evaluating the comprehensive benefit of eco industrial parks by employing multi criteria decision making approach for circular economy abstract with the increasing conflicts among economic growth environmental deterioration and resource shortage as an effective way to achieve the sustainable development and circular economy the eco industrial park gradually becomes a critical research issue in the field of recycling economy in this paper a hybrid framework for evaluating the comprehensive benefit of eco industrial parks from the perspective of circular economy was proposed firstly the evaluation index system for eco industrial parks was constructed by employing the grey delphi method according to the opinions provided by experts from relevant fields which includes economic benefit criteria social benefit criteria environmental benefit criteria ecology industry construction criteria and management level criteria consisting of seventeen quantitative sub criteria and nine qualitative sub criteria secondly in order to solve complicated uncertain and ambiguous problems under the fuzzy background a hybrid multi criteria decision making mcdm approach was put forward on the basis of superiority linguistic ratings and entropy weight method for weight determination as well as fuzzy vikor for ranking alternatives finally the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed hybrid mcdm approach was demonstrated through a case analysis of six representative eco industrial parks in china and the comprehensive benefits of six eco industrial parks were prioritized effectively the hybrid mcdm approach in this paper presents a great potential in evaluating and ranking the comprehensive benefits of eco industrial parks through solving complex and ambiguous problems in a fuzzy environment and varying mcdm tools the evaluation findings by employing the proposed mcdm approach can provide references for the construction and management of eco industrial parks and relevant policy formulation

nonfarm diversification poverty economic mobility and income inequality a case study in village india this paper assembles data at the all india level and for the village of palanpur uttar pradesh to document the growing importance and influence of the non farm sector in the rural economy between the early 1980s and late 2000s the suggestion from the combined national sample survey and palanpur data is of a slow process of non farm diversification whose distributional incidence on the margin is increasingly pro poor the village level analysis documents that the non farm sector is not only increasing incomes and reducing poverty but appears as well to be breaking down long standing barriers to mobility among the poorest segments of rural society efforts by the government of india to accelerate the process of diversification could thus yield significant returns in terms of declining poverty and increased income mobility the evidence from palanpur also shows however that at the village level a significant increase in income inequality has accompanied diversification away from the farm a growing literature argues that such a rise in inequality could affect the fabric of village society the way in which village institutions function and evolve and the scope for collective action at the village level failure to keep such inequalities in check could thus undermine the pro poor impacts from the process of structural transformation currently underway in rural india

a cross country comparison of rural income generating activities summary this paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households the analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents though less so in the included african countries for most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income diversification not specialization is the norm nevertheless agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries

perspectives on finland s sustainable consumption and production policy abstract the finnish approach that is starting from the basic human needs of food housing mobility and related lifestyles enables us to address the social dimension of sustainable development alongside the ecological and economic dimensions in this context environmental problems cannot be resolved in isolation from people s everyday lives as can happen if environmental policies are based purely on emissions but it is also worth questioning the potential for national scp programmes in today s global markets over the last ten years domestic material flows within the finnish economy have remained fairly constant with gains in material efficiency cancelled out by increasing levels of material consumption however external material flows and the consequent environmental impacts have steadily increased and the magnitude and environmental impacts of both imports and exports are approximately the same as for domestic flows this means that the role of external material flows can no longer be ignored in national scp policies it is also important to integrate scp with climate policies finland s national climate and energy strategy is mainly based on the need to reduce co 2 emissions from energy production and industrial installations but there is also a need for complementary actions to reduce the carbon footprints caused by private and public consumption

do local officials know something we don t decentralization of targeted transfers in albania abstract albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly 20 of its population through a system which allows a degree of community discretion in determining distribution this study indicates that relative to other safety net programs in low income countries social assistance in albania is fairly well targeted to the poor moreover the poverty targeting exceeds that which could be expected on the basis of proxy indicators of targeting alone communes appear to be using local information unlikely to be obtained on the basis of a questionnaire or formula this remains the case conditional on the level of funding allocated from the central government

on the unequal inequality of poor communities important differences exist between communities with respect to their needs capacities and circumstances as central governments are not able to discern these differences fully they seek to achieve their policy objectives by relying on decentralized mechanisms that use local information however household and individual characteristics within communities can also vary substantially a growing theoretical literature suggests that inequality within communities can influence policy outcomes and that this influence could be harmful or helpful depending on the circumstances empirical investigations into the impact of inequality have to date largely been held back by a lack of systematic evidence on community level inequality the authors use household survey and population census data to estimate per capita consumption inequality within communities in three developing countries ecuador madagascar and mozambique communities are found to vary markedly from one another in terms of the degree of inequality they exhibit the authors also show that there should be no presumption that inequality is less severe in poor communities they argue that the kind of community level inequality estimates generated in this paper can be used in designing and evaluating decentralized antipoverty programs

wage labour activities by agricultural households in nicaragua this article considers wage labour activities by agricultural households in nicaragua it analyses the role of 1 comparative advantage as determined by individual and household characteristics and 2 agricultural conditions and market imperfections in shaping wage labour supply an econometric specification is developed which allows for random household specific effects results reveal that non agricultural wage work is largely determined by comparative advantages whereas agricultural wage work is used to deal with a number of agricultural conditions and market imperfections

few opportunities much desperation the dichotomy of non agricultural activities and inequality in western kenya summary using data from western kenya we confirm the existence of a dichotomous non agricultural sector the poverty and inequality implications of the differently motivated diversification strategies only partly correspond to expected patterns while high return activities are indeed confined to richer households low return activities constitute an important income source for households across the entire income distribution finally we examine the wider implications of our findings for rural livelihoods we find that only engagement in high return non agricultural activities is significantly associated with increased agricultural productivity it seems that such high return activities play a key role in triggering cumulative effects of relative livelihood success

regional labor market integration shadow wages and poverty in vietnam poor workers suffer from low returns to their most abundant resource labor in this paper we show that labor market integration strongly affects these returns for poor workers in vietnam using seven representative household surveys it is shown that while regional labor markets have become increasingly integrated over the period 1993 2010 considering market wages of workers in wage employment there remains a strong lack of integration considering shadow wages of workers in farm self employment shadow wages have been increasing as a proportion of market wages during 1993 2010 but they remain only 22 28 of rural market wages by 2010 using a decomposition technique it is shown that the lack of integration between the farm self employment segment with various segments of wage employment regional urban versus rural non farm household versus other enterprises explains primarily the gap in returns to labor between poor and non poor workers these findings show that labor market integration studies should not only focus on observed market wages but also on shadow wages in order to understand the relationship between labor market integration and the returns to labor

inequality and crime this paper considers the relationship between inequality and crime using data from urban counties the behavior of property and violent crime are quite different inequality has no effect on property crime but a strong and robust impact on violent crime with an elasticity above 0 5 by contrast poverty and police activity have significant effects on property crime but little on violent crime property crime is well explained by the economic theory of crime while violent crime is better explained by strain and social disorganization theories

crime and growth convergence evidence from mexico scholars have often argued that crime deters growth but the empirical literature assessing such effect is scarce by exploiting cross municipality income and crime data for mexico a country that experienced a high increase in crime rates over the past decade this study circumvents two of the most common problems faced by researchers in this area these are i the lack of a homogenous consistently comparable measure of crime and ii the small sample problem in the estimation combining income data from poverty maps administrative records on crime and violence and public expenditures data at the municipal level for mexico 2005 2010 the analysis finds evidence indicating that drug related crimes indeed deter growth it also finds no evidence of a negative effect on growth from crimes unrelated to drug trafficking

income inequality and violent crime evidence from mexico s drug war the relationship between income inequality and crime has attracted the interest of many researchers but little convincing evidence exists on the causal effect of inequality on crime in developing countries this paper estimates this effect in a unique context mexico s drug war the analysis takes advantage of a unique data set containing inequality and crime statistics for more than 2 000 mexican municipalities covering a period of 20 years using an instrumental variable for inequality that tackles problems of reverse causality and omitted variable bias this paper finds that an increment of one point in the gini coefficient translates into an increase of more than 10 drug related homicides per 100 000 inhabitants between 2006 and 2010 there are no significant effects before 2005 the fact that the effect was found during mexico s drug war and not before is likely because the cost of crime decreased with the proliferation of gangs facilitating access to knowledge and logistics lowering the marginal cost of criminal behavior which combined with rising inequality increased the expected net benefit from criminal acts after 2005

do favorable land price policy affect renewable energy industry evidence from photovoltaics abstract renewable energy is necessary for sustainable social and economic development this is particularly so with global energy shortages the continuous deterioration of ecosystems and the environment as well as the world population explosion this article qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes the effects and problems of chinese favorable land price policy on photovoltaics in examining the favorable land price policy in china this study develops a multiple linear regression model to study the effects of favorable land price policy on photovoltaic power and photovoltaic industry data used in this research was mainly collected from 20 provinces in china it is found that the development of pv in china has been greatly affected by the favorable land price policy in the end it is highly recommended that favorable land price policy should be continued for renewable energy systemic deficiencies can be overcome through continual reform and innovation of mechanisms

poverty in african households the limits of survey and census representations african poverty statistics depend on household level measurements from survey data making the definition of household of critical importance detailed case studies from tanzania and burkina faso explore 1 understandings of household membership and ambiguities and 2 how well survey definitions capture households as economic units and the implications for household size and responses to and mitigation of poverty we develop an analytic framework of open and closed households open households cope with poverty using flexibility movement and extra household networks but are poorly represented by survey data closed households are likely to be better described by survey data

using repeated cross sections to explore movements into and out of poverty movements in and out of poverty are of core interest to both policymakers and economists yet the panel data needed to analyze such movements are rare in this paper the authors build on the methodology used to construct poverty maps to show how repeated cross sections of household survey data can allow inferences to be made about movements in and out of poverty they illustrate that the method permits the estimation of bounds on mobility and provide non parametric and parametric approaches to obtaining these bounds they test how well the method works on data sets for vietnam and indonesia where we are able to compare our method to true panel estimates the results are sufficiently encouraging to offer the prospect of some limited basic insights into mobility and poverty duration in settings where historically it was judged that the data necessary for such analysis were unavailable

a review on circular economy the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems el articulo muestra un estudio en donde se proporciona una revision extensa de la literatura de las dos ultimas decadas con el proposito de captar las principales caracteristicas y perspectivas de la ce economia circular origenes principios basicos ventajas y desventajas modelado e implementacion de ce en los diferentes niveles micro meso y macro en todo el mundo los resultados demuestran que los origenes de la ce se basan principalmente en la economia ecologica y ecologia industrial

is off farm income reforming the farm evidence from mexico does access to off farm income complement or compete with agricultural production this article explores the effect of off farm income on agricultural production activities using data from the 2003 mexico national rural household survey we first discuss the theoretical conditions under which access to off farm income may influence production in an agricultural household model instrumental variable iv estimation methods are then used to test whether agricultural production activities technologies and input use differ between households with and without access to off farm income we find that off farm income has a negative effect on agricultural output and the use of family labor on the farm but a positive impact on the demand for purchased inputs there is also a slight efficiency gain in households with access to off farm income findings offer insights into how household production evolves as rural households increasingly engage in off farm income activities

is globalization reducing absolute poverty summary using data from 114 countries 1983 2007 we examine the relationship between globalization and world bank absolute poverty estimates we find a significant negative correlation between globalization and poverty robust to several econometric specifications including a fixed effect panel a long run first difference and a pooled ols regression introducing two instruments for globalization we also show that results are robust to correction for potential endogeneity we motivate and test the instruments in several ways in particular information flows and more liberal trade restrictions robustly correlate with lower absolute poverty

eco industrial park initiatives in the usa and the netherlands first lessons abstract since the introduction of the industrial ecology concept by frosch and gallopoulos in 1989 and the apparent success of the kalundborg industrial symbiosis project attention to planned eco industrial park eip development projects has grown all over the world this article includes data from six of these eip development projects three of the projects discussed are located in the netherlands and three in the us this article compares the differences in project approach and results on a national level the approach suggested is derived from the available eip development literature initial research indicates that the dutch eip projects are more successful than their us counterparts this difference in success can be mostly attributed to the fact that the us projects are initiated by local and regional governments that see the project as a way to improve the local regional economy with access to substantial government funds because of this heavy government involvement us companies are in general not interested in the project the more successful dutch projects on the other hand are mostly initiated by the companies themselves with financial and advisory support from the local and regional government

forest loss and economic inequality in the solomon islands using small area estimation to link environmental change to welfare outcomes abstract to study welfare effects of environmental change data from household surveys may be linked to remote sensing data using spatial aggregation to link risks ecological fallacy since surveys are usually representative for areas larger than the spatial scale of decision making units this paper uses survey to census imputation to estimate welfare indicators for small areas to study the effect of deforestation on subsequent inequality in the rural solomon islands this country depends on logging for almost half of foreign exchange and one sixth of government revenue and most forested land remains under customary ownership a sharp increase in log exports to seven times the sustainable yield and a major shift in export destinations as other countries withdrew from the tropical log trade represents an exogenous shock that helps to identify effects of deforestation on inequality rather than the reverse relationship a standard deviation increase in the rate of forest loss over 2000 to 2012 raises the gini index of inequality in 2013 by one third of a standard deviation mean incomes and poverty rates are also higher implying that deforestation makes some households richer while others become poorer these precisely estimated effects would be obscured using more spatially aggregated data

neighbourhood income inequality and property crime this paper examines the relationship between income inequality and property crime using census block group data from three us cities nashville tn portland or and tucson az this paper is one o

updating poverty maps with panel data summary this paper extends the methodology of elbers c lanjouw j o lanjouw p 2003 micro level estimation of poverty and inequality econometrica 71 1 355 364 and presents a low cost approach to arriving at small area welfare estimates for non census years the approach requires panel data and the estimation of a relation between per capita consumption from the year of interest and household characteristics from the census year the method is illustrated for uganda it is shown that with the exception of the north progress in rural poverty reduction was broadly shared during 1992 99 areas with high initial levels of poverty appear to have benefited less from growth

nonfarm employment and rural welfare evidence from the himalayas the potential importance of nonfarm employment for the welfare of rural households has long been recognized but whether the nonfarm sector offers prospects for improving the welfare of the rural poor remains a contentious issue we examine distributional and well being effects of nonfarm employment of rural households in the himalayas we account for heterogeneity of nonfarm employment and estimate a system of structural equations to better understand the causal linkages between nonfarm employment and household well being the results confirm that disaggregating nonfarm employment activities matters for understanding the relationship between nonfarm employment and rural welfare while low return nonfarm employment is associated with lower income inequality high return nonfarm activities have a disequalizing effect on the distribution of household incomes we also find that the ability to engage in high return nonfarm activities is associated with higher economic well being poor households on the other hand tend to rely on low return activities that do not contribute to improved well being

determinants of collective action on the local commons a model with evidence from mexico i develop a model of cooperation in small irrigation systems i give conditions under which an equalizing redistribution of wealth increases the level of equilibrium cooperation but also show that some redistributions that increase inequality can also increase cooperation the distributive rule a combination of arrangements for maintenance cost sharing and water allocation also affects the cooperation level i estimate statistical models of cooperation for three maintenance indicators using field data from a study of mexican irrigation societies social heterogeneity and landholding inequality are significantly associated with lower maintenance distributive rules that allocate water proportionally to landholding size likewise reduce maintenance

replication of industrial ecosystems the case of a sustainable biogas for traffic solution abstract distributed energy systems are key in building a sustainable energy economy biofuels are an example of an industry that needs to be based on a system of rather small scale local production units due to the limited transportation radius of biomass moreover the benefits of biofuels are greater if their production is based on the integration of local production activities and consumption among traditionally separate industries as implied by the notion of industrial symbiosis such an arrangement however requires the establishment of industrial ecosystems that are customised to local conditions which increases costs and uncertainty for the involved stakeholders and the integrating company in this paper we discuss replication strategy as a means of transferring not only technical knowledge but also the business format to new locations thereby achieving economies of repetition the case of a biogas for traffic solution serves as an illustrative example we analyse the establishment of a vanguard ecosystem and assess the potential of replicating the solution in six other locations based on this we propose a replication framework that builds on functional modularisation collaboration mechanisms required for cooperating with the relevant stakeholders and organisational learning the replication approach is expected to be useful for the companies attempting to build sustainable distributed energy systems based on industrial symbiosis

using an optimization model to evaluate the economic benefits of industrial symbiosis in the forest industry in this work a model comprising a pulp mill a sawmill a district heating network and a biofuel upgrading plant is used to demonstrate how the mind method an optimization method based on mixed integer linear programming can be used to evaluate industrial symbiosis in the forest industry using this method both energy and material flows on both the supply and the demand side can be studied simultaneously the method can be used to find improvements in the structure of the modelled system to find the optimal operational strategy of a given system and to evaluate and compare different systems the total system costs for stand alone cases and integrated industrial symbiosis system configuration are compared generating results that can be used as decision support when planning industrial symbiosis initiatives in the forest industry the results of this study showed that there are financial benefits to industrial symbiosis compared to the same system operated in stand alone mode and that the industrial symbiosis configuration generates a more stable system however it is difficult to generalize the results from a case study and the main conclusion drawn is that it is possible to show that industrial symbiosis has economical benefits although the magnitude of these benefits needs to be evaluated from case to case

industrial symbiosis and the policy instruments of sustainable consumption and production abstract industrial symbioses iss and eco industrial parks eips are key concepts of industrial ecology ie the aim of iss and eips is to minimise inefficient material and energy use by utilising local by product and energy flows industrial symbioses tend to develop through spontaneous action of economic actors for gaining of economic benefit but these systems can be designed and promoted via policy instruments as well a literature review showed that national programmes for eco industrial parks can be found in different parts of the world in the action programmes and other sustainable consumption and production scp policy documents of the eu on the other hand industrial symbioses gain less recognition as a path to enhanced sustainable production in this article we consider this and also analyse how the evolution and environmental performance of an industrial symbiosis system centred on a finnish pulp and paper mill have been affected by scp policy instruments with regard to the system forming the subject of the case study and finnish industrial systems in general policy instruments have succeeded in reducing emissions but not in systematically encouraging operators toward symbiosis like activities all in all few studies exist on the overall impact of policy instruments promoting design of eco industrial parks it is not self evident that symbiosis like production systems would be sustainable in every case as the background assumptions for political promotion of eips suggest we concluded that industrial symbioses should be analysed and developed on a life cycle basis with documentation of the real environmental benefits due to efficient resource use and decreased emissions in comparison to standalone production iss can then bring eco competitiveness to companies in relation to scp tools such as environmental permits ecolabels and future product regulation based on the ecodesign directive in europe indirect encouragement of symbiosis through land use regulation and planning in such a way that material fluxes between companies are possible both in operations and in financial terms may prove effective the same holds for waste policies that encourage increased reuse of a company s waste by other enterprises

industrial symbiosis the case for market coordination abstract despite the fact that all successful documented cases of industrial symbiosis to this day have been self organizing some authors and development officials have suggested that increased public planning might deliver better results in this respect than spontaneously evolved market coordination this paper takes an historical approach to suggest that comprehensive planning is unlikely to live up to the expectations of its proponents the essay is structured as follows the first section provides short case studies of industrial symbiosis in highly different economic and institutional settings the essentially free market regime of victorian england and communist hungary 1948 1989 the available evidence suggests that market coordination proved much more favorable to the emergence of industrial symbiosis despite the elaboration of a comprehensive policy to that effect in hungary insights derived from the so called austrian critique of central planning are then used to explain this paradox the analysis presented suggests that the hungarian planners failure was not so much the result of the bad implementation of sound policies but the logical outcome of a top down approach s shortcomings policy implications for the public planning of industrial symbiosis in a mixed economy are then derived and the case for self organization is found more compelling the creation of more innovative institutions that will force firms to internalize their externalities while leaving them the necessary freedom to innovate is viewed as an urgently needed and promising path towards increased sustainable reuse of industrial by products

assets activities and rural income generation evidence from a multicountry analysis summary this paper examines the links between the assets and the economic activities of rural households in developing countries to provide insight into how the promotion of certain key assets particularly education land and infrastructure influences the economic choices of these households nationally representative data from 15 countries which form part of the rural income generating activities riga database are used in the analysis the results indicate that improved land access is linked to agricultural production and thus will lead households to take on average this path for improving household welfare higher levels of education and greater access to infrastructure appear to be most closely linked to non agricultural wage employment

a large scale mapping of territorial development dynamics in latin america summary this paper summarizes a study of changes in per capita income monetary poverty and income distribution in 9 045 subnational administrative units of nine latin american countries between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s the results largely support spatial convergence of mean household incomes although the estimates indicate it has been slow territorial inequality is found to be persistent and reduces the pro poor effect of local income growth although national context specific the estimates also indicate that territorial development dynamics are influenced by the structural features of the territories in view of the evidence territorial development policies in latin america seem well warranted

nonfarm employment and poverty in rural el salvador abstract this paper analyzes two complementary data sets to study poverty and the nonfarm sector in rural el salvador we find that rural poverty in el salvador remains acute and significantly higher than in urban areas while the rural poor are mainly agricultural laborers and marginal farmers some nonfarm activities are also of importance to the poor in fact nonfarm activities in el salvador account for a significant share of rural employment and income for both the poor and the nonpoor the poor on the one hand are engaged in last resort nonfarm activities that are not associated with high levels of labor productivity the nonpoor on the other are engaged in productive nonfarm activities which are likely to present a potent force for upward mobility significant correlates of these high productivity occupations include education infrastructure location and gender while most of the analysis is at the household level the data also permit some focus on small scale rural enterprise activities it appears that in el salvador very few rural enterprises report utilizing formal credit in setting up their activities in addition a significant proportion of enterprises are engaged in subcontracting arrangements with some larger often urban based firm

intersectoral transfer growth and inequality in rural ecuador abstract in this paper we study intersectoral transfer and its impact on the distribution of income in ecuador we find that income shares between farm and nonfarm activities are roughly equal on average although the rich in rural areas typically receive a greater share of income from nonfarm sources thus decomposing inequality by income source reveals that a rise in nonfarm incomes increases inequality drawing on a new method to estimate local level distributional outcomes growth of the high productivity nonfarm sector is observed to have a strong and positive association with average consumption and inequality growth of the low productivity nonfarm sector is associated with little change in either average income or income inequality irrespective of subsector growth of the nonfarm sector is associated with a substantial fall in poverty

on the industrial ecology potential in asian developing countries abstract this paper focuses on the current situation in the adaptation and adoption of industrial ecology in asian developing countries adcs the objective of this paper is to consider the possibilities to develop an eco industrial development eid strategy for these developing countries we review the regional indigenous resources of adcs and use the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats swot grouping to classify the preconditions of industrial ecology in adcs the authors of this paper argue that unlike the usual way of applying industrial ecology as a technical tool or a practical instrument adcs need to adopt industrial ecology as a strategic vision and as a strategic approach to plan the economic social and ecological development of their national economies in this way it can be possible for the adcs to avoid the same problems that occurred when the developed countries experienced industrialization and rapid economic growth and move toward more sustainable development

promoting industrial symbiosis empirical observations of low carbon innovations in the humber region uk industrial symbiosis has been identified as a strategy to increase resource efficiency lower carbon emissions and increase business growth one type of industrial symbiosis is the innovative use of wastes from one company as a resource for another company however empirical understanding of implementing waste to resource innovations and hence how they can be promoted by public and private organisations is still limited therefore this study explored how companies implemented waste to resource innovations in the humber region uk five case studies were conducted with companies that used or supplied a secondary biomass resource for power generation or fuel manufacturing this article discusses how companies developed relations with biowaste resource suppliers or clients the results expanded operational understanding of waste to resource innovation processes as it revealed companies activities and their strategic considerations comparing the case studies the social processes through which relations between biowaste resource partners developed were largely similar however two different networking strategies were identified some companies had to engage new industries and therefore diversified their resource partners during the innovation process but strived to limit the number of resource partners once the innovation was realised conversely others expanded activities within their network and hence strengthened existing relations during the innovation but strived to increase the number of resource partners afterwards to manage risky over dependencies within their supply network finally resource security economic benefits and policy and regulation were of key importance to conclude operational and strategic insights to promote the uptake of waste to resource innovations are presented however further research is necessary before broad generalizations can be considered

targeting maps an asset based approach to geographic targeting summary proper targeting of policy interventions requires reasonable estimates of the benefits of the alternative options to inform such decisions we develop an integrated approach stemming from the small area estimation literature that estimates the marginal returns to a range of assets across geographically defined subpopulations we create a series of maps that can be overlaid with traditional poverty maps to identify strong candidate areas for intervention though an efficiency equity tradeoff sometimes exists we apply our method using recent ugandan data results are consistent with independent empirical findings and suggest asset specific transfer schemes would improve with a spatially targeted strategy

industrial ecosystems as technological niches abstract in this paper we consider industrial ecology as a novel and distinct state in the evolution of production systems trajectory more specifically adopting an evolutionary institutionalist s perspective at the socio technical system level of analysis we discuss the transition towards an industrial ecology inspired industrial production system through the governance approach of strategic niche management snm towards this end the paper first develops industrial ecology as a novel state of the industrial production socio technical system paying particular attention at its technological component then it discusses in detail the transition of this system through snm and examines whether existing implementations of the industrial ecology industrial ecosystems and eco industrial parks are efforts embracing this philosophy and transition procedures we conclude by stressing the importance of adopting the technology policy and strategic niche management perspectives in eco industrial projects and we provide insights for accomplishing it in a more effective manner

does globalisation affect crime theory and evidence globalization skeptics argue that trade liberalization has high social costs including an increase in expropriative behavior such as civil conflict coercion of labor and crime we show that a theoretical relationship between trade and expropriation exists but the sign differs for developed and developing economies we verify this empirically using data on crime rates specifically we find trade liberalization as measured by both higher openness and lower import duty rates tends to increase burglaries and theft in very labor abundant countries for other countries however we find that trade liberalization has either a small negative effect on crime or no effect depending on the country s capital abundance

energy management on industrial parks in flanders in the race against climate change aiming for low carbon competitiveness flanders has initiated a carbon neutrality strategy on industrial parks building towards energy efficient buildings and processes acting as a stimulus for the production and consumption of green electricity however premises and internal process optimisation on industrial parks is not considered sufficient to limit greenhouse emissions in flanders structural transition is called for aiming for industrial clustering and energy autonomy based on renewables therefore the concept of industrial symbiosis is analysed to determine how it could improve the energy related carbon management on industrial parks this article explores the literature on industrial symbiosis and eco industrial parks searching for specific energy strategies and is illustrated with case studies energy management on industrial parks can be integrated in the entire development process and park management maximising efficiency is a promising local optimisation issue in which business should be engaged stimulated and facilitated by clustering buildings and processes by energy exchange collective production and joint contracting of energy services local synergies can be intensified yet uncertainty and variability in time of energy consumption can keep developers from tailoring industrial park design and utilities instead flexibility and solidity could be gained and the offer of business space could be diversified supported by a persevering issuing procedure to join similar and matching energy profiles energy management on industrial parks in flanders has only recently started but is expected to gain professionalism however further research is needed on this flexible design and thermal planning

uncovering industrial symbiosis potentials in a small island developing state the case study of mauritius small island developing states sids face a serious issue of sustainability as far as waste management within the industrial sector is concerned this paper makes an attempt at addressing the eventual practice of industrial ecology in sids with mauritius as a case study three major polluting industries namely the slaughterhouse edible oil refinery and the scrap metal recycling plant have been considered with a particular focus on the recycling of electric arc furnace slag as concrete aggregates along with the potential areas of applications for the different waste materials this research has also addressed the benefits barriers and factors for implementing industrial symbiosis projects within sids the most striking benefits are the preservation of the fauna and flora of the island and reduced dependency on developed countries for the importation of raw materials while the absence of a landfill disposal fee for non hazardous wastes and lack of awareness of industrial symbiosis projects have been identified as the main barriers to overcome these barriers a shift from manufacture consume dispose to manufacture consume recycle manufacture is recommended this study concludes that if a sustainable island is anticipated in the future a combination of recycling options along with all necessary factors such as technology funding from international organisations regulatory framework and involvement of stakeholders general public and non governmental organisations is required ultimately this would result in the establishment of networks among source and sink industries thus being in harmony with the environment

the role of registered retirement savings plans in a life cycle model in this paper a distinction is made between two types of personal saving one of which is tax deductible and another which is not and the role of each is examined within the framework of a life cycle model more precisely the model shows how tax deductible rrsp saving enables the individual to do his own lifetime income averaging for tax purposes in order to generate the lifetime profile of taxable income which minimizes the discounted value of tax payments the use of rrsps for this purpose however does not usually result in income averaging in the conventional sense since it is not necessarily optimal for a person to equalize taxable income over each period of his lifetime by contrast non tax deductible saving permits the individual to choose his optimal lifetime consumption path and bequests le ro le des regimes enregistres d epargne retraite dans un modele d optimisation sur tout le cycle de vie dans ce m6moire l auteur distingue deux types d 6pargne personnelle l une d6ductible aux fins de l impot sur le revenu et l autre non le role de chacune est analyse dans le contexte d un modele d optimisation sur tout le cycle de vie plus pr6cis6ment le modele montre comment l 6pargne via les r6gimes enregistr6s d 6pargne retraite permet a l individu d 6taler son revenu total dans le temps aux fins d imp6t afin de construire un profil de revenu imposable qui minimise la valeur pr6sente des impots pay6s l utilisation des r6gimes enregistr6s d 6pargne retraite h cette fin n engendre pas necessairement un 6talement conventionnel du revenu puisqu il se peut fort bien qu il ne soit pas optimal pour l individu d 6galiser son revenu imposable pour chaque p6riode de sa vie d autre part l 6pargne qui n est pas d6ductible aux fins d impot sur le revenu permet h l individu de choisir le sentier optimal de consommation et de legs sur tout le cycle de vie

more inequality more crime a panel cointegration analysis for the united states abstract this study employs state level panel data to examine the effect of income inequality on crime in the united states using panel cointegration techniques we find a significant negative effect of inequality on crime

what causes violent crime this study uses panel data of intentional homicide and robbery rates for a sample of developed and developing countries for the period 1970 1994 based on information from the united nations world crime surveys to analyze the determinants of national crime rates both across countries and over time a simple model of the incentives to commit crimes is proposed which explicitly considers possible causes of the persistence of crime over time criminal inertia a panel data based gmm methodology is used to estimate a dynamic model of national crime rates this estimator controls for unobserved country speci ce ects the joint endogeneity of some of the explanatory variables and the existence of some types of measurement errors a icting the crime data the results showthat increases in income inequality raise crime rates crime tends to be countercyclical and criminal inertia is signi cant 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the history and current applications of the circular economy concept abstract the challenges of balancing industrial development environmental and human health and economic growth in china and elsewhere in the world are drivers for recent resource use and low carbon development strategies that include the application of the circular economy ce concept a central theme of the ce concept is the valuation of materials within a closed looped system with the aim to allow for natural resource use while reducing pollution or avoiding resource constraints and sustaining economic growth the objectives of this study are 1 to review the history of the ce concept to provide a context for 2 a critical examination of how it is applied currently thematic categories are used to organize the literature review results including policy instruments and approaches value chains material flows and products and technology organizational and social innovation the literature review illustrates the variability in ce project success and failure over time and by region ce successes key challenges and research gaps are identified the literature review results provide useful information for researchers as well as multi stakeholder groups who seek to define the ce concept in practical terms and to consider potential challenges and opportunities it presents when implemented

violent crime does social capital matter this paper examines empirically the effect of some commonly used indicators of social capital such as the prevalence of trust on community members and the participation in voluntary secular and religious organizations on the incidence of violent crimes this is a cross country study whose basic sample consists of 39 developed and developing countries and whose dependent variable is the national intentional homicide rate the paper identifies and deals with three challenges in the empirical estimation of the effect of social capital on the incidence of violent crimes the omittedvariable problem is dealt with by including income inequality and economic growth as additional determinants of a country s violent crime rate the joint endogeneity or reverse causation problem is accounted for by using instrumental variables for social capital in the crime regression the specificity problem that is the potentially opposite effects of group specific and society wide social capital is noted and addressed only indirectly by emphasizing the results applied to the social capital indicators that have application for society as a whole the main result of the paper is that only the component of social capital measured by trust on community members has the effect of reducing the incidence of violent crimes the results regarding measures of other indicators of social capital are rather unclear this may be due to a combination of limited samples inability to fully control for reverse causation and most likely the opposite effects that society wide and group specific social capital may have on violent crime lederman and menendez are economists with the office of the chief economist for latin america and the caribbean of the world bank loayza is a senior economist with the research department of the central bank of chile and he is currently on leave from the development economics research group of the world bank the opinions expressed herein should not be attributed to the world bank the authors are grateful to ed glaeser jeff grogger gale johnson sanjay marwah steve messner nicholas sambanis and an anonymous referee for invaluable comments and suggestions the authors are responsible for any remaining errors

theoretical contribution of industrial ecology to circular economy abstract circular economy ce currently represents a viable option for countries governments academia and society to transform the linear and semi circular materials and energy flows into circular flows and obtain better sustainable benefits in this sense industrial ecology ie with its tools can assist in the transition to ce therefore the main goal of this paper is to present the theoretical contribution of ie to ce the methodology used was based on bibliometric analysis in the international context with regard to the bibliometric analyses we have identified that the evolution of ce would not be possible without the existence of ie concepts and tools especially with tools such as industrial symbiosis is and eco industrial parks eips furthermore three levels of ie contribution to ce were identified such as conceptual technical and policy aspects finally new ce based researches from an ie perspective with bibliometric analysis and with co citation networks are possible including solid waste management and policies

toward a research agenda for policy intervention and facilitation to enhance industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive literature review the normative question what role should governmental policy play to facilitate the development of industrial symbiosis has received considerable attention of researchers however for several reasons the effects of governmental policy actions on industrial symbiosis are still not clear this article proposes a research agenda to clarify the mechanisms of policy intervention and facilitation of industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive review of industrial symbiosis literature focusing on how policy is conceptualized and studied the results show that existing research lacks an explicit definition of policy and employs a static conceptualization of policy that is reinforced by comparative statics research methods we argue that a dynamic process perspective is crucial to reveal the actual mechanisms through which policy intervention and facilitation affect the evolution of industrial symbiosis building on this view industrial symbiosis research is connected with insights from policy sciences and the case of policy translation of circular economy and eco industrial park in china is investigated in order to illustrate that policy is at heart a dynamic process we conclude with a research agenda proposing that the key to reveal the mechanisms is to identify the sequence of events connecting policy process and industrial symbiosis practices

approaches and policies for promoting industrial park recycling transformation iprt in china practices and lessons abstract industrial park recycling transformation iprt was one of the major circular economy construction demonstration programs in the 12th five year plan issued by the china state council in 2012 it comprised of 7 major tasks to transform traditionally high resource and energy intensive production into high efficiency and low pollutant production by 2017 129 industrial parks had been approved for iprt by the national development and reform commission ndrc this paper presents a thorough review on iprt content policies and practices with some lessons and suggestions for further development six types of projects were supported by national funds which included industrial chain extension and complementary projects water conversion and recycling projects energy saving projects pollution prevention projects platform construction projects and infrastructure construction sharing projects case studies show success for each case however deficiencies in industrial development management policy making and information sharing also emerged two suggestions were put forward first investment should be diverted from traditional industries to new industries past cases have shown that traditional industries have a greater risk of obsolescence failure in one park has already created a cascading effect on other enterprises in the park secondly the government led model should be transformed into a government and market co led model the government could establish more effective incentive and restraint mechanisms to attract participation from enterprises and or social capital information sharing platforms for example benefit enterprises by increasing awareness for circular economy projects to both private and public actors

the role of landholding as a determinant of food and nutrition insecurity in rural myanmar summary recent research has emphasized the role of land tenure in influencing rural food and nutrition insecurity in developing countries we use data from rural myanmar to empirically analyze the links between land holdings and household level food and nutrition security our analysis focuses on the following issues i what are the socio economic characteristics of food insecure households ii what are the main coping strategies adopted by vulnerable households to address their food security and iii are our findings robust across the different food security measures our results show landholding to be a strong predictor of household food and nutrition security

entrepreneurship selection and performance a meta analysis of the impact of education in developing economies this meta analytical review of empirical studies of the impact of schooling on entrepreneurship in selection and performance in developing economies looks at variations impact across specific characteristics of the studies a marginal year of schooling in developing economies raises enterprise income by an average of 5 5 percent which is close to the average return in industrial countries the return varies however by gender rural or urban residence and the share of agriculture in the economy furthermore more educated workers typically end up in wage employment and prefer nonfarm entrepreneurship to farming the education effect that separates workers into self employment and wage employment is stronger for women possibly stronger in urban areas and also stronger in the least developed economies where agriculture is more dominant and literacy rates are lower

when is delivering the goods not good enough how economic disparities in latin american neighborhoods shape citizen trust in local government this article develops and tests a theory to explain why perceptions of good government performance are a necessary but insufficient condition for the poor to trust their local government the authors theorize that independent of partisan sympathies the poor evaluate local government on the basis of government performance and the economic disparities that they observe in their neighborhood of residence accordingly even if the poor hold positive perceptions of government performance they are less likely to trust their local government when they live in a context of high economic inequality to test their theory the authors rely on census public opinion and systematic observation data collected within resident identified neighborhood borders in each of seventy one neighborhoods sampled from six municipalities in el salvador the findings are consistent with the hypotheses and indicate that economic inequality at the neighborhood level may produce a reservoir of distrust in local government among the poor the results further highlight the political relevance of neighborhoods for the formation of citizen attitudes toward local government in the latin american context

inequality and violent crime abstract we investigate the robustness and causality of the link between income inequality and violent crime across countries first we study the correlation between the gini index and homicide and robbery rates within and between countries second we examine the partial correlation by considering other crime determinants third we control for the endogeneity of inequality by isolating its exogenous impact on these crime rates fourth we control for measurement error in crime rates by modeling it as both unobserved country effects and random noise finally we examine the robustness of this partial correlation to alternative measures of inequality the panel data consist of nonoverlapping 5 year averages for 39 countries during 1965 95 for homicides and 37 countries during 1970 94 for robberies crime rates and inequality are positively correlated within countries and particularly between countries and this correlation reflects causation from inequality to crime rates even after controlling for ot

the role of policy instruments in the innovation and diffusion of environmentally friendlier technologies popular claims versus case study experiences abstract moving towards sustainability will require that new environmentally friendlier technologies are developed and widely adopted policy instruments that promote eco efficiency are therefore necessary some claims frequently made in the literature on the relationship between policy instruments and technological development are examined the claims concern regulations environmental taxation and funding of research and development the claims are explored on the basis of empirical evidence from two sectors the pulp and paper industry and the marine engine industry little support was found for some of the claims in some cases even contradictory findings and for some claims the findings differed between the sectors and even within a sector depending on the issue

the european commission s sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan abstract the promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns is enshrined as a key objective in the renewed european union sustainable development strategy eu sds sustainable consumption and production is arguably the most challenging aspect of the eu sds it requires changes to the way products and services are designed produced used and disposed of taking into account producer and consumer behaviours this paper reviews the european commission s communication on the sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan introduced on july 16 2008 the paper examines the priority areas identified for action the means adopted to improve energy and environmental performance of products as well as uptake by consumers the paper concludes that the absence of mandatory quantifiable targets and deadlines and a reliance on both cross sectoral and multi level relationships are likely to weaken the ability of the action plan s fundamental objective of decoupling economic growth from resource use

rural nonfarm employment and incomes in the himalayas abstract nonfarm activities generate on average about 60 of rural households incomes in the himalayas this article analyzes the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and of nonfarm incomes across rural households a unique data set collected in the himalayan region of india allows us to deal with the heterogeneity of rural nonfarm activities by using aggregations into categories that are useful both analytically and for policy purposes we conduct an empirical inquiry that reveals that education plays a major role in accessing more remunerative nonfarm employment other household assets and characteristics such as land social status and geographical location also play a role

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

local inequality and project choice theory and evidence from ecuador this paper provides evidence consistent with elite capture of social fund investment projects in ecuador exploiting a unique combination of data sets on village level income distributions social fund project administration and province level electoral results we test a simple model of project choice when local political power is unequally distributed in accordance with the predictions of the model poorer villages are more likely to receive projects that provide excludable private goods to the poor such as latrines controlling for poverty more unequal communities are less likely to receive such projects consistent with the hypothesis of elite capture these results are sensitive to the specific measures of inequality and elite power used in the empirical analysis and are strongest for expenditure shares at the top of the distribution

the distribution of public services an exploration of local governmental preferences a local governmental welfare function is specified to explore two of its central characteristics the equity productivity trade off and differential weights across neighborhoods the constrained maximization model is estimated using service outcomes safety in the welfare function as opposed to publicly provided inputs police over neighborhoods the equity productivity trade off is found to be considerable and not all neighborhoods are weighted equally the results show that inequality aversion and unequal concern by local government over service outcomes must be addressed explicitly to understand the observed distribution of publicly provided inputs with important implications for standard analysis of local governmental behavior copyright 1987 by american economic association

do inequality unemployment and deterrence affect crime over the long run abstractdo inequality unemployment and deterrence affect crime over the long run regional studies this paper investigates the long run relationship between crime inequality unemployment and deterrence using us state level data from 1978 to 2013 the novelty is to use non stationary panels with a factor structure the results show that 1 a crime theoretical model fits the long run relationship well 2 income inequality and unemployment have a positive impact on crime whereas that of deterrence is negative 3 the effect of income inequality on crime is larger when inequality is measured on a wider population proportion and 4 property crime is generally highly sensitive to the deterrence effect of police

the rural non farm sector issues and evidence from developing countries abstract the rural non farm sector has traditionally been viewed as a low productivity sector which produces low quality goods it is often expected to wither away as a country develops recent years have seen a shift away from this position towards recognition that the rural non farm sector can and often does contribute to economic growth rural employment poverty reduction and a more spatially balanced population distribution this paper reviews the literature on the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of this more recent perspective focussing on the experience in developing countries the paper documents the size and heterogeneity of the sector pointing to evidence that in many countries the sector is expanding rather than declining the issues associated with measuring the sector s economic contribution are discussed followed by empirical assessments for several countries and regions the distributional impact of non farm earnings is examined and it is found that a pro poor impact while by no means inevitable can be considerable the sector s trajectory over time in different settings is reviewed and the scope for and experience of various policy interventions is discussed

inequality and conservation on the local commons a theoretical exercise to analyse the effect of asset inequality on co operation within a group we consider a twoplayer nonco operative model of conservation of a common pool resource overexploitation by one user affects another s payoff by reducing the next period catch we give necessary and sufficient conditions such that conservation is a nash equilibrium and show that increasing inequality does not in general favour full conservation however once inequality is sufficiently great further inequality can raise efficiency thus the relationship between inequality and economic efficiency is u shaped finally we analyse the implications for conservation if players have earning opportunities outside the commons the daily livelihood of vast masses of the rural poor in many countries depends on the success with which common pool resources cprs such as forest resources grazing lands in shore fisheries and irrigation water are managed and on the environmental consequences of their management understanding the factors that lead to success or failure of community management of these resources is thus critical to rural development cpr management is a collective action dilemma a situation in which mutual cooperation is collectively rational for the group as a whole but individual cooperation is not necessarily individually rational for each member one factor that has not always been recognised as critical to the outcome of collective action dilemmas is heterogeneity among the resource users in this paper our attention will be largely restricted to a single but potent kind of heterogeneity inequality in asset ownership olson 1965 hypothesised that inequality might favour the provision of a public good

decentralized targeting of an antipoverty program abstract developing country governments often delegate authority over the targeting of antipoverty programs to community organizations while retaining control over how much goes to each community we offer a theoretical characterization of the information structure in such programs and the interconnected behavior of the various players our model motivates an econometric specification for explaining distributional outcomes results for bangladesh s food for education ffe program indicate that within village targeting improved with program size lower land inequality less remoteness fewer shocks and less private redistribution there is no sign that the center took account of village attributes conducive to reaching the poor

a case study of industrial symbiosis development using a middle out approach abstract industrial symbiosis is emerged as a collective multi industrial approach to improve economic and environmental performance through the use of wastes by products as substitutes for raw materials the development of is initiatives depends on the context in which they occur characterised in terms of social economic political spatial and temporal embeddedness as a consequence the context can be influenced to become more supportive of is through a continuous interactive process combining top down governmental directives and bottom up spontaneous business initiatives a strategy to develop and enhance this process is explored in this paper and described by the authors as a middle out approach policies and policy instruments introduced by governmental agencies provide objectives and incentives to businesses the middle out approach induces the development of a strategy to create positive feedback loops among agents e g government industries that may guide their actions into setting the conditions to support is emergence this paper provides a case study that discusses a regional development of is in portugal that highlights critical factors for success in implementing is and shows that the middle out approach can also be understood as an extension and combination of previous research on context factors and planned spontaneous approaches to is development

rural nonagricultural activities in development theory and application abstract this paper focusses on the potentially important role of rural nonagricultural activity in the development process using the hymer resnick z goods model as a point of departure we first show that its pessimistic conclusions are based on rather restrictive assumptions as applied to the colonial period we relax these assumptions indicating the theoretical possibility of a substantially more positive scenario for that period subsequently we analyze the role of z goods traditional and nontraditional in the post independence era again distinguishing between archetypal pessimistic and optimistic cases finally the comparative historical experience of the philippines and taiwan is brought to bear to illustrate the argument empirically

finding the poor vs measuring their poverty exploring the drivers of targeting effectiveness in indonesia centralized targeting registries are increasingly used to allocate social assistance benefits in developing countries there are two key design issues that matter for targeting accuracy i which households to survey for inclusion in the registry and ii how to rank surveyed households the authors attempt to identify their relative importance by evaluating indonesia s unified database for social protection programs udb among the largest targeting registries in the world used to provide social assistance to over 25 million households linking administrative data with an independent household survey they find that the udb system is more progressive than previous program specific targeting approaches however simulating an alternative targeting system based on enumerating all households they find a one third reduction in undercoverage of the poor compared to focusing on households registered in the udb overall there are large gains in targeting performance from improving the initial registration stage relative to the ranking stage

the ambiguous impact of inequality on local resource management abstract the impact of inequality on the ability of human groups to undertake successful collective action is investigated with special reference to overexploitation of common property resources in voluntary provision problems on the one hand inequality has an ambiguous impact on the feasibility of the efficient outcome even though better endowed agents contribute more to collective action in regulated settings on the other hand inequality tends to reduce the acceptability of available regulatory schemes and therefore to make collective action more difficult

rural nonfarm employment and incomes in latin america overview and policy implications abstract rural nonfarm employment rnfe and incomes rnfi are crucial to latin american rural households the 11 rural household income studies in this volume reviewed in this paper use 1990s data and show that rnfi averages 40 of rural incomes rnfi and rnfe have grown quickly over the past three decades the review of evidence provided some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of latin american rural households in terms of shares of rural incomes 1 nonfarm wage incomes exceed self employment incomes 2 rnfi far exceeds farm wage incomes 3 local rnfi far exceeds migration incomes 4 service sector rnfi far exceeds manufactures rnfi these findings suggest the need for more development program attention to wage employment in the service sector versus the traditional focus on small enterprise manufactures moreover poor households and zones tend to have higher shares in their incomes but lower absolute levels of rnfi as compared to richer households and zones the rnfe of the poor tend to be the low paid nonfarm equivalent of semi subsistence farming raising the capacity of the poor to participate in the better paid types of rnfe is crucial via employment skills training education infrastructure credit finally rnfe has grown fastest and been most poverty alleviating where there are dynamic growth motors in particular in the agricultural sector but also in tourism links to urban areas mining and forestry this means that developing rnf jobs cannot be done at the expense of programs promoting agricultural development

crime rates and local labor market opportunities in the united states 1979 1997 the labor market prospects of young unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s crime rates show a reverse pattern increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s because young unskilled men commit most crime this paper seeks to establish a causal relationship between the two trends previous work on the relationship between labor markets and crime focused mainly on the relationship between the unemployment rate and crime and found inconclusive results in contrast this paper examines the impact of both wages and unemployment on crime and uses instrumental variables to establish causality we conclude that both wages and unemployment are significantly related to crime but that wages played a larger role in the crime trends over the last few decades these results are robust to the inclusion of deterrence variables controls for simultaneity and controlling for individual and family characteristics

burglary and income inequality abstract in a model where risk neutral agents have differing legal incomes which may be supplemented by burglary we study the effects of income distribution on the level of burglary assuming that a detected burglar is incarcerated for a fixed term and assuming that burglars choose target houses using the signal of house quality we show how increases in income inequality may increase the level of crime in particular increases in relative differential inequality unambiguously increase burglary crime corollaries are that a more regressive income tax increases the level of crime and that richer neighborhoods may have lower crime rates

key drivers for unsustainable resource use categories effects and policy pointers abstract prevailing resource use patterns of the global socio industrial metabolism are unsustainable an increasing number of people globally require ever more materials including energy carriers land and water for rising living standards and lifestyles converging towards western industrialised patterns therefore these resources will continue becoming both scarcer and depleted while environmental impacts associated with their consumption e g run away climate change will continue to rise for effective resource policies drivers for such unsustainable resource use and their effects need to be better understood and mapped by means of meta analysis of more than 60 sources of relevant literature we identified a set of ten driver categories that affect unsustainable resource use inter alia prevailing consumption and production patterns use and design of infrastructure and technology underlying paradigms and world views resource prices and the level of knowledge and information of resource users cumulative effects of the drivers contribute for instance up to 30 of phosphorus loss from soil and around 30 of building energy loss globally although the data does not allow clear cut causal attribution of effects it enables the distinction between direct and indirect drivers in relation to a multi dimensional network of drivers causing unsustainable resource use resource policy should combine policy objectives and instruments into policy mixes to target key drivers and their interrelations while policy mixes need to respond to context specific driver settings targeting consumer behaviour emerges as a general driver focus of policy mixes combining different instrument types and implementing them in a time dynamic sequence can mitigate trade offs between different instruments and in the longer term increase feasibility of profound behaviour changes

some microeconometric evidence concerning the effect of the canada pension plan on personal saving growing criticism of canada s retirement income system during the past few years has resulted in renewed pressure on both federal and provincial governments to expand public pension programmes especially the canada pension plan cpp once again this prospect has aroused fears that an unfunded expansion of the public pension system could have a seriously adverse effect on personal saving the adverse effect on personal saving it is argued could in turn lower investment and thereby reduce even further what is already by postwar standards an extremely sluggish rate of productivity growth for the canadian economy however the basis for fearing that public pensions may reduce household saving is somewhat questionable since the wealth replacement effect of public pensions on saving may be offset by an induced retirement effect and perhaps by inter generational transfers in the form of bequests the theory at least is inconclusive in this regard 1 surprisingly enough unlike in the united states where the theoretical indeterminacy concerning the overall impact of public pensions on saving has spawned a multitude of empirical studies the subject has been largely ignored by econometricians in canada but sparse though the empirical evidence may be it does not support the seemingly popular contention that public pensions reduce personal saving in the only published empirical study to date boyle and murray 1979 conclude from their analysis of time series data that canada s public pension plans have had no visible effect on household savings behaviour this paper presents some cross sectional evidence on the response of personal saving to public pensions which appears to conflict with the boyle and murray findings it is organized as follows section i describes the methodology and the data base used the empirical results are analysed in section ii some conclusions follow in section iii

the benefits of a brazilian agro industrial symbiosis system and the strategies to make it happen abstract alcohol fuel is generally presented as a sustainable fuel in comparison with other fossil fuel due to lower emissions during production and combustion steps as well as due to its assumed closed carbon cycle however assessing the brazilian traditional alcohol production cycle many social and environmental impacts may still be indicated burning pesticides biodiversity labor exploration high water consumption erosion and others based on the strategy of an agro industrial networking and symbiosis a project was designed to optimize the system by means of polygeneration and total integration of production steps the case presented in this paper is the project for a social and ecological agro industry model named geripa geracao de energia renovavel integrada a producao de alimentos which produces renewable fuel electricity and organic food besides the technical project an economic evaluation is also presented resulting into a five year pay back time in addition environmental and social aspects were evaluated by means the emergy synthesis methodology odum 1996 which assesses the value of all inputs through an estimate of the environmental work directly and indirectly required for their production and sustainable supply the emergy based comparison of geripa system and a traditional system in brazil indicates better performance of geripa with an emergy sustainability index of 1 26 much higher than for a traditional system 0 22 the project is presently under discussion with investors and government and if approved will be carried out in marginal and presently unused land in addition to providing an environmentally friendly process for food and energy production the project would generate new jobs opportunities for brazilian rural workers presently unemployed

the impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality a case study in china large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in china migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income this article examines the impact of rural to urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income poverty and inequality would have been in the absence of migration our results show that by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture migration leads to an increase in rural income in contrast to many studies that suggest that the increasing share of nonfarm income in total income widens inequality this article offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons 1 migration is rational self selection farmers with higher expected return in agricultural activities and or in local nonfarm activities choose to remain in the countryside while those with higher expected return in urban nonfarm sectors migrate 2 households facing binding constraints of land supply are more likely to migrate 3 poorer households benefit disproportionately from migration

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

an emergy evaluation of complexity information and technology towards maximum power and zero emissions abstract this paper mostly deals with the role of energy matter and information flows within both environmental and human dominated systems sustainable growth and development of both kinds of systems require optimum use of available resources for maximum power output as suggested by lotka s maximum power principle lotka aj contribution to the energetics of evolution in proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america vol 8 1922 p 147 50 lotka aj natural selection as a physical principle in proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america vol 8 1922 p 151 5 recently restated by odum odum ht maximum power and efficiency a rebuttal ecol model 1983 20 71 82 odum ht environmental accounting emergy and environmental decision making n y john wiley sons 1996 as maximum em power principle within the framework of his emergy synthesis approach in times of declining resources this principle translates into increased efficiency and optimum use of any kind of waste and co products ecosystems and any self organizing systems always apply this strategy and their selection evolution mechanisms are based on their ability of growing on any untapped resource available in order to do so they increase the number of components and patterns for resource degradation in order to optimize the resource throughput and power output such a strategy also applies to human dominated economic systems where the ability of dealing with co products and wastes by means of appropriate designs as well as reuse and recycling processes may lead to zero emission patterns increased complexity optimal resource throughput minimization of emissions resource exchange among system s components and be the key for successful and sustainable development in this paper life cycle assessment and emergy synthesis approaches are suggested as joint tools for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of progresses towards industrial symbiosis and more sustainable production and consumption patterns within a zero emission framework

the determinants of nonfarm income diversification in rural peru abstract this paper shows that in peruvian rural areas there has been substantial growth over the past decade in household employment outside of own farming at present 51 of the net income of rural households comes from these off farm activities and thus they certainly cannot be considered as marginal the reasons households diversify their incomes are several access to public assets such as roads and private assets such as education and credit is an important factor in diversification increasing access to these assets will help rural households to increase their self employment as well as wage employment in the nonfarm sector

is there a metropolitan bias the relationship between poverty and city size in a selection of developing countries this paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities this basic pattern is generally robust to the choice of poverty line the paper shows further that for all eight countries a majority of the urban poor live in medium small or very small towns moreover it is shown that the greater incidence and severity of consumption poverty in smaller towns is generally compounded by similarly greater deprivation in terms of access to basic infrastructure services such as electricity heating gas sewerage and solid waste disposal we illustrate for one country morocco that inequality within large cities is not driven by a severe dichotomy between slum dwellers and others robustness checks are performed to assess whether the findings in the paper hinge on a specific definition of urban area are driven by differences in the cost of

rural nonfarm activities and poverty in the brazilian northeast abstract this paper combines two complementary data sets to present a disaggregated spatial profile of poverty in the brazilian northeast and to investigate the importance of nonagricultural activities for its rural dwellers we present both univariate and multivariate profiles of nonagricultural employment and discuss its determinants while the main occupational difference between the rural poor and the rural nonpoor in brazil seems to be the greater reliance of the former on paid agricultural employment vis a vis own cultivation rather than access to nonagricultural activities the evidence nevertheless suggests that diversification into this growing sector provides both an important complement to the budgets of the poor and possibly a self insurance mechanism against negative shocks despite the substantial heterogeneity of the sector two general findings are robust returns to education are comparatively high and location in relation to urban areas is an important determinant of both employment and earnings in rural nonagricultural activities

the changing role of non farm household enterprises in vietnam summary in this paper we study the importance of the non farm household enterprise nfhe sector in vietnam we do find that nfhes increase income and reduce between household inequality however the role of the nfhe sector has been diminishing especially in urban areas and the nfhes have been affected by trade liberalization in the period 1993 2002 in terms of policy this suggests that there is increasing scope for targeting nfhe sector policies at those nfhes that are in the best position to benefit from the new opportunities in the liberalizing environment

crime and local inequality in south africa the authors examine the effects of local inequality on property and violent crime in south africa their findings are consistent with economic theories relating inequality to property crime and also with sociological theories that imply that inequality leads to crime in general burglary rates are 20 30 percent higher in police station jurisdictions that are the wealthiest among their neighbors suggesting that criminals travel to neighborhoods where the expected returns from burglary are highest the authors do not find evidence that inequality between racial groups fosters interpersonal conflict at the local level