escaping the green prison entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development abstract while entrepreneurial activity has been an important force for social and ecological sustainability its efficacy is dependent upon the nature of market incentives this limitation is sometimes explained by the metaphor of the prisoner s dilemma which we term the green prison in this prison entrepreneurs are compelled to environmentally degrading behavior due to the divergence between individual rewards and collective goals for sustainable development entrepreneurs however can escape from the green prison by altering or creating the institutions norms property rights and legislation that establish the incentives of competitive games we provide a variety of evidence of such entrepreneurial action and discuss its implications for theory and practice

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

perspectives of gatekeepers in the kenyan food industry towards genetically modified food abstract attitudes and perceptions of stakeholders are crucial in the acceptability of gm foods past research focussed on consumers but paid little attention to the food industry and its gatekeepers especially in africa therefore a survey was conducted covering 39 respondents from the milling industry and supermarkets the main processors and distributors of maize products in seven urban centres of kenya respondents mostly from senior management were well educated and had a good knowledge of biotechnology their major sources of information were the media for the supermarkets and brochures and the food industry for the milling companies respondents generally appreciated the benefits of biotechnology but had concerns about the environment although few people considered gm food harmful to human or animal health most respondents found traceability of gm products important but would prefer not to label them because of the costs and possible negative consumer reactions respondents were largely non committal on the use of gm products in their companies preferring to decide on a case by case basis the few negative responses mostly from the milling industry were affected by high risk and low benefit perceptions most respondents do not like the idea of labelling gm food better communication between research and the food industry is now needed and more research on the labelling of gm products

sustainable innovation business models and economic performance an overview sustainable development requires radical and systemic innovations such innovations can be more effectively created and studied when building on the concept of business models this concept provides firms with a holistic framework to envision and implement sustainable innovations for researchers the concept provides an analytical tool that allows them to assess the interplay between the different aspects that firms combine to create ecological economic and social value in addition the business model concept provides a link between the individual firm and the larger production and consumption system in which it operates this paper provides an introduction to the special issue which emerged from selected papers presented at the erscp emsu 2010 conference held in delft the netherlands papers in the special issue cover a broad range from a conceptual discussion resulting in a research agenda the assessment of diffusion of specific business models such as product service systems the introduction of new management tools for business transition management to case studies on how specific business models evolved in specific communities together these papers provide insight into the promise of the business model concept for understanding and advancing sustainable innovation

environmental efficiency with multiple environmentally detrimental variables estimated with sfa and dea abstract the objective of this paper is to estimate comprehensive environmental efficiency measures for dutch dairy farms the environmental efficiency scores are based on the nitrogen surplus phosphate surplus and the total direct and indirect energy use of an unbalanced panel of dairy farms we define environmental efficiency as the ratio of minimum feasible to observed use of multiple environmentally detrimental inputs conditional on observed levels of output and the conventional inputs we compare two methods for the calculation of efficiency namely stochastic frontier analysis sfa and data envelopment analysis dea this paper reveals the strengths and weaknesses for estimating environmental efficiency of the methods applied both sfa and dea can estimate environmental efficiency scores the mean technical efficiency scores output oriented sfa 89 dea 78 and the mean comprehensive environmental efficiency scores sfa 80 dea 52 differ between the two methods sfa allows hypothesis testing and the monotonicity hypothesis is rejected for the specification including phosphate surplus dea can calculate environmental efficiency scores for all specifications because regularity is imposed in this method

relating life cycle assessment indicators to gross value added for dutch dairy farms sustainable dairy production requires farms that are economically viable environmentally sound and socially acceptable a low environmental impact of milk production is not necessarily associated with an economically viable farm to gain insight into a possible trade off between economic and environmental sustainability the relation between the environmental and economic indicators of dairy farms was quantified and farm characteristics that influence this relation were identified economic and environmental indicators were quantified for 119 specialized dairy farms in 2005 based on data from the dutch farm accountancy data network fadn economic indicators used were gross value added expressed per kg fat and protein corrected milk fpcm or expressed per unit of labour i e labour productivity environmental indicators used were land use per kg fpcm energy use per kg fpcm global warming potential per kg fpcm eutrophication and acidification potential per kg fpcm or per ha of land environmental indicators were deduced from a life cycle assessment high labour productivity on dairy farms was associated with low on farm energy use total and on farm land use total and on farm global warming potential and total and off farm acidification potential per kg fpcm high labour productivity however was associated also with high on farm eutrophication and acidification potential per hectare from partial least squares regression analysis it was concluded that relations between economic and environmental indicators were affected mainly by milk production per ha annual milk production per cow farm size and amount of concentrates per kg fpcm an increase in annual milk production per cow for example not only increased labour productivity reduced energy use and global warming potential per kg fpcm but also in the case of an unchanged stocking density increased eutrophication and acidification per ha to be economically and environmentally sustainable animal production in the netherlands therefore should focus on high animal productivity i e high annual milk production per cow and efficient use of feed per kg milk and moderate stocking density provided that a good animal welfare standard is guaranteed

accounting technologies and sustainability assessment models abstract within ecological economics there is recognition of the need for new approaches to decision making to support sustainable development initiatives there is an increasing acknowledgement of the limitations of cost benefit analysis approaches as a measure of the un sustainability of organizational activities these are viewed as particularly inappropriate within the participatory settings that sustainable development proponents seek to foster they also fail to deal with the highly contested nature of sustainable development discourse in contemporary pluralist democracies while advances have been made in the field of multi criteria decision making there is still a relative dearth of versatile models that accommodate monetization in a way that recognizes the limits of calculative technologies this article introduces readers to developments within the accounting discipline designed to support sustainable development decision making and evaluation in particular it proposes sustainability assessment models as a viable alternative to cost benefit analysis sustainability assessment models are based on an inter disciplinary approach that recognizes the need for accountings that facilitate more participatory forms of decision making and accountability as such they address many of the weaknesses in current approaches to cost benefit analysis the authors first experiences with sustainability assessment models were with bp and the united kingdom oil and gas sector where models were developed as a means of making previously external costs more central to organizational decision making later work has included exploration of a range of decision making situations in private and public sector organizations in both the united kingdom and new zealand this has involved more explicit attention to plural values and issues of participation dialogue and democracy

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

accumulation of assets in farms covered by the fadn farm accountancy system in poland the economic and eco efficiency context the primary objective of the article is to identify the accumulation processes in farms in poland based on the economic size as well as the context of eco efficiency from the perspective of environmental sustainable value in addition the importance of subsidies in generating accumulation was specified and the context of eco efficiency was taken into account analysis of the environmental context was carried out with the use of the assessment of subsidies for public goods and return to cost ratio rtc based on the concept of sustainable value sv cross analysis has shown that with the transition to groups of farms with an increasing economic size the situation was more favourable from the perspective of the accumulation rate and its level per 1 ha subsidies play a significant role in shaping accumulation it was observed that the higher rate of accumulation associated with the transition to groups of farms with greater economic strength is accompanied by an increase in eco efficiency through the prism of the rtc indicator larger but not the largest farms are more efficient in using the transformation of environmental inputs into production output which does not mean that they exert an absolutely lower environmental pressure

consumer acceptance valuation of and attitudes towards genetically modified food review and implications for food policy abstract an increasing set of evidence has been reported on how consumers could potentially react to the introduction of genetically modified food studies typically contain some empirical evidence and some theoretical explanations of the data however to date limited effort has been posed on systematically reviewing the existing evidence and its implications for policy this paper contributes to the literature by bringing together the published evidence on the behavioural frameworks and evidence on the process leading to the public acceptance of genetically modified gm food and organisms gmos in doing so we employ a set of clearly defined search tools and a limited number of comprehensive key words the study attempts to gather an understanding of the published findings on the determinants of the valuation of gm food both in terms of willingness to accept and the willing to pay a premium for non gm food trust with information sources on the safety and public health and ultimate attitudes underpinning such evidence furthermore in the light of such evidence we formulate some policy strategies to deal with public uncertainly regarding to gmos and especially gm food

going one s own way drivers in developing business models for sustainability business models have received much attention in recent years due to their importance in the fundamental logic of every company this paper is based on a qualitative empirical research study conducted in cooperation with 10 austrian companies in 2014 it aims to investigate business models for sustainability in order to better understand how they operate and what the drivers for developing these business models are this is a cross industry sample covering companies showing notable sustainability activities in fact half of the companies were founded with the intention of complying with sustainability principles the results show that business models incorporating aspects of sustainability do not differ substantially from traditional business models however they do require specific adaptations and extensions furthermore the findings highlight the significance of company leaders in organizing change processes so as to encompass sustainable business practices the findings reveal that business models undergo constant change and that sustainability plays a central role both internally and externally the results gained allow for a deeper understanding of the motivational aspects and drivers needed in developing business models for sustainability and serve as a solid basis for further research in this field

the rationality of a safe minimum standard the safe minimum standard sms is a policy shift to safety defaults to forestall irreversible outcomes critics charge an inconsistency what justifies business as usual cannot also justify switching to the sms currently the sms is only a procedural shift where economic optimality procedures are buttressed by extra special focus on uncertainty yet social welfare function may not be complete enough warranting a more fundamental sms shift numerous moral positions support this sms approach this sms also operationalizes the intolerable cost as a trigger point noting societies with lower tolerance for sacrifice must trigger the sms earlier

stature and the standard of living research on the standard of living now emphasizes alternatives or supplements to the national income accounts this paper reviews the results of two decades of research using stature as a measure of health aspects of human welfare after comparing and contrasting stature with per capita income i consider height patterns discovered by economic historians that challenge traditional beliefs about the past including long term trends cycles in heights and the dreadfully small stature of slave children that was followed by catch up growth the paper concludes with comparisons to work in development economics and suggestions for research

a framework for strategic sustainable development the purpose of this paper is to give a comprehensive and cohesive description of the most recent version of the framework for strategic sustainable development fssd and also to describe and discuss the overall method for developing the fssd elaborate on the general rational for and general benefits of a framework of this type and validate benefits of the fssd through examples of its application the purpose is also to point to pertinent future work in preparation of this paper we have reviewed previous publications and other documents related to the fssd and reflected on the 25 year learning process between scientists and practitioners we conclude that the fssd has proven to aid organizations in thoroughly understanding and putting themselves in context of the global sustainability challenge and to move themselves strategically towards sustainability i e to stepwise reduce their negative impacts on ecological and social systems at large while strengthening the own organization through capturing of innovation opportunities including new business models exploration of new markets and winning of new market shares and through reduced risks and operation costs specifically we conclude that the fssd aids more effective management of system boundaries and trade offs makes it possible to model and assess sustainable potentials for various materials and practices before investments are made and offers the possibility for more effective collaboration across disciplines and sectors regions value chains and stakeholder groups we also conclude that the fssd makes it possible to prevent damages even from yet unknown problems and not the least to guide selection development and combination of supplementary methods tools and other forms of support which makes it possible to increase their utility for strategic sustainable development finally we have shown that the fssd is useful for structuring transdisciplinary academic education and research several examples of ongoing fssd related research as well as ideas for future work are given

measuring the distribution of material well being u s trends abstract economists with a few exceptions have automatically assumed that the important measure of well being is income in contrast economic historians have broadened the measure of well being with particular interest in mortality morbidity nutrition education and leisure when one takes this broader view of the standard of living there appears to be a strong trend toward more equality in the distribution of well being since the industrial revolution gini coefficients calculated for the distributions of lifespan and educational attainment have declined dramatically since the mid nineteenth century for the united states mortality and educational differentials have also declined inequality of leisure time and consumption though not as consistently measured also show trends toward equality over the twentieth century these trends toward equality in well being as measured by indicators other than income and wealth seem to be generated by provision of public goods natural boundaries to lifespan educational attainment and leisure and by the growth in mean per capita income the divergent trends in the distributions of income and the other measures of well being caution against reliance on the distribution of income to interpret trends in inequality

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

the if how and where of assessing sustainable resource use in today s economies those who sustain the burden of resource use those using resources and those providing resources are not necessarily identical with this separation come three fundamental but interrelated decision making perspectives on the sustainability assessment of resource use these three perspectives correspond to the three assessment questions if how and where resources should be used most sustainability assessment approaches do not make their underlying assessment perspectives explicit the goal of this paper is to provide structure and organisation to existing approaches this structuring suggests that any discussion on the appropriateness and validity of different assessment approaches and their results must take into account the underlying assessment perspective the three questions if how and where resources should be used correspond to the requirements of a sustainable resource use while existing assessments do address the three questions in isolation it is all the more important that the limitations and implications of focusing on a single perspective are spelled out as the main contribution the paper distinguishes the rationale of each assessment perspective and develops on their interlinkages and thus provides the context and structure for a more informed and fruitful debate on the assessment of sustainable resource use

a framework for the practical application of the concepts of critical natural capital and strong sustainability this paper develops a methodology for identifying that natural capital called critical natural capital cnc the maintenance of which is essential for environmental sustainability by consideration of the characteristics of natural capital of the environmental functions that these characteristics enable natural capital to perform and of the importance of these functions to humans and the biosphere it shows how sustainability standards in respect of these environmental functions may be derived the difference between the current situation and these standards is termed the sustainability gap the methodology that emerges from bringing these ideas together into a single analytical framework enables policy makers to identify the extent of current unsustainability the principal causes of it the elements and processes of natural capital the cnc which need to be maintained or restored to close the sustainability gap and the costs of so doing the framework should therefore be of use in identifying priorities and policies for moving towards environmental sustainability

ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability the assessment of sustainability at farm level has been growing in popularity over the last few years this article contributes to this line of research by building up composite indicators for different facets social economic environmental and global of farm sustainability using a methodological approach that combines data envelopment analysis dea and multicriteria decision making mcdm methods and assigns common weights to each individual sustainability indicator this approach is applied to a database of 163 farms located in the campos county a region belonging to the dry lands of the spanish northern plateau using 12 individual indicators of sustainability our findings show that both economic and environmental composite sustainability indicators are positively correlated but that this is not the case for the social indicator we also check the influence of a set of variables on farm sustainability using bootstrapping statistical techniques and showing that increasing farm size membership in agricultural cooperatives and farmers medium and upper agricultural specific technical education all exert a significant positive influence on sustainability these results provide clues for policy makers that intend to design sustainability increasing structural agricultural policies

non parametric productivity analysis with undesirable outputs an application to the canadian pulp and paper industry this article extends the chavas cox approach to non parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology inner and outer non parametric technology bounds are constructed the methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the canadian pulp and paper industry conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth further there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on dea methods copyright 2001 oxford university press

sustainable entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial will enough a north south comparison based on an analysis of 44 cases in canada tunisia and cameroon this research attempts to determine the fundaments of sustainable entrepreneurship se in an international perspective and to shed the light on the potential impact of economic institutional and cultural dimensions upon diverse levels of sustainability in small and medium size firms smes neo institutional and entrepreneurship theories were combined in an integrative conceptual model to fully embrace the meanings and practices of se and to question the culture free argument of some prescriptions as well as some international programs the analysis of the rationale behind entrepreneurs committed to sustainability in the three countries compared to less engaged firms shows that entrepreneurs individual values are crucial in all cases socio cultural specificities and institutional realities can however be more or less inductive to the adoption of sustainable practices in smes this study also demonstrates that external stimuli are needed in tunisia and cameroon to reach the same environmental involvement as found in canada moreover support programs to assist smes with the adoption of sustainable practices and communication about the issue have to be tailored to the entrepreneur s motives the firms levels of openness to sustainability the socio cultural practices already embedded and the countries priorities implications for policy management and research are also discussed

environmental emissions and production economics implications of the materials balance in modeling emissions the literature has usually specified an explicit emission function or treated emissions as a production input we examine the validity of these approaches taking into account the materials balance principle we show that a technology can equivalently be described by i a production function with material and nonmaterial inputs and bounded marginal product of the material input ii a well behaved production function with emissions as an input and iii a well behaved emission function if the materials balance is accounted for as an additional condition we offer a forma derivation of common but not rigorously established modeling approaches

the role of co opetition in low carbon manufacturing abstract low carbon manufacturing has become a strategic objective for many developed and developing economies this study examines the role of co opetition in achieving this objective we investigate the pricing and emissions reduction policies for two rival manufacturers with different emission reduction efficiencies under the cap and trade policy we assume that the product demand is price and emission sensitive based on non cooperative and cooperative games the optimal solutions for the two manufacturers are derived in the purely competitive and co opetitive market environments respectively through the discussion and numerical analysis we uncovered that in both pure competition and co opetition models the two manufacturers optimal prices depend on the unit price of carbon emission trading in addition higher emission reduction efficiency leads to lower optimal unit carbon emissions and higher profit in both the pure competition and co petition models interestingly compared to pure competition co opetition will lead to more profit and less total carbon emissions however the improvement in economic and environmental performance is based on higher product prices and unit carbon emissions

applications of option pricing theory twenty five years later nobel lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 9 1997 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

feeding the famine american food aid and the gmo debate in southern africa abstract the inclusion of genetically modified maize in food aid shipments to southern africa during the 2002 food crisis rekindled debates over agricultural biotechnology as the region edged ever closer to famine putting the lives to some 14 million africans at risk corporate pundits government officials and biotech s critics debated the health and environmental dangers posed by the new technology by situating the decision to send genetically modified maize to southern africa in the context of us european debates over agricultural biotechnology it becomes clear that the promotion of biotechnology has nothing to do with ending hunger in the region indeed american food aid shipments to southern africa have little to do with the famine at all instead i argue that us food aid policy following the 2002 crisis was intended to promote the adoption of biotech crops in southern africa expanding the market access and control of transnational corporations and undermining local smallholder production thereby fostering greater food insecurity on the continent

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

recent trends in the size distribution of household wealth based on the survey of consumer finances the distribution of wealth in the united states became much more unequal in the 1980s and that trend continued albeit at a slower pace in the 1990s the only households that saw their mean net worth rise in absolute terms between 1983 and 1995 were those in the top 20 percent and the gains were particularly strong for the top one percent all other groups were particularly strong for the top one percent all other groups suffered real wealth losses including the median household and declines were particularly precipitous at the bottom racial disparities widened and young households also lost out over this period

data envelopment analysis of different climate policy scenarios abstract recent developments in the political scientific and economic debate on climate change suggest that it is of critical importance to develop new approaches able to compare policy scenarios for their environmental effectiveness their distributive effects their enforceability their costs and many other dimensions this paper discusses a quantitative methodology to assess the relative performance of different climate policy scenarios when accounting for their long term economic social and environmental impacts the proposed procedure is based on data envelopment analysis here employed in evaluating the relative efficiency of eleven global climate policy scenarios the methodology provides a promising comparison framework it can be seen as a way of setting some basic guidelines to frame further debates and negotiations and can be flexibly adopted and modified by decision makers to obtain relevant information for policy design three major findings emerge from this analysis i stringent climate policies can outperform less ambitious proposals if all sustainability dimensions are taken into account ii a carefully chosen burden sharing rule is able to bring together climate stabilisation and equity considerations and iii the most inefficient strategy results from the failure to negotiate a post 2012 global climate agreement

pollution abatement activities and traditional productivity abstract this study models the joint production of good and bad output production and calculates traditional productivity when bad output production is regulated and when it is unregulated we apply this model to data for u s coal fired electric power plants for 1985 1995 and compare rates of productivity and technical change to gain an understanding of the association between pollution abatement activities and traditional rates of productivity and technical change while traditional productivity and technical change associated with abatement activities decline we conclude they are not statistically significant

measuring farm sustainability and explaining differences in sustainable efficiency abstract a major objective of european agricultural policy is to have a sustainable and efficient farming sector that is applying environmentally friendly production methods policy makers aim to combine a strong economic performance and a sustainable use of natural resources therefore it is important to measure and to assess farm sustainability for a large dataset of flemish dairy farms a valuation method that is based on the concept of opportunity costs is used to calculate and analyze differences among the sample farms with respect to the creation of sustainable value but more important than measuring the creation of sustainable value is to analyze differences in sustainable efficiency therefore sustainable efficiency measures are calculated and differences in sustainable efficiency are explained using panel data an effect model captures the determinants of sustainable efficiency of the studied farms the empirical model shows that in general larger farms have a higher sustainable efficiency also farmer s age and dependency on support payments proved to be determining characteristics for observed differences in sustainable efficiency

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

willingness to pay for other species well being abstract benefit cost analysis of environmental policies typically focuses on benefits to human health and well being for other species economists have attempted to measure human wtp for changes in the numbers of individuals for different types of wildlife and to preserve biodiversity when it comes to humans wtp for improvements in the quality of life for other species however the evidence is limited morbidity and quality of life considerations may be particularly important to the task of valuing non fatal harm to wildlife in the wake of an environmental disaster we argue that the other species morbidity reduction component of wtp should be calculated net of any outrage component associated with the cause of the harm this net wtp is likely to be correlated with the premium that people are willing to pay for chicken products from birds for which the quality of life has been enhanced by improved animal welfare measures this paper uses a conjoint choice stated preference survey to reveal the nature of systematic heterogeneity in preferences for humanely raised versus conventionally raised chicken we also use latent class analysis to distinguish between two classes of people those who are willing to pay a premium for humanely raised chicken and those who are not

issues of paradigm ideology and democracy in sustainability assessment does the challenge of sustainable development sd have implications for our approches to decision making and evaluation do we need specific sustainability assessment models sams and if so what

dynamic environmental performance analysis a malmquist index approach abstract this article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by kuosmanen and kortelainen kuosmanen t kortelainen m 2005 measuring eco efficiency of production with data envelopment analysis journal of industrial ecology 9 4 59 72 from a static to a dynamic setting for this purpose we construct an environmental performance index epi by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a malmquist index approach compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods our approach builds on the standard definition of eco efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco efficiency and shifts in environmental technology respectively we apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the european union in 1990 2003 according to the results environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance while relative eco efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period

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

econometric estimation of technical and environmental efficiency an application to dutch dairy farms in this article we estimate the technical and environmental efficiency of a panel of dutch dairy farms nitrogen surplus arising from the application of excessive amounts of manure and chemical fertilizer is treated as an environmentally detrimental input a stochastic translog production frontier is specified to estimate the output oriented technical efficiency environmental efficiency is estimated as the input oriented technical efficiency of a single input the nitrogen surplus of each farm the mean output oriented technical efficiency is rather high 0 894 but the mean input oriented environmental efficiency is only 0 441 intensive dairy farms are both technically and environmentally more efficient than extensive farms

transforming sustainability challenges into competitive advantage multiple case studies kaleidoscope converging into sustainable business models abstract recent tendency has been pushing organizations to rethink their role in society and making organization reflect that profit may not be the only and foremost important business performance criteria thus recent literature has been exploring the sustainable business models sbm s as a way to insert sustainability goals into the core of business decisions this research aims to advance in this body of knowledge and proposes a theory and practice based framework to support organizations towards more sbm making explicit main elements to align business to sustainability performance goals to support the argument that there is no unique solution to design sbm this research performs a multiple case studies in eleven organizations from diverse sectors situated in brazil and in the united kingdom results show that sbm is not an attempt to deny business as usual perspective but rather it seeks to complement this view by adding a more axiological and systemic approach in particular three convergent aspects were identified in the case studies as relevant efforts support the integration of sustainability into sbm s value creation and delivery system 1 the connection between business purpose and employees values and believes 2 the pro active and clear engagement in solving sustainability problems and 3 the need for system level changes to enable successful sbm s this systemic thinking is highlighted by the concept emerged from the research the cascaded sustainable value captured representing that as sbm s are part of a value network value delivered by the organizations is captured not only by stakeholders to which they have direct contact but rather this is also deployed to stakeholders of focal company s stakeholders this distinction is not always trivial for companies so the proposed concept can support advances in sbm discussions further studies are called to the challenge of making explicit that sbm s are not only companies that directly addresses a specific social and or environmental problem but rather is an emerging paradigm on how to manage efficient businesses in any sector to add positive value to the globe

the real threat to gm crops in poor countries consumer and policy resistance to gm foods in rich countries abstract in most poor countries today farmers still plant no gm food or feed crops at all some are now planting gm cotton but gm food and feed crops have not yet been grown commercially anywhere in developing asia or the middle east and in only one african country south africa government authorities in most of these countries have not yet given farmers official permission to plant any gm food or feed crops superficially in most cases because of precautionary concerns about biological safety the more fundamental reason is now a fear that consumers in high income importing regions such as europe and japan will shun imports from any country that begins planting gm varieties the new eu regulation calling for strict labelling and traceability on all gm derived foods and feeds requiring a costly physical segregation of gm from non gm all the way up the marketing chain will further discourage the planting of gm crops in poor countries

impact of genetic modification on country image of imported food products in european markets perceptions of channel members abstract risk to the image of food exporting countries in foreign markets for food products has been advanced as a reason for them to ban commercial release of genetically modified gm crops the aim of this paper is to explore the reality and intensity of such a risk in depth interviews have been conducted with key distributors in the european food sector to ascertain factors that they consider important in determining reputation of exporting countries and to ascertain whether gm impacts on such reputations highly negative consumer sentiment towards gm in europe seems likely to continue to influence food industry buyers against importing gm food however no evidence was found that presence of gm crops in a country causes negative perception of non gm food imported from that country provided adequate steps are taken to avoid accidental contamination of conventional crops producer countries do not appear at great risk of damaging their overall country image for food products if gm technology is introduced

georgescu roegen daly versus solow stiglitz revisited there are two key issues which are not fullyelaborated in the papers in a recent special issueof ecological economics the contribution ofnicholas georgescu roegen vol 22 no 3 1997 i the operational meaning of substitutionin production function and ii the effect of tech nological improvement on resource utilization inthis piece we examine these two issues based on i georgescu roegen s conceptualization of pro duction process and ii jevons paradox neoclassical production functions whether forindividual rms or the aggregate economy as sume that any factor can always be substituted forany other factor except the cases of xed coef cients and or the existence of limitational factors the implication or entailment of this assumptionis that an increase in the input of any factoralways yields an increase in output this is thebasis for solow s contention that t he world can in effect get along without natural resources solow 1974 however those neoclassical economists adopt ing the substitution assumption have not paid dueattention to the essential distinction between ows quantities of materials qualitatively trans formed in the process and funds agents trans forming a given set of in ows into a given set ofout ows in the material production process georgescu roegen 1971 neglecting this dis tinction results in a systematic indifference to thebiophysical foundation of economic activities infact according to georgescu roegen 1990 fordesigning a blueprint of a factory process anexpert has to consider a set of three relationships i the normal rate of output

what does corporate strong sustainability actually mean in the real market world a response to bjorn and ropke abstract in a recent issue of the journal of cleaner production bjorn and ropke 2018 publish an article titled what does it really mean to be a strongly sustainable company a response to nikolaou and tsalis through which they express their concerns over the methodological framework developed by nikolaou and tsalis 2018 bjorn and ropke point out some weaknesses of this methodology suggesting some possible amendments to improve it specifically they raise doubts over the selection of environmental indicators and the definition of thresholds taking into consideration the points discussed by bjorn and ropke this paper aims to analyze the relevant theoretical background on which our framework was built by clarifying the concepts of corporate strong sustainability it also underlines some misconceptions of bjorn and ropke in relation to our framework and their proposed approach as well as making some suggestions for a possible new framework for corporate strong sustainability business oriented approach which encompasses the united nation un 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the corporate strong sustainability principles

measuring sustainability a time series of alternative indicators for scotland this paper presents results from a time series analysis of seven alternative measures of sustainability for scotland the measures chosen are green net national product genuine savings ecological footprint environmental space net primary productivity the index of sustainable economic welfare and the genuine progress indicator these are all measures at the national or macro level we note arguments in the literature that no one single measure of sustainability is likely to be sufficient however very different messages concerning the sustainability of scotland over the period in question 1980 1993 emerge from these measures chosen we also argue that different indicators provide different insights for policy making

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

poverty alleviation through partnerships a road less travelled for business governments and entrepreneurs while investigating the role of business and accepting that profitable partnerships are the primary solution for poverty alleviation we voice certain concerns that we hope will extend the authors discourse in alleviating poverty through profitable partnerships we present a model that we believe can serve as an effective framework for addressing these issues we then establish the imperative of inclusive growth here we engage with the necessity of formulating strategies that focus on the pace and importantly the pattern of economic growth including its social and cultural dimensions we also deliberate on the parameters of inclusive growth with the overriding objective of ensuring that multiple strata of society share the benefits of globalization turning to the critical role of institutions in promoting social welfare we explore the impact of government policy vis a vis the leverage enjoyed by other social institutions despite the reality that state and private interests often operate at cross purposes we argue that government must still be an integral part of the solution matrix with direction from other social institutions entrepreneurial forces can be unleashed to tackle endemic poverty prevalent in the base of the pyramid we then provide an in depth case study in which the availability of telecommunications in rural areas was utilized as a means to foster development and ensure inclusive growth the conclusion examines lessons learned while operationalizing the model and spells out the impact of our enablers at ground level

the sustainable value approach a clarifying and constructive comment recently the original benchmarking methodology of the sustainable value approach became subjected to serious debate while kuosmanen and kuosmanen 2009b critically question its validity introducing productive efficiency theory figge and hahn 2009 put forward that the implementation of productive efficiency theory severely conflicts with the original financial economics perspective of the sustainable value approach we argue that the debate is very confusing because the original sustainable value approach presents two largely incompatible objectives nevertheless we maintain that both ways of benchmarking could provide useful and moreover complementary insights if one intends to present the overall resource efficiency of the firm from the investor s viewpoint we recommend the original benchmarking methodology if one on the other hand aspires to create a prescriptive tool setting up some sort of reallocation scheme we advocate implementation of the productive efficiency theory although the discussion on benchmark application is certainly substantial we should avoid the debate to become accordingly narrowed next to the benchmark concern we see several other challenges considering the development of the sustainable value approach 1 a more systematic resource selection 2 the inclusion of the value chain and 3 additional analyses related to policy in order to increase interpretative power

of fair markets and distributive justice the authors argue that a free market paradigm facilitates wealth creation but does little to distribute that wealth in a just manner in order to achieve the social goal of distributive justice the concept of a fair market is introduced and explored the authors then examine three drivers that can help improve the lives of all people especially the poor civil society its institutions and business after exploring the roles these drivers might play in developing fair markets we describe three enablers that serve as catalysts for change the effects of globalization the impact of technology and the emergence of entrepreneurial activity we conclude by making recommendations for establishing fair markets and provide exemplars of two firms that embody the arguments made in the article

consumer willingness to pay for genetically modified food in kenya genetically modified gm crops are popular in many regions of the world but their deployment in africa is hindered by safety concerns and regulatory issues although the continent is in dire need of boosting its food production although consumers acceptance of gm food has been analyzed in many continents no such studies have been conducted in africa therefore a survey of 604 consumers was conducted in nairobi kenya in 2003 to gauge consumers awareness of gm crops their willingness to pay wtp for gm food and the factors that influence their wtp consumers knowledge of gm crops was limited and only 38 of the 604 respondents were aware of gm crops people in higher education and income groups were more aware than others regardless people were generally appreciative of the technology and a large majority 68 would be willing to buy gm maize meal at the same price as their favorite brand consumers were however concerned about possible side effects especially on the environment and biodiversity wtp was estimated using a double bounded dichotomous choice model and the mean wtp was found to be 13 8 higher than the average price of non gm maize meal perceptions of health risk and ethical and equity concerns had a negative influence on the likelihood of purchasing gm maize meal whereas trust in government to ensure food quality had a positive influence on wtp people with at least some secondary education and those in the high income category were more likely to purchase gm maize meal at the same price the study concludes that because awareness is still low appropriate communications are needed to involve the consumer in the debate consumers acceptance in this study was high but the research needs to be expanded to rural areas where most consumers live and other survey methods need to be explored

macroeconomic measures of sustainability this paper reviews the policy need for indicators of sustainable development and the impetus behind recent moves to establish official indicators the range of indicators available from current economic theory is then examined these measures may be divided into those based on flows and those based on stocks flow based measures are essentially attempts to adjust net national product to transform it into an indicator of sustainability stock based measures revolve around the concept of the natural and man made capital stocks we also consider the idea of safe minimum standards as a sustainability indicator the paper concludes that no currently available single measure of sustainability is likely to be adequate

internal capital market controls and financial performance in multidivisional firms it is proposed that within the population of m form firms the control systems necessary to realize economic benefits from interrelationships between subunits o f a firm are incompatible with the systems necessary to realize benef its from an m form type internal capital market this hypothesis is t ested on 156 large u k firms questionnaire data are used to classif y the firms according to their internal control characteristics the findings provide tentative support for the hypothesis copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

not measuring sustainable value at all a response to kuosmanen and kuosmanen abstract in their article in this issue of ecological economics kuosmanen and kuosmanen kuosmanen t and kuosmanen n this issue how not to measure sustainable value and how one might ecological economics aim to criticise the measurement of sustainable value as proposed in our previous research by adopting a production perspective and based on a productive efficiency analysis they claim that the proposed way of measuring sustainable value represents an invalid simplification that rests on restrictive and unrealistic assumptions our response is to show that their argument rests on a fundamental misspecification of the sustainable value approach we identify three conceptual misfits a mismatch in the perspective of the analysis a misspecification of opportunity costs and the irrelevance of production functions ultimately kuosmanen and kuosmanen s train of thought rests entirely within the realm of productive efficiency analysis whereas sustainable value builds on the foundations of financial economics and consequently adopts a macro rather than a firm perspective it is thus not surprising that the findings of kuosmanen and kuosmanen appear to contradict the sustainable value approach however this is due to their fundamental misspecification of the sustainable value approach as a result rather than providing novel insights into how sustainable value might be measured in a better way they do not measure sustainable value at all

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

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

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

environmental cost benefit analysis of alternative timing strategies in greenhouse gas abatement a data envelopment analysis approach assessing the benefits of climate policies is complicated due to ancillary benefits abatement of greenhouse gases also reduces local air pollution the timing of the abatement measures influences both the economic costs and ancillary benefits this paper conducts efficiency analysis of ten alternative timing strategies taking into account the ancillary benefits we apply the approach by kuosmanen and kortelainen valuing environmental factors in cost benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis ecological economics 62 2007 56 65 which does not require prior valuation of the environmental impacts the assessment is based on synthetic data from a dynamic applied general equilibrium model calibrated to the netherlands our assessment shows that if one is only interested in ghg abatement at the lowest economic cost then equal reduction of ghgs over time is preferred if society is willing to pay a premium for higher ancillary benefits an early mid intensive reduction strategy is optimal

valuing environmental factors in cost benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis abstract environmental cost benefit analysis ecba is used for the social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts economic valuation of environmental impacts forms one of the critical steps of ecba we develop a new method for this purpose which does not require price estimation for environmental impacts using stated or revealed preference methods our approach is based on data envelopment analysis dea which is modified to ecba by using absolute shadow prices instead of relative prices we also discuss how the method can be used for sensitive analysis in ecba we illustrate the method by means of a hypothetical numerical example

can r d expenditure avoid corporate bankruptcy comparison between japanese machinery and electric equipment industries using dea discriminant analysis abstract this study compares data envelopment analysis discriminant analysis dea da with altman s financial ratio analysis to identify the position of dea da in financial performance analysis then this study applies dea da to examine whether research and development r d expenditure influences the financial performance of japanese machinery industry and electric equipment industry the investigation of dea da identifies that the r d expenditure makes a positive impact on the financial performance of japanese machinery industry but it yields a negative impact on japanese electric equipment industry the result implies that the influence of r d expenditure on financial performance including the avoidance of bankruptcy depends upon the type of a manufacturing industry a rationale regarding why such a discrepancy has occurred between the two japanese manufacturing industries is because the life cycle of electric equipments is shorter than that of the machinery products furthermore the electric equipment industry faces more fierce competition than the machinery industry this study suggests that the japanese electric equipment industry needs r d expenditure for competition in its global market however it is a high risk and high return investment in contrast the japanese machinery is a technologically mature industry where the r d expenditure influences positively its financial performance in this sense the r d expenditure is a low risk and necessary investment

how not to measure sustainable value and how one might abstract sustainability is a complex multidimensional concept that entails economic environmental and social aspects the sustainable value sv method developed by f figge and t hahn ecol econ 48 2004 173 187 is one of the most promising attempts to measure sustainability performance of firms sv measures corporate contributions to sustainability by valuing resource use based on the opportunity cost which must be estimated this paper critically examines figge and hahn s estimator for opportunity cost and shows that the proposed estimator rests on a number of strong unrealistic assumptions evidence from monte carlo simulations conducted by authors shows that the proposed estimator performs very poorly even under ideal conditions having identified shortcomings in the sv method we review some econometric approaches with a proven statistical foundation which might be usefully applied in the present context

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms

justifying the incorporation of the materials balance principle into frontier based eco efficiency models frontier based models are an alternative to traditional eco efficiency ratio indicators this paper considers two different types environmentally adjusted production efficiency models and frontier eco efficiency models and tries to find justification for incorporating the materials balance principle mbp in them similar importance is attached to the economic and environmental outcomes of a production process like economic outcomes can be derived from inputs and outputs and respective prices some cases allow for deriving environmental outcomes from the production function with the mbp after an overview of attempts to incorporate environmental issues in production efficiency models and some reflections why mbp has been neglected in environmental economics and production efficiency analysis the paper gives basic principles to incorporate the mbp in conventional production efficiency methods and shows how this adjustment leads to a more diversified diagnosis of eco efficiency finally potentialities and bottlenecks are discussed exploiting the mbp in production efficiency and eco efficiency analysis will facilitate more pro active eco efficiency research

non parametric frontier approach to modelling the relationships among population gdp energy consumption and co2 emissions abstract in this paper a non parametric approach based in data envelopment analysis dea is proposed as an alternative to the kaya identity a k a impact this frontier method identifies and extends existing best practices population and gdp are considered as input and output respectively both primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas ghg emissions are considered as undesirable outputs several linear programming models are formulated with different aims namely a determine efficiency levels b estimate maximum gdp compatible with given levels of population energy intensity and carbonization intensity and c estimate the minimum level of ghg emissions compatible with given levels of population gdp energy intensity or carbonization index the united states of america case is used as illustration of the proposed approach

towards indicators of sustainable development for firms a productive efficiency perspective sustainable development can be reflected by various economic social and environmental factors that are closely interconnected with each other and with the additional dimension of time which stresses the long term perspective of several factors due to their central role in human activities and development firms should play an important part in the attainment of sustainability goals the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the methodology of indicators that allow for the assessment of business participation into sustainable development a fundamental standpoint adopted is to view economic social and environmental efficiency as a necessary but not sufficient step towards sustainability to work out indicators we build on both the concepts of cost benefit analysis and the principles of productive efficiency we assume that we have observations on economic social and environmental factors for a set of decision making units dmus e g firms in an industrial sub sector the efficiency of each dmu is computed from a set of observed data using mathematical programming techniques resulting in dmus that are efficient and define the efficiency frontier among the set of dmus and dmus that are inefficient to cope with the multidimensionality of sustainable development it is important not to base decisions on one unique aggregate sustainability indicator instead it is suggested to develop two or three partial indicators that stress different aspects of the problem the proposed indicators could be used as an aid to detect so called factors of unsustainability and hence to provide for recommendations as to the regulations and incentives or managerial practices that will contribute to overall sustainability c 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved