the economic multiplier of environmental life support can capital substitute for a degraded environment abstract this paper analyzes the effects of environmental degradation on the long run growth path of an economy it seeks to answer the following question does the effect of environmental degradation on economic activity increase or decrease over time to answer this question i use a neoclassical growth model to calculate an environmental life support multiplier this multiplier compares the short and long run effects of environmental degradation on economic activity the value of the multiplier indicates that the effect of a reduction in environmental life support on economic activity increases by a factor of 2 3 over time such results indicate that it is not possible to substitute capital for environmental life support and maintain material well being

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

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

natural capital and the theory of economic growth abstract during the past half century theorizing about economic growth has forced economists to reconsider and revise the capital concept a number of times this paper explores the analytical relationship between capital accumulation and economic growth on the one hand and the natural world on the other section 1 sketches modern growth theory with an emphasis on whether or not the economy is seen as facing biophysical limits to growth section 2 argues that analysis of the role that natural capital plays in the production process must occur before one can assess the prospects for economic growth section 3 inserts natural capital into a simple growth model and discusses the implications that 1 depletion of natural capital 2 complementarity in production of natural and social forms of capital and 3 accumulation of technical knowledge have for the growth process

the school to work transition a cross national perspective school to work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies france germany japan the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states the emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position of young people and recent trends therein along with the institutions that regulate youth education training and employment the power of public policies including labor market deregulation labor market programs vocationalization of education and apprenticeship to improve youth outcomes is discussed drawing on national evaluation literatures evidence of extensive policy failure points up the need to develop nationally appropriate institutions to improve school to work transitions

sense of place geographic discounting by people animals and plants abstract people animals and plants seem to consistently prefer to distance themselves from objects they fear and draw close to things that they desire i present an argument for ecologists and economists which allows them to capture this behavior in a simple way i offer some evidence for how such behavior occurs and how to include it in specific formulation of environmental policy models

the probable foundations of sustainabilism information energy and entropy based definition of capital homo sustainabiliticus and the need for a new gold abstract this conceptual interdisciplinary paper will start with an introduction to the new networked knowledge based global economy and the importance of intellectual and specifically human capital next an advanced definition of human and other forms of capital using information energy and entropy will be introduced this will be followed by a discussion of the premises framing the study of economics and will focus on the role of law in the economy afterwards the paper will suggest the addition of a new model of humans that should serve as the base for the concept of law the homo sustainabiliticus ensuing this discussion and consistent with the newly proposed definition of capital a proposal for a new currency new gold will be offered this proposal suggests viewing usable renewable energy knowledge and data as the most important assets for the 21st century and is seen as the building block for the new sustainabilistic economy

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

stocks flows and complementarity formalizing a basic insight of ecological economics abstract in this paper we focus on expressing in mathematical form the following statement of ecological economics a vital role of nature in production is yielding resource flows that are transformed by the fund of man made capital the flow of resources and the fund of man made capital are fundamentally complements see e g an introduction to ecological economics 1997 100 or beyond growth the economics of sistainable development 1996 22 we formulate a simple economic growth model expressing that statement and contrast it with a model that makes production depend on the total fund of natural capital while both models lead to an a priori limit to total output of man made capital their dynamics at the point where the natural resource constraint becomes binding differ greatly assuming production to depend on the total fund of natural capital leads to an early and relatively smooth decline in production while in our model the resource scarcity only makes itself felt when the resources are virtually exhausted with catastrophic results starting from the standard formulation using the minimum function we proceed to explore more flexible ways of expressing complementarity mathematically we describe what conditions a production function must fulfill if it is to exhibit fundamental complementarity combined with some substitutability at the margin and point out a class of algebraically simple functions that do so we then extend the discussion of complementarity between man made and natural capital from production to utility one of the consequences of such complementarity turns out to be that uneconomic growth is possible even at very low initial income levels

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

what can we learn from the grand policy experiment lessons from so2 allowance trading stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0895 3309 28199822 2912 3a3 3c69 3awcwlft 3e2 0 co 3b2 tthe journal of economic perspectives is currently published by american economic association your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals aea html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgtue jun 26 16 25 17 2007

from groundless universalism to grounded generalism improving ecological economic indicators of human environmental interaction abstract ecological economics occasionally makes universal claims about how to understand and measure change in systems of human environmental interaction in terms of environmental policy one of the most influential universal concepts that has come out of the ecological economics literature recently is ecological efficiency or eco efficiency this article uses eco efficiency as a vehicle to illustrate that universal indicators of human environmental interaction are theoretically unfounded and practically problematic population ecology and neo classical economics are identified as two theoretical approaches that have contributed to the emergence of universal concepts such as eco efficiency the limited applicability of the approaches is highlighted by putting them in comparative context with approaches that make less universal claims namely systems ecology and institutional economics investigating indicators of human environmental interaction from disciplinary perspectives that are rarely found in indicator literature offers novel insights on what indicators are for and how they should be applied the article concludes with a call for scale sensitive generalization in the development of future indicators

does energy price affect energy efficiency cross country panel evidence abstract in this paper we analyze the relationship between energy intensity and energy price in a panel of 120 countries over 34 years from 1980 to 2013 we use information on energy intensity and real oil price and merge it with macroeconomic data on the countries structural characteristics we assess their long run relationship and direction of causality using panel cointegration tests and dynamic panel data models we identify a statistically significant but weak negative effect of real oil price on energy intensity which corresponds to a positive effect of energy price on energy efficiency we also show significant large regional differences in this relationship we thus posit that a global policy aimed at increasing the price of oil would induce a limited increase in average energy efficiency through a more efficient use of energy but this increase would differ considerably across regions around the world

does fdi have energy saving spillover effect in china a perspective of energy biased technical change abstract existing studies pay little attention to when or under which conditions foreign direct investment fdi can spill energy saving technologies from a perspective of energy biased technical change and using a two layer nested constant elasticity of substitution ces production function this paper investigates the energy saving spillover effect of fdi on technical change i e energy saving spillovers in china between 2002 and 2015 in particular we consider the conditions of marketization industry technology and labor mobility to examine whether and when fdi has energy saving spillovers the results indicate no income inequality effect i e there is no evidence supporting that fdi flowing into low and middle income regions increases energy consumption while fdi flowing into high income regions conserves energy however there is a condition effect fdi can improve support the halo effect or deteriorate contradict the halo effect the environmental performance under different conditions moreover there is a threshold effect the direction of fdi spillovers varies with the different levels of the threshold variables an increasing marketization motivates enterprises to select energy biased technologies it is more likely to generate energy saving spillovers in the regions with a lower specialized agglomeration level fdi will have energy biased spillovers when domestic technological level is relatively high with an evident energy biased technology in addition a moderate labor mobility is beneficial to the energy saving spillovers of fdi

critical natural capital a socio cultural perspective abstract critical natural capital cnc is commonly defined as that part of the natural environment which performs important and irreplaceable functions so far the challenge to determine the criticality of natural capital nc has mainly been taken up by the natural sciences and the critical functions of nature mainly associated with its life support and ecological services little attention has been paid to the socio cultural functions of nc and to their values for the health and well being of human societies the aim of this paper is to encourage a more complete accounting of the critical functions of nc and its associated values by highlighting the importance of the information functions health recreation amenity education heritage etc for the quality and sustainability of human life it is argued that despite their immaterial and often intangible nature these functions provide many socio economic benefits which might be assessed through both qualitative and quantitative valuation methodologies integration of ecology sociology and economics is essential to operationalize the concept of cnc as a tool for more balanced environmental planning and decision making

measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy article i nfo in order to determine whether degrowth is occurring or how close national economies are to the concept of a steady state economy clear indicators are required within this paper i analyse four indicator approaches that could be used 1 gross domestic product 2 the index of sustainable economic welfare 3 biophysical and social indicators and 4 a composite indicator i conclude that separate biophysical and social indicators represent the best approach but a unifying conceptual framework is required to choose appropriate indicators and interpret the relationships between them i propose a framework based on ends and means and a set of biophysical and social indicators within this framework the biophysical indicators are derived from herman daly s definition of a steady state economy and measure the major stocks and flows in the economy environment system the social indicators are based on the stated goals of the degrowth

assessing the impact of renewable energy deployment on local sustainability towards a theoretical framework renewable energy sources res have a large potential to contribute to the sustainable development sd of specific territories by providing them with a wide variety of socioeconomic and environmental benefits however the existing literature has put much emphasis on the environmental benefits including the reduction of global and local pollutants while socioeconomic impacts have not received a comparable attention these include diversification of energy supply enhanced regional and rural development opportunities creation of a domestic industry and employment opportunities with the exception of the diversification and security of energy supply these benefits have usually been mentioned but their analysis has been too general i e mostly at the national level and a focus on the regional and even more so the local level has been lacking at most studies provide scattered evidence of some of those regional and local benefits but without an integrated conceptual framework to analyse them this paper tries to make a contribution in this regard by developing an integrated theoretical framework which allows a comprehensive analysis of the impact of renewable energy on local sustainability and which can be empirically applied to identify these benefits in different territories

the environment as a luxury good or too poor to be green abstract this paper discusses the views of different authors on the relations between economic growth and environmental scarcities it lays out the common assumptions behind inglehart s postmaterialist thesis in environmental sociology krutilla s criterion for the valuation of environmental amenities hirsch s notion of the positional economy and pearce s numerical results on weak sustainability the paper shows how different views on the environmental consequences of economic growth imply at the same time different theories about environmental movements in rich countries there is an increasing demand for environmental amenities which cannot be substituted by products of the material economy and there are also environmental movements against the effluents of affluence in poor countries there are environmental movements characterized as the environmentalism of the poor

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

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

natural versus manufactured capital win lose or win win a case study of the finnish pulp and paper industry abstract the effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win win rhetoric specifically in micro level analysis on the macro level the win win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital intensive industry over time the paper shows that rather than generalise the existence of win win situations or the substitutability of capital these positions are determined by purely situational factors as a result in the assessment of substitutability the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account this implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment

imposing local concavity in the translog and generalized leontief cost functions abstract we propose and illustrate a method for imposing concavity at a single point which may result in concavity at many points in the familiar translog and generalized leontief cost functions while at the same time maintaining flexibility of the forms

externalities in an endogenous growth model with social and natural capital abstract models of economic growth are typically based on the use of one or more stocks of productive assets to create goods for utility generating consumption the roles played by man made capital natural capital and human capital have been explored in the literature and more recently the notion of social capital has been brought to the fore this paper provides an attempt to construct an inclusive model of growth analyzing externalities and distortions due to market failures linked with social capital and environmental problems

indicators of sustainable development some lessons from capital theory abstract interest in sustainable development has prompted a search for suitable indicators that might complement or supplant the traditional measures of economic success although there is no agreement about the precise meaning of sustainable development one idea which is increasingly in good currency is that sustainable development requires that the stock of capital that one generation passes on to the next be maintained or enhanced further this stock of capital is seen by some to comprise two elements manufactured capital and natural capital the extent to which these are believed to be substitutes or complements is one factor which separates the neoclassical school from some of its critics a premise of this paper is that if capital theory is relevant to sustainable development then it should also be helpful in developing indicators however even within the normal confines of economics capital theory is not a homogeneous body of analysis therefore an exploration of capital theory and its relevance to sustainable development can be expected to generate various perspectives on those measures most useful for gauging the sustainability of economic activity it is these linkages between capital theory in various schools of thought and possible indicators of sustainable development that are the subject of this paper

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

a nested ces approach to capital energy substitution abstract this paper uses the nested constant elasticity of substitution ces production function to estimate elasticities of substitution between capital labour energy and materials over the 1971 1976 period around the initial energy crisis elasticities are estimated for each of the two digit sic industries within us manufacturing using more disaggregate four digit sic data the nested ces function makes it possible to distinguish between engineering and economic elasticities of substitution capital and energy are estimated to be slight engineering substitutes and economic complements labour energy and materials are estimated economic substitutes

spatial and temporal flows of china s forest resources development of a framework for evaluating resource efficiency abstract population growth and resource scarcity have remained major constraints on china s development for several decades under conditions of resource limitations utilization efficiency is a key concern for chinese scientists and decision makers based on forest production and trade data for china we present a conceptual framework for resource flow analysis calculate the quantities and analyze the characteristics of flows of forest resources primarily wood and wood byproducts during the critical early economic development of china from 1953 to 2000 by converting the forest resource flows into log equivalents i e the quantity of logs required to generate a unit of each type of product the consumption of forest resources has accelerated throughout the study period and the structure and efficiency of forest resource utilization have both improved the proportion of forest resource flows obtained from outside china has increased and most of this wood was consumed by wood processing industries over time consumption has shifted from logs and lumber to the pulp and paper and artificial board industries to improve the economics and sustainability of its use of forest resources china should increase consumption of forest resources by its pulp and paper industry more fully utilize forest resources obtained from outside china and weaken the dependence on these foreign forest resources by promoting increased utilization efficiency and structural readjustment of the forest industry therefore improved forest management is an effective mean of weakening the dependence on foreign forest resources

discounting of long term costs what would future generations prefer us to do decisions with intergenerational consequences may leave future generations worse off i e not be pareto optimal if costs and benefits are not discounted correctly we point out that this happens if the conventional social discount rate is applied to intergenerational costs with that rate the justification of intergenerational costs benefits of a project are invested and the proceeds can cover future costs leads to an inconsistency over the long term eventually the supposed benefits of any project become larger than the entire gnp the conventional approach commits an error by treating the time preference component of the discount rate as if it represented creation of wealth while it really involves only redistribution the time horizon of the redistribution is limited by the duration of market transactions especially loans thus we recommend a two step discounting procedure with the conventional social discount rate for the short term about 30 years and the growth rate of the economy for the long term data for gnp per capita growth in the us the uk france germany japan and the soviet union since the industrial revolution combined with data for net economic welfare per capita suggest an intergenerational discount rate in the range of 1 to 2 for practical application the rate at which costs and benefits will grow over time is just as important as the discount rate only the difference between these two rates matters for many environmental costs these rates may be close to each other during the next few generations this implies that some of the uncertainty in the prediction of rates cancels and one can treat the problem as if the effective rate were close to zero the consequence for costs such as global warming or nuclear power can be very significant the valuation can increase by more than an order of magnitude compared to values based on conventional discounting

evaluation of swedish youth labor market programs this paper evaluates two swedish active labour market programmes for youth namely youth practice and labour market training a non parametric matching approach is applied to estimate the average p

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

examining the multiple impacts of technological progress on co2 emissions in china a panel quantile regression approach abstract whilst a plethora of literature has viewed technological progress as one of the critical influencing factors in relation to energy consumption and co2 emissions little effort has been made to identify the sectoral differences in the relationship between technological progress and co2 emissions thereby this paper remedies the inadequacies in the extant literature by empirically investigating the impact of technological progress on co2 emissions specifically taking into account its heterogeneous effect in various economic sectors this paper first decomposes the effect of technological progress as taking place in heavy industry in light industry in construction industry and in service industry a panel quantile regression approach and a balanced city panel data model are then applied covering the period 2001 2013 in china the empirical results show that technological progress in heavy industry and light industry surprisingly facilitates a higher level of co2 emissions despite its prominent contribution to energy efficiency improvement meanwhile as distinct from the effect it shows in the heavy and light industries technological progress in construction and service industries exerts a negative effect on co2 emissions additionally this paper further discovers that the strength of the multiple impacts of technological progress also varies with the level of emitters by studying the heterogeneous effect brought about by technological progress in different economic sectors and emitters this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between co2 emissions and technological progress

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

the relationships among energy consumption economic output and energy intensity of countries at different stage of development based on 3gr model the relationships between energy consumption economic effect and technical effect of countries at different stage of development developed developing and the least developed countries was figured out comparing the equivalent value of grec greo and grei during the period from 1996 to 2013 the diverse development laws in different kinds of countries was found the following conclusions were obtained 1 based on 3gr model there is a liner relationship between grec and greo or grei and an inverse relationship between grei and greo when the equivalent value of 1 greoi or 1 greii or 1 greci is a constant 2 the equivalent value of greo are in the following orders developed countries developing countries the least developed countries while that of grei have the opposite orders the orders of the equivalent value of grec are developed countries the least developed countries and developing countries from small to large the least developed countries own the largest potential to realize further development whether in economic expansion technical innovation or in optimize industrial structure while these potential in developed countries are the smallest and in developing countries are at the middle level the development in developing countries shows the most growth going forward 3 the change in energy consumption is codetermined by eo effect ei effect and their interactive effect eo effect shows the leading position among the three effects especially in developing countries and the least developed countries in developed countries ec change eo effect and ei effect are both change in a tight range while in developing countries and the least developed countries these ranges are rather large

in memoriam on the death of the market mechanism the concept of the market mechanism emerged in the 1940s as a central feature in the thinking of the economics profession in the united states with improved knowledge of the scientific laws of the market economists argued that society could use the instrument of the market to achieve a wide range of social goals with maximal efficiency and effectiveness for example many economists have argued that the reduction of poverty is best accomplished by manipulating the labor market through the negative income tax or other technical devices health care other economists have more recently argued should be provided through various forms of managed competition based on market incentives the concept of the market mechanism has also been applied widely to ecological matters economists have proposed that if a given reduction in pollution emissions is the goal this reduction is efficiently achieved by allocating rights to pollute and then allowing market trading in these rights dales 1968 pearce et al 1989 a carbon tax is often advocated as an effective way of using market forces to achieve a desired reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for global warming purposes oecd 1992 other economists have argued that conservation of water supplies and thus avoidance of the need to build environmentally harmful dams and other water facilities is efficiently achieved by creating a system of water rights and then allowing market trading in these rights anderson 1983 many other types of environmental objectives could in principle be achieved by setting a target and then using the market mechanism to realize this goal tietenberg 1993 zylicz 1991 economists have typically also argued that the market mechanism like other tools of professional economics is a value neutral device its efficiency and effectiveness rest on technical grounds alone economists assert that are independent of any particular cultural or broader value circumstances however as this paper will argue the economic case for the market mechanism is actually grounded in the existence of a particular set of social values if these values were in fact commonly rejected in society markets would lose the efficiency advantages that mainstream economics claims for them to be sure the values on which market efficiency depends have in fact been broadly accepted in american life that is why the market mechanism has been as widely proposed and in a number of cases sometimes involving the environment used successfully to be specific the particular value system that has supported the functioning of the market mechanism in the united states has been the belief in economic progress the market is an engine of great social dislocation as well as economic advance american society has been willing to tolerate the major dislocations because it has believed that they

optimal unemployment insurance with human capital depreciation and duration dependence this paper studies the effect of human capital depreciation and duration dependence on the design of an optimal unemployment insurance ui scheme our results partially confirm those obtained in most previous studies benefits should decrease with unemployment duration the optimal program also generates two main novel features which are not present in stationary models first if human capital depreciates rapidly enough during unemployment ui transfers are bounded below by a minimal assistance level that arises endogenously in the efficient program second we study the optimality of imposing a history contingent wage tax after reemployment our numerical simulations based on the spanish and us economies show that the wage tax should decrease with the length of worker s previous unemployment spell and become a wage subsidy for long term unemployed workers as a by product of our study we develop a systematic approach suitable for studying recursively a wide range of dynamic moral hazard problems and other models with similar characteristics

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

ecology sustainability and environment as capital abstract the idea of environment as capital has found widespread support in both the economic and ecological literature it is often suggested in a related sustainability literature that natural capital should remain intact if possible the popularity of this approach to exploring the human environment relationship is due in part to the way it is seemingly legitimised by ecological theory and practice this legitimation is important for emerging areas of human environment study such as ecological economics because ecology and other natural sciences have often dismissed economic constructions of the environment however a closer examination of the state of contemporary ecology suggests that there are problems with an ecological legitimation of the environment as capital approach first ecology itself is a troubled discipline and its ability to provide a comprehensive theory of human environment interactions is limited second emerging ecological discourse tends to undermine the ecological rationale for many natural capital related resource management recommendations this does not mean that the environment as capital concept is without considerable heuristic power it does imply however a need to return to a social construction of the environment in which different environmental possibilities are valued in terms of their potential contribution to human well being

partitioning of resources in production an empirical analysis abstract industrial economies ingest materials energy and information to produce goods and services and excrete wastes and emissions wastes can be minimized and the relative amounts of resources which go into goods and services as opposed to waste are essential to clean production and to the sustainability of the production system a regression model based on empirical data is presented that provides a partition coefficient expressing the ratio of energy or material resources invested in goods to energy going to waste partition coefficients are developed for five countries and are shown to be related to gdp energy and material consumption and energy and waste intensities higher partition coefficients mean higher productivity and lower energy waste and material intensities in addition energy use capita and pollution capita is lower the price of energy to the industrial sector is related to the partition coefficient the policy implications are that partitioning of resources to goods should be maximized and waste minimized for economic as well as environmental reasons

eco efficiency as abandonment of nature abstract the paper argues that eco efficiency is fundamentally disruptive when promoted as a universal prescription for environmental policy eco efficiency runs against the cognitive and institutional bases of sustainable human environmental interaction at the cognitive level eco efficiency assumes that an individual s concern for the environment can be decoupled from his or her material dependency on ecosystem services at the collective level eco efficiency builds upon decoupling environmental governance from the local socio economic and cultural context the assumptions are not well supported by empirical work on systems of human environmental interaction which stresses the importance of material connections to maintaining environmental concerns the criterion for adopting eco efficiency should be the extent to which it promotes the recoupling of human perception of environmental issues with human action on the environment and the concomitant recoupling of collective local organization with locally crafted ecosystem management

which kind of directed technical change does china s economy have from the perspective of energy saving and low carbon abstract improvements in energy saving and low carbon technologies in the economic system are foundations of sustainable economic development therefore measuring the bias of technical change from the perspective of energy saving and low carbon is a prerequisite for clarifying whether economic growth is manifested as low carbon and sustainable in this paper the production function from the perspective of energy saving and low carbon in china is constructed and ridge regression is used to estimate it to measure energy and carbon bias in china s technical change the results indicate that technical change is biased towards energy use and carbon emissions relative to capital and labor but this bias is weakening in general china s economic system has always biased towards carbon emissions and its carbon biased technical change has the largest share in directed technical change however it is gradually shrinking

the concept of weak sustainability abstract this paper surveys the links between growth theory with exhaustible resources and the concept of weak sustainability it examines the underlying assumptions behind this concept and questions the usefulness of the weak sustainability index as an indicator of sustainable development

understanding technological progress and input price as drivers of energy demand in manufacturing industries in india abstract this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of energy demand behaviour of seven energy intensive manufacturing industries and the aggregate manufacturing sector in india during 1973 74 to 2011 12 the policy perform achieve and trade pat has mandated energy efficiency targets for these manufacturing industries in india we focus on two major drivers of energy demand technological progress and energy price productivity growth accounting and estimation of parametric cost function using annual survey of industry data bring out important implications regarding the role of these two drivers results suggest that these industries experienced technological progress over the study period 1973 74 to 2011 12 with significant energy saving bias during 1998 99 to 2011 12 increase in energy price has led to reduction in energy demand and augmented technological progress in most of the industries energy and material inputs are mostly substitutes during 1998 99 to 2011 12 productivity growth of energy input was induced by both technological progress and increase in energy price estimates of inter factor substitution suggest that price induced reduction in energy demand can be a capital intensive process in case of some industries rebound effect has never taken back full gains of energy efficiency policies in the context of these industries

an aggregate resource efficiency perspective on sustainability a sustainable value application to the eu 15 countries the sustainable value approach integrates the efficiency with regard to environmental social and economic resources into a monetary indicator it gained significant popularity as evidenced by diverse applications at the corporate level however its introduction as a measure adhering to the strong sustainability paradigm sparked an ardent debate this study explores its validity as a macroeconomic strong sustainability measure by applying the sustainable value approach to the eu 15 countries concretely we assessed environmental social and economic resources in combination with the gdp for all eu 15 countries from 1995 to 2006 for three benchmark alternatives the results show that several countries manage to adequately delink resource use from gdp growth furthermore the remarkable difference in outcome between the national and eu 15 benchmark indicates a possible inefficiency of the current allocation of national resource ceilings imposed by the european institutions additionally by using an effects model we argue that the service degree of the economy and governmental expenditures on social protection and research and development are important determinants of overall resource efficiency finally we sketch out three necessary conditions to link the sustainable value approach to the strong sustainability paradigm

sustainable ecological economies abstract a brief accounting is presented of the evolution of natural ecosystems and human cultures including industrialization and its ecologically significant interactions with natural abiotic and biotic processes of the earth these accounts show among other things that excess resource harvest rates and material releases into the natural environment have been ecological risks of growing scope and scale throughout the history of political economies the growing ecological risks of industrialization are attributed to disparities between the rates and directions of evolution in the ecological features of process and structure of corporate and political economies relative to the rates and directions of evolution in their cultural institutions of control many social and political organizations are now calling for adaptations toward sustainable industrialization by promoting evolution in the cultural institutions of control through research education ethics politics and government what is required are on line institutional processes for effectively translating emerging ecological risk assessments into economic incentives for feasible adaptations throughout the systems institutionalization of such on line adaptive processes requires broad moral ethical enlightenment and social political commitment to make the emerging scientific technological and economic dimensions productive faber et al 1996 this paper presents on line strategies of ecological risk assessment and control which are believed to be superior to alternatives that require a prior consensus on economic valuations of natural resource stocks natural processes and environmental damages and incentives have advantages over prescriptive regulations when viewed in their greater economic context the proposed strategies are formulated as coordinated institutions of on line ecological and fiscal control processes on what is here defined as the ecological economies of corporate and political economies the objective of the proposed control strategies is to pursue trajectories of joint ecological and cultural evolution toward systems that are ecologically and culturally both satisfying and sustainable

a coevolutionary model for promoting agricultural sustainability abstract this article presents a coevolutionary model of agricultural development that is based on observations from the environmental history of agriculture and the need for addressing development processes toward sustainability it asserts that the challenge of agricultural sustainability can be fruitfully addressed within an analytical framework that consciously and explicitly considers agricultural development as consisting of processes of coevolution involving agriculture and the surrounding ecological and socioeconomic systems widening the processes to include strong interconnectedness with national and global systems with respect to off farm resources and farm outputs has led to various agro ecological problems strengthening local interaction and interconnectedness in a rural urban context is found to be essential for developing a system of sustainable agriculture such development requires influencing many subsystems and implementing changes in production methods and land use as short term responses to the problem and technological development resource allocation and changes in values as long term responses it also requires some sustainability principles and indicators in order to direct actions and to facilitate communications which can be derived from the model applying the model on swedish agricultural sustainability during the twentieth century reveals some probably important findings for building sustainable agriculture and lends support to the usefulness of the model

defining the generational environmental debt abstract assume that we have borrowed the earth from our children and that we one day shall give it back to them and account for what we have done to it then we would have to try to restore the damage we have caused further we would have to offer compensation for the damage we have done that we cannot repair at a lower cost the generational environmental debt ged is a measure of these costs in this paper we define and discuss the concept of ged and calculate ged for emissions of the greenhouse gas co 2 the global ged for co 2 emissions is estimated to 10000 billion us dollars and the swedish ged for co 2 emissions is estimated to 60 billion us dollars

estimated substitution elasticities of a nested ces production function approach for germany this paper demonstrates an econometric estimation of substitution elasticities of a nested constant elasticity of substitution production function ces between capital energy and labour for the west german industry in the last few years ces production functions have become more important in economic modelling especially for applied general equilibrium models where ces production functions are an important building stone in the literature different results of estimated elasticities can be found this paper investigates three different approaches for nested ces production functions and their estimated substitution elasticities capital energy and labour are estimated as substitutes for the west german industry in the long run

technological change in economic models of environmental policy a survey this paper provides an overview of the treatment of technological change in economic models of environmental policy numerous economic modeling studies have confirmed the sensitivity of mid and long run climate change mitigation cost and benefit projections to assumptions about technology costs in general technical progress is considered to be a noneconomic exogenous variable in global climate change modeling however there is overwhelming evidence that technological change is not an exogenous variable but to an important degree endogenous induced by needs and pressures hence some environmenteconomy models treat technological change as endogenous responding to socio economic variables three main elements in models of technological innovation are i corporate investment in research and development ii spillovers from r d and iii technology learning especially learning by doing the incorporation of induced technological change in different types of environmental economic models tends to reduce the costs of environmental policy accelerates abatement and may lead to positive spillover and negative leakage

georgescu roegen versus solow stiglitz daly is right to be concerned about our society s use of resources environmental degradation and the wasteful use of natural resources or any resources for that matter are of concern daly s tirade concerning our work seems motivated by two concerns a lack of consistency with basic laws of physics and the alleged implication that growth can continue unabated without eventually facing constraints imposed by the limited supply of natural resources part of the problem arises from a lack of understanding of the role of the kind of analytic models that we and others have formulated they are intended to help us answer questions like for the intermediate run for the next 50 60 years is it possible that growth can be sustained what does this possibility entail we write down models as if they extend out to infinity but no one takes these limits seriously for one thing an exponential increase in the population presents almost unimaginable problems of congestion on our limited planet in this intermediate run capital can substitute for natural resources and this is true even though capital itself uses resources more precise machines made out of resources that are relatively abundant can reduce wastage of resources that are relatively scarce technical change some of which is the result of investments in rd and increased efficiency in production may imply less wastage of bauxite and less coal or oil to produce the energy used to make a pound of aluminum or consider the resources that were required to run a regression only a half century ago pounds and pounds of heavy calculating machines replaced by mere ounces of a modern calculator changes in technology also allow us to recycle resources more efficiently so that the amount that is not recaptured for future production may be reduced perhaps the most important question is where does all of this lead us resources are scarce and markets when they function well reflect that scarcity economizing on the use of resources there are important instances especially where the environment and natural resources are concerned where markets do not work well there are for instance the classic problems posed by pollution externalities when markets do not

a regulatory framework for a policy of sustainability lessons from the neo liberal school abstract in this paper targets institutions and policy measures for describing and implementing sustainable development are evaluated in terms of their conformity with the economic framework of a market system from the viewpoint of neo liberal economic thinking as conceived by the german freiburg school of economists a general set of criteria is developed it includes issues of operationalization and legitimation of goals as well as institutional and instrumental issues on this basis general rules for designing an ecological framework guaranteeing the greatest possible degree of conformity with a market system are derived the concrete application of these rules leads to recommendations for a policy of sustainability with respect to the setting of goals the establishment of institutions as well as the use of appropriate instruments

applying the concept of natural capital criticality to regional resource management this paper applies the concept of natural capital stock and identifies its critical elements in a regional sustainable development context in order to assess its conceptual and practical relevance assessment of the physical stock of natural capital was undertaken for central region in scotland it was found that the concept can be a useful way of assessing and giving greater recognition to natural resources at a regional or local level however identification of critical levels of resources was less straightforward the lack of clear guidelines relating to criteria of criticality natural capital category aggregation issues and conflicts between types of critical natural capital were encountered as major issues the application of an absolute preservation rule was found to suffer from the same general disadvantages as any absolute rule nevertheless the assessment of natural capital and identification where possible of critical elements were thought to be a useful adjunct to sustainable development work

material accounting in a macroeconomic framework forecast of waste generated in manufacturing industries in norway this paper analyses the generation of waste inproduction processes using a technique based onthe physical law of conservation of mass according to this law mass going into aproduction process must equal the mass comingout of the same process the paper uses thismass balance perspective to refine a previouslydeveloped technique for forecasting wastequantities a macroeconomic model predicts theuse of intermediate inputs and production inmonetary units and by multiplying thesevariables with weight conversion factors weestimate physical amounts going into and out ofproduction the difference between input andoutput the residual consists of discharges toland water and air we predict a growth in theresiduals from manufacturing industries of 74 from 1993 to 2010 this growth is partly explained by an anticipated growth in material intensity

analysis of technological progress and input prices on electricity consumption evidence from china abstract this paper establishes a translog cost function model with productivity growth equations to study the influence of technological progress and price changes on electricity production factors and consumption within a unified analytic framework regression is applied to the panel data for seven regions in china during the period 1997 to 2013 the functions of production costs on factor substitution are analyzed based on the regression the influence of electricity price and technological progress on electricity productivity and the rebound effect of electricity are discussed electricity price can significantly and positively influence electricity productivity expressed by the total value of output consumed by unit electricity however the stimulation of technological progress is not notable the rebound effect of electricity computed based on an electricity price breakdown showed that values of the rebound effect in southwestern china and central china were higher than 100 while annual average values of the rebound effect in northeastern china and southern china were 60 39 and 81 47 respectively the area with the lowest annual average value for the rebound effect was northwestern china at 14 96

is technological change biased toward energy a multi sectoral analysis for the french economy abstract since the adoption and implementation of new technologies has an important influence on the structure and performance of the economy in both developed and developing countries many research papers are devoted to the technology economy nexus motivated by the fact that the impact of technical progress on the demand for different production factors may vary depending on the bias of the technological change in this paper by estimating a translog cost share system and using state space modeling technique we investigate to what extent the direction of technical change is biased toward energy and away from other factors by applying this methodology to the french economy for the period 1978 2006 the obtained results suggest that first technical change has a non neutral impact on factor demands second capital saving technical progress is present in the majority of the sectors studied third energy demand has increased in all sectors but electricity and gas these findings may have important policy implications for environmental and energy issues in france

sustainable growth criteria minimum benchmarks and scenarios for employment and the environment abstract the relationship of economic growth and environmental impact has spurred fierce debates between growth optimists referring to the phenomenon of the environmental kuznets curve and pessimists referring to the limits to growth however no operational set of simple criteria has been developed so far to assess the sustainability of a given growth pattern this is all the more true for measures combining environmental and social criteria the paper undertakes to sketch out such criteria and to assess them by applying them to transdiciplinary sustainability scenarios and model simulations with panta rhei one of the most complex models of the german economy theoretical considerations as well as the empirical work with the model demonstrate that there are indeed trade offs between economic growth and environmental impacts and a positive correlation of growth and employment nonetheless it is still possible to develop carefully orchestrated strategies that combine economic competitiveness low unemployment rates and an easing of the pressure on the environment social and technical innovation reduced working time a modernised social security system green taxes and salary increases proportional to labour productivity growth are essential parts of any such strategy the triple effectiveness of such strategies regarding environmental social and economic sustainability is demonstrated by the model runs

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

life course risks mobility regimes and mobility consequences a comparison of sweden germany and the united states1 the analysis of intergenerational mobility has primarily used measures of social position that are functions of an individual s occupation occupation based models of social mobility however have limitations that arguably have grown in recent decades meta analysis of available evidence for sweden western germany and the united states concerning occupational mobility household income mobility job displacement union dissolution and poverty dynamics shows the limitations of the individual level occupation based career trajectory approach to life course mobility this article develops an alternative formulation at the household level which focuses on cross national variation in the extent to which societal institutions influence the rate of events with the potential to change a household s life conditions via the manipulation of incentives for mobility generating events and the extent to which they mitigate the consequences of these events through social insurance the combination of these institut

limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption a neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics abstract there are many methodological approaches within ecological economics one of the principal modes of analysis is a modified version of the standard neoclassical model this paper examines the parallels which emerge between the ideas of some ecological economists concerning production and the ideas of others concerning consumption when these ideas are interpreted in the neoclassical paradigm it is well known that ecological economics is characterized by arguments concerning limits to substitution between inputs energy natural capital etc vs manufactured capital labor etc in production and the implications these have for sustainability however various authors have also expressed concerns regarding limits to substitution in consumption either between environmental assets and other goods or between basic needs commodities and other goods though the specific reasons for non substitution are different in the production and consumption cases the underlying theme is that individual commodities and other inputs have unique physical or other properties which make them poor substitutes ideas about irreversibility in production and economic development are also prominent in ecological economics likewise many authors have argued for similar irreversibilities in consumption behavior in analogy to the term technological change i coin the term preferential change to describe these phenomena the linking themes in this case are that the economy environment system is evolutionary in character and that external effects intended and unintended consequences of actions or processes imposed on other parties or resources are all pervasive

constraints on dematerialisation and allocation of natural capital along a sustainable growth path abstract to study societal and biophysical constraints on sustainability we present an extension of the neoclassical growth model with two new concepts allocation of natural capital and dematerialisation we consider that anthropogenic environmental impact is correlated with the material throughput of the economy materialisation and that due to composition change and innovation this throughput can be reduced the process of dematerialisation we also consider that the allocation of natural capital to production negatively affects the endogenous dynamics of ecosystems reducing the total amount of environmental services ecosystems provide according to our model it is possible to achieve unbounded economic growth by keeping the natural system in steady state balanced growth however is only possible for special parameter values

unemployment and subsequent earnings estimating scarring among british men 1984 94 this paper estimates the impact of unemployment on earnings following re employment for a large and representative sample of british men 1984 94 unemployment incidence is found to have only a temporary effect an average earnings setback of 10 on initial re engagement largely eroding over two years the effect of unemployment duration by contrast is permanent a one year spell adding a further penalty of 10 percentage points these wage penalties are least for young men and the low paid those most at risk of unemployment and greatest for prime age and highly paid men

importance and threat as determining factors for criticality of natural capital abstract an important issue in the debate about the use and conservation of natural ecosystems is the degree to which these ecosystems and their functions should be considered critical this paper presents some guidelines to determine the criticality of natural capital based on two main criteria the first criterion is the importance of natural ecosystems ecological socio cultural and economic and the second is the degree of threat based on the quantity and quality of the remaining natural areas in a given region it is argued that the two criteria are complementary and need to be taken into account simultaneously when determining the criticality of natural capital finally the paper presents and discusses some possibilities for the development of a critical natural capital index for europe

youth unemployment labor market programs and subsequent earnings the effects of unemployment public relief jobs and labor market training on subsequent hourly earnings are examined in a sample of swedish youth earnings equations are estimated using both cross section and panel data methods and biases due to sample selection endogeneity of unemployment and program participation and omitted individual effects are considered the main finding is that one year of unemployment reduces earnings by two percent while the effects of labor market programs are negligible however the negative unemployment effect is eliminated when time invariant individual effects are accounted for copyright 1991 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

estimating energy augmenting technological change in developing country industries assumptions regarding the magnitude and direction of energy related technological change have long been recognized as critical determinants of the outputs and policy conclusions derived from integrated assessment models particularly in the case of developing countries however empirical analysis of technological change has lagged behind simulation modeling this paper presents estimates of sectoral productivity trends and energy augmenting technological change for several energy intensive industries in india and south korea and for comparison the united states the key findings are substantial heterogeneity among both industries and countries and a number of cases of declining energy efficiency the results are subject to certain technical qualifications both in regards to the methodology and to the direct comparison to integrated assessment parameterizations nevertheless they highlight the importance of closer attention to the empirical basis for common modeling assumptions