determinants of energy productivity in 39 countries an empirical investigation abstract this paper uses three types of analysis to investigate the drivers of energy productivity changes occurring in 39 countries during 1995 2009 we find that increases in sectoral energy productivity were the primary driver behind economy wide energy productivity improvements structural economic shifts away from industry and towards service oriented sectors played a lesser role in aggregate energy productivity improvements nations with similar demographic and economic characteristics showed similar levels of energy productivity and rates of improvement most notably former communist countries and nations undergoing economic liberalization exhibited the highest rate of improvement although they are still less energy productive than developed nations moreover the econometric analysis reinforces the long standing hypothesis that higher levels of income per capita and higher energy prices are associated with greater energy productivity while a greater share of output from industry is associated with lower energy productivity levels in particular higher energy prices and income levels are associated with improvements in sectoral energy productivity

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

a theory of interlinked rural transactions this paper argues that the interlinking of labor output and credit contracts often observed in rural economies can be regarded as an attempt to improve allocative efficiency in the face of moral hazard it advances an economic explanation of the phenomenon which is rooted in the view that prevalent modes of transaction of which interlinked contracts are an example are shaped by technological considerations interlinking is shown to be an efficient economic response to unequally distributed information arising from the uncertainty which characterizes subsistence agriculture all pareto efficient allocations require a combination of wage cum output sharing with consumption credit contracts the analytical framework set up to demonstrate the results is used to examine the response of the contractual parameters to changes in i the returns to alternative occupations available to tenant laborers ii the cost of credit to the village economy and iii the riskiness of cultivation the analysis concludes that public policy to alleviate rural poverty must recognize the relationships between technological considerations and modes of transaction in the absence of a complete set of markets

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

co2 emission standards and investment in carbon capture abstract policy makers in a number of countries have proposed or are considering proposing co 2 emission standards for new fossil fuel fired power plants the proposed standards require coal fired power plants to have approximately the same carbon emissions as an uncontrolled natural gas fired power plant effectively mandating the adoption of carbon capture and sequestration ccs technologies for new coal plants however given the uncertainty in the capital and operating costs of a commercial scale coal plant with ccs the impact of such a standard is not apparent a priori we apply a stochastic generation expansion model to determine the impact of co 2 emission standards on generation investment decisions and in particular for coal plants with ccs moreover we demonstrate how the incentive to invest in coal ccs from emission standards depends on the natural gas price the co 2 price and the enhanced oil recovery price as well as on the level of the emission standard this analysis is the first to consider the entire power system and at the same time allow the capture percentage for ccs plants to be chosen from a continuous range to meet the given standard at minimum cost previous system level studies have assumed that ccs plants capture 90 of the carbon while studies of individual units have demonstrated the costs of carbon capture over a continuous range we show that 1 currently proposed levels of emission standards are more likely to shift fossil fuel generation from coal to natural gas rather than to incentivize investment in ccs 2 tighter standards that require some carbon reductions from natural gas fired power plants are more likely than proposed standards to incentivize investments in ccs especially on natural gas plants but also on coal plants at high gas prices and 3 imposing a less strict emission standard emission rates higher than natural gas but lower than coal e g 1500 lbs mwh is more likely than current proposals to incentivize investment in coal ccs technology but only at high gas prices and to a lesser extent than a stringent standard e g 300 lbs mwh

formal and informal sector credit institutions and interlinkage abstract nationalized banks in poor countries often ration rural credit this creates demand for loans from monopolistic landlord moneylenders who often interlink credit and product contracts allowing the latter to extract more of the tenant s consumer surplus in the presence of asymmetric information such arrangements can be inefficient we find that increasing the fixed credit allocation to the rural sector at a subsidized rate does not reduce that inefficiency the entire benefit of the subsidy is extracted by the moneylender an alternative policy of providing credit at subsidized rates but in a flexible manner is more effective in reducing the inefficiency

effects of carbon taxes in an economy with prior tax distortions an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper analyzes the costs of carbon taxes in a model that recognizes interactions between this tax and pre existing taxes first we examine the extent to which costs of a u s carbon tax are reduced when its revenues finance cuts in income taxes such use of revenues significantly reduces but does not eliminate the overall policy costs the positive overall costs reflect the carbon tax s focus on intermediate inputs and its relatively narrow base in comparison with income taxes we also examine the sensitivity of the carbon tax s costs to the level of pre existing taxes for any given use of revenues welfare costs rise significantly with pre existing tax rates indicating that models disregarding pre existing taxes may substantially understate the costs of new environmental tax initiatives

two part pricing for experience goods in the presence of adverse selection abstract because customers learn something when they purchase an experience good for the first time a firm selling experience goods may face different demand curves from new and repeat customers the firm can exploit these differences by using a two part pricing strategy to price discriminate between new and repeat customers the firm may also use a two part pricing strategy to mitigate the information problems of adverse selection when its quality is uncertain the analysis is particularly applicable to service markets where customers and firms seek long term relationships and firms maintain customer records which facilitate price discrimination

capital requirements screening and interlinked sharecropping and credit contracts this paper provides one more rationale for interlinking credit and tenancy contracts in the context of production loans in an environment characterized by a heterogeneous labor pool and imperfect information landlords will have an incentive to avail themselves of screening devices by linking tenancy and credit contracts a screening device can be implemented the equilibrium set of contracts is characterized by a variety of interest rates some of which might be below the market interest rate the interest rate principal schedule is downward sloping with higher ability tenants choosing larger principals at lower interest rates

ecolocical certification of forest products economic challenges abstract with increasing rates of forest depletion worldwide increasingly the question is being asked can markets play a role in mitigating the deleterious environmental and social impacts of forestry activities the forest stewardship council and others have proposed systems of ecological certification where otherwise very similar products are viewed by consumers as different products because additional information on the products history is provided the certification assures the consumer that the products have been produced with practices that meet fundamental ecological and social standards for ecological certification systems to be viable and deliver products to the market over the long term the relationships among key components must evolve economically and institutionally consisting of local forest management firms local certifying non government organizations international non government organizations timber and product markets the ecological certification system transcends local forests and communities to international markets conceptually the system is a series of principal agent relationships this paper in addition to developing the concept of ecological certification analyzes the relationships among the many actors and the relationship of the actors to the forest

why institutional credit agencies are reluctant to lend to the rural poor a theoretical analysis of the indian rural credit market abstract this paper examines why institutional credit facilities remain unable to extend credit to the rural poor analysis indicates that poor peasants at best can offer an entitlement set as a mortgage comprised only of future shares of their harvest which itself is subject to risk consequently lenders can not advance loans without risking extensive loss of loanable funds as the landlords income is subject to the same risk as that of peasants they advance loans to ensure that their own income is not affected by the peasants financial situation an extension of institutional credit to peasants results only in subsidization of landlords

institutionalisation of sustainable consumption patterns based on shared use the product service system pss concept has been proposed as a way of dealing with unsustainable patterns of consumption in the business to consumer b2c domain existing alternatives to traditional consumption based on ownership such as car sharing communal washing centres and tool sharing schemes indicate that more sustainable patterns of consumption may be found for other household functions however the low profile of these examples in society and on the market calls for a query into factors that may facilitate or hinder broader acceptance of more sustainable alternatives in this study the aforementioned examples are analysed from institutional and product service system perspectives and it is suggested that the embodiment of alternative consumption patterns into every day routines depends on institutional arrangements regulatory and normative on how the product service systems are designed and applied in practice and oil the socio cultural background of the society the systems are implemented in c 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

targeting child labor in debt bondage evidence theory and policy implications despite recent multilateral efforts to single out child labor in debt bondage as one of the worst forms of child labor several important questions have yet to be addressed how pervasive is the phenomenon are there systematic correlations between the incidence of children in debt bondage and the economic legislative and financial development indicators of the economy how does an understanding of these correlates affect the way national and international policy measures aimed at targeting this form of child labor are perceived this article addresses each of these questions the empirical findings suggest strong correlation between the likelihood of the incidence of child labor in debt bondage with the stage of development of an economy the stage of financial development and enforcement of core labor rights building on this evidence the article presents a theoretical model that highlights the drawbacks and merits of a number of policies aimed at putting checks on child labor in debt bondage

the shading and distancing of commerce when internalization is not enough abstract a political economy of degradation and of sustainability should account not only for the full range of production costs but the sources of those costs it should consider how the pursuit of wealth can deliberately or not lead to uncounted costs and unaccountable actors this article explores the conditions of cost generation and externalization especially those that are largely unintended and inadvertent it shows how the pursuit of wealth the expansion of markets the mobility of capital and the entanglements of production processes can lead to the unwitting generation and displacement of costs it analyzes competitive business strategy and patterns of production and consumption for their contribution to such costs business strategy and state policy tend to create a never ending search for frontiers however simulated and however unecological they may be the costs generated in those frontiers are a function of shading that is obscuring of costs and distancing the separation of production and consumption decisions both of which impede ecological and social feedback and create cognitive institutional and ethical lags between initial benefits and eventual full costs as distance increases along dimensions of geography culture bargaining power or agency negative feedback loops are severed stakeholders expand while decision making contracts environmental problems are displaced and shading and cost externalization increase the likelihood of sustainable resource use increases as distance is lowered as institutions locate decision authority in those who receive negative ecological feedback and who have the capacity and incentives to act on that feedback and as the burden of proof for economic interventions shifts to the interveners

trophically balanced sustainable agriculture considering an economy without fossil fuels literally built from the ground then up we developed several interactive research models of biointensive farms that use no fossil fuels quantifying and summarizing total human labor energy input and total caloric energy output we demonstrate that a successfully designed farm can produce a positive energy return on investment eroi leaving excess caloric energy available for building economic community structures e g schools and hospitals farm products with negative eroi must be coupled with other products with positive eroi to assure nutritionally balanced diets are maintained while still achieving an overall positive eroi for the total agroecological operation we show that similar to the ecosystem energy budgets are tight which makes for difficult decisions on diet farm plot diversity and energy profitability for future growth considering the totality of this low energy agro system based economy we simplify many operational variables into a unique graphical solution space which reveals both reasonable expectations of agroecological eroi performance and extreme asymptotes beyond which indicate regions of system failure

consumption and environment some conceptual issues abstract consumption ranks with population and technology as a major driver of environmental change and yet researchers and policymakers have paid it scant attention when the topic is addressed its conceptual foundations are either taken as self evident or are conflated with production overall economic activity materialism maldistribution population or technology the risk is to adopt the latest buzzword in the environmental debate stretch the concept to encompass all conceivable concerns and forfeit any advantage for analysis or for behavior change that may accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems consumption must be distinguished conceptually from other approaches to environmental problems one approach is to work within the consumption production dichotomy examining not just purchasing but product use and non purchase decisions a second approach one that challenges the prevailing dichotomy and its propensity to relegate consumption to a black box is to treat all resource use as consuming that is using up and ask what risks are entailed consumption can then be seen as material provisioning where risks increase with increasing distance from the resource as background misconsumption or overconsumption depending on the social concern raised or as a chain of decisions that compel the behaviors of restraint and resistance among producers pursuing the consumption and environment topic engenders resistance among a wide range of actors for reasons that are personal analytic and policy related nevertheless the topic appears to have the potential of helping analysts and others transcend conventional approaches to excess throughput

energy price energy efficiency and capital productivity empirical investigations and policy implications abstract the immediate effect of carbon pricing policy is to raise energy costs which in turn reduces energy consumption either through induced capital under utilization or investments in new energy efficient capital the latter mechanism which implies improvements in energy efficiency is realized in the long run while the former which has implications for capital productivity tends to occur in the short run we employ panel vector autoregressions as well as co integration and error correction techniques to identify these short and long run relationships including their differences across canadian industries

monopoly power and distribution in fragmented markets the case of groundwater using data from pakistan s punjab the authors examine monopoly power in the market for groundwater irrigation water extracted using private tubewells a market characterized by barriers to entry and spatial fragmentation simple theory predicts that tubewell owners should price discriminate in favor of their own share tenants and this analysis of individual groundwater transactions over an 18 month period confirms such price discrimination and among those studied tubewell owners and their tenants use considerably more groundwater on their plots than do other farmers the authors also provide evidence that monopoly pricing of groundwater leads to compensating albeit small reallocations of canal water which farmers exchange in a separate informal market despite the substantial misallocation of groundwater a welfare analysis show that monopoly pricing has limited effects on equity and efficiency in the long run a policy aimed at eliminating monopoly pricing would do little to help the poorest farmers

delayed formal credit bribing and the informal credit market in agriculture a theoretical analysis abstract the paper presents a theory of interest rate determination in the informal credit market in backward agriculture the market for informal credit is created by the delay in disbursement of formal credit the delay is controlled by the official of the formal credit agency and he is bribed by the farmer to reduce the delay the official and the moneylender play a non cooperative game in choosing the bribing rate and the informal interest rate respectively the informal sector interest rate and the effective formal sector interest rate incorporating the bribe are equal in equilibrium agricultural price and credit subsidy policies may raise the interest rate in the informal credit market

disneyland monopoly interlinkage and usurious interest rates abstract interlinkage between labour and credit markets is interpreted as a consequence of a monopolistic moneylender s attempt to extract consumer s surplus from the borrower by levying a two part tariff this analogy enables us to draw on the literature on non linear pricing to high light issues in agrarian structure the consequence of policy interventions like taxes and minimum wage legislation is studied it is shown that the moneylender will charge usurious interest rates if wages are rigid downwards or there is a tax on agricultural income or borrowers have heterogeneous preferences some geometry for analysing interlinkage is developed and used for deriving some of the results

estimating the net implicit price of energy efficient building codes on u s households abstract requiring energy efficiency building codes raises housing prices or the monthly rental equivalent but theoretically this effect might be fully offset by reductions in household energy expenditures whether there is a full compensating differential or how much households are paying implicitly is an empirical question this study estimates the net implicit price of energy efficient buildings codes iecc 2003 through iecc 2006 for american households using sample data from the american community survey 2007 a heteroskedastic seemingly unrelated estimation approach is used to estimate hedonic price house rent and energy expenditure models the value of energy efficiency building codes is capitalized into housing rents which are estimated to increase by 23 25 percent with the codes however the codes provide households a compensating differential of about a 6 47 percent reduction about 7 71 in monthly energy expenditure results indicate that the mean household net implicit price for these codes is about 140 87 per month in 2006 dollars 163 19 in 2013 dollars however this estimated price is shown to vary significantly by region energy type and the rent gradient

credit and sharecropping in agrarian societies this paper considers a model of linkage between land labor and credit transactions in the context of sharecropping the paper s objectives are a to derive and characterize the equilibrium in a model of a land scarce labour abundant economy under sharecropping given an infinitely elastic supply of identical sharecroppers at a reservation utility and b to demonstrate that in an imperfect market a landlord may offer credit to his tenant sometimes even at a subsidized rate of interest without necessarily insisting that the sharecropper borrow only from him precluding an involuntary linkage between credit and land transations it has been demonstrated that regardless of the presence or absence of linkage or any other control by the landlord as long as he can vary the size of the plot given to a tenant and there are enough potential tenants in equilibrium contracts a tenants utility under sharecropping will be the same as that which he could have obtained as a full time wage laborer this result implies that policies other than land reform will not affect the welfare of tenants

defects in disneyland quality control as a two part tariff this paper shows that firms endowed with monopoly power can utilize an optional service contract form of guarantee as an instrument for effecting a surplus extracting two part tariff the monopolist finds it optimal to produce guarantee and replace defective units even if a zero defect rate could be achieved at no additional production cost it is also shown that the price per unit is greater than the effective marginal cost it may even be higher than the pure monopoly price moreover the monopolist is unable to extract all of the consumers surplus thus that optional service contract policy can provide an effective yet defensible form of price discrimination as an alternative to possible illegal tie ins quantity discounts and simple two part tariffs a guarantee is a risk sharing insurance contract tailored to the risky or uncertain flow of consumption services from a commodity see heal 1976 guarantees provide for full or partial replacement repair or refund for expected and unexpected short falls in service indeed appelbaum and scheffman 1978 have provided an example in which the refund exceeds the purchase price the guarantee may come into force in a variety of circumstances ranging from specifically named contingencies to general promises of satisfaction guaranteed or your money back guarantees may be offered as a mandatory tie in with purchase or may be optional we refer to the latter as service contracts they may be priced on a per unit basis or offered at a fixed fee invariant of number of units purchased

european co2 prices and carbon capture investments we assess the option to install a carbon capture and storage ccs unit in a coal fired power plant operating in a carbon constrained environment we consider two sources of risk namely the price of emission allowance and the price of the electricity output first we analyse the performance of the eu market for co2 emission allowances specifically we focus on the contracts maturing in the kyoto protocol s first commitment period 2008 to 2012 and calibrate the underlying parameters of the allowance price process then we refer to the spanish wholesale electricity market and calibrate the parameters of the electricity price process we use a two dimensional binomial lattice to derive the optimal investment rule in particular we obtain the trigger allowance prices above which it is optimal to install the capture unit immediately we further analyse the effect of changes in several variables on these critical prices among them allowance price volatility and a hypothetical government subsidy we conclude that at current permit prices immediate installation does not seem justified from a financial point of view this need not be the case though if carbon market parameters change dramatically carbon capture technology undergoes significant improvements and or a specific governmental policy to promote these units is adopted

import adjusted fatality rates for individual organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries caused by accidents in the oil energy chain abstract oil and its derivatives are crucial components of economic growth and prosperity globally the economic and social gains from producing trading and consuming oil are readily estimated and observed however during each of the phases of oil production and trade beginning with exploration and extraction physical damages injuries and fatalities and economic losses are frequently incurred from accidents such as pipeline explosions specifically organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries consume the majority of the oil produced annually yet most accidents occur in non oecd countries drawing from the input output analysis literature this paper uses a one dimensional accounting method based on trade data to determine the crude oil consumption fatality rates of the oecd countries annually between 1978 and 2008 this analysis results in meaningful changes to production based fatality calculations in particular oecd countries import the majority of their annual fatality rates from non oecd countries based on 5 patterns that emerge the authors postulate that historical trade relationships differential policies and regulations as well as levels of technology adoption may influence these outcomes this fundamental analysis applies the now popular consumption based accounting method taken from multi regional input output and life cycle assessment to a risk assessment setting the authors introduce the method in this setting such that as in the case of embodied emissions it can act as a basis for further econometric analyses develop more awareness and a greater sense of shared international responsibility as well as instruct policy changes for best practices in the field of energy

buying greenhouse insurance the economic costs of carbon dioxide emission limits in recent years a growing concern that the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases will lead to undesirable changes in global climate has resulted in a number of proposals both in the united states and internationally to set physical targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but what will these proposals cost based on the authors earlier ground breaking work buying greenhouse insurance outlines a way to think about greenhouse effect decisions under uncertainty it describes an insightful model for determining the economic costs of limiting carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning fossil fuels and provides a solid analytical base for rethinking public policy on the farreaching issue of global warming manne and richels present region by region estimates of the costs that would underlie an international agreement using a computer model known as global 2100 they analyze the economic impacts of limiting c02 emissions under alternative supply and conservation scenarios the results clearly indicate that a reduction in emissions is not the sole policy response to potential climate change following a summary of the greenhouse effect its likely causes and possible consequences manne and richels take up issues that concern the public at large they provide an overview of global 2100 look at how the u s energy sector is likely to evolve under businessas usual conditions and under carbon constraints and describe the concept of greenhouse insurance they consider possible global agreements including an estimate of benefits that might result from trading in an international market in emission rights they conclude with a technical description directed toward modeling specialists alan manne is professor of operations research at stanford university richard richels is director of the energy analysis and planning department at the electric power research institute

the effects of economic and policy incentives on carbon mitigation technologies the ability to estimate the likely effects of potential climate change policies on energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions requires an improved understanding of the relationship between different policy alternatives and energy saving and ghg reducing changes in technology a particularly important and understudied aspect of this set of issues is the conceptual and empirical modeling of how the various stages of technological change are interrelated how they unfold over time in response to market forces and the differential impact of various policies for example r d subsidies environmental taxes information programs we summarize several contributions to this literature and suggest promising areas for continued research on empirical analysis and modeling of induced technological change

fragmented duopoly theory and applications to backward agriculture abstract the central aim of this paper is to provide a formal description of the idea of market fragmentation which is so widely used to describe markets in backward agriculture we begin by describing a fragmented duopoly in which each seller has a captive set of customers and there is a non captive set who may buy from either seller the nash cournot equilibria of the system are analyzed and then the model is generalized to allow for the endogenous determination of the captive sets the subgame perfect equilibrium of the model provides a useful background for studying familiar topics like fragmentation interlinkage and disguised unemployment from a new point of view

analysis on china s eco innovations regulation context intertemporal change and regional differences abstract eco innovation is recognized as a determinant of success or failure of environmental protection efforts in the long run this paper attempts to examine china s eco innovation gains in response to the energy saving and emissions reduction eser policy enforced during 2006 2010 we first construct an integrated analysis framework to evaluate the changes of energy and environmental performance used as the proxy of eco innovation and then the intertemporal change of china s eco innovation gains as well as the regional differences is investigated the results indicate that china had accelerated its process of eco innovations during 2006 2010 when a series of eser policies were enforced the developments and wide adoptions of advanced energy saving and environmentally friendly technologies serve as the primary driving forces while upgrading management skills and organizational designs contribute relatively little furthermore the realizing paths of cross region eco innovations in china are obviously discrepant

limits to the growth paradigm abstract this paper is a synthesis of several current controversies it makes four broad claims 1 that economic growth as conventionally measured is not and never has been the most important contributor to increasing human welfare 2 that technological progress has always been the primary source of both growth and welfare considered separately 3 that trade was at best a minor contributor to growth in the past and is probably now contributing negatively to both national wealth and equity hence to welfare in western europe and north america and 4 that both growth of gdp and trade are increasingly incompatible with environmental protection in fact while increasing prosperity breeds environmental sensitivity many of the processes by which it is achieved are environmentally destructive the paper assembles and presents some of the key arguments and evidence

mobilizing private finance for low carbon innovation a systematic review of barriers and solutions this paper analyses the field of innovation studies regarding barriers to low carbon innovation and consequences for finance investment and divestment and contributes to a more holistic understanding of the underlying mechanisms a combination of technological barriers combined with economic barriers institutional and political barriers contribute to sub optimal low carbon investment all along the innovation cycle policy makers need to take a systemic approach to enable the redirection of diverse private financial sources instruments range from cutting dirty r d subsidies and support for clean technology innovation and diffusion levelling the institutional playing field and making risks of high carbon and low carbon technologies transparent to providing a consistent but adaptive long term transition strategy this would allow financiers to gradually shift their investments away from high carbon mainstream markets and scale low carbon technology niche markets however financiers also need to sharpen their competencies with regard to new clean technologies and markets

the energy efficiency gap what does it mean abstract as renewed attention has been given by policy makers to energy conservation issues it has frequently been asserted that an energy efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use the critical questions is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency this paper seeks to disentangle some confusing strands of argument that are frequently brought to bear on this question by identifying the major conceptual issues that determine the set of feasible answers we identify five separate and distinct notions of optimality the economists economic potential the technologists economic potential hypothetical potential the narrow social optimum and the true social optimum each of these has associated with it a corresponding definition of the energy efficiency gap our analysis demonstrates that necessary preconditions for identifying the right measure of the energy efficiency gap include understanding and disentangling market failure and non market failure explanations for the gradual diffusion of energy efficient technologies

economic security and value change confirming inglehart s prediction 1971 of an intergenerational shift toward postmaterialist values a time series analysis controlling for the joint effects of inflation and unemployment demonstrates that there is a statistically significant trend toward postmaterialism in all eight west european countries for which data are available over the past two decades evidence from the 1981 83 and 1990 91 world values surveys indicates that this value shift occurs in any society that has experienced sufficient economic growth in recent decades so that the preadult experiences of younger birth cohorts were significantly more secure than those of older cohorts large intergenerational differences tend to be found in societies that have experienced rapid growth in gross national product per capita and are negligible in societies that have had little or no growth accordingly postmaterialism increased in 18 of the 20 societies on five continents for which we have comparable data over the past decade

international trade related food miles the case of canada abstract at the beginning of the 21st century imports of agricultural and food commodities have become a major part of many nations food baskets indeed the global food system has several merits for nations businesses and individual consumers well being however as increasing evidence suggests that we are approaching an era of climate change and scarcity of cheap energy sources the sustainability of that system must be examined one part of any food commodity chain is its food miles the distance the commodity travels from point of production to point of consumption the required energy and resulting emissions this paper presents a 1 year snapshot of canada s total import related food miles it presents an analysis of the distance imported foods traveled from around the world to major points of consumption in canada and documents the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions related to those imports it presents both a macro scale picture of the equivalent emissions related to transportation of imported food and a micro scale picture which focuses on specific commodities consumed in various parts of the country it then discusses policy implications for food sustainability overall the research highlights that about 30 of the agricultural and food commodities consumed in canada are imported resulting in food miles of over 61 billion tonnes km leading to annual emissions of 3 3 million metric tonnes of co 2 of the various agriculture and food commodities studied fruits and vegetables had the highest food miles related emissions

impact of a possible environmental externalities internalisation on energy prices the case of the greenhouse gases from the greek electricity sector the present paper is concerned with the impact of the internalisation of environmental externalities on energy prices in this context its aim is to quantify the external cost of greenhouse gases specifically carbon dioxide generated during electricity production in the thermal power plants in greece and to estimate the impact on the electricity production cost and on the electricity prices of a possible internalisation of this external cost by the producers for this purpose this paper applies the ecosensele online tool to quantify the examined externalities this research finds that the calculated external cost is significantly high compared to the corresponding production cost mainly in lignite fired power plants specifically a possible internalisation of this external cost would increase the production cost by more than 52 on average which in turn would affect similarly the electricity prices this finding could be important for decision makers in the electricity sector to develop strategies for emission reduction and to develop environmental and energy policies the general limitation of the external cost methodology applies to this work as it uses the standard method developed for the externe project similarly the data limitations as well as assumptions related to the costs and exclusions omissions of cost elements affect the results

targeting child labor in debt bondage despite recent multilateral efforts to single out child labor in debt bondage as one of the worst forms of child labor several important questions have yet to be addressed how pervasive is the phenomenon are there systematic correlations between the incidence of children in debt bondage and the economic legislative and financial development indicators of the economy how does an understanding of these correlates affect the way national and international policy measures aimed at targeting this form of child labor are perceived this article addresses each of these questions the empirical findings suggest strong correlation between the likelihood of the incidence of child labor in debt bondage with the stage of development of an economy the stage of financial development and enforcement of core labor rights building on this evidence the article presents a theoretical model that highlights the drawbacks and merits of a number of policies aimed at putting checks on child labor in debt bondage

demand pull and technology push public support for eco innovation the case of the biofuels sector the purpose of this paper is to explore the differentiated impact of demand pull and technology push policies in shaping technological patterns in the biofuels sector the empirical analysis is based on a novel and original database biopat containing patents in the field of biofuels selected using appropriate keywords and classified according to the technological content of the invention our results generally show that technological capabilities and environmental regulation spur innovative activities in the biofuels sector both demand pull and technology push factors are found to be important drivers of innovation in the biofuels sector however technology exploitation activities in first generation technologies are found to be mainly driven by quantity and price based demand pull policies on the contrary the pace of technology exploration efforts in advanced generation biofuels is shown to react positively to price based demand pull incentives but also to technology push policy the clear diversity in the impact of different public support instruments provides new insights which fuel discussion on the optimal policy mix debate and offers new elements for the design of future policy strategies

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