environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century an age adjusted citation analysis of the influential articles journals authors and institutions we investigate the influence of articles authors journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics we depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field we adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article s publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors we analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009 we provide rankings of the influential articles authors journals and institutions and find that ecological economics energy economics and the journal of environmental economics and management have the most influential articles they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most the university of maryland resources for the future the university of east anglia and the world bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics

microfinance literature a sustainability level perspective survey abstract since the early microcredit programs up to the present microfinance has grown exponentially as it has the academic interest on it as a research subject considering that this sector has impact in terms of sustainability any research in the field requires an analysis with wide criteria which should include the economic environmental social and governance dimensions eesg as well as their interrelationships the objectives of this survey are to investigate the contributions of microfinance sectoral scholarly research to sustainability through a systematic literature review using content analysis method contextualizing the scientific production and studying its terminology according to the eesg criteria and under global reporting initiative framework and finally to identify research gaps and to propose future research paths

the role of corporate sustainability performance for economic performance a firm level analysis of moderation effects abstract this paper analyses the link between sustainability management and economic performance its main research question concerns the association of social responsibility and environmental management with economic performance determinants of the latter and possible moderation effects based on data collected from financial databases and kinder lydenberg domini for the period 1992 to 2003 the paper analyses the link of corporate sustainability performance with economic performance using panel estimation techniques the analysis shows that advertising intensity moderates the association of corporate sustainability performance and economic performance as measured by tobin s q for research and development efforts relative to firm size no moderating role on the link between corporate sustainability and economic performance is identified a sensitivity analysis using separate measures for social and environmental performance reveals that the latter only has a direct effect and the former only a fully moderated effect on economic performance policy and management implications of these findings are discussed

abatement investments and green goodwill this paper develops and estimates a dynamic model that links profits to green goodwill assuming that abatement investments generate green goodwill and using data from the swedish pulp industry we are able to test the effects of green goodwill on firm level output price and profits the results suggests that swedish pulp plant output prices and profits may be positively related to changes in green goodwill furthermore no evidence is found to support the existence of adjustment costs due to abatement investments

finance as a driver of corporate social responsibility finance is grease to the economy therefore we assume that it may affect corporate social responsibility csr and the sustainability of economic development too this paper discusses the transmission mechanisms between finance and sustainability we find that there is no simple one to one relationship between financial development and sustainable development but there are various often indirect linkages it appears that most of the literature concentrates on the role of public shareholders when it comes to changing corporate policy and performance in a more sustainable direction however this focus neglects the potential impact of the credit channel and private equity on a firm s non financial policies and performance these very powerful mechanisms can govern business policies and practices therefore there appears to be much more scope for finance to promote socially and environmentally desirable activities and to discourage detrimental activities than has been acknowledged in the academic literature so far

can a carbon permit system reduce spanish unemployment this paper analyses the impact of carbon policy on unemployment in spain and whether recycling the public revenues earned from permit auctions can alleviate this problem while spain s deviation from the european union s intermediate emission goals is more serious than most other member countries unemployment in spain is also well above average for the european union we use a computable general equilibrium model that includes unemployment in the markets for unskilled and skilled labour we find that introducing carbon permits does not aggravate spanish unemployment in fact if supplied with revenue recycling schemes unemployment rates may actually fall contrary to other european studies we find that the best option is to reduce payroll taxes on relatively skilled types of labour this reform is successful in both increasing labour demand and dampening the supply response to rising wages however while all of the recycling schemes generate dividends in terms of aggregate welfare none entirely offsets the abatement costs

retailing public goods the economics of corporate social responsibility abstract this paper explores the feasibility and desirability of corporate social responsibility csr we identify csr with creation of public goods or curtailment of public bads using a model with profit maximizing firms the paper shows that there is a direct parallel between csr and traditional models of private provision of public goods indeed firms that use csr will produce public goods at exactly the same level as predicted by the standard voluntary contribution equilibrium for public goods we compare csr with government provision and charitable provision discussing when csr by private for profit firms could have a comparative advantage in dealing with public goods provision

why do manufacturing facilities introduce environmental management systems improving and or signaling performance abstract in this paper we explore the motivation for the introduction of environmental management systems and their certification a distinction is drawn between their role in bringing about better compliance or improved performance and as external indicators of good environmental practices to both other market participants and regulatory authorities drawing upon a database of approximately 4000 facilities in seven oecd countries empirical evidence is found for the role that both factors play in encouraging the adoption and certification of ems s but that the relative importance of different factors varies according to facility size

a real options approach to abatement investments and green goodwill in this paper we adopt the green goodwill argument as to why firms voluntarily invest in abatement capital we investigate the effects on the abatement investment decision of changes in uncertainty about future green goodwill competitor abatement investments regulations etc using a real options framework our results indicate that increased uncertainty about consumers willingness to pay for green products in the future discourage voluntary abatement investments the model also suggests that voluntary abatement investments are promoted by an increased threat of regulation and competitor abatement investments furthermore the benefit cost ratio of the abatement investment project at the point where it is optimal to invest is independent of what regulatory regime stringent or lenient the firm operates in we also conclude that despite the fact that voluntary abatement investment exists there may still be room for environmental policy

governing a groundwater commons a strategic and laboratory analysis of western water law we examine strategic behavior in groundwater depletion within the setting of state governance of groundwater resources in the american west solving a dynamic common pool resource model for its optimal solution and its subgame perfect equilibrium provides benchmarks for behavior observed in laboratory experiments three forms of legal rules common pool depletion with a rule of capture to establish ownership absolute ownership doctrine entry restrictions prior appropriation doctrine and stock quotas correlative rights doctrinekre examined in terms of their impact on individual strategic behavior in laboratory experiments

foreign investors and corporate social responsibility evidence from the career advancement of women in japan i examine whether foreign investors invest in firms that encourage the career advancement of women by using data from a sample of japanese firms during the period 2008 2011 first i find that corporate governance reform and work life balance practices facilitate the promotion of women to higher positions in firms furthermore i find that foreign investors hold more shares of firms that encourage the career advancement of women overall these results indicate that the career advancement of women as a part of corporate social responsible activities benefits foreign investors

on the optimal order of natural resource use when the capacity of the inexhaustible substitute is limited consider a general equilibrium framework where the marginal cost of extraction from several deposits of an exhaustible resource is constant in terms of an inexhaustible perfect substitute and differs between deposits the instantaneous rate of production form the inexhaustible resource is subject to a capacity constraint

extraction capacity and the optimal order of extraction the least cost first extraction rule for deposits with different extraction costs previously has been shown to be invalid in general equilibrium this paper demonstrates that this rule also does not hold in partial equilibrium when extraction capacity is limited necessary and sufficient conditions for several surprising extraction orders are presented if extraction from a high cost resource is constrained it may be optimal to begin extraction from a high cost deposit or backstop strictly before extracting from a lower cost deposit if extraction from a low cost resource is limited it may be optimal to exhaust a high cost deposit strictly before the low cost deposit is exhausted or to abandon extraction temporarily from a high cost deposit and then to exhaust it later the analysis demonstrates how extraction constraints affect the order of extraction and shows that certain cost reversals are caused by limited extraction capacity rather than by the general equilibrium definition of extraction costs

quality leadership when regulatory standards are forthcoming in many markets governments set minimum quality standards while some sellers compete on the basis of quality by exceeding them such quality leadership strategies often win public acclaim especially when they involve environmental attributes using a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation we show that if the high quality firm can commit to a quality level before regulations are promulgated it induces the regulator to weaken standards and welfare falls our results raise doubts about the social benefits of corporate self regulation and highlight the dangers of lengthy delays between legislative mandates for new regulations and their implementation

coordination versus flexibility in wage formation a focus on the nominal wage impact of productivity in germany greece ireland portugal spain and the united states wage coordination between countries of the european monetary union emu aims at aligning nominal wage growth with labour productivity growth at the national level we analyse the developments in germany the emu s periphery countries greece ireland portugal and spain along with the united states over the period 1980 to 2010 apart from the contribution of productivity to nominal wages we take into account the contributions of prices unemployment replacement rates and taxes by means of an econometrically estimated nonlinear equation resulting from a wage bargaining model we further study the downward rigidities of nominal wages the findings show that in past times of low productivity price inflation and reductions in unemployment still put significant upward pressure on nominal wage growth the periphery countries are far from aligning nominal wage growth with productivity growth german productivity is a major wage determinant but surely not the only one within the context of a free bargaining

foreign equity investment restrictions capital flight and shareholder wealth maximization theory and evidence this article provides a theory of foreign equity investment restrictions we consider a model where the demand function for domestic shares differs between domestic and foreign investors because of deadweight costs in holding domestic and foreign securities that depend on the country of residence of investors we show that domestic entrepreneurs maximize firm value by discriminating between domestic and foreign investors the model implies that countries benefitting from capital flight have binding ownership restrictions such that foreign investors pay a higher price for shares than domestic investors the empirical implications of this theory are supported by evidence from switzerland article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

identity and the economics of organizations on plebes first day at west point called r day they strip down to their underwear their hair is cut off they are put in uniform they then must address an older cadet with the proper salute and with the statement sir new cadet doe reports to the cadet in the red sash for the first time as ordered plebes must stand and salute and repeat and stand and salute and repeat until they get it exactly right all the while being reprimanded for every tiny mistake in the summary of david lipsky 2003 pp 145 154 who spent four years tracking a company of cadets at west point on r day you surrender your old self in stages but r day is just the beginning of the training and personal re engineering that is to come so that west point graduates emerge four years later as loyal officers in the u s army lipsky shows that despite some failure this tough program is remarkably successful in creating officers with the will to lead in battle economists current picture of organizations and work incentives has no place for the west point program and the motivations it seeks to inculcate in recruits in a standard economic model an individual s preferences are fixed and utility depends only on pecuniary variables the army s aim at west point is to change cadets preferences they wish to inculcate non economic motives in the cadets so that they have the same goals as the u s army alternatively stated the goal of west point is to change the identity of the cadets so they will think of themselves above all else as officers in the u s army they will feel bad about themselves they will lose utility if they fall short of the ideals of such an officer this change in identity

the persistence of social strategies under increasing competitive pressure abstract in this paper we study the long run outcome if firms are repeatedly matched to play a n firm cournot oligopoly game and can select their type of business objective firms can either be profit maximizing or socially concerned also pursuing consumer welfare we use an indirect evolutionary approach to distinguish between the endogenous profit maximizing choice of the firms business objectives and their corresponding market behavior our main result is that the prospects of long run survival of firms pursuing social strategies strongly depends on the number of firms in the industry if a social strategy entails higher marginal production costs it is best suited if the number of firms in the industry is not too large in particular we demonstrate that the relation between long survival and the level of competitiveness of the industry is inverse u shaped we confirm this result by using the concept of coalition stability and further show that if a high number of firms adopt a social strategy welfare might be lower than with just profit maximizing firms

the economics of corporate social responsibility a firm level perspective survey this paper analyzes the economics of corporate social responsibility csr as a private response to market imperfections in order to satisfy social preferences depending on whether they affect regulation competition or contracts market imperfections driving csr decisions are classified in three categories public goods and bads and altruism imperfect competition and incomplete contracts we successively present these drivers of csr decisions and highlight the nature of incentives external or internal at work and the testable and tested hypotheses in the reviewed studies we finally review the link between csr and financial performance as well as between csr and social and environmental performance a twofold discrepancy appears in the literature opening future research paths a disconnection between our understanding of csr drivers and csr impacts and a knowledge gap between csr financial and social consequences the latter having received little attention

the economics of dams dams provide a host of benefits to societies helping to balance variability in water availability with demand for multiple uses allowing power generation providing and enhancing recreation opportunities and offering protection against damaging floods yet dams are often controversial due to their high investment requirements unequal distributional effects and concerns over the irreparable harm they may cause to free flowing rivers and ecosystems this paper considers the economic case for such projects organized around a review of what we know about their value and impacts though heterogeneity across contexts is a common feature of interventions in many sectors we argue that it is particularly acute in the case of dams and that this creates difficulties for drawing general conclusions about their social value still evidence suggests that investment in additional surface water storage may not always be the best solution for addressing water scarcity furthermore a number of biases and blind spots exist in economic frameworks used to evaluate dams and these often challenge analysts ability to correctly identify which projects will be most attractive perhaps due to some of these perceived deficiencies policy makers do not appear to make much use of economic analyses for decision making about dams if progress is to be made in avoiding costly mistakes related to construction and removal of such infrastructures in the future economists need to improve the realism and methods underlying their analyses of the value of dams and offer more useful interpretations of the results that these approaches produce

cadillac desert revisited property rights public policy and water resource depletion to alleviate arizona s dependence on groundwater the federal government subsidized construction of the central arizona project cap to import water from the colorado river in exchange for the subsidy arizona reformed its groundwater law to eliminate common property pumping and to ban groundwater mining after the year 2025 we build a model of water resource development in which imported water is a capacity constrained backstop the model is applied to quantify the welfare effects of alternative cap construction dates and arizona groundwater laws we reach two general conclusions first cap was completed 86 years too early in 1987 at a deadweight loss of 2 612 billion ironically construction in 1987 yielded lower surplus than never constructing cap second the political exchange of reform for subsidy introduced a greater loss 2 612 billion than it corrected 0 810 billion the exchange was worse than doing nothing at all

the economic impacts of voluntary environmental performance of firms a critical review new trends in studies on the governance of natural assets include substantial consideration of the role of voluntary initiatives a traditional economic view states that there is a trade off between being green and being competitive according to that view no voluntary environmental action is expected to occur to undertake an in depth analysis of the scope for voluntary action this paper reviews empirical literature that analyzes the relationship between manufacturing firms environmental initiatives or performance and economic results this review moves beyond the general test of the pay to be green hypothesis preferring instead to systematize empirical results in more specific research questions empirical findings of the reviewed literature generally support that there is no penalty for being green in addition the typology of firms the methods utilized for implementing environmental initiatives the intensity of abatement efforts and stockholders valuation of green firms have all been shown to have a sizeable influence on the actual economic results of environmental action or management consequently the findings of this paper challenge the traditional strategic theory that predicts widespread free riding it holds major implications for environmental policy making and environmental business decisions

the impact of global warming on agriculture a ricardian analysis reply we measure the economic impact of climate on land prices using cross sectional data on climate farmland prices and other economic and geophysical data for almost 3 000 counties in the united states we find that higher temperatures in all seasons except autumn reduce average farm values while more precipitation outside of autumn increases farm values applying the model to a global warming scenario shows a significantly lower estimated impact of global warming on u s agriculture than the traditional production function approach and in one case suggests that even without co sub 2 fertilization global warming may have economic benefits for agriculture 16 refs 5 figs 5 tabs

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

voluntary environmental investment and responsive regulation instances of corporate voluntary environmental investments have been rising in recent years motivations for such activities include corporate image building regulatory preemption and production cost savings while some of these investments arise from industry attempts to set environmental standards where none currently exist many investments seem to be aimed at reducing the costs of complying with existing regulations using a simple game theoretic model we investigate firm motivations for and welfare consequences of these types of voluntary investments by focusing on the role regulatory enforcement might play we find that such investments unambiguously increase when an enforcement regulator acts as a stackelberg follower a regulatory structure we refer to as responsive regulation in setting its monitoring and enforcement strategy these additional investments may be socially undesirable necessitating a restructuring of non compliance penalties

economic implications of climate change for u s agriculture assessing recent evidence recent studies estimate potential economic impacts of climate change on u s agriculture while results are not directly comparable several big picture lessons can be drawn these broader findings are developed and put into a policy context while the estimated impacts on u s agriculture and the u s economy do not yet justify costly adaptation or mitigation strategies some regional and environmental impacts could be quite severe current policy efforts should focus on reducing climate change uncertainties and increasing farm sector flexibility from a national perspective future agreements to limit greenhouse gas emissions could be partially met through adjustments of farm practices

benefits from groundwater management magnitude sensitivity and distribution empirical estimates of benefits from groundwater management are reported for an area in california with heavy reliance on groundwater supplies benefits are quite sensitive to the water demand schedule and interest rate but less sensitive to other parameters however in all cases considered the increases in welfare from groundwater management are less than ten percent tax revenues received under a system of pump taxes are four to five times as large as the benefits from management thus groundwater users gain under a system of quotas but may suffer substantial welfare losses under pump taxes

doing well by doing good green office buildings this paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of green buildings in the commercial sector value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates we match publicly available information on the addresses of energy star and leed rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of u s office buildings and their rental rates we analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings we find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby effective rents i e rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby at prevailing capitalization rates conversion of the average non green building to an equivalent green building would add more than 5 million in market value these results are robust to the statistical models employed

labour market outliers lessons from portugal and spain iberian labour markets why spain and portugal are oecd outliers spain has the highest unemployment rate 22 2 of any european union country portugal one of the lowest 7 3 superficially these countries share many labour market features the toughest job security rules in the oecd an apparently similar architecture of wage bargaining and comparable generosity of their unemployment insurance systems at least since 1989 we address the puzzle by examining portuguese and spanish labour market institutions in particular job security unemployment benefits and the system of wage bargaining we then conduct empirical analysis of spanish and portuguese unemployment outflows and wage distributions using micro data we find differences in unemployment benefits non existent in portugal until 1985 and less generous nowadays differences in wage flexibility wage floors by category established by collective agreements are set at a lower relative level in portugal and in practice higher firing costs in spain a key explanation of the difference in portuguese and spanish unemployment rates is the wage adjustment process generous benefit levels may have been necessary for the path spanish unions took but this was not the sole explanation of different wage setting in spain and portugal olympia bover pilar garcia perea and pedro portugal

charity as a substitute for reputation evidence from an online marketplace consumers respond positively to products tied to charity particularly from sellers that are relatively new and hence have limited alternative means for assuring quality we establish this result using data from a diverse group of ebay sellers who experiment with charity by varying the presence of a donation in a set of otherwise matched product listings most of charity s benefits accrue to sellers without extensive ebay histories consistent with charity serving as a quality signal we find fewer customer complaints among charity intensive sellers

groundwater use under incomplete information abstract this paper introduces a game theoretic model of groundwater extraction in a two cell aquifer under incomplete information a novel assumption is that individual users have incomplete knowledge of the speed of lateral flows in the aquifer although a user is aware that his neighbor s water use has some influence on his future water stock he is uncertain about the degree of this impact we find that the lack of information may either increase or decrease the rate of water use and welfare in a two period framework the relevant characteristic is the ratio of the periodic marginal benefits of water use depending on whether this ratio is convex or concave the average speed with which the aquifer is depleted decreases or increases when users learn more about the local hydrologic properties of groundwater in principle welfare may decrease even in cases when the groundwater allocation is closer to the efficient groundwater allocation

environmental technological change and governance in sustainable development policy abstract an evolutionary economics perspective between technological innovation and public policy is applied to analyse the relationships between technological change sustainable development and industrial competitiveness this leads us to emphasise the fundamental role that firm s strategies vis a vis the endogenisation of technological change can play for giving effect to win win strategies however allowing industrial competition to become the only factor determining win win strategies could lead to locked technological and social options being chosen which do not contribute to overall goals of ecological social and economic sustainability for this reason we introduce as complements to competitiveness the requirement of new forms of governance in pursuit of ecological economic sustainability

does social performance really lead to financial performance accounting for endogeneity the empirical relationship between a firm s social performance and its financial performance is still not well established in the literature despite more than 30 years of research and more than 100 empirical studies on the issue the results are still mixed we argue that the heterogeneous results found in previous studies are not due exclusively to problems related with the measurement instruments or the samples used instead we posit that a more fundamental problem related with the endogeneity of social strategic decisions could be driving most of the empirical findings we show that using a panel data of 658 firms from 1991 to 2005 how some of the results found in previous research change and some are even reversed when endogeneity is properly taken into account

a change in market responses to the environmental management ranking in japan abstract this article investigates stock price reactions to the release of the environmental management ranking issued by nihon keizai shimbun nikkei newspaper from 1998 to 2005 by using a standard event study methodology an examination of stock price movements of the top 100 manufacturing companies reveals that stock prices during the sample period did not respond significantly to the release of the ranking within a 3 day event window however market responses became significantly positive after 2003 while they were significantly negative in 1999 and 2000 the stock prices of upgraded companies in particular reacted negatively before 2000 but positively after 2002 these results indicate that market reactions were changed between 2001 and 2002 when the japanese government showed its strong commitment to environmental policies by establishing the ministry of the environment and signing the kyoto protocol following a number of legislations

groundwater focusing on the real issue most studies of the welfare economics of groundwater have focused mainly on the dichotomy between optimal control of groundwater use and no control at all this article argues that under circumstances that generally prevail in semiarid zones assigning property rights to groundwater and permitting the market to determine the allocation of water use can lead to a second best solution an argument is made that if potential users would be allowed to coase bargain with incumbent users on the issuance of new groundwater rights the second best solution is elevated to a pareto optimal solution this article is also a tale of two states water law and performance in new mexico and arizona

corporate social responsibility business strategy and the environment we examine the concept of firms sacrificing profits in the social interest within the environmental realm with particular focus on the case of the united states by addressing four key questions may they do so within the scope of their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders can they do so on a sustainable basis or will the forces of a competitivemarketplace render such efforts and their impacts transient at best do firms in fact frequently or at least sometimes behave this way reducing their earnings by voluntarily engaging in environmental stewardship should firms carryout such profit sacrificing activities i e is this an efficient use of social resources we address these questions through the lens of economics including insights from legal and business scholarship

can corporate social responsibility resolve the sanitation question in developing asian countries abstract the existing state of sanitation in developing asian countries fails to deliver a level of service that is adequate for meeting the human right to a standard of living consistent with dignity and health or for sustaining the capacity for future generations to have access to clean water resources and healthy ecosystems we argue that translating the current neo centralised technologies and institutional arrangements mainstreamed by industrialised countries would not resolve the problem in the context of developing countries instead it is necessary to leap frog to the emerging technological and institutional arrangements that are responsive to current needs and contexts and to potential risks the sustainability focus and often decentralised technologies of this emergent stage in sanitation present many opportunities for new actors to enter the urban sanitation industry at the same time there are many barriers to entry particularly from the perspective of conventional business management focused on increasing shareholder value we propose that perspectives from the corporate social responsibility discourse have the potential to provide both the pull for seizing the business opportunity for profit while serving social needs and the push to overcome the barriers in order to serve a wider social purpose for corporations the wealth of nations at least as reported in ubiquitous gdp terms has greatly increased through the activities of corporations driven by a profit motive but the increased poverty injustice and ecosystem degradation that have resulted from economic activity suggest that corporations perhaps ought to have regard for broader concerns beyond shareholder value we explore how the alternative relational view of a corporation as a metaphorical person within society who adopts a moral code consistent with both buddhist economics and adam smith s philosophy may facilitate profitable corporations that provide better economic ecological and social outcomes in serving the need for sustainable sanitation services in developing asian countries

social spending and automatic stabilizers in the oecd the macroeconomic literature on automatic stabilization tends to focus on taxes and dismiss the relevance of government expenditure except for unemployment compensation our results go sharply contrary to this view we engage in an empirical analysis of 21 oecd countries from 1982 to 2003 and find that age and health related social expenditure as well as incapacity and sick benefits all react to the cycle in a stabilizing manner while possibly new in the macro literature this conforms to many results in studies in labour economics the policy implications are broad since much previous analysis of discretionary fiscal policy rests on official figures for automatic stabilization there are also major implications for efforts to incorporate automatic fiscal policy in simulation models julia darby and jacques melitz

morally motivated self regulation 2 this paper focuses on self regulation motivated by altruistic moral concerns the context is one in which individuals can voluntarily self regulate in the presence of opportunities to free ride on the self regulation of their trading partners moral preferences can mitigate free riding but moral preferences can be limited in the sense that they may be weaker the greater the socioeconomic distance from a trading partner and can depend on whether others are expected to reciprocate the scope of self regulation can be increased by moral suasion but individuals can also form organizations to reduce free riding this paper characterizes the scope of self regulation as a function of the form and strength of moral preferences and explains the effectiveness of organizations in expanding that scope moral preferences can be conditional on the actions of others or limited by socioeconomic distance a citizen thus may self regulate when interacting with someone close but not with someone far away moral preferences can also be conditional or unconditional unconditional moral preferences are independent of the action of others whereas with conditional preferences a citizen is more willing to self regulate if other citizens are expected to reciprocate 3

when is the standard analysis of common property extraction under free access correct a game theoretic justification for non game theoretic analyses analyses of common property extraction under free access follow two distinct paths traditional and game theoretic giving rise to two standard methodologies one methodology avoids game theoretic analysis by assuming that aggregate extraction in each period induces fel rent dissipation the second methodology solves for the marko perfect equilibrium of an n player extraction game investigating aggregate behavior over time as n we show by example that these coexisting standard methodologies can yield conflicting predictions we then provide conditions relatively easy to satisfy sufficient for the two approaches to yield the same predictions

a theory of environmental risk disclosure abstract the regulation of environmental risks increasingly emphasizes the awareness and empowerment of stakeholders the success of this approach however seems to depend crucially on the quality of environmental disclosures in this paper we investigate the amount and quality of the information that would be voluntarily delivered to some stakeholder by a potential polluter we find that information may be hazier when the stakeholder is confident or naive a priori the cost of analyzing the received reports increases little with their complexity or a polluter s net expected payoff from undertaking an industrial activity that would turn out to be unsafe is small a worried stakeholder and a low cost of producing more accurate figures on the other hand favor disclosure of high quality information by delivering information of very good quality safe firms can set themselves apart more easily from dangerous ones the higher the relative ex post payoff from their current industrial activity implications of this framework for the scope and design of public programs of environmental disclosure are briefly examined

voluntary pollution reductions and the enforcement of environmental law an empirical study of the 33 50 program abstract this paper studies determinants and effects of firms participation in the 33 50 program which is a voluntary pollution reduction vpr program initiated by government regulators we examine a wide range of explanations for voluntary corporate environmentalism and find evidence in support of an enforcement theory that predicts that 1 vpr participation is rewarded by relaxed regulatory scrutiny 2 the anticipation of this reward spurs firms to participate in the program and 3 the program rewards regulators with reduced pollution we also find that 33 50 participation was more likely for firms operating in states with larger environmentalist constituencies

market failure and government failure f or several decades a debate has been raging in development economics on the relative virtues of the free market as opposed to state intervention with the help of analytical models of a market economy the interventionists demonstrate what they consider serious instances of market failure that is the inability of a market economy to reach certain desirable outcomes in resource use the protagonists of free markets on the other hand compile impressive lists of ill conceived and counterproductive policy measures implemented by the governments of different countries at various times leading to wasteful use of resources in their economies this debate inevitably remains inlconclusive the analytical results on market failure do not disappear in the face of the evidence that most governments or for that matter most economies of less developed countries with or without state intervention have performed rather badly when there appears to be scope for imnprovement over the market outcome the search for the appropriate corrective measures goes on some protagonists of government failure question the significance of such market failures others voice skepticism about the ability of governments to take any action in the economy which is not counterproductive but none of them seems to be able to explain why a less developed country like india failed to grow during the first half of this century under a non interventionist colonial adnministration thus while the debate goes on neither side succeeds in convincing the other

does environmental performance affect financial performance a meta analysis abstract what do we know about the impact of environmental regulations performance on firm performance after more than three decades of theoretical as well as empirical research the results seem to remain inconclusive some papers suggest that regulations harm firms while others claim that regulations may contribute positively and give an impetus to innovations therefore i examine the heterogeneity in financial environmental performance nexus empirically carrying out a meta regression analysis of 64 outcomes from 37 empirical studies to uncover the underlying factors which can influence the observed variation in the empirical results the results suggest both that the empirical method used matters for the nexus and that the likelihood of finding a negative link between environmental and financial performance significantly increases when using simple correlation coefficients instead of more advanced econometric analysis the results also indicate that the portfolio studies tend to report a negative link between environmental and financial performance this likely reflects the omitted factors in portfolio studies the positive link is found more frequently in common law countries than in civil law countries the results also point to the importance of appropriate time coverage to establish a positive link between environmental and financial performance

do fair trade and eco labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience abstract in this study a face to face survey was conducted in order to reveal consumer preferences for ethical and environmentally sound labeling programs in coffee valuation questions regarding the fair trade shade grown and organic coffee labels were asked using a payment card format after consumers were previously informed about each of the labeling programs results suggest that consumers are very receptive toward both fair trade and shade grown coffee labels and consequently are willing to pay higher premiums for these labeling programs than for the organic coffee

environmental regulation and mnes location does csr matter abstract we investigate whether firms with relatively low environmental standards are more often located in countries that are poor corrupt or have weak environmental regulations we find new empirical evidence in favor of the pollution haven hypothesis which states that mnes are transferring their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation our findings suggest that these are not necessarily the poorest or most corrupt countries we establish that mnes with strong social responsibility avoid locating their operations in countries with weak environmental regulation

does competition destroy ethical behavior explanations of unethical behavior often neglect the role of competition as opposed to greed in assuring its spread using the examples of child labor corruption excessive executive pay corporate earnings manipulation and commercial activities by universities this paper clarifies the role of competition in promoting censured conduct when unethical behavior cuts costs competition drives down prices and entrepreneurs incomes and thereby reduces their willingness to pay for ethical conduct nonetheless i suggest that competition might be good for ethical behavior in the long run because it promotes growth and raises incomes higher incomes raise the willingness to pay for ethical behavior but may also change what people believe to be ethical for the better this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

private vs public regulation political economy of the international environment minimum standards set by a world environmental organization weo and ngo labelling are promoted as alternative approaches to international environmental protection we explore the potential inter play between these two approaches when the weo is subject to pressure from producers we find that if weo and ngo schemes are mutually exclusive then the existence of an ngo alternative increases industry resistance to weo proposals and this may reduce welfare if however the schemes are run in parallel existence of the ngo lessens producer opposition to weo activities this allows the weo to be bolder in its proposals which is good for welfare

measuring risk in environmental finance abstract environmental sustainability indices such as the dow jones sustainability indexes and the ethibel sustainability index quantify the development and promotion of sustainable social ethical and environmental values in the community moreover such indices provide a benchmark for managing sustainability portfolios and developing financial products and services that are linked to sustainable economic environmental social and ethical criteria this paper reviews the existing data and risk indices in environmental finance the main purpose of the paper is to analyse existing sustainability and ethical indices in environmental finance and evaluate empirical environmental risk by estimating conditional volatility clustering that is inherent in these indices financial volatility models are estimated to analyse the underlying conditional volatility or time varying risk that is inherent in alternative environmental sustainability indices volatility clustering is observed for most series but some extreme observations are also evident the log and second moment conditions suggest that valid inferences can be drawn for purposes of sensible empirical analysis

the curse of the haven the impact of multinational enterprise on environmental regulation abstract we analyze the behavior of multinational enterprises in the context of resource rich and poor countries and regarding high and low income countries we depart from the pollution haven hypothesis and the resource curse the pollution haven hypothesis states that multinational enterprises move their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation the resource curse holds that economic growth in countries abundant in natural resources is reduced we find that more polluting firms are relatively more often located in countries with weak environmental regulation however multinational enterprises do not have a significant impact on environmental regulation in the host country it appears that it is mainly the quality of institutions that drives both the pollution haven and the resource curse

corporate social responsibility in the banking industry motives and financial performance abstract the current study investigates the association between corporate social responsibility csr and financial performance fp and discusses the driving motives of banks to engage in csr three motives namely strategic choices altruism and greenwashing suggest that the relationship between csr and fp is positive non negative and non existent respectively we obtained our sample which covered 2003 2009 from the ethical investment research service eiris databank and bankscope database the data consists of 162 banks in 22 countries we then classified the banks into four types based on their degree of engagement in csr this study proposes the use of an extended version of the heckman two step regression in which the first step adopts a multinomial logit model and the second step estimates the performance equation with the inverse mills ratio generated by the first step the empirical results show that csr positively associates with fp in terms of return on assets return on equity net interest income and non interest income in contrast csr negatively associates with non performing loans hence strategic choice is the primary motive of banks to engage in csr

the changing nature of gender selection into employment europe over the great recession the aim of this paper is to evaluate the role played by selectivity issues induced by nonemployment in explaining gender wage gap patterns in the eu since the onset of the great recession we show that male selection into the labour market traditionally disregarded has increased this is particularly the case in peripheral european countries where dramatic drops in male unskilled jobs have taken place during the crisis as regards female selection traditionally positive we document mixed findings while it has declined in some countries as a result of increasing female lfp due to an added worker effect it has become even more positive in other countries this is due to adverse labour demand shifts in industries which are intensive in temporary work where women are over represented these adverse shifts may have more than offset the rise in unskilled female labour supply

bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence a discussion on the coase theorem and the porter and van der linde hypothesis environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have been associated with the notion of additional costs of compliance rather than with innovation and sustainability the contrary has also been suggested claiming that strict environmental legislation merely serves as a catalyst for firms to retain obvious economic and environmental mutual gains so called win wins laying around waiting to be collected such implications can be seen from the porter and van der linde writings heavily criticised by palmer et al as being built on faulty examples this paper supports that conclusion and uses property rights and transactions costs theories to find private incentives to explore the win wins for those actors who have the largest potentials to diminish the pressure on our environment by applying the coase theorem emphasising transaction costs and property rights this paper argues that strong public support is needed to create private incentives for exploring economic and environmental win win innovations the public support suggested is to a extend producer responsibilities where the same costs which may be neglected by the end consumers will if transferred to the design owner be viewed as a production cost and to b enforce environmental public procurement both may be combined with a support to c actors such as non governmental organisations and consumer agencies positioning themselves as information bridges by informing the consumers the negative effects of asymmetric information among actors can thereby be diminished as well as the low interest to primarily care for the environment among common consumers

unemployment duration competing and defective risks this paper examines the determinants of unemployment duration in a competing risks framework with two destination states inactivity and employment the innovation is the recognition of defective risks a polynomial hazard function is used to differentiate between two possible sources of infinite durations the first is produced by a random process of unlucky draws the second by workers rejecting a destination state the evidence favors the mover stayer model over the search model refinement of the former approach using a more flexible baseline hazard function produces a robust and more convincing explanation for positive and zero transition rates out of unemployment

direct foreign ownership institutional investors and firm characteristics in this paper we characterize foreign ownership using a dataset of ownership and attributes of swedish rms the analysis reveals that foreigners show a preference for large rms rms paying low dividends and rms with large cash positions on their balance sheets when we further analyze the preference for large rms we nd that market liquidity and presence in international markets measured through export sales or listings on other exchanges seem to characterize foreign holdings better than rm size alone foreigners also tend to underweight rms with a dominant owner importantly we demonstrate that most of the features associated with foreign ownership are driven by the fact that foreign investors typically are mutual funds or other institutional investors hence we identify an institutional investor bias rather than a foreign investor bias finally using ownership data on a country level we conclude that the results are particularly strong among u s investors who comprise the largest institutions among foreign investors 2001 elsevier science s a all rights reserved jel classixcation g1 g15

unintended impacts of public investments on private decisions the depletion of forested wetlands by affecting relative economic returns infrastructure investments can induce major changes in private land use the authors find that 30 percent of forested wetland depletion in the mississippi valley has resulted from private decisions induced by federal flood control projects despite explicit federal policy to preserve wetlands the model aggregates individual land use decisions using a parametric distribution of unobserved land quality dynamic simulations are used to quantify the impacts on wetlands of federal projects and other factors copyright 1990 by american economic association

appropriative water rights and the efficient allocation of resources this paper investigates the allocative efficiency of the appropriative system of water rights within the context of a simplified model of a water using industry at a long run competitive equilibrium for the industry and with a prohibition on the transfer of water rights among firms it is shown that 1 senior appropriators claim and use more water than junior appropriators 2 senior appropriators bear less risk than junior appropriators 3 the allocation of water and diversion capacitie 6among firms is inefficient being dominated by an equal sharing among firms the equal sharing allocation which is pareto optimal when diversion capacities are supplied by a competitive leasing industry can be achieved under the appropriative system if there are competitive markets in water rights and in leases for the use of diversion capacities an application of the coase theorem