way forward for alternative energy research a bibliometric analysis during 1994 2013 abstract the alternative energy plays a crucial role in the sustainable energy development the alternative energy related literature had attracted a growing attention with the research outputs expanding substantially based on the science citation index expanded sci e and the social sciences citation index ssci a bibliometric analysis of the research output was carried out to depict existing research activities on alternative energy and future directions the article was the main type of publications with the english as the dominate language to explain their results with the publications increasing rapidly since 2008 the researches mostly focused on the fields of energy fuels and environmental sciences energy policy was the journal that published the largest number of research articles on the alternative energy the bioenergy and solar energy were popular items in the commonly used 20 journals among the countries the usa was leading on alternative energy related research publishing the largest number of articles tp 2368 and being the most influent h index 90 the usa played a key role in the academic collaborations with china uk canada germany italy south korea and spain the national renewable energy lab the usa contributed most in the alternative energy field and more specially the school of electrical computer engineering tp 36 was the most productive subordinate in the national technology university of athens it was interesting to note that more attention was paid to solar or wind energy during the first 5 or 10 years then turned to bioenergy subsequently except for spain canada and australia in addition bioenergy received the most attention in the 7 types of alternative energy the forest wood biomass energy crops and switchgrass were the main bioenergy resources and fermentation was the commonly used conversion technology the production of biogas biodiesel and bioethanol was most popular in the bioenergy related studies wind energy and solar energy related researches were mainly on the energy utilization approaches such as the wind generation wind farm photovoltaic and solar thermal the conversion devices such as the wind turbine and solar cell were paid most attention in order to improve the production efficiency the most cited article published in desalination in 2009 with 1562 citations until 2013 was about wind power utilization in the reverse osmosis desalination plant

effectiveness of eu biofuels sustainability criteria in the context of land acquisitions in africa abstract in recent years land is becoming an important commodity and the land sector in many developing countries has been object of growing foreign acquisitions the aim of the paper is to analyze whether the requirements set by the eu renewable energy directive introducing biofuels sustainability criteria has induced the european investors acquiring land for producing biofuel feedstocks to adopt more sustainable strategies first we review the factors that may induce a corporation to adopt sustainable behavior and corporate social responsibility csr strategies in the context of land acquisitions second the paper illustrates our original evidence on european land acquisitions in africa and on the behavior of the investors involved then we use a logistic model to estimate the variables affecting the investor s choice to certify its actions and to adopt csr strategies our evidence shows that the main factors influencing the probability that an investor chooses to certify the sustainability of its actions are the sector in which it operates the fact of acquiring land in more than one foreign country and the characteristics of origin and destination country interestingly the european economic operators involved in acquisitions for biofuel crops show significantly lower probability of being certified therefore the eu sustainability criteria seem to be ineffective in guaranteeing and verifying the sustainability of the european land investments in africa joint efforts by european union member states target countries and private sector operators are necessary to prevent the negative effects of land acquisitions on local stakeholders and the environment

the importance of comprehensiveness in renewable electricity and energy efficiency policy based on extensive research interviews and supplemented with a review of the academic literature this article assesses the best way to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency it begins by briefly laying out why government intervention is needed and then details the four most favored policy mechanisms identified by participants eliminating subsidies for conventional and mature electricity technologies pricing electricity accurately passing a national feed in tariff and implementing a nationwide systems benefit fund to raise public awareness protect lower income households and administer demand side management programs drawing mostly from case studies in the united states the article also discusses why these policy mechanisms must be implemented comprehensively not individually if the barriers to renewables and energy efficiency are to be overcome

measuring corporate sustainability management a data envelopment analysis approach despite the increased awareness of the conceptual and practical definition of corporate sustainability questions remain on how to measure performance the objective of this paper is to advance our understanding of the measurement of corporate sustainability management by introducing a data envelopment analysis dea technique and an empirical case of a korean electronics industry in particular we employ cross efficiency in the presence of dual role factors by reflecting some complexity of a real world case donations for tax benefits by employing the combined approach of cross efficiency and dual role factors we offer a new model to measure corporate sustainability management the new model and study findings contribute to the body of knowledge in corporate sustainability management and its performance measurement

lottery choice incentives complexity and decision time this paper reports the results of an experiment on lottery choice in which decision cost is measured as decision making time a simple decision cost model motivates this measurement and the experiment and predicts relationships between incentive mechanism manipulations and decision making time which are borne out in the experiment the decision cost model also suggests that decisions will change in the face of the incentive manipulations in the experiment this suggestion is borne out in a complex decision making environment but not in a simple one specification tests demonstrate that observed changes in subjects behavior are not merely due to changes in subject specific error variance one may conclude from this that the payoff dominance problem is a real issue in complex decision making experiments copyright 1993 by royal economic society

testing expected utility in the presence of errors one possible conclusion from recent experimental research on decision making under risk is that observed behaviour can be reasonably accommodated by expected utility plus an error term this conclusion implies that the violation rate of expected utility should decrease if errors are excluded this article reports on an experiment which investigates this implication by presenting the same choice problems to subjects three times the results show that the exclusion of errors leads to a significant reduction of the violation rate for most of the cases this observation can be regarded as supporting evidence for expected utility plus error term the common consequence effect and the common ratio effect both introduced by allais 1953 are the most prominent and most investigated violations of expected utility eu they have motivated the development of alternative theories of choice under risk which are able to accommodate the observed behavioural patterns nowadays a large number of alternative theories exist see starmer 2000 sugden 2004 and schmidt 2004 for surveys and naturally the question arises which theory can explain observed behaviour best many studies have addressed this question most prominent seem to be those of harless and camerer 1994 and hey and orme 1994 since eu and its alternatives are deterministic theories but observed choices are stochastic both papers integrated an error term into their estimations this fact has aroused interest in a general discussion of the role of errors in decision making under risk the discussion can be disentangled into two issues the first issue concerns the modelling of the stochastic component harless and camerer 1994 hey and orme 1994 camerer and ho 1994 hey 1995 loomes and sugden 1995 and corresponding experimental tests carbone 1997 ballinger and wilcox 1997 loomes and sugden 1998 carbone and hey 2000 buschena and zilberman 2000 loomes et al 2002 the second issue concerns the performance of eu and its alternatives for given specifications of the error term in this context hey 1995 building upon the results of hey and orme 1994 arrives at the following conclusion

ecological modernization in the electrical utility industry an application of a bads goods dea model of ecological and technical efficiency abstract newly developed data envelopment analysis techniques permit simultaneous consideration of good and bad outputs in evaluating efficiency we use these techniques to determine joint ecological and technical efficiencies of the 437 largest fossil fueled electricity generating plants in the united states utilizing the epa s e grid and clean air markets databases and drawing on ecological modernization theory we evaluate whether innovations in organizational practices and technological solutions help achieve joint technical and environmental performance efficiencies

a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy this paper proposes a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy based on the coevolution of ecosystems technologies institutions business strategies and user practices within a multi level micro meso macro perspective this builds on and develops previous coevolutionary analyses of long term technological and industrial change and recent renewed interest within ecological economics on coevolutionary approaches previous work has analysed how the coevolution of technologies and institutions has led to the lock in of current high carbon energy systems and how the coevolution of physical and social technologies and business strategies has brought significant material and welfare benefits to the minority of the world s population living in industrialised countries the coevolutionary framework proposed here may be used to undertake 1 detailed empirical analyses at a micro meso level of the challenges relating to the innovation and adoption of particularly low carbon technologies 2 as a framework for analysing the multi level interaction of social and technological elements within potential transition pathways to a low carbon energy system 3 to assess the implications for economic growth and prosperity of a transition to a low carbon economy and 4 to assist in the development of more formal multi level evolutionary economic models

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

decisions error and heterogeneity probabilistic choices or choice errors may play an important supporting role in shaping observed risky choices and a variety of restrictions on such choice probabilities play the role of identifying restrictions in empirical decision research we test six restrictions in the context of common ratio effect data for a general class of theories of risky choice two restrictions one for aggregate and one for individual data are supported but none of the heterogeneity restrictions that make the aggregate data model powerful survive scrutiny nor do estimable parametric versions of the individual data model there is room for new stochastic identifying restrictions in empirical decision research

inter linking issues and dimensions in sustainability reporting during the last decade sustainability reporting sr has been increasingly adopted by corporations worldwide this is evidenced by the adoption of several guidelines such as the iso 14000 series the social accountability 8000 standard and the gri sustainability guidelines sr shows promise to help corporate leaders and their employees to contribute towards achieving sustainable societies however most of the guidelines and standards address sustainability issues through comparmentalisation thereby leading to the separation of the economic environmental and social dimensions due to these divisive approaches holistic assessments of the effects of their efforts are seldom properly integrated into coporate decisions and procedures to make improvements for example through cleaner production worker health and safety consumer safety and reductions in the negative short and long term social and environmental impacts this paper analyses sr reports from three companies with the help of grounded theory s constant comparative analysis this analytical framework helped the authors to systematically assess the degree to which the companies addressed economic ecological and social issues separately or in an integrated and inter linked manner from the inter linkages found a new category is proposed to be added to future sr this new category can help corporate sr planners and researchers on sustainability reports to better understand how the company leaders understand their responsibilities with regard to sd these inter connectednesses are highly relevant in many short and long term dimensions of supply chain management global warming ecological disruption and societal equity issues especially with regard to the local national and global energy issues of fuels and oils the central themes of the conference at which this paper was originally presented it also plays a key role in real long term changes towards sustainability where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on planet earth

the recovery of agricultural productivity in sub saharan africa abstract this paper presents a new view of cross country agricultural productivity in sub saharan africa for the first time the wheat units approach to output aggregation is applied to africa this approach avoids many of the problems caused by exchange rate distortion and related problems when international output comparisons are based on agricultural value added measures of agricultural productivity based on the wheat unit aggregates reveal a striking recovery of growth in agricultural productivity during the mid 1980s these results contrast sharply with those derived from standard output aggregates based on agricultural value added this contrast is true for both partial and total factor productivity analyses technical change measured by expenditures for agricultural research and macroeconomic reform which leads to improved economic incentives for agriculture might account for up to two thirds of this recovery if this explanation is correct it raises concerns for the sustainability of africa s recent gains reduced public investment in agricultural research for example reduces current fiscal deficits at the expense of future growth in productivity

sustainability policy of construction contractors a review abstract sustainability is an issue of concern in many industrial sectors the construction industry is no exception the study described in this paper adopts a critical qualitative approach to investigate sustainability policy practices in the construction industry this approach includes a statement of principles sustainability reporting incorporated within a financial report and a stand alone sustainability reporting system the top international contractors listed by engineering news record enr were examined the results show that sustainability policy development varies from case to case in these companies but trends are emerging on common issues addressed the findings show a trend of increasingly level of disclosure of corporation s commitmnets an achievements on sustainability similarly the energy efficiency and conservation greenhouse gas emission reduction and integration of renewable energy resources into projects are among the common themes of these sustainability policies disclosed by construction contractors the construcion industry can learn from the energy sector that is advanced in sustainability reporting

turkey s energy efficiency assessment white certificates systems and their applicability in turkey abstract the last decade has seen an increase in the importance of energy efficiency and the sustainable use of energy resources due to their significant benefits for reducing a country s dependence on foreign energy resources and increasing awareness on environmental problems turkey aims to reduce its energy intensity by 20 up to 2023 and in order to accomplish this target the country plans to use energy more effectively in various industries and develop financial mechanisms for energy efficiency although much effort has been made to improve energy efficiency additional policies such as marked based incentives are still necessary this article deals with one of the many market based energy efficiency policies called tradable white certificates whc or energy efficiency obligations the current situation of the energy field in turkey and energy consumption by industries is presented first in this paper followed by potentials for energy efficiency in each industry and energy efficiency policies furthermore the theory and applicability of a whc system is introduced and discussed in terms of market conditions choice of obligated participants and market mechanisms and barriers for the turkish electricity and natural gas market to benefit from the residential and industrial energy savings potential

dea environmental assessment on u s industrial sectors investment for improvement in operational and environmental performance to attain corporate sustainability abstract environmental assessment has recently become an important business concern because consumers are interested in environmental protection they try to avoid purchasing products from dirt imaged companies which do not pay attention to environmental protection even if their prices are much less than the ones produced by green imaged companies thus a green image is very important for corporate survivability in a global market this study considers corporate sustainability indicating that companies need to consider both economic prosperity and pollution prevention in their operations to discuss the issue from corporate strategy for modern business this study discusses a use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment by focusing upon research and development r d strategy as well as technology innovation and selection for reduction of undesirable outputs e g co 2 emission this type of research has never been explored in previous studies it is easily envisioned that the proposed dea environmental assessment will guide corporate leaders in identifying how to invest for technology innovation to reduce an amount of undesirable outputs to discuss the practicality this study applies the proposed approach to 153 observations on s p 500 corporations in 2012 and 2013 the empirical investigation confirms that investors pay more serious attention to company s green image and the reality for a long run sustainability than profitability in a short run concern furthermore the energy sector is the best investment target among seven industrial sectors examined in this study the measurement of corporate sustainability can serve as an empirical basis in selecting what type of technology is fitted for a specific industry

sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies using weighted multi criteria decision analysis abstract solving the issue of environmental degradation due to the expansion of the world s energy demand requires a balanced approach the aim of this paper is to comprehensively rank a large number of electricity generation technologies based on their compatibility with the sustainable development of the industry the study is based on a set of 10 sustainability indicators which provide a life cycle analysis of the plants the technologies are ranked using a weighted sum multi attribute utility method the indicator weights were established through a survey of 62 academics from the fields of energy and environmental science our results show that large hydroelectric projects are the most sustainable technology type followed by small hydro onshore wind and solar photovoltaic we argue that political leaders should have a more structured and strategic approach in implementing sustainable energy policies and this type of research can provide arguments to support such decisions

emergence of green business models the case of algae biofuel for aviation emergent business models seek to take advantage of new market mechanisms driven by technological changes particularly those related to the production and delivery of clean or sustainable energy such business models often function at the intersection of various industries with global views and the resulting systems have distinct social political environmental economic technological and business dimensions such holistic systems are not only difficult to develop but also require support from a broad range of actors with effective regulations and policies in place such that the firm functions within a framework that integrates various factors this study substantiates such a framework by detailing the nascent algae based bio fuel industry that caters to the aviation sector while arguing that businesses in the energy industry can emerge as a next practice platform that drive a sixth wave of innovation the framework begins with three basic enablers innovation flexibility and sustainability and explains how value from renewable energy technologies can be created and captured sustainably and innovatively with new market mechanisms implemented by firms with green business models

darwin s invisible hand market competition evolution and the firm competition among firms has been suggested to reflect the ruthless logic of darwinian selection a free market is a struggle for survival in which successful firms survive and unsuccessful ones die this view appears to bolster three pillars of neoclassical economics 1 that economic actors are self interested 2 that self interest leads to public goods adam smith s invisible hand and 3 that together these lead to market optimization however this chain of reasoning leads to a paradox we show that the application of darwinian selection to competition among firms as opposed to among individuals invokes group selection which leads to exactly the opposite predictions notably altruism and the suppression of individual self interest we apply an alternative evolutionary model of economic competition multi level selection mls theory which integrates the effects of selection at both individual and group levels this approach reveals that while individuals may generally pursue their own self interest as in the standard evolutionary account humans also have evolved traits that as if led by an invisible hand steer our self interest to align with the good of the firm or wider society as well but it is the hand of darwin not smith

measuring the immeasurable a survey of sustainability indices sustainability indices for countries provide a one dimensional metric to valuate country specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development economic environmental and social conditions at the policy level they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country s development can be measured and even a cross country comparison can be performed this paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice we show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice

strategies to promote renewable energy in brazil the present study is the result of recent research that has been developed in brazil in cooperation with international research centers the aim is to analyze the best strategies for maintaining the high share of renewable sources in brazil s electric power generation system the results show that for the time horizon considered the country still has plentiful energy resources available notably its hydroelectric potential and that the introduction of mitigation measures in the electricity sector has only a small impact on the price of electricity the study also shows that the country has made a significant contribution to the struggle against global warming

testing different stochastic specificationsof risky choice the harless camerer hc hey orme ho and random preference rp models of stochastic variation in choice under uncertainty are compared implications of these models including some that are independent of the deterministic theory with which they are combined are tested in an experiment in which participants respond to decision problems twice the hc model generally performs poorly the ho model predicts more violations of dominance than are observed while the rp model fails to account for those few violations which do occur additional regularities are observed which are inconsistent with all three models when combined with expected utility theory

ghatak subrata and ken ingersent agriculture and economic development baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1984 380 pp 27 50 10 95 paper

short and long run returns to agricultural r d in south africa or will the real rate of return please stand up abstract this paper briefly presents the results of a total factor productivity tfp study of south african commercial agriculture for 1947 1997 and illustrates some potential pitfalls in rate of return to research ror calculations the lag between r d and tfp is analyzed and found to be only 9 years with a pronounced negative skew reflecting the adaptive focus of the south african system the two stage approach gives a massive ror of 170 the predetermined lag parameters are then used in modeling the knowledge stock to refine the estimates of the ror from short and long run dual profit functions in the short run with the capital inputs treated as fixed the ror is a more reasonable 44 in the long run with adjustment of the capital stocks it rises to 113 which would reflect the fact that new technology is embodied in the capital items however the long run model raises a new problem since capital stock adjustment takes 11 years 2 years longer than the lag between r d and tfp if this is assumed to be the correct lag the ror falls to 58 a best estimate the paper draws attention to the possible sensitivity of rate of return calculations to assumed lag structure particularly when the lag between changes in r d and tfp is skewed

private irrigation investment in colombia effects of violence macroeconomic policy and environmental conditions abstract this paper identifies and estimates the effects of several determinants on private investment in irrigation in colombia it attempts to quantify macroeconomic policy environment and violence variables that have been identified in previous studies as significantly affecting investment in agriculture in general and in irrigation in particular variables such as violence climate and governmental price and credit policies are used to explain changes in private investment in irrigation across regions and over time violence negatively affects private investment climate affects the investment such that in regions with favorable climate conditions investment in irrigation is less attractive and appropriate government crop price and credit policies promote investment in irrigation

analysis of the energy intensity evolution in the brazilian industrial sector 1995 to 2005 this study developed a method to evaluate the evolution of energy intensity in the brazilian industrial sector from 1995 to 2004 in order to do so it was necessary to obtain six different measures indicators of the sector energy intensity considering the concept of energy intensity as the ratio between energy consumption and the level of economic activity two measures were used for the energy consumption a thermal physical and an economic one for the level of economic activity three measures were used value of production value of delivered goods and added value in the brazilian industrial sector most of these indicators have behaved in a similar way in a disaggregated way energy intensity indicators show a unified direction of its evolution however a more elaborate study on the consumption profile of the brazilian industrial sector and its economical activities indicates the presence of important deviations concerning the annual rate of change in energy intensity besides there is no evident relation between these deviations and the composition of the different indicators of energy intensity

expected utility violations implications for agricultural and natural resource economics nomic toolkit they compare the dogged defense of eu by economists to that of a monty python character playing the role of a petstore owner disputing the state of an obviously dead parrot the shop owner goes through incredible machinations to avoid replacing the bird let us consider another analogy the behavior of a caged parrot can likely tell us very little about the behavior of parrots in the wild a biologist may want to incorporate the behavior of caged parrots into the study of wild birds but would undoubtedly need to be extremely careful about understanding the underlying differences in the opportunities and constraints faced by caged versus wild birds before inferring much about wild parrot behavior to some extent experimental violations of eu present us with the same problem as the hypothetical parrot biologist subjects in these risk experiments are in a setting and are completing tasks very different from the setting and tasks they face in their everyday economic and social context what is missing relates to the power of the rationality assumption discussed in friedman that relies not only on the person s skill but also on the feedback they receive from the market friedman s expert billiards players are selected by a market because of their skill in billiards and th se are the players who fit friedman s as if description 1 risk researchers should not ignore experimental data however before we eliminate eu we should more fully understand the underlying reasons for the experimental behavior that violates eu agricultural and natural resource economists are well suited to assess

evolving theories of sustainability and firms history future directions and implications for renewable energy research abstract sustainability has become a critical perspective in managing firms via a holistic approach by considering economic environmental and social dimensions of firms with the rising significance of sustainable development the theories of sustainability in firms have evolved during the past six decades this article offers a critical review of the evolving theories linking sustainability to firms and discusses their implications for future renewable energy research the relationships among different theories are critically analysed and the directions for future research are discussed the paper shows that the main theories linking sustainability to firms in a chronological order are 1 corporate social responsibility 2 stakeholder theory 3 corporate sustainability and 4 green economics currently various innovative approaches and new theories emerged such as co evolution theory and multi level perspective reflecting three directions of theory development namely 1 shifting from what to how 2 growing use of interdisciplinary approach and 3 towards broader systems renewable energy studies associated with firms and future research opportunities in this area are also critically analysed the comprehensive review offered in this paper provides a useful reference for policy makers corporate managers and researchers interested in corporate sustainability and renewable energy related studies

incorporating a stochastic element into decision theories abstract recent papers by harless and camerer 1994 and hey and orme 1994 have employed two rather different models of errors in decision making under uncertainty the present paper develops a third approach and shows how different stochastic specifications of the same deterministic core theory may generate very different and sometimes surprising hypotheses

a theory of anticipated utility abstract a new theory of cardinal utility with an associated set of axioms is presented it is a generalization of the von neumann morgenstern expected utility theory which permits the analysis of phenomena associated with the distortion of subjective probability

environmental assessment by dea radial measurement u s coal fired power plants in iso independent system operator and rto regional transmission organization abstract the economic concept of weak and strong disposability on undesirable outputs dominated the previous discussions on dea data envelopment analysis radial measurement for environmental assessment this study reexamines the economic concept from the perspective of corporate strategies on how to adapt a regulation change on undesirable outputs the economic concept of disposability conventionally accepted by production economists is replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy that a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector the firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation meanwhile the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change on undesirable outputs as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified operational and environmental performance by utilizing new technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two types of disposability this study discusses how to measure unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability by dea radial models to document the practicality of the proposed dea environmental assessment this study applies it to compare the performance of u s coal fired power plants under isos rtos independent system operators regional transmission organizations with that of the other power plants not belonging to any organization this study identifies two empirical findings one of the two findings is that the latter coal fired power plants outperform the former power plants belonging to isos rtos in terms of three efficiency measures this result indicates that isos and rtos do not provide an effective coordination for coal fired power plants at the level that can be found in the other power plants the other finding is that there is technological improvement in the operation of coal fired power plants

experimental investigations of errors in decision making under risk abstract many if not all of the recent theories of decision making under risk that have been developed in the light of experimentally observed violations of expected utility theory are essentially deterministic in nature yet it is clear that actual decision making contains a random or error component this paper surveys the assumptions that have been employed in previous analyses of such experimental data and tries to find better explanations both from an economic and an econometrics point of view of such errors hopefully such work will lead to a unified theory in which the stochastic component is an integral part

from green growth to sound policies an overview abstract green growth is an attractive slogan with a variety of possible meanings this essay critically examines several potential meanings of this slogan and provides a brief overview of some of the main implications of the other papers in this special issue taken together these papers argue for the importance of careful analysis of energy environmental policies particularly ambitious ones claiming to offer huge benefits with little or no cost

firm size and productivity evidence from the electricity distribution industry in brazil in this paper we apply stochastic frontier analysis through a distance function to investigate the impact of firm size on productivity development in electricity distribution we use a sample of seventeen brazilian firms from 1998 to 2005 and decompose productivity into technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical change moreover a further step is to decompose the technical change measurement into several components the results indicate that firm size is important for industry s productivity and therefore a key aspect to consider when making decisions that affect the market structure in the electricity distribution industry

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

sustainability performance for brazilian electricity power industry an assessment integrating social economic and environmental issues the increased pressure on companies to address sustainability issues has resulted in the development of several voluntary corporate sustainability integration approaches the array of existing approaches is large and overwhelming resulting in companies not understanding what corporate sustainability really means for their businesses considering environmental economic and social issues this paper aims at assessing the performance of the brazilian electricity power industry in terms of its sustainability performance an analysis of global reporting initiative gri indicators for the energy sector lead to an assessment of its sustainability performance by applying data envelopment analysis dea specified with a directional distance function ddf five scenarios were created i flexible weights ii triple bottom line iii social issues iv economic issues and v environmental issues with considering i flexibility weights almost all companies are efficient we also found a significant difference when we compared i with the other four scenarios ii iii iv and v taking into account the triple bottom line scenario ii the results indicate that companies were less efficient when compared with the flexible weights scenario i taking into account the last three scenarios iii iv and v only four companies were considered as providing top benchmarks in sustainability performance

green growth from a growing eco industry to economic sustainability abstract there are many questionable assumptions in the discussion of economic growth one of them is the idea that governments are able to achieve sustained high growth another one is the believe that the solution to pressing financial and social problems centers on higher growth it is also questionalble however to say that giving up on economic growth as a paradigm is the necessary condition to tackle the environmental crisis in actuality solving such problems is about radical growth in environmental and resource saving technologies it is also about radical de growth in products and processes that undermine long term living and production conditions this paper describes some best practice cases of green growth and the conceptual generalisations given by the oecd and other established institutions in europe and asia it traces the transformation of the concept of green growth and evaluates the strategy that accompanies it

sustainability performance disclosures the case of independent power producers abstract independent power producers ipps investing across borders represent a crucial sector that produces an adverse impact on greenhouse gas emissions ghg the main purpose of this study is to articulate issues pertinent to sustainability performance among contemporary ipps which seek funding from the capital markets a framework employing a sustainability performance scorecard is developed based on an interdisciplinary literature review that spans the fields of corporate finance financial reporting and sustainability by examining the sustainability performance as disclosed by three cross border ipps from the u s europe and the emerging economy of asia this comparative case study unveils the current weaknesses in comparability relevance and usefulness in disclosures among the ipps it points out potential information asymmetry to decision making of the primary stakeholders who seek to invest in renewable and sustainable energy while countering short termism over financial returns a concerted policy effort on disclosures about sustainability performance would be crucial to channeling effective private investments into the development of renewable and sustainable energy

developments in non expected utility theory the hunt for a descriptive theory of choice under risk this article reviews recent developments in the economic theory of individual decision making under risk since the 1950s it has been known that individual choices violate the standard model of expected utility in predictable ways considerable research effort has now been devoted to the project of developing a superior descriptive model following an overview of non expected utility theories which distinguishes between conventional and non conventional approaches the paper seeks to assess these alternative models in terms of empirical success using laboratory and field data and theoretical usefulness the closing sections reflect on some new directions emerging in this literature

regime destabilisation as the flipside of energy transitions lessons from the history of the british coal industry 1913 1997 this paper investigates a neglected aspect of the transitions literature the destabilisation of existing regimes and industries it presents an analytical perspective that integrates four existing views on destabilisation and conceptualizes the process as a multi dimensional and enacted phenomenon involving technical economic political and cultural processes this perspective is illustrated with two historical cases of the british coal industry 1913 1967 1967 1997 these cases are also used to articulate five lessons regarding the overall destabilisation process and five lessons regarding the economic and socio political environments of industries the conclusion section translates the historical lessons into insights with relevance for the contemporary challenge of climate change and transitions to low carbon energy systems

environmental reporting in the spanish wind energy sector an institutional view abstract the aim of this paper is to explore the relevance of institutional influences on corporate environmental reporting practices the wind energy sector in spain was chosen for analysis because of its rapid growth and significant impact on moves towards cleaner energy production a content analysis of recent sustainability reports 2005 2009 from seven main wind energy companies facilitated a longitudinal comparison of the levels of compliance with global reporting initiative indicators of sustainability results show that initial institutional pressures for reporting have been replaced by imitation by companies of each other s practices leading to a reduction in the differences between environmental disclosures results confirm the importance of examining different institutional pressures on disclosure practices to development of policy however a key finding is that the disclosures have been minimal and their lack of effectiveness and unreliability mean they are not conducive to the notion of increasing transparency in the wind generated clean energy electricity sector as a result the credibility of relying on a voluntary sustainability standard such as the global reporting initiative gri as an incentive for informative environmental reporting is challenged

managing electric power system transition in china abstract this research studies the low carbon transition of the electric power sector in china using a multi level perspective mlp of niches socio technical regime and landscape as well as literature on innovation systems three lines of thought on transition process are integrated in the paper to probe the possible transition pathways in china a mlp analysis is presented to understand the current niches regime and landscape of china s power sector a brief analysis on the future macroscopic socio economic transition in the process of industrialization urbanization and modernization of chinese society and its implication on power landscape are depicted to prove the urgency and magnitude of transition in china and why systematic transition management is needed five transition pathways namely reproduction transformation substitution reconfiguration de alignment re alignment and reconfiguration with their possible technology options are presented the paper goes further to propose an interactive framework for managing the transition to a low carbon energy system in china representative technology options are appraised by employing innovation theory to indicate the logic of policymaking within the framework institutional gaps in realizing the transition are also addressed the work presented in the paper will be useful in informing policy makers and other stakeholders and may provide references for power sector transition management in other countries

tempus fugit time pressure in risky decisions we study the effects of time pressure on risky decisions for pure gain prospects pure loss prospects and mixed prospects involving both gains and losses in two experiments we find that time pressure has no effect on risk attitudes for gains but increases risk aversion for losses for mixed prospects subjects become simultaneously more loss averse and more gain seeking under time pressure depending on the framing of the prospects the results suggest the importance of aspiration levels and thus the overall probability to break even under time pressure we discuss the implications of our findings for decision making situations that involve time pressure

competitive and responsible the relationship between corporate social and financial performance in the energy sector abstract our key research objective in this study is to examine whether investments in corporate social responsibility csr have an effect on corporate financial performance cfp or vice versa the context is the energy industry in which sustainability issues are of vital importance our data set is compiled from the kld database and thomson one we use panel data on energy sector companies covering the years 1991 and 2009 in order to assess granger causality between csr strengths concerns and cfp we consider strengths and concerns separately and use both accounting and market based measures of cfp our findings indicate differing impacts on financial performance csr concerns granger cause both profitability and market value whereas csr strengths seem only to granger cause market value these effects appear after different delays furthermore as cfp does not seem to granger cause csp in most of the model specifications our results do not support bidirectional causality between csp and cfp

sustainability performance for china s transportation industry under the environmental regulation abstract traffic and transportation industry is a carbon intensive industry in china the implementation of environmental regulation is of important practical significance nowadays literatures lack of quantitative analysis on transport industry s sustainability performance under the environmental regulation by using a directional distance function this paper aims to investigate the effect of environmental regulation on this industry furthermore this paper measures its green total factor productivity under the general intensity of regulation and strict regulation from 2000 to 2010 results show that the economic growth mode in transportation industry is still the extensive mode while there is great potential for the improvement of energy saving and production

higher order risk attitudes demographics and financial decisions we conduct an experiment to study the prevalence of the higher order risk attitudes of prudence and temperance in a large demographically representative sample as well as in a sample of undergraduate students participants make pairwise choices between lotteries of the form proposed by eeckhoudt and schlesinger 2006 the choices in these lotteries isolate prudent from imprudent and temperate from intemperate behavior we relate individuals risk aversion prudence and temperance levels to demographics and financial decisions we observe that the majority of individuals decisions are consistent with risk aversion prudence and temperance in both the student and the demographically representative sample an individual s level of prudence is predictive of his wealth saving and borrowing behavior outside of the experiment while temperance predicts the riskiness of portfolio choices our findings suggest that the coefficient of relative prudence for a representative individual is approximately equal to two

rural urban migration and agricultural productivity the case of senegal abstract this paper explores the relationship between agricultural productivity and rural urban migration by developing an econometric model and applying it to the case of senegal country level data is used covering the years 1961 1996 policy implications of reducing rural urban migration using agricultural output elasticities are developed the findings support the hypothesis that rural urban migration is a positive function of the ratio of urban per capita income to rural per capita income moreover the results support a policy aimed at reducing rural urban migration flows through increases in per capita earnings derived from increased agricultural investment

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

the evolution and main determinants of productivity in brazilian electricity distribution 1998 2005 an empirical analysis abstract this paper estimates changes in the productivity of the brazilian electricity distribution sector using data envelopment analysis dea on a panel of 18 firms from 1998 to 2005 the study decomposes the productivity change of these distribution firms in terms of technical efficiency scale efficiency and technical progress this exercise aims to help the understanding of the main determinants of the evolution of productivity focusing its relationship with the restructuring process implemented in the 1990s tfp index records a yearly positive growth rate of 1 3 in the whole period under analysis for all firms technical change was the main component behind this evolution with an average growth of 2 1 per year while technical efficiency presented a yearly negative performance of 0 8 the results prove that in general terms the incentives generated in the reform process do not seem to have led the firms to behave in a more efficient manner

sustainable energy policy for asia mitigating systemic hurdles in a highly dense city abstract greenhouse gas emission ghg has been increasingly a sensitive issue that is across border and impacting global public interests while the use of renewable energy technology is perceived as a means to enable delivery of emission free solutions its penetration into the energy market has not been timely and significant enough as projected in prior studies this article aims to illustrate some of the critical hurdles as the policy makers start formulating environmentally friendly energy consumption means for the public in asian economies in particular through analyzing the characteristics in the case of hong kong the authors unveil the challenges for this highly dense city to reach a landscape of alternative energy resources for its transition into a sustainable economy education and engagement with the public about a sustainable future alignment of stakeholders economic interests and absorption capacity of emerging technologies are argued as the three main challenges and initiatives in mitigating the underlying systemic hurdles that remain to be overcome observing the current responses to the externalities by the policy makers in hong kong this study articulates the critical challenges to mitigate these specific systemic hurdles embedded in the existing infrastructure of a highly dense city possible mitigating measures to enable deployment of integrative sustainable energy solutions in dealing with climate change are discussed

corporate sustainability ratings an investigation into how corporations use the dow jones sustainability index abstract the purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the dow jones sustainability index djsi with an emphasis on canadian corporations the paper provides insight into the use of the djsi in several areas including the use of its logo the steps taken by corporations to achieve initial acceptance to the index and the steps corporations take to maintain their inclusion in the djsi a content analysis of publicly available information from 24 canadian corporations listed in the djsi north america djsina showed that less than half of those sampled used the djsi logo in their sustainability reports or on their websites the majority of the published references to the djsi were in highlighting corporate achievements or in providing background information on the index a survey of 10 experts from the canadian corporations listed in the djsina revealed a wide range of strategies for gaining and maintaining inclusion in the index particularly involving a large number of internal stakeholders in responding to data requests and working with third parties several suggestions for improving the djsi were also provided including streamlining the questionnaire improving coordination among sustainability ratings agencies and enhancing transparency

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms

economic growth in africa abstract this paper draws on the recent endogenous growth methodology to study the factors behind differences in per capita growth rates across africa the results indicate that various economic factors including initial conditions investment population growth trade orientation inflation financial development and the growth of the government sector contribute significantly to economic growth in addition to economic variables we find the degree of political freedom to be a significant contributor to economic growth finally we find some evidence that economic growth by the members of the cfa franc zone has not fared well in comparison to other african countries

an analysis of short run response of export and domestic agriculture in sub saharan africa abstract short run responses of export and domestic shares of total agricultural output to changes in stocks of domestic savings sav development assistance oda private foreign commercial capital pfx and other variables is investigated a profit function approach is used time series data for 19 sub saharan african countries are pooled into three panels using similarities in changes in economic policy regime statistical evidence suggests that for the panel of countries that were undertaking liberalized economic reforms the slope coefficients of some of the variables in the models have changed significantly between 1970 1980 and 1981 1993 for the 1981 1993 period the impacts of oda pfx and sav on export and domestic shares were different for this panel the effect of increases in agricultural labor was different across the three panels there is also evidence that productivity growth in the export agriculture sub sector is negative in all the groups it is recommended that to halt the decline in export share of agricultural output in the group of countries that have undertaken substantial improvements in economic policy environment efforts must be made to reduce the negative impact of domestic savings and agricultural labor while at the same time working to reduce the bias of development assistance against food security