modified ecological footprint accounting and analysis based on embodied exergy a case study of the chinese society 1981 2001 abstract the resource consumption of the chinese society from 1981 to 2001 is investigated by ecological footprint ef as an aggregate indicator based on the theory of ecological thermodynamics a modified calculation of ecological footprint termed as embodied exergy ecological footprint eeef in contrast to the conventional one is performed and related overall trends of the chinese society 1981 2001 are analyzed the annual policy for the individual sector is described in detail corresponding to the ef and eeef components comparison of the conventional ef and the eeef based on different views of ecological production is outlined the ef intensity and eeef intensity are also presented to depict the resource consumption level corresponding to unit economic output finally eeef is suggested to serve as a modified indicator of ef towards illustrating the productions of the resource environment population and thereby reflecting the ecological overshoot of the general ecological system

environmental regulation industrial innovation and green development of chinese manufacturing based on an extended cdm model abstract as for the academics and policymakers more attention has been given to the issue on how to drive green development of the manufacturing through regulations and innovations we construct the extended crepon duguet mairesse cdm model and employ the panel data of chinese manufacturing industries during 2003 2014 to examine the effects of environmental regulation on industrial innovation and green development the findings reveal that 1 in the long term environmental regulation has crowded out r d investment 2 environmental regulation has inhibited patent outputs so that the weak version of porter hypothesis is not underpinned 3 in the short term environmental regulation has promoted the improvements of labor productivity energy efficiency and environmental efficiency in the manufacturing industry excluding green total factor productivity gtfp whereas in the long term environmental regulation only has increased energy efficiency while it has obstructed labor productivity which provides no support for the strong version of porter hypothesis 4 different innovation outputs have distinct influences on labor productivity energy efficiency environmental efficiency and gtfp finally this paper provides pertinent policy implications

prices and quantities unsustainable consumption and the global economy abstract the ecological unsustainability of current consumption patterns is now well documented one aspect of this problem which has not been sufficiently addressed is the growth of excess consumption driven by falling goods prices the index of department store prices have fallen substantially since the early 1990s in large part because global capital mobility and excess global labor supply has allowed firms to depress wages and avoid paying environmental costs consumers have responded by purchasing increasing numbers of these artificially cheap goods the example of apparel is discussed in some detail and data from other goods categories are presented these trends suggest that achieving sustainable consumption in the us is not only a technical issue but will also involve fundamental changes in the global political economy to eliminate the artificially low prices of imported goods

is there a glass ceiling in sweden using 1998 data we show that the gender log wage gap in sweden increases throughout the wage distribution and accelerates in the upper tail we interpret this as a strong glass ceiling effect we use quantile regression decompositions to examine whether this pattern can be ascribed primarily to gender differences in labor market characteristics or in the rewards to those characteristics even after extensive controls for gender differences in age education both level and field sector industry and occupation we find that the glass ceiling effect we see in the raw data persists to a considerable extent

adoption of digital repositories for co2 emissions reduction the case of korea abstractthis study aims to estimate the potential economic benefits energy and co2 emissions reductions when using trusted third party digital repository ttpr services in one individual bank and within the banking industry in korea first the cost benefit and net benefit of using ttpr services in the banking industry are estimated second the net induced output effect is estimated third based on an environmentally extended input output analysis co2 emissions reduction was estimated as 1924 32 tons in 2009 and the energy consumption reduction as 640 70 toe fourth the total economic benefit which is the sum of the net induced output effect and economic value of co2 emissions reductions is approximately 11 04 million the findings demonstrate that energy consumption and co2 emissions reductions are meaningful enough to result in significant economic benefits therefore the korean government should promote the use of ttpr services in the entire industry

the role of exergy in energy policy making abstract this paper deals with the utilization of exergy as an efficient tool for energy policy making applications since exergy is a measure of quantity and quality of the energy sources unlike energy which is only about the quantity in addition energy and exergy concepts are evaluated for various actual processes and the role of exergy is discussed for energy and environment policy making activities from several key perspectives e g quality energy conservation environment economy and sustainable development the results of this study exhibit that the potential usefulness exergy in addressing and solving environmental problems as well as attaining sustainable development is crucial

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

quantifying economic sustainability implications for free enterprise theory policy and practice article i nfo in a previous paper ulanowicz goerner lietaer and gomez 2009 we combined thermodynamic network and information theoretic measures with research on real life ecosystems to create a generalized quantitative measure of sustainability for any complex matter energy flow system the current paper explores how this metric and its related concepts can be used to provide a new narrative for long term economic health and sustainability based on a system s ability to maintain a crucial balance between two equally essential but complementary factors resilience and efficiency this generic explanation of the network structure needed to maintain long term robustness provides the missing theoretical explanation for what constitutes healthy development and the mathematical means to differentiate it quantitatively from mere growth matching long standing observations of sustainable vitality in natural ecosystems and living organisms the result is a much clearer more accurate understanding of the conditions needed for free enterprise networks to produce the kind of sustainable vitality everyone desires one which enhances and reliably maintains the health and well being of all levels of global civilization as well as the planet

understanding the family gap in pay for women with children as the gender gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing the family gap in pay between mothers and nonmothers has been widening one reason may be the institutional structure in the united states which has emphasized equal pay and opportunity policies but not family policies in contrast to other countries that have implemented both the authors now have evidence on the links between one such family policy and women s pay recent research suggests that maternity leave coverage by raising women s retention after childbirth also raises women s levels of work experience job tenure and pay

biophysical assessments in evaluating industrial development an experience from taiwan freshwater aquaculture abstract herman e daly noted in 1992 that maintaining the scale of the physical economy within ecological capacity is vital in pursuing sustainability leading to the use of biophysical assessments as a central concept in sustainability analysis from the perspective of ecological economics accordingly this study provides an empirical support for the key role of biophysical assessments in sustainability analysis by presenting the pictures of taiwan freshwater aquaculture from monetary and biophysical perspectives the analytical results demonstrate that freshwater aquaculture contributes to taiwan s economic prosperity from a monetary perspective but causes land subsidence from the biophysical perspective results of this study also indicate the critical role of spatial dimension in biophysical assessments

measuring global oil trade dependencies an application of the point wise mutual information method abstract oil trade is one of the most vital networks in the global economy in this paper we analyze the 1998 2012 oil trade networks using the point wise mutual information pmi method and determine the pairwise trade preferences and dependencies using examples of the usa s trade partners this research demonstrates the usefulness of the pmi method as an additional methodological tool to evaluate the outcomes from countries decisions to engage in preferred trading partners a positive pmi value indicates trade preference where trade is larger than would be expected for example in 2012 the usa imported 2 548 7 kbpd despite an expected 358 5 kbpd of oil from canada conversely a negative pmi value indicates trade dis preference where the amount of trade is smaller than what would be expected for example the 15 year average of annual pmi between saudi arabia and the u s a is 0 130 and between russia and the usa 1 596 we reflect the three primary reasons of discrepancies between actual and neutral model trade can be related to position price and politics the pmi can quantify the political success or failure of trade preferences and can more accurately account temporal variation of interdependencies

is there a glass ceiling over europe exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution using harmonised data from the european union household panel we analyse gender pay gaps by sector across the wages distribution for ten countries we find that the mean gender pay gap in the raw data typically hides large variations in the gap across the wages distribution we use quantile regression qr techniques to control for the effects of individual and job characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women we find that first gender pay gaps are typically bigger at the top of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with the existence of glass ceilings for some countries gender pay gaps are also bigger at the bottom of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with sticky floors third the gender pay gap is typically higher at the top than the bottom end of the wage distribution suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors and that these prevail in the majority of our countries fourth the gender pay gap differs significantly across the public and the private sector wages distribution for each of our eu countries

an empirical analysis of process and product patenting a simultaneous equation framework the results of this study support the hypothesis that research activity is not a homogeneous activity and that important differences exist between the determinants of process patenting and product patenting further the effects on concentration and advertising of research depend on the type of research carried on by firms concentration and process patenting are positively related and concentration and product patenting are not there is some weak evidence linking advertising and product patenting further process patenting tends to generate greater industrial concentration

does trade liberalization lead to environmental burden shifting in the global economy abstract does trade liberalization lead to the outsourcing of pollution from industrialized countries to developing countries according to the pollution haven hypothesis international trade is a key channel through which richer countries can geographically dissociate consumption from production of goods we examine whether and how trade liberalization via preferential trade agreements ptas facilitates the shifting of consumption based environmental burdens from developed countries via imports to poorer countries via exports based on panel data analysis of 183 countries from 1987 to 2013 we find partial evidence for trade induced environmental burden shifting while we observe an increase in footprint exports from low income countries when these countries liberalize trade this is not matched by an increase in footprint imports of high income countries our results also show that environmental clauses in ptas and participation in international environmental agreements do not influence the relationship between trade liberalization and ecological footprint movements however domestic institutions have a significant effect on the trade induced distribution of environmental burdens these findings suggest that ptas as a policy tool for trade liberalization are per se unlikely to induce exploitation of low income countries natural capital by wealthier nations however they suggest that political incentives inherent to democratic institutions encourage environmental burden shifting

firm size and r d intensity a re examination using data from the federal trade commission s line of business program and survey measures of technological opportunity and appropriability conditions this paper finds that overall firm size has a very small statistically insignificant effect on business unit r d intensity when either fixed industry effects or measured industry characteristics are taken into account business unit size has no effect on the r d intensity of business units that perform r d but it affects the probability of conducting r d business unit and firm size jointly explain less than one per cent of the variance in r d industry effects explain nearly half the variance two sets of well known hypotheses are associated with the later work of joseph schumpeter the first concerns the effects of market concentration on research and development investment and on innovative performance the second bears on the effects of firm size on r d and innovation in a recent paper levin cohen and mowery 1985 we re examined the first set of hypotheses simple regressions at the line of business level replicated the established findings that both r d intensity and innovative performance first increase and then decrease as industrial concentration rises the effect of concentration however was sharply attenuated when we controlled for interindustry differences in technological opportunity and in the appropriability of returns from new technology our results suggested that it is probably unwarranted to conclude that market concentration favors r d investment and innovation in this paper we investigate the schumpeterian hypothesis that large size is conducive to r d investment this relationship has been studied at least as intensively as the link between concentration and r d but our approach is novel in two respects first using data collected by the federal trade

do deployment policies pick technologies by not picking applications a simulation of investment decisions in technologies with multiple applications abstract the role of deployment policies that aim to foster technological change has grown considerably especially in the fields of energy and climate however recent research has shown that the adoption of deployment policies carries the potential of locking in the technology that is most cost effective at the point of policy introduction but may be inefficient in the long term the present paper contributes to the emerging literature on the role of deployment policies in creating path dependency and eventually technology lock in while previous studies focused on the relationship between lock in and the technology specificity of deployment policies this paper introduces a new factor the existence of multiple applications for a technology we argue that this factor is highly relevant for technological lock in and should be considered by policy makers to support our argument we simulate the competition among four stationary battery technologies across energy system applications in an investment simulation model this simulation shows that the degree of competition among technologies differs strongly across applications which corresponds with a highly varying lock in probability hence selecting applications in deployment policies very likely corresponds to selecting technologies we discuss the implications of these results for both policy makers and for the academic debate on deployment policies and technological lock in as well as on technology assessment and governance more generally based on the notion that policies can have different technology specificity levels we develop the idea of the application specificity of policies and provide examples of currently enacted deployment policies that vary in terms of their technology and application specificity

human appropriation of natural capital a comparison of ecological footprint and water footprint analysis the water footprint concept introduced in 2002 is an analogue of the ecological footprint concept originating from the 1990s whereas the ecological footprint ef denotes the bioproductive area hectares needed to sustain a population the water footprint wf represents the freshwater volume cubic metres per year required in elaborating the wf concept into a well defined quantifiable indicator a number of methodological issues have been addressed with many similarities to the methodological concerns in ef analysis the methodology followed in wf studies is in most cases analogous to the methodology taken in ef studies but deviates at some points well reasoned it has been chosen for instance to specifically take into account the source and production circumstances of products and assess the actual water use involved thus not taking global averages as a result one can exactly localise the spatial distribution of a water footprint of a country with respect to the outcome of the footprint estimates one can see both similarities and striking differences food consumption for instance contributes significantly to both the ef and the wf but mobility and associated energy use is very important only for the ef from a sustainability perspective the wf of a country tells another story and thus at times will put particular development strategies in a different perspective the paper reviews and compares the methodologies in ef and wf studies compares nation s footprint estimates and suggests how the two concepts can be interpreted in relation to one another the key conclusion is that the two concepts are to be regarded as complementary in the sustainability debate

false prophet or genuine savior assessing the effects of economic openness on sustainable development 1980 99 while many herald globalization the increasing interconnectedness of national economies to be associated with rising standards of living across the globe others fear its effects on sustainability antiglobalization forces and environ mentalists view these developments as a threat to the welfare of future generations because of profligate and excessive current consumption this study is the first to estimate the effects of dependence on trade foreign direct investment fdi and an index of economic freedom on the world bank s measure of sustainability the gen uine savings rate which measures the rate at which investment in the total stock of manufactured human and natural capital exceeds its depreciation contrary to pessi mists fears our indicators of economic openness show positive effects on sustain ability results that are robust to sample size testing procedure and several alternative specifications the results support those who suggest that distorted economies tend to be both inefficient and damaging to future generations if increasing trade fdi and economic freedom are hallmarks of globalization then worries about its effects on future well being are misplaced

sustainable total factor productivity growth the case of china abstract a scientific and rational evaluation of the sustainable development process is of vital and practical significance for not only china but also the entire world this study incorporates the ecological footprint index and the human development index into the translog production function to define and construct a sustainable total factor productivity growth index the sustainable total factor productivity growth of 30 provinces in china from 2006 to 2016 was calculated by employing the stochastic frontier analysis method based on the translog production function the results are as follows firstly from 2006 to 2016 the overall sustainable total factor productivity growth of china was slow indicating sluggish sustainable development secondly factors such as labor productivity and environmental regulations were found to improve sustainable technological efficiency positively while capital deepening economic openness and industrial structure played a negative role in promoting sustainable technological efficiency thirdly sustainable total factor productivity growth for china s regions presented different upward trends in the order of the western central and eastern regions from high to low four the divergence of sustainable total factor productivity growth among the provinces revealed a high incidence of economic imbalance accompanied by the matthew effect thus revealing the problems of unresolved imbalances in china s sustainable development progress hence to improve china s sustainable total factor productivity growth it is imperative to focus on measures such as ensuring environmental governance upgrading the industrial structure and narrowing the gap in regional development

r d appropriability opportunity and market structure new evidence on some schumpeterian hypotheses one of the largest bodies of literature in the field of industrial organization is devoted to the interpretation and testing of several hypotheses advanced by joseph schumpeter 1950 concerning innovation and industrial market structure one set of hypotheses focuses on the role of firm size as a determinant of r d spending and the rate of technological advance another set focuses on the effect of market concentration on r d and technological advance in this paper we reexamine the latter set of hypotheses at the industry level using new data on r d appropriability and technological opportunity collected by levin et al 1984 in a survey of r d executives in 130 industries

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

promises and pitfalls in environmentally extended input output analysis for china a survey of the literature abstract as the world s largest developing economy china plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern environmentally extended input output analysis ee ioa is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large scale environmental impacts in china calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions carbon and water footprints pollution and embodied energy this paper surveys the published articles regarding ee ioa for china in peer reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature examining the research impact environmental issues addressed and data utilized the paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations

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

determinants of innovation in energy intensive industry and implications for energy policy abstracts the korean government adopted green growth in 2008 as an environmentally friendly growth strategy the energy efficiency of korea however is still relatively low due to the large portion of energy intensive industry eii in its manufacturing sector to improve energy efficiency in korea from an eii perspective a new approach has to be taken because restructuring entire industries would take too much time and be too costly this study aims to emphasize the importance of innovation and analyze the effects of r d on product and process innovations in eii in korea the probit model is adopted to estimate the effects of eight determinants in the korea innovation survey 2008 data the results of this study demonstrate that one of the most important determinants the r d personnel ratio has a strong positive effect on both product and process innovation while another determinant r d intensity only has a strong and positive effect on process innovation in eii because of the resulting innovation energy policies should be enacted to enhance energy efficiency thus the korean government should keep providing incentives for firms in eii to invest more financial and human resources in their r d activities

an ecological footprint approach to external debt relief abstract this paper applies martinez alier s environ values 2 1993 97 ecological debt concept to the problem of debt relief exploring the possibility of compensatory transfers from rich to poor countries based on existing ecological balances i employ recent estimates on ecological footprints and ecosystem values to estimate the ecological debt to be distributed among eligible transfer recipients all less developed countries ldcs the results provide a policy criterion for transfers in the event that future circumstances make large scale international debt relief compulsory the study probably underestimates the appropriate transfer amounts because of conservative assumptions regarding the environmental values and the size of the north s ecological debt in physical terms

emergy based ecological footprint analysis for a mega city the dynamic changes of shanghai abstract to move towards sustainable urban development interactions between economic and ecological systems should be further investigated due to their coupled relations in this study we propose an emergy based ecological footprint eef analysis framework shanghai was selected as a case study city to see its dynamic changes from 2007 to 2016 the results show that shanghai had a large ecological deficit an extremely high ecological footprint intensity and a poor coordination relationship between its ecological system and its economic system indicating a great ecological challenge that it is facing the uneven distribution of its emergy ecological footprint is mainly due to the large share of fossil fuels land type but with the city s great efforts the overall ecological pressure has been reduced and the coordination relationship has also been improved while the local economy is still booming pearson correlation analysis further indicates that the city s policy on developing tertiary industry has resulted in a positive effect on improving the coordinating relationship the ratio between the output value of heavy industry and gross industrial output value has the most negative correlation with the coordinating relationship finally policy recommendations are raised by considering the local realities these recommendations can also provide valuable insights to other megacities with similar challenges

determinants of innovation the study examines how firm size market structure profitability and growth influence innovative activity in small to medium sized australian manufacturing businesses using the recently released confidentialised unit record file drawn from the business longitudinal survey of the australian bureau of statistics regression analysis is conducted to determine the factors that effect subsequent innovative activity for the full sample of businesses as well as for sub samples of firms from high and low technological opportunity industries most variables including size r d intensity market structure and trade shares are found to be conducive to further innovative activity for the full sample and for high tech firms for low tech industries fewer variables are significant

the impact of segregation and sorting on the gender wage gap evidence from german linked longitudinal employer employee data for this study the author inspects the relationship between segregation in the workplace measured as the proportion female in job cells and the gender wage gap using linked longitudinal employer employee data from the german employment register he extends the literature by controlling for nonrandom sorting of workers into job cells establishments and occupations in line with previous studies the pooled least squares estimates show that the gender wage gap increases as the job cell level proportion of females increases this increase is attributable to the fact that women experience greater wage declines than men do when additional women enter their job cells controlling additionally for unobserved heterogeneity at the individual establishment occupation and job cell levels considerably reduces the size of the proportion female effects on women s wages while rendering the effects on men s wages insignificant or even positive the same controls also significantly decrease the proportion effects on the wage gap the related sorting analysis shows that a good deal of the proportion effects can be explained by unobserved individual ability and suggests that especially women working in job cells with small proportions of females show above average unobserved individual ability

constructing a network of the social economic consumption system of china using extended exergy analysis abstract the prominent conflict between consumption and environmental resources is acknowledged as a significant force in affecting the social ecological community balance the whole process of resource allocation utilization efficiency and outcome are crucial clues in uncovering the structural and functional characteristics in complex consuming systems herein network relationship provides a system oriented modeling technique for examining the structure as well as flow of materials or energy from an input output perspective meanwhile extended exergy the only currently available thermodynamic based metric for social economic environmental impacts associated with energy consumption manpower and monetary operation as well as environmental emission is an extension of the labor theory of value and a possible sustainability metric the core purpose of this research is to construct a network of the social economic consumption system of china using extended exergy analysis to explain the interrelationship among different sectors within a thermodynamic metric therefore we firstly make a database of extended exergy accounting in the chinese consumption system data are available for 2007 which can be divided into seven sectors based on the reclassification of the regularly published 42 sector input output table namely 1 agriculture 2 extraction 3 conversion 4 industry 5 transportation 6 tertiary and 7 domestic sectors then we will construct an extended exergy network to gain insight into the thermodynamic distribution within sectoral criterion lastly the network results and indicator analysis are explained for china s social metabolism maintained by a large quantity of energy resources and labor as well as the environmental costs within an exergy foundation

buyer market structure and r d effort a simultaneous equations model the theoretical and empirical investigations of the relationship between market structure and the firm s incentive to invent and innovate have concentrated on the effects of the structure of the supply side of the market this focus on the supply side originated in schumpeter s controversial hypothesis that current market power provided the necessary conditions and future market power provided the incentive for technical change schumpeter 1950 this hypothesis stimulated a vast number of theoretical refinements and empirical tests of relations between research and development activity r d and supply side characteristics such as concentration firm size and diversification this literature has been well summarized by kamien and schwartz 1975 and scherer 1980 the analysis of the effects of the buyer market structure on the selling industry conduct and performance has been limited both theoretically and empirically stigler 1964 modeled the effects of the size distribution of buyers on price competition in oligopoly telser 1964 devel oped a theory of advertising messages in which he suggested that advertising would increase when buyers were many and small lustgarten 1975 tested the effects of buyer market structure on price cost margins and advertising and found the relations suggested by stigler and telser invention and innovation are forms of competition which like price and advertising will be affected by both buyer market structure and seller market structure however unlike price and advertising competition there have not been explicit attempts to establish theoretical and empirical relations between buyer market structure and inventive and innovative activity the effects of buyer market structure on the selling industry s incentive to invent and innovate is relevant to interpreting the effects of seller market structure on this effort a number of previous studies of the effects of seller market structure on technical change have found that seller concentration may have a slight positive impact on inventive and innovative effort kamien and schwartz 1975 p 20 even this weak relation may be due to not controlling for buyer market structure if galbraith s 1952 countervailing power hypothesis is correct lustgarten 1975 p 128 concentration in the buyer and seller markets may be positively correlated if buyer market concentration is positively related to inventive and innovative effort in the selling industry the empirical estimate of the partial effect of seller concentration will be biased upward this paper investigates the effect of buyer market structure on r d effort section ii draws together the literature that is relevant to the issue of the relation between buyer market structure and seller inventive and innovative activity section iii develops a simultaneous equation model of r d activity where r d advertising and concentration are endogenous variables section iv uses data on scientific and engineering inputs to test this model section v summarizes these results

evaluating the trends of china s ecological civilization construction using a novel indicator system ecological civilization construction has become one of the key strategies to address china s serious resource and environmental issues however how to define and how to assess ecological civilization ec are worth further exploring this paper constructed a people oriented ec indicator system composed of a set of indicators viz degree of physiological equilibrium dpe degree of psychological imbalance dpi degree of imbalance of human and environment dihe degree of human development dhp disharmony degree of economy and environment ddee and a composite index ecological civilization index eci and then the indicator system was used to investigate the trends of china s ec construction during 1980 2010 based on the reference year 1980 the study revealed that 1 physiological equilibrium of chinese people has been slightly disturbed 2 psychological balance of chinese people has been broken seriously 3 the balance between human and environment has been destroyed greatly 4 china has achieved great progress in promoting human development 5 this country has improved the relationship between economy and environment obviously despite that this improvement pace still falls behind speed of economic growth and 6 china s ec level has declined during this study period therein psychological problem and conflict between human and environment are the key obstacles to china s ec progress china s government should further emphasize reform of its income distribution system and transformation of its economic development mode in the future

using the fisherian concept of income to guide a nation s transition to a steady state economy abstract many ecological economists have long been advocating that industrialised nations should abandon their growth predilection and initiate the transition to a steady state economy to demonstrate how a nation s transition to a steady state economy might be usefully guided fisherian national income one of the best known indicators of sustainable economic welfare is calculated for australia for the period 1967 1997 also calculated for the study period is the changing physical scale of the australian economy by juxtaposing per capita fisherian income and the growth of the australian economy it is shown that australia surpassed its optimal macroeconomic scale in the mid 1970s while around this time australia began a transition to a lower rate of growth that arrested the steep decline in per capita fisherian income australia had reverted back to a high growth policy by the end of the study period it chose not to continue the deceleration towards a steady state economy a policy stance that is likely to be detrimental to the sustainable economic welfare enjoyed by the average australian

vocational training and gender wages and occupational mobility among young workers this paper investigates the relationship between the gender wage gap the choice of training occupation and occupational mobility we use longitudinal data for young workers with apprenticeship training in west germany workers make occupational career choices early during their careers and women and men pursue very different occupational careers we reconsider whether through occupational segregation women are locked in low wage careers kunze 2005 or whether they can move up to higher wage paths through mobility we furthermore investigate whether patterns have changed across cohorts during the period 1975 and 2001 and whether effects vary across the distribution the main results are first while there exists a persistent gender wage gap over experience the gap has decreased over time second in the lower part of the wage distribution the gap is highest and it increases with experience third occupational mobility is lower for women than for men and the wage gains due to occupational mobility are higher for men than for women especially in the lower part of the wage distribution we conclude that occupational mobility has reduced the gender wage gap but lock in effects are still stronger for women compared to men

breaking the glass ceiling the effect of board quotas on female labor market outcomes in norway in late 2003 norway passed a law mandating 40 representation of each gender on the board of public limited liability companies the primary objective of this reform was to increase the representation of women in top positions in the corporate sector and decrease the gender disparity in earnings within that sector we document that the women appointed to these boards post reform were observably more qualified than their female predecessors along many dimensions and that the gender gap in earnings within boards fell substantially however we see no robust evidence that the reform benefited the larger set of women employed in the companies subject to the quota moreover the reform had no clear impact on highly qualified women whose qualifications mirror those of board members but who were not appointed to boards finally we find mixed support for the view that the reform affected the decisions of young women while the reform was not accompanied by any change in female enrollment in business education programmes we do see some improvements in labour market outcomes for young women with graduate business degrees in their early career stages however we observe similar improvements for young women with graduate science degrees suggesting this may not be due to the reform overall seven years after the board quota policy fully came into effect we conclude that it had very little discernible impact on women in business beyond its direct effect on the women who made it into boardrooms

emergy network analysis of chinese sectoral ecological sustainability abstract ecological sustainability of the chinese economy is vital for china as well as for the world by integrating environmental input output analysis emergy theory and a complex network model into one framework this paper explores chinese sectoral ecological sustainability with the most recent 2012 input output table the results show that there are significant differences in emergy intensities among sectors the non metal mining sector is the most emergy intensive sector at 6 06e 17 sej 10000 yuan followed by the metal mining sector additionally output connections have a positive impact on the emergy yield ratio input connections exert a negative impact on the emergy yield ratio and pagerank centrality has a positive effect on the environmental loading ratio this paper updates the chinese sectoral emergy assessment identifies key sectors in the chinese ecological network and analyzes the impact of network indicators on sectoral emergy performance these analyses will be useful in updating the guide for adjusting industrial structure in china

extended exergy based sustainability accounting of a household biogas project in rural china biogas has been earmarked as one of the leading renewable energy sources capable of mitigating environmental emissions in rural areas thus developing an accounting technique is of particular importance in coping with increasing problems related to renewable agriculture and rural energy supply in this study extended exergy was generalised for the sustainability evaluation of biogas projects furthermore a series of extended exergy based indicators was presented as benchmarking from the perspectives of resources economics and greenhouse gas ghg emissions the sustainability of a three in one biogas production system in southern china was thereby evaluated based on the proposed framework the results show that economic costs concentrate in the construction phase ghg emissions are mainly derived from bricks and cement with proportions of 36 23 and 34 91 respectively the largest resource depletion occurs during the consumption of feedstock 87 06 in the operation phase compared with other renewable energy conversion systems the biogas project has a higher renewability 0 925 and economic return on investment ratio 6 82 and a lower ghg emission intensity 0 012 with the merit of bridging thermodynamics and externality the extended exergy based approach presented in this study may effectively appraise the energy and environmental performance of biogas projects

why do some occupations pay more than others social closure and earnings inequality in the united states1 this article elaborates and evaluates the neo weberian notion of social closure to investigate positional inequality in the united states it argues that social and legal barriers around occupations raise the rewards of their members by restricting the labor supply enhancing diffuse demand channeling demand or signaling a particular quality of service hypotheses derived from the closure perspective are evaluated using new data that map five institutionalized closure devices licensing educational credentialing voluntary certification association representation and unionization onto 488 occupations results from multilevel models demonstrate that closure practices particularly those that generate tangible restrictions on the labor supply shape the contemporary structure of occupational earnings returns to these strategies vary across occupations but are not tightly linked to the complexity of the occupation s knowledge base if suitably elaborated closure theory thus offers a promising complemen

extended divisia index decomposition of changes in energy intensity a case of korean manufacturing industry abstract this study aims to examine the energy efficiency of the manufacturing industry of korea by using the extended divisia index decomposition of choi and ang 2012 first we applied the sato vartia index decomposition to the energy intensity of the manufacturing industry in korea second we attributed the growth rate of aggregate energy intensity to 10 sub manufacturing industries through two channels real energy intensity and structural change the result of the decomposition illustrates that the aggregate energy intensity index decreased in the period 1981 2010 the index decomposition analysis demonstrates that real energy intensity decreased by 85 85 whereas structural change increased energy intensity by 69 37 over the same period of time the negative effect of structural change is partly a result of the increasing portion of energy intensive industry in manufacturing the result reflects that industrial structure in korea can be an important aspect for improving energy efficiency

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

early gender gaps among university graduates abstract we use data from six cohorts of university graduates in germany to assess the extent of gender gaps in college and labor market performance twelve to eighteen months after graduation men and women enter college in roughly equal numbers but more women than men complete their degrees women enter college with slightly better high school grades but women leave university with slightly lower marks immediately following university completion male and female full timers work a very similar number of hours per week but men earn more than women across the pay distribution with an unadjusted gender gap in full time monthly earnings of about 20 log points on average including a large set of controls reduces the gap to 5 10 log points the single most important proximate factor that explains the gap is field of study at university

does firm size matter anymore the new economy and firm size wage effects researchers have long known that large firms pay higher wages than small firms for workers with similar measured characteristics however an agreed upon explanation for this firm size wage effect fswe has not been reached recent changes in the economy provide new leverage for testing competing theories for the effect while questions about the existence and nature of the new economy provide new motivation for exploring this topic this study uses the 1988 2003 current population survey and finds that the fswe has declined by about one third over the study period examining the competing explanations for the fswe this study finds that while the sorting of workers by traits unions and industry factors all contribute to some portion of the effect in cross section they fail to explain why it has declined over time market power explanations also fail to find support shifts in organizational structures particularly a decline of internal labor markets appear to best fit the results these findings

interdependence between energy and metals in china evidence from a nexus perspective abstract the lack of knowledge about the interdependence between energy and metals hinders sustainable management of the two essential resources in this study a hybrid framework which combines the environmentally extended input output analysis eeioa and ecological network analysis ena was constructed to evaluate energy metals use and flows within china s economic system in 2012 from the perspective of nexus furthermore the structural properties of nexus networks and mutual relationships between sectors were simultaneously explored the results show that hybrid energy direct energy metals related energy and hybrid metals direct metals energy related metals used by all the sectors were 1 22 and 1 05 times their direct energy and direct metals use respectively in both hybrid energy and metal networks mining industry and construction industry had a strong control and dependence relationship over 50 with other sectors reflecting the tight inter sectoral connection between energy use and metals use therefore stabilizing these main control and dependence pathways is essential to the system s effective operation in addition alleviating excess industrial capacity and optimizing economic structure are two effective measures to improve the currently low energy metals circulation efficiency within china s economy system by revealing the nexus between energy and metals in china this study provides important policy implications for trade offs and synergies between energy and metals use

quantifying the sustainability of economic resource networks an ecological information based approach abstract sustainability as a concept has multiple disparate perspectives stemming from different related disciplines which either maintain ambiguous interpretations or concentrate on metrics pertaining to single aspects of a system given the embedded multi dimensionality of sustainability systemic approaches are needed that can cope with interactions of different dimensions past efforts for measuring sustainability holistically have taken an accounting approach based on the availability and efficiency of resource flows however an accounting approach fails to fully incorporate the intensive parameters pertaining to sustainability an ecological information based approach is a promising holistic measurement which incorporates both intensive and extensive dimensions of sustainability this paper evaluates this approach by applying it to six economic resource trade flow networks virtual water oil world commodity oecd bric commodity oecd bric foreign direct investment and iron and steel from the perspective of biomimicry it appears that these networks can achieve higher levels of efficiency without weakening their robustness to resource delivery the trends of measured efficiency and redundancy of the studied networks are demonstrated to be useful in reflecting long term changes while the trend in robustness levels were found to exhibit similar behavior to an ecosystem in its early phase of development

union density and varieties of coverage the anatomy of union wage effects in germany collective bargaining in germany takes place at either industry or firm level and bargaining coverage is much higher than union density the share of a firm s employees covered can vary between 0 and 100 suggesting that researchers should distinguish union density coverage at the firm level and coverage at the individual level using linked employer employee data the authors estimate ols and quantile regressions of wages on these dimensions of union influence they find that a higher share of employees in a firm covered by industrywide or firm specific contracts is associated with higher wages but find no clear cut effect on wage dispersion yet holding coverage at the firm level constant individual coverage is associated with lower wages and less wage dispersion higher union density reinforces the effects of coverage but for employees in firms without coverage density s effect is negative and thus compresses the wage distribution in firms without coverage

driving forces of rapid co2 emissions growth a case of korea abstract this study aims to investigate korea s final demand structure and its impacts on co 2 emissions in order to reduce co 2 emissions and develop environmental policy directions based on the environmentally extended input output model this study adopts a two step approach 1 to estimate the embodied emissions and their intensities for 393 sectors induced by final demand and 2 to calculate the driving factors of emission growth between 2003 and 2011 and then evaluate the result by using structural decomposition analysis sda the findings of this study demonstrate that the impact of composition change in export with less embodied emission intensities tends to offset the increase in co 2 emission by the export scale growth the relatively low residential electricity price has resulted in the rapid growth of household electricity consumption and significantly contributed to emissions growth the result of sda indicates that korea s final demand behavior yielded high carbonization over the same period the findings suggest that korean government should promote exports in industries with less embedded co 2 in order to protect environments in addition emission information of each product and service should be provided for consumers to change their purchase patterns towards contributing to low carbon emissions as active players

trimming the excess environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption in australia abstract tackling the overconsumption of discretionary foods foods and drinks not necessary to provide the nutrients the body needs is central to aligning human and planetary health whilst the adverse health impacts of discretionary foods are well documented the environmental and broader sustainability impacts of these products deserve more attention especially since their consumption has been increasing in recent decades particularly amongst low income groups this paper presents a quantitative case study analysis of discretionary food consumption and the associated environmental impacts for households from different income groups in australia environmentally extended input output analysis is used to estimate the full life cycle environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption on the basis of household expenditures on average discretionary foods account for a significant 35 39 33 and 35 of the overall diet related life cycle water use energy use carbon dioxide equivalent and land use respectively these significant percentages provide further support for the need to incentivise diets that are both healthier and more sustainable including divestment from discretionary food products the study highlights the challenges ahead including the need for further research on food substitutions to minimise environmental and social impacts whilst maximising nutritional quality especially amongst poorer socioeconomic groups

the importance of energy quality in energy intensive manufacturing evidence from panel cointegration and panel fmols this paper expands on the panel gdp energy cointegration modeling literature it does so by using data disaggregated along sectoral lines and adjusting energy consumption for the quality of the energy source e g electricity is of higher quality than oil which is of higher quality than coal in order to examine the role of energy quality in the five most energy intensive manufacturing sectors iron and steel non ferrous metals non metallic minerals chemicals and pulp and paper the database was constructed by combing energy consumption and energy price data to construct the energy quality index from the iea with economic data value added labor employed and physical capital from the oecd s structural analysis database in addition to finding the variables analyzed are panel i 1 and cointegrated for each sector based panel the long run elasticity estimates from panel fmols indicate the importance of energy quality primarily the shift toward the use of high quality electricity in these energy intensive manufacturing sectors in each case the elasticity for energy quality is greater than that for conventionally measured energy consumption sometimes orders of magnitude greater indeed the elasticity of conventionally measured energy consumption is insignificant to very small for three of the five sectors also when using the energy quality measure the importance of energy consumption relative to the other production factors stands out such results are useful for both energy gdp cointegration causality modelers and cge modelers who may need to estimate elasticities

applying input output analysis to scenario analysis of ecological footprints abstract application of input output analysis to ecological footprints efs is shifting from an ex post static calculation toward an ex ante scenario analysis for enhancing the policy relevance of ef analysis this change in application prompts two issues requiring careful examination 1 what is measured by leontief inverses or extended environmental leontief inverses and 2 whether a sector s land multiplier or compositions of land multiplier can appropriately reflect the effect of delivering one unit of the sector s output to final demand on the required area s of production lands used by the sector itself and by other producing sectors whose products are contributed directly and indirectly to its production the underlying message of these two questions is whether the assumed linear marginal relationship between a sector s output and its intermediate inputs input output coefficients a critical assumption made by w leontief to transform a transactions table from an accounting framework into the input output model can be extended to assume that the marginal relationship between a sector s output and the area of production land it uses for generating output is fixed land output marginal coefficient equal to average coefficient by reviewing the literature on input output analysis and its application to environmental issues and by theoretically and empirically examining the relation between sector output and land appropriation this study advises against the use of land multipliers or their compositions in the ef scenario analysis to apply the input output model to ef scenario analysis for enhancing policy relevance with due attention to the relationship between sector output and land appropriation this study suggests a two stage ef calculation procedure in the first stage the input output application estimates only the required raw materials or generated pollutants for meeting a given consumption pattern which is the objective of environmental input output analysis in the second stage the estimated amount of raw materials or pollutants is converted into land water area and a choice of conversion methods is suggested according to the research questions and the availability of conversion methods and required data

equality for whom organizational policies and the gender gap across the german earnings distribution work establishments are critical for the creation and maintenance of gender inequality organizational practices most notably those that formalize personnel systems or target gender inequality are often assumed to have uniform effects on inequality across the wage hierarchy this assumption has eluded careful empirical scrutiny the authors estimate unconditional quantile regressions with a unique german linked employer employee data set to assess whether formalized human resource practices female friendly diversity measures and the availability of workplace child care facilities affect wage inequality differently across the wage distribution while these policies reduce gender inequality in general they do so more strongly near the bottom of the earnings distribution policies that formalize personnel systems and explicitly promote female employees are particularly advantageous to women in low wage jobs these results suggest that gender policies have a more subtle effect on earnings inequality than

analysis of co2 emissions in apec countries a time series and a cross sectional decomposition using the log mean divisia method abstract we decompose the changes of co2 emissions in apec countries over time as well as the differences of co2 emissions among three income groups of apec countries at a given period of time based on the logarithmic mean divisia decomposition approach among the major findings of the paper the growth in per capita gdp and population are the two dominant contributors to the increase in co2 emissions in most cases furthermore energy efficiency and fuel switching are found to be the two most promising fields for possible cooperation between apec member countries

is the motherhood penalty larger for low wage women a comment on quantile regression in this comment we offer a nontechnical discussion of conventional conditional multivariate quantile regression with an emphasis on the appropriate interpretation of results we discuss its distinction from unconditional quantile regression an analytic method that can be used to estimate varying associations between predictors and outcome at different points of the outcome distribution we argue that the research question posed by budig and hodges 2010 whether the motherhood penalty is larger for low wage women cannot be answered with the authors conditional quantile regression models using more appropriate unconditional quantile regression models we find in contrast to budig and hodges s claims that the motherhood penalty is not largest for low wage women

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

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

using the concept of yield to assess the sustainability of different tourist types abstract sustainability assessments have become important tools for decision makers this research assesses the sustainability of different types of tourists in new zealand by using the concept of yield and by developing yield indicators in the areas of financial public sector and sustainable yield the concept and indicators have been developed in cooperation with the new zealand tourism sector and therefore provide a sector driven approach to implement a sustainability assessment the analysis shows that there are numerous trade offs between indicators when attempting to define the ideal visitor type coach tourists for example are the largest spenders and generate the greatest value added in tourism on a per day basis but they contribute less to the financial sustainability of tourism when the costs of capital are accounted for coach tourists are highly concentrated in a few key destinations and at the same time produce substantial amounts of co2 emissions due to their air travel component in contrast backpacker and camping tourists provide greater financial yield and are more dispersed but they are also the greatest user of publicly provided tourist attractions and therefore come at a higher cost to government than other tourist types camping tourists are also contributing considerably to co2 emissions the yield analysis proposed in this paper could be a valuable tool for complex policy decision making and identifying strategies that lead to high yield tourism