information rigidities and the news adjusted output gap a vector autoregressive model of actual output and expected output obtained from surveys is used to test for information rigidities and to provide a characterisation of output dynamics that accommodates these information structures news on actual and expected outputs is decomposed to identify innovations understood to have short lived effects and these are used with the model to derive a news adjusted output gap measure the approach is applied to us data over 1970q1 2014q2 and the new gap measure is shown to provide a good leading indicator of inflation

sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy beyond green growth and green economies abstract in 1992 one unambiguous result of the unced conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns with affluent countries taking the lead 20 years later at the 2012 uncsd little is left over and instead the green economy has been the theme pursued by the oecd the eu and other countries so the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished sustainable development is still a convincing concept if the original definition is taken avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits it can still guide strong sustainable consumption green economy green growth on the other hand is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation it is indeed overdue but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the brundtland sustainability criteria a factor analysis based on the i p a t formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept consequently the authors pledge for a pragmatic risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy this requires strong sustainable consumption including production as resource consumption which in turn requires a change of the societies institutional settings formal and informal mechanisms and orientations finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out with special emphasis on the role of non governmental organisations ngos through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption

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

on the dominance solvability of large cournot games we consider cournot s model of oligopolistic competition in a market for a homogeneous good we seek conditions under which the oligopolists game is dominance solvable and hence the cournot equilibrium is the only outcome that survives iterated deletion of dominated strategies we focus on large oligopolies whereby we define an oligopoly to be large if both the demand and the supply side are replicated more than a certain finite number of times we show that large cournot oligopolies are dominance solvable if and only if the equilibrium of the approximated perfectly competitive market is globally stable under cobweb dynamics journal of economic literature classification numbers 022 1995 academic press inc

using portfolio theory to improve resource efficiency of invested capital limited literature provides concrete theory based methods for quantifying the effects of sharing capital this paper describes the potential contribution of portfolio theory to quantify the effects and optimize the employment of capital human tangible financial and service employing capital in a theoretical and quantitative manner in the context of sustainability insights illustrate how portfolio principles can yield benefits including the fulfillment of needs using fewer resources consistent with sustainability in particular pooling assets to meet uncertain demands from different users of an asset pool may yield benefit from diversification effects suggests future research avenues such as the management of high value critical value and expiring resources to support sustainability

bridging sustainable business model innovation and user driven innovation a process for sustainable value proposition design with an increasing population a growing middle class and increased resource use our current ways of living and doing business are unsustainable next to the implementation of innovative technology sustainable development based on innovative business models better understating of customer needs and behavioural change are crucial this research aims at combining principles from both sustainable business model innovation and user driven innovation to develop more successful radical and user centred sustainable value propositions sustainable business model innovation entails developing value propositions that create value for multiple stakeholders at the same time including customers shareholders suppliers and partners as well as the environment and society user driven innovation allows developing solutions that are meaningful for people and profitable for business by involving potential customers users and or other stakeholders in an experimental and iterative design process the study adopts a research through design methodology a qualitative research approach that uses design practice to inform research to this end a design project in the framework of the climate kic the largest european partnership addressing the challenge of climate change was investigated as a result this paper proposes a process for sustainable value proposition design which adopts a thorough dynamic and iterative perspective talking to stakeholders thinking about the problem testing the product service that leads to an actual sustainable value proposition and to a superior problem solution fit in practice managers are provided with an initial methodological framework for mapping and understanding the stakeholders in a broad sense including and especially users identifying their needs and interests and progressively combining them into a more meaningful and enriching value proposition

sustainable homeservices toward household services that enhance ecological social and economic sustainability abstract the idea of services replacing products is increasingly offered as a solution to making the production and consumption patterns of the affluent consumers more sustainable however the discussion about sustainable services or sustainable product service systems tends to emphasize the eco efficiency perspective rather than explicitly capture all sustainability aspects social or socioeconomic considerations are often forgotten or by passed without scrutiny this paper argues that there is the need for a concept of sustainable services in which the social sustainability aspect is also recognized with equal attention since a major part of private consumption occurs in the household context living at home and moving to and from it this paper will put forth the concept of sustainable homeservices and will suggest a way to assess sustainability of services directed to households for assessing the sustainability of services directed to households a set of indicators relating to the ecological social and economic dimensions of sustainability is proposed with the aim of giving an idea of how to assess homeservices in practical terms the paper will also exemplify how one could operationalize these indicators on an ordinal rating scale the conclusion is that it is possible to assess the sustainability of a homeservice in a relative fashion using no service or the product alternative as the point of comparison households alone have a limited capacity to influence their consumption choices because other actors set the frame for this reason institutional arrangements for making services easily available to households are outlined it appears that housing organizations have a central role in the alternative option for organizing the supply of service provision they are involved in five of the seven alternative ways of supplying services that could be identified the role of the housing organization can vary from direct supply to lighter forms such as cooperative arrangements with external service providers or resident involvement

multivariate detrending under common trend restrictions implications for business cycle research abstract this paper outlines a methodology to detrend multiple time series under common trend restrictions the same filters used to construct the estimated trend in univariate exercises are shown to be appropriate in multivariate studies with a single common trend however to estimate the common trend in the multivariate case the filter is applied to a linear combination of series rather than to each series individually an empirical example and simulation exercises illustrate the implications of common trend detrending for measurement of business cycle properties

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

corporate social responsibility theories mapping the territory the corporate social responsibility csr field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches which are controversial complex and unclear this article tries to clarify the sit uation mapping the territory by classifying the main csr theories and related approaches in four groups 1 instrumental theories in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results 2 political theories which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena 3 integrative theories in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands and 4 ethical theories based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society in practice each csr theory presents four dimensions related to profits political performance social demands and ethical values the findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship which should integrate these four dimensions

adaptive versus eductive learning theory and evidence adaptive and eductive learning are two widely used ways of modeling the process by which agents learn a rational expectation equilibrium ree in this paper we report an experiment where we exploit differences in the conditions under which adaptive and eductive learning converge to ree so as to investigate which approach provides the better description of the learning behavior of human subjects our results suggest that the path by which the system converges appears to be a mixture of both adaptive and eductive learning model predictions

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

enacting ecological sustainability in the mnc a test of an adapted value belief norm framework undoubtedly multinational corporations must play a significant role in the advancement of global ecological ethics our research offers a glimpse into the process of how goals of ecological sustainability in one multinational corporation can trickle down through the organization via the sustainability support behaviors of supervisors we asked the question how do supervisors in a multinational corporation internalize their corporation s commitment to ecological sustainability and in turn behave in ways that convey this commitment to their subordinates in response we created a theoretical framework for supervisor sustainability support behavior based on stern et al human ecology review 6 2 81 97 1999 value belief norm vbn theory we then tested our framework by performing a survey based field study of supervisors in a multinational pharmaceutical company that has publicly professed a goal of ecological sustainability

innovation process of new ventures driven by sustainability abstract since the brundtland report appeared in 1987 various approaches to realising sustainable consumption and production have come into practice while more traditional approaches like ecodesign and design for sustainability often emphasize optimizing existing products processes and businesses more radical approaches like product service systems and system innovation for sustainability emphasize developing new innovative products and services with higher environmental gains although these studies increased our understanding of sustainability in relation to product design they are criticized for failing to draw on existing theoretical frameworks in the organizational innovation literature berchicci 2005 this paper seeks to explore the innovation process within new ventures driven by sustainability since 1 conventional wisdom suggests that young and new firms have advantages in innovation acs and audretsch 1990 and as such they are the potential candidates of offering radical solutions to the challenges of sustainability and 2 there are few studies that address exploiting sustainable product ideas through new organizations the paper reports on the results of an explorative study involving the use of generative techniques during 19 individual semi structured interviews with eight entrepreneurs and seven innovation support organizations the results suggest that the relative impact of internal and external factors on the innovation process change over time as the new organization forms in addition creating new businesses from sustainability ideals is influenced by the firms ability in understanding and managing the differences between intended and created value and in finding an overlap between customer benefits and clearly defined prioritized sustainability goals

eductive learning and the rationalizability of oligopoly games abstract this paper extends the eductive learning approach in settings with non atomistic agents it shows the connection between the characterization of rationalizable sets by basu 1991 and the seminal result by guesnerie 1992 in the context of cournot oligopoly models

towards a new taxonomy of circular economy business models abstract circular economy has undoubtedly become one of the hot topics in public debates about new and more sustainable industrial paradigms and strategies in this respect the fashion of circular economy is in the fact that it aims at overcoming the dominant linear take make disposal economy model i e a traditional open ended economy model developed with no built in tendency to recycle which is reflected by treating the environment as a waste reservoir su et al 2013 circular economy indeed bases on the establishment of closed production systems where resources are reused and kept in a loop of production and usage allowing generating more value and for a longer period despite the interest for circular economy by politicians and practitioners scholars particularly in the strategic management field are still struggling with a lack of a framework explaining how companies willing to become circular adapt their existing business model or create a new one by extensively reviewing through the lens of business model literature the extant contributions on circular economy we propose a taxonomy of circular economy business models based on the degree of adoption of circularity along two major dimensions i the customer value proposition interface i e the implementation of the circularity concept in proposing value to customers ii the value network i e the ways through which interacting with suppliers and reorganizing the own internal activities the taxonomy is then initially tested through some explorative case studies showing in practice the ability of the framework to properly distinguish different modes of adoption of circular economy

sustainable business model adoption among s p 500 firms a longitudinal content analysis study in this study we examine the diversity of sustainable business models adopted by the largest global corporations those listed in the s p 500 index over the period 2005 2014 we examine press release communications during this period which represent public data about business relevant events we expect that examining this communication can reveal longitudinal patterns in the adoption of sustainable business activities and models empirically we utilize academic and practitioner expert panels to build a set of keywords across nine sustainable business model archetypes and utilize automated content analysis to examine the breadth and nature of a firm s sustainable business activities and practices we find evidence of the increasing prominence of different types of sustainable business models over time in particular the results show that large capitalized firms have mostly adopted the environmentally oriented archetypes and to much lesser extent the societal and organizational ones

permanent vs transitory components and economic fundamentals any non stationary series can be decomposed into permanent or trend and transitory or cycle components typically some atheoretic pre filtering procedure is applied to extract the permanent component this paper argues that analysis of the fundamental underlying stationary economic processes should instead be central to this process we present a new derivation of multivariate beveridge nelson permanent and transitory components whereby the latter can be derived explicitly as a weighting of observable stationary processes this allows far clearer economic interpretations different assumptions on the fundamental stationary processes result in distinctly different results but this reflects deep economic uncertainty we illustrate with an example using garratt et al s 2003a small vecm model of the uk economy

global factors and trend inflation abstract we develop an empirical model to study the influence of global factors in driving trend inflation and the inflation gap we apply our model to 7 developed economies and 21 emerging market economies our results suggest that while global factors can have a sizeable influence on the inflation gap they play only a marginal role in driving trend inflation much of the influence of global factors in the inflation gap may be reflecting commodity price shocks finally we find the effect of global factors to be greater in our sample of emerging market economies relative to the developed economies there is some evidence which suggest propagation mechanisms which may reflect institutional structures or policy choices can explain the greater role for global factors in driving trend inflation in emerging market economies

rationalizable strategic behavior the notion of equilibrium proposed by nash 19 has come to play a dominant role in economic applications of noncooperative games while analyses of nash equilibria have unquestionably contributed to our understanding of economic behavior it would be unreasonably optimistic to maintain that nash solved the problem of noncooperative strategic choice there is a small literature beginning with ellsberg 6 and a much larger oral tradition which argues that nash behavior is neither a necessary consequence of rationality nor a reasonable empirical proposition in this paper i take the view that although there may be various reasons why an agent might select a nash strategy the notion of an equilibrium has little intrinsic appeal within a strategic context when an agent reaches a decision in ignorance of the strategies adopted by other players rationality consists of making a choice which is justifiable by an internally consistent system of beliefs rather than one which is optimal post hoc this point of view is not original indeed most serious justifications of the nash hypothesis embrace such an approach arguing that agents will expect the game to yield a nash outcome and consequently will choose their equilibrium strategies nevertheless when we think in terms of maximizing utility subject to expectations rather than realizations it becomes clear that the nash hypothesis far from being a consequence of rationality arises from certain restrictions on agents expectations which may or may not be plausible depending upon the game being played we are then quite naturally led to ask are there any restrictions of individuals expectations and hence choices which are required by rationality alone rather than by subjective plausibility this paper is concerned with defining justifying characterizing and refining a criterion for rational strategic choice which i label rationalizability

understanding the diffusion of sustainable product service systems insights from the sociology of consumption and practice theory the sustainable product service system spss concept highlights that achieving sustainability requires changes in both production and consumption nevertheless attention has focused mainly on production this paper enriches the spss approach with insights from the sociology of consumption and practice theory to provide a deeper understanding of the use of products and services in daily life contexts the paper advances three key insights related to a the internal dynamics of user practices b the strength of linkages of practice elements loose and tight coupling c external linkages to other practices these insights are mobilised to provide a deeper understanding of the uptake and diffusion of innovations such as spss the insights are illustrated with two cases in which interventions designed to stimulate diffusion have had differential success energy efficient light bulbs and low temperature laundry implications for understanding the diffusion of spss are discussed

multinational oil companies and the adoption of sustainable development a resource based and institutional theory interpretation of adoption heterogeneity sustainable development is often framed as a social issue to which corporations should pay attention because it offers both opportunities and challenges through the use of institutional theory and the resource based view of the firm we shed some light on why more than 20 years after sustainable development was first introduced we see neither the adoption of this business model as dominant nor its converse that is the total abandonment of the model as unworkable and unprofitable we focus on multinational corporations mncs because they were among the organizations first called to take action in order to illustrate the institutional pressures mncs face and their strategic response to these pressures we analysed four major oil and gas multinationals subject to similar sustainable development pressures climate change biodiversity renewable energy development and social investment we argue that normative and coercive isomorphism does not occur at the global level because sustainable development is largely a stakeholder driven rather than a broad social pressure that is host country interpretation of sustainable development pressures varies across an mnc s subsidiary network based on the analysis of the four major mncs annual reports from 2000 to 2005 we argue that mimetic isomorphism may occur but since it implies the use of complex and intangible resources mimetic processes are slow rare and discretionary

a perspective on multinational enterprises and climate change learning from an inconvenient truth this paper explores whether and how an important environmental issue such as climate change can not only give multinational enterprises the opportunity to develop green firm specific advantages fsas but also help reconfigure key fsas that are viewed as the main sources of firms profitability growth and survival we examine the nature and geography of such fsa development and develop two organizing frameworks which are subsequently applied to climate change using information from global 500 firms implications and future directions for international business research are indicated

an exploration of the eductive justifications of the rational expectations hypothesis this paper examines justifications of the rational expectations hypothesis that rely on the analysis of the agents mental forecasting educing activity which involves forecasting the forecasts of others etc the corresponding concept of eductive learning stability based on the game theoretical concept of rationalizability is primarily used within the classical muth model conditions for coordination of beliefs are interpreted and discussed they are robust to the introduction of noise more generally eductive stability fits economic intuition on coordination stability increases when the industry product differentiation increases and when decisions are sequential and observable copyright 1992 by american economic association

rationalizable strategic behavior and the problem of perfection this paper explores the fundamental problem of what can be inferred about the outcome of a noncooperative game from the rationality of the players and from the information they possess the answer is summarized in a solution concept called rationalizability strategy profiles that are rationalizable are not always nash equilibria conversely the information in an extensive form game often allows certain unreasonable nash equilibria to be excluded from the set of rationalizable profiles a stronger form of rationalizability is appropriate if players are known to be not merely rational but also cautious what constitutes rational behavior in a noncooperative strategic situation this paper explores the issue in the context of a wide class of finite noncooperative games in extensive form the traditional answer relies heavily upon the idea of nash equilibrium nash 17 the position developed here however is that as a criterion for judging a profile of strategies to be reasonable choices for players in a game the nash equilibrium property is neither necessary nor sufficient some nash equilibria are intuitively unreasonable and not all reasonable strategy profiles are nash equilibria the fact that a nash equilibrium can be intuitively unattractive is well known the equilibrium may be imperfect introduced into the literature by selten 20 the idea of imperfect equilibria has prompted game theorists to search for a narrower definition of equilibrium while this research some of which will be discussed here has been extremely instructive it remains inconclusive theorists often agree about what should happen in particular games but to capture this intuition in a general solution concept has proved to be very difficult if this paper is successful it should make some progress in that direction the other side of the coin has received less scrutiny can all non nash profiles really be excluded on logical grounds i believe not the standard justifications for considering only nash profiles are circular in nature or make gratuitous assumptions about players decision criteria or beliefs the following discussion of these points is extremely brief due to space constraints more detailed arguments may be found in pearce 18

short run expectational coordination fixed versus flexible wages this paper considers a simple three goods model and focuses attention on the expectational stability of its equilibria the setting allows us to describe stylized general equilibrium macro interactions firms hire workers and then sell production to buyers whose purchasing power depends on the firms previous decisions we assess expectational stability from an eductive learning procedure that reflects basic rationality considerations from our viewpoint on coordination we compare the merits of fixed wages versus flexible wages although in both cases the same factors supply and demand elasticities marginal propensity to save are effective expectational coordination is often more successful with flexible wages

the role of values in collaborative consumption insights from a product service system for lending and borrowing in the uk abstract collaborative consumption is an emerging socio economic model based on sharing renting gifting bartering swapping lending and borrowing made possible through community interaction and increasingly use of network technologies these alternative and more sustainable ways of consuming have attracted growing attention for their potential to prevent new purchases intensify the use of idle assets and promote reuse of possessions that are no longer wanted nonetheless the uptake of product service systems psss that enable collaborative consumption is still very limited this paper investigates how consumers values can influence the acceptance adoption and diffusion of collaborative consumption it reviews two theoretical frameworks used to understand pro environmental behaviour social psychological models of behaviour and social practice theory coming from contrasting disciplinary perspectives these approaches conceptualise values differently the paper evaluates the possibility of resolving these differences through a mixed methods study it examines values empirically through a case study of ecomodo a uk based online marketplace where people can lend and borrow each other s objects spaces and skills and present the results of a quantitative study which identified and measured value priorities among ecomodo users through schwartz s portrait value questionnaire it concludes with a discussion of the role of values in relation to the introduction and scaling up of psss that enable collaborative consumption

the value of big data in servitization abstract servitization has become a pervasive business strategy among manufacturers enabling them to undergird their competitive advantage however it has at least one weakness while it is used worldwide also in economies with lower production costs services in manufacturing are slowly becoming commoditized and will become a necessary though not sufficient condition for reaching an above average competitive advantage consequently in this article we propose a new basis for competitive advantage for manufacturing enterprises called a big data strategy in servitization we scrutinize how manufacturers can exploit the opportunity arising from combined big data and servitization therefore the concept of a big data strategy framework in servitization is proposed the findings are benchmarked against established frameworks in the big data and servitization literature its impact on competitive advantage is assessed through three theoretical perspectives that increase the validity of the results the main finding is that through the proposed strategy new revenue streams can be created while opening the possibility to decrease prices for product services through the proposed strategy manufacturers can differentiate themselves from the ones that are already servitizing this article introduces the possibility of influencing the most important of the five vs in big data value in addition to the other four vs volume variety velocity and verification as in regards to servitization the article adds a third layer of added value information beside the two existing ones product and service the results have strategic implications for managers

strategic perspectives of corporate sustainability management to develop a sustainable organization sustainable development refers to an economic environmental and social development that meets the needs of the present and does not prevent future generations from fulfilling their needs in this context businesses play an important role however progress towards sustainable development has been slow indicating the need for more concrete guidance that will allow businesses to act strategically and successfully in a sustainable way this theoretical paper connects three distinct but complementary dimensions of strategic management as viewed from the perspective of sustainability in order to encourage the integration of sustainability issues into corporate activities and strategies these three dimensions are strategy process strategy content and strategy context sixteen propositions related to these dimensions have been developed to explore the contributions of corporate sustainability management to the creation of value for businesses society and nature this theoretical discussion contributes to existing research in that it reveals relationships between strategic management and sustainable development and provides an agenda for further empirical research

estimating and accounting for the output gap with large bayesian vector autoregressions we consider how to estimate the trend and cycle of a time series such as real gross domestic product given a large information set our approach makes use of the beveridge nelson decomposition based on a vector autoregression but with two practical considerations first we show how to determine which conditioning variables span the relevant information by directly accounting for the beveridge nelson trend and cycle in terms of contributions from different forecast errors second we employ bayesian shrinkage to avoid overfitting in finite samples when estimating models that are large enough to include many possible sources of information an empirical application with up to 138 variables covering various aspects of the us economy reveals that the unemployment rate inflation and to a lesser extent housing starts aggregate consumption stock prices real money balances and the federal funds rate contain relevant information beyond that in output growth for estimating the output gap with estimates largely robust to substituting some of these variables or incorporating additional variables

forecasting with medium and large bayesian vars this paper is motivated by the recent interest in the use of bayesian vars for forecasting even in cases where the number of dependent variables is large in such cases factor methods have been traditionally used but recent work using a particular prior suggests that bayesian var methods can forecast better in this paper we consider a range of alternative priors which have been used with small vars discuss the issues which arise when they are used with medium and large vars and examine their forecast performance using a us macroeconomic dataset containing 168 variables we find that bayesian vars do tend to forecast better than factor methods and provide an extensive comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches typically we find that the simple minnesota prior forecasts well in medium and large vars which makes this prior attractive relative to computationally more demanding alternatives our empirical results show the importance of using forecast metrics based on the entire predictive density instead of relying solely on those based on point forecasts

the asymmetric business cycle abstract the business cycle is a fundamental yet elusive concept in macroeconomics in this paper we consider the problem of measuring the business cycle first we argue for the output gap view that the business cycle corresponds to transitory deviations in economic activity away from a permanent or trend level then we investigate the extent to which a general model based approach to estimating trend and cycle for the u s economy leads to measures of the business cycle that reflect models versus the data we find empirical support for a nonlinear time series model that produces a business cycle measure with an asymmetric shape across nber expansion and recession phases specifically this business cycle measure suggests that recessions are periods of relatively large and negative transitory fluctuations in output however several close competitors to the nonlinear model produce business cycle measures of widely differing shapes and magnitudes given this model based uncertainty we construct a mode

product services as a research field past present and future reflections from a decade of research in the last decade many researchers institutes and programs in the eu paid attention to product service systems pss given this massive effort it is time to take stock is pss research a theoretical field in its own right is the pss concept indeed the road to the factor 10 world is it the road to enhanced competitiveness what is needed to really use the potential of the concept this paper discusses these questions summarizing the analysis done in the pss review book new business for old europe various eu sponsored projects and the conceptual approach chosen in a new research network on sustainable consumption and production called score 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

an approach to business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development successful business is increasingly about understanding the challenges and opportunities linked to society s transition towards sustainability and e g being able to innovate design and build business models that are functional in this context however current business model innovation and design generally fails to sufficiently embrace the sustainability dimension typically the business case of sustainability is not understood profoundly enough the planning horizon and system scope are insufficient the competence to bring together people into systematic ventures towards sustainable business is too low a unifying framework for sustainability analyses planning cross disciplinary and cross sector cooperation and cohesive use of the myriad sustainability tools methods and concepts has been developed the framework for strategic sustainable development fssd similarly a generic approach to business model design has been put forward the business model canvas bmc in this paper we explore how the fssd could inform business model innovation and design by combining it with the bmc and supplementary tools methods and concepts such as creativity techniques value network mapping life cycle assessment and product service systems the results show that the fssd bmc combination can support business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development as well as strengthen each supplementary tool method and concept in its own primary purpose we apply the combined approach for the purpose of initial testing and presentation to a real case of business model evolution based on our findings we propose a new approach to business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development the new approach facilitates e g business scalability and risk avoidance and clarifies the interplay between classical business model development and strategic sustainability thinking the new approach highlights the opportunity for novel business model design for future sustainable success

information forecasts and measurement of the business cycle the beveridge nelson bn technique provides a forecast based method of decomposing a variable such as output into trend and cycle when the variable is integrated of order one i 1 this paper considers the multivariate generalization of the bn decomposition when the information set includes other i 1 and or stationary variables we show how the relative importance of the cyclical component depends on the size of the information set and is necessarily higher with multivariate bn decompositions the results are illustrated using post wwii united states data an explanation is also provided for the empirical finding of a positive association of the multivariate bn cycle with output growth

the relationships between permanent and transitory movements in u s output and the unemployment rate this paper estimates the permanent and transitory movements in u s output and the unemployment rate and the relationships between them the results suggest that permanent movements in u s output and the unemployment rate are important for explaining overall fluctuations further the correlation between changes in these series arises in large part due to the relationship between their permanent components

sequential coordination higher order belief dynamics and the e stability principle abstract this paper explores convergence in higher order beliefs otherwise called eductive stability when coordination is sequential that is when each agent of a given type fixes his own actions after observing the ones of earlier types in a given order the presence of sequential types enhances expectational coordination in the case of strategic substitutability but not in the case of strategic complementarity in particular eductive stability can be obtained for any degree of substitutability provided the number of sequential types is large enough therefore sequential coordination opens up to the possibility that eductive convergence occurs at the same conditions of adaptive convergence in accordance to the e stability principle

the role of policy labels keywords and framing in transitioning waste policy abstract the last decade has seen a new wave of ambitious policies in order to address the mounting ecological damage caused by high levels of consumerism and the depletion of resources to manufacture short life cycle products in this paper zero waste and sustainable materials management are examined as prominent labels of an evolving waste policy discourse towards waste prevention and reduction and material cycles using discourse analysis key documents are comparatively assessed presenting the origins of these two concepts and how they entered the waste policy domain the different framing tactics and governance models are then presented the findings demonstrate that the different discourse paradigms around the concept of waste and materials influences what policy initiatives measurement tools and outcomes are pursued although zero waste and sustainable materials management are gaining popularity as indicators of shifting waste policy towards sustainable production and consumption policy particularly with increasing discussion and application of circular economy governance models in europe and china a distinction still exists between the conceptualisation and implementation within and across the two concepts it is in this transition towards a circular economy that it is valuable to review the role of policy labels keywords and framing context in waste policy and the ability of enhanced waste management to assist in the development of more sustainable and environmentally acceptable economic and social behaviour models

a characterization of the class of rationalizable equilibria of oligopoly games abstract the set of rationalizable strategies of a firm in a quantity setting oligopoly is characterized it is shown that as the number of firms in the industry increases the rationalizable solution converges to the interval from zero to the monopoly output

demand pull government policies to support product service system activity the case of energy service companies escos in the uk product service systems psss constitute a family of service based business models designed to satisfy our societal needs in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner to date however pss application has remained niche due to a variety of critical barriers this paper explores how demand pull national government policies could support pss activity by addressing these barriers and cultivating market demand lessons are drawn from a case study of how regulatory economic incentive informative and procurement policies have supported energy service company esco activity in the uk a sub set of the pss family focused on energy service provision subsequently five policy recommendations are presented to support pss activity 1 balancing economic incentives and regulatory disincentives 2 promoting indirect policy support 3 redesigning existing market structures 4 promoting locally led pss activity and 5 creating stable policy frameworks the paper warns however that national government policy cannot easily address all pss barriers such as customer preferences international developments technological progress and inherent business model weaknesses pointing to the need for other complementary solutions furthermore other governance actors beside national government could also implement pss supporting policies

an inflation predicting measure of the output gap in the euro area using a small bayesian dynamic factor model of the euro area we estimate the deviations of output from its trend that are consistent with the behavior of inflation we label these deviations the output gap in order to pin down the features of the model we evaluate the accuracy of real time inflation forecasts from different model specifications the version that forecasts inflation best implies that after the 2011 sovereign debt crisis the output gap in the euro area has been much larger than the official estimates versions featuring a secular stagnation like slowdown in trend growth and hence a small output gap after 2011 do not adequately capture the inflation developments

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