credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

preferences technology and the environment understanding the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis we derive a simple expression for the income pollution path using the standard static model of the environmental kuznets curve ekc this expression makes it straightforward to identify the general characteristics of utility and pollution functions that lead to such a curve we show that suitable preferences can always lead to an ekc while there is no technology that yields an ekc for all types of preferences and we derive a sufficient condition for technology that leads to an ekc for almost all types of preferences our results hold for a model with multiple goods with different pollution intensities and for a production economy with nonconstant relative price of consumption and environmental effort we derive our results without assuming specific functional forms and we encompass several other models as special cases

sustainable innovation business models and economic performance an overview sustainable development requires radical and systemic innovations such innovations can be more effectively created and studied when building on the concept of business models this concept provides firms with a holistic framework to envision and implement sustainable innovations for researchers the concept provides an analytical tool that allows them to assess the interplay between the different aspects that firms combine to create ecological economic and social value in addition the business model concept provides a link between the individual firm and the larger production and consumption system in which it operates this paper provides an introduction to the special issue which emerged from selected papers presented at the erscp emsu 2010 conference held in delft the netherlands papers in the special issue cover a broad range from a conceptual discussion resulting in a research agenda the assessment of diffusion of specific business models such as product service systems the introduction of new management tools for business transition management to case studies on how specific business models evolved in specific communities together these papers provide insight into the promise of the business model concept for understanding and advancing sustainable innovation

durable goods monopolists durable goods monopolists face special problems because the sale of their products creates a secondhand market not controlled by the monopolist to the extent the monopolist is able to rent his product rather than sell it or to make binding promises about his future production such problems are ameliorated given the inability to do the above the monopolist is led to producing goods less durable than those produced by either competitive firms or monopolist returns a reverse averch johnson result that monopolist sellers may invest less in fixed costs including plant modernization and research and development than would the renters is shown it is also shown that even though sellers have less monopoly power than renters and nondurable goods monopolists it is possible that the seller will cause a greater deadweight loss than the other types of monopolies

dynamic contracting under adverse selection and renegotiation abstract we study the effects of renegotiation in an infinitely repeated screening model with long term contracts we propose a simple and tractable recursive formulation to study equilibria in which the monopolist s profit is maximized after every history we show that the monopolist sequentially screens high type consumers and characterize second degree price discrimination policies the monopolist s ability to extract rent from high type consumers by distorting the allocation of low type consumers vanishes as all parties become more patient as a result all distortions disappear and the allocation becomes efficient

designing optimal disability insurance a case for asset testing we analyze an implementation of an optimal disability insurance system as a competitive equilibrium with taxes an optimum is implemented by an asset tested disability system in which a disability transfer is paid only if an agent has assets below a specified maximum the logic behind this result is that an agent who plans to falsely claim disability a finds doing so unattractive if he does not adjust his savings and b cannot collect disability insurance if he does adjust his savings in the desired direction upward for a calibrated economy we find that welfare gains from asset testing are significant

outside options and the failure of the coase conjecture a buyer wishes to purchase a good from a seller who chooses a sequence of prices over time each period the buyer can also exercise an outside option abandoning their search or moving on to another seller we show there is a unique equilibrium in which the seller charges a constant price in every period equal to the monopoly price contravening the coase conjecture we then embed the singleseller model into a search framework and show the result provides a foundation for the usual no haggling assumption jel c78 d42 d43 l12 l13 the coase conjecture is a cornerstone of modern microeconomic theory informing monopoly theory and providing a canonical example of the problem of commitment the idea is that for any given price high value buyers are more likely to purchase than low value buyers leading to negative selection in the demand pool accordingly the seller cuts its price over time causing high value buyers to delay their purchases the seller s inability to commit thus leads its later selves to exert a negative externality on its former selves reducing its overall profit gul sonnenschein and wilson 1986 this idea of negative selection is robust versions of it hold when costs are nonlinear kahn 1986 when goods depreciate over time bond and samuelson 1984 when there is entry of new buyers sobel 1991 and when the buyers face future competition fuchs and skrzypacz 2010 in this article we show that the coase conjecture fails in a natural environment where buyers have an outside option they can choose to exercise we consider a seller who faces a buyer or a continuum of buyers with unknown value for the good and unknown outside option each period the seller chooses price p t the buyer then chooses to buy wait or exercise his option and terminate the game the outside option may come from the possibility of buying another product for example when waiting for the price of the iphone to fall a customer could instead buy a comparable phone from a competitor similarly when bargaining over the price of a car a buyer may abandon negotiations and move on to the next dealer the outside option may also come from pursuing other objectives once the negotiation has terminated for example after he finishes bargaining at a bazaar a tourist could start seeing local attractions

the coase conjecture need not hold for durable good monopolies with depreciation abstract we consider the optimal sales policy for a monopoly seller of a durable good in a non stationary rational expectations equilibruim with replacement sales we show that coase s conjecture that the monopolist will sell the competitive stock as period length approaches zero may not hold under these assumptions

redistribution and social insurance we study optimal redistribution and insurance in a life cycle economy with private idiosyncratic shocks we characterize pareto optima show the forces determining optimal labor distortions and derive closed form expressions for their limiting behavior the labor distortions for high productivity shocks are determined by the labor elasticity and the higher moments of the shock process the labor distortions for low productivity shocks are determined by the autocorrelation of the shock process redistributive objectives and past distortions in a model calibrated using newly available estimates of idiosyncratic shocks the labor distortions are u shaped and the savings distortions generally increase in current earnings jel d82 d91 h21 h23 i38 j22 j24

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

dynamic duopoly with congestion effects abstract we analyze duopolistic competition between horizontally differentiated firms selling durable goods or services subject to congestion at each point of time new customers buy one unit of the commodity from one of the firms by comparing present prices and future congestion rates we study the linear markov equilibrium of this game which exists and is unique when firms are not too different the existence of negative consumption externalities is shown to soften the price competition moreover we show that the firm with the larger capacity has at the steady state a larger market share a higher price and a lower congestion rate the price of an entrant decreases gradually after entry while the price of the incumbent rises the faster the speed of convergence to the steady state is the stronger is the congestion effect

neoclassical growth the j curve for abatement and the inverted u curve for pollution abstract this paper reexamines the neoclassical environmental growth model of forster to gain insights into the dynamic relationships among pollution abatement effort and economic development whereas the model has heretofore been used to examine steady state levels of capital consumption and environmental quality it also provides a theoretical basis for recent empirical research on j curves for abatement effort and inverted u curves for pollution

durable goods with quality differentiation abstract we study the optimal strategy of a durable goods monopolist who can offer goods in different qualities the key finding is that the presence of the additional sorting variable further undermines the firm s commitment problem leading to results that contrast sharply with those of standard durable goods models or those of models where the firm can commit

nonhomothetic growth models for the environmental kuznets curve we show the role of the elasticity of substitution between general consumption and the environment in environmental degradation specifically our numerical experiments demonstrate for a wide range of models exponential utility generates the environmental kuznets curve without adding any special assumptions with exponential utility the elasticity of substitution and hence the substitution effect between consumption and the environment are both decreasing in income hence when income is low society the government readily gives up environmental quality in return for more consumption but it does not want to substitute consumption for the environment anymore once it becomes wealthy enough

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

research note consumer addressability and customized pricing the increasing availability of customer information is giving many firms the ability to reach and customize price and other marketing efforts to the tastes of the individual consumer this ability is labeled as consumer addressability consumer addressability through sophisticated databases is particularly important for direct marketing firms catalog retailers such as l l bean and land s end credit card issuing banks and firms in the long distance telephone market we examine the strategic implications of consumer addressability on competition between database direct marketing firms we address questions such as in a competitive environment how should firms invest in addressability will future improvements in the degree of addressability increase or mitigate the intensity of competition between the firms will greater addressability always be beneficial for firms we model competition between two firms in a market where consumers differ on a horizontal attribute of product differentiation the market comprises consumers located on a linear attribute space and firms located at the ends of the line we represent the degree of addressability or the reach of a firm s database as the proportion of consumers at each point in the market who are in the firm s database consequently the firm can offer these consumers customized prices consumer addressability creates two effects that govern the competition between firms a surplus extraction effect because a firm might address a consumer who is not reached by its competitor and a competitive effect that is created by the set of consumers who can be addressed by both firms the key results of the paper pertain to when the addressability decision is endogenous when the extent of market differentiation or consumer heterogeneity in preferences for a product brand attribute as well as the incremental cost of addressability are sufficiently large firms make symmetric investments in equilibrium given high costs firms choose sufficiently low levels of addressability low addressability and high levels of market differentiation both help reduce price competition which facilitates symmetric choice of addressability by the firms in equilibrium however when market differentiation and the cost of incremental addressability become small firms face the prospect of destructive competition as a result they strategically differentiate in their choice of addressability to mitigate this competition interestingly even in the extreme case when incremental addressability is costless not every firm chooses full addressability in equilibrium this has useful implications for direct marketing given that the advances in information technology should improve the ability of firms to address their consumers it might indeed not be desirable for all direct marketing firms to indefinitely pursue greater addressability as costs of doing so decline the analysis also shows an interesting effect of market differentiation in addressable markets equilibrium profits can decrease with an increase in market differentiation when the marginal cost of addressability is sufficiently high finally we discuss the competitive outcome that would result when firms compete with addressable as well as uniform posted prices

quality and price personalization under customer recognition a dynamic monopoly model with contrasting equilibria abstract we present a model of market hyper segmentation where a monopolist acquires within a short time all information about the preferences of consumers who purchase its vertically differentiated products the firm offers a new price quality schedule after each commitment period lower consumer types may have an incentive to delay their purchases until next period to obtain a better introductory offer the monopolist counters this incentive by offering higher informational rents considering the dynamic game played by the monopolist and its customers we find that there is always a markov perfect equilibrium mpe in which the firm immediately sells the good to all customers offering the mussa rosen static equilibrium schedule to first time customers and getting full commitment profits however if the commitment period between two offers is long enough there is another mpe with gradual market expansion contrary to the coasian result for a durable good monopoly we find that in both equilibria the profit of the monopolist increases and the aggregate consumers surplus decreases as the interval of commitment shrinks the model yields policy implications for regulations on collection and storage of customers information

constructing sustainable palm oil how actors define sustainability abstract biofuels as a renewable source of energy have gained considerable importance in recent years the use of biofuels is expected to rise since national governments of developed nations like the us and european countries see it as one of the ways to fulfill climate targets and increase the security in their energy supply production of biofuels is also expected to rise as developing nations see in biofuels the opportunity for connecting to international markets through supplying a new demand in the energy market several studies report on the environmental social and economic gains and detriments that can arise from increased biofuel production and consumption however research that provides insight into the way in which such issues are defined by actors within the product chain is scarce in this article we analyse how the strategies and value definitions of actors involved in the production and consumption of biofuels lead to specific definitions of sustainability the empirical material concerns the chain of palm oil production in colombia and electricity generation in the netherlands it is analysed using the method of action in context which allows us to uncover the level and source of diversity of sustainability definitions in the product chain while the current growth in production of palm oil is definitely buyer driven the analysis of various activities in the chain shows that several aspects of sustainability are defined in more complex actor fields throughout the product chain

national contexts matter the co evolution of sustainability standards in global value chains in this paper we investigate the role of key industry and other stakeholders and their embeddedness in particular national contexts in driving the proliferation and co evolution of sustainability standards based on the case of the global coffee industry we find that institutional conditions and market opportunity structures in consuming countries have been important sources of standards variation for example in the cases of fairtrade utz certified and the common code for the coffee community 4c in turn supplier structures in producing countries as well as their linkages with traders and buyers targeting particular consuming countries have been key mechanisms of standards transmission and selection unlike prior research which has emphasized the role of global actors and structures in promoting and hindering sustainability initiatives we argue that national economic and institutional conditions in consuming and producing countries have not only served as important drivers of standards multiplicity and co evolution but also as catalysts for the entire global sustainability movement

the dynamics of incentive contracts the paper studies a simple two period principal agent model in which the principal updates the incentive scheme after observing the agent s first period performance the agent has superior information about his ability the principal offers a first period incentive scheme and observes some measure of the agent s first period performance cost or profit which depends on the agent s ability and unobservable first period effort the relationship is entirely run by short term contracts in the second period the principal updates the incentive scheme and the agent is free to accept the new incentive scheme or to quit the strategies are required to be perfect and updating of the principal s beliefs about the agent s ability follows bayes rule the central theme of the paper is that the ratchet effect leads to much pooling in the first period first for any first period incentive scheme there exists no separating equilibrium second when the uncertainty about the agent s ability is small the optimal scheme must involve a large amount of pooling the paper also gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of partition equilibria and looks at the effect of cost uncertainty

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

wealth varying intertemporal elasticities of substitution evidence from panel and aggregate data abstract this paper constructs and estimates a model of consumer preferences in which the intertemporal elasticity of substitution ies of consumption expenditure rises with the level of wealth the purpose of this paper is to measure the effect that systematic variation in the ies of poor and rich consumers has on the ies of aggregate consumption expenditure we find economically significant differences in the ies of poor and rich consumers in indian panel data on the consumption of individual households we also find economically significant differences in the ies measured in aggregate time series data for the u s and india

economic models for the environmental kuznets curve a survey abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc refers to an inverted u shaped relationship between some pollutant level and per capita income i e the environmental quality deteriorates at early stages of economic growth and subsequently improves at a later stage since the early 1990s a considerable number of empirical studies have been conducted on the ekc and although there is no conclusive proof it has been recognized that the ekc emerges as an empirical regularity however some recent studies cast doubt on the concept and methodology of empirical results and evidence of the existence of the ekc has been questioned in fact how economic growth affects the environmental quality i e the shape of the ekc is still controversial in order to identify the actual relationship between the environmental quality and economic growth it is essential to develop economic models from various points of view this paper overviews the current stage of theoretical models that explain such relationship

assessing the relationship between economic and ecological performance distinguishing system levels and the role of innovation in this article we critically discuss the different perspectives that are currently in use for assessing the relationship between ecological and economic performance based on a review of the literature we propose that research up till now has made use of four distinct system boundaries the firm markets production and consumption systems and economic systems making these boundaries explicit is helpful in interpreting the mixed results that have been obtained we describe the consequences of the choice for each of these system boundaries and look at implications for innovation we also argue that the production and consumption system boundary offers potential for further advances in the field and deserves more attention in future research

renewable energy sources their global potential for the first half of the 21st century at a global level an integrated approach abstract the risk of human induced climate change and the volatility of world oil markets make non fossil fuel options important this paper investigates the potential for wind solar pv and biomass wsb to deliver energy the focus is on land opportunities and constraints and on production costs as a function of resource availability and depletion and of innovation dynamics the context is provided by the ipcc sres scenarios as simulated with the image 2 2 model we explicitly consider several sources of uncertainty aspects of the food vs energy trade off and the effects of interaction between the three options through their claims on land we show that potential production concepts are strongly dependent on the chosen land use scenario and should therefore be used with an indication of the underlying assumptions our results indicate a potential for liquid biofuels in the order of 75 300 ej year 1 and for electricity from wsb options at production costs below 10 kwh 1 of 200 300 pwh year 1 theoretically future electricity demand can be amply met from wsb sources in most regions by 2050 below 10 kwh 1 but major uncertainties are the degree to which land is actually available and the rate and extent at which specific investment costs can be reduced in some regions competition for land among the three wsb options may significantly reduce the total potential as estimated from simple addition which is another source of uncertainty

sustainability governance of chains and networks a review and future outlook this paper reviews the extent to which sustainability governance has been integrated into the literature on sustainable chains and networks the analysis brings together four main approaches to chains and network studies supply chain management scm global commodity chains gcc global value chains gvcs and global production networks gpns to examine how and the extent to which sustainability and sustainability governance are conceptualised and incorporated into their analytical frameworks the results point to a shift in this combined literature from conceptualising the formation of global chains and networks as sites of inequality under conditions of globalisation towards a renewed vision on the potential of chains as a site for social and environmental reform overall however we conclude that the literature on global chains and networks has not adequately conceptualised distinct modes of sustainability governance in response we offer an amended typology for identifying how firm and non firm actors govern sustainability in chains of chains and through chains in globalised commodity production and consumption the paper finishes with an exploration of the research frontiers challenges and continuing potential of chain and network studies to understand the governance of sustainability and a call for further academic debate on the kinds of integrated governance arrangements necessary for future sustainability reform through hybridised public private economic practice

depreciation erodes the coase conjecture if a durable good monopolist produces at constant marginal costs and the good depreciates there exists a family of strong markov perfect equilibrium smpe one member of this family entails instantaneous production of the level of stock produced in a competitive equilibrium this is consistent with the coase conjecture other smpe in the family entail steady state production at a stock level lower than in the competitive equilibrium there may be a jump to these steady states or they may be approached asymptotically monopoly profits are positive in these equilibria and the coase conjecture fails

using cost observation to regulate firms the paper emphasizes the use of accounting data in regulatory or procurement contracts when the supplier 1 has superior information about the cost of the project and 2 invests in cost reduction the main result states that under risk neutrality the supplier announces an expected cost and is given an incentive contract linear in cost overruns this optimal contract moves toward a fixed price contract as the announced cost decreases an investment choice is then introduced and the use of a rate of return regulation is studied

optimal indirect and capital taxation we consider an environment in which agents skills are private information and follow arbitrary stochastic processes we prove that it is typically pareto optimal for an individual s marginal benefit of investing in capital to exceed his marginal cost of doing so this wedge is consistent with a positive tax on capital income we also prove that it is pareto optimal for the marginal rate of substitution between any two consumption goods to equal the marginal rate of transformation this lack of a wedge is consistent with uniform taxation of consumption goods within a period

disadvantageous oil tariffs and dynamic consistency a large importer who places relatively greater weight on future than current oil consumption will import less oil in the future than if it were able to commit itself in advance to future tariffs and may find itself worse off than if it were unable to impose tariffs at all futures markets and storage modify these adverse effects and may avoid the problem of dynamic inconsistency copyright 1990 by american economic association

network externalities and the coase conjecture abstract this paper addresses two general questions first what is the effect of market structure on the development of a network in a dynamic model with rational expectations secondly is the intuition that network externalities are economies of scale on the demand side correct these questions are examined in a model of durable good production in the presence of network externalities two results are presented first the coase conjecture fails in its strongest sense when network benefits are increasing in the current network size secondly a committed monopolist may be socially preferable to a time consistent producer when network externalities are sufficiently large the analysis indicates an analogy between network externalities and learning by doing

a dynamic model of the environmental kuznets curve turning point and public policy we set up a simple dynamic macroeconomic model with i polluting consumption and a preference for a clean environment ii increasing returns in abatement giving rise to an ekc and iii sustained growth resulting from a linear final output technology there are two sorts of market failures caused by external effects associated with consumption and environmental effort the model is employed to investigate the determinants of the turning point and the cost effectiveness of different public policies aimed at a reduction of the environmental burden moreover the model offers a potential explanation of an n shaped pollution income relation it is shown that the model is compatible with most empirical regularities on economic growth and the environment

monopoly and oligopoly provision of addictive goods this article investigates monopoly and oligopoly provision of an addictive good consumer preferences are modeled as in becker and murphy 1988 addictive goods have characteristics that create interesting strategic issues when suppliers are noncompetitive we characterize the perfect markov equilibrium of a market with noncompetitive supply of an addictive good and compare it with the efficient solution depending on particular parameter values we find a wide variety of possible steady state outcomes including ones with output above the efficient level and price below marginal cost we also find that market power can be disadvantageous

economic growth and environmental degradation when preferences are non homothetic we study the dynamics of pollution in an economic growth model with non homothetic preferences we characterize the forces that may drive the evolution of the income pollution relationship along the development process in particular we disentangle the standard accumulation mechanism which determines the intertemporal allocation of pollution from a mechanism based on the non homotheticity of preferences which leads the intratemporal allocation of expenditure between consumption and pollution abatement to depend on income as the economy develops and aggregate income grows up the fraction of income devoted to abatement increases if the income elasticity of abatement is larger than unity in this case the pollution may decrease with income even when the elasticity of pollution with respect to abatement is smaller than the elasticity of pollution with respect to emissions we numerically illustrate how this demand based mechanism determines the dynamic relationship between pollution and aggregate income

a tale of two elasticities a general theoretical framework for the environmental kuznets curve analysis abstract we show that a variety of seemingly diverse concepts used to theoretically explaining the ekc have a common origin in two key preference and production elasticities we also prove that they jointly correspond to a unique underlying preference technology theoretical framework

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

market based governance for sustainability in value chains conditions for successful standard setting in the palm oil sector abstract current production and consumption patterns remain unsustainable global economic growth reaches planetary boundaries and puts increasing pressure on the world s natural resources whereas most economic actors just react to environmental pressures proactive market actors and other non governmental organisations e g greentec firms or fair trade organisations turn them into market opportunities or even create standards or certification schemes as promising problem solving market instruments in global value chains however how legitimate are standards and certification schemes developed by collaborating non state actors for sustainability in global value chains what are conditions for the success of those market based governance mechanisms this paper discusses the legitimacy and effectiveness of standard setting in the case of palm oil and focuses on the roundtable of sustainable palm oil rspo as the first global standard setting initiative in this respect conditions for the success of sustainability standard setting in global value chains are identified based on the concept of non state market driven nsmd governance based on literature review and expert interviews on standard setting results from the case study on rspo highlight strengths and weaknesses of its standard setting process in the light of increasing market demand for palm oil

oligopoly extraction of a common property natural resource the importance of the period of commitment in dynamic games the theory of noncooperative dynamic games has provided an extremely powerful framework for studying many of the classic questions in industrial organization for example questions about resource extraction advertising research and development investment in new capacity and barriers to entry where interactions over time among few firms are involved however an important methodological issue arises when economic competition over time is modeled as a dynamic game the issue is the appropriate formulation of the players strategy spaces

sustainability criteria for bioenergy systems results from an expert survey abstract environmental impacts associated with the use of fossil fuels rising prices potential limitations in supply and concerns about regional and national security are driving the development and use of biomass for bioenergy biofuels and bioproducts however the use of biomass does not automatically imply that its production conversion and use are sustainable in order to operationalize sustainability assessments of biomass systems it is crucial to identify critical criteria but keep their number and measurement at a manageable level the selection of these criteria can vary depending on individual s expertise geographical region where they work and spatial scale they are focused on no clear consensus has yet emerged on what experts consider as critical indicators of sustainability objectives of this paper were to analyze how key experts perceive the 35 sustainability criteria for bioenergy found in emerging sustainability assessment frameworks and to identify levels of agreement and uncertainty experts were asked to rate the criteria for attributes of relevance practicality reliability and importance perceptions of the importance of the 35 criteria varied among the experts surveyed only two criteria energy balance and greenhouse gas balance were perceived as critical by more than half of the respondents social criteria and locally applied criteria were generally ranked low for all four attributes seven of the 12 criteria scored as most important focused on environmental issues four were social and only one was economic of the 12 most important criteria seven were ranked low in practicality and reliability indicating that mechanisms to assess a number of important criteria need to be developed the spatial scale the experts worked at and their profession explained most of the differences in importance ranking between experts while regional focus had minimal effect criteria that were ranked low for importance were characterized by a lack of consensus suggesting the need for further debate regarding their inclusion in sustainability assessments outcomes of the survey provide a foundation for further discussions and development of sustainability assessments for bioenergy systems and may also provide a basis for assessing individual bioenergy projects within their specific geographic ecological societal and technological context and scale