managing without growth abstract there are three main arguments why developed countries should consider managing without growth 1 continued economic growth worldwide is not an option owing to environmental and resource constraints and so developed countries should leave room for growth in developing countries where the benefits of growth are evident 2 in developed countries growth has become uneconomic in the sense that it detracts more from well being than it adds and 3 economic growth in developed countries is neither necessary nor sufficient for meeting specific policy objectives such as full employment no poverty and protection of the environment this paper explores various growth scenarios for canada over the medium range to 2020 using lowgrow a dynamic simulation model after describing lowgrow a scenario is presented that shows conditions under which the rate of unemployment in canada could be reduced to historically low levels poverty eliminated and greenhouse gas emissions reduced to comply with canada s commitment under the kyoto protocol without relying on economic growth this is not to say that zero growth should itself become a policy objective rather that the dependence on and defence of economic growth should not be an obstacle to fulfilling more specific welfare enhancing objectives of full employment eliminating poverty and protecting the environment the paper concludes with some policy implications for managing without growth followed by an annex which provides a technical description of lowgrow

natural resources curse or blessing are natural resources a curse or a blessing the empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible this paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources these include that a resource bonanza induces appreciation of the real exchange rate deindustrialization and bad growth prospects and that these adverse effects are more severe in volatile countries with bad institutions and lack of rule of law corruption presidential democracies and underdeveloped financial systems another hypothesis is that a resource boom reinforces rent grabbing and civil conflict especially if institutions are bad induces corruption especially in nondemocratic countries and keeps in place bad policies finally resource rich developing economies seem unable to successfully convert their depleting exhaustible resources into other productive assets the survey also offers some welfare based fiscal rules for harnessing resource windfalls in developed and developing economies

metropolitan evolution sectoral economic change and the city size distribution metropolitan evolution is conceptualised from a broad long term perspective that focuses on demographic and sectoral economic variables emphasis is placed on understanding these changes from a process oriented approach that considers its general relevance rather than its outcomes or microanalytic details a selective review of the literature provides a significant perspective and background on the stages model that is applied to the study of metropolitan change this is then related to the pareto city size distribution by considering the interurban population distribution coefficient and its expected performance over the various phases of metropolitan evolution a hypothetical interurban manufacturing employment distribution coefficient analogous to the pareto population coefficient is also considered and is related to the process of metropolitan and interurban sectoral economic change the relationship between metropolitan change and national urban size distribution is viewed as a significant compone

ecological macroeconomic models assessing current developments our society faces a dilemma while continued economic growth is ecologically unsustainable low or negative rates of economic growth are accompanied by adverse social impacts hence there is a need for macroeconomic tools that can help identify socially sustainable post growth pathways the emerging field of ecological macroeconomics aims to address this need and features a number of new macroeconomic modelling approaches this article provides 1 a review of modelling developments in ecological macroeconomics based on the literature and interviews with researchers and 2 an analysis of how the different models incorporate policy themes from the post growth literature twenty two ecological macroeconomic models were analysed and compared to eight policy themes it was found that environmental interactions and the monetary system were treated most comprehensively themes of income inequality work patterns indicators of well being and disaggregated production were addressed with less detail while alternative business models and cross scale interactions were hardly addressed overall the combination of input output analysis with stock flow consistent modelling was identified as a promising avenue for developing macroeconomic models for a post growth economy however due to the wide interpretation of what the economy entails future research will benefit from employing a range of approaches

assessing empirical approaches for analyzing taxes and labor supply recent surveys on the labor supply responses of men document a divergence in the estimates of substitution and income effects obtained using various estimation approaches generally studies accounting for nonlinear tax schedules in a static setting via a piecewise linear approach produce estimates that typically imply higher substitution and lower income responses than are suggested by empirical work applying other approaches this paper demonstrates that maximum likelihood estimation of a consumer choice problem with nonlinear budget sets implicitly relies on the satisfaction of inequality constraints that translate into behaviorally meaningful restrictions these constraints arise not as a consequence of economic theory but instead as a requirement to create a properly defined statistical model in the analysis of piecewise linear budget sets the implicit constraints required by maximum likelihood in estimation amount to imposition of slutsky conditions at all wage income combinations associated with kink points in the analysis of differentiable budget sets the tacit constraints invoked by maximum likelihood also involve inequality restrictions on slutsky terms the empirical work presented in this study supports the contention that these implicit constraints play a major role in explaining the discrepancies in estimates found in the literature on men s labor supply

allocation inflexibilities female labor supply and housing assets accumulation are women working to pay the mortgage this article uses data from the 1986 canadian family expenditures survey to estimate a life cycle consistent model of household labor supply and commodity demand that incorporates a mortgage qualification constraint based on earnings both the parametric and nonparametric implications of the model suggest that the labor supply of a nontrivial percentage of married women is constrained by mortgage commitments the results of generalized selectivity models of female labor force participation and labor supply show that the positive effect of a high debt service ratio exceeds the negative effect of young children

the threat of rent extraction in a resource constrained future abstract ecological economists aim to transform our economic institutions so that society can flourish within planetary boundaries the central message of this article is that private rent extraction forms a key barrier to the realisation of that goal i define rent as an economic reward which is sustained through control of assets that cannot be quickly and widely replicated and which exceeds proportionate compensation for the labour of the recipient i argue that unless we close opportunities for rent extraction and socialise unavoidable rents our governments will be compelled to pursue output growth regardless of its environmental consequences in order to prevent spiralling inequality and unemployment the positive proposition in this article is that the concept of rent can help us to identify and build democratic support for the institutional transformations necessary to prepare for a resource constrained future measures to reduce and redistribute rentier power could be emancipatory for the poorest in society whilst making more feasible many proposals that have been advocated already in this journal including reduced working hours and resource caps by contrast if environmental protections are introduced before opportunities for private rent extraction are closed we could see intensified rent seeking asset price bubbles poverty and economic insecurity

degrowth through income and wealth caps abstract in the degrowth literature maximum caps on wealth and or income are frequently mentioned among the policy instruments that could support transitions towards ecologically and socially sustainable societies yet an in depth discussion of concrete policy proposals has yet to be initiated to facilitate such a discussion the present paper reviews several proposals for placing caps on wealth and or income some of these proposals consider environmental limits others focus exclusively on social inequality the paper moreover raises various critical issues concerning the introduction of maximum caps on wealth and income in a degrowth context discussing the role of the state the impact on economic growth and the risk of emigration of high skilled employees and capital flight we conclude that while in an ecologically constrained world there is an argument for imposing limits on wealth and income above a certain level it is crucial not to dictate such policies as mere top down measures but to develop and deliberate them in democratic forums

the curious incidence of rent subsidies evidence of heterogeneity from administrative data abstract this paper provides new evidence on the incidence of rent subsidies we use administrative panel data on subsidy recipients in the uk and exploit a natural experiment in which entitlements were cut for about a million households in the short run about 90 of the incidence of the cuts is found to be on tenants we also uncover an important dimension of heterogeneity in the balance of incidence between tenants and their landlords we find that the share of the incidence of the cut that falls on landlords rather than tenants is higher in cases where the previous system looked more generous relative to tenants likely housing needs this is informative about the likely incidence of alternative rent subsidy schemes

the estimation of a joint wage hours labor supply model in this paper the standard cross sectional static model of labor supply is modified to make the wage endogenous and a joint wage hours model is estimated the econometric technique addresses the non linearity of the budget constraint by approximating the constraint by a series of discrete points the results show that the budget constraint is indeed nonlinear that hours affect the wage quadratically that true wage elasticities are lower as a result and that the model fits the hours distribution much better than the standard tobit model

the value of time spent in price comparison shopping survey and experimental evidence the value that consumers place on time spent in price comparison shopping is central to the economics of information theory and models of consumers search behavior yet few empirical studies have examined consumers subjective value of time building on gary becker s work this article presents two tests of a model of the subjective value of time in an effort to explain consumers subjective value of time while they are price comparison shopping the model introduces perceived enjoyment of shopping as a new explanatory variable the findings reveal that respondents incorporate both wage rates and perceived enjoyment of price comparison shopping into their subjective value of time

households willingness to pay for public housing in the presence of price controls nonmarket housing allocation mechanisms such as queueing prevent households from revealing their marginal willingness to pay for housing through market prices we derive the households marginal willingness to pay using the intuitive idea that the length of the queue for a specific house reflects the households willingness to pay for housing characteristics we apply our methodology to public housing in the amsterdam metropolitan area and show that on average the households marginal willingness to pay for a unit of public housing is close to its marginal costs this suggests that the welfare loss of public housing through distortions in housing supply is rather limited and is mainly through distortions in housing demand we provide indirect evidence of the latter by showing that queueing induces inefficient matching of households and housing

ecological economics degrowth and institutional change ecological economics has made great strides in the understanding of how the human economy is embedded in a finite and limited biophysical system however less progress has been made in understanding the internal dynamics of the economy that produce periods of slow growth even in the absence of biophysical constraints the real economy is a complex system replete with myriad positive feedback loops by looking at the economy from a systems perspective ecological economists can better understand the internal dynamics of a market system that lead to the periodic depressions and recessions that characterize the failed growth economy a non growing or declining economy exacerbates formidable economic problems such as unemployment debt and poverty since the middle of the 20th century governments have pursued growth strategies to solve social problems but the age of economic growth is coming to an end driven by its own internal dynamics and by biophysical forces such as climate change and peak oil degrowth implies less and the steady state implies less on a permanent basis ecological economists need to pay more attention to the implications of less for a market economy and the effects upon people under our present economic configuration

carbon pricing effectiveness and equity abstract the 2015 paris agreement adopted the goal of limiting the rise in global mean temperature to 1 5 2 c above pre industrial levels carbon pricing can play a key role in meeting this objective a cap and permit system or alternatively a carbon tax indexed to a fixed emission reduction trajectory not only can spur cost effective mitigation and cost reducing innovation but also crucially can ensure that emissions are held to the target level the carbon prices needed to meet this constraint are likely to be considerably higher however than existing prices and conventional measures of the social cost of carbon this poses issues of distributional equity and political sustainability that can be addressed by universal dividends funded by carbon revenues

estimating labour supply responses using tax reforms the 1980 s tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one of the best opportunities yet to estimate labor supply effects nevertheless changing sample composition aggregate shocks the changing composition of the tax paying population and discontinuities in the tax system create serious identification and estimation problems we develop grouping estimators that address these issues our results reveal positive and moderately sized wage elasticities we also find negative income effects for women with children

do low income housing subsidies increase the occupied housing stock abstract a necessary condition for justifying a policy such as subsidized low income housing either via tenant based rental assistance or construction of public or private projects is that it has a real effect on market outcomes in this paper we examine one aspect of the real effect of subsidized housing does it increase the housing stock if subsidized housing raises the quantity of occupied housing per capita either more people are finding housing or they are being housed less densely on the other hand if subsidized housing merely crowds out equivalent quality low income housing that otherwise would have been provided by the private sector the housing policy may have little real effect on housing consumption using both census place and msa level data from the decennial census and from the department of housing and urban development we ask whether housing markets with more subsidized housing also have more total housing after accounting for housing demand we find that government financed units raise the total number of units in a market although on average one government subsidized unit adds only one third to one half of a unit to the total housing stock there is less crowd out in more populous markets and more crowd out in places where there is less excess demand for subsidized housing as measured by the number of government financed units per eligible person tenant based housing programs such as section 8 certificates and vouchers seem to be more effective than project based programs at targeting subsidized housing units to people who otherwise would not have their own

a structural model of multiple welfare program participation and labor supply work on estimating the labor supply effects of high marginal tax rates in welfare programs has been hindered by the difficulty of estimating the effects of participation in multiple welfare programs simultaneously the authors solve this problem by applying methods of simulation estimation to a model of labor supply and multiple program participation the results show asymmetric wage and tax rate effects with fairly large wage elasticities of labor supply but very inelastic responses to moderate changes in cumulative marginal tax rates implying that high welfare tax rates do not necessarily induce major reductions in work effort copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

should nfl blackouts be banned in this paper the authors examine the economic and policy implications of the national football league nfl blackout rule a league rule that prohibits local television broadcast of games that are not sold out at least 72 hours prior to game time the foundation for understanding and assessing the impact of the blackout rule is an analysis of attendance using data on games during the 1996 1997 national football league season expanding on previous research three separate components of attendance season ticket sales game day ticket sales and game day noshows are examined in detail accounting for the endogeneity of key variables tobit and probit analyses are used to estimate and predict individual game attendance these empirical estimates are then used as a vehicle to assess the implications of game day blackouts and the potential for public policy intervention more specifically the authors begin by estimating the impact of the blackout on game day attendance using these estimates they asses

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

in defence of degrowth abstract this article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth a starting premise is that resource and co2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable if degrowth is inevitable the question is how it can become socially sustainable i e a prosperous and stable rather than a catastrophic descent pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required including among others policies for a basic income reduction of working hours environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising policies like these that threaten to harm the economy are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies whose basic institutions financial property political and redistributive depend on and mandate continuous economic growth an intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less

the wellbeing consumption paradox happiness health income and carbon emissions in growing versus non growing economies abstract we investigate the relationships between carbon intensive consumption and two dimensions of human wellbeing physical health and happiness for 120 countries over the 2005 2015 period long term 10 year relationships are analysed to re assess the happiness income paradox i e easterlin paradox which states that changes in national income and happiness are correlated in the short term but not in the long term we broaden the scope of easterlin s analysis in two novel ways first the evidence for a health income paradox is explored second a parallel analysis using national consumption based carbon footprints instead of income is conducted to explore complementary relationships with both of the wellbeing indicators we show that countries with declining per capita consumption measured in terms of either gross domestic product gdp or carbon footprint have significant reductions in average happiness in contrast countries with growing per capita consumption have no significant change in happiness there is no relationship between changes in per capita consumption and health irrespective of whether gdp or carbon footprint is growing or not these findings apply to rich and poor countries alike and are robust to the inclusion of other social indicators such as social support and autonomy we find that happiness is less sensitive to declines in carbon footprint than declines in gdp thus lending support to calls for decoupling carbon emissions from economic growth however observed decoupling trends are insufficient to meet climate targets if the 2 target is to be met without a decline in wellbeing then either decoupling must be vastly improved or happiness levels must be made less sensitive to declining consumption

the financial cycle and macroeconomics what have we learnt abstract it is high time we rediscovered the role of the financial cycle in macroeconomics in the environment that has prevailed for at least three decades now it is not possible to understand business fluctuations and the corresponding analytical and policy challenges without understanding the financial cycle this calls for a rethink of modelling strategies and for significant adjustments to macroeconomic policies this essay highlights the stylised empirical features of the financial cycle conjectures as to what it may take to model it satisfactorily and considers its policy implications in the discussion of policy the essay pays special attention to the bust phase which is less well explored and raises much more controversial issues

planning for the information city the challenge and response the emergence of the information city based upon new technologies such as converging computer and telecommunications innovations may signify the onset of a new historical era comparable with the social transformation wrought by the industrial revolution new types of urban economy are being built around these new technologies and their applications the paper describes the broad economic and technical aspects of the information city goes on to consider the economic and social issues raised and evaluates some of the main policy alternatives currently being pursued by local authorities in different countries

discrete hours labour supply modelling specification estimation and simulation the assumption behind discrete hours labour supply modelling is that utility maximising individuals choose from a relatively small number of hours levels rather than being able to vary hours worked continuously such models are becoming widely used in view of their substantial advantages compared with a continuous hours approach when estimating and their role in tax policy microsimulation this paper provides an introduction to the basic analytics of discrete hours labour supply modelling special attention is given to model specification maximum likelihood estimation and microsimulation of tax reforms the analysis is at each stage illustrated by the use of numerical examples at the end an empirical example of a hypothetical policy change to the social security system is given to illustrate the role of discrete hours microsimulation in the analysis of tax and transfer policy changes

structural models of family labor supply a discrete choice approach a static neoclassical structural model is presented explaining labor supply of both spouses in two adult households in the netherlands family preferences are described with a direct translog utility function with the husbands leisure the wifes leisure and family income as its arguments we assume that the choice set of each family is finite account is taken of the dutch tax and benefits system we allow for hours restrictions and random preferences and account for unobserved wages of nonworkers the models are estimated using smooth simulated maximum likelihood results based upon dutch cross section data from 1987 are illustrated by confidence intervals for elasticities and by several policy simulations excerpt

producer services trade in city systems evidence from chicago recent efforts aimed at understanding the spatial supply and demand of business services have focused on their trade in regional and global settings noticeably absent from this research is a clear understanding of the organisation of trade within city systems this paper demonstrates conceptually that trade flows through a two tiered organisation of cities the first involves world class cities and the second a hierarchical organisation of cities within the us urban system these patterns of interaction are analysed empirically using a recent survey of 263 business service establishments located in the chicago metropolitan region the survey enables identification of the spatial extent of both supply and demand for five business services spatial supply and demand distances are examined more closely via survivor functions the results indicate that supply and demand distances vary markedly from industry to industry

impact caps why population affluence and technology strategies should be abandoned abstract this paper classifies strategies to reduce environmental impact according to the terms of the i pat formula policies limiting resource depletion and pollution impact by heavily taxing resources or rationing them on a country basis are thus called direct or left side strategies other policies to achieve the environmental goal of lowering impact strive to limit population and affluence or to use technology to lower the ratio of resource inputs to goods and services outputs next it is shown that lowering any of these right side factors causes or at least enables the other two to rise or rebound this has two consequences 1 since i pat does not express these interdependencies on the right side it is more accurately written i f p a t and 2 success in lowering any of the right side factors does not necessarily lower impact rationing or pigouvian taxation of resources or pollution on the other hand necessarily lower impact and are therefore preferable to population consumption and technological environmental strategies finally lifestyle and technology changes towards more sufficiency and efficiency would follow the caps as consumers and producers work to retain the greatest amount of welfare within the limits given

superstars in the national basketball association economic value and policy an econometric analysis demonstrates that television ratings for nba games are substantially higher when certain players superstars are involved thus these superstars are quite important for generating revenue not only for their own teams but for other teams as well using the econometric analysis and additional information on attendance and paraphernalia sales we estimate the value of michael jordan to the other nba teams to be approximately 53 million the positive externality superstars have on other teams can lead to an inefficient distribution of player talent we examine several league policies that might be used to address the externality

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

collective labor supply and welfare the paper develops a general collective model of household labor supply in which agents are characterized by their own possibly altruistic preferences and household decisions are only assumed to be pareto efficient an alternative interpretation is that there are two stages in the internal decision process agents first share nonlabor income according to some given sharing rule then each one optimally chooses his or her own labor supply and consumption this setting is shown to generate testable restrictions on labor supplies moreover the observation of labor supply behavior is sufficient for recovering individual preferences and the sharing rule up to a constant finally the traditional tools of welfare analysis can be adapted to the new setting

customer preferences attendance and the racial structure of professional basketball teams this paper examines the importance of customer based discrimiantion in professional basketball over the 1980 81 to 1985 86 seasons empirical rsesults offer strong support of the hypothesis that if fans prefer to see players of their own race teams will be influenced in their selection of players by the racial composition of their market area by the same token attendance is found to be positively related to the extent to which the racial composition of the team matches that of the corresponding market area

rent vouchers and the price of low income housing since the early 1980s low income housing subsidies have increasingly shifted towards vouchers which allow recipients to rent in the private market by 1993 vouchers subsidized as many households as lived in traditional housing projects although most low income households did not receive any subsidies this study investigates whether this policy has raised rents for unsubsidized poor households as many analysts predicted when the program was conceived the main finding is that low income households in metropolitan areas with more vouchers have experienced faster rent increases than those where vouchers are less abundant in the 90 biggest metropolitan areas vouchers have raised rents by 16 percent on average a large effect consistent with a low supply elasticity in the low quality rental housing market considered as a transfer program this result implies that vouchers have caused a 8 2 billion increase in the total rent paid by low income non recipients while only providing a subsidy of 5 8 billion to recipients resulting in a net loss of 2 4 billion to low income households

team roster turnover and attendance in major league baseball empirical support is shown for the propositionthat sports fans prefer the composition of their home team to remain the same from season to season controlling for price income population team quality league year the stadium effects the regression results indicate that for each percentage point increase in the turnover of the composition of the team attendance will fall by about 0 7 the implications of this heretofore ignored tendency are briefly discussed

how to spend it resource wealth and the distribution of resource rents natural resource revenues differ from other government revenues both in their time profile and in their political and legal status they are volatile and exhaustible and belong to all citizens of the country in which they are located this paper discusses the theory of natural resource revenues and examines expenditure practices in a range of resource rich countries it considers both the distributional impact and the efficiency of expenditure policies focusing on the extent to which they succeed in providing all citizens with their share of the benefits due to natural resources

rents in the european power sector due to carbon trading abstract the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets has imposed a price on the allowances for co2 emissions of electricity companies integrating this allowance price into the price of electricity earns a rent for companies who have received these allowances for free during phase i 2005 2007 rents corresponding to the aggregate value of allocated allowances amounted to roughly 13 billion per year however due to the specific price setting mechanism in electricity markets true rents were considerably higher this is due to the fact that companies also that have not received any allowances gain additional infra marginal rents to the extent that their variable costs are below the new market price after inclusion of the allowance price producers with low carbon emissions and low marginal costs thus also benefit substantially from carbon pricing this paper develops a methodology to determine the specific interaction of the imposition of such a co2 constraint and the price setting mechanism in the electricity sector under the assumption of marginal cost pricing in a liberalized european electricity market the article thus provides an empirical estimate of the true total rents of power producers during phase i of the eu ets 2005 2007 the eu ets generated in phase i additional rents in excess of 19 billion per year for electricity producers these transfers are distributed very unevenly between different electricity producers in a second step the paper assesses the impact of switching from free allocation to an auctioning of allowances in 2013 we show that such a switch to auctioning will continue to create additional infra marginal rents for certain producers and will leave the electricity sector as a whole better off than before the introduction of the eu ets

the energetic metabolism of societies and the degrowth paradigm analyzing biophysical constraints and realities the belief that it is possible to have a perpetual economic growth based on fossil energy has been challenged since the 1970s however only in the last decade is this issue re emerging once again because of the predicaments of climate change and peak oil many finally start to perceive that an economic degrowth entailing a downscaling of the current size and pattern of socio economic systems seem unavoidable in this paper we analyze the implications the feasibility and the desirability of possible trajectories of downscaling from an energetic perspective the quantitative analysis is based on the methodological approach of societal metabolism and it provides a dynamic accounting of the profile of energy flows required and consumed by societies in relation the expression of a given set of societal functions this analysis makes it possible to check two types of constraints external constraints supply and sink side limits for the whole and internal constraints the feasibility of energy budget of the various parts of the society expressing the required functions the analysis of the metabolic pattern of a sample of developed countries is used to discuss possible implications of i demographic changes ii the declining supply of net energy sources and iii the effects of the jevons paradox within such an analysis a few assumptions and recipes of the degrowth movement seem problematic i population is and will remain as a relevant variable to be considered ii the proposed reduction in working hours seem to be impractical unless a major catastrophe will reset current civilization to pre industrial standards and iii voluntary reduction of personal energy consumption even if a welcome adjustment alone will not solve the existing problems in the final part of the paper future energetic road maps are questioned within the realm of post normal science can we plan degrowth if we are serious about the need of doing something completely different societies will have to learn how to deliberate under uncertainty within the realms of flexible management and stop planning for either growth or degrowth moreover before suggesting policies it would be wise first to try to understand the option space

the incidence of uk housing benefit evidence from the 1990s reforms this paper estimates the incidence of the most important uk rent subsidy housing benefit hb it exploits changes to housing benefit in 1996 and 1997 that reduced the maximum subsidy payable the research design is based on the fact that the changes only applied to new claimants and not to pre existing claimants we use difference in differences to estimate the size of the treatment effect we show that the changes did have an effect on the level of housing subsidy with an estimated fall of 10 15 in benefit receipt in the treatment group relative to the control group there is also evidence that rents paid fell by 6 11 we find no evidence this can be explained by a fall in housing consumption by the treatment group our estimates imply that between 60 and two thirds of the incidence of the subsidy reduction was on landlords

assessing the degrowth discourse a review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals abstract debates on ecological and social limits to economic growth and new ways to deal with resource scarcity without compromising human well being have re emerged in the last few years central to many of these is a call for a degrowth approach in this paper a framework is developed to support a systematic analysis of degrowth in the academic literature this article attempts to present a clearer notion of what the academic degrowth literature explores by identifying organising and analysing a set of proposals for action retrieved from a selection of articles the framework is applied to classify proposals according to their alignment to ecological economics policy objectives sustainable scale fair distribution and efficient allocation type of approach top down versus bottom up and geographical focus local national or international a total of 128 peer reviewed articles focused on degrowth were reviewed and 54 that include proposals for action were analysed the proposals identified align with three broad goals 1 reduce the environmental impact of human activities 2 redistribute income and wealth both within and between countries and 3 promote the transition from a materialistic to a convivial and participatory society the findings indicate that the majority of degrowth proposals are national top down approaches focusing on government as a major driver of change rather than local bottom up approaches as advocated by many degrowth proponents the most emphasised aspects in the degrowth literature are related to social equity closely followed by environmental sustainability topics such as population growth and the implications of degrowth for developing nations are largely neglected and represent an important area for future research moreover there is a need for a deeper analysis of how degrowth proposals would act in combination

the vermont common assets trust an institution for sustainable just and efficient resource allocation both private and public sectors have failed to adequately provide critical ecosystem goods and services or an equitable distribution of wealth and income to address this problem the vermont legislature is considering the creation of a vermont common assets trust vcat that would make the state s atmosphere aquifers and other resources created by nature or by society as a whole the common property of all vermonters present and future under the trust a board of trustees would have the legal obligation to manage these assets for the benefit of all vermonters including future generations this paper first explains why certain resources are likely to be managed more sustainably fairly and efficiently as common property than as private property it then discusses mechanisms for integrating assets into the trust estimates of potential revenue from a vcat suggest that it could eliminate the state budget deficit contribute to a better distribution of wealth and resources and help address critical ecological problems survey results suggest that a vcat is politically feasible the vcat promises to be an important pilot project that could later be scaled up to a national or global level

housing subsidies and work incentives in great britain in great britain the move away from rented accommodation to owner occupation is leaving behind a large group of households with low incomes wages and hours of work and high housing costs who are increasingly in receipt of welfare transfers the disparity along all of these dimensions between renters and owner occupiers has continued to grow since the 1970 s the relationship between housing costs wages and transfer programmes is complex and yet plays an important part in determining the incentive to work for individuals in low income or high housing cost households while it is true that many individuals who are in these categories are out of the labour force retired sick and disabled there are many who are not and whose incentive to seek work or to work harder if already in work could be modified by directly changing the rent levels they face or indirectly via changes to the structure of programmes designed to subsidise housing for the poor here we estimate a static discrete choice labour supply model which allows for housing benefit programme participation we use samples of 42491 married women and 13340 unmarried women drawn from great britain family resources surveys 1994 5 97 8 we find that women are quite responsive to labour supply incentives housing benefit income has similar incentive effects to earned income which suggests any stigma is small our analysis is complemented by simulating housing benefit and direct rent subsidy reforms

does high cost of mortgage debt explain why young adults live with their parents young adults leave their parents homes at a higher rate in northern europe or in the united states than in southern europe with broad implications on labor market mobility and on fertility we assess if differences in household formation are associated to differences in access to credit by estimating the impact of the cost of a mortgage on the probability that a young adult leaves his or her parents home exogenous changes in the cost of credit are identified using the reform in 1998 and the cancellation in 2002 of credito bonificado a portuguese program that provided four different reductions of the interest rate of mortgages signed by low and medium income youth using a unique data set that links administrative records of debt with the 1998 2004 waves of the employment survey we document three findings first borrowing among young adults fell when borrowing costs increased second the elasticity of new household formation with respect to net interest rates lies between 0 8 and 3 3 third young adults responded to the increase in mortgage costs by delaying home purchases or by reducing the quality of housing services purchased but there was only a modest increase of the probability of renting a new accommodation jel d91 h24 j13

does slow growth lead to rising inequality some theoretical reflections and numerical simulations this paper explores the hypothesis most notably made by french economist thomas piketty that slow growth rates lead to rising inequality if true this hypothesis would pose serious challenges to achieving prosperity without growth or meeting the ambitions of those who call for an intentional slowing down of growth on ecological grounds it would also create problems of social justice in the context of a secular stagnation the paper describes a closed demand driven stock flow consistent model of savings inequality and growth in a macroeconomic framework sigma with exogenous growth and savings rates sigma is used to examine the evolution of inequality in the context of declining economic growth contrary to the general hypothesis we find that inequality does not necessarily increase as growth slows down in fact there are certain conditions under which inequality can be reduced significantly or even eliminated entirely as growth declines the paper discusses the implications of this finding for questions of employment government fiscal policy and the politics of de growth

attendance at australian rules football a panel study the demand for australian rules football is examined using data on attendance at individual matches played between 1981 and 1986 an estimation methodology which is appropriate for a dynamic model with panel data is adopted and it is found that attendance at football is price inelastic and an inferior good the effect of habit in consumption behaviour stadium size uncertainty of outcome and team success are also shown to be important determinants of attendance

housing allowance and the rent of low income households this paper analyses the effect of a housing allowance programme on the rent paid by assisted low income households the data consist of 12 000 rental households in the free market and municipal sectors the effect is estimated using the programme reform of 2002 as an instrument the reform increased the allowance of the assisted households depending on housing characteristics but it had little effect on the eligibility results suggest that in the private sector one additional euro of allowance increases the rent of claimants by 60 70 cents the effect is zero in the municipal sector as rents are tied to the housing costs

extremely low income households housing affordability and the great recession the effects of the great recession on housing equity and homeownership have been well documented however we know little about how rental households fared and the efficacy of housing subsidies in addressing affordability gaps this paper examines the extent to which rental housing became less affordable for extremely low income eli households those earning less than 30 of the area median income ami i then run regression models to determine the local characteristics most strongly associated with larger affordability gaps with a focus on whether housing subsidies are effective at combating such gaps rental affordability gaps became more pronounced during the great recession in nearly 70 of the counties in my sample there was an increase from 2007 to 2010 in the number of eli households per affordable rental unit across the country the increase was 17 a dramatic increase in only three years there is considerable variation across the country with acute affordability crises often concentrated in the south particularly florida regression models provide compelling evidence that housing vouchers public housing and project based section 8 subsidies play an important role in limiting the extent to which large numbers of eli households are competing for a shortage of low cost rental units however these programmes do not respond quickly to local needs such as those brought about by the great recession a pilot study where local housing authorities had funding to be more agile and responsive would be an important step toward crafting better policy

the prerequisites for a degrowth paradigm shift insights from critical political economy abstract what would it take for a degrowth paradigm shift to take place drawing on contemporary critical political economy scholarship this article identifies four prerequisites for socio economic paradigm shifts deep crisis an alternative political project a comprehensive coalition of social forces promoting the project in political struggles and broad based consent it is argued that on the one hand there is much to suggest that current crises cannot be resolved under existing institutional frameworks and that degrowth is a political project that provides solutions to some of the key problems currently facing humanity on the other hand the prospects for a degrowth paradigm shift remain bleak unlike political projects that became hegemonic in the past degrowth has neither support from a comprehensive coalition of social forces nor any consent to its agenda among the broader population