow come to be generally accepted as reflecting long run tendencies towards stagnation several explanations for these tendencies have been offered bhagwati and desai 1970 and bhagwati and srinivasan 1975 have focused on inefficiencies and the misallocationof resources arising from industrial policies pursued by the government others chakravarty 1974 raj 1976 and vaidyanathan 1974 among them have emphasisedthe sluggishness of agricultural growth which is alleged to have retarded industrial growthby limiting markets and the supply of wage goods and raw materials a third view reflectedin srinivasan and narayana 1977 for example has put the blame on a slackening of invest ment demand due to lower public investment but does not explain why public investmentfell or why its fall restrained industrial growth finally there is the explanation put forthin bagchi 1970 1975 1982 in nayyar 1978 and in parts of mitra 1977 that inequali ties in income distribution have resulted in a limited demand for industrial goods reducedincentives for investment and therefore reduced growth this view seems to suggest apositive relation between growth and income equality which is opposed to the generallyaccepted idea derived from cambridge growth models that higher growth requires greaterinequality the purpose of this paper is to examine the last explanation by considering the inter action between growth and income distribution in an underdeveloped economy with thehelp of a simple macroeconomic model the model is a stylisation of the indian economy so that we will be able to use the model to assess the argument that a deceleration in therate of growth of the indian industrial economy could have been caused by an unequaldistribution of income the argument will not be made that this income distributional con straint is the binding constraint on industrial growth the model will merely examine theinternal consistency of the argument that a bad income distribution could explain stagnation in the sense of reduced growth and show that in the indian context as in other similarcontexts this argument can be put forward in explaining stagnation our argument is first presented with a highly simplified schematisation of the indianeconomy which we shall call the basic model the economy modelled produces only one

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for e waste in the eu28 2 countries abstract this paper investigates the kuznets curve hypothesis for e waste using a balanced panel of 30 european countries eu28 2 over the period 2000 2016 to account for the dynamic and the time invariant characteristics we employed the generalized method of moments gmm estimator as a core method and used the 2sls estimator and cross section method to analyze the robustness of results we found that the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is well supported for e waste generated in the eu28 2 area in addition this relationship is robust and is not sensitive to the choice of control variables and the estimation methods all three methods evidenced ekc in e waste for the studied european area this reveals that e waste generation increases with an increasing gdp up to a certain gdp level turning point but thereafter decreases despite further economic growth while this suggests that e waste generation and the related adverse environmental impacts will decline at elevated gdp levels the results of this study highlight that the turning point occurs at rather exceptionally high levels of gdp the evidence of ekc in e waste contributes to better understanding the interlinkage between economic growth and e waste generation but it does not diminish the urgent need to implement effective e waste collection and valorization schemes

growth and income distribution with the dynamics of power in labour and goods markets the interaction between economic growth and income distribution is examined using kaleckian post keynesian models in which there are lags in investment and in which the dynamics of income distribution between wages and profits depends on changes in power relations in both the labour market and goods market by examining these two influences on distributional dynamics simultaneously the relative strength of which can change over the growth process it is shown that the growth distributional dynamics can involve non linearities multiple equilibria and instability the implications of policy induced changes including those in macroeconomic policy and labour market and antitrust policies on aggregate demand and distribution are examined for both wage led and profit led growth regimes copyright oxford university press

debt cycles instability and fiscal rules a godley minsky synthesis wynne godley and hyman minsky were two macroeconomists who saw the crisis coming this paper develops a simple macrodynamic model that synthesises some key perspectives of their analytical frameworks the model incorporates godley s financial balances approach and postulates that private sector s propensity to spend is driven by a stock flow norm the target net private debt to income ratio that changes endogenously via a minsky mechanism it also includes two fiscal rules a maastricht type fiscal rule according to which the fiscal authorities adjust the government expenditures based on a target net government debt ratio and a godley minsky fiscal rule which links government expenditures with private indebtedness following a counter cyclical logic the analysis shows that i the interaction between the propensity to spend and net private indebtedness can generate cycles and instability ii instability is more likely when the propensity to spend responds strongly to deviations from the stock flow norm and when the expectations that determine the stock flow norm are highly sensitive to the economic cycle iii the maastricht type fiscal rule is destabilising while the godley minsky fiscal rule is stabilising iv the paradox of debt can apply both to the private sector and the government sector

factors that drive chinese listed companies in voluntary disclosure of environmental information based on the institutional theory this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure eid 1 whether or not to disclose and 2 the level of disclosure the relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in china some interesting findings appear we find that firms that are state owned those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries those having more industrial peers engaged in eid and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information when it comes to the content of eid variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of eid this study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and eid development

how economic growth renewable electricity and natural resources contribute to co2 emissions abstract this study explores the relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions in the so called european union 5 eu 5 countries germany france italy spain and the united kingdom for the 1985 2016 period in doing so we employ a carbon emission function to investigate the environmental kuznets curve phenomenon which describes a relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation the empirical results confirm the existence of an n shaped relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions in the eu 5 countries we incorporate additional variables such as renewable electricity consumption trade openness natural resource abundance and energy innovation to augment the carbon emission function renewable electricity consumption natural resources and energy innovation improve environmental quality while trade openness and the interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption exert a positive impact on co2 emissions this study is novel in that it presents an interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption we also confirm the need for renewable energy regulations related to increasing renewable sources and promoting energy innovation to reduce the negative effects of energy and fossil energy resources on environmental degradation

the determinants of atmospheric so2 concentrations reconsidering the environmental kuznets curve this analysis explores the effects of income and the spatial intensity of economic activity on the atmospheric concentration of sulfur dioxide the results indicate that there is a u shaped relation between income and atmospheric concentration of so2 and an inverted u shaped relation between the spatial intensity of economic activity and so2 concentrations these results suggest that the spatial intensity of economic activity rather than income provides the impetus for policies and technologies that reduce so2 emissions based on this result the atmospheric concentration of so2 in developing nations may decline faster than indicated by previous analyses the potential for this decline depends on the rate at which income grows relative to population the trade off between the effects of income gains and the spatial intensity of economic activity on the atmospheric concentration of so2 is consistent with the notion that some environmental problems can be ameliorated by slowing population growth and increasing income levels

energy innovations ghg emissions nexus fresh empirical evidence from oecd countries abstract this study explores the impact of improvements in energy research development erd on greenhouse gas ghg emissions using environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2014 in doing so we have employed a panel data where public budget in energy research development and demonstration erd d has transformed into a finite inverted v lag distribution model developed by de leeuw 1962 this model considers that energy innovation accumulates in time and presents empirical evidence how energy innovation contributes in reducing energy intensity and environmental pollution as well our results indicate that energy innovation measures require lapses of time to reach their full effect i e innovation applied to measures for environmental correction does not reach its whole effect immediately requiring instead a certain amount of time to pass innovation policies have recommended for improving environmental quality

the new economics of regulation ten years after the new economics of regulation is an application of the principal agent methodology to the contractual relationship between regulators and regulated firms after a critique of the traditional paradigms of regulation from the point of view of information economics a canonical model of regulation under asymmetric information is developed a survey of the main results obtained in the new economics of regulation is then provided in particular concerning the implementation of optimal contracts by a menu of linear contracts the dichotomy between pricing and cost reimbursement rules the auctioning of incentive contracts the dynamics of contracting under limited commitment and the hierarchical problems in regulation empirical implications are then discussed and avenues of further research are described in the conclusion

ekc analysis for studying economic growth and environmental quality a case study in china compared with the extensive research on the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in developed countries there is a paucity of an empirical research on studying the relation for developing countries based upon the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory this paper develops regression models for investigating the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in china the ekc analysis based on six pollution indices is illustrated with a case study in jiaxing of zhejiang china

linking analyses and environmental kuznets curves for aggregated material flows in the eu abstract the relationship between economy and environmental impacts has been an essential topic in the discussion on environmental problems for a long time from the 1990s this relationship has gained a position in environmental policy as well de coupling the use of natural resources from economic growth has been set as one of the policy goals in the sixth environmental action programme by the european commission in the scientific discussion the concept of environmental kuznets curve deals closely with the de coupling or de linking phenomenon aggregated material flows on the other hand have often been considered as a macro level proxy of environmental degradation different methods or approaches have been designed for sustainability or carrying capacity evaluation as well the objective of this article is i to discuss the possibilities and limitations of using environmental and economic indicators in the sustainability analysis at the macro level ii to present a theoretical framework for the linking analysis including a classification of the degrees of de linking re linking environmental impacts from to economic growth and iii to give an empirical example by using indicators of direct material flows as a proxy of environmental degradation and by applying the framework into the european union and its 15 member countries the results show that the trend in the european union is a weak de linking of material flows from economic growth during the years 1980 2000 in other words material intensity of the economy has generally decreased due to increased efficiency but the absolute amount of material use has increased although at a lower rate of increase than economic growth on the other hand there is a quite large variation between different eu member countries however absolute decrease in the use of materials cannot be found as a continuous trend between the years 1980 and 2000 in any of the studied eu member countries

china s natural gas consumption peak and factors analysis a regional perspective abstract china s natural gas consumption usually accounts for a small proportion of total energy consumption but it has increased rapidly in recent years china has a vast territory and the level of economic development varies significantly across regions in this paper a panel unit root and heterogeneous panel cointegration methods are applied to investigate the natural gas consumption of 30 provinces in mainland china the influencing factors of natural gas consumption are also investigated from a long term point of view china s per capita natural gas consumption seems to fit the energy kuznets curve which implies that the current rapid growth rate of natural gas consumption would not be sustained in the long term there is a peak at 200 450 cubic meters which is about 2 4 times the current consumption per capita of china and about 7 16 of russia the specific peak consumption level and peak year depend on the speed of economic development and the pace of pipeline network development in summary gas population rate plays a more important role in gas consumption in the long run and the impact of gdp weakens the potential of gas consumption of the different regions differs greatly

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

a conditional directional distance function approach for measuring regional environmental efficiency evidence from uk regions abstract this paper by using conditional directional distance functions as introduced by simar and vanhems j econometrics 166 2012 342 354 modifies the model by fare and grosskopf eur j operat res 157 2004 242 245 and examines the link between regional environmental efficiency and economic growth the proposed model using conditional directional distance functions incorporates the effect of regional economic growth on regions environmental efficiency levels the results from uk regional data reveal a negative relationship between regions gdp per capita and environmental inefficiency up to a certain gdp per capita level after that level it appears that the relationship becomes positive as an overall result the regional environmental inefficiency gdp per capita relationship appears to have a u shape form

equity measurement in facility location analysis a review and framework abstract in selecting sites for facilities especially in the public sector the issue of equity is becoming increasingly important beginning with the work of mumphreys et al 1971 mcallister 1976 and savas 1978 a substantial literature has developed that incorporates equity in facility siting decision models despite this level of interest however there has been little agreement in these models as to how equity should be measured further except for some recent works there has generally been little comparison of alternative measures or assesment of their relative value let alone any consensus on the best measure s to use perhaps even more surprising is the great number and variety of measures employed the motivation for this paper is to address these problems and provide for researchers a base from which issues of equity can be included in facility siting models more specifically we seek to review the equity literature as it pertains to facility location assemble the set of measures that have been developed and introduce a framework and common notation for organizing them we also will discuss approaches that can be used to select an appropriate measure of equity

why do firms engage in environmental management an empirical study in china abstract there are increasing pressures being put on firms from a number of different sources such as governmental regulation community participation and market demand to engage firms in environmental initiatives these factors play different roles at various development periods government regulation was the major pressure initially however community participation and market demand have become more and more important thus a better understanding of the determinant factors that play a role in engaging firms to take environmental management initiatives may help policy makers develop more effective environmental policies using data collected from 89 firms in wujin county of jiangsu province china this paper developed an index system to evaluate the corporate environmental management performance furthermore we used econometric methodology to identify the main factors that probably shape corporate environmental management performance including both external pressures and firm characteristics the results showed that pressures from supply chain customers and communities played positive roles in engaging firms to improve environmental management performance however the pressure from the regulatory system did not implicate positive effect on environmental management performance when basic compliance is not an issue in the region anymore the results also showed that firms with larger scale will be more active in engaging in environmental management initiatives finally our results suggest that a regulation s stimulation may be reduced as long as firms have complied with requirements of local environmental standards and other environmental laws b policy makers should pay more attention to market and information instruments c more financial and technical support should be provided to encourage small and medium sized enterprises smes to improve environmental performance

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

a theory of yardstick competition in the typical regulatory scheme a franchised monopoly has little incentive to reduce costs this article proposes a mechanism in which the price the regulatedfirm receives depends on the costs of identical firms in equilibrium each firm chooses a socially efficient level of cost reduction the mechanism generalizes to cover heterogeneous firms with observable differences medicare s prospective reimbursement of hospitals by using diagnostically related groups is a scheme very similar to the one outlined here

room for improvement in low carbon economies of g7 and brics countries based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves abstract carbon emissions which are nowadays targeted for significant reduction cause global warming with climate change producing a series of side effects including economic losses and ecological extinction the data envelopment analysis approach has recently been employed for environmental estimations the target of this study is to introduce a new data envelopment analysis method in order to provide environmental improvement suggestions this study measures the room for improvements in low carbon economies of g7 group and brics group based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves the main findings are as follows i the g7 group has greater room for improvement in its carbonization value than the brics group before 2005 however the latter has greater room for improvement in carbonization value than the former after 2005 ii countries with the backfire effect of a high carbon economy include germany italy and south africa iii during the data period three environmental kuznets curves including energy intensity emission intensity and carbonization value do not satisfy the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis that the curves are inverted u shaped on the contrary the three environmental kuznets curves in this study are u shaped

fixed cost and resource allocation based on dea cross efficiency abstract in many managerial applications situations frequently occur when a fixed cost is used in constructing the common platform of an organization and needs to be shared by all related entities or decision making units dmus it is of vital importance to allocate such a cost across dmus where there is competition for resources data envelopment analysis dea has been successfully used in cost and resource allocation problems whether it is a cost or resource allocation issue one needs to consider both the competitive and cooperative situation existing among dmus in addition to maintaining or improving efficiency the current paper uses the cross efficiency concept in dea to approach cost and resource allocation problems because dea cross efficiency uses the concept of peer appraisal it is a very reasonable and appropriate mechanism for allocating a shared resource cost it is shown that our proposed iterative approach is always feasible and ensures that all dmus become efficient after the fixed cost is allocated as an additional input measure the cross efficiency dea based iterative method is further extended into a resource allocation setting to achieve maximization in the aggregated output change by distributing available resources such allocations for fixed costs and resources are more acceptable to the players involved because the allocation results are jointly determined by all dmus rather than a specific one the proposed approaches are demonstrated using an existing data set that has been applied in similar studies

opportunism incentives and the m form hypothesis a laboratory study abstract opportunism is one central premise of the m form hypothesis this premise is investigated in a laboratory experiment using m form and u form organizations under incentives based on corporate profit and divisional profits there was greater opportunism under u form organization than under the m form and under divisional profit than under corporate profit incentives additionally a misguided altruism lead a number of individuals to misrepresent information the m form yields higher performance than the u form also corporate profit incentives yield higher total profit than divisional profit incentives the results partially explain why empirical studies do not strongly support the m form hypothesis

the cyclical behavior of marginal cost and price the author examines the cyclical behavior of price marginal cost margins for u s manufac turing after 1956 short run marginal cost is markedly procyclical this is primarily due to procyclical overtime payments incurred beca use employment is not perfectly flexible in most industries output price fails to respond to the cyclical movement in marginal cost so price marginal cost margins are markedly countercyclical the res ults contradict business cycle theories that explain low production i n a recession by a high real cost of producing they support theories that explain low production in a recession by the inability of firms to sell their output copyright 1987 by american economic association

using cost observation to regulate firms the paper emphasizes the use of accounting data in regulatory or procurement contracts when the supplier 1 has superior information about the cost of the project and 2 invests in cost reduction the main result states that under risk neutrality the supplier announces an expected cost and is given an incentive contract linear in cost overruns this optimal contract moves toward a fixed price contract as the announced cost decreases an investment choice is then introduced and the use of a rate of return regulation is studied

introducing the all seeing eye of business a model for understanding the nature impact and potential uses of waste abstract at current rates of disposal there are nearly 8 years of remaining landfill capacity at permitted sites in england and wales industry encouraged by financial penalties from the government faces the challenges of cleaner and more sustainable production whilst trying to remain competitive in the market place this paper proposes fit thinking as a means by which waste can be reduced from the early design stages alongside the all seeing eye of business a model to illustrate potential sources of profit and loss in a manufacturing firm s output a literature review on waste and profitability reveals the basis for the model concepts from material flow cost accounting the kanthal effect and the kano model are combined together with industry case studies to develop the model the model is explained in detail demonstrating twelve types of relationships between a company s product outputs and the profitability of each output the model and the relationships it proposes are then tested against examples from literature ultimately fit thinking is shown to help companies prevent waste where waste is unavoidable the all seeing eye of business model can be used by companies in the understanding of their non product output waste providing insights into the nature of their waste and the impact on profitability it is hoped that this understanding will encourage them to see waste as a potential profit making co product rather than as a necessary evil

circular economy and the opportunity cost of not closing the loop of water industry the case of jordan abstract the water industry is moving from an end of pipe approach consistent with the linear economic model to a circular approach consistent with the circular economy model the economic dimension of wastewater circularity has not received the attention that other dimensions have this study attempts to fill this research gap by studying the economic dimension in order to estimate the net opportunity cost of a non circular water industry the financial and environmental benefits of treating wastewater along with the associated operating and capital costs are calculated to arrive at the opportunity cost and the closing the loop charge the analytical results reveal an estimated net opportunity cost of 643 million jordanian dinar jod 907 million us if the option not to go circular is chosen with jod 212 million us 299 million of this amount currently squandered furthermore this indicates an average closing the loop charge of jod0 70 m3 1 0 m3 which represents the average shadow price of the associated environmental externalities having thus shown a strong economic case for the circular model in the water industry movements in all economic sectors to adhere to this model appear to be highly desirable

incentive efficient production frontiers an agency perspective on dea in this paper we examine how empirical production frontiers may contribute to the incentives of production units we consider a series of data envelopment analysis dea frontiers and we show when these may be incentive efficient in the sense that they contain all the information that are relevant for optimal incentive provision the frontiers considered include the so called constant decreasing and varying return to scale models the free disposability and the free replicability models as well as the increasing and decreasing return to scale models based on a relaxed set of assumptions also we illustrate how to design optimal incentive schemes based on such frontiers contents 1 introduction 2 the incentive problem 3 production frontiers and productivity measures 4 incentive efficient production frontiers 5 extensions 6 an example 7 final remarks mathematical appendix references

macro economic and development indexes and iso14001 certificates a cross national analysis abstract environmental management systems emss implemented according to the iso14001 standard have been examined by many authors especially focussing on its impact at the firm level however only a few papers have investigated the impact of iso14001 from a country perspective this paper aims to contribute to bridging this gap the aim is to study the relation between iso14001 growth and the trend in selected macro economic and development indexes by applying the growth mixture model to a panel of 73 countries for the period 1999 2012 we assess the following hypotheses a the increase in numbers of iso14001 certifications corresponds to an increase in economic indexes b the increase in iso14001 corresponds to an increase in development indexes c the trends of iso14001 adoption and macro economic indexes confirm the relationship described by the environmental kuznets curve the results confirm a positive relation among the trends of some variables such as iso14001 and gross domestic product gdp iso14001 and industry value added while no significant results were found when observing the relation between iso14001 and the selected development indexes in addition using the industry added value as the variable to measure economic development our results support the theory of the environmental kuznets curve

air quality and economic growth an empirical study abstract in the present empirical study we have observed an inverse and sometimes u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and per capita real income as opposed to the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve ekc found in many earlier studies it was felt that a possible explanation of the observed pattern of relationship might be sought in the dynamics of the process of economic growth experienced by the countries concerned thus e g economic development may strengthen the market mechanism as a result of which the economy may gradually shift from non market to marketed energy resources that are less polluting this phenomenon may show up in the form of an inverse relationship as mentioned above also due to the global technical progress the production techniques available to the countries all over the world are becoming more and more capital intensive and at the same time less polluting this may mean that given the income level the pollution level decreases as the capital intensity of an economy rises in the present study it is indeed observed that as capital intensity increases the level of suspended particulate matter spm in the atmosphere decreases per capita real income is also found to be inversely related to spm partially but the interaction effect of per capita income and capital intensity on spm is observed to be positive this suggests that given the level of per capita income capital intensity a more capital intensive production technique a higher per capita income level would cause less pollution for spm a surprising result is also obtained i e a u turn is observed at a very high level of per capita real income i e us 12 500 at 1985 us prices this is possibly indicative of the fact that there are technological limits to industrial pollution control such that beyond a threshold level of income further rise in income cannot be achieved without environmental degradation

cluster analysis of the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth abstract as global warming continues to worsen the balance between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth has received increasing attention and carbon reduction comes to be an urgent task in many countries in literature various regression models have been developed to investigate the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth such as the inverted u shaped ekc model inverted n shaped model etc which play critical roles in analyzing the relationships existing studies suggest that some countries follow similar models to describe the relationships while others employ different ones regarding the interplay between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth there lacks a cluster analysis to systematically uncover the similarity of countries that employ models more similar to each other than to the countries in other clusters in this paper a novel clustering approach is proposed to identify clusters of 67 countries from the spatial temporal and descriptive dimensions unlike the traditional clustering technique in which clusters are determined by geometric distances the clusters in this research are obtained based on the differences between the fitting models of the countries in each cluster the first step of the approach is to find clusters of countries sharing similar models in a given year based on the symbolic regression method and the second step is to determine the countries that frequently cooccur in the same cluster by the apriori algorithm the results present two high order clusters with different dynamic features during the period between 1971 and 2010 one high order cluster mainly consists of countries in higher level of income while the other contains lower income level countries and the carbon intensities of the two high order clusters have distinct differences the findings suggest that the countries within the same cluster could learn more lessons from each other while countries belonging to different clusters should not be examined together indiscriminately several policy implications are provided which may inform decision making for policymakers when choosing proper learning objects and help researchers with designing optimal models for specific countries

decoupling co2 emission and economic growth in china is there consistency in estimation results in analyzing environmental kuznets curve china is one of the highest growth economies in the world and it has experienced a significant rise in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in recent decades its economic growth heavily depends on fossil fuels of coal and oil which led to huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions this study logically analyzes the nexus of co2 emissions economic growth and energy consumption by decoupling greenhouse gas emission of co2 and economic growth to provide more conclusive evidence on the phenomenon of the environmental kuznets curve ekc over the period 1970 2015 to achieve the objective of consistency in the estimation results the study applies different estimation techniques such as ardl auto regressive distributed lag model fmols fully modified ordinary least squares dols dynamic ordinary least squares and impulse response and variance decomposition in addition the business as usual inverted u shaped relationship between gdp per capita and an economy related co2 emission is hypothesized the result supports the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis from different techniques the turning point hovers around 744665 the estimation result indicates that china ekc turning point shows some inconsistencies when compared to other turning points obtained from different studies the inconsistency of the ekc turning point is attributed to the sensitivity of the result to different data source variables selection different pollutants and scope of the data although the ekc turning point of this present research differs from other china ekc turning points it gives a clear policy roadmap on the pursuance of long run economic growth in favour of environmental quality besides significance of the turning point lies with the need to explore other structural policies such as articulated demographic and energy policies rather than passively waiting for the arrival of the inflexion point one interesting findings of the analysis is the consistency of the estimation results from the different estimation techniques

a test of environmental kuznets curve for haze pollution in china evidence from the penal data of 27 capital cities abstract the mounting environmental crisis especially the large scale and continuous haze pollution is the most pressing challenge for china during rapid urbanization process this study is aimed at examining the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth and its turning points for different regions in china based on the panel data of 27 capital cities and municipalities in china during 2011 2015 we constructed the parameter estimation model after conducting the unit root cointegration and hausman tests based on the basic and extended models we find that the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth in china is not a typical inverted u shaped environmental kuznet curve ekc by introducing variables such as industrial structure foreign trade and energy intensity this study demonstrates that adjusting industrial structure and improving energy efficiency are effective means for haze pollution control grouping regressions reveal that regional differences exist in the relationships between haze pollution and economic growth and their tuning points for instance there was a u shaped relationship for the central region while there were inverted n shaped relationships for eastern western and northeastern regions policy implications are thus summarized for different regions in terms of balancing economic growth and environmental protection

exploring the relationship between energy usage segregation and environmental degradation in n 11 countries numerous studies regarding the economic growth environmental pollution link have struggled to determine the effects of various forms of energy consumption on environmental degradation particularly in the context of emerging economies this study examines the environmental kuznets curve ekc for co2 emissions in n 11 countries during 1990 2014 by segregating three forms of energy consumption renewable biomass and non renewable urbanization and trade openness are additional explanatory variables that are used in the empirical framework using the generalized moments method gmm the empirical evidence confirms the presence of an n shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation for n 11 countries this study analyzed the interaction effects among trade openness biomass consumption and economic growth these interactions had a negative impact on co2 emissions levels of n 11 countries suitable policy recommendations have been provided based on the detailed results

the environmental kuznets curve when the environment exhibits hysteresis abstract the relevance and implications of the environmental kuznets hypothesis are examined in the presence of stock effects and non linearities associated with pollution generation stock effects lead to hysteresis and irreversibilities in environmental quality that are overlooked when emphasis is placed on the flow effects of pollutants only it is demonstrated here that an optimal growth plan in the presence of stock effects shifts the focus away from prescribing economic growth as a panacea for environmental ills implications for currently industrializing economies are discussed

unemployment and the real wage the economic basis for contesting political ideologies using the keynesian theory of effective demand this paper demonstrates how particular models such as that of cooperative capitalism enunciated by the left keynesian social democrats the marxian model of profit squeeze emphasizing distributive conflict and even the conservative model relying on supply side stimulus fit in as particular variants of a more general theoretical scheme through a reconstruction of the familiar is schedule the argument is weaved around the theme of the relations between unemployment and real wage in the context of both a closed and an open economy to explain the common macroeconomic basis of contesting ideologies copyright 1990 by oxford university press

parallelism in information production moral hazard and relative performance evaluations we analyse how to design incentive schemes for agents producing information the agents may for example be divisional managers market researchers or consultants financial analysts corporate auditors research scientists or political pollsters we show that an agent should be compensated more for making a correct rather than an incorrect prediction and for agreeing rather than disagreeing with colleagues depending on the environment correctness should be compensated more or less than agreement also compensation should increase with the difficulties of making correct or conforming predictions one consequence of the result is that it may sometimes reduce a principal s total incentive costs to engage with more information producers performing parallel investigations because the possibility to make relative performance evaluations of the agents may substantially reduce the costs of motivating the agents in performing their duties as desired

securing a bioenergy future without imports the uk has legally binding renewable energy and greenhouse gas targets energy from biomass is anticipated to make major contributions to these however there are concerns about the availability and sustainability of biomass for the bioenergy sector a biomass resource model has been developed that reflects the key biomass supply chain dynamics and interactions determining resource availability taking into account climate food land and other constraints the model has been applied to the uk developing four biomass resource scenarios to analyse resource availability and energy generation potential within different contexts the model shows that indigenous biomass resources and energy crops could service up to 44 of uk energy demand by 2050 without impacting food systems the scenarios show residues from agriculture forestry and industry provide the most robust resource potentially providing up to 6 5 of primary energy demand by 2050 waste resources are found to potentially provide up to 15 4 and specifically grown biomass and energy crops up to 22 of demand the uk is therefore projected to have significant indigenous biomass resources to meet its targets however the dominant biomass resource opportunities identified in the paper are not consistent with current uk bioenergy strategies risking biomass deficit despite resource abundance

price rigidities and market structure conventional wisdom has it that a large part of the explanation of keynesian unemployment is the observed rigidities of wages and prices what has been lacking however is a satisfactory theory or conjunction of theories which explains how wages and prices can be at non market clearing levels the objective of this paper is to sketch out several alternative theoretical explanations of this phenomenon each in contrast with keynesian theory is consistent with the observation that as the economy goes into a recession real product wages do not increase and may in fact decrease all of the theories assume rational profit maximizing firms and all entail some important departure from the standard competitive paradigm the first three explanations represent minor adaptations of standard models

restricted reallocation of resources abstract this paper investigates restricted reallocation among individual units when the efficiency index is calculated for an aggregated unit in the dea framework moreover we address the question of the optimal reallocation flow the optimal flow of inputs among the individual units subject to given transfer costs restrictions on reallocation can be given by the maximum cost the managers are willing to pay in the framework of full reallocation there is a trade off between the maximum allowed reallocation cost and the highest efficiency the aggregated unit can achieve the final goal is to present a way to generate efficiency gain functions that show this trade off

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

assessing the technical and allocative efficiency of hospital operations in greece and its resource allocation implications abstract in this paper we seek to develop a research framework concerning the assessment of the efficiency of public sector hospital operations public hospitals are increasingly under pressure to improve their operations both in terms of resources they use and also in terms of the quantity and quality of their outcomes the assessment of efficiency entails both the notions of technical and allocative efficiency as they yield complementary information about the management effectiveness of individual hospitals technical efficiency has a diagnostic purpose as it yields comparative information about the effectiveness with which individual units convert their input resources into outputs on the other hand allocative efficiency has a planning orientation since the objective of the assessment is to gauge efficiency improvements by means of resource reallocation a linear programming based model is proposed for assessing allocative efficiency in the light of uncertainty about the prices of input factors the empirical part of the paper is based on data from greek public hospitals results and policy implications are discussed based on data from 98 general hospitals based on information from 1992 it was found that significant inefficiencies are present in the operations of greek hospitals that account approximately for 100 mecu in 1992 prices

towards circular economy implementation a comprehensive review in context of manufacturing industry the concept of circular economy ce is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to series of challenges such as waste generation resource scarcity and sustaining economic benefits however the concept of circularity is not of novel as such specific circumstances and motivations have stimulated ideas relevant to circularity in the past through activities such as reuse remanufacturing or recycling main objectives of this work are to provide a comprehensive review of research efforts encompassing aspects of resources scarcity waste generation and economic advantages to explore the ce landscape in the context of these three aspects especially when they are considered simultaneously based on an idea of a comprehensive ce framework propose an implementation strategy using top down and bottom up approach in a concurrent manner to fulfill this objective a comprehensive review of state of the art research is carried out to understand different ideas relevant to ce motivation for the research and context of their recurrence main contributions of this paper are a comprehensive ce framework and a practical implementation strategy for a regenerative economy and natural environment the framework emphasizes on a combined view of three main aspects i e environment resources and economic benefits it also underlines that joint support of all stakeholders is necessary in order to successfully implement the ce concept at large scale the proposed framework and implementation strategy also identify new avenues for future research and practice in the field of ce

productive and financial performance in u s manufacturing industries an integrated structural approach in the last few years macroeconomists and industrial organization researchers have reexamined relationships among scale economies markups economic profitability and productivity growth paul romer 14 has emphasized the importance of increasing returns for productivity growth at the aggregate industry or economy level empirical evidence supporting this at the industry level has been presented by robert hall 4 5 who reported both significant increasing returns and markups of price over marginal cost in various u s manufacturing sectors related evidence on the cyclical nature of markups in these industries suggesting some procyclicality of markup behavior has been presented by domowitz hubbard and petersen 3 analysis of the cyclical characteristics of robert solow s 16 productivity residual provided the basis for these empirical studies the resulting framework is limited however by its dependence on a number of restrictive assumptions which severely hamper analysis of interactions among these characteristics the purpose of this paper is to extend this type of analysis to consider profit maximizing markups economic profitability scale economies capacity utilization and productivity growth within an integrated theoretical structural model and to assess their interactions empirically for two digit u s manufacturing data more specifically using the new industrial economics approach outlined by timothy bresnahan 2 in which marginal cost and therefore markups are unobserved but estimated econometrically i specify an integrated cost and demand structure for each industry the structure is quite general in that i markups and returns to scale are permitted to vary over time they are not constant parameters ii shortand long run impacts are distinguished by explicit recognition of adjustment costs iii quasi fixity of both capital and labor is incorporated to accommodate labor hoarding as well as slow adjustment of capital iv input substitution is not constrained a priori a generalized leontief restricted cost function based on gross output is employed v nonstatic expectations are allowed for through an instrumental variable estimation procedure and vi the effects of cost and demand shocks are directly represented by specifying and estimating industry specific cost output demand and input demand functions

decision support for target based resource allocation of public services in multiunit and multilevel systems this paper is concerned with the problem of resource allocationand target setting in the provision of public services the paper develops a network based representation of multilevel resource management with equity efficiency and effectiveness being recognised as the fundamental objectives of the system on the modelling side the proposed method combines data envelopment analysis and goal programming formulations integrated within an interactive planning framework an illustrative application on fire departments is used to show the applicability of the method developed to assist the resource allocation process