sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy beyond green growth and green economies abstract in 1992 one unambiguous result of the unced conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns with affluent countries taking the lead 20 years later at the 2012 uncsd little is left over and instead the green economy has been the theme pursued by the oecd the eu and other countries so the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished sustainable development is still a convincing concept if the original definition is taken avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits it can still guide strong sustainable consumption green economy green growth on the other hand is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation it is indeed overdue but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the brundtland sustainability criteria a factor analysis based on the i p a t formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept consequently the authors pledge for a pragmatic risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy this requires strong sustainable consumption including production as resource consumption which in turn requires a change of the societies institutional settings formal and informal mechanisms and orientations finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out with special emphasis on the role of non governmental organisations ngos through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption

evolution of the economics of agricultural policy agricultural economists helped develop farm programs to respond to the dire economic situation of the 1920s and 1930s some early authors appreciated that such policies created problems in markets for commodities and inputs over time our understanding of agricultural issues and policies has deepened through the application of improved models and tools of analysis to more extensive data we have developed better answers to old questions and have responded to changing policy instruments market contexts and policy concerns this article traces the evolution of our deepening economic understanding of the causes and consequences of agricultural policy

greenhouse gas emissions per unit of value added geva a corporate guide to voluntary climate action abstract how much must i reduce my greenhouse gas ghg emissions if i want to do my fair share to contribute towards the global effort to keep global warming below a 2 c rise in average temperature over preindustrial times this paper suggests an answer for nations and corporations that want to move ahead of legislation on a voluntary basis if all nations reduce their ghg emissions per unit of gdp by 5 per year global ghg emissions will be 50 lower in 2050 than in 2010 as long as the global economy continues to grow at its historical rate of 3 5 per year the suggested 5 per year decline can be translated into a corporate resolution to reduce corporate ghg emissions per unit of value added geva by 5 per year if all corporations cut their geva by 5 per year the same global result will be achieved the suggested 5 per year decline can be used as a guideline for responsible action on a voluntary basis the guideline is unlikely to be made mandatory soon but compulsory publication of the necessary emissions and productivity data by nations and corporations could help civil society highlight top performers

a rational expectations model of agricultural supply this work suggests a dynamic linear rational expectations modeling strategy for using time series observations to study the impact of product prices on agricultural production and land allocation the farmer s decision consists of specifying each period the portion of his land to be devoted to the growing of alternative crops the dynamic element in the farmer s problem comes from the technology a quadratic production technology is used the farmer s optimal land allocation decision rules are derived as linear functions of past land allocations expectations of future product prices and other exogenous variables and they can be interpreted as an optimal crop rotation assuming rational expectations and the exogeneity of prices for a small open economy one obtains closed form linear regression equations representing decision rules and stochastic processes these are then estimated and tested using maximum likelihood methods and aggregate data from the egyptian agriculture

replacement of agricultural price supports by area payments in the european union and the effects on pesticide use this article determines the contribution of recent european union agricultural policy reforms on the use of pesticides our theoretical model extends the multioutput generalization of the lichtenberg zilberman damage control technology model developed by chambers and lichtenberg our empirical analysis uses farm level data for a sample of french farms results suggest that price effects on the use of pesticides are always more elastic than area payment effects this indicates that policy reforms consisting of a reduction in price supports in favor of area payments may reduce application of crop protection inputs such policy changes which represent a certain degree of decoupling took place under the 1992 common agricultural policy reforms

the influence of commodity programs on acreage response to market price with an illustration concerning rice policy in the united states farm programs influence the parameters of typically estimated supply functions we develop and apply an approach that uses detailed information about farm program incentives and constraints to identify underlying structural acreage response parameters when the data reflect behavior under complex government commodity programs we illustrate the approach with data on rice acreage response to market price in the united states for u s rice estimates that fail to appropriately incorporate the program rules under which market data were generated are three to four times smaller than the structural parameters that are useful for most policy analysis or projections under alternative policies

consumer scapegoatism and limits to green consumerism an axiom that has shaped policy approaches to sustainable consumption has been that if more consumers understand the environmental consequences of their consumption patterns through their market choices they would inevitably put pressure on retailers and manufacturers to move towards sustainable production the result is the proliferation of green consumerism and consumption of green products eco labels to assist consumers in making informed ecologically conscious choices consumer awareness campaigns etc however this paper argues that the dominant focus on green consumerism as against the need for structural changes towards a broader systemic shift is unrealistic furthermore promoting green consumerism at once lays responsibility on consumers to undertake the function of maintaining economic growth while simultaneously even if contradictorily bearing the burden to drive the system towards sustainability given the scope of the sustainability challenge and the urgency with which it must be addressed this paper argues that the consumer is not the most salient agent in the production consumption system and so expecting the consumer through green consumerism to shift society towards scp patterns is consumer scapegoatism this paper draws on the discursive confusion over discourse and practice of sustainable consumption in an attempt to clarify the differences between green consumerism and sustainable consumption and to provide a broadened framework for sustainable consumption policy design that enables wellbeing and ecological sustainability without propagating the economic growth dogma that has a stranglehold on contemporary policy making

irrational workers the moral economy of labor protest in egypt after comparing the predictions of marxist moral economy and rational choice theories concerning collective actions by workers in egypt in the period since the 1952 free officers coup this article concludes that a moral economy perspective is best able to explain the nature and frequency of these protests the supporting evidence is the correlation between labor protest and violations of workers feelings of entitlement as manifest in declining real wages or disruptions to established patterns of wage differentials the targeting of state institutions combined with the fact that workers have eschewed actual production stoppages in favor of symbolic protests indicates a view of reciprocal rights and obligations between themselves and the state the latter reinforces the moral economy by combining significant concessions with its repressive response to labor protests marxism proves unable to explain the largely defensive and reactive nature of labor protest while rational choice theory is reduced to efforts to quantify workers reactions to this repression

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

assessing the impacts of stochastic trend in crop acreage supply response model this paper demonstrates the need to revisit the way a technical change has been incorporated in a crop acreage supply response model three different versions of technological change were introduced and compared no trend deterministic trend and stochastic trend the results confirm the need to treat a technology variable as a stochastic trend for better results in crop acreage supply response model specifications

george stigler s contribution to the economic analysis of regulation george stigler changed the way economists analyze government regulation this enormous legacy is essentially embodied in two articles his 1962 analysis of electricity rates with claire friedland and his 1971 theoretical piece there were to be sure precursors and successors in his own work but none of them so profoundly affected the course of intellectual inquiry as these two the importance of both articles rests more i believe with the questions each posed than with the answers even by the standards of the day neither piece evinced the sort of technical sophistication that the profession has come to admire neither produced conclusions that were impervious to all serious subsequent challenges but both produced insights that have altered the course of research in the area to this day to understand stigler s contribution it is best to proceed chronologically and to begin with the state of the field around 1962 there is room here only for caricature rather than extensive survey however i think it is fair to say that the field derived its main energy from the normative economics of marginal cost pricing the proper role of government was to correct the private market failures that prevented attainment of marginal cost pricing applied economic analysis of regulation was then largely descriptive and its main tendency was to show how the regulatory institutions constrained departures from marginal cost pricing monopoly was viewed as the main barrier to marginal cost pricing and the natural monopoly occupied center stage in the economics of regulation the prime examples of natural monopoly were sup1 man made monopolies were the main subject matter of industrial organization stigler s profound influence on this field is summarized by harold demsetz s article in this issue

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

applied general equilibrium welfare analysis harberger has long advocated a particular technique for measuring the sum of all effects of an intervention both in the intervened in and related markets the technique is to calculate consumer and producer surplus changes behind demand and supply curves that are explicitly general equilibrium ge that is along curves that hold constant demand and supply conditions in related markets but not prices by calculating surplus changes with respect to such curves one simulates the equilibrium price paths in other markets resulting from the intervention and captures the sum of the welfare effects several authors have elaborated on harber

is earth recognized as a finite system in corporate responsibility reporting abstract companies are increasingly encouraged to frame their sustainability activities and communication around ecological limits as captured by concepts such as planetary boundaries climate tipping points or regenerative capacity ecological limits may serve as scientific basis for defining environmental sustainability targets at the company level and moreover inspire companies to align their product portfolios with emerging societal needs related to sustainable transformations although corporate environmental reporting is widely researched little attention has hitherto been given to company use of the ecological limits concepts in stakeholder communication this study presents a comprehensive review of references made to ecological limits in corporate responsibility cr reports in 2000 2014 an exhaustive list of terms related to ecological limits was developed and used to search the corporateregister database which contained approximately 40 000 cr reports from this time period for every identified reference we analyzed the context in which the ecological limit term was used in the cr report we found a 10 fold increase in the number of references made to ecological limits in cr reports during the period 2000 2014 the number of cr reports published in this time period has also increased at a similar rate hence the proportion of companies referring to ecological limits in their cr reports has over the years remained stable roughly 5 the most commonly invoked ecological limits were related to climate change and references to 2 c were by far the most frequent the vast majority of companies referring to ecological limits did so without specific references to ongoing or planned changes in their activities as a consequence of recognizing these limits only a small percentage predominately high tech companies 31 in total explicitly used ecological limits to define targets for resource consumption emissions reductions and or as a stated reason for adjusting their product portfolio in defining targets for resource consumption or emissions only a few cr reports dealt explicitly with the issue of allocating resource and emission rights within ecological limits amongst companies and other actors a longitudinal study of three companies showed that these did not directly report progress towards planned changes based on ecological limits and offered explanations as to why some companies abandoned planned changes altogether our findings provide novel insights into the current use of the ecological limits concept by companies and may be useful for actors trying to motivate companies to align their activities with the finite nature of earth s natural systems

rice trade liberalization and implications for u s policy the u s government s rice program treats rice as a homogeneous commodity even though rice s two primary subspecies indica and japonica are differentiated commodities in world markets trade liberalization under the uruguay round of gatt is expected to increase demand for japonica more than for indica we develop a u s rice model which treats rice as a differentiated product u s government programs are modeled and trade liberalization scenarios are analyzed under alternative policies compared to the current policy a more flexible u s policy that treats rice as a differentiated commodity could result in both higher farm incomes and lower government expenditures after trade liberalization

the effects of policy expectations on crop supply with an application to base updating we develop a dynamic model to assess the effects of policy expectations on crop supply and illustrate the approach with estimates of the effects of base updating in u s crop programs for corn and soybeans in the corn belt the effect of base updating is relatively small because relevant crop alternatives are subject to similar policies and the alternatives are substitutes in production increasing acreage of one program crop to capture future payments from base updating reduces future payments from the alternative crop we also use our model to assess the effect of base updating on acreage response to prices

detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company application to the food portfolio of a retailer companies are called by institutional organizations to assess their impacts on biodiversity and to take actions to achieve collectively conservation objectives this paper presents a method to assess whether the pressures exerted by a business and its value chain on biodiversity are compatible with biodiversity conservation the absolute environmental sustainability assessment framework is used to compare relevant life cycle assessment midpoint and endpoint indicators to the ecological budgets assigned to the company this approach is illustrated based on the case study of a mass market retailer with a focus on the pressures exerted by its food portfolio at the agricultural production step the results indicate that several pressures driving biodiversity loss are not sustainable the study also highlights the prominent weight of a few product categories in the ecological burden these findings have implications for mass market retailers as well as their food value chains and open research perspectives to make such an approach fully operational

strong sustainable consumption governance precondition for a degrowth path this paper aims to link two debates and literatures at the cutting edge of sustainable development research and governance sustainable consumption and degrowth interestingly these literatures have only recently started to exchange and integrate insights despite their similar interest in the fundamental systemic challenges to sustainable development the paper argues that this lack of connection is due to a predominance of perspectives in sustainable consumption governance that focus almost exclusively on questions of efficiency gains this weak sustainable consumption governance however is not able to address the challenges to sustainable development arising from overconsumption in general or the rebound effect and distributive issues in particular in contrast a strong sustainable consumption perspective provides a basis for a promising inquiry into the linkages between consumption and sustainable development as well as a fruitful exchange with degrowth specifically it allows the delineation of relevant insights on the role of values in governance obstacles to political reform and promising political strategies for the degrowth debate and literature

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

scattered landholdings in common property systems abstract concepts of common property have received increasing attention in recent years this has been associated with a re evaluation of historical common property institutions such as the medieval commons one of the major problems raised in the process has been the need to explain the phenomenon of scattering of a farmer s landholdings into a number of separate strips an explanation is sought in the need for a smoothly operating collective decision process scattering is seen as a means by which intra group conflict can be minimized other aspects of the problem such as externalities are also examined

the relative inefficiency of quotas the cheese case the nonequivalence of tariffs and quotas under a wide variety of circumstances is well established in economic theory this study considers heterogeneity as a source of nonequivalence and demonstrates its practical importance where restriction is inevitable the bias of economists in favor of price instruments is not thoroughly grounded this study should help provide a foundation the point of departure from the equivalence model is differentiation of products

a note on the idea of the moral economy in their research note robert bates and amy curry 1992 have drawn our attention to the importance for political science of the challenges posed by the moral economic approach using their essay as a springboard and recasting their understanding of the idea of the moral economy i show that the full significance of this controversy would be better illuminated by moving the debate on to a different terrain one that captures the fundamental sources of the antagonism between the moral economic and competing approaches i begin by setting out the central difficulty in bates and curry s reading of the moral economy argument and relate that to how the controversy has been framed in the recent political science literature i then offer a sketch of the core claims of the moral economic approach drawing out the radicalness of their challenge and offer an estimate of their weaknesses and value i conclude with some observations about political philosophy and the idea of the moral economy

community versus market a note on corporate villages we return to the literature on collective villages and reexamine its central arguments in doing so we focus on an institution for allocating land that we call the rule as claimed by its advocates the rule secures land allocations that result in outcomes differing from those that would be achieved by markets the outcomes are not constrained to be efficient but the economic costs paid fail to secure the attainment of guarantees of subsistence greater equality or a greater sense of community resulting from the elimination of envy however in the face of high levels of risk the form of collective property rights embodied in the rule may create what we call communities of mis fortune in which no one can envy others gains or losses resulting from the random shocks of nature

restricting the market for quota an analysis of tobacco production rights with corroboration from congressional testimony regulatory programs that restrict output levels often impose restrictions on the transfer of rights to produce or to use particular inputs in this paper we use a unique cross section time series data set from north carolina to quantify the welfare effects of transfer restrictions for poundage quota under the u s flue cured tobacco program we find that the deadweight costs of such restrictions are small but that the distributional effects are substantial we analyze congressional testimony on quota transfer legislation and conclude that our estimates of the distributional effects are consistent with expressed views of market participants

rethinking moral economy i establish three closely related claims the first two are interpretive the third theoretical 1 the prevailing conception of moral economy in political science presupposed by opponents as well as advocates rests too heavily on the distinction between nonmarket and market based societies 2 the prevailing conception of moral economy reduces to the unduly narrow claim that economic incorporation of a nonmarket people is the basis for the moral indignation that leads to resistance and rebellion 3 reconceptualizing moral economy in terms of social goods reveals additional grounds for politically significant moral indignation and permits moral economic political analysis of a larger set of cases and phenomena water politics in the arid american west illustrate the power of a conception of moral economy based on social goods

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

cost benefit analysis and environmental policy the use of cost benefit analysis cba in british environmental policy has gone through several stages early applications of cba tended to ignore environmental impacts altogether leave them for a subsidiary impact analysis or provide only a partial monetization of impacts currently cba is the subject of renewed interest in government departments in the environment agency and among other agencies providing guidance and advice to government while the amount of cba being undertaken has increased its influence on policy making is open to question obstacles remain much cba is expensive and this means that benefits transfer is widely regarded as essential currently however the validity of much benefits transfer is questionable other problems arise from misunderstandings about the nature of economic values and the links to individuals self interest and from concerns that cba results will crowd out flexibility in decision making especially the likely context of multiple political objectives over and above economic efficiency none the less cba has begun to have influence in the setting of environmental taxes and alternative decision rules appear to suffer as many if not more shortcomings as those faced by cba copyright 1998 by oxford university press

does the samaritan s dilemma matter evidence from u s agriculture the samaritan s dilemma posits a downside to charity recipients may rely on free aid instead of their own efforts anecdotally the expectation of free assistance is thought to be important for decisions about insurance and risky behavior in numerous settings but reliable empirical evidence is scarce we estimate whether the samaritan s dilemma exists in u s agriculture where both private crop insurance and frequent federal disaster assistance are present we find that bailout expectations are qualitatively and quantitatively important for the insurance decision furthermore aid expectations reduce both expenditure on farm inputs and subsequent crop revenue jel d72 h84 q18

effects on a corn soybean farm of uncertainty about the future of farm programs dynamic programming techniques are used to evaluate effects of uncertainty about continuation of farm programs on planting decisions during the last year of the 1990 farm bill results indicate farm level decisions are affected by uncertainty only when the farmer s subjective probability if the continuation of farm programs is very low the optimal value functions in different versions f the model can also be used to estimate the implicit value of base acreage

estimating supply response in the presence of farm programs previous empirical research on crop supply response has given insufficient attention to the fundamentally different nature of supply response under farm programs versus competitive markets a simple theoretical model is presented which highlights the program participation option in the farmer s acreage allocation decision the model also provides the basis for different expected supply elasticities under free market and farm program regimes for corn and soybeans econometric supply estimation for corn belt states for 1948 80 using a temporally disaggregated approach confirms a greater supply elasticity for corn and a lower supply elasticity for soybeans under acreage restricting feed grain programs

transfer efficiency and distributional impacts of u s farm support evidence from a macro micro simulation the objective of this analysis is to provide insight into the transfer and distributional efficiency of farm support policies a one shot macro micro simulation model weaves together the two prominent threads in the agri cultural decoupling literature that focuses for the first part on economy wide impacts and for the second on the role of cross household het erogeneity experimental shocks to output and land subsidies that generate a 1 increase in net national farm income are compared for the united states with output subsidies shown to have lower transfer efficiency but comparable distributional impact surprisingly a more cou pled approach to policy whereby some agricul tural enterprises are excluded from program participation is found to generate a stronger reduction in inequality this is partially at tributed to the inclusive definition of a farm

the new development economics abstract the theory of rural organization based on rational peasants in environments where information is imperfect and costly provides a simple explanation for a wide variety of phenomena in ldcs it provides insights into both why sharecropping is so widespread and why it takes on the particular forms that it does it provides an explanation of the interlinkage of credit and land markets and of cost sharing the paper argues that this theory provides a better explanation of these phenomena than do the competing theories this theory can be viewed as an important application of a more general paradigm the imperfect information paradigm which has been useful in explaining economic phenomena under a wide variety of settings under competition oligopoly and monopoly in labor markets capital markets in insurance markets and product markets and in developed and less developed countries

what makes rational peasants revolutionary dilemma paradox and irony in peasant collective action peasant upheavals are studied from the perspective offered by the selective incentives solution to olson s collective action problem this article presents much evidence from three different forms of peasant struggles everyday forms of peasant resistance unorganized rural movements and organized peasant rebellions that demonstrates the widespread existence of selective incentives questions about the causes and consequences of selective incentives are then examined first what are the conditions under which peasant struggles emphasize material selective incentives rather than nonmaterial altruistic appeals the level of selective incentives in any peasant upheaval is a function of demand and supply considerations peasants demand selective incentives the suppliers include one or more dissident peasant organizations the authorities and the allies of both a political struggle ensues as the suppliers compete and attempt to monopolize the market second what are the conditions under which the pursuit of material self interest hurts rather than helps the peasantry s collective cause selective incentives supplemented by ideology can be effective selective incentives alone are counterproductive these questions and answers lead to the conclusion that the selective incentives solution reveals much more about peasant upheavals than simply that peasants will often be concerned with their own material self interest it is therefore important to study the following three aspects of peasant collective action the dilemma peasants face or how peasant resistance is in the interest of all peasants but in the self interest of none the paradox peasants face or that rational peasants do solve their dilemma for example with selective incentives and participate in collective action and the irony peasants face or that self interest is both at the root of their dilemma and at the foundation of a solution to their paradox

modeling supply response with implicit revenue functions a policy switching procedure for rice an econometric method of estimating implicit revenue with a policy switching mechanism is proposed for supply response analysis the model develops important linkages between farm program instruments and commodity market equilibrium and allows evaluation of supply response decisions under conditions of major policy shifts the econometric procedure developed here is applied to the u s rice sector to determine program compliance noncompliance decisions under three alternative rice program periods a change in farm prices was found to affect significantly producers net returns and participation rate results indicate price impacts on acreage planted are inelastic for program participants but elastic for nonparticipants

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

what does it really mean to be a strongly sustainable company a response to nikolaou and tsalis abstract in a recent issue of this journal nikolaou and tsalis 2018 published a paper titled a framework to evaluate eco and social labels for designing a sustainability consumption label to measure strong sustainability impact of firms products in their paper the authors n t develop a method for identifying strongly sustainable companies as a basis for consumer communication n t test their method on a case study of five chemical companies and conclude that two of these are strongly sustainable essentially because they had obtained a higher number of eco labels than the average across the five companies while we agree with n t on the relevance of applying a strong sustainability perspective in the assessment of companies we are afraid that their method can lead to misguided consumer communication at the root of this concern is that n t 1 use a market average as reference to decide whether a company has a strong or weak sustainability performance and 2 use the number of eco labels as an environmental indicator we lay the foundation of this response by briefly accounting for the academic origin of the weak strong sustainability dichotomy we then present our argument against the method presented by n t this is followed by a proposal for how to improve the method finally we discuss state of the art in strong sustainability assessments of companies taking into account other existing methods that draw on the planetary boundaries concept and life cycle assessment

economic rents under supply controls with marketable quota we analyze the distribution of economic rent between owners and renters of marketable production quotas and examine how this distribution changes with increases in marginal costs while quota owners unambiguously lose because of a marginal cost increase quota renters may gain depending on whether the marginal cost shift is divergent parallel or convergent using output and input prices county production quotas and quota rental rate data we estimate a marginal cost function for north carolina flue cured tobacco to demonstrate how wage increases affect owners and renters welfare