democratising the global economy by ecologicalising economics the example of global warming abstract the aim of this paper is to show that continued reliance on an unreconstructed neo classical economic model for human progress is largely responsible for an economic development path which is both unsustainable and undemocratic using the topical issue of global warming as an illustration it is argued that the ecological isation of the economics discipline challenges the foundations of this strategy and promises among other benefits a more democratic global economic organisation the data analysed in this paper suggest that the damage of global warming is directly attributable to economic activity the benefits of economic growth go to the economically articulate and the disbenefits in terms of environmental damage are borne by the economically inarticulate mainstream economics gives no answer to and becomes a method for evading this moral problem the data also show that huge increases in energy efficiency are required if a basically unchanged world economic system is to be sustainable nevertheless the predominant goal of development policy is to ignore the problem of scale and to promote an economic model of urbanised development in the developing countries which carries the implication and the promise that the rates of resource consumption typical in developed countries can be achieved globally an alternative development model is presented which includes the recognition that in ecological terms developed countries are in debt to developing countries largely because of the way in which economic growth is measured gross of externalised social and environmental costs a method is suggested for calculating part of this ecological debt for individual countries thus going some way towards quantifying the extent of the distortions in the current global political economy and the unsustainability of the present economic order

good for living on the relationship between globalization and life expectancy this paper analyzes the relationship between three dimensions economic social and political of globalization and life expectancy using a panel of 92 countries covering the 1970 2005 period using different estimation techniques and sample groupings we find that economic globalization has a robust positive effect on life expectancy even when controlling for income nutritional intake literacy number of physicians and several other factors the result also holds when the sample is restricted to low income countries only in contrast political and social globalization have no such robust effects

uk electricity market reform revolution or much ado about nothing abstract the uk government has published a white paper on electricity market reform which precedes legislation with a declared aim of delivering secure clean and decarbonised electricity supply it introduces interventionist methods aiming to promote a nuclear power construction programme a streamlined renewables programmes and a system to ensure that generation capacity is built to cope with variability in electricity output however the policies announced to date are likely to fail in delivering the promised nuclear programme and the system of feed in tariffs announced for renewables is stunted and made less efficient by a desire to integrate it with the prevailing electricity market arrangements the effect of the changes in the white paper is likely to be incremental rather than revolutionary

the contribution of the mining sector to sustainability in developing countries abstract does the mining sector contribute to or detract from the achievement of sustainable development in developing countries sustainability is defined as development that will give future generations opportunities equal to or greater than those of the present generation treating gross income per capita as an imperfect proxy of these opportunities a test is made to investigate whether increases in mining gdp have led to long run increases in gnp per capita despite the exhaustibility of mineral deposits this is a more encompassing criterion than the conventional hartwick criterion which establishes necessary conditions for the achievement of a related definition of sustainability a vector autoregression model var is estimated for each of 19 non opec developing countries with large mining sectors using the impulse response functions the long run multiplier of mining income on gnp is calculated the sustainability criterion developed in the paper requires the multiplier to exceed a minimum value this test is carried out under alternative assumptions regarding future mining income

does globalization affect growth evidence from a new index of globalization the study develops an index of globalization covering its three main dimensions economic integration social integration and political integration using panel data for 123 countries in 1970 2000 it is analysed empirically whether the overall index of globalization as well as sub indexes constructed to measure the single dimensions affect economic growth as the results show globalization indeed promotes growth the dimensions most robustly related with growth refer to actual economic flows and restrictions in developed countries although less robustly information flows also promote growth whereas political integration has no effect

shadow economy and unemployment rate in u s a is there a structural relationship an empirical analysis this article aims to estimate the size of the us shadow economy se using a structural equation approach and to evaluate if a structural relationship exists between the se and the unemployment rate ur in the united states the size of the se is estimated to be decreasing over the last two decades we corroborate the existence of a structural relationship between the se and the ur by using a simple theoretical model furthermore we extend the okun s law to estimate the structural relationship between growth rate of official gdp se and ur our results indicate a significant positive relationship between the se and the ur

corruption and the shadow economy an empirical analysis this paper analyzes the influence of the shadow economy on corruption and vice versa we hypothesize that corruption and the shadow economy are substitutes in high income countries while they are complements in low income countries the hypotheses are tested for a cross section of 98 countries our results show that there is no robust relationship between corruption and the size of the shadow economy when perceptions based indices of corruption are used employing an index of corruption based on a structural model however corruption and the shadow economy are complements in countries with low income but not in high income countries

smuggling around the world evidence from a structural equation model this article uses a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model to analyse the determinants of smuggling the analysis reveals that higher corruption and a lower rule of law encourage smuggling tariffs and trade restrictions are important push factors while a higher black market premium bmp discourages smugglers based on the mimic estimates we calculate an index of smuggling which provides a ranking for 54 countries we find that smuggling is rampant in cameroon pakistan and kenya while it is least prevalent in switzerland finland and sweden

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

federalism and the shadow economy this paper analyzes the relationships between federalism and the shadow economy the theoretical analysis leads to the conclusion that the shadow economy is smaller in federal countries than in unitary states the mobility of individuals among competing jurisdictions leads policy makers to adopt policies that are more efficient in terms of taxation and public good provision this increases the return for activities in the formal sector relative to those in the informal one thus reducing activity in the shadow economy a cross sectional empirical analysis of a sample of 73 countries confirms this theoretical prediction

on generation integrated energy storage generation integrated energy storage gies systems store energy at some point along the transformation between the primary energy form and electricity instances exist already in natural hydro power biomass generation wave power and concentrated solar power gies systems have been proposed for wind nuclear power and they arise naturally in photocatalysis systems that are in development gies systems can compare very favourably in both performance and total cost against equivalent non integrated systems comprising both generation and storage despite this they have not hitherto been recognised as a discrete class of systems consequently policy decisions affecting development or demonstration projects and policy approaches concerning low carbon generation are not fully informed this paper highlights that policy structures exist militating against the development and introduction of gies systems probably to the detriment of overall system good

investigating policy and r d effects on environmental innovation a meta analysis in the last decades a wide research effort has been devoted at the analysis of the determinants of environmental innovation ei whereas agreement seemed to emerge around a cluster of determinants mainly technology push market pull policy push pull and firm specific factors empirical analyses have failed to provide strong confirmation on the relevance of some core variables after a qualitative discussion of this literature we empirically assess it by exploiting meta regression analysis techniques to test the effectiveness of two determinants policy and r d our findings are clear as for the first we show that only certain types of policy have proven to affect ei in particular regulatory stringency as for r d we show that the use of estimation methods is not neutral to the outcome of the primary studies

the impact of renewable energies on eex day ahead electricity prices in this paper we analyze the impact of renewable energies wind and photovoltaic on the formation of day ahead electricity prices at eex we give an overview of the policy decisions concerning the promotion of renewable energy sources in germany and discuss their consequences on day ahead prices an analysis of electricity spot prices reveals that the introduction of renewable energies enhances extreme price changes in the frame of a dynamic fundamental model we show that there has been a continuous electricity price adaption process to market fundamentals furthermore the fundamental drivers of prices differ among hours with different load profiles our results imply that renewable energies decrease market spot prices and have implications on the traditional fuel mix for electricity production however the prices for the final consumers increased overall because they must pay in addition the feed in tariffs for the promotion of renewable energy

pascal s wager and conomics in a hotter time abstract in wrestling with the problem of the existence of god blaise pascal proposed a line of reasoning at once prudent and self interested his reasoning is instructive to policy makers now facing the prospect of global warming in contrast to some economists and the findings of the adaption panel of the national academy of sciences pascal s logic would lead us to minimize greenhouse gas emissions for reasons of both prudence and self interest

global corruption and the shadow economy spatial aspects using a large sample of nations this paper examines the relation between corruption and the shadow economy focusing especially on geographic spillovers the results point to complementarity between corruption and the shadow economy we find evidence of own contagion across nations in both corruption and shadow economy activity while cross contagion mostly points to substitution between own shadow economy corruption and neighboring corruption shadow economy these findings are fairly robust across different estimation techniques and measures of the shadow economy

wind power integration and power system flexibility an empirical analysis of extreme events in germany under the new negative price regime abstract in this article the flexibility of the german power market with respect to the integration of an increasing share of electricity from renewable energy sources was analysed flexibility limiting system components which cause negative prices are explained and illustrated for the german market the decision of the european energy exchange in leipzig to allow negative price bids is then explained the empirical data illustrate the flexibility of conventional generating capacities in germany from october 2008 to december 2009 of the 86 h of negative spot prices 19 h were significantly negative with prices of at least 100 mwh these extreme hours were analysed in greater detail by the examination of different system components thereby load wind power infeed and conventional generation by fuel type were observed as well as the market for negative tertiary reserve as indicators for market tightness although the market situations were found to be severe under the current conditions it could have been much worse in order to enable the market to clear at all times policy recommendations are provided and long run implications of an increasing res e share on the conventional generation capacity are discussed the article concludes with an outlook on additional power system flexibility options

does globalisation affect the shadow economy we investigate the impact of globalisation on the shadow economy using panel data for 119 countries our evidence suggests that globalisation matters in mitigating shadow development more specifically we find that political globalisation reduces the shadow economy whereas economic and social globalisations have limited statistical support after controlling for important factors that affect the size of the shadow economy overall these results are robust after accounting for an alternative measure of the shadow economy outliers endogeneity and alternative model specifications

developing pathways for energy storage in the uk using a coevolutionary framework abstract a number of recent techno economic studies have shown that energy storage could offer significant benefits to a low carbon uk energy system as it faces increased challenges in matching supply and demand however the majority of this work has not investigated the real world issues affecting the widespread deployment of storage this paper is designed to address this gap by drawing on the systems innovation and socio technical transitions literature to identify some of the most important contextual factors which are likely to influence storage deployment specifically it uses a coevolutionary framework to examine how changes in ecosystems user practices business strategies institutions and technologies are creating a new selection environment and potentially opening up the energy system to new variations of storage for both electricity and heat the analysis shows how these different dimensions of the energy regime can coevolve in mutually reinforcing ways to create alternative pathways for the energy system which in turn have different flexibility requirements and imply different roles for storage technologies using this framework three pathways are developed user led decentralised and centralised which illustrate potential long term trajectories for energy storage technologies in a low carbon energy system

what is ecological economics ecological economics addresses the relationships between ecosystems and economic systems in the broadest sense these relationships are the locus of many of our most pressing current problems i e sustainability acid rain global warming species extinction wealth distribution but they are not well covered by any existing discipline environmental and resource economics as it is currently practiced covers only the application of neoclassical economics to environmental and resource problems ecology as it is cur rently practiced sometimes deals with human impacts on ecosystems but the more common tendency is to stick to natural systems ecological economics aims to extend these modest areas of overlap it will include neoclassical environmental economics and ecological impact studies as sub sets but will also encourage new ways of thinking about the linkages between ecological and economic systems we have chosen the name ecological economics for this area of study because it implies a broad ecological interdisciplinary and holistic view of the problem of studying and managing our world the earth from space cover of the journal reflects this global holistic perspective we did not intend to imply with the ordering of the two words in the title that the journal is mainly an economics journal it is intended to be a new approach to both ecology and economics that recognizes the need to make economics more cognizant of ecological impacts and dependencies the need to make ecology more sensitive to economic forces incentives and constraints and the need to treat integrated economic ecologic systems with a common but diverse set of conceptual and analytical tools there was much discussion of other possible names such as economic ecology or ecology and economics or some conjoining of the two words that to me end up being confusing tongue twisters like ecolnomics or econology but ecological economics seemed to get closest to the mean ing we desired while still being evocative to the uninitiated