crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

domestic responses to capital market internationalization under the gold standard 1870 1914 the internationalization of capital markets that occurred during the era of the classical gold standard 1870 1914 was part of a broader set of trends that threatened to drain local markets from capital and channel that capital to the national financial center and from there toward other national financial centers still internationalization was neither inevitable uniform nor irreversible but was a political choice informed by redistributional considerations between rival domestic interests and decided by politically dominant coalitions the domestic institutional structure in each country determined the composition of the politically dominant coalition decentralized structures allowed potential losers to curb public policies favorable to capital market internationalization whereas centralized structures allowed expected winners to promote such policies as a result economies with centralized states ended up being the most dependent on the international capital market whereas economies with decentralized states took a less active part in the globalization of finance

institutional selection in international relations state anarchy as order by the end of the medieval era three new competing institutions attempted to capture gains from trade and reduce feudal particularism sovereign territorial states cityleagues and city states by the middle of the seventeenth century city leagues and city states had declined markedly territorial states survived as the dominant form because they were able to reduce free riding lower transaction costs and credibly commit their constituents the selection process took place along three dimensions first sovereign territorial states proved competitively superior in the economic realm second states increasingly recognized only other sovereign territorial states as legitimate actors in the international system third other actors defected to or copied the institutional makeup of sovereign territorial organization the emergence of discrete territorial units in which only sovereign authorities represented their citizens as the predominant type of organization in international affairs created a new solution to the problem of markets and hierarchies

input orientated data envelopment analysis framework for measuring and decomposing economic environmental and ecological efficiency an application to oecd agriculture this paper presents an input orientated data envelopment analysis dea framework which allows the measurement and decomposition of economic environmental and ecological efficiency levels in agricultural production across different countries economic environmental and ecological optimisations search for optimal input combinations that minimise total costs total amount of nutrients and total amount of cumulative exergy contained in inputs respectively the application of the framework to an agricultural dataset of 30 oecd countries revealed that i there was significant scope to make their agricultural production systems more environmentally and ecologically sustainable ii the improvement in the environmental and ecological sustainability could be achieved by being more technically efficient and even more significantly by changing the input combinations iii the rankings of sustainability varied significantly across oecd countries within frontier based environmental and ecological efficiency measures and between frontier based measures and indicators

review of environmental efficiency and its influencing factors in china 1998 2009 abstract improving environmental efficiency has been regarded as an objective requirement and an inevitable path to build a resource saving and environment friendly society in china the slacks based measurement sbm model with undesirable output is applied to measure the environmental efficiency of provinces in china from 1998 to 2009 then by the tobit model we can empirically test the impact of influencing factors on the environmental efficiency it demonstrates the low value of the environmental efficiency of each province with an essentially descending trend on the whole and the distinct differences between the environmental efficiency of those provinces besides gdp per capita dependent on foreign capital and trade environmental awareness and population density have obviously positive impacts on environmental efficiency and the proportion of the secondary industry in the gdp shows a significantly negative impact on the environmental efficiency

sraffa and his arguments against marginism the subtitle of sraffa s most celebrated work production of commodities by means of commodities is prelude to a critique of economic theory given that no later work was ever published by sraffa we are left to wonder what would have come after the prelude this paper suggests that the core of the critique might have been the marginal method itself by carefully distinguishing between published and unpublished work we shows that sraffa s opposition to the marginal method follows several threads some of which were developed over a period of nearly 35 years such as the belief that economic theory should use only measurable and observable magnitudes the critique of the fundamental symmetry between production and consumption and the disagreement with the marshallian concept of equilibrium although none of the arguments reached a stage that sraffa considered satisfactory enough to be worth publishing our reconstruction sheds light on his research programme and on otherwise rather obscure passages in his works

setting the agenda electoral competition commitment of policy and issue salience by committing policy an incumbent in effect disowns an issue when she maintains policy flexibility the issue remains electorally salient electoral competition shapes political commitment decisions and collapses the multi dimensional issue space into a low dimensional space of electorally salient issues

piero sraffa s early views on classical political economy the present paper outlines the building blocks for a reconstruction of piero sraffa s early views on classical political economy besides discussing some of the basic conjectures for a plausible reconstruction in the context of the current debate on the issues involved the paper focuses on evidence gathered from a selection of documents concerning the preparation of sraffa s lectures on value delivered in the second half of the 1920s whilst full discussion of sraffa s early scientific and intellectual development would fall outside the scope of this paper the treatment directs the reader s attention to some elements of potential interest and it supports the interpretation advanced by pasinetti it is hoped that the present analysis will contribute to a discussion on new perspectives concerning the scientific work of piero sraffa copyright oxford university press

a sraffian critique of the classical notion of centre of gravitation in this paper we use insights from sraffa s classic production of commodities by means of commodities to argue that the classical notion of centre of gravitation is not a sound concept the market mechanics of labour allocation through price signals and quantity adjustments given effectual demands do not lead to a centre of gravitation we work out all such possible market mechanisms including the specific classical case and show that the centre of gravitation is a non attractive point in all cases copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

income distribution and the size of the financial sector a sraffian analysis the recent expansion of the financial sector has been accompanied by deregulation an acceleration of financial innovation and changes in income distribution the size of these phenomena has attracted the attention of the literature a large part has analysed the relationship between financial development and inequality arguing that the former tends to reduce the latter for a review of this literature see demirguc kunt and levine 2009 it moves from the claim that perfect credit markets reduce inequality by bringing about the efficient exploitation of personal qualities material endowments and the growth potentials of the economy credit market imperfections hold back the achievement of these results but are counteracted by deregulation and financial innovation which tend to eliminate rent positions

impact of emission regulation policies on chinese power firms reusable environmental investments and sustainable operations abstract this study investigates the impact of emission regulation policies i e emergency response policy versus long term protection policy on the investment levels of reusable environmental facilities e g desulphurization pumps used by coal fired power plants in china to improve their sustainable operations to set up a baseline for further analysis and compare the impact of emission regulation policies an improved framework for performance evaluation of sustainable operations is developed in this study by integrating classical data envelopment analysis dea and exponential learning curve the proposed mathematical models are applied into an empirical study of 27 major million kw coal fired power plants in mainland china empirical analysis shows that the interactions among official emission regulation policies reusable environmental investment rei and sustainable operations management of coal fired power plants in china several policy suggestions are provided for power firm managers and policy makers in china specifically we suggest that the chinese government should implement long term protection policies in less developed regions instead of emergency response policies

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis abstract for three decades a growing interest in the modeling of desirable and undesirable outputs has led to a theoretical and methodological debate in the nonparametric literature on production technology and efficiency the first main discussion is about the way of modeling bad undesirables as inputs or outputs or by transformation functions the second debate concerns the implications of the weak disposability assumption in the modeling of bad outputs in particular the possibility of assigning unexpected signs to shadow prices of bad outputs in addition we point out a current error in the modeling of weak disposability under a variable returns to scale technology in this paper we introduce a hybrid model to ensure the economically meaningful jointness of good and bad outputs while constraining shadow prices of bad outputs to their expected sign we argue that it is a sound compromise to model undesirable outputs with a meaningful primal dual economic interpretation finally we propose an extension to define shadow prices for undesirable outputs following the law of one price loop rule

an unproductive labour view of finance the present paper discusses the role of the financial sector in a capitalist economy arguing that the huge increase in its weight economic and otherwise in the last decades is not justified by the importance of its contribution to economic growth the point is developed going back to the classical concepts of productive and unproductive labour there are two dimensions of these concepts that we discuss the first links the social efficiency of the financial sector to its role in the reproduction process crucially distinguishing basic from non basic uses we argue that many financial services usually seen as services to production really consist of the provision of gambling facilities and thereby have to be considered at best as luxury goods when evaluated according to its reproductive capability the service of arranging a gambling house cannot be seen as producing social value a second sense in which the discussion of productive and unproductive labour casts light on the nature of some financial services is that connected to the conception of pure circulation costs as different from costs of production proper the amount of circulation costs varies with the varying intensity of the realisation problem they are not defined by the production technique and are in this sense arbitrary copyright oxford university press

a few counter factual hypotheses on the current economic crisis the economic and financial problems of the present devastating crisis are terribly practical sraffa s little book is highly theoretical to relate the two we must avoid stopping at keynes and include the whole group of economists around him in cambridge resuming the discussions that have been pushed into oblivion by the mainstream the capital theory controversy was not the only one here more relevant is the controversy on growth income distribution savings and profits between samuelson modigliani and kaldor pasinetti as a result a theorem associated with modigliani miller was brought to fame and hailed as the core of modern corporate finance its surprisingly wide acceptance is here harshly criticised and indicted of major responsibility for the present crisis inevitably this is argued through counter factual hypotheses yet even with less sophisticated analytical tools a framework does exist much nearer to common sense implying the needed flexibility and openness of mind for the major restructuring of financial institutions which today so clearly emerges as the major task to undertake copyright oxford university press

environmental efficiency analysis of power industry in china based on an entropy sbm model chinese national natural science fund 71073040 710201139 71273075 humanities and social science fund of the ministry of education 09yjc790061

the technology gap and efficiency measure in wec countries application of the hybrid meta frontier model this study develops the hybrid meta frontier dea model for which inputs are distinguished into radial inputs that change proportionally and non radial inputs that change non proportionally in order to measure the technical efficiency and technology gap ratios tgr of four different regions asia africa america and europe this paper selects 87 countries that are members of the world energy council from 2005 to 2007 the input variables are industry and population while the output variances are gross domestic product gdp and the amount of fossil fuel co2 emissions the result shows that countries efficiency ranking among their own region presents more implied volatility in view of the technology gap ratio europe is the most efficient of any region but during the same period asia has a lower efficiency than other regions finally regions with higher industry or gdp might not have higher efficiency from 2005 to 2007 and higher co2 emissions or population also might not mean lower efficiency for other regions in addition brazil is not oecd member but it is higher efficiency than other oecd members in emerging countries case oecd countries are better efficiency than non oecd countries and europe is higher than asia to control co2 emissions if non oecd countries or asia countries could reach the best efficiency score they should try to control co2 emissions

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

global linkages and domestic politics trade reform and institution building in india in comparative perspective this article examines how the world trade organization wto affects institutional development and policy responses in india india is a country traditionally resistant to external pressures but in

the effect of industrial agglomeration on green development efficiency in northeast china since the revitalization abstract using panel data from 2003 to 2016 this paper estimates the green development efficiency of 34 cities in northeast china based on the sbm dea model and determines whether industrial agglomeration promotes or impedes green development efficiency the results show the following 1 the average green development efficiency of northeast china exhibits a fluctuant upward trend in 2003 2016 and there are significant spatial differences 2 during the revitalization period industrial agglomeration hinders green development efficiency a u shaped relationship exists between industrial agglomeration and green development 3 economic development level and foreign direct investment are positively related to green development efficiency while industrial structure energy consumption structure and environmental regulation are negatively related economic development level has the greatest positive influence and environmental regulation the strongest negative influence on green development several corresponding policy implications are proposed for promoting green development and revitalization

efficiency evaluation and dynamic evolution of china s regional green economy a method based on the super pebm model and dea window analysis abstract given the current circumstances of increasingly serious resource consumption and environmental pollution the development of china s green economy will profoundly impact the nation s future economic prosperity and even global economic development based on panel data from 2008 to 2017 this paper measures the green economic efficiency gee of chinese regions and analyzes its dynamic evolution using time series based on a novel data envelopment analysis dea model using environmental dea techniques this paper introduces the super pebm ebm based on pearson correlation coefficient model which is developed from the epsilon based measure ebm model and combines super pebm with the window analysis method firstly environmental dea technology is used to analyze gee at the regional level in china secondly based on panel data the window analysis method is used to analyze the regional differences of china s regional gee finally the development trend of china s regional gee in different time windows is obtained by combining the super pebm model and window analysis the empirical analysis results using panel data for regions in china from 2008 to 2017 show that 1 the overall gee of china is slowly increasing and the regional differences are still significant and 2 the improvement of gee can help to reduce regional differences

measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in italy abstractenvironmental and economic efficiency has being receiving growing attention among researchers in general terms this concept is related to the capability of the economic systems to employ natural resources efficiently so as to increase economic and human wealth this clearly implies that both the economic and ecological aspects of decisions ought to be considered bearing this in mind this article considers economic and ecological performance together by applying data envelopment analysis and the malmquist productivity index to investigate the efficiency of the 20 italian regions from 2004 to 2011 the results reveal that the northern regions have been more efficient than the southern ones highlighting the strong geographical differences between the two furthermore this article uses the grey system theory to forecast regional economic and environmental efficiency the results of the forecasting analysis show that the north south duality remains strong and will possibly increase since the r

corporate limited liability and cambridge economics in the inter war period robertson keynes and sraffa this article investigates the contribution of three well known cambridge economists dennis robertson john maynard keynes and piero sraffa to the analysis of limited corporate liability in relation to the separation of ownership from control the paper argues that although as is to be expected these economists develop different approaches and overall conclusions on the issue of corporate limited liability and the separation of ownership from control their interpretations converge nevertheless on important points put differently robertson keynes and sraffa raised the same micro and macro economic issues but came up with different answers their shared concerns as well as their varied answers display an undeniable modernity and thus remain very relevant to contemporary considerations on firm governance especially in the context of the present global economic crisis

economic versus environmental improvement potentials of danish pig farms this article demonstrates how economic and environmental improvement potentials of danish pig farms can be estimated using data envelopment analysis dea to avoid some of the problems associated with the definition of undesirable outputs environmental variables are included as nutrients applied with manure and nutrients removed with the crops these environmental variables are combined with a series of economic variables including the costs of fertilizer furthermore subvector efficiency and a two step analysis are used in order to consider economic and environmental technical efficiency separately the empirical results show considerable improvement potentials especially on the environmental variables sensitivity studies validate that these results are robust to possible uncertainties in the measurement of the environmental variables

measuring the performance of thermal power firms in china via fuzzy enhanced russell measure model with undesirable outputs abstract thermal power has accounted for the major part of the electricity generation over recent several decades in china it plays an important role in supporting china s economic development while it also brings great pressure to the environment protection because of a large amount of pollution generated during its production in order to solve or alleviate the environmental problem caused by thermal power firms efficiency evaluation is the first important step as thermal power firm is a complex system with multiple inputs and multiple outputs usually including fuzzy data and undesirable outputs in the productions in this paper we build an integrated enhanced russell measure model based on data envelopment analysis for evaluating the performance of decision making units in the presence of the undesirable outputs in fuzzy circumstance then this new model is applied to analyze the environmental performance and provide the benchmarks for the thermal power firms in china which can guide the decision makers to make suitable future production plans for improving their performance

globalization and the changing logic of collective action globalization transforms collective action in domestic and international politics as the scale of markets widens and as economic organization becomes more complex the institutional scale of political structures can become insufficient for the provision of an appropriate range of public goods a process of this sort occurred prior to the emergence of the modern nation state which itself constituted a paradigmatic response to this predicament today however a complex process of globalization of goods and assets is undermining the effectiveness of state based collective action overlapping playing fields are developing made up of increasingly heterogeneous transnational local and intermediate arenas the residual state retains great cultural force and innovative projects for reinventing government are being tried nevertheless the state s effectiveness as a civil association has eroded significantly and this may lead to a crisis of legitimacy

listen to sraffa s silences a new interpretation of sraffa s production of commodities this paper argues that the received interpretation of sraffa s prices as classical natural prices that would prevail when the system is at the centre of gravitation cannot be retained it offers an alternative interpretation in which sraffa s prices are completely independent of demand considerations or the condition of equilibrium of demand and supply the requirement of the uniform rate of profits in sraffa s price equations is argued to be a logical consequence of the assumption that wages are uniform and fixed from outside the system the paper provides evidence from sraffa s published and unpublished writings to buttress its new interpretation it also provides answers to the major criticisms and questions raised against the new interpretation copyright oxford university press

energy and ghg emission efficiency in the chilean manufacturing industry sectoral and regional analysis by dea and malmquist indexes abstract global warming produced mainly by the emission of greenhouse gases is currently a worldwide concern in the last few decades since the 1950s many of the changes observed in the world climate have been meaningful this paper presents an analysis of energy efficiency and of greenhouse gas emissions in the chilean manufacturing industry by region and sector taking into consideration time sequences data envelopment analysis dea models are used for the analysis three ways to handle undesirable outputs are compared the source of inefficiency in each decision making unit dmu is calculated using scale efficiency and the evolution over time is analyzed using the malmquist index the results indicate that the industries located in the chilean regions of coquimbo la araucania and aysen were the most efficient while the industries in the regions of tarapaca antofagasta and biobio were less efficient the most efficient industrial sectors were those involving communications equipment base metals and clothing the least efficient were those concerned with food and beverages textiles and nonmetallic minerals due to the treatment of the undesirable outputs differences were found in the efficiency indexes obtained by the three models this finding suggests using a model better adapted to the characteristics of the outputs in question and the viability of improving industrial practices

undesirable outputs in efficiency valuations abstract efficiency measurement is usually based on the assumption that inputs have to be minimized and outputs have to be maximized in a growing number of applications however undesirable outputs are incorporated into the production model which have to be minimized in this paper various approaches for treating such outputs in the framework of data envelopment analysis dea are discussed and the resulting efficient frontiers are compared new radial measures are introduced which assume that any change of the output level will involve both undesirable and desirable outputs

measuring macroeconomic performance in the oecd a comparison of european and non european countries abstract we study the macroeconomic performance of 19 oecd countries over the period 1970 1990 performance is defined in terms of the ability of a country s macroeconomic managers to provide four services to their citizens a high level of real gdp per capita a low rate of inflation a low rate of unemployment and a favorable trade balance we use linear programming techniques to construct a best practice macroeconomic performance frontier and to measure the performance of each country in each year relative to the frontier we then add two environmental disamenities carbon and nitrogen emissions to the service list and repeat the analysis to see if the performance rankings change throughout the analysis emphasis is placed on a comparison of the performance of 14 european oecd countries with that of five non european oecd countries we find that performance rankings do change and that the relative performance of the european countries declines when the environmental disamenities are added to the service list

power industry restructuring and eco efficiency changes a new slacks based model in malmquist luenberger index measurement measuring variations in efficiency and its extension eco efficiency during a restructuring period in different industries has always been a point of interest for regulators and policy makers this paper assesses the impacts of restructuring of procurement in the iranian power industry on the performance of power plants we introduce a new slacks based model for malmquist luenberger ml index measurement and apply it to the power plants to calculate the efficiency eco efficiency and technological changes over the 8 year period 2003 2010 of restructuring in the power industry the results reveal that although the restructuring had different effects on the individual power plants the overall growth in the eco efficiency of the sector was mainly due to advances in pure technology we also assess the correlation between efficiency and eco efficiency of the power plants which indicates a close relationship between these two steps thus lending support to the incorporation of environmental factors in efficiency analysis

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

order process and morphology sraffa and wittgenstein this contribution is based on an exploration of the nature and meaning of some of sraffa s and wittgenstein s mutual ontological methodological and philosophical influences whose initial findings are set out in arena 2013 the article has two core objectives first i argue that based on earlier findings a different interpretation of sraffa s contribution to economics is possible from those that have been predominant so far and that hold that sraffa s approach is primarily a contribution to the theory of relative prices i consider the two main interpretations of sraffa s price system in this regard whilst these differ in important aspects i argue that they share a core feature namely an approach to prices based on the concept of economic or social order understood as a final outcome independent of the possible process through which this outcome can be achieved second i am interested in highlighting a number of connections between wittgenstein s works post tractatus and certain developments contained in sraffa s unpublished papers taking wittgenstein post tractatus as the starting point i proceed to argue that core concepts employed by wittgenstein are compatible with and reinforce an interpretation of sraffa s contribution in terms of a morphological and comparative analysis of the economic foundations of surplus based societies from this perspective the notions of surveyable representation and snapshot are employed to characterise an analysis in which agents are guided by social rules and the concept of mechanical causality is discarded this convergence of sraffa s and wittgenstein s approaches does not however exclude differences concerning the social facts investigated and the use of analytical tools such as mathematics

does industrial convergence promote regional metabolism evidence from china abstract industrial convergence is one of the important strategies to promote china s sustainable development and its development is phased in order to better explore the heterogeneous effect of industrial convergence on regional metabolism in different stages we takes the convergence of manufacturing and producer services in 26 provinces of china as the research object and for the first time attempt to empirically test the impact of industrial convergence at different stages on metabolic efficiency in this paper we measure metabolic efficiency using emergy analysis and index data envelopment analysis index dea and measure the convergence degree of the two industries using the coupling evaluation model then we analyze the effects of industrial convergence on metabolic efficiency using the tobit model the results show that industrial convergence can significantly promote the metabolic efficiency of china specifically in the emerging industry convergence zone industry convergence has a significant promoting effect on the advancement of metabolic efficiency while in the mature industry convergence zone industry convergence has no effect on metabolic efficiency moreover this paper considers six other factors that affect regional metabolism in addition to government interaction the other five factors have an impact on metabolism efficiency finally special issues are briefly discussed the results provide important insights for policy makers to better promote industrial convergence and improve regional metabolism

the recursivity of law global norm making and national lawmaking in the globalization of corporate insolvency regimes for the past 15 years an enormous enterprise of global norm making and related national lawmaking has been underway in many areas of global commerce this article shows that leading global institutions such as the world bank imf and united nations are building an international financial architecture with law including corporate bankruptcy law as its foundation building on research on international institutions and three national cases china indonesia korea the authors propose a new framework for legal change in a global context the recursivity of law they argue that the globalization of bankruptcy law has proceeded through three cycles 1 at the national level through recursive cycles of lawmaking 2 at the global level through iterative cycles of norm making and 3 at the nexus of the two recursive cycles are driven by driven by four mechanisms the indeterminacy of law contradictions diagnostic struggles and actor mismatch thus the recursivity of law both revives and expands the soc

congestion measurement for regional industries in china a data envelopment analysis approach with undesirable outputs abstract the industry in china has been developing extensively in the last few decades large investments in china s industry may cause congestion because congestion is a widely observed economic phenomenon in such a scenario in order to know the performance and allocate resources well it is necessary for the chinese government to measure congestion of the industry many scholars have studied this topic by means of data envelopment analysis dea however previous studies only pay attention to the framework of desirable outputs in fact undesirable outputs often accompany desirable outputs in production thus in this study a new approach for measuring congestion with undesirable outputs is proposed and applied to analyzing congestion of the industry in 31 administrative regions of china the results show that five regions have congestion in their industry in 2010 besides the regions located in the east of the country perform the best in ecological efficiency followed by regions in central and west china based on these findings this paper proposes some political schemes to improve regional industrial efficiency

can top down and bottom up be reconciled electoral competition and service delivery in malaysia summary top down versus bottom up is one of development s enduring tensions not least in public service delivery in malaysia public services have traditionally been animated from the top down bottom up forces in civil society have strengthened recently but so too have top down forces and their impact on public services is greater malaysia s experience suggests that where electoral competition gives politicians an incentive to respond to voters service preferences top down initiatives have the greater potential for large scale social change participatory initiatives will be most effective when they play a supplementary role

malmquist indices of productivity growth during the deregulation of norwegian banking 1980 89 productivity growth during the deregulation of the norwegian banking industry is studied within the framework of data envelopment analysis which explicitly allows for multiple outputs introducing malmquist indices for productivity growth total growth can be decomposed into frontier growth and change in each bank s distance to the frontier both the total growth index and its components can be consistently chained over time we find productivity regress at the average bank prior to the deregulation but rapid growth when deregulation took place deregulation also led to less dispersion of productivity levels within the industry

piero sraffa and the true object of economics the role of the unpublished manuscripts this special issue is concerned with the work of piero sraffa and with recent developments in its interpretation occasioned by the opening of the sraffa archives in late 1993 1 it brings together some of the contributions to a workshop on this theme that was sponsored by the cambridge journal of economics and held in july 2010 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of piero sraffa s major work production of commodities by means of commodities pcmc the original workshop on new perspectives on the work of piero sraffa was aimed at sraffa scholars who had taken the opportunity to engage with materials in the sraffa archives and who were interested in exploring their potential for revisiting and placing pcmc in the wider context of ongoing debates on economic philosophy economic theory and economic policy as is usually the case not all presentations made at the workshop were advanced for consideration in this special issue nor could all invitees attend heinz kurz as chief editor of the sraffa archives agreed to present his view on the relevance of the sraffa archives to research on sraffa and to comment on contributions at the workshop as well as on their final versions submitted for publication in this special issue kurz s contribution to this special issue was thus written in the short time available between the receipt of final versions and publication deadlines we are indebted to him for his cooperation in the preparation of this special issue we are especially grateful for his patience in the time taken to bring this project to publication this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

piero sraffa s monetary inflation in italy during and after the war an introduction the dissertation was highly appreciated by sraffa s thesis director luigi einaudi he did not share all the opinions expressed by sraffa on the subject but oral tradition has it that sraffa succeeded in convincing him that bringing the lira back to pre war gold parity was wrong einaudi recommended to the thesis committee that it be awarded the distinc tion of appearing as an official publication of the university of turin thus sraffa s first economic essay appeared in a small sleek volume in november 1920 privately printed by the premiata scuola tipografica salesiana presumably at the author s own expense in accordance with contemporary italian academic practice on the choice of thesis topic luigi einaudi might have had some say sraffa showed however by his immediately subsequent articles and book reviews that he was attracted to monetary and banking problems domestic as well as international his first and second articles in english published respectively in the manchester guardian commercial supplements on the reconstruction of europe and in the economic journal both in 1922 were commissioned by j m keynes whom he had first met in cambridge while he was at the london school of economics both concerned the structure and problems of the italian banking system after the war they made a permanent mark on the interpretation of italian banking history piero sraffa thus came to economics via monetary problems a route he shares with ricardo and keynes readers will note that sraffa s dissertation bears a remarkable resemblance as far as its main points are concerned to the central argument which

nonparametric analysis of technical and allocative efficiencies in production in this paper we extend varian s 1984 nonparametric production analysis to situations when the set of observed output input and price data is not consistent with profit maximization for at least one firm in such cases varian s results imply that no production possibility set containing all observations can rationalize the observed data we identify each firm whose performance given the prices faced by it may be found consistent with profit maximization relative to some production possibility set containing all observed output input vectors we show that the set 4 of all such firms can itself be weaklv rationalized in the sense that there exists a closed convex and monotone production possibility set that contains all the observations and relative to which the performance of all the firms in the set 8o is consistent with profit maximization given their respective prices by definition firms not included in this largest set d of efficient observations unambiguously deviate from profit maximizing behavior for any production possibility set containing all observations we follow farrell 1957 and analyze these deviations into technical and allocative efficiency measures considering as admissible all closed convex and monotone production possibility sets relative to which the performance of each firm in the set g remains consistent with profit maximization we then describe nonparametric methods for determining the tightest upper and lower bounds on the technical allocative and aggregate efficiency measures evaluated relative to all such admissible production possibility sets it is seen that the tightest upper bound on the technical efficiency measure is the same as the value computed by the nonparametric efficiency evaluation technique known as data envelopment analysis thus establishing a link between this literature in management science operations research and the nonparametric production analysis in economics

room to move international financial markets and national welfare states a central research question in international political economy concerns the influence of financial markets on government policy outcomes to what extent does international capital mobility limit government policy choices i evaluate the relationship between international financial markets and government policy outcomes with a focus on the government bond market in developed democracies evidence includes interviews with financial market participants and a cross sectional time series analysis of the determinants of interest rates this evaluation suggests that governments of developed democracies face strong but narrowly defined financial market pressures financial market participants are concerned with a few macroeconomic policy indicators including inflation rates and government deficit gdp ratios but not with micropolicy indicators such as the distribution of government spending across functional categories in these areas governments retain policymaking autonomy i conclude by exploring the role of financial market influences within domestic politics and offering suggestions for further research

perspectives on multinational enterprises in emerging economies multinational enterprises mnes play a pivotal role in the development of many emerging economies in consequence they became the focus of scholarly research by economists and policy analysts in contrast international business scholars have been comparatively uninterested in analysing this role of mnes yet they could make important contributions to these debates first studies taking the individual firms as starting point would enhance understanding of the interaction between mnes and the local environment second theories and research methodologies developed in international business research could provide new insights into the dynamics of mnes in emerging economies the objective of this paper is to motivate more international business scholars to engage in research on positive and negative spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi in emerging economy societies to advance this research agenda scholars need to analyse the specific activities and capabilities of the firms involved and the impact of fdi on the broader social and environmental context for management this agenda raises the ethical question to what extent ought businesses to care about their local stakeholders

a comprehensive review of data envelopment analysis dea approach in energy efficiency the main aim of this review article is to review of dea models in regarding to energy efficiency this paper reviewed and summarized the different models of dea that have been applied around the world to development of energy efficiency problems consequently a review of 144 published scholarly papers appearing in 45 high ranking journals between 2006 and 2015 have been obtained to achieve a comprehensive review of dea application in energy efficiency accordingly the selected articles have been categorized based on year of publication author s nationalities scope of study time duration application area study purpose results and outcomes results of this review paper indicated that dea showed great promise to be a good evaluative tool for future analysis on energy efficiency issues where the production function between the inputs and outputs was virtually absent or extremely difficult to acquire

efficiency assessment of primary care providers a conditional nonparametric approach this paper uses a fully nonparametric approach to estimate efficiency measures for primary care units incorporating the effect of exogenous environmental factors this methodology allows us to account for different types of variables continuous and discrete describing the main characteristics of patients served by those providers in addition we use an extension of this nonparametric approach to deal with the presence of undesirable outputs in data represented by the rates of hospitalization for ambulatory care sensitive condition acsc the empirical results show that all the exogenous variables considered have a significant and negative effect on efficiency estimates

wages economic development and the customary standard of life this paper examines empirically the evolution of the customary standard of life and how this relates to real wages and economic development its starting point is sraffa s reintroduction of the classical notion of wages as the cost of reproducing labour so that they are necessarily a charge on production however when considering a production system generating a surplus sraffa offered no explanation of how the surplus might be realised and distributed rather he concentrated on the choice of technique as the profit share varied from 0 to 1 his approach was one of taking a snapshot of a productive system at a point in time in contrast this paper explores the trend in wages in the uk over the past 150 years and the evolving level and composition of what became the social necessities of worker consumption i e the customary standard of life in this process four dynamically interacting processes can be identified i a progressive increase in the productive potential of the system ii the diffusion of a greater quantity and varieties of consumer goods the growth of property ownership by consumers and their use of credit in a cumulative improvement in their customary standard of life iii the consolidation of the customary standard of life into real wages by collective bargaining and iv diffusion of improved living standards by an extension of collective bargaining coverage to include groups previously excluded and the growth of the welfare state in which the failure to achieve the customary standard of life defines poverty and triggers policy designed to alleviate it the central role played by the customary standard of life in driving real wages means that the inputs of labour power into commodity production can be represented by the commodity composition of the customary standard of life in sraffa style analyses in this the successive cross sections in the historical flow of economic development showing the commodity flows into and out of production will be ever changing like the still frames in a moving picture show moreover such a historical approach rules out the possibility that at any time changes in the rate of profit will precipitate the switching of methods of production past choices of techniques are historically embedded in the capital stock the composition of which is modified by new investment and the scrapping of old as it wears out becomes technically outmoded and or demand for its products declines nevertheless changes in the distribution of income have consequences for the future path of economic and social development and what this might be is arguably the most useful area for economic and social research copyright oxford university press

globalization as galton s problem the missing link in the analysis of diffusion patterns in welfare state development most macro cross national studies in political science that analyze the impact of globalization on domestic policies do not sufficiently consider the meth odological consequences of diffusion processes or galton s problem as it is often referred to i argue that globalization is a form of diffusion therefore it requires a shift from an exclusively functional analysis which dominates in almost all estab lished comparative studies in the field to a diffusional analysis i assume that glob alization leads to a shift in focus on the part of political actors from domestic to international issues i test this hypothesis by examining social expenditure rates of sixteen highly developed welfare states the results indicate that globalization has become a highly influential factor since the late 1980s in contrast to the years before in addition to the actual results presented here the methodological approach of ana lyzing globalization as diffusion is relevant to other areas of comparative and inter national politics and may be a tool in future research

efficiency evaluation of material and energy flows a case study of chinese cities abstract the environmental impact of materials and energy is an important concern when cities and regions produce goods and services to examine this requires an evaluation tool which can deal with the complex system of resources energy inputs products and wastes involved this paper evaluates the urban material and energy flow efficiencies of 31 cities in china using a combination of the data envelopment analysis model and principal component analysis method the results show that the urban flow system is composed of several input and output principal components including energy materials urban capital investment overall output wastes and others in 2010 16 cities were efficient as judged by the material and energy inputs and outputs the remaining 15 cities were not efficient primarily due to product shortfalls and waste excesses since 2000 half of the analyzed cities experienced a decline in the urban flow efficiencies while only six cities showed a positive trend the reasons include excess inputs of coal coke electricity cement investment as well as output shortfalls in terms of overall output wastes services agriculture and transport we conclude that key priorities for improving urban systems with material and energy flow inefficiency are the use of urban renewable supplies focus on sustainable endogenous development model and improvement management of waste output in order to increase efficiency and sustain economic growth

performance assessment of alternative energy resources in brazilian power sector using data envelopment analysis abstract the brazilian power sector is known for the strong participation of renewable sources this characteristic is maintained thanks to government incentives for alternative sources with particular emphasis on wind generation small hydroelectric and sugar cane bagasse fired power plants because these are more costly than conventional plants they are nevertheless less costly than other alternative sources such as residue based generation the government s policy is based however on a purely economic analysis if socio environmental variables were to be taken into account the government s orientation in favor of renewable sources might be different the present article uses the data envelopment analysis dea method to incorporate such variables in the government s energy policies the results demonstrate the advantage of promoting residue based generation above that from other sources

heterogeneous impacts of regulatory policy stringency on the eu electricity industry a bayesian shrinkage dynamic analysis abstract environmental and technical efficiency in the electricity sector is a major focus of regulatory policies aimed at hastening greenhouse gas reduction and lowering energy prices for final consumers understanding the impact of market and environmental regulations on efficiency is crucial for the design and choice of policy packages at the national level the productivity response to regulations depends on unobserved country specific factors that current empirical analyses have not modelled in this framework we analyse the regulation effects on efficiency in the electricity sector for a panel of european union countries we explicitly consider the effects of the environmental regulation along with the market regulation our estimation strategy uses the bayesian shrinkage estimator which can deal with the bias aggregation problem and cross country heterogeneity it allows us to identify the different transmission channels through which regulatory policy is implemented the results highlight divergent behaviours at the country level the direct impacts of the market and environmental regulatory policies on productivity are negative around 2 7 and 2 3 respectively but the countries vary in the degree to which they are able to compensate these negative effects

multi output efficiency with good and bad outputs abstract cherchye de rock dierynck roodhooft and sabbe 2013 introduced a dea methodology that is specially tailored for multi output efficiency measurement the methodology accounts for jointly used inputs and incorporates information on how inputs are allocated to outputs in this paper we present extensions that render the methodology useful to deal with undesirable or bad outputs in addition to desirable or good outputs interestingly these extensions deal in a natural way with several limitations of existing dea approaches to treat undesirable outputs we also demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodological extensions through an application to us electric utilities

incorporating the learning effect into data envelopment analysis to measure msw recycling performance abstract the effect of organizational learning which results in continuous improvement of organizational performance over time has been widely discussed the cumulative learning effect may form as a source of intellectual capital thus far the static data envelopment analysis dea model has not been used to examine the longitudinal learning effect therefore a two stage approach is developed together with the estimation of a latent learning effect using time series data the estimated learning effect is then used as an input in the dea slacks based measure sbm model the proposed dea sbm model can be used to investigate the efficiency of the organizational learning effect of municipal solid waste msw recycling systems this study estimated the cumulative learning effect of 23 local governments in taiwan from 2001 to 2009 using regression analysis the results were incorporated into the dea sbm model to evaluate the relative performance of msw recycling systems in 2009 this work makes three major contributions first this paper developed a new approach that incorporates organizational learning effects into the dea sbm model second improved policies were provided to local governments with inefficient msw recycling systems third this paper found that household disposable income levels influence learning methods leading to a considerable difference in cumulative learning effects in promoting recycling policies local governments should determine whether such policies can be disseminated and implemented given the local community s standard of living

piero sraffa and the future of economics how did piero sraffa look at the future of economic theory first when he arrived in england in the mid 1920s and then after the publication of his extraordinarily compact little book production of commodities by means of commodities 1960 the author sifts through sraffa s published works and abundant unpublished papers his acquaintances and personal contacts and vicissitudes the conclusions he arrives at remain problematical but do not refrain him from clearly expressing his specific quite definite views copyright oxford university press

the neo ricardians focuses on the neoclassical theory of economics in great britain calculation for the standard commodity assumptions of piedro sraffa on the cycle of production functions of the rate of return ebsco

optimal regulation of multinationals under collusion this paper analyses the optimal collusion proof mechanism for the regulation of multinational firms mnfs in foreign direct investment fdi projects there is a host country with a profitable investment opportunity either a multinational firm mnf or a local firm lf can undertake this project nonetheless due to its firm specific advantage and the mnf has the potential to create a larger surplus the host government faces an informational constraint such that it cannot observe the extra surplus the mnf can generate using this set up karabay 2010 shows that employing foreign ownership restrictions to force a joint venture jv can help the host government to partially overcome its information disadvantage in this paper we extend karabay 2010 by studying the host government s optimal regulatory policy when the mnf and the lf can collude it turns out collusion imposes no cost on the host government and the expected welfare attained in the absence of collusion can still be secured under collusion

collective strategies in fighting corruption some intuitions and counter intuitions this article explores the plausibility of some intuitions and counter intuitions about the anti corruption efforts of mdbs and international organizations leveraging the power of the private sector regulation of a sizable percentage of global private sector actors now falls into a new area of international governance with innovative institutions standards and programs we wrestle with the role and value of private sector partnerships and available informal and formal social controls crafting proportional informal controls e g monitoring evaluations and sanctions and proper incentives to cooperative games across networks are the lynchpins of successful collective action programs ambivalence with informal social controls or effective incentives we argue risks far too much deference to private sector interests

the political economy of production of commodities by means of commodities a comment on pasinetti and sraffa luigi pasinetti s contribution in this special issue highlights the complexity and richness of sraffa s sources and points to the diversity of the streams of thought that may be detected behind sraffa s original research programme in particular pasinetti calls attention to the heuristic value of sraffa s unpublished manuscripts in assessing the constructive effort of production of commodities by means of commodities pcc this paper moves further along the above line of investigation and explores the smithian strand of pcc in particular the paper highlights that the duality between horizontal and vertical prices explored by both sraffa and pasinetti points to the existence of different complementary causal linkages in classical political economy vertical integration makes it possible to resolve prices into a sum of weighted quantities of labour and calls attention to the system of weights needed for this operation alternative weighting systems may be associated with alternative institutional arrangements for example a traditional wage profit economy would attach increasingly higher weights to increasingly remote quantities of labour but the analytics of vertical integration also raises the institutional possibility of increasingly lower weights as increasingly remote labour quantities are considered the paper argues that by assessing together the horizontal ricardian and vertical smithian strands of pcc it is possible to grasp more fully the theoretical potential of this work in particular it becomes possible to distinguish between the identification of general causal principles and the instantiation of those principles in specific historical contexts copyright oxford university press

regional analysis across colombian departments a non parametric study of energy use abstract the analysis of energy use is important in emerging economies and especially in the manufacturing industries as energy is a key factor of sustainable development this research analyses and evaluates the features of regional energy use and efficiency across colombian departments in the manufacturing industries for the period between 2005 and 2013 by applying two malmquist data envelopment analysis models the results indicate significant difference in energy use and efficiency across colombian departments in the manufacturing industries the results of the malmquist indexes determine that various manufacturing industries across colombian departments have a high potential to increase energy efficiency several manufacturing industries across colombian departments have experienced gains in productivity a growth in efficiency an improvement in the relationship between inputs and outputs and scale production and advances in innovation through new technologies this technique allows to make comparisons and improves energy policies to increase energy efficiency and decrease co 2 emissions the application of panel data models indicate that increases in energy prices exports and productivity lead to better energy use while a higher presence of energy intensive sectors and small and medium enterprises across colombian departments reduce energy efficiency the methods selected in this research generated consistent robust and reliable estimates related to energy use and co 2 emissions for regional studies the findings of this study indicate that diverse energy policies should implement in the industrial sector across colombian departments and that they should contribute to improvements in energy use especially in small and medium companies and energy intensive sectors

circuitous processes jigsaw puzzles and indisputable results making best use of the manuscripts of sraffa s production of commodities by means of commodities the opening of the sraffa archive has allowed the production of credible narratives of the development of sraffa s thought based on documentary evidence the archive is complex especially in the case of the papers relating to production of commodities by means of commodities pcmc but the author s paperwork helps guide us through the development of his ideas affirming the causal relationship between thought and archive the complex interrelationships between materials in the archive make a painstaking scholarly approach necessary but rewarding allowing authors to use material of high evidential value to corroborate the cases they are making the archive has primarily been used by historians of economic thought however as the material contextualises pcmc it may also be useful to those working on economic theory from a sraffian perspective copyright oxford university press

globalization and the decline of the welfare state in less developed countries why have trends in government welfare spending in developing countries diverged from those in developed countries i address this question by investigating the effects of capital and trade flows on government welfare spending in fifty three developing countries using an original measure of labor power in developing countries i test the links between international markets labor s political strength and the welfare state i argue that labor s collective action problems caused by large populations of low skilled and surplus workers offset labor s potential political gains from globalization i show that when the proportion of low skilled workers in a nation is high globalization will lead to a decline in welfare spending most significantly the results suggest that in nations where labor market institutions are not yet well developed government social welfare spending is constrained by international market forces

political responses to interdependence what s left for the left heightened economic interdependence in recent years is commonly argued to have generated great pressures for convergence in economic policies across the advanced industrial democracies interdependence has clearly had a great impact on the types of economic policies that governments can pursue they have been unable to pursue independent fiscal and monetary policies since the mid 1970s furthermore all governments have been forced to attempt to promote the competitiveness of national goods and services in world markets and to increase the speed and efficiency with which national producers adjust to changes in global markets there are however different policies consistent with these goals statistical analyses of economic policies since the mid 1970s show that governments of the left and the right continue to be able to enact distinctive supply side policies that promote competitiveness and flexible adjustment and simultaneously further their partisan objectives

global networks and domestic policy convergence a network explanation of policy changes national economies are embedded in complex networks such as trade capital flows and intergovernmental organizations igo s these globalization forces impose differential impacts on national economies depending on a country s network positions this article addresses the policy convergence divergence debate by focusing on how networks at the international level affect domestic fiscal monetary and regulatory policies the author presents two hypotheses first similarity in network positions induces convergence in domestic economic policies as a result of peer competitive pressure second proximity in network positions facilitates policy learning and emulation which result in policy convergence the empirical analysis applies a latent space model for relational dyadic data and indicates that position similarity in the network of exports induces convergence in fiscal and regulatory policies position similarity in the network of transnational portfolio investments induces convergence in fiscal policies and position proximity in igo networks is consistently associated with policy convergence in fiscal monetary and regulatory policies

international systems and domestic politics linking complex interactions with empirical models in international relations following older debates in international relations literature concerning the relative importance of domestic versus systemic factors newer debates emphasize interdependence among states and the complex interactions between systemic and domestic factors as globalization and democratization advance theories and empirical models of international politics have become more complicated we present a systematic theoretical categorization of relationships between domestic and systemic variables we use this categorization so that scholars can match their theory to the appropriate empirical model and assess the degree to which systemic factors affect their arguments we also present two advances at the frontier of these empirical models in one we combine hierarchical models of moderating relationships with spatial models of interdependence among units within a system in the other we provide a model for analyzing spatial interdependence that varies over time this enables us to examine how the level of interdependence among units has evolved we illustrate our categorization and new models by revisiting the recent international political economy ipe debate over the relationship between trade policy and regime type in developing countries

on the present state of the capital controversy the post war capital controversy seems to have had two distinguishable stages thanks to the unambiguous phenomena of reswitching and reverse capital deepening the first stage was conclusive in discarding from pure theory the traditional versions of neoclassical theory that relied on the notion of capital as a single quantity subsequently however when the implications of those phenomena took centre stage in the controversy together with the reformulations of the theory which intended to do away with the quantity of capital several misunderstandings prevented i shall contend decisive progress in the analysis and we entered an inconclusive phase of the discussion

environmental efficiency and economic growth of china a ray slack based model analysis abstract the chinese economy has been experiencing rapid growth since the implementation of the reform and opening up policy however at the same time it faces issues regarding resource savings and environmental protection which are important aspects of the new industrialization therefore this study conducts data envelopment analysis dea to evaluate the environmental efficiency of chinese regions certain existing dea models account for undesirable outputs and do not elucidate the weak disposable relationship between undesirable and desirable outputs thus polar theory is introduced among the dea modeling in this study first drawing on stochastic frontier analysis ray stochastic frontier analysis and dea we propose a ray slack based model rsbm to evaluate provincial environmental efficiencies in china from 2004 to 2012 subsequently an rsbm malmquist luenberger total factor productivity index is structured finally economic growth environmental efficiency and energy consumption are analyzed using spatial panel econometrics as this study treats industrial waste as undesirable outputs the rsbm results show that the environmental efficiencies in the east are the highest while those in the central regions are the lowest the spatial econometric analysis reveals that the ratios of direct to total elasticity and those of direct to total effect for capital labor and energy input variables are fixed furthermore the study provides policy implications and suggestions for future research