from food availability to nutritional capabilities advancing food security analysis abstract this paper has a threefold objective first it provides a comprehensive review of different approaches to analysing food security second it highlights the added value provided by the capability approach and the human development paradigm third it proposes a methodology to assess food security through this approach our proposal entails three basic steps 1 analysis of food entitlements 2 analysis of nutritional capabilities and 3 analysis of the capability to be food secure in this way we can move beyond income entitlement or livelihood related frameworks and identify the root causes of food insecurity food insecurity can be the result of a lack of education health or other basic capabilities that constitute people s wellbeing this therefore allows situating the study within the broader area of wellbeing and development

material flows vs natural capital what makes an economy sustainable abstract in the discourse about sustainable development constant natural capital is frequently referred to as a criterion for ecological sustainability but what is natural capital the concept will be analyzed by presenting arguments in favour of using the term and different versions of sustainability strong and weak subsequently a critique of the natural capital concept is brought forward from an ecological as well as from an economic perspective following this critique the use of material inputs and the material input per unit of service mips as a measure for the environmental impact potential is suggested dematerialisation is understood to be an alternative management rule for sustainability in conclusion a change of perspective is proposed due to the conceptual and measurement problems associated with the constant natural capital criterion which refers to a stock it seems more reasonable from a scientific as well as from a practical perspective to add flows i e material inputs to a decision criterion for whether a development is sustainable or not

the accounting push and the policy pull balancing environment and economic decisions abstract the use of information in environmental and economic policy has been a theme for over 100 years but standards for integrating environmental and economic information were not adopted until 2012 through the system of environmental economic accounting seea for 20 years the technical push to develop accounts proceeded largely independently of the pull from the intended or likely end users of accounts consequently governments have little knowledge of the accounting or how it might be used we examine why public policy imperatives have not yet pulled environmental accounting into the mainstream and explain how accounting can help reshape government decision making as part of this a model showing the place of accounts in the information system and the policy cycle is presented along with a research agenda and principles for the decision centred design of accounts we conclude that a phased implementation of the accounts as well as additional research into their applications will be needed to build practical understanding and political acceptance of the accounts

for better or for worse till the human development index do us part abstract this paper describes the results of research intended to explore the volatility inherent in the united nations development programme s undp human development index hdi the hdi is intended to be a simple and transparent device for comparing progress in human development and is an aggregate of life expectancy education and gdp per capita values of the hdi for each country are presented in the human development reports hdrs the first being published in 1990 however while the methodology is consistent for all countries in each year there are notable differences between years that make temporal comparisons of progress difficult the paper presents the results of recalculating the hdi for a simplified sample of 114 countries using various methodologies employed by the undp the results are a set of deviations of recalculated hdi ranks compared to the original ranks given in the hdrs the volatility that can result from such recalculation is shown to be substantial 10 15 ranks yet reports in the popular press are frequently sensitive to movements of only a few ranks such movement can easily be accounted for by changes in the hdi methodology rather than genuine progress in human development while the hdrs often carry warnings about the inadvisability of such year on year comparisons it is argued that the existence of such a high profile index and the overt presentation within league tables do encourage such comparison assuming that the hdi will be retained as a focal point within the hdrs then it is suggested that greater focus be upon more meaningful and robust categories of human development e g low medium and high rather than league tables where shifts of a few places perhaps as a result of nothing more than a methodological or data artefact may be highlighted in the press and by policy makers

spatial sustainability trade and indicators an evaluation of the ecological footprint the search for frameworks and indicators of sustainable development has taken a prominent place in this journal however some specific aspects have received little or no attention notably the spatial dimension and the role of international trade in indicator development moreover many sustainable development indicators comprise implicit valuations weighting schemes and policy objectives which are insufficiently recognised as such this contribution tries to highlight these issues by means of a review of a recently proposed indicator for ecological economic analysis namely the ecological footprint that has been developed by wackernagel and rees its concept and calculation procedure are criticised on a number of points and it is concluded that the ecological footprint is not the comprehensive and transparent planning tool as is often assumed in explaining our position we will argue that spatial sustainability and regional sustainable development have not been precisely discussed so far neither in the literature on trade and environment nor in that on sustainable development we will defend the view that trade can contribute positively and negatively to environmental unsustainability consequently indicators and models are needed that allow for analysing interactions and trade offs between such opposite effects 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

urban growth and productivity the case of greece the present paper reports an attempt to estimate the role of urbanisation economies in greek industry using a flexible form of production function obtained from a taylor series expansion of a polynomial it is estimated that the labour productivity of the manufacturing sector is five per cent higher with each doubling of urban population the substantial advantages to urban production seem to be at the heart of the urbanisation process that accompanied industrialisation in greece the policy implications are that decentralisation policies may be justifiable on regional equity but not on economic efficiency grounds selection and promotion of a few urban centres in each region would be a more successful regional policy

the comparative advantage of cities abstract what determines the distributions of skills occupations and industries across cities we develop a theory to jointly address these fundamental questions about the spatial organization of economies our model incorporates a system of cities their internal urban structures and a high dimensional theory of factor driven comparative advantage it predicts that larger cities will be skill abundant and specialize in skill intensive activities according to the monotone likelihood ratio property we test the model using data on 270 us metropolitan areas 3 to 9 educational categories 22 occupations and 19 industries the results provide support for our theory s predictions

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

perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital economics from an ecological footprint perspective this paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality far from encouraging investment in natural capital actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks moreover conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem this paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept to develop the argument the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses it shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital it picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles it draws lessons for current development

institutional design of public agencies and coproduction a study of irrigation associations in taiwan abstract the provision and production of many public goods and services involve the joint effort of government officials and citizen users this paper examines the successful experience of irrigation governance and management in taiwan as a means of understanding how joint efforts can be established and sustained through institutional arrangements several principles for institutional design including a careful definition of the scope of farmers participation complementarity of interests between individuals reduction of asymmetries involved in the use of authority and the existence of domains of autonomy are identified as instrumental to the success in taiwan

some remarks on the system of integrated environmental and economic accounting of the united nations abstract the publication of the system of integrated environmental and economic accounting seea by the united nations marked a decisive advance in the discussion of environmental accounting and will have a great influence on the design of national environmental accounting systems seea contains a great variety of definitions methods and procedures before this important system will be adopted on a broad basis it may be useful to point out certain basic problems connected with it in this article we will concentrate on two main problem areas first the fundamental incompatibility of economic and ecological spatial and time scales and second the questionable emphasis placed on data artificially generated with the help of hypotheses rather than on data based on empirical observations the following discussion leads to the consequence that monetary valuations of environmental facts should be avoided because of the incompatibility of economic and ecological scales the authors propose to renounce to a large extent full integration of these two aspects instead one should concentrate on the two following aims development of a classification for a systematic description of the anthropogenic alterations of environmental factors and a compilation of a variety of coordinated indicators which at widely differing aggregation levels and with a wide range of methods and scales would help to observe changes in environmental quality over time within at least a rough framework

on the possibility of an inverse relationship between tax rates and government revenues abstract when arthur laffer and other supply side advocates plot total tax revenue as a function of a particular tax rate they draw an upward sloping segment called the normal range followed by a downward sloping segment called the prohibitive range a brief literature review indicates that tax rates on the prohibitive range in theoretical and empirical models have been the result of particularly high tax rates high elasticity parameters or both the labor tax rate which maximizes total revenue for example will depend on the assumed labor supply elasticity this paper introduces a new curve which summarizes the tax rate and elasticity combinations that result in maximum revenues separating the normal area from the prohibitive area a general purpose empirical u s general equilibrium model is used to plot the laffer curve for several elasticities and to plot the newly introduced curve using the labor tax example results indicate that the u s could conceivably be operating in the prohibitive area but that the tax wedge or labor supply elasticity would have to be much higher than most estimates would suggest

sustainability indicators policy and governance issues for ecological economics abstract ecological economics is a major forum for discussion of theoretical and analytical aspects of measuring sustainability the role of sustainability indicators as an evaluation method for sustainability within the emerging context of governance merits further analysis focusing on policy processes surrounding the production of sustainability indicators this paper addresses two questions what is the potential utility of indicators for policy and in what ways can indicators influence governance the former is addressed by exploring three disciplines with long histories of indicator application public administration studies urban studies and environmental sciences the latter is addressed by distilling key perspectives from public policy literature on knowledge utilisation and policy learning which become the foundation for clarifying the notion of policy resonant indicators this clarification is achieved by canvassing the spectrum of the influences on indicators and the mechanisms of their resonance in policy processes the final section of the paper brings these arguments together by exploring two major insights in terms of challenges for ecological economics strengthening indicator theory and practice by addressing four key ingredients and mobilisation of indicators through their active use within the context of governance

an empirical analysis of dematerialisation application to metal policies in the netherlands abstract this paper presents a first empirical step in filling the gap between physical and economic models by combining a material flow model and an applied general equilibrium age model the goal of this paper is threefold firstly a new methodology is discussed for the integration of material and economic flow models secondly the new methodology is tested for its empirical applicability by simulation of material policies finally the analysis leads to the identification of major steps for filling the existing gap between physical and economic models further fiscal material policies are imposed to reduce the use of specific materials the material levy and the accompanying labour tax reduction shift the tax burden from labour to the use of materials the empirical illustration shows that the physical and economic flows can be made mutually compatible and that the combined model can be used for empirical analysis of material policies from this analysis of material policies in an economic model it may be concluded that the combination of an age model and a material flow model may produce an appropriate tool for analysing environmental sectoral and distributional effects of dematerialisation policies

the rhetorics of ecological economics since the early 1980s there has been a lively discussion about the rhetoric of economics ecological economists however so far have not tried to incorporate this discussion into their work this paper is a first step towards including the discourse on rhetoric into the self awareness of ecological economics after a brief outline of what this discourse is about the importance of metaphors as one aspect of rhetoric is examined connections of the rhetorical discourse to ecological economics as a post normal science are shown it is argued that two rhetorics of ecological economics can be distinguished internal and external rhetoric while the former refers mostly to methodological issues the latter is of particular importance for the political impact that ecological economics can have finally some suggestions for research are made

a conceptual framework for the study of rural places three attributes of rural america reflect its fundamental nature a a relatively sparse population b its interdependence with urban and global systems and c its enormous diversity these attributes are frequently neglected in rural studies work when they are not recognized conclusions pertaining to rural places are seldom reliable the 1990 census reports that 97 of the land area of the forty eight contiguous states is rural and about 80 is nonmetropolitan this vast area provides residence for 22 5 and 24 8 of the population respectively sparsity of population is of value to some people most of the time and other people part of the time as well as for certain space using activities such as farming and forestry nevertheless space equates to distance and overcoming distance requires a sacrifice of time and other resources crosson fuguitt hart farming occupies about one half the land area of rural america farming and agricultural services provide less than 10 of the total employment in nonmetropolitan places further there is a remarkable similarity in the sectoral shares of employment between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties mills thus there is little factual basis for the common practice of treating agricultural and rural as synonymous great interdependence exists between rural and urban systems rural fundamentalist rhetoric to the contrary weber it is difficult to imagine a single significant rural social problem that can be understood or addressed in isolation from urban or global systems jacobs

different ways of knowing a communicative turn toward sustainability abstract despite the urgency of the ecological crisis the steady continuation of environmental degradation suggests that new ways of interpreting problems and acting with environmental integrity may need to be considered this paper draws on a broad range of contemporary theory to argue that the conventional conceptualization of environmental problems has remained a largely disciplinary based exercise that has relied on abstracting the environmental issues from their real world complexity a practical articulation of the main environmental narratives reveals self referential discourses whose disciplinary based practices have insulated these approaches from a broad range of contemporary theorising and different ways of knowing the dominance of these approaches in environmental policy development has led to the continued acceleration of environmental degradation despite widespread political and social interest in its abatement this paper provides a critique of methodologies derived from the assumptions of instrumental rationalism and contemplates the potential for alternative communicative approaches and strategies for dealing with environmental policy development and implementation it is argued that a communicative approach to planning for sustainability represents a more appropriate strategy for mobilising a currently impotent environmental movement a communicative approach by explicitly dealing with the assumptions and motivations of contested positions in the sustainability debate it is argued offers the most pragmatic way of developing change strategies to deal with the complex issues surrounding environmental policy development and implementation

time preference in global warming calculations a proposal for a unified index abstract many aspects of the calculation of the impacts of greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the costs and benefits of possible response options are highly sensitive to the way in which time preference is incorporated into the computations the intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc used global warming potentials gwps to standardize inputs of different gases with differing radiative forcings and atmospheric lifetimes in the results emphasized by the ipcc s second assessment report a 100 year time horizon and no discounting is used and this has been adopted by the kyoto protocol for use in the first commitment period 2008 2012 here an alternative unified index is proposed that assigns explicit weights to the interests of different generations in contrast to discounting including the zero discount rate used by the ipcc the generationally weighted index forces policy makers to face the moral assumptions that underlie their choices related to global warming

the genuine progress indicator methodological developments and results from australia abstract this paper is a contribution to the continuing development of the methods and results for the index of sustainable economic welfare also known as the genuine progress indicator gpi it attempts a more systematic approach to some of the components of the gpi it includes a more careful specification of types of capital and more plausible methods of estimating the costs of depletion of non renewable resources and environmental damage due to ozone depletion in addition the paper attempts a more comprehensive treatment of the value of time including the costs of unemployment and overwork results of the gpi calculations for australia over the period 1950 1996 are presented and analysed

grassroots based rural development strategies ecuador in comparative perspective abstract international donors are providing increasing amounts of assistance to grassroots based economic initiatives in latin america and elsewhere the question is can such initiatives prosper and generate widespread improvements in living standards in the context of the prevailing neoliberal economic policy agenda the paper responds to this question from comparative latin american and east asian perspectives by analyzing how economic diversification and improved living standards were achieved in two rural parishes in highland ecuador we find that in both cases access to landownership and other assets was a critical factor in permitting small scale producers to participate in market exchange in a manner that allowed them to improve their living standards hence to the extent that neoliberal policies freeze into place the highly inequitable overall structure of asset and income distribution in ecuador and elsewhere such policies inhibit the widespread replication of the two successful cases

an institutional framework for designing and monitoring ecosystem based fisheries management policy experiments indicator systems are seen as central tools for ecosystem based fisheries management helping to steer fisheries towards sustainability by providing timely and useful information to decision makers without testing hypotheses about the links between policies and outcomes however indicator systems may do little more than promote ad hoc policies possibly even prolonging the transition to sustainable fisheries the institutional analysis and development iad framework is a robust framework that has been used extensively to design policy experiments and empirically test theories and models linking ecological economic systems institutions and the sustainability of common pool resource systems a modified iad framework is developed that transparently encompasses both process oriented pressure state response psr and structurally oriented sustainable livelihood indicator frameworks thus providing a platform for ecosystem based fisheries management policy experiment design and monitoring an institutional approach to fisheries management facilitates critical examination of important cross cutting issues including assumptions regarding what comprises sustainability and how market government and civil society organizations use strategic investments in capital assets and institutions to achieve sustainability objectives the emphasis on capital assets keeps attention on the relative merits of alternative investment options in policy experiments

family farm sustainability in southern brazil an application of agri environmental indicators abstract this paper investigates the sustainability of agroecological and conventional agriculture on small farms in southern brazil a methodology was developed to identify agri environmental indicators of the environmental economic and social dimensions of the farming systems the criteria used for selecting sustainability indicators were policy relevance measurability validity analytical soundness level of aggregation communication to the user based on these criteria indicators were selected for natural financial physical human and social capital assets the research identified external indicators those relevant to researcher policy makers and internal indicators those relevant to the resource users the two sets were combined and data relevant to the selected indicators were collected from secondary sources and also direct from farmers through a small scale sample survey after analysing the data indicators were selected for each capital asset to generate a multi criteria assessment of sustainability at three scales farm local and regional the analysis provided evidence of ecological and social advantages of ecological farms but financial disadvantages associated with the cost of alternative marketing arrangements for agroecological produce the paper draws conclusions about the usefulness of indicators in the assessment of farming sustainability and possibilities for wider application

oecd organisational discourse peer reviews and sustainable development an ecological institutionalist perspective as part of the recent ideational turn in research on international organisations the study of organisational discourse has gained popularity yet ecological economics has thus far paid little attention to the role of organisations as sites for the discursive battles over the meaning of sustainable development for an international organisation without regulatory powers such as the oecd organisation for economic cooperation and development discourse is the main vehicle for policy influence but it also plays a key role in re defining the organisation s identity and authority the oecd s organisational discourse has been strongly dominated by modern mainstream economics and has given little room for marginalised discourses this paper compares from the perspective of institutionally oriented ecological economics ioee and borrowing from critical discourse analysis the experience from attempts to integrate the concept of sustainable development within two oecd peer review mechanisms the economic surveys and the environmental performance reviews the extent to which the respective conceptions of sustainable development in the two reviews are in line with the principles of ioee and the reasons for the apparent failure of sustainable development discourse to gain foothold within the organisation are analysed

rural livelihood diversification in sub saharan africa a literature review abstractthis article provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the nature and evolution of rural livelihood diversification in sub saharan africa and the situation regarding smallholders it reveals mixed findings about the causes and consequences of livelihood diversification on rural smallholders adopting this strategy a lot of evidence from the literature suggests that it is relatively better off smallholders with sufficient assets who achieve successful livelihood diversification mainly by exploiting opportunities and synergies between farm and nonfarm activities because of asset constraints increase in incomes and wealth based on livelihood diversification has not yet benefitted the large majority of smallholders

sense and sustainability sustainability as an objective in international agricultural research abstract this paper first discusses how to use sustainability as a criterion by which to evaluate agricultural research then illustrates the difficulties inherent in applying the criterion and finally draws implications for international agricultural research seven propositions relating to sustainability are stated agricultural researchers are urged to a recognize the importance of the sustainability of agricultural systems b devise appropriate ways to measure sustainability c empirically examine the sustainability of some well defined cropping or farming systems d define the externalities that exist in such systems and e develop methods to measure those externalities

green accounting and economic policy abstract through the lens of conventional national accounting resource depletion and natural environment degradation often appear misleadingly as desirable economic growth the old system of national accounts sna has been revised and a set of environmental satellite accounts proposed certain weaknesses however pervade the new proposals the conventional measurements remain largely unaltered and the satellite accounts are of unclear purpose and unnecessarily complex as proposed they rely on the valuation of environmental stocks while the economically more important flow accounts to their detriment are to be derived indirectly from changes in stock values the sna the paper stresses is primarily an economic framework incapable of capturing all environmental change and the national accounts are far more useful economically than environmentally greening the accounts would be optional for most affluent countries whose overriding environmental concern is pollution this can be addressed directly through taxation and regulation pollution information in satellite accounts can indeed be valuable but revised and fully integrated resource accounting is a priority concern for those developing countries that are running down natural resources and for which conventional accounting distorts macroeconomic measurement analysis and policy the paper argues that green accounting can only ensure income sometimes called weak sustainability which should be considered as a step leading ultimately to an ecological or stronger sustainability

rural poverty dynamics in kenya structural declines and stochastic escapes we use panel survey data and household event histories to explore patterns of rural poverty dynamics in kenya over the period 2000 2009 we find substantial mobility across poverty categories using economic transition matrices drawing on asset based approaches we distinguish stochastic from structural poverty transitions few households successfully escaped poverty through asset accumulation up to 35 of the upwardly mobile while a large proportion of households up to 66 declining into poverty experienced structural transitions using household event histories we find significant differences across structural poverty transition classes in livelihood strategies household level shocks and other factors

capitals and capabilities a framework for analyzing peasant viability rural livelihoods and poverty abstract on the basis of themes emerging in current debates on rural development in latin america this paper develops an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty the framework argues that our analyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of a people s access to five types of capital asset b the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs c the ways in which people are able to expand their asset bases through engaging with other actors through relationships governed by the logics of the state market and civil society and d the ways in which they are able to deploy and enhance their capabilities both to make living more meaningful and to change the dominant rules and relationships governing the ways in which resources are controlled distributed and transformed in society particular attention is paid to the importance of social capital as an asset through which people are able to widen their access to resources and other actors

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

the effect of state fiscal policy on state relative economic performance the relative performance of different state economies has been a matter of much interest to both policymakers and the public in general in a neoclassical world where factors are free to move across political boundaries one would not expect to observe the existence of persistent product price or factor income differentials such differentials would disappear either through the trading of goods or factor migration yet in seeming violation of neoclassical economic theory apparent persistent differences in factor incomes have been repeatedly observed among states or regions in the u s the intent of this paper is to develop and empirically examine a neoclassical model which explicitly incorporates both state and federal fiscal policies in order to explain persistent differences in the levels of market income of the states economies 2 in section ii a simple neoclassical model of an integrated economy is developed within this framework we show that trade in market goods and migration of the mobile factor may result in factor price equalization across states on a before tax basis our model differs from others 6 16 in that the assumption of factor price equalization does not necessarily imply equality in per capita market income across states this result may be traced to our assumption that each factor has the choice of working in either the market or household sector consequently although full incomes may be equated market incomes

the case for methodological pluralism abstract ecology and economics share the same greek root both address complex systems ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems energetics population biology food web models hierarchy theory to mention just a few within ecology field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected economics on the other hand is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of proof the market model and econometrics within economics field knowledge and observations per se are little valued agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science the argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies the agreement on method within economics however seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided

the limited political influence of ecological economics a case study on dutch environmental policies abstract although the ecological economics ee discourse attempts to influence environmental policy empirical studies have concluded that its success in this endeavour has been limited thus far in the netherlands however two ee related policy concepts environmental utilisation space and ecological footprint were strongly present in environmental policy during certain periods in time but subsequently disappeared from the environmental agenda the central question of this article is how these ups and downs of the ee concepts can be understood which factors determine their rise on and fall from the policy agenda over time to answer this question this article offers a conceptual model informed by the approaches in political science on framing agenda setting and knowledge utilisation we conclude that the interplay of concept specific characteristics the formation of coalitions around the concept and contextual variables explain the rise and fall of the aforementioned concepts a match between the dominant policy frame and the core elements of the concept provides the opportunity for the two concepts to be pushed on the agenda we observe the alternation of constraining frames which allows for ee concepts to survive and reconciling frames which block agenda entrance for ee concepts furthermore the alternation of these frames seems to correlate with economic and public environmental attention cycles in the netherlands

institutional resource regimes towards sustainability through the combination of property rights theory and policy analysis abstract although the concept of sustainable development is gaining increasing political acknowledgement despite the implementation of environmental policies specifically intended to solve problems in this area environmental degradation resulting from the recurrent problems associated with the over exploitation of natural resources remains an important concern for most countries how can this situation be explained this article postulates that a combination of approaches from the political sciences in particular policy analysis and institutional economics would enable the identification of the most relevant regulatory dimensions which can explain the un sustainable uses of resources based on this starting point it develops an innovative theoretical framework i e that of the institutional resource regime irr the adopted approach facilitates the analysis of the regulatory measures and resource management practices associated with complex and competitive heterogeneous use situations from a perspective of sustainability indeed the two dimensions of extent and coherence enable the definition and categorization of the irr of a given resource the extent of an irr refers to the total number of goods and services in use that are actually regulated by the regime at a given time while the coherence measures the degree of coordination of the various user actors within the regime one of the major contributions of the irr framework is its ability to describe the different configurations of regimes both theoretically and empirically and to predict their effect on the sustainability of a resource based on the hypothesis that high levels of regime extent and coherence are necessary preconditions for sustainability by doing this the irr framework also enables the analysis of the actual use rights to the goods and services provided by resources as the result of the political strategies of actors who mobilize different legal provisions which stem either from formal property rights to resources or from policies that regulate the use and protection of these resources having developed the central research hypotheses and the empirical research procedure we present the lessons drawn from the first campaign of field research which was mainly conducted in switzerland from 1999 based on the evidence from these initial findings it is suggested that the scope of the irr framework could be far broader than evidenced by its application in the case of switzerland where it was initially developed

agglomeration economies as manifested in technical efficiency at the firm level abstract this paper makes an attempt to assess the significance of agglomeration economies in the case of two indian industries electrical machinery and cotton and cotton textiles using firm level data an efficiency index based on a statistical stochastic frontier model is generated to examine its relationship with external scale variable s a positive association between technical efficiency and city size is evident although after a certain threshold level city size works more as diseconomies than economies of scale undue emphasis on industrial dispersal may therefore lead to suboptimal utilisation of resources

capital theory and the measurement of sustainable development an indicator of weak sustainability the measurement of sustainable development is not without considerable difficulties yet this should not detract from the positive advances that can be made in this direction in this paper we present one form that a weak sustainability indicator can take derived from a simple but intuitive savings rule it incorporates the idea that the level of overall capital stock should be non decreasing although subject to qualification at this stage some interesting results emerge from the application of the rule to 18 countries

exploring synergies among agricultural sustainability dimensions an empirical study on farming system in almeria southeast spain abstract measuring sustainability is a multi attribute issue consisting of numerous variables that tend to be interrelated the holistic perspective and the determination of said relationships synergies and or trade offs are aspects that have been receiving close attention in the literature on the subject this paper aims to develop an analysis that considers these topics regarding the farming system in almeria utilizing primary data obtained from surveys of a sampling of farmers and secondary data from the sector a series of ecological social and economic indicators are determined following the framework of the sustainability assessment of farming and the environment safe and its subsequent aggregation using synthetic indexes the estimation of interrelationships is carried out by means of a multivariate analysis considering the endogeneity between the sustainability dimensions and the influence of several features of the agrifood system the results reveal that the increase in the economic and social indicators reduces environmental pressures on the use of resources in parallel it can also be observed how social and environmental improvements reveal positive effects on the economic dimension of the farmers overall this study presents an analytical study that combines indicators at farm level and the effects related to the productive activities surrounding agriculture

information technology consultancy firms economies of agglomeration from a wide area perspective agglomeration economies remains a powerful concept in spatial analysis however in order to keep its full relevance for contemporary urban and regional systems it must be completed in two ways

poverty and famines an essay on entitlement and deprivation this book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular the traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective and the author develops an alternative analysis

industrial bases and city sizes away from heavy manufacturing and bluecollar occupations and towards professional activities communications finance insurance real estate and high tech activities should we expect these gains and losses to be spread across cities or are certain cities likely to be gainers and others losers in terms of population are losers likely to experience permanent declines in population or for some will their losses level off or will they rebound if the growth industries of an economy operate best in larger cities while declining industries tend to reside in smaller cities this implies national population will shift from smaller cities to locating in larger cities this increase in urban concentration means there will be changes in other patterns of resource usage efficient levels of per capita resources devoted to urban infrastructure roads sewers parks etc tend to rise with city size and it is a common perception that the magnitudes of certain consumer externalities congestion air and water pollution crime etc rise with city size this has implications for public policies governing the allocation of public investment and governing the regulation of externalities moreover the changes in population allocation between larger and smaller cities itself involves to some extend a painful process of population upheavals and there may be public policies which can alleviate the costs of the adjustment process in this paper i outline a conceptual framework and empirical methodologies from which some of these issues can be examined

neoclassical and institutional approaches to development and the environment abstract institutional economics is suggested as a more fruitful approach to environmental problems than the now dominant neoclassical paradigm the historical background of institutionalism in the united states and europe is given as well as the main characteristics of this approach i e holism emphasis on institutional arrangements pattern modelling and emphasis on the political element of economics differences between neoclassical and institutional economics are elaborated with respect to the concept of economics reductionist versus holistic the approach to decision making aggregated versus highly disaggregated and the view of social and institutional change public choice versus actor network approach

the build up of local sustainable development politics a case study of company leaders in france abstract the purpose of this study is to examine business leaders perceptions on sustainable development and their expectations about local governments using a questionnaire on a cross section of 32 french business leaders we examine the following questions can issues related to sustainable development extend beyond questions of profit and future economic dynamism the modern global economic crisis in combination with the ongoing ecological one makes regional attractiveness more topical than ever if local governments invest in sustainable development policy it might satisfy not only citizens but also firms in the territory while attracting new ones as well to determine if firms are really interested in such a policy as well as understand their expectations this research undertook interviews with 32 business leaders we found that local governments should act with firms as partners to increase resilience and sustainability the expectations of business leaders and their sensitivity to sustainable development suggest that sustainable development policies could improve the attractiveness of a local economy especially in the context of the current environmental and economic crises

environmental entitlements dynamics and institutions in community based natural resource management abstract while community based natural resource management cbnrm now attracts widespread international attention its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations this paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity it builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society in mediating environment society relationships grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well being further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference new dynamic ecology new institutional economics structuration theory and landscape history the theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from india south africa and ghana

trust in a rent seeking world health and government transformed in northeast brazil abstract this article draws lessons from a set of innovative programs carried out by a state government in brazil now widely acclaimed for excellence in public management key to the high performance was strong worker commitment to the job and what the state did to elicit a topic of little note in the development literature but of central importance in the literature of industrial performance and workplace transformation in the industrialized countries the state created an unusual sense of calling among the program s workers new prestige in the communities where they worked and an informed citizenry that both monitored the workers and trusted them

shadow prices of social capital in rural india a nonparametric approach this article studies the role of social capital on cotton production efficiency and productivity for a sample of small farms in maharashtra india using data envelopment analysis input shadow prices are computed as an indicator of the importance of social capital relative to other inputs results suggest social capital to be the input with the highest contribution to production efficiency after land the luenberger indicator is used to assess the productivity improvement associated to an investment in social capital which is found to be on the order of 12 undertaking collective production activities is found to play an important role in improving productivity this is especially relevant to agricultural households facing important economic and institutional restrictions that make it difficult to increase conventional expensive inputs

urbanisation and regional productivity in korean manufacturing as the first study for korea we estimate the effects of urbanisation and localisation economies on the productivity of 19 korean manufacturing industries in 1983 1988 and 1993 based on the observation that material inputs contributed about 60 per cent of productivity growth in korea we consider gross output productivity which is an innovation that distinguishes our study from previous ones we find that localisation economies have been dominant features of korean manufacturing industries whereas korean manufacturing industries did not benefit much from locating in large cities more interestingly there are some indications of quadratic relations between city size and urbanisation economies

evolution of macro information systems for sustainable development abstract the changing perception of the environmental problem as articulated in the brundtland report has shifted the issue of environment information from an almost exclusive focus on pollution towards changes in natural productivity and resource depletion this has reorientated environmental data needs towards the macro perspective of national accounting as reflected in natural resource stocks and flows indicators of the state of environment and sustainable development the stockholm conference 1972 raised the question of the need for a system of environment statistics complementary to and integratible with the body of social and economic statistics we propose here a conceptual framework which tracks stocks and flows of natural resources incorporates a critical set of indicators of ecological integrity at the eco region level and has the capacity to integrate certain parameters in the system of national accounts sna with those found in natural resource accounts nra and state of environment reporting soe reports the emphasis is on the applied side of macro information systems of ecological economics as it has so far evolved from the experience of official government statistics the final section briefly reviews developments in canada and suggests some future directions

a bibliometric account of the evolution of ee in the last two decades is ecological economics becoming a post normal science abstract in ecological economics the debate on formalism and formalization has been addressed in the context of a lively discussion on ecological economics as a post normal versus normal science using ecological economics ee as a seed journal and applying bibliometric techniques to all 2533 the articles published in ee from january 1989 to december 2009 we analyze the evolution of the field of ecological economics aiming to shed light on this debate we observe the predominance and increased relevance of certain research topics methodological issues policies governance and institutions and valuation moreover collective action technical change and the environment and values stand as emergent themes of research finally we note that ecological economics experienced an empirical turn reflected in a shift away from exclusively formalized papers towards exclusively empirical and to a larger extent formal and empirical ones the combination of the prominent and emergent topics and the empirical turn mirrors the increasing awareness among researchers in the field of the need to address a key specificity of ecological economics the interdependence of the economic biophysical and social spheres on this basis we argue that at least through the lens of ee ecological economics has evolved towards a post normal science

swedish tax rates labor supply and tax revenues effective marginal tax rates on labor income for the representative swede have increased from roughly 50 percent in 1959 to 80 percent today the effects of this increase in the level of taxation are examined using a two sector model parameterized to correspond to the swedish economy the model contains a single household which allocates labor to either taxed essentially market or untaxed largely household uses the estimated long run effects are sufficient to explain up to 75 percent of the recent decline in the measured growth rate of the swedish gnp calculations of total tax revenues are also derived from the model these peak when the tax rate is approximately 70 percent indicating that sweden is presently on the downward sloping portion of its laffer curve

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

globalization and the skilled city abstract the location of economic activity both across and within countries has undergone dramatic shifts over the last five decades three key trends stand out first cross country inequality has declined as many developing countries have grown rapidly second economic geography within countries has instead grown more unequal in both the developed and the developing world third within country spatial disparities have grown mainly because of the disproportionate success of skilled cities in this paper i develop a model that jointly explains these patterns as a consequence of deepening international economic integration my model explains the faster population and output growth of skilled cities as well as their tendency to increase their initial skill advantage consistent with the evidence my theory predicts a non monotonic path of urban growth in developed countries the model predicts a future shift in worldwide urban hierarchies as some developing world cities overtake unskilled cities in industrialized countries along global supply chains

contesting legitimacy of voluntary sustainability certification schemes valuation languages and power asymmetries in the roundtable on sustainable palm oil in colombia voluntary certification schemes aimed at assuring producer compliance with a set of sustainability criteria have emerged as market based instruments mbis of sustainability governance however the impacts they tackle can be part of a complex arena of socio environmental conflict where values and powers of business and local actors compete legitimacy of these schemes not only results from compliance by business actors but also depends on acceptance by local actors affected by or resisting the industries that these mechanisms aim to govern this paper explores the influence of different local actors values and powers on legitimacy granting or contestation by local actors during national processes of sustainability criteria development we analyse the case of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil rspo in colombia using an approach that combines concepts of ecological economics and political ecology with the legitimacy literature based on critical sociology in colombia the palm oil industry led the initiative to implement certification under national interpretation of rspo principles and criteria however the national interpretation process revealed power asymmetries among stakeholders and clashes between their different values this resulted in strong contestation of rspo legitimacy by local actors who resist expansion of oil palm cultivation

avoiding the resource curse indigenous communities and canada s oil sands summary concerns about a resource curse in canada have been raised in response to rapid growth in the petroleum sector in northern alberta in previous research there has been little consideration of how symptoms of the resource curse are experienced and managed at a regional scale and by indigenous communities an analysis of effects and responses is offered using a natural financial human and social capitals framework without consideration of how to manage the symptoms of the resource curse oil and gas activity is likely to further disadvantage indigenous populations already living on the margins of canadian society

local capacity village governance and the political economy of rural development in indonesia summary this paper develops a framework for conceptualizing local capacity to address village level livelihood and governance problems the framework is based on an analysis of asset distribution combined with an explicit analysis of the links between processes of state formation state business linkages and local forms of social capital the framework is used to discuss findings from recent research on village capacity in rural indonesia the discussion suggests that it is possible to link a political economic approach to rural development with recent conceptualizations of social capital such an analysis can illuminate the forms taken by and the effectiveness of village level collective action in ways that either purely political economy or social capital approaches do not

sustainability analysis of ecological and conventional agricultural systems in bangladesh summary this paper examines the sustainability of conventional and ecological agricultural systems based on their environmental soundness economic viability and social acceptability significant differences were found in crop diversification soil fertility management pests and diseases management and use of agrochemicals no remarkable variations were found in land use pattern crop yield and stability financial and economic returns risk and uncertainties or food security the findings suggest that ecological agriculture is relatively more sustainable and it could be an economically and environmentally viable alternative to the conventional agricultural system ecological agriculture could become an alternative if market distortions created by subsidies were removed and financial benefits were provided to resource conserving farmers along with necessary support through extension credit research and marketing 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

a framework for evaluating collective action and informal institutional dynamics under a resource management policy of decentralization the decentralization of resource property rights has become an increasingly popular policy in many natural resource dependent communities of the developing world however the success of this policy approach depends on both collective action and institutionalization it is therefore important to evaluate collective action and institutionalization where the process of property rights decentralization is in progress this paper presents a modified version of the institutional analysis and development iad framework designed to analyze the decentralization of property rights and the collective action of community members to obtain these rights it describes a three phased framework for analyzing i the government property right decentralization policy ii the stock of capital assets in the community required to achieve property rights by initiating collective action and iii the development of an informal institution for effective property right distribution in the community finally to demonstrate its utility to collective action research we present a case study application of our modified framework to the fisheries property right decentralization policy of the bangladesh government and the subsequent collective action of a wetland dependent community

the dynamics of welfare gains and losses an african case study this article uses panel survey data for cote d ivoire to investigate the determinants of welfare gains and losses of households over time a first difference model is estimated which takes account of initial conditions for urban areas it was found that human capital is not only a key explanatory factor for levels of welfare but also the most important endowment to explain welfare changes over time in rural areas physical capital especially land and farm equipment mattered most household size and composition and socioeconomic characteristics of the household also affected welfare changes policy implications are discussed

agglomeration economies localization or urbanization i estimate localization and urbanization economies with a methodology and data different from those of henderson and nakamura after demonstrating the problems associated with using a single agglomeration variable i present my estimates as nakamura found for japanese cities i find evidence of both localization economies and urbanization economies but i also find evidence of urbanization diseconomies in some industries as did henderson my evidence for localization and urbanization economies in american cities is stronger than henderson s evidence finally i show that the pattern of agglomeration economies by industry is consistent with observed patterns of industrial location

the revenue effects of the kennedy and reagan tax cuts some time series estimates univariate time series models are estimated for sample periods ending with the enactment of major tax reductions in 1964 and 1981 these models are used to forecast government revenue for the period following the tax cut and the pattern of forecast errors is examined unforecast revenue is negative and large relative to its standard error following the 1981 tax cuts but is close to zero following the 1964 cuts this disparity occurs because national output behaved differently in the two cases suggesting that short run movements in output are dominated by factors other than tax rate changes

flows funds and the complexity of deprivation using concepts from ecological economics for the study of poverty abstract poverty has been increasingly conceptualized as being multidimensional involving deprivation in many dimensions of life this paper discusses issues and implications of multidimensional poverty by adopting concepts commonly used in ecological economics in particular poverty is approached as an irreducible complex phenomenon for which many legitimate but non equivalent descriptions exist issues of social and technical incommensurability are illustrated for different meanings and measurement types of poverty georgescu roegen s flow fund framework is interpreted informed by the capability approach of amartya sen the paper argues that a predominant focus on flows as a proxy to analyze poverty represents rather a short term perspective on access to satisfiers to fulfill particular needs contrary to that focusing on valued funds may provide useful information for the analysis of capabilities that persons and societies might pursue in the long term furthermore it is argued that strong poverty alleviation needs to adopt analytical tools that can deal with non trade off cases improvements in one poverty dimension cannot always compensate for the deterioration of other poverties this implies to rethink the usefulness of aggregate multidimensional poverty indices as well as the predominant use of income measures

live long and prosper collective action social capital and social vision abstract to understand the social driving forces that lead to environmental change we must account for the role of social interactions the development of norms of behavior and the institutionalization of rules and norms the development of social capital this paper demonstrates the utility of social capital theory by articulating linkages between human decision making at individual and collective levels and social vision an important research focus within the emerging ecological economics research tradition social capital theory clarifies relationships between social interactions and outcomes that contribute to the production of environmental quality public peace and economic prosperity necessary factors for long term social and ecological sustainability

ten years of q squared implications for understanding and explaining poverty summary over the past decade there have been a number of initiatives to promote a more systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative or q squared approaches to poverty analysis in the global south and a large body of literature had emerged the objective of the article is to present a selective review of this empirical work with a view to demonstrate the value it has added for understanding and explaining poverty the evidence strongly suggests that q squared approaches have aided our understanding of the characteristics of the poor and the causes of poverty

the economics of convention c onventions regulate much of economic and social life yet they have received surprisingly little attention from economists by a convention we mean a pattern of behavior that is customary expected and self enforcing everyone conforms everyone expects others to conform and everyone has good reason to conform because conforming is in each person s best interest when everyone else plans to conform lewis 1969 familiar examples include following rules of the road adhering to conventional codes of dress and using words with their conventional meanings conventions with direct economic implications include species of money and credit industrial and technological standards accounting rules and forms of economic contracts indeed it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that almost all economic and social institutions are governed to some extent by convention the main feature of a convention is that out of a host of conceivable choices only one is actually used this fact also explains why conventions are needed they resolve problems of indeterminacy in interactions that have multiple equilibria indeed from a formal point of view we may define a convention as an equilibrium that everyone expects in interactions that have more than one equilibrium the economic significance of conventions is that they reduce transaction costs imagine the inconvenience if whenever two vehicles approached one another the important exceptions are sugden 1986 and ullman margalit 1977 the interested reader might also refer to the symposium on social norms that appeared in the fall 1989 issue of this journal with articles by sugden 1989 and elster 1989

trust membership in groups and household welfare evidence from kwazulu natal south africa unfortunately these two literatures have remained largely unconnected the group and network literature concludes that participation has important economic benefits even when the stated function of the group is noneconomic in most cases however the mechanisms by which groups and networks achieve this are unclear the determinants of trust and participation in groups literature highlights the importance of income and social homogeneity what remains less understood is whether and how trust can be generated for example via participation in groups this article links the empirical literatures referenced above by exploring the relationship between membership in groups and trust specifically using longitudinal data from kwazulu natal province south africa we examine 1 the importance of trust in the decision to join groups 2 the subsequent ability of groups to generate trust and 3 the effect of group membership and trust on a measure of well being per capita household income in addition we disaggregate groups into financial and nonfinancial and we categorize trust in people by agent or actor therefore we can explore whether trust in different kinds of actors is important for participation in different kinds of groups and whether participation in different kinds of groups is important for generating trust in different kinds of actors excerpt

three dilemmas of environmental accounting abstract economist during the past two decades have tried to logically extended the system of national accounts to include the value of resources environmental systems and their services alternative proposals for improving the accounts have been extensively debated but no agreement has been reached the debate has been fueld by a false implicit belief among the participants that there is one best way to understand how economies interrelate with environmental systems the falsity is exposed through the elaboration of irresolvable dilemmas rather than trying to agree on a single approach the alternative strategy of experimenting with many approaches is espoused the development and use of multiple approaches would be scientifically more rigorous and more likely fail safe

editorial human capital and human capability i would like to comment on the connection as well as contrast between two distinct but related areas of investigation in understanding the processes of economic and social development the accumulation of human capital and the expansion of human capability the former concentrates on the agency of human beings through skill and knowledge as well as effort in augmenting production possibilities the latter focuses on the ability of human beings to lead lives they have reason to value and to enhance the substantive choices they have the two perspectives cannot but be related since both are concerned with the role of human beings and in particular with the actual abilities that they achieve and acquire given her personal characteristics social background economic circumstances etc a person has the ability to do or be certain things that she has reason to value the reason for valuation can be direct the functioning involved may directly enrich her life such as being well nourished or being healthy or indirect the functioning involved may contribute to further production or command a price in the market the human capital perspective can in principle be defined very broadly to cover both types of valuation but it is typically defined by convention primarily in terms of indirect value human qualities that can be employed as capital in production in the way physical capital is in this sense the narrower view of human capital approach fits into the more inclusive perspective of human capability which can cover both direct and indirect consequences of human abilities consider an example if education makes a person more efficient in commodity production then this is clearly an enhancement of human capital this can add to the value of production in the economy and also to the income of the person who has been educated but even with the same level of income a person may benefit from education in reading communicating arguing in being able to choose in a more informed way in being taken more seriously by others and so on the benefits of education thus exceeds its role as human capital in commodity production the broader human capability perspective would record and value these additional roles the two perspectives are thus closely related but distinct the significant transformation that has occurred in recent years in giving greater recognition to the role of human capital is helpful for understanding the relevance of the capability perspective if a person can become more productive in making commodities through better education better health and so on it is not unnatural to expect that she can also directly achieve more and have the freedom to achieve more in leading her life both perspectives put humanity at the center of attention altogether this involves to a great extent a return to an integrated approach to economic and social development championed particularly by adam smith both in the wealth of nations and in the theory of moral sentiments in analysing the determination of production possibilities smith emphasized the role education as well as division of labor learning by doing and skill formation the development of human capability in leading a worthwhile life as well as in being more productive is quite central to smith s analysis of the wealth of nations indeed adam smith s belief in the power of education and learning was peculiarly strong regarding the debate that continues today on the respective roles of nature and nurture smith was an uncompromising nurturist and this fitted in with his massive confidence in the improvability of human capabilities

household strategies and rural livelihood diversification this article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries with particular reference to sub saharan africa livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living the determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty income distribution farm output and gender are examined some policy inferences are summarised the conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to and expansion of opportunities for diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards