but who will monitor the monitor suppose that providing incentives for a group of individuals in a strategic context requires a monitor to detect their deviations what about the monitor s deviations to address this question i propose a contract that makes the monitor responsible for monitoring and thereby provides incentives even when the monitor s observations are not only private but costly too i also characterize exactly when such a contract can provide monitors with the right incentives to perform in doing so i emphasize virtual enforcement and suggest its implications for the theory of repeated games jel c78 d23 d82 d86

some comments on free riding in leontief partnerships hans k hvide holmstrom bell journal of economics 13 1982 324 40 showed that freeriding is inevitable in partnerships where inputs are substitutes legros and matthews review of economic studies 68 1993 599 611 and vislie journal of economics behavior and organization 23 1994 83 91 showed that when inputs are strict complements leontief technology free riding can be avoided with a linear sharing rule this paper considers the robustness and some extensions of the positive result of these articles first i show that legros and matthews s and vislie s results are not robust to the introduction of participation constraints and limited liability however i construct a novel rule that mitigates that problem second i perturb the deterministic model of the other authors it turns out that free riding is avoidable with noise added to joint output and is inevitable when noise is added to individual productivity jel c72 d20 d29 d82 i introduction a long tradition in economics compares the performance of different ownership arrangements of firms capitalist firms are defined through separating ownership and production by having an outside owner and partnership firms split the value of production in full between the partners building on alchian and demsetz 1972 the seminal paper by holmstrom 1982 argues that partnership firms may suffer from free riding problems holmstrom 1982 shows that efficient provision of effort is not consistent with nash behavior in static partnership games where inputs are substitutes and actions are noncontractible capitalist firms on the other hand can mitigate the free rider problems by a principal breaking the budget i e keep some of the surplus for oneself whenever one observes a low joint output motivated by the many examples of partnerships in the real world considerable literature has questioned the generality of holmstrom s result 1 the present article considers a particular branch of that literature works that explore effort taking in leontief partnerships partnerships where joint output is determined by the partner with the least effort 2 legros and matthews 1993 section 3 1 and vislie 1994 hereafter abbreviated lmv find that if production is determined in such a manner there exists a linear sharing rule denoted beta sup that implements the efficient provision of effort and hence eliminates free riding the intuition for this result is that given that the other agents stick to the efficient action no agent can gain by providing more effort because output does not change and can be made to support the full decrease in output since his deviation is proportional to the change in output the present article discusses the robustness of the implementation result of lmv in two different directions by introducing participation constraints and limited liability on one hand and by introducing noise in the production on the other hand let me articulate why it is important to test for robustness along these two directions first the partnership literature has largely ignored whether a partnership can be expected to agree ex ante on efficient sharing rules when such rules exist the interesting problem is that a partner with a strong bargaining power may wish to settle on a non efficient rule if that gives him or herself a greater return hence it is of importance to have sharing rules that make provision of effort incentive compatible under any distribution of participation constraints to distribute a large share of surplus to agents with strong bargaining power proposition 1 see below constructs a simple sharing rule that solves the participation problem this sharing rule which is inspired by the groves s mechanism has the attractive property of implementing the efficient provision of effort under any conceivable distribution of participation constraints

planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

who formulates renewable energy policy a swedish example a broad participation by stakeholders and an extensive reliance on expert advice are often seen as preconditions for a legitimate and successfully implemented renewable energy policy however we have lacked systematic data for testing this argument this article s contribution is to examine the actors who take part in the making of swedish energy policy with the help of data on the composition of various committees of inquiry over the last twenty years 1988 2009 swedish renewable energy policy is often characterised with words like pioneering and forerunner suggesting that the policy making process in this area engages many different experts and stakeholders our data give only some support to this argument results point to a noteworthy predominance of politicians civil servants and representatives of state agencies within the policy process producers of uranium and fossils based energy have been engaged more often than producers of renewable energy experts have played a prominent role but this is mostly due to the participation of expert bureaucrats rather than of scientists the study suggests that a better understanding of the making of energy policy both in sweden and elsewhere requires greater attention to the networks and role of various state employees

wind power development in sweden global policies and local obstacles abstract recently the swedish government adopted a national planning goal of a yearly wind power generation of 10 twh by 2015 implying a substantial increase from the current 0 6 twh level in this paper we provide an economic assessment of the potential for future wind power investments in sweden in close conjunction with an analysis of the legal attitudinal and policy related uncertainties that face a wind mill investor it is shown that the economics of swedish wind power is negatively affected by a the lack of policy stability b public criticism at the local level and in particular c the legal provisions governing the assessment of the environmental impacts of wind mills and the planning procedures for mill location while national and global energy policies as well as the general public point out wind power as particularly environmentally friendly most of the objections to its expansion at the local level tend to have environmental origins the interests of those who object to wind mill installations gain strong legal protection and the municipal territorial planning monopoly in sweden implies that it is hard to make national energy policy goals heard at the local implementation stage compared to its competitors wind power is the technology that tends to have the most to loose from the risk and uncertainties created by this investment environment the paper identifies and discusses a number of ways in which the national policy interests could be strengthened at the local level we discuss the role of citizen participation as well as solutions within the realms of the legal system moreover since the diffusion of wind power encounters the most strident legal and attitudinal obstacles where it interferes with competing land uses a move offshore appears to be an efficient strategy from the perspective of a wind mill investor a stronger political commitment to wind power expansion in legal provisions as well as in the form of long run stability in policy instrument implementation will probably be necessary to attain the 2015 policy goal

diffusion of renewable energy technologies in south korea on incorporating their competitive interrelationships renewable energy technologies rets have attracted significant public attention for several reasons the most important being that they are clean alternative energy sources that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions to increase the probability that rets will be successful it is essential to reduce the uncertainty about its adoption with accurate long term demand forecasting this study develops a diffusion model that incorporates the effect of competitive interrelationships among renewable sources to forecast the growth pattern of five rets solar photovoltaic wind power and fuel cell in the electric power sector and solar thermal and geothermal energy in the heating sector the 2 step forecasting procedure is based on the bayus 1993 manage sci 39 11 1319 1333 price function and a diffusion model suggested by hahn et al 1994 marketing sci 13 3 224 247 in an empirical analysis the model is applied to the south korean renewable energy market

towards a science of sustainability improving the way ecological economics understands human well being abstract ecological economics seeks to recognize what traditional economics often ignores that the economy is embedded in wider social and biophysical systems to date ecological economics has focused on the biophysical dimensions of these interactions yet achieving sustainable development will require difficult decisions regarding which environmental and other assets should be preserved and in what form this emphasizes the importance of understanding why particular environmental resources and services are important to human well being and how social and economic institutions may be structured to make the best use of these and other forms of capital the paper thus examines a variety of approaches to well being characterizing these as interpreting well being as a state of mind as a state of the world as human capability or as the satisfaction of underlying needs the literature surveyed is drawn largely from political philosophy and psychology and includes classical utilitarianism and self evaluative approaches descriptive utilitarianism and preference based approaches the basic needs approach functional approaches and underlying needs based and virtue based approaches particular authors include michalos scitovsky easterlin hirsch galbraith rawls sen maslow boyden and max neef the ideas examined are found to have significant implications for economic theory and policy especially regarding the social construction of preferences the treatment of distributional issues the identification of universal underlying needs and the relationship between the satisfaction of these needs and perceived well being these insights suggest that rising real incomes are unlikely to result in improved community well being calling into question the traditional economic view of progress they also offer a new path to sustainable development in which the primary focus is on the cultivation of appropriate institutions and attitudes rather than on the better management of resources the paper concludes that important aspects of social economic and environmental systems are codetermined and thus that achieving sustainable development will require an expansion of the scope of analysis to encompass a wider system dynamic the most promising approaches to well being in this context are those that identify universal underlying human needs thus avoiding the commodity fetishism of mainstream economics

on sustainability and materiality homo faber a new approach abstract this paper explicitly engages with recent debates in ecological economics on what mode of humanity and person the sustainability project requires e g becker 2006 siebenhuner 2000 and responds to calls to widen our understanding of the human being beyond homo economicus e g bina and guedes vaz 2011 using the example of the increasing attention to well being both within policy and academic circles we seek to contribute to current critical considerations of the sustainable person becker 2010 2012 we do this by incorporating often neglected perspectives from disciplines rooted in the arts and humanities specifically anthropology and philosophy introducing to debates on sustainability the notion of homo faber our aim is threefold 1 to invite creative thinking about the role that materiality and practice play in the constitution of alternative notions of being 2 to soften the anthropocentrism of western worldviews by considering the possibility of a different mode of humanity based upon connection rather than separation interdependence rather than autonomy gibson graham 2011 2 and 3 to encourage deeper reflection about the need for and the challenge of interdisciplinary sustainability research

on the generic inefficiency of differentiable market games it is shown that a differentiable market game remains generically inefficient when its strategic outcome function is perturbed smoothly the proof is based on thom s transversality theorem and removes any restriction regarding the dimension of the strategy spaces a converse result is that almost all efficient market games that are competitive are characterized by bertrand like non differentiabilities finally a synthesis between the cournot and bertrand type approaches to walrasian equilibrium as recently developed in the literature is suggested

facilitating practices the effects of advance notice and best price policies even if firms in a market choose discount prices noncooperatively the use of most favored customer and meet or release contracts enables those firms to adopt quantity choice strategies consequently there can be a range of list prices that are impervious to unilateral nonselective discounts but this range does not include prices above the level determined in a cournot equilibrium the practice of advance public notification of list price increases can facilitate the establishment of such supracompetitive list prices as was argued in the recent ftc ethyl case the possibility of offering discounts selectively results in a much more competitive situation

general equilibrium theory with imperfect competition abstract this survey is organized as follows i introduction ii the main issues iii negishi s model iv objective demand in the cournot nash framework v objective demand in the bertrand nash framework vi the assumption of quasi concavity of the profit functions vii compromises between the conjectural and the objective approach viii insights into the notion of perfect competition ix conclusion

on monopolistic competition and involuntary unemployment in a simple temporary general equilibrium model it is shown that if the number of firms is small imperfect price competition in the markets for goods may be responsible for the existence of unemployment at any given positive wage in our examples involving two firms facing their true demand curves total monopolistic labor demand remains bounded as the wage rate goes to zero and unemployment prevails for a sufficiently large inelastic labor supply in the competitive case total labor demand would go to infinity and intersect labor supply at a positive wage

guaranteed lowest prices do they facilitate collusion abstract the effects of a policy guaranteeing lowest price are analyzed in a two stage game where firms first decide whether to adopt such a policy and then choose prices symmetric and asymmetric games are solved to examine the extent to which prices can rise to collusive levels

the fragmentation of the bargaining society wage setting in the nordic countries 1950 to 1992 it is commonly believed that corporatist bargaining institutions have been in general decline in the 1980s and 1990s the leading explanations of the purported universal trend toward greater decentralization of collective bargaining are the impact of technological change changes in the occupational structure and growing international economic integration decentralization should be particularly visible in the nordic countries because collective bargaining was more centralized in these countries in the 1960s and 1970s than in any others in western europe in this article the authors present data on the changes in the centralization of wage bargaining in the four nordic countries since 1950 they document that a significant decentralization of collective bargaining has occurred in sweden as is well known but not in the other three the article concludes with a review of possible explanations of swedish exceptionalism

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

market socialism the current debate with the decline of command economies in eastern europe china and elsewhere the systemic issue of the feasability of combining the market mechanism with some form of public or collective ownership or control over the distribution of surplus has assumed topical importance the essays in this book aim at advancing the old debate on this issue to a new analytical stage questions of incentive compatability agency problems depoliticization of economic decisions and those of justice and worker autonomy are at the heart of the discussion the defenders as well as critics of market socialist proposals in this book are particularly sensitive to the centrality of these questions

the relevance of epistemic analysis to sustainability economics and the capability approach abstract this paper considers how epistemic analyses birkin and polesie 2011 foucault 1970 foucault 1990a foucault 1990b may assist with the development of sustainability economics bartelmus 2010 baumgartner and quaas 2010a baumgartner and quaas 2010b and soderbaum 2011 and the capability approach ballet et al 2011 martins 2011 rauschmayer and lesmann 2011 scerri 2012 it was the french social theorist michel foucault 1926 1984 who coined the term episteme to refer to the possibility of knowledge that determines the development of thought and knowledge in a given period for foucault epistemes were the buried foundations of knowledge that his epistemic archaeology could unearth in 2007 foucault was identified as the most cited author of books in the humanities by thomson reuters isi web of science this paper begins with a brief definition and description of epistemic analyses a summary analysis of the modern episteme and neoclassical economics is then provided and this is followed by outline evidence for the emerging episteme finally the opportunity is considered for the emerging episteme to reinforce and enhance sustainability economics and the capability approach

renewable energy an efficient mechanism to improve gdp abstract this article analyzes the effects of renewable energy on gdp for 116 economies in 2003 through structural equation modeling sem approach in order to decipher the mechanism of how the use of renewables improves macroeconomic efficiency we decompose gdp by the expenditure approach although previous theory predicts positive effects of renewables on capital formation and trade balance the sem results show that renewables have a significant positive influence on capital formation only the result that renewables do not have a significant impact on trade balance implies that renewables do not have an import substitution effect thus we confirm the positive relationship between renewable energy and gdp through the path of increasing capital formation but not for the path of increasing trade balance

from rational actor to efficient complexity manager exorcising the ghost of homo economicus with a unified synthesis of cognition research it is now commonplace to note that economics canonical model of humans as rational self interested utility maximizers homo economicus is both descriptively misleading and often insufficiently predictive however certain outdated assumptions tied to homo economicus persist often influencing discourse and research design even in sustainability oriented fields we argue this ghost of homo economicus endures because the diversity of findings that confound the canonical model has surfaced across multiple behavioral and cognitive sciences each with its own terminology and focus area as such a unified accessible synthesis of this new information has yet to emerge in this paper we review recent insights from across the behavioral and cognitive sciences and propose an efficient complexity manager ecm model homo efficens as the best synthesizing option the crux of this model is that our species works within biological limits to efficiently filter massive environmental complexity this is achieved largely through analogical or case based reasoning we explain this synthesized model using a series of accessible metaphors finally we speculate on how this model may enrich future sustainable development research insofar as it points to fruitful units of analysis can stimulate methodological innovation and provide a more explicit theoretical foundation for the field

the collaborative enterprise instead of the currently prevailing competitive model a more collaborative strategy is needed to address the concerns related to the unsustainability of today s business this article aims to explore collaborative approaches where enterprises seek to build long term mutually beneficial relationships with all stakeholders and want to produce sustainable values for their whole business ecosystem cases here analyzed demonstrate that alternative ways of doing business are possible these enterprises share more democratic ownership structures more balanced and broader governance systems and a more comprehensive view of organizational goals and performance which goes beyond the narrow concept of financial bottom line and into a stronger and systematic care of the needs and requirements of the different stakeholder groups thanks to this evidence and different theoretical and empirical contributions we suggest that the strength and sustainability of enterprises come from their ability to fit into the environmental social and cultural context in which they operate by creating values for all stakeholders enterprises can involve them and gain deep support based on their commitment this may lead to superior performance from a multiple bottom line perspective

wind power implementation the nature of public attitudes equity and fairness instead of backyard motives abstract public attitudes anywhere in europe show moderate to strong support for the implementation of renewable energy nevertheless planning wind power developments appears to be a complicated matter in most countries the problems that have to be dealt with during decision making processes on the siting of wind turbines are usually referred to as mere communication problems however public attitudes towards wind power are fundamentally different from attitudes towards wind farms this gap causes misunderstandings about the nature of public support for renewables in particular where planners easily assume support for renewables can be generated by information campaigns emphasising the environmental benefits whereas opposition to renewable energy schemes can be explained by a selfish not in my backyard attitude both explanations used by planners authorities and unfortunately by many scholars are falsified furthermore policies that still take this common knowledge for granted can have negative consequences for the implementation rates of renewables visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on landscape values is by far the dominant factor in explaining why some are opposed to wind power and others are supporting it moreover feelings about equity and fairness appear the determinants of backyard motives instead of selfishness

efficiency despite mutually payoff relevant private information the finite case individuals have or observe partly private information they independently choose acts possibly including messages the center may also act individuals utilities may depend on all acts and information including others private information are there incentives depending only on public information that make desired behavior a bayesian equilibrium assume incentive payments are separable and fully transferable appropriate incentives exisit either if the center s information depends stochastically however slightly on all relevant private information or if individuals relative valuations of acts however divergent are not too dissimilarly affected by different states of nature more generally one gives necessary and sufficient conditions for existence whenever the strategy profile asks agents to reveal all private knowledge relevant to their beliefs about the center s information

institutional factors influencing strategic decision making in energy policy a case study of wind energy in france and quebec canada abstract this article studies the different institutional factors that influence a strategic wind energy decision making process through a comparative transnational study of quebec canada and france research confirms that political choices are dynamic and vary with a change in the wind energy context the balance of power between pressure groups supranational influences energy evaluation approaches and social acceptance until the 90 s an initially unfavorable national energy context combined with a neocorporatist culture as defined by szarka 2004 1 limited the place of wind energy in both jurisdictions in the 2000 s a political window opened when the private sector penetrated the market with the deregulation of the electricity sector exogenous pressure from the european union in france endogenous pressure from social actions in quebec and a more favorable energy context in both cases however this political window was short lived due to social acceptance issues in quebec political will was stronger until 2013 now the social controversy surrounding wind energy has shifted from the local to the national level projects are better accepted locally because of local financial involvement but an anticipated electricity surplus questions the relevance of new energy projects in france political support depends on the government in power between 2005 and 2013 the reduction in annual wind power installations from 1246 mw to 621 mw was due to the major influence of the anti wind lobby on a right wing government after 2013 the left wing government s arrival coincided with a phasing out of several regulatory and financial uncertainties today both jurisdictions are at a crossroads and the future energy mix will depend on the relative influence of the institutional components identified in our opinion key solutions to more sustainable political choices are conditioned by an improvement in the way projects and policies plans and programs are assessed

the impact of international forces on the chinese wind power industry abstract the chinese wind power industry has achieved remarkable growth in the last two decades the total installed capacity of wind power in china has now surpassed that of the united states thereby making it the country with the largest installed wind power capacity in the world the independent and innovative capability of chinese wind turbine manufacturers has undergone continuous improvement and has now reached the point where the country has the capability to produce large scale wind turbines although the chinese domestic policy incentive has played a significant role in the rapid development of the chinese wind power industry the contribution made by external international forces should not be overlooked this research aims to establish a comprehensive model reflecting the international forces that impact on the chinese wind power industry this model consists of three subsystems i e 1 the international cooperation subsystem 2 the clean development mechanism cdm subsystem and 3 the import export subsystem using the model as part of the research the findings suggest that for the international cooperation subsystem joint research and development rd however its effect in terms of the diffusion of technical information and technical capability is weak similarly the degree of dependence of chinese wind turbine manufacturing on imports is weakening as domestic wind turbine manufacturers actively explore overseas markets this comprehensive model helps both international and domestic wind power investors to understand the impact of international forces on the chinese wind power industry resulting in better investment decisions and the consequential minimization of risk

market uncertainty correlated and sunspot equilibria in imperfectly competitive economies first version received june 1988 final version accepted november 1990 eds an imperfectly competitive economy is very prone to market uncertainty including uncertainty about the liquidity or thickness of markets we show in particular that there exist stochastic equilibrium outcomes in nonstochastic market games if and only if the endowments are not pareto optimal we also provide a link between extrinsic uncertainty arising in games e g correlated equilibria and extrinsic uncertainty in market economies e g sunspot equilibria a correlated equilibria to the market game is either a sunspot equilibrium or a non sunspot equilibrium to the related securities games but the converse is not true in general

allocation under dictatorship research in stalin s archives we survey recent research on the soviet economy in the state party and military archives of the stalin era the archives have provided rich new evidence on the economic arrangements of a command system under a powerful dictator including stalin s role in the making of the economic system and economic policy stalin s accumulation objectives and the constraints that limited his power to achieve them the limits to administrative allocation the information flows and incentives that governed the behavior of economic managers the scope and significance of corruption and market oriented behavior and the prospects for economic reform

efficient and nearly efficient partnerships this paper shows in two ways that the degree to which free riding diminishes the performance of deterministic partnerships may be less than has been generally thought first a necessary and sufficient condition is provided for a partnership to sustain full efficiency it implies that many non trivial partnerships sustain efficiency such as generic ones with finite action spaces and neoclassical ones with leontief technologies second approximate efficiency is shown to be achievable in a large class of partnerships including ones with smooth and monotonic production and disutility functions approximate efficiency is achieved by mixed strategy equilibria one partner takes with small probability an inefficient action the degree to which efficiency is approximated is restricted only by the amount of liability the partners can bear nonetheless their equilibrium payments are not arbitrarily large

a participatory approach to sustainable energy strategy development in a carbon intensive jurisdiction the case of nova scotia the need for governments to reduce the exposure of energy consumers to future increases in fossil fuel prices places urgent pressure on policy makers to deliver fundamental transformations in energy strategies particularly in jurisdictions with high dependency on fossil fuel sources dorian et al 2006 this transformation is unlikely without a high level of stakeholder engagement in the policy development process this paper describes two policy development processes recently undertaken in nova scotia in which the inclusion of stakeholder views was central to the approach the first delivered a new institutional framework for electricity energy efficiency involving the inception of an independent performance based administrator the second required the delivery of a strategy to significantly increase renewable energy generation in the province it involved recommendations for changes in institutional arrangements financial incentives and technological options this process was followed by new commitments to renewable energy developments new infrastructure for the importation of hydro electricity and the announcement of fits for ocean energy in both cases recommendations were made by an independent academic institution and the government responded directly to a majority of recommendations the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and the implications for future energy policy making in carbon intensive jurisdictions

wind farms where and how to place them a choice experiment approach to measure consumer preferences for characteristics of wind farm establishments in sweden this paper explores preferences among the general public in sweden for attributes related to the establishment of wind power farms the method applied is a choice experiment where people are asked to choose between two hypothetical wind farms characterized by different attributes five attributes are included in the experiment i type of landscape ii type of ownership iii the degree of local participation in the planning process iv the choice to transfer revenue to the society in a pre specified way and v a monetary cost in terms of an additional electricity certificate fee the data are analyzed with multinomial logit random parameter logit and latent class models the results indicate that consumers in sweden are more likely to accept the higher renewable electricity certificate fee if a wind power farms in areas used for recreational purposes are substantially avoided b the establishment is anchored by whole or partial ownership in the local community and c the locals are involved in the planning and implementation process our policy simulation exercise shows that respondents are willing to pay a higher electricity fee corresponding to about 0 6 euro cents per kwh to avoid wind farms located in the mountainous area and private ownership

promise and shortcomings of a green turn in recent policy responses to the double crisis abstract the paper analyses six international scale responses to the financial and climate change double crisis in order to review how they define problems and solutions analyse what underpins the policy choices revealed in these responses the green turn reflect on the implications of the proposed solutions in terms of sustainability and global environmental justice and to suggest three elements for a paradigm shift towards an alternative turn embedded in ecological economics theory the analysis reveals that responses by leading international organisations continue to appeal to the precepts of neoclassical economy we argue that from an ecological economics perspective policy responses under the various labels of green economy green growth sustainable growth green new deal fall well short of what is needed to fight the environmental crisis and rising inequality across and within countries the idea of justice and equity that underpins the mainstream approach seems inadequate in terms of sustaining our environmental base and global environmental justice based on this critical review we propose an alternative turn centred on three elements of a paradigm shift leading to a new economy where the environmental base and global environmental justice are at the centre of the discourse

humans environment and economies from vicious relationships to virtuous responsibility abstract the debates questioning the meaning of growth point to a need for a more holistic understanding of human beings and of the economic actor fundamental to economic theory and practice this contribution turns to virtue ethics in order to reframe the self in more reflexive relational and environmental terms we explore the significance of understanding humans sense of responsibility that is quintessentially relational and of their capacity and need to relate to nature as well as community and society we begin by reviewing the main arguments in the thriving debate in ecological economics around what the characteristics of the human being can contribute to implement an ecologically sustainable development our aim is then to draw a link between this debate and that of virtue ethics that leads to a different understanding of the human being of what can contribute to individual wellbeing and a good life responsibility we argue is not only a value but a virtue that enables individuals to find meaning in acting responsibly towards the environment emphasising the multiple benefits that arise from framing good lives in active terms we conclude reflecting on the challenges to and implications of our proposition for government institutions particularly education

the folk theorem with imperfect public information the authors study repeated games in which players observe a public outcome that imperfectly signals the actions played they provide conditions guaranteeing that any feasible individually rational payoff vector of the stage game can arise as a perfect equilibrium of the repeated game with sufficiently little discounting the central condition requires that there exist action profiles with the property that for any two players no two deviations one by either player give rise to the same probability distribution over public outcomes the results apply to principal agent partnership oligopoly and mechanism design models and to one shot games with transferable utilities copyright 1994 by the econometric society

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

human development and economic sustainability abstract this paper attempts to integrate the concern for human development in the present with that in the future in arguing for sustainable human development it appeals to the notion of ethical universalism an elementary demand for impartiality of claims applied within and between generations economic sustainability is often seen as a matter of intergenerational equity but the specification of what is to be sustained is not always straightforward the addendum explores the relationship between distributional equity sustainable development optimal growth and pure time preference

who invests in renewable electricity production empirical evidence and suggestions for further research transforming energy systems to fulfill the needs of a low carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production res e recent literature underlines the need to take a closer look at the composition of the res e investor group in order to understand the motives and investment processes of different types of investors however existing energy policies generally consider res e investments made on a regional or national level and target investors who evaluate their res e investments according to least cost high profit criteria we present empirical evidence to show that res e investments are made by a heterogeneous group of investors that a variety of investors exist and that their formation varies among the different types of renewable sources this has direct implications for our understanding of the investment process in res e and for the study of motives and driving forces of res e investors we introduce a multi dimensional framework for analyzing differences between categories of investors which not only considers to the standard economic dimension which is predominant in the contemporary energy literature but also considers the entrepreneurship innovation adoption and institutional dimensions the framework emphasizes the influence of four main investor related factors on the investment process which should be studied in future research motives background resources and personal characteristics

public acceptance of energy technologies the effects of labeling time and heterogeneity in a discrete choice experiment public acceptance is crucial for successful implementation of energy technologies in society however studies that use the concept do so in diverse and often inconsistent ways they also often limit themselves to specific technologies and do not account for the effects of labeling time and the heterogeneity of the general public which may lead to a biased and incomplete understanding of public acceptance this study first conceptualizes three forms of public acceptance socio political acceptance market acceptance and community acceptance it then relates the concept of socio political acceptance to preference formation next it uses two discrete choice experiments that were conducted in 2010 and 2012 to investigate these concerns our results show that public preferences for energy technologies are temporally stable even in the face of exogenous shocks such as the fukushima incident using mixed logit models we further show that labeling has a profound influence on stated preferences when technology labels are revealed respondents favor renewable and natural gas technologies when labels remain unobserved nuclear energy and biomass take prominence however latent class models show that there are distinct classes of respondents tied to specific socio demographic characteristics that differ greatly in their sensitivity to labeling and in the temporal stability of their preferences it follows that changes in public acceptance are not population wide but remain limited to specific sub groups we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings and conclude that future studies and policy initiatives may overlook important insights if they disregard the effects of labels time and heterogeneity

new energy strategies in the swedish pulp and paper industry the role of national and eu climate and energy policies the swedish pulp and paper industry has gone through a strategic change in its approach to electricity production and consumption over the past decade this paper documents this reorientation which includes increased on site electricity production investments and investment plans for wind power and new partnerships concerning investments in electricity production assets we also assess the extent to which these changes can be attributed to key energy and climate policies our analysis shows that this strategic reorientation has been driven by changes in the underlying economic conditions for the pulp and paper industry in particular increases in the price of electricity following the swedish energy market reform in 1996 and the introduction of the eu ets the scheme for tradable renewable electricity certificates on the other hand has provided a new source of income while these market based signals and responses are the most dominant drivers of strategic change cognitive changes in the pulp and paper industry have also played a role in the strategic reorientation the cognitive changes concerning the functioning of the electricity market i e the pricing of electricity and influence of the eu ets have been particularly important in this regard

linear inequality methods to enforce partnerships under uncertainty an overview we review different generic conditions on stochastic outcome functions to enforce either efficient or nearly efficient partnerships their logical relationship is explored two kinds of conditions are considered however the property for an action profile to be compatible plays a crucial role in both kinds also two kinds of enforcement mechanisms are considered enforcement through utility transfers and enforcement through repetition

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

the political economy of international green certificate markets this paper analyzes the political economy of establishing bilateral trade in green certificate markets as one step towards harmonization of european green electricity support systems we outline some of the economic principles of an integrated bilateral green certificates market and then discuss a number of issues that are deemed to be critical for the effectiveness stability and legitimacy of such a market by drawing on some of the lessons of the fairly recent intentions to integrate a future green certificate market in norway with the existing swedish one we highlight exemplify and discuss some critical policy implementation and design issues these include for instance the system s connection to climate policy targets the role of other support schemes and the definition of what green electricity technologies should be included furthermore the establishment of an international market presumes that the benefits of renewable power e g its impacts on the environment diversification of the power mix self sufficiency etc are approached and valued from an international perspective rather than from a national one thus implying lesser emphasis on for instance employment and regional development impacts a bilateral green certificate system thus faces a number of important policy challenges but at the same time it could provide important institutional learning effects that can be useful for future attempts aiming at achieving greater policy integration in the european renewable energy sector

impacts of a common green certificate market on electricity and co2 emission markets in the nordic countries abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of introducing a common nordic system for tradable green certificates tgcs on the electricity market and a future market for tradable co 2 emission permits teps in the analysis the energy system model generator markal was used to model the electricity and district heating supply systems in the four nordic countries sweden norway finland and denmark it is shown that the introduction of tgc quotas reduces wholesale electricity and tep prices the impact on the latter is very pronounced retail electricity prices may become lower or higher depending on the tgc quota than if obligations to fulfill tgc quotas were absent the tgc scheme s efficiency in reducing a specific amount of co 2 emissions is also compared to the corresponding efficiency of a tep scheme involving a broader range of technologies furthermore obligations to fulfill tgc quotas affect investment incentives for new non renewable electricity supply this seems especially true for gas fired power plants finally it is indicated that electricity supply based on biomass combustion dominates the tgc scheme at least in the short run

using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms an example from spain this paper focuses on the effect on people s utility of the potential environmental impacts of wind farm developments we report on research designed to provide insight into their preferences and we show how two alternative choice modelling techniques can be used to estimate them our results show that significant social costs in the form of environmental impacts can be associated with wind farm developments as relative environmental values are revealed by these methods it would be possible to develop wind farms in such a way that minimises the total social costs of the investment and which maximises its net benefits

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

new evolutionary foundations theoretical requirements for a science of sustainability abstract ecological economics stands in theoretical and ethical opposition to many aspects of neoclassical economic theory despite their sound critiques of that theory ecological economists have not settled on an alternative theory of human behavior as a potential alternative norgaard s socioecological coevolutionary framework remains underspecified in terms of variation heredity and selection i review concepts and insights on human behavior from evolutionary biology and evolutionary social science in order to supply new theoretical tools for ecological economic problems and help refine the coevolutionary framework i argue that a synthetic evolutionary theory of human behavior provides a sufficient alternative to the neoclassical perspective and that cultural evolutionary theory is a necessary prerequisite of a mature economic science ecological coevolutionary or otherwise finally i suggest some potential topics that such a mature theory might begin to tackle

feminism ecology and the philosophy of economics abstract the contemporary discipline of economics pays little heed to either the natural environment or to the work of women a review of the literature on the historical development of western concepts of self and science shows that this is not coincidental rather than suggesting that ecological economics reinforce the identification of women with nature however feminist thought suggests that dualistic thinking about men and women humans and nature can be should be replaced with a fuller picture of human identity and knowledge

lessons learned in france and quebec regarding financial and legal mechanisms to develop renewable energy a hybrid model as an acceptable solution for onshore wind abstract this article shows that the unfavorable context of emergence as well as neo corporatism limited the weight of wind energy in france and quebec and delayed the project development and the wind industry as a whole indeed the level of political will to wind energy development in both jurisdictions is fluctuating and characterized by a lack of continuity in policy or regulatory instruments the efficiency of the pricing mechanisms depends on its political design while the french feed in tariff is inefficient in terms of installed capacity and is deemed too expensive by opponents the first two calls for tenders in quebec fare quite well on that front however they are perceived as unacceptable due to the multinational companies involved and the implantation of large scale wind farms in inhabited areas the third community call for tender while generally better accepted locally is poorly regarded among the cooperative movement and at the national level because of the competition with the municipal sector and higher costs to society in both cases a hybrid pricing model would achieve a better balance between costs to society and local development thus promoting social acceptance through a greater diversity in ownership types and wind farms size

leaving some stones unturned a reassessment of iterative planning theory abstract drawbacks of standard iterative planning algorithms include i planner actions are just on paper calculations without direct economic consequences and may converge very slowly ii planners cannot act systematically on hunches and intuitions and iii planners can observe unrealistically detailed information these problems are addressed through a bayesian learning model it is shown in sharp contrast to the standard literature that planners will not necessarily settle in the long run on even approximately optimal prices in an example the planner can end up setting prices in every period that guarantee chronic shortage this is an outcome of a fully optimizing model

incentives and the existence of pareto optimal revelation mechanisms abstract from the characterization of strongly and bayesian incentive compatible paretooptimal mechanisms with transferable utilities we derive the following results if there are only two types per individual then a strongly incentive compatible paretooptimal mechanism exists if there are only two individuals with more than three types then there are sets of beliefs open in the class of all beliefs for which no bayesian incentive compatible pareto optimal mechanism exists if there are more than two individuals then the class of beliefs for which such mechanisms exist is open and dense in the class of all beliefs

values ideology and politics in ecological economics abstract ecological economics is built on a value commitment to study environmental issues and to contribute constructively to a more sustainable development path however many ecological economists still hesitate it appears to depart too much from other scholars by openly addressing issues of values and ideology in this essay the role of the scholar s orientation with respect to values and ideology is addressed it is observed that not only scholars but also actors in society are guided by their ideological orientation this leads to the idea that some of the weaknesses of economic man and profit maximising firm assumptions can be mitigated by introducing a political economic person and a political economic organisation

optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring abstract there exist optimal symmetric equilibria in the green porter model 4 8 having an elementary intertemporal structure such an equilibrium is described entirely by two subsets of price space and two quantities the only production levels used by firms in any contingency the central technique employed in the analysis is the reduction of the repeated game to a family of static games

carbon lock in rebound effects and china at the limits of statism abstract from the beginning the statist frame of the kyoto protocol has invited a focus on national carbon budgets and piecemeal mitigation within rich countries despite the clean development mechanism and other efforts to diffuse low carbon technologies to developing countries china has over the last decades continued to construct hundreds of new thermal coal power plants leading not only to skyrocketing emissions in the present but also to long term carbon lock in in light of this china is likely to continue to put strong upward pressure on global emissions for many decades to come ignoring the seriousness of this situation many rich countries have persisted to seek marginal improvements to intermittent low energy sources such as wind power rather than taking the lead in developing breakthrough baseload technologies such as nuclear fusion this paper argues that only such high energy technologies if made significantly cheaper than any fossil alternatives will be capable of breaking the current carbon lock in process in china and other developing countries

weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics the main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values should be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics the formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability implying strong or weak commensurability and weak comparability implying incommensurability will be clarified multicriteria evaluation offers the methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis the concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition in economics moreover we will show that analytic philosophy theories of complexity post normal science and the recent theories of rationality lead with different trajectories to a non algorithmic approach which in our view could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

beyond homo economicus evidence from experimental economics environmental policies are generally based on a model of the human actor taken from neoclassical economic theory this paper reports on laboratory experiments suggesting weaknesses in this model and describes alternative models correcting these weaknesses one finding is that economic actors tend to be hyperbolic as opposed to exponential discounters who discount the immediate future at a higher rate than the more distant future another finding is that economic actors are not self regarding but rather in many circumstances are strong reciprocators who come to strategic interactions with a propensity to cooperate respond to cooperative behavior by maintaining or increasing cooperation and respond to free riders by retaliating against the offenders even at a personal cost and even when there is no reasonable expectation that future personal gains will flow from such retaliation we discuss some implications for policy analysis 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

correlation and relative performance evaluation this paper reexamines the issue of relative versus joint incentive schemes in a multi agent moral hazard framework the model allows a full analysis of the information and dependence structure an important result is that the widespread notion that greater correlation in outcomes calls for more competition is not robust first when the dependence structure is effort sensitive the optimal incentive scheme in general mixes elements of relative evaluation and joint evaluation second under limited liability higher equilibrium correlation tends to make joint performance evaluation more desirable examples are provided regarding incentives in firms finance and innovation

microeconomic degrowth the case of community supported agriculture in this paper we attempt to build a new microeconomic approach that could be considered as a basis of the degrowth macroeconomic view as degrowth is a critique of the dominant macroeconomic model of the endless search for economic growth its microeconomic foundations can be built by searching a relevant grass root economic initiative to theorise our approach is based upon the case study research of a self harvesting community supported agriculture in belgium the mainstream microeconomic model is based on the well known homo economicus assumption of individual self interest and competitive behaviour by contrast our model is based on a holistic approach of producers and consumers based upon trust cooperation and ecologically responsible behaviours this contribution participates to the flourishing literature on degrowth in ecological economics we begin by reviewing the debate on degrowth and economic behaviour we discuss the case study and its accounting expression that departs from the capitalist profit seeking model we conclude by explaining the limits and challenges of our model that implements degrowth on a small scale and in a capitalist environment

environmental labelling of electricity delivery contracts in sweden abstract competition in the electricity market allows customers to choose between suppliers as a consequence customers may demand electricity from specified sources of energy in sweden the swedish society for nature conservation ssnc operates a system of environmental labelling of electricity delivery contracts since 1996 labelling is available for suppliers offering electricity from renewable sources of energy with some additional criteria companies may acquire a licence to use the label by showing ability to deliver such electricity and by agreeing to be audited the system is private independent it is operating on the bases of credibility earned by the ssnc during 90 years as an environmental organisation and 10 years as operator of environmental labelling of consumer products the system is market oriented compatible with wto and eu market principles and independent of governmental environmental restrictions subsidy or quota systems it is relying on voluntary agreements the results are desirable if only a few by electricity under labelled contracts as well as if every customer do so the market is growing a majority of the suppliers have a license and may offer labelled contracts in the year 2000 7 of all electricity sold to final consumers was sold under labelled contracts

an example of a repeated partnership game with discounting and with uniformly inefficient equilibria in this note we present an example of a repeated partnership game with imperfect monitoring in which all supergame equilibria with positive discount rates are bounded away from full efficiency uniformly in the discount rate provided the latter is strictly positive on the other hand if the players do not discount the future then every efficient one period payoff vector that dominates the one period equilibrium payoff vector can be attained by an equilibrium of the repeated game thus the correspondence that maps the players discount rate into the corresponding set of repeated game equilibrium payoff vectors is discontinuous at the point at which the discount rate is zero

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

structural dynamics of innovation networks funded by the european union in the context of systemic innovation of the renewable energy sector innovation in the renewable energy re sector relies on the concept of systemic innovation which requires interaction between two innovation aspects technology exploration and market exploitation the european union eu has introduced political instruments for systemic re innovation by integrating resources from different thematic and geographic areas however using these instruments to establish an ecosystem for systemic innovation remains unexplored this study develops a framework for evaluating the systemic innovation performance of networks through a time series analysis of network structural properties overall eu funded innovation networks have not evolved in a systemic direction first the network exhibits densely connected local clusters for technology exploration and market exploitation of re innovation which are disconnected from each other over time the gap between the two phases has weakened with increasing connectivity but the local clusters supporting either explorative or exploitative activities have diminished the existing networking linkages among organizations are considered ineffective because their positions in the network tend to display a mismatch with their innovation patterns this research presents policy suggestions for optimizing the exploration and exploitation activities in the eu s funding program and their complementarities to establish a systemic innovation environment in the re sector

pursuing self interest or self actualization from capitalism to a steady state wisdom economy the co evolution of capitalism democracy and science since 1800 has led to enormous progress but also major existential problems this article asserts that these problems are rooted in neo classical economics narrow focus within human nature on self interest which causes intense conflicts for scarce resources among people societies species and generations it describes how an emphasis on the totality of human nature in life with a focus on self actualization instead of self interest as the main driving force and wisdom rather than wealth as the ultimate aim can lead to a steady state wisdom economy that can simultaneously ensure high personal welfare and collective sustainability

new market socialism a case for rejuvenation or inspired alchemy the aim of this paper is to examine the relative merits and drawbacks of two recent models of market socialism proposed by bardhan and roemer this is done first by putting these models into the perspective of the history of economic thought thus after presenting the basic elements of the early lange model as well as the austrian and new information economics critiques the necessary comparisons and contrasts are made to see what new light these new models bring into this debate in addition the internal consistency and coherence of these models is checked in terms of their own proclaimed goals last a more radical methodological critique is provided copyright 2003 oxford university press

efficiency in partnerships we provide the necessary and sufficient condition for a partnership to be able to sustain efficiency when the output is stochastic when limited liability is imposed we show that only the level of the average liability of the partnership is important the individual levels of liability are irrelevant however the allocation of the total liability among the partners is crucial when additional conditions such as neutrality or individual rationality are imposed

the politics of market socialism the debate over market socialism has ignored the importance of the assumptions about the objectives of politicians in determining resource allocation theory and evidence suggest that totalitarian socialism does not lead to efficient resource allocation because dictators do not maximize social welfare but democratic governments have political objectives different from social welfare as well the authors argue that because these governments command greater resources have more control rights under socialism democratic socialism even if it could exist is a less efficient system than democratic capitalism thus the political case against market socialism is even stronger than the economic case

from socialism to capitalism and democracy jainos kornai is generally regarded as the world s leading scholar on socialist economic systems in this interview professor kornai discusses the evolution of his thinking on the political economy of the socialist system its characteristics reform transition and future

the rise and decline of the soviet economy the reasons for the rapid growth of the soviet union before roughly 1970 and for its subsequent growth slowdown are analysed the concentration of investment on heavy industry and soft budget constraints explain most of the growth in the 1930s the growth slowdown was due to disastrous investment decisions following the elimination of surplus labour and the diversion of research and development resources to the military rather than the failure of firms to carry out plans or diminishing returns to capital

environmental sustainability as the first principle of distributive justice towards an ecological communitarian normative foundation for ecological economics abstract the ecological economic concern with environmental sustainability embodies the normative orientations of the field this concern is foremost a matter of distributive justice the definition of which determines the relevance of the appropriate scale and efficient allocation criteria yet it would appear that the discipline lacks a shared internally consistent set of ethical premises by which this concern might be legitimized various authors have embraced a rawlsian conception of liberal justice as the appropriate banner for ecological economics in place of the consequentialist libertarian foundations of neoclassical economics including environmental economics it is argued here that this is insufficient in so far as it is premised on a vision of a discrete self sufficient economic actor instead it is posited that an ecological economic ethic must proceed from an understanding of the economic actor as community member a recognition implicit in recent ecological economic contributions focused on discourse ethics and deliberative democracy an ecological communitarian conception of distributive justice which views the well being of the individual as inseparable from the integrity of its implicate mutually constituting human and non human natural communities is advanced as the appropriate basis for the ecological economic world view in this light the thermodynamic foundations of ecological economics are seen to provide the necessary departure point for normative decision making oriented towards ensuring sustainability in economic organization

international environmental problems a simple taxonomy of international environmental problems is developed based on economic considerations the unidirectional externalities are illustrated by the case of one upstream and one downstream country the main problem in this case is an informational one the analysis of regional reciprocal externalities is illustrated by the acid rains in europe it is shown that an efficient solution could be achieved by transferable export rights finally global external problems are discussed with reference to greenhouse effects and extinction of species copyright 1990 by oxford university press

motives and performance outcomes of sustainable supply chain management practices a multi theoretical perspective many researchers believe the tremendous industrial development over the past two centuries is unsustainable because it has led to unintended ecological deterioration despite the ever growing attention sustainable supply chain management sscm has received most sscm research and models look at the consequences rather than the antecedents or motives of such responsible practices the few studies that explore corporate motives have remained largely qualitative and large scale empirical analyses are scarce drawing on multiple theories and combining supply chain and business ethics literature we purport that instrumental relational and moral motives are behind a firm s engagement in sscm practices specifically we examine the links between corporate motives sscm practices and firm performance using a sample of 259 supply chain firms in germany we empirically test five hypothesized relationships our results reveal that relational and moral motives are key drivers and that firms exhibiting high levels of moral obligations tend to outperform those primarily driven by amoral considerations findings of this study contribute to multiple literatures espousing sustainability management and can help policy makers stakeholder groups and scholars develop more robust strategies for encouraging firms to practice sscm

rural versus urban preferences for renewable energy developments development of renewable energy resources such as wind farms and hydro electric schemes are being promoted as a new method of expanding and diversifying employment in rural areas however such energy projects are associated with a range of environmental impacts which might be detrimental to other economic activities such as those based on nature tourism the authors use a choice experiment to quantify peoples preferences over environmental and employment impacts that may result from the deployment of renewable energy projects in rural areas of scotland focussing in particular on any differences between the preferences of urban and rural dwellers and on heterogeneity within these groups rural and urban households are shown to have different welfare gains which are dependent on the type of renewable energy technology and on the scale of project under consideration