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

a note on the production possibility frontier with pure public intermediate goods some recent studies have shown that certain forms of production functions satisfy the convexity of the production set in the presence of pure public intermediate goods this note permits a broader form of the production functions to reach the same result and further investigates the condition for the production surface to contain a flat portion une note sur la frontiere des possibilites de production quand des biens intermediaires sont purement publics certaines etudes recentes ont montre qu il existe certaines formes de fonctions de production susceptibles d assurer la convexite du bloc des possibilites de production quand existent des biens intermediaires purement publics cette note developpe certaines conditions plus generales des fonctions de production qui assurent le meme resultat de plus les auteurs examinent a quelles conditions le bloc des possibilites de production va avoir une portion plate

fostering change to sustainable consumption and production an evidence based view this note from the field is an edited version of a policy brief summarizing the key findings from the first half of the sustainable consumption research exchange network score for the policy programs in the field of sustainable consumption and production scp we recommend a framework for action to change to scp that mentions the key domains to include food mobility and energy use housing the last two clearly related to urban development it should use a systemic perspective on the scp challenge and differentiate between developed fast developing and base of the pyramid economies score focuses mainly on developed economies and here we propose to differentiate between 1 measures that fit with mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could make operational agreements on implementation of instruments like green public procurement stimulating ecodesign etc 2 problems where a rough agreement on goals exists but where change is radical or means are uncertain and hence planning difficult here governments could foster visioning experimentation and support e g international collaboration in leapfrogging programs 3 problems that outright clash with the mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could foster informed deliberation on the more fundamental issues related to markets governance and growth 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

degrowth and collaborative value creation reflections on concepts and technologies abstract the concept of degrowth aims fundamentally at reducing material and energy throughput equitably while questioning the desirability of further economic growth in order to achieve this reduction of society s throughput radical changes in the ways goods and services are produced distributed and used are required in this think piece concepts of consumer integration into the value creation process and new enabling technologies are discussed as possible constituting elements of alternative organizational models in a degrowth society to date collaborative value creation concepts such as crowdsourcing and mass customization have been discussed almost exclusively as business model patterns for companies in economies that are set to grow the same applies to the assessment of new technologies such as additive manufacturing web based user interfaces for co creation and other flexible production technologies that allow for collaborative and individualized production potential positive and negative effects of these concepts and technologies with regard to the objectives of degrowth are discussed in order to initiate a debate about the inclusion of cvc for the design of alternative organizational models that are in line with degrowth thinking this think piece illustrates that several elements of collaborative value creation and its enabling technologies coincide with degrowth objectives but do not lead per se to their attainment thereby a starting point for future empirical work in this area is generated

the optimal revenue tariff for public input provision abstract the revenue motive has been important in most countries employment of tariffs many ldcs remain dependent on the tariff as a revenue source such revenue may fund economic development projects that enhance domestic production possibilities as such these projects are better described as public inputs rather than public goods this paper derives efficiency rules for public input provision when the tariff is the sole source of revenue the implications of both private and public sector production of the public input are investigated in the latter case deviation from production efficiency is potentially welfare improving

global equity and environmental crisis an argument for reducing working hours in the north abstract is an improvement in the distribution of income between north and south compatible with environmental reconstruction to date economic growth rather than redistribution has been the dominant strategy for redressing global inequality but environmental constraints on growth at least in the north may prove desirable this paper argues that one strategy for reconciling these two goals is for the north to take productivity increases in the form of leisure time rather than increased output it discusses the feasibility of such an approach

sustainable energy prices and growth comparing macroeconomic and backcasting scenarios how do results from the sustainability research world of backcasting relate to the macroeconomic scenarios used for policy evaluation and planning the answer is that they don t mostly they come

production possibilities with a public intermediate good this paper considers the shape of the production possibility set with a public intermediate good of the atmos phere type the elements which tend to give rise to a concave product ion frontier are isolated from those which tend to generate a convex one by using the notion of the production surface the results from earlier models are both generalized and sharpened

large cash transfers to the elderly in south africa we examine the social pension in south africa where large cash sums about twice the median per capita income of african households are paid to people qualified by age but irrespective of previous contributions we present the history of the scheme and use a 1993 nationally representative survey to investigate the redistributive consequences of the transfers documenting who receive the pensions their levels of living and those of their families we also look at behavioural effects particularly the effects of the cash receipts on the allocation of income to food schooling transfers and savings in south africa a large social pension about twice the median per capita income of african households is paid in cash to people qualified by age irrespective of previous contributions we present the history of the scheme and explain how such large transfers could come about in an economy in which the recipients were not only politically weak but without any political representation whatsoever we then use a 1993 nationally representative survey to investigate the redistributive consequences of the transfers documenting who receive the pensions their levels of living and those of their families we also look at behavioural effects particularly the effects of the cash receipts on the allocation of income to food schooling transfers and savings the pressing policy issue for south africans is whether it makes sense to target seven billion rand nearly 2 billion of social expenditure through the current pension schemes our analysis contributes to the discussion by documenting the redistributive and behavioural effects of the transfers we find that at least as far as immediate incidence is concerned and without allowance for behavioural effects the social pension is an effective tool of redistribution and that the households it reaches are predominantly poor because so many of the elderly among south africa s african population live with children the social pension is also effective in putting money into house

the design of an environmental index of sustainable food consumption a pilot study using supermarket data monitoring of the environmental impacts of consumption is necessary for the evaluation of current performance and to support the understanding of how initiatives for change can be implemented we discuss design issues and methodology for an environmentally sensitive shopper ess index to measure the environmental sustainability of food consumption at the household level the ess index is based on revealed consumer preferences and uses scanner data provided by the largest uk food retailer as a pilot illustration of the methodology we use the index to identify environmentally critical periods during the calendar year

political economy of climate change ecological destruction and uneven development abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze climate change and ecological destruction through the prism of the core general principles of political economy the paper starts with the principle of historical specificity and the various waves of climate change through successive cooler and warmer periods on planet earth including the most recent climate change escalation through the open circuit associated with the treadmill of production then we scrutinize the principle of contradiction associated with the disembedded economy social costs entropy and destructive creation the principle of uneven development is then explored through core periphery dynamics ecologically unequal exchange metabolic rift and asymmetric global in justice the principles of circular and cumulative causation ccc and uncertainty are then related to climate change dynamics through non linear transformations complex interaction of dominant variables and threshold effects climate change and ecological destruction are impacting on most areas especially the periphery earlier and more intensely than previously thought likely a political economy approach to climate change is able to enrich the analysis of ecological economics and put many critical themes in a broad context

econ 101 in need of a sustainability transition abstract ecological economics was one of the first of a number of scientific communities to develop transdisciplinary understandings of the sustainability challenges faced by society as a field with economics in its name ecological economics differs from the other communities and should face the particular task of contributing to the development of a new economics for economics to promote sustainability transitions it is not enough to call for more pluralism a new basic structure of economic knowledge should be developed in order to provide the foundation for a sustainability transition to econ 101 this paper argues that the performativity of economics needs to change and proposes a way of structuring econ 101

targeting transfers through restrictions on recipients our objective is to design transfer programs that maximize some social welfare function following the optimal income tax formulation we assume that a random process endows individuals with characteristics that influence welfare such as ability to earn income medical condition or unmonitorable income the goal is to maximize the utility of a randomly chosen individual other individualistic social welfare functions would lead to equivalent results if the random characteristics were observable a first best outcome could be achieved by making them the basis for lump sum transfers in practice however we can observe only indicators of these characteristics such as earnings medical expenditures or consumption patterns the challenge for policy is to design an efficient second best transfer program based on indicators in this paper we argue that 1 an optimal transfer program in general must sacrifice productive efficiency to target efficiency this is done by imposing restrictions on the choices made by intended beneficiaries 2 a program that incorporates restrictions such as means tested in kind transfers commodity specific taxes and subsidies and even ordeals i e the imposition of deadweight costs to qualify for a transfer will perform better than programs that rely solely on income taxes and cash transfers

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

cash versus direct food relief abstract the usual method of providing relief to a famine region is to import food and distribute it to the needy direct food relief if there are markets for food in the region however a relief agency could just as easily distribute money to the needy and let them purchase food in the market cash relief this alternative has been much discussed in the famine literature recently the purpose of this paper is to clarify the conditions under which cash relief will be more or less effective than direct food relief by analyzing the relative effectiveness of the two policies in a formal model

are we consuming too much this paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive we consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness or insufficiency of current consumption one is an intertemporal utility maximization criterion actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility the other is a sustainability criterion which requires that current consumption be consistent with non declining living standards over time we extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change in applying this formula we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion in these regions genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital

public investment optimal provision of hicksian public inputs a considerable portion of government spending is devoted to commodities that are not public goods but that directly affect production possibilities examples include public infrastructure like roads and dams educational facilities and research projects in basic science and some forms of information such commodities are public inputs in a small open economy context the focus of this paper is on those that are hicksian in nature an interesting decomposition of the beneficial impact of a hicksian public input is developed then first best and second best optimality conditions for public inputs that are comparable to those for collective consumption goods are derived

global inequities and emissions in western european textiles and clothing consumption abstract rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in western europe is well documented as are changes in the textiles and clothing industry s globalised production structure we apply a sub systems global multi regional input output accounting framework to examine the sustainability implications of meeting western european demand for textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009 our framework estimates environmental and socio economic impacts of consumption in a consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in the value chain the results demonstrate that western european textiles and clothing consumption remains dependent on low cost labour from brazil russia india and china bric principally in the textiles and clothing and agricultural sectors conversely we show that the wage rate for bric workers in the global value chains serving western european textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but remains low relative to the wage rate paid to western european workers likewise we find that profits are increasingly generated within bric and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in western europe we find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for western europe between 1995 and 2009 however the trend is not linear and the importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries we conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more sustainable future for western european textiles and clothing consumption

the sufficiency strategy would rich world frugality lower environmental impact abstract one alleged weapon against unsustainable environmental impact is for the wealthy to consume less this sufficiency strategy is to complement the efficiency strategy of lowering ratios of resource inputs to economic outputs the former would reduce the affluence factor in i pat the latter the technology factor that the latter strategy suffers from a consumption rebound is widely recognized this paper identifies a similar rebound when the affluence factor is autonomously lowered the lower initial demand lowers prices which in turn stimulates new demand by others the strategy moreover addresses only the rich raising questions of its theoretical maximum efficacy its proponents usually conflate frugality with the north south dichotomy and intra generational with inter generational equity moreover there are difficulties with the supporting arguments that frugality is good for one s own sake as well as for the environment and that the rich should lead the way to living more lightly personal behaviour change is furthermore not a substitute for international political efforts finally since all changes in right side factors of the i pat equation change other right side factors such indirect attacks on impact should be abandoned in favor of supply and emissions quotas