are biofuels a feasible option abstract recently a number of objections have been raised against the use of ethanol produced from agricultural products such as maize sugarcane wheat or sugar beets as a replacement for gasoline despite some of their advantages such as being cleaner and to some extent renewable we address these objections in this paper topics discussed include the corn connection which was theorized to be a cause of deforestation in the amazonia the rise of food prices due to ethanol production and the real possibilities of ethanol in reducing greenhouse gas emissions it has been shown that such concerns are grossly exaggerated and that ethanol from sugarcane as produced in brazil is the preferred option for the production of fuel not only in terms of cost but also as a favourable energy balance finally the possibility of expanding ethanol production to other sugar producing countries is also discussed

liquid biofuels in china current status government policies and future opportunities and challenges abstract china like many other countries is promoting the development of liquid biofuel including bioethanol and biodiesel the chinese government has set biofuel development targets for the coming decade and sanctioned a series of supportive policies this paper provides a comprehensive overview of current liquid biofuel development in china related government policies and the potential opportunities and challenges for its future expansion our assessment is based on two rounds of in depth fieldwork and a thorough literature review the assessment shows that the prevailing concern on food security has pushed china to move from cereal based to non cereal based biofuel production emphasis has also been put on utilizing new marginal land for feedstock production our assessment indicates that the targets of china s biofuel development are cautious and feasible but on the other hand there are still severe challenges for the sustainability of such development a better understanding of china s experience in striking a balance between energy security food security and environmental protection would inform the debates across country boundaries and contribute to the efforts for global sustainability

using operating cash flow data to predict financial distress some extensions recently financial statement users and regulators of publicly reported financial accounting data have argued in favor of the disclosure of detailed information on firms current operating cash flows harris et al 1980 fasb 1981 smith 1982 and thomas 1982 the fasb suggests that such disclosures will allow users to assess better the amount timing and uncertainty of future cash flows it states that the greater the amount of future net cash inflows from operations the greater the ability of the enterprise to withstand adverse changes in operating conditions 1981 p 11 the presumption that historical operating cash flows enable better assessments of future cash flows however is based on intuition rather than on empirical evidence griffin 1982 our study was conducted to assess whether operating cash flow data and related measures lead to more accurate predictions of bankrupt and

credit risk measurement developments over the last 20 years abstract this paper traces developments in the credit risk measurement literature over the last 20 years the paper is essentially divided into two parts in the first part the evolution of the literature on the credit risk measurement of individual loans and portfolios of loans is traced by way of reference to articles appearing in relevant issues of the journal of banking and finance and other publications in the second part a new approach built around a mortality risk framework to measuring the risk and returns on loans and bonds is presented this model is shown to offer some promise in analyzing the risk return structures of portfolios of credit risk exposed debt instruments

corporate governance and default prediction a reality test default prediction has commanded the attention of researchers for at least 50 years this paper addresses several testable hypotheses regarding the relations between corporate governance and defaul

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

environmental regulation and competitiveness empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from european manufacturing sectors abstract this paper investigates the weak and strong versions of porter hypothesis ph focusing on the manufacturing sectors of 17 european countries between 1997 and 2009 the hypothesis that well crafted and well enforced regulation would benefit both the environment and the firm was originally proposed by porter 1991 and porter and van der linde 1995 to date the literature has analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on innovation and on productivity mostly in separate analyses and focusing on the usa the few existing contributions on europe study the effect of environmental regulation either on green innovation or on performance indicators such as exports we instead look at overall innovation and productivity impacts first focusing on overall innovative activity allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations second productivity impacts are arguably the most relevant indicators for the strong ph as a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures pace one of the few sectoral level indicators available we remedy upon its main drawback namely potential endogeneity by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach we find evidence of a positive impact of environmental regulation on the output of innovation activity as proxied by patents thus providing support in favor of the weak ph this result is in line with most of the literature on the other front we find no evidence in favor of the strong ph as productivity appears to be unaffected by the degree of pollution control and abatement efforts

the prediction of bankruptcy of small and medium sized industrial firms using large amounts of data from small and medium sized industrial firms this study examines several aspects of bankruptcy prediction we have tested a hypothesis on the predictive power of different ratio categories during the successive phases before bankruptcy and one on the relationship between the age of a firm and the predictability of bankruptcy it was found that virtually every ratio investigated had some predictive power and that the univariate and multivariate importance of ratio stability were not very high

an intertemporal model of industrial exit a finite horizon model of industrial exit is developed after an initial lag most exits are by young firms the duration of the lag is positively related to sunk entry costs but not due to the fallacy of sunk costs the conception of entry differs from previous research as a result not all entrants are identical and firm size affects the rate of learning on average larger new firms last longer entrepreneurs in declining firms act more lazily as the firm declines a number of empirical observations about declining firms are organized by the model

safety first bankruptcy and the pricing and investment decisions of the firm the paper analyzes the impact of imposing a constraint on the probability of bankruptcy for the pricing and investment choices of firms two models are presented in which a firm faces stochastic demand in one costs are known with certainty and in the other costs of production are probabilistic in both cases the constraint induces a reduction in optimal price if demand is elastic for less elastic demand price increases may be indicated with constant costs the constraint lowers optimal investment the results are applicable to the analysis of rating agencies behavior or to the design of bond covenants especially for public utilities

geographies of energy transition space place and the low carbon economy this paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity the paper draws on a seminar series on the geographies of energy transition security climate governance hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011 which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography focussing on the uk government s policy for a low carbon transition the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy six concepts are introduced and explained location landscape territoriality spatial differentiation scaling and spatial embeddedness examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent and contending potential geographical futures are in play more attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low carbon economy will be like it also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available

tentative governing of fuel cell innovation in a dynamic network of expectations abstract expectations and visions are known to be forceful elements in the governance of emerging innovations however visions and expectations are prone to change thus creating challenges for strategy and policy processes actors have to deal with the dynamics of expectations either ex post when expectations have changed or ex ante for instance by taking possible future changes into account in the design of policy measures this article follows the dynamics of fuel cell expectations in the german policy discourse 1994 2011 firstly we study how fuel cell expectations were discursively related to a wider network of expectations regarding developments in the context of fuel cells secondly we examine whether and how policy measures referred to these expectations and how policy dealt with the dynamic evolution of expectations we show that fuel cell expectations alone were not sufficient to trigger substantial policy support only once they linked up with visions and expectations about the future energy system and further context developments were supportive policy measures initiated furthermore although we observed dedicated and successful efforts to stabilize policy support for fuel cells pre empting possible changes in expectations governance still had to adapt to changes in the network of expectations in particular the rise in expectations for battery electric vehicles

governing community energy feed in tariffs and the development of community wind energy schemes in the united kingdom and germany this paper analyses the development of community energy in the uk by comparing it to germany in relation to decentralisation scales and ownership structures particularly of wind energy varying approaches to energy generation at the community scale provide interesting insights into the impact of policy innovation as well as the capacity of national energy frameworks to foster socially innovative engagement practices beyond the purely technological diffusion of innovations by examining interactions between technological and social innovations with the help of a qualitative analysis opportunities for potential generators not traditionally engaged in energy generation to tap into these innovation systems are analysed this paper suggests that greater commitment to diversification beyond the implementation of policy measures such as the feed in tariff is required to provide communities with the capacity to develop new generation practices in terms of scale and ownership the uk in particular is struggling to protect these new generation practices which allow communities to derive benefits facilitated by specific energy policy measures according to their potential it concludes by indicating areas where niche protection might need to be expanded if community energy is to play a greater role in the uk s ambitious transition to a low carbon economy

the price for biofuels sustainability abstract the production and usage of biofuels has increased worldwide seeking goals of energy security low carbon energy and rural development as biofuels trade increased the european union introduced sustainability regulations in an attempt to reduce the risks associated with biofuels producers were then confronted with costs of sustainability certification in order to access the eu market hopes were that sustainably produced biofuels would be rewarded with higher prices in the eu based on a review of recent literature interviews with traders and price data from platts this paper explores whether sustainability premiums emerged and if so did they represent an attracting feature in the market for sustainable biofuels this article finds that premiums for ethanol and biodiesel evolved differently between 2011 and 2012 but have been in general very small or inexistent with certified fuels becoming the new norm in the market for different reasons there has been an apparent convergence between biofuel policies in the eu and the us as market operators perceive a long term trend for full certification in the biofuels market producers in developing countries are likely to face additional challenges in terms of finance and capacity to cope with the sustainability requirements

environmental innovations and firm profitability unmasking the porter hypothesis we examine impacts of different types of environmental innovations on firm profits following porter s sci am 264 4 168 1991 hypothesis that environmental regulation can improve firms competitiveness we distinguish between regulation induced and voluntary environmental innovations we find that innovations which do not improve firms resource efficiency do not provide positive returns to profitability however innovations that increase a firm s resource efficiency in terms of material or energy consumption per unit of output have a positive impact on profitability this positive result holds for both regulation induced and voluntary innovations although the effect is greater for regulation driven innovation we conclude that the porter hypothesis does not hold in general for its strong version but depends on the type of environmental innovation our findings rest on firm level data from the german part of the community innovation survey 2008 cis 2008

biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys this paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems the legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production in the 1970 80s promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed where the territorial and scalar vision was breached it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher value biofuel to the north rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today however controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions and to their local impacts becoming more widely known south south and north north trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities as assumptions of a food versus fuel conflict have come to be challenged legitimacy questions over global agri business and trade are spotlighted even further in this context visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising these include large scale biomass for fuel models in europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global south to compete and small scale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the south

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

implications of market mediated emissions and uncertainty for biofuel policies abstract biofuel policies affect global agricultural and oil commodity markets whose response has consequences for greenhouse gas ghg emissions estimates of the net ghg impact of biofuel policies are wide ranging and shrouded in uncertainty we perform a monte carlo experiment using a stylized model of the global liquid fuel market and compare different biofuel policies with respect to global ghg emissions and global oil consumption taking iluc emissions into consideration we find that for the currently commercial biofuels inclusion of iluc emissions as part of the policy rating of biofuels ghg intensity i likely leads to lower emissions ii leads to greater reduction in both domestic and global oil consumption iii leads to higher price of fuels in the home region all compared to when iluc emissions are excluded from the policy rating and iv does not however ensure that emissions absolutely decline owing to fuel market effects which unlike iluc are presently excluded from all existing fuel ghg regulations sensitivity analysis suggests that iluc emissions and the price elasticity of oil supply are the greatest contributors to variance in net global ghg emissions under any given policy

lead markets and regulation a framework for analyzing the international diffusion of environmental innovations abstract environmental regulations are often intended to stimulate the generation and adoption of eco efficient innovations an important argument in the public debate is also the creation of new markets for environmentally benign products processes and services in other countries and the generation as a result of export opportunities for the pioneering country lead markets research on lead markets has not however focused on environmental innovations to date we therefore extend the lead market model to environmental innovations and take particular account of the peculiarities of such innovations in particular the public good character of environmental benefits and the role of regulations this approach is applied to two case studies wind energy and fuel efficient passenger cars in both cases the innovation was initially adopted in one country other countries subsequently adopted the same innovation design favored by the lead market which in turn developed into a large exporter in the wind generation and car industries respectively we discuss the regulations employed and the reasons for the international success of the innovations induced by them our findings demonstrate that when supported by global demand or regulatory trends strict regulation results in the creation of lead markets finally we provide recommendations on how our model could be used for further research and in the development of a coordinated environmental and innovation policy

bankruptcy prediction using terminal failure processes abstract traditional bankruptcy prediction models designed using classification or regression techniques achieve short term performances 1 year that are fairly good but that often worsen when the prediction horizon exceeds 1 year we show how to improve the performance of such models beyond 1 year using models that take into account the evolution of firm s financial health over a short period of time for this purpose we design models that fit the underlying failure process of different groups of firms our results demonstrate that such models lead to better prediction accuracy at a 3 year horizon than that achieved with common models

how biofuel policies backfire misguided goals inefficient mechanisms and political ecological blind spots abstract the development of an economically viable biofuel industry rests on strong state subsidies for production and processing creation of markets through government procurement fuel blending mandates price controls as well as foreign trade tariffs and quotas and multiple interventions in agricultural ecological and other regulations we use an approach grounded in agrarian political economy to critically analyze the literature on how biofuel policies interact with broader production trade and agro ecological processes we focus on policies involving the most prominent crops in the places where biofuel production has advanced the most i e usa brazil and the eu but also extend analysis to their relations with broader transformations in production commercial and even governance practices around the world we investigate the political and economic interests driving biofuel policies and how these set the terms in which state interventions and policies are conceived and implemented we find that these are not developed and implemented according to environmental or inclusive pro poor development purposes but according to state interests in energy security and its intersection with a tense alliance between corporate sectors rendering many policy mechanisms ineffective or even outright counterproductive to effectively facilitate more socially and environmentally sustainable energy production and agricultural practices

three new empirical tests of the pollution haven hypothesis when environmental regulation is endogenous the validity of existing empirical tests of the pollution haven hypothesis phh is constantly under scrutiny due to two shortcomings first the issues of unobserved heterogeneity and measurement error in environmental regulation are typically ignored due to the lack of a credible traditional instrumental variable second while the recent literature has emphasized the importance of geographic spillovers in determining the location choice of foreign investment such spatial effects have yet to be adequately incorporated into empirical tests of the phh as a result the impact of environmental regulations on trade patterns and the location decisions of multinational enterprises remains unclear in this paper we circumvent the lack of a traditional instrument within a model incorporating geographic spillovers utilizing three novel identification strategies using state level panel data on inbound u s fdi relative abatement costs and other determinants of fdi we consistently find i evidence of environmental regulation being endogenous ii a negative impact of own environmental regulation on inbound fdi in pollution intensive sectors particularly when measured by employment and iii larger effects of environmental regulation once endogeneity is addressed neighboring environmental regulation is not found to be an important determinant of fdi

developing post normal technologies for sustainability abstract the last two decades have seen the development of an array of techniques and practices aimed at promoting sustainability for many results have been disappointing there are charges that supposedly new organisational approaches remain embedded in managerialist functionalist and anti dialogic frameworks that are a significant part of the problem similarly the technocratic scientization of public policy is viewed as ill equipped to deal with the social economic and ecological issues currently facing neo liberal societies in this paper we seek to interpret these frustrations and identify pathways that move beyond this specifically we argue that the gap between sustainability rhetoric and sustainability practices can be reconceptualised through the practice of science as post normal and through developing the notion of post normal sustainability technologies pnsts the exponents of post normal science show why stakeholder engagement in sustainability and other scientific issues is critical for the legitimacy and quality of decisions and the admission of complexity in decision making and accountability processes building on this now well established foundation we seek to characterise and give examples of pnsts as tools for achieving this participation wherein stakeholders assume expertise and interact with those possessing more traditional forms of expertise in order to co produce knowledge about sustainability recognition of ideological and value diversity is also central to the post normal sustainability agenda and with pnsts the values based nature of the issues involved is articulated in a way that seeks to bring politics openly into the picture to this end we identify processes that are emerging in the literature and in practice that will enable pnsts these include extended peer communities and multi actor heuristics agonistic processes and new characterisations of citizenship that support moves to sustainability in so doing we believe that pnsts offer clumsy solutions for wicked problems that can be engaged with in both the research and practice arenas as significant contributions to addressing urgent needs

environmental policy stringency and technological innovation evidence from survey data and patent counts this article uses patent data to examine the impact of public environmental policy on innovations in environment related technology the analysis is conducted using data on an unbalanced panel of 77 countries between 2001 and 2007 drawing upon data obtained from the european patent office epo world patent statistical patstat database and the world economic forum s wef executive opinion survey the results support our hypotheses concerning the positive role of both general innovative capacity and environmental policy stringency on environment related innovation a subsequent two stage model assesses the factors which drive innovation in general and uses the fitted values to estimate environmental innovation while the analysis is conducted on a smaller sample they confirm the findings of the reduced form model

the challenge of measuring biofuel sustainability a stakeholder driven approach applied to the french case measuring biofuel sustainability requires dealing with a wide variety of complex and conflicting values at stake consequently the biofuel capacity to contribute to one specific value cannot lead to any absolute conclusion about the overall sustainability of biofuel the scope of the sustainability concept may vary depending on individuals preferences the time scale and the geographical region based on the 5 pillars sustainability concept that includes social economic environmental legal and cultural considerations the present study proposes to assess several biofuel sustainability options for france by 2030 through a stakeholder driven approach rather than seeking to reach a consensus our approach allows us to capture the wide diversity of stakeholders perspectives and preferences french stakeholders perceive 22 different sustainability criteria for biofuels with a very low level of agreement between the different segments of professions feedstock producers biofuel producers refining industry fuel distributors car manufacturers end users government and ngos in order to operationalize the sustainability assessment a set of indicators has been identified with stakeholders that allows us to measure the capacity of biofuels to fulfill each of their criteria seventeen biofuel options were assessed with regards to economic social environmental cultural and legal considerations allowing the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of each biofuel

does energy policy hurt international competitiveness of firms a comparative study for germany switzerland and austria this paper investigates the impact of energy policies on the export performance of firms there has been a long policy debate on potentially negative impacts of cost increasing energy policies on international competitiveness we use firm level data from three countries with similar industry structure but different energy policies germany switzerland and austria we rely on firm manager assessments on the relevance of energy policy in terms of taxes regulations standards subsidies and demand stimulation for their firm operation and link data on the adoption and development of new energy technologies regression analyses and matching approaches both show very few impacts of energy policy on export performance suggesting that either policy impacts on firms cost are negligible in the period of study 2012 to 2014 or likely negative impacts are balanced by the adoption of new technology

scaling up biofuels a critical look at expectations performance and governance this editorial is the introduction to a special issue of scaling up biofuels a critical look at expectations performance and governance which assesses biofuels contribution to sustainability governance and upscaling the issue aims to contribute to a more informed evidence based policy debate on the role of bioenergy for sustainable development it comprises six review papers that share a solutions oriented and policy focused approach towards the assessment of sustainability bioenergy production and consumption is not evaluated as an isolated industry or additionality instead it is assessed as an inherent component of the broader social ecological system and history of which it forms a part synthesizing available empirical evidence on performance and contextualizing the evidence in view of expectations and bioenergy governance in and over time the papers address the role of biofuels for climate mitigation their ability to deliver on socio economic policy expectations the actual performance in view of risk anticipation and mitigation the role of state policy considering sector development and sustainability and the ability of certification schemes to deliver on market conversion and quality the synthesis paper draws on the empirical findings to develop a set of sustainability conditions sine qua nons that have to be considered in processes of policy making and upscaling

energy security for india biofuels energy efficiency and food productivity abstract the emergence of biofuel as a renewable energy source offers opportunities for significant climate change mitigation and greater energy independence to many countries at the same time biofuel represents the possibility of substitution between energy and food for developing countries like india which imports over 75 of its crude oil fossil fuels pose two risks global warming pollution and long term risk that oil prices will undermine real living standards this paper examines india s options for managing energy price risk in three ways biofuel development energy efficiency promotion and food productivity improvements our salient results suggest that biodiesel shows promise as a transport fuel substitute that can be produced in ways that fully utilize marginal agricultural resources and hence promote rural livelihoods first generation bioethanol by contrast appears to have a limited ability to offset the impacts of oil price hikes combining the biodiesel expansion policy with energy efficiency improvements and food productivity increases proved to be a more effective strategy to enhance both energy and food security help mitigate climate change and cushion the economy against oil price shocks

the information value of failure predictions in credit assessment abstract this paper is concerned with the information value of failure prediction in the context of bank lending decisions it argues that earlier concerns about the methodology and robustness of classificatory models are given the volume of confirmatory studies no longer of practical significance instead the problem is whether reported classificatory performance provides information of value new information in a plausible ex ante decision situation in interpreting ex post evidence it appears that claimed information value is directly dependent on assumptions about factors which are neither specified nor testable within the conventional ex post experiment past claims for information value have used extreme values for these assumptions but it is argued that with plausible alternative assumptions the ex post evidence is also consistent with negative information value

development and utilization of energy related technologies economic performance and the role of policy instruments the present study investigates the effects of energy related technologies on economic performance at firm level we distinguish clearly between adoption and use of energy related technologies process innovation in the broad sense and product innovation in energy related fields we take into consideration four energy related policy instruments and expected demand for energy related new products and services we investigate the possibility of indirect effects of policy on performance via adoption or innovation by interacting adoption and innovation variables with policy instrument dummies we test our hypotheses not only for the pooled data but also separately for the three countries austria germany switzerland that are taken into consideration in this study we find a positive direct effect of investment expenditures for energy related technologies on labour productivity that measure intensity of adoption of energy related technologies and a positive indirect effect of energy taxes via investment in energy related technologies further we find positive direct and indirect effects of regulation standards and voluntary agreements via the adoption of production related technologies and for technologies for the generation of renewal energy sources we find neither direct nor indirect effects of the sales of innovative energy related products that measure product innovation in energy related products on labour productivity no differences among the three countries could be detected with respect to investment in energy related technologies and sales of innovative energy related products the indirect effects of regulation and standards and voluntary agreements can be primarily traced back to german firms

ukraine and the great biofuel potential a political material flow analysis ukraine was once considered the breadbasket of the soviet union its agriculture subject to both extensification and intensification measures following the dissolution of the soviet union both these processes were reversed giving modern day ukraine the image of untapped agricultural potential alongside the country s proximity to the european union and its access to the black sea this has made ukraine a key candidate as a global supplier of feedstock for biofuel demand for the latter is rising noticeably especially in the wake of current european and international blending targets for liquid biofuels ukraine has responded with a number of initiatives to further biofuel feedstock production we have compiled a material flow account for ukraine focusing especially on the development of the agricultural sector since the early 1990s by complementing this physical account with an in depth analysis of political and economic developments we are able to trace the impact of rising demand for biofuel feedstock on ukraine we find that the attempt to establish a biofuel sector based largely on rapeseed was not successful but has nonetheless left the country at a cross road in the development of both its economy and its resource use

reply to commentary on the special issue scaling up biofuels a critical look at expectations performance and governance abstract the special issue scaling up bioenergy identifies major policy expectations attached to biofuels production worldwide and it provides systematic reviews of actual biofuel performance and governance in these areas papers address the extent to which policy expectations related to climate change mitigation energy security rural livelihoods and risk mitigation have been achieved and the effectiveness of public and private governance in advancing sector sustainability building on these findings the synthesis paper asks what next for countries wishing to advance national biofuel programmes as one option for the necessary divestment from fossil fuels among other sine qua nons the special issue highlights the urgent need to downscale global energy demand and to stop treating biofuels as an isolated sector goldemberg et al 2018 query several aspects of our approach from research design data collection to our recommendation to apply the precautionary principle in research as well as policy making unfortunately goldemberg et al 2018 incorrectly portray our main argument moreover they claim bias in our approach and mistakes in our empirical evidence however without bringing forward an evenhanded critique of research philosophy methodology or referencing different empirical literature we fully stand behind our research philosophy and findings presented

modeling the timing of business firm exits the previous theoretical studies of the timing of business exits have employed two different approaches they have either developed sequential decision making models or models based on gambler s ruin the purpose of this paper is to evaluate both approaches for this task some simple models of the exit process are developed and it is shown that both types of models are capable of generating the observed patterns of firm mortality the reasonableness of the assumptions and the importance of key variables in the two models are tested using a case study of restaurant exits we find that the sequential decision making model would have to be rather complex to serve as a realistic descriptive model of the exit process gambler s ruin models on the other hand provide a realistic descriptive model not only of the environment in which a large portion of this industry operates but of the decision process as well models based on gambler s ruin may therefore provide a potentially useful approach for modeling exit process in other industries dominated by small firms

the evolution of collective strategy frames in high and low velocity industries we argue that the collective assumptions of firms drive their actions and practices and create the conditions of industry velocity in our view cognitive construction by firms is the primary driver of industry velocity this is in contrast to the contingency views common in the literature which hold that industry velocity plays a role by constraining and shaping firm strategies specifically we suggest that firms develop unique assumptions social networks and feedback mechanisms that these mechanisms perpetuate patterns of changes in collective beliefs and aggregate actions and that these patterns in turn shape high and low velocity conditions we examine these assertions by tracing the collective beliefs of three aircraft low velocity and semiconductor high velocity firms over a 20 year period 1977 1997 our results suggest that the cognitive construction view of industry velocity is reasonable

green jobs economic impacts of renewable energy in germany abstract the labor market implications of large investment into renewable energy re are analyzed in this text although a growing re industry can be observed in germany the overall effect of large increases of re based electricity and heat generating technologies on the german economy require a careful model based analysis the applied model panta rhei has been used among others to evaluate the german energy concept in 2010 it takes positive and negative impacts of re into account the paper shows the overall effects under different assumptions for fossil fuel prices domestic installations and international trade the results are sensitive to assumptions on the development of re world markets and german exports to these markets almost all of these scenarios exhibit positive net employment effects under medium assumptions net employment of re expansion will reach around 150 thousand in 2030 only with assumptions for german re exports below today s level net impacts are slightly negative gross employment will increase from 340 thousand in 2009 to between 500 and 600 thousand in 2030

sugar rush prospects for a global ethanol market in 2005 the major economies of the world including the g8 and 5 developing nations mexico india brazil china and south africa along with the united nations the international energy agency and the european union launched the global bioenergy partnership to discuss ways to promote the sustained use and production of biofuels around the globe reflecting growing concerns for finding economically viable substitutes for petroleum this paper examines whether and if a vibrant global market in biofuels based on sugarcane based ethanol is economically feasible the paper finds that while there is already international trading in biofuels it is highly limited compared with its potential in the current climate of accelerating fossil fuel prices biofuels represent an increasingly attractive displacement for some of our fossil fuel addiction not only do they substitute for petrol but they also produce lower emissions the paper finds that sugarcane ethanol could make an important contribution to substituting for a portion of petroleum and also offer potential benefits for international development

us biofuels subsidies and co2 emissions an empirical test for a weak and a strong green paradox abstract using energy data over the period 1981 2011 we find that us biofuels subsidies and production have provided a perverse incentive for us fossil fuel producers to increase their rate of extraction that has generated a weak green paradox further in the short run if the reduction in the co 2 emissions from a one to one substitution between biofuels and fossil fuels is less than 26 percent or less than 57 percent if long run effect is taken into account then us biofuels production is likely to have resulted in a strong green paradox these results indicate that subsidies for first generation biofuels which yield a low level of per unit co 2 emission reduction compared to fossil fuels might have contributed to additional net co 2 emissions over the study period

bankruptcy theory development and classification via genetic programming abstract bankruptcy is a highly significant worldwide problem with high social costs traditional bankruptcy risk models have been criticized for falling short with respect to bankruptcy theory building due to either modeling assumptions or model complexity genetic programming minimizes the amount of a priori structure that is associated with traditional functional forms and statistical selection procedures but still produces easily understandable and implementable models genetic programming was used to analyze 28 potential bankruptcy variables found to be significant in multiple prior research studies including 10 fraud risk factors data was taken from a sample of 422 bankrupt and non bankrupt norwegian companies for the period 1993 1998 six variables were determined to be significant a genetic programming model was developed for the six variables from an expanded sample of 1136 bankrupt and non bankrupt norwegian companies the model was 81 accurate on a validation sample slightly better than prior genetic programming research on us public companies and statistically significantly better than the 77 accuracy of a traditional logit model developed using the same variables and data the most significant variable in the final model was the prior auditor opinion thus validating the information value of the auditor s report the model provides insight into the complex interaction of bankruptcy related factors especially the effect of company size the results suggest that accounting information including the auditor s evaluation of it is more important for larger than smaller firms it also suggests that for small firms the most important information is liquidity and non accounting information the genetic programming model relationships developed in this study also support prior bankruptcy research including the finding that company size decreases bankruptcy risk when profits are positive it also confirms that very high profit levels are associated with increased bankruptcy risk even for large companies an association that may be reflecting the potential for management to be cooking the books

how policies affect international biofuel price linkages abstract we estimate the role of biofuel policies in determining which country is the price leader in world biofuel markets using a cointegration analysis and a vector error correction vec model weekly prices are analyzed for the eu us and brazilian ethanol and biodiesel markets in the 2002 2010 and 2005 2010 time periods respectively the us blender s tax credit and brazil s consumer tax exemption are found to play a role in determining the ethanol prices in other countries for biodiesel our results demonstrate that eu policies the consumer tax exemption and blending target tend to determine the world biodiesel price

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

intra firm diffusion of green energy technologies and the choice of policy instruments environmental benefits only unfold if green environmentally friendly technologies are widely diffused and intensively deployed within a firm we investigate how different types of policies directly and in combination affect the number of different green energy technologies adopted by a single firm intra firm diffusion using data from a dedicated survey on the diffusion of green energy technologies of 1200 swiss firms and applying well identified econometric models we found that energy taxes are a very effective policy instrument for the intra firm diffusion of green energy technologies even more important however are non political measures that show the largest effect among all tested instruments additional analyses show that a time consistency in policy making is more important for energy tax regimes than for regulations and b no evidence for complementarities between the policy types could be identified

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

inventor networks in renewable energies the influence of the policy mix in germany technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support various policy instruments that can broadly be categorized as technology push demand pull or systemic constitute part of the policy mix for renewable energies our goal is to gain insights into the influence of this policy mix on the intensity and organization of inventive activities for wind power and photovoltaics in germany since the 1980s we examine the effect of different instruments on the size and structure of co inventor networks based on patent data our results indicate notable differences between the technologies the network size for wind power is driven by technology push and systemic instruments while in photovoltaics demand pull is decisive for network growth by and large the instruments complement each other and form a consistent mix of policy instruments the structure of the networks is driven by demand pull for both technologies systemic instruments increase interaction especially in the wind power network and are complementary to demand pull in fostering collaboration

sustainability of biofuels in latin america risks and opportunities several latin american countries are setting up biofuel programmes to establish alternative markets for agricultural commodities this is mainly triggered by the current success of brazilian bioethanol production for the domestic market and for export furthermore the global biofuel market is expected to increase due to ambitious biofuel programmes in the eu and in the usa colombia venezuela costa rica and guatemala are focusing on bioethanol production from sugarcane whereas biofuel production in argentina is based on soy biodiesel recent developments of the biofuel sector take place extremely rapid especially in argentina which became one of the five largest biodiesel producers in the world in 2008 till date no specific biofuel sustainability certification systems have been implemented in latin american as well as on global level this fact and the predominant use of food crops for biofuel production raise concerns about the sustainability of biofuel production related to environmental and social aspects this paper provides an overview of the hotspots of conflicts in biofuel production in latin america it investigates presently available sustainability tools and initiatives to ensure sustainable biofuel production in latin america finally it provides an outlook on how to integrate sustainability in the latin american biofuel sector

governance and legitimacy aspects of the uk biofuel carbon and sustainability reporting system biofuel policy has become highly contentious in europe in this paper we discuss the governance and legitimacy aspects of the carbon and sustainability system of the uk renewable transport fuel obligation rtfo both before and after implementation of the renewable energy directive rtfo certification is of a meta type being built upon existing certification and labelling schemes each of which are more or less contested by ngos despite the rtfo being based on these non state initiatives so far the concerns of environment and development ngos and others have not been given serious expression in regulatory terms indeed biofuel policy development in the uk has arguably been unduly non responsive to critical opinion given the limited scientific base on biofuel impacts and the reliance of rtfo sustainability certification on non state actors and schemes drawing on documentary evidence interviews and three sets of literatures co production of regulation post normal science and legitimacy of non state certification and labelling processes we suggest that until concerned voices are given a stronger expression in uk and ec biofuel policy development the policy cannot yet be said to have achieved a wide social mandate

symbolic convergence and the hydrogen economy this article documents that the hydrogen economy continues to attract significant attention among politicians the media and some academics we believe that an explanation lies in the way that the hydrogen economy fulfills psychological and cultural needs related to a future world where energy is abundant cheap and pollution free a fantasy that manifests itself with the idea that society can continue to operate without limits imposed by population growth and the destruction of the environment the article begins by explaining its research methodology consisting of two literature reviews research interviews of energy experts and the application of symbolic convergence theory a general communications theory about the construction of rhetorical fantasies we then identify a host of socio technical challenges to explain why the creation of a hydrogen economy would present immense and possibly intractable obstacles an argument supplemented by our research interviews next we employ symbolic convergence theory to identify five prevalent fantasy themes and rhetorical visions independence patriotism progress democratization and inevitability in academic and public discussions in favor of the hydrogen economy we conclude by offering implications for scholarship relating to energy policy more broadly

governing biofuels in brazil a comparison of ethanol and biodiesel policies over the last decade brazil has implemented a new and ambitious biofuel program the national program of production and use of biodiesel pnpb when launching this program in 2004 the government stated that it wanted to avoid the same kind of geographical concentration single crop focus dominance of agribusiness and exclusion of family farmers that have occurred with bioethanol production through the proalcool policy since 1975 this paper compares the life histories of the bioethanol and the biodiesel policies of brazil by analyzing their substantive policy content the power and politics of actors that struggle for the design and implementation of the policies and the polity in terms the organization and institutionalization of the policies the paper concludes that both policies have become submerged by and dependent on the polity and politics of primarily the energy and agricultural sectors that operate as the two semi autonomous governance fields this submerging has shaped the substantive contents of biofuels policies and explains why the 2004 biodiesel policy pnpb in spite of its objectives for social inclusion and rural development faces similar problems in implementation as its predecessor the 1975 bioethanol policy proalcool

applying portfolio theory to global bank lending abstract portfolio theory provides some insights into how a bank should manage its global exposures practical application of some of the principles of portfolio analysis is possible if comparable credit ratings are available and if the impact on each loan s rating of likely future events can be assessed if further restrictive assumptions are made about which quality dimensions of the portfolio are more important and how much more important and if judgements can be quantified about what risk return tradeoffs are acceptable then it is possible to derive measures to guide exposure and pricing decisions this article is related to the other papers in this special issue in that country and corporate risk assessment methodologies can provide important inputs into the portfolio analysis this paper however attempts to go beyond the evaluation of risk at the level of individual companies countries or other loan customers and to focus instead on the problem of managing the riskiness of the overall bank loan portfolio

promotion of biofuel consumption in the transport sector an eu 27 perspective abstract the european union s eu directive 2003 30 ec 1 set an objective of reaching a 5 75 share of renewable energy as a proportion of the total energy consumption of the transport sector by 2010 as all the member states mss of the eu 27 were obliged to comply with this directive different public policy measures were developed and implemented to promote the use of biofuels in transport biofuels being the main renewable energy source res in this sector in this article we review the public measures undertaken in the eu 27 and show how these measures primarily involve tax incentives and biofuel blending mandates on fuel sales all countries with the exception of finland introduced tax incentives of various types to promote the use of biofuels while 18 mss also implemented biofuel blending mandates through the passing of legislation relating to this matter

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

how to deal with the rebound effect a policy oriented approach policy makers and environmental agencies have echoed concerns brought forward by academics about the need to address the rebound effect for achieving absolute energy and environmental decoupling however such concerns have generally not been translated into tangible policy action the reasons behind this inaction are not fully understood and much remains unknown about the status of the rebound effect issue on the policy agenda and policy pathways available such knowledge gaps may hamper the development of effective policies to address this issue in this paper we examine the extent to and ways in which the rebound effect is considered in policy documents and analyse thirteen specific policy pathways for rebound mitigation the effectiveness of the pathways is scrutinised and conclusions are offered to mitigate rebound effects the main policy conclusions of the paper are that an appropriate policy design and policy mix are key to avoiding undesired outcomes such as the creation of additional rebound effects and environmental trade offs from the discussion economy wide cap and trade systems as well as energy and carbon taxes when designed appropriately emerge as the most effective policies in setting a ceiling for emissions and addressing energy use across the economy

fuelling expectations a policy promise lock in of uk biofuel policy abstract controversy over eu wide biofuel policy resonated within the uk fuelling policy disagreements among uk public authorities they disagreed over how to protect a space for future second generation biofuels which were expected to overcome harm from first generation biofuels the uk government defended rising targets for available biofuels as a necessary stimulus for industry to help fulfil the uk s eu obligations and eventually develop second generation biofuels by contrast parliamentary select committees opposed biofuel targets on grounds that these would instead lock in first generation biofuels thus delaying or pre empting second generation biofuels those disagreements can be explained by different institutional responsibilities and reputational stakes towards promise requirement cycles whereby techno optimistic promises generate future requirements for the actors involved the uk government s stance illustrates a policy promise lock in a dilemma whereby promised support is a requirement for credibility towards technology innovators and thus technoscientific development but may delay the redirection of support from incumbent to preferable emerging technologies thus the sociology of expectations previously applied to technological expectations from technology innovators can be extended to analyse public authorities

do no harm risk perceptions in national bioenergy policies and actual mitigation performance this paper investigates how risks are anticipated in national bioenergy policies and in which way related expectations that harms can be prevented or mitigated have actually been met the paper draws on the national biofuel policies of ten countries and the eu selected to represent a diverse sample of regions producers and consumers and pioneers and latecomers it proceeds in two steps firstly it identifies three risk categories most frequently mentioned across the investigated national policies secondly it conducts a systematic review of available empirical research about biofuels effects in these risk categories findings are discussed regarding the empirical conditions under which related expectations to do no harm have materialized or failed and concerning the challenges of risks perception and management in actual policies we observe issues of crop selection and inadequate sectoral governance of biofuels but also challenges of large scale modes of intensive production effective risk mitigation was often the result of risk adverse choices by contract farmers engaged in biofuels production national policy documents have insufficiently conceptualized do no harm concepts and strategies in place to address these performance issues while remaining silent on the particular risk governance and accountability framework that keeps track of actual developments commitments and responsibilities

multi regime dynamics in the analysis of sectoral transformation potentials evidence from german utility sectors abstract network bound infrastructure systems as electricity gas water and telecommunications are currently undergoing transformations on various levels and dimensions liberalization technological innovations and socio cultural dynamics are part of this for analyzing these ongoing transformation dynamics as well as exploring future developments of utility systems a theoretical concept is necessary which spans production consumption and governance different levels and also different sectors this paper argues that the multi level perspective is a fruitful starting point allowing the identification of interrelated transformation dynamics in production consumption and governance but that multi regime dynamics need more emphasis particularly in a future oriented analysis

sine qua nons of sustainable biofuels distilling implications of under performance for national biofuel programs biofuels have been promoted worldwide under the assumption that they can support several strategic policy goals while mitigating associated risks drawing on published evidence on performance contributing papers to this special section question assumptions commonly attributed to biofuels their carbon neutrality their positive effect on rural livelihoods and policymakers ability to effectively govern for sustainability this paper takes these findings as its starting point and asks what next for countries wishing to advance biofuels as one option for the necessary divestment from fossil fuels deriving recommendations for national biofuel programs from past performance is no easy task context complexity power dynamics and scaling pose significant challenges to achieving policy aims we are nevertheless able to distill a set of sine qua nons indispensables for sustainable biofuel governance from the evidence and change management literatures they are put forward not as recipes for success but minimum conditions and best bet approaches requiring testing deliberation and refinement perhaps the most fundamental sine qua non is to pursue options that downscale global demand as current levels of global energy consumption if only in the transport sector cannot be met by biomass derived agrofuels in a way that meets social and environmental sustainability goals

the social return on investment in the energy efficiency of buildings in germany the german government has developed a variety of policy instruments intended to reduce national co2 emissions these instruments include a programme administered by kfw bank which aims at improving the energy efficiency of buildings it provides attractive credit conditions or subsidies to finance refurbishment measures which improve the energy efficiency of buildings significantly the refurbishment programme leads to a reduction in energy use which benefits private investors by reducing their energy bills in order to estimate whether the programme benefits society as a whole additional effects must be taken into account such as the amount of employment generated and the impact on the public budget the aim of this paper is to evaluate the social benefits of the german co2 refurbishment programme for the years 2005 2007 an extended input output model is used to estimate the effect of the refurbishment works on public revenue via taxes and social security contributions the value of avoided co2 emissions is approximated using a range of marginal damage estimates from the literature from these social benefits the programme cost is deducted the net social benefit thus computed turns out to be positive this finding suggests that the refurbishment programme is a reasonable investment of public funds

a review of social sustainability considerations among eu approved voluntary schemes for biofuels with implications for rural livelihoods the rapid expansion of biofuel production and consumption has raised concerns over the social and environmental sustainability of biofuel feedstock production processing and trade the european union eu has thus balanced its commitment to biofuels as one option for meeting its renewable energy targets with sustainability criteria for economic operators supplying biofuels to member states seven voluntary eu sustainability schemes were approved in july 2011 as a means to verify compliance while mandated sustainability criteria have a strong environmental focus a number of these voluntary schemes have social sustainability as a significant component of the requirements put forward for achieving certification as several of these voluntary schemes are incipient thereby limiting evidence on their effectiveness in practice this analysis is based on a comparative analysis of the substantive content or scope of these schemes and the likely procedural effectiveness of the same findings show that while some schemes have considerable coverage of social sustainability concerns poor coverage of some critical issues the presence of schemes lacking any social sustainability requirements and gaps in procedural rules are likely to undermine the likelihood that social sustainability is achieved through these schemes or the eu sustainability policies lending credibility to them

the probability of bankruptcy a comparison of empirical predictions and theoretical models abstract the last decade has witnessed the development of many empirical models to predict corporate bankruptcy and of several bankruptcy theories this paper reviews and integrates these two strands of research and finds a substantial amount of overlap however the overlap is not perfect the paper presents a new theory of bankruptcy that appears to fit the data better the paper also suggests directions for future empirical and theoretical research