ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

piketty and the growth dilemma revisited in the context of ecological economics 2017 elsevier b v piketty s capital has provoked considerable debate regarding inequality the existence of increasing inequality creates a challenge for ecological economics in this paper we set out some of the problems inherent in piketty s approach and how they are addressed from the point of view of ecological economics we use jackson and victor s response as a point of departure to make several points piketty s work involves an unreconciled inconsistency between his laws and the institutional context which becomes problematic when one starts to think about inevitability he simply assumes away ecological problems to make future forecasts for inequality as such his forecasts are undermined since ecological issues are fundamental to any viable future economy furthermore piketty effectively reproduces rather than contests the mainstream practice of delegating ecological issues to a sub discipline jackson and victor meanwhile focus on the mainstream economic aspect of piketty s work and construct a model to contest a model in so doing they provide an ideational response to what is also a problem of ideological frameworks though it can be important to contest an idea they inadvertently through family resemblance contribute to the reproduction of the problematic position of ecological concerns within dominant ways of conceiving economics

coping with change a study of local irrigation institutions in taiwan abstract this paper examines how taiwan s local irrigation institutions have evolved and changed amid rapid political economic development in the last decade based upon the literatures of institutional analysis and common pool resource management i discuss and compare how local irrigation institutions in three areas in the country have responded or failed to respond to the changing environment a major finding is that local self governing irrigation institutions are not doomed to fail amid economic development several variables affect the incentives and capacity of farmers to redesign their local institutions to cope with the changes in the macro setting particularly flexible status quo institutions and a conductive governance regime can better facilitate farmers rule crafting efforts

tracking distortions in agriculture china and its accession to the world trade organization this article examines the impacts of china s accession to the world trade organization wto on prices in its agricultural sector the analysis uses a new methodology to estimate nominal protection rates in china s agricultural sector before its accession to the wto these new measures account for differences in commodity quality within china and between china and world markets the analysis shows that some of china s agricultural commodities are well above world market prices and others are well below the article also assesses market integration and efficiency in china it finds high degrees of integration between coastal and inland markets and between regional and village markets the remarkable improvements in market performance in recent years mean that if increased imports or exports affect china s domestic price near the border producers throughout most of china will feel the price shifts

the new institutional economics this outstanding book presents new original contributions from some of the world s leading economists including ronald coase douglass c north masahiko aoki oliver e williamson and harold demsetz it demonstrates the extent and depth of the new institutional economics research programme which is having a worldwide impact on the economics profession

china s projected cereals deficits in a world context abstract lester brown s recent writings about trends in china s food consumption production and rapidly rising import requirements and his predictions that the world is running out of potential to increase production of cereals received wide publicity in the press they increased awareness of the problem among the public which was stimulated by recent declines in world cereals production per capita falling stocks and sharp rises in world market prices this paper is an attempt on my part to extract a coherent picture of what brown says about china and the world and examine it in the light of what we know about this country and of possible developments in the world as a whole i make the following conclusions 1 1 brown misjudges china s potential to maintain and indeed increase cereals production because he misinterprets the data on land losses he treats diversion of land from cereals to mainly other crops and aquaculture as if such land were lost to food production he ignores new data which indicate that china has more agricultural land than reported in official statistics and his projected numbers do not account for responses on the part of producers consumers and government policy to an increasing scarcity of products and rising prices 2 2 the analogies he draws with the experiences of japan south korea and taiwan are inappropriate 3 3 china will probably be a growing net importer of cereals but at levels much below those projected by brown 4 4 world production of cereals may indeed grow at a lower rate than in the long term past but not as low as that projected by brown which could be sufficient to accommodate china s growing import requirements and the probable ones of other countries 5 5 the world food problem is one of persistence of very low food consumption levels and high incidence of undernutrition in many developing countries mainly in sub saharan africa and south asia the persistence of severe food insecurity problems reflects not so much constraints in increasing food production in the world as whole but development failures often agricultural development failures and the persistence of poverty in certain countries

institutional design of public agencies and coproduction a study of irrigation associations in taiwan abstract the provision and production of many public goods and services involve the joint effort of government officials and citizen users this paper examines the successful experience of irrigation governance and management in taiwan as a means of understanding how joint efforts can be established and sustained through institutional arrangements several principles for institutional design including a careful definition of the scope of farmers participation complementarity of interests between individuals reduction of asymmetries involved in the use of authority and the existence of domains of autonomy are identified as instrumental to the success in taiwan

grain versus food a hidden issue in china s food policy debate abstract the paper examines the likely pattern of china s food trade in the future should china s food trade policy be adjusted to accommodate its comparative advantage differing from the common perception that china s overall food sector will follow the path of grain trade and face an ever growing trend of net imports this study has found an evolving pattern of exchanging food for food in china over the last 15 years the pattern is in part characterized by strong export expansion of selected food products such as vegetables and fruits aquatic products etc the economic rationale behind the pattern is examined through a comparison of relative costs among alternative food products in china the policy implications of the study are discussed

technological change rediscovering the engine of productivity growth in china s rural economy abstract this paper focuses on measuring the relative importance of the role of technology versus that of institutional innovation in china s rural economy a six equation rice sector model explaining provincial level technology adoption yield and factor demand are econometrically estimated using data from china s 13 rice growing provinces for the period 1975 1990 growth decomposition analysis identifies technology adoption as the most important determinant of rice yield growth during 1978 1984 accounting for nearly 40 percent the change institutional reform accounted for 35 percent of the growth in 1985 1990 technology accounts for all of the increase in rice yields the study demonstrates earlier studies may have over estimated the impact of decollectivization

renewable micro generation of heat and electricity review on common and missing socio technical configurations abstract a widespread adoption of distributed generation dg technologies in energy systems can play a key role in creating clean reliable energy and support the targets of emission reduction a transition from current modes of production to a significant deployment of renewable energy technologies can fundamentally affect the structure of the industry and change the way energy is produced transmitted and sold the current paper provides an extended review of the socio technical configurations of micro generation based on journal publications and reports during the 21st century the paper analyses currently existing and missing configurations and discusses technology and policy implications to support proliferation of micro generation technology and local energy production from renewable sources the potential for new configurations can be found particularly in heat producing micro generation with solar heat heat pumps and biomass developing further the operations and maintenance of distributed generation technologies and business models appears an area that calls for further innovation and corresponding innovation policy measures third party service and community driven deployment models can aide the proliferation of distributed generation and further innovation therein justifying the introduction of feed in tariffs to attract such models during their early diffusion

exploring futures for amazonia s sierra del divisor an environmental valuation triadics approach to analyzing ecological economic decision choices in the context of major shifts in boundary conditions abstract this text presents a new methodological approach to ecological economic analysis employing georgescu roegen s flow fund theory of economic process it offers an alternative to monetary valuation based analyses and aims to contribute toward advancing work concerned with addressing complex ecological economic questions as complete wholes the methodology is demonstrated through reference to the empirical case of a proposed rail link between peru and brazil which would cut across the sierra del divisor of western amazonia connecting the pacific and atlantic coasts and further opening up the amazon commodity frontier in order to analyze the potential impacts of the rail link four flow fund representations of economic process two at the regional and two at the local level are developed in order to juxtapose two alternative political economy contexts that might govern the rail link s impacts in the region one where conservation is prioritized over cash income and one where it is not our results suggest that completion of the rail link under the current political economy context which prioritizes cash income over conservation is likely to have substantial negative consequences for forest conservation in both peru and brazil and for local livelihoods throughout the region

the management of irrigation systems how to evoke trust and avoid prisoner s dilemma abstract the performance of canal irrigation systems depends partly on trust by farmers in the good faith and abilities of irrigation officials in india this trust is typically lacking there is instead a prisoners dilemma type syndrome of anarchy under the canals in which farmers lack the confidence that if they refrain from taking water out of turn they will get water on time and officials lack the confidence that if they work conscientiously to deliver the water on time farmers will refrain from rule breaking in east asia this syndrome of irrigation anarchy scarcely exists the reasons for the difference are partly to do with agro climatic conditions but they are also related to policy relevant variables of physical design and organizational arrangements within the constraints of agro climatic conditions features of east asian design and organization might usefully be transferred to indian conditions including break point reservoirs irrigation scheduling and monitoring separation of construction organization from operations and maintenance organization and catchment based operating agencies with their own revenue base

geographies of energy transition space place and the low carbon economy this paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity the paper draws on a seminar series on the geographies of energy transition security climate governance hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011 which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography focussing on the uk government s policy for a low carbon transition the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy six concepts are introduced and explained location landscape territoriality spatial differentiation scaling and spatial embeddedness examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent and contending potential geographical futures are in play more attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low carbon economy will be like it also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available

grassroots based rural development strategies ecuador in comparative perspective abstract international donors are providing increasing amounts of assistance to grassroots based economic initiatives in latin america and elsewhere the question is can such initiatives prosper and generate widespread improvements in living standards in the context of the prevailing neoliberal economic policy agenda the paper responds to this question from comparative latin american and east asian perspectives by analyzing how economic diversification and improved living standards were achieved in two rural parishes in highland ecuador we find that in both cases access to landownership and other assets was a critical factor in permitting small scale producers to participate in market exchange in a manner that allowed them to improve their living standards hence to the extent that neoliberal policies freeze into place the highly inequitable overall structure of asset and income distribution in ecuador and elsewhere such policies inhibit the widespread replication of the two successful cases

china s food economy to the twenty first century supply demand and trade this paper accounts for the structural changes now taking place in china and suggests that china is not likely to become either an enormous importer or exporter of grain ultimately though china s grain balances will depend on decisions made by chinese policymakers rather than natural resource constraints p v this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

clarifying the epistemology of corporate sustainability abstract business research is placing increasing focus on the relationship between the natural environment and the political concept of sustainable development within this nexus one area labelled corporate sustainability emphasizes the interactions between economic environmental and social values the need to consider multiple values has contributed to a blur in the conceptual landscape this is partly due to the fact that authors often address epistemological challenges on an implicit level moreover hidden ideologies e g the profit maximization paradigm can explain the conceptual obscurity the contribution of this article is twofold firstly a conceptual framework is developed based on the dichotomy of positivism and constructivism a relation is established between these epistemological positions and the analytic treatment of environmental and social values the framework can be applied to increase transparency on epistemological challenges and thereby strengthening construct validity in the field secondly an analysis of the most influential literature from the last 50 years shows that there is a trend of clustering theoretical positions and value constructs without any critical awareness of their philosophical assumptions the authors hope that acknowledgement of a multi paradigmatic approach can help to clarify the epistemology of the research area by establishing pluralism as an explicit position

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

on the complexities of china s wto accession what are the reasons for and significance of not including china in the wto after recalling why the world has a wto and what membership involves this paper then examines why china wishes to join and the stumbling blocks that have caused the delay in china s wto accession a summary of some recent empirical estimates of the likely orders of magnitude of the economic effects of its accession both to china and to the rest of the world highlight the folly of delaying membership the stumbling blocks concern whether china should be granted developing country status in the wto whether china would be a fair competitor given the dominance of state owned enterprises in that economy still what the extent and conditions of market access into china would be and whether china can deliver on its promise of stricter enforcement of intellectual property rights actions needed by china for getting over those stumbling blocks include building a stronger and broader domestic consensus based on the net benefits from wto membership providing greater trade policy transparency and market access and working towards a compromise on the issue of china s developing country status in the wto

feeding and fueling china in the 21st century abstract this paper addresses the questions to what extent will china become a significant net importer of food and fuel in the foreseeable future and what will be the impact of that import demand growth on international markets it first summarizes what standard trade and development economics and the experiences of other asian economies suggest we should expect of china and then examines china s experience to date before turning to some forecasts for the next decade or so our review suggests that before long china will become a significant net importer of both food and fuels especially petroleum contrary to chinese fears however becoming more interdependent with the rest of the world need not be threatening and it may even offer more supply security for china in the long run

the economic costs of food self sufficiency in china abstract despite the surge in agricultural output since the late 1970s a comparison of china s resource endowments with those of its trading partners suggests that with continued rapid income growth food imports will again expand unless relative domestic prices are raised quantitative analysis of price policies which would achieve self sufficiency in the 1990s indicates net economic costs ranging between 2 3 of gnp annually these results are however particularly sensitive to the relatively undocumented changes taking place in the dependence of china s rapidly growing livestock sector on feed grains

lobbying incentives and the pattern of protection in rich and poor countries in seeking to explain why poor countries tend to choose policies that tax agriculture relative to manufacturing while rich countries do the opposite archetypical parameters for a poor agrarian economy and a rich industrial one are inserted in a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the medium term effects on income distribution of policies that distort the relative prices of tradables the model includes a non tradables sector and intermediate inputs realistic features that ensure even greater skewness in the distributional effects of protection than simpler models suggest the magnitude of the results helps explain the tendency for countries to change gradually from taxing to subsidizing agriculture relative to manufacturing as their economies develop the paper draws out the implications of the analysis for agricultural and trade policy reform in the 1990s this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

growth in china s grain production 1978 1997 a disaggregate analysis abstract this paper analyzes china s grain production during 1978 97 using disaggregate approach to explore disparities in growth patterns of respective crops the study reveals that during this period almost all the increased output can be attributed to the growth of rice wheat and corn the contribution of other crops as a whole was almost negligible the disparities in growth patterns were partly the result of crop adjustments induced by changes in food demand and dominated by substitutions of high yield crops for low yield crops in this process the adoption of new technologies played an important role varying opportunity costs of grain production in different areas also affected growth patterns of respective crops the trend in china s grain production in the past two decades suggests that the adherence to grain self sufficiency has become not only increasingly costly but also unnecessary

trends in china s regional grain production and their implications abstract the paper examines the growth of china s regional grain production during the reform period impacts of regional trends on china s interregional grain transfers and international trade are tackled it finds that there are significant variations between regions in terms of magnitudes and patterns of growth northern regions experienced a faster growth than southern regions there is a tendency to shift grain production centres towards north leading to a modification of crop composition in total national output a reversal of the prevailing direction of interregional transfers and a change in contents of grain flows the study argues that this shift is an inevitable result of the uneven progress of reforms and economic development and consequently the varying opportunity costs of grain production in different regions the analysis suggests that for china as a whole further growth of grain output has been impeded by the lack of new technologies and increasingly high opportunity costs of grain production in the northeast region where the potential for increasing maize output is relatively high production has been constrained by the shortage of transport and storage facilities as well as policy obstacles the study concludes that there is a necessity for china to decentralize its grain international trade in doing so the imports of grain in the south will increase and so will the exports of maize in the north

how should china feed itself since the publication of brown s book enormous interest in the issue has been generated among policymakers and scholars around the world this surge in interest coincided with the sharp rises in world food prices in the year to june 1996 following on from harvest shortfalls in several grain producing regions around the world with the slowing of grain output growth since the mid 1980s chinese policymakers have been particularly concerned about food security brown s dire prediction has aggravated their concern

economic structure and the politics of sectoral bias east asian and other cases governments of poor countries generally practise urban biased policies that penalise the agricultural sector to the advantage of non agriculture conversely governments of rich countries generally practise rural bias as south korea and taiwan have become relatively wealthy over recent decades they have also shifted from urban biased to rural biased policies adherents of the rational choice approach to political analysis claim to provide an explanation of the causes of this pattern this explanation is based on changing patterns of political interests and coalition forming possibilities induced by the changes in economic structure characteristically associated with economic growth an evaluation of this claim in the light of the south korean and taiwanese cases suggests that a it has considerable validity although its explanatory power is easily exaggerated b a satisfactory rational choice approach would encompass a wider range of political actors than has been incorporated in existing analy

domestic micro generation economic regulatory and policy issues for the uk abstract micro generation in individual homes has been the subject of increasing policy and industry attention in recent years whilst it has been estimated that micro generation could meet 30 40 of uk electricity demand by 2050 deployment to date has been slow in its micro generation strategy the uk government has started to outline how deployment could be increased various technical economic behavioural and institutional changes are needed to establish a uk market for micro generation this article discusses how different deployment models for domestic micro generation might attract investments in these technologies it considers not only investments by individual households but also by energy companies starting from an economic analysis of payback times for three different technologies micro chp micro wind and solar pv it identifies policy and regulatory recommendations it argues for technology specific support policies in the short term it also suggests that a level playing field for micro generation technologies as a result of fiscal and market reforms could considerably increase the attractiveness of micro generation technologies

trust in a rent seeking world health and government transformed in northeast brazil abstract this article draws lessons from a set of innovative programs carried out by a state government in brazil now widely acclaimed for excellence in public management key to the high performance was strong worker commitment to the job and what the state did to elicit a topic of little note in the development literature but of central importance in the literature of industrial performance and workplace transformation in the industrialized countries the state created an unusual sense of calling among the program s workers new prestige in the communities where they worked and an informed citizenry that both monitored the workers and trusted them

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

institutional influences on business model choice by new ventures in the microgenerated energy industry abstract business model choice plays an important source of competitive advantage for new ventures in the microgeneration sector yet existing literature focuses on strategic management of internal resources as the constraints in this choice process in the energy sector external factors may be at least as influential in shaping these business models this paper examines the roles of politico institutional and socio institutional dynamics in the choice of business models for microgeneration ventures business models have traditionally been viewed as constructions of the internal values strategies and resources of organizations but this perspective overlooks the role that external forces have on these models particularly in more highly institutionalized contexts like microgeneration when these factors are introduced into the existing framework for business model choice the business model based less on firm decision making and more about variables that exist within national innovation systems and political structure local socio technological conditions and cognitive abilities of the entrepreneur and corresponding stakeholders

trade policy biotechnology and grain self sufficiency in china abstract over the past 20 years the growth of china s agricultural economy has been extraordinary however it seems unlikely that china will maintain self sufficiency in grains by 2005 without substantial intervention we develop a cge model to assess the options available to chinese policy makers we compare the welfare effects of import tariffs and domestic support and explore the potential of biotechnology as a means to achieve self sufficiency through improvements in agricultural productivity our results indicate that the price interventions that would be required to maintain china s desired self sufficiency ratios are considerable and are unlikely to be compatible with wto accession the productivity improvements required are also significant and likely beyond the current potential of biotechnology

a conceptual framework for community based health insurance in low income countries social capital and economic development summary the international policy model linking community based health insurance cbhi and universal coverage for health care in low income countries is implicitly determined by the development of mutual health insurance in 19th century europe and japan the economic and health system frameworks employed in cbhi policy have not sufficiently taken into account contextual considerations social capital theories could contribute to understanding why generally cbhi does not achieve significant and sustainable levels of population coverage a framework of social capital and economic development is used to organize and interpret existing evidence on cbhi this suggests that solidarity trust extra community networks vertical civil society links and state society relations affect the success of cbhi aligning schemes to social determinants of cbhi could result in structures that differ from those proposed by current analytic frameworks

sustainability guided promotion of renewable electricity generation in recent years the threat of global climate change high fuel import dependence and rapidly rising electricity demand levels have intensified the quest for more sustainable energy systems this in turn has increased the need for policy makers to promote electricity generation from renewable energy sources guaranteed prices coupled with a buy back obligation for electricity fed into the grid is a popular renewables promotion instrument especially in europe more recently driven mainly by electricity market liberalisation efforts quota targets for the share of renewables in combination with tradable green certificates tgc have received considerable attention tgc offer a greater theoretical potential for economic efficiency gains due to price competition and the greater flexibility assigned to the obliged parties while guaranteed prices and tgc schemes support the operation of renewable energy technology systems bidding schemes for renewable energy generation capacity are used to raise economic efficiency on the plant construction side all of these policy instruments suffer from the shortcoming that they do not explicitly account for the often widely varying environmental social and economic impacts of the technologies concerned in this paper we propose a methodology for the design of renewable energy policy instruments that is based on integrated assessment in particular we argue that using participatory multicriteria evaluation as part of the design of renewable energy promotion policies would make it possible 1 to differentiate the level of promotion in a systematic and transparent manner according to their socio ecological economic impact and 2 to explicitly account for the preferences of stakeholders a further problem of existing tgc and bidding schemes is that diversity of supply could be severely diminished if few low cost technologies were allowed to dominate the renewable energy market to ensure a certain diversity of technologies our scheme suggests the use of different technology bands for technologies that are relatively homogeneous with respect to their maturity

primary commodity prices manufactured goods prices and the terms of trade of developing countries what the long run shows the authors revisit in this article the empirical foundation of the alleged secular decline in the prices of primary commodities relative to those of manufactures they use a newly constructed index of commodity prices and two modified indexes of manufactured good prices and find that from 1900 to 1986 the relative prices of all primary commodities fell on trend by 0 5 percent a year and those of nonfuel primary commodities by 0 6 percent a year they thus confirm the sign but not the magnitude of the trend implicit in the work of prebisch but even the more limited secular decline shown by their relative price indexes may be magnified by an incomplete account of quality improvements in manufactures they then show that the evolution of terms of trade of nonfuel primary commodities is not the same as that of the net barter terms of trade of non oil exporting developing countries finally they find that despite the decline that has probably occurred during the current century in the terms of trade of nonfuel primary commodities the purchasing power of total exports of these products has increased considerably similarly the fall that may have occurred after world war ii in the net barter terms of trade of developing countries seems to have been more than compensated for by the steady improvement in their income terms of trade

agricultural incentives in developing countries measuring the effect of sectoral and economywide policies the impact of sector specific direct and economywide indirect policies on agricultural incentives for 18 developing countries for the period 1975 84 are estimated the direct effect is measured by the proportional difference between the producer price and the border price adjusting for distribution storage transport and other marketing costs the indirect effect has two components 1 the impact of the unsustainable portion of the current account deficit and of industrial protection policies on the real exchange rate and thus on the price of agricultural commodities relative to nonagricultural nontradables and 2 the impact of industrial protection policies on the relative price of agricultural commodities to that of nonagricultural tradable goods the authors found that a in almost all cases the direct effect is equivalent to a tax on exportable goods and to a subsidy for importables b the indirect effect also taxes agriculture and dominates the direct effect and c the direct policies for both importables and exportables stabilize domestic producer prices

the patchy spread of renewables a socio territorial perspective on the energy transition process abstract in the energy transition process the district heating networks and the wind power facilities play a key role these two technologies can contribute to establish models of co provision involving new social actors in the energy field despite that the socio organizational change appears patchy in italy these options are dominated by large utilities and the few forms of energy co production are to be found in specific contexts the influence of socio territorial features on the energy transition seem relevant this paper aims analysing energy transition while focusing on the institutional relational and territorial dimensions to unfold how energy innovations take place within territorial contexts in this respect energy transition is investigated considering both the district heating and the wind power in italy the analysis suggests that the transition is influenced by the way in which territorial context is destabilized by the perturbations of energy landscape

the fruits and fallacies of neoliberalism the case of irrigation policy abstract neoliberal doctrine provides the analytic basis for a convincing explanation and critique of irrigation policy in the third world there is a strong case for subjecting capital and recurrent decisions to the discipline of scarcity pricing however it is rarely practicable to apply scarcity pricing rigorously because of the economic and technical infeasibility of volumetric water pricing in most third world irrigation schemes the taiwanese experience illustrates that political and institutional mechanisms for promoting managerial performance can be effective where the neoliberal prescription fails

co provision in sustainable energy systems the case of micro generation electricity generation by individual households known as micro generation is attracting an increasing amount of interest within government industry and the research community this paper focuses on the potential for micro generation to contribute to a more active role for household energy consumers in the development and operation of the energy system the paper applies the concept of energy service co provision to aid an understanding of this more active role it considers a number of alternative models for micro generation investment that imply different kinds of co provision by consumers and energy companies the analysis focuses in particular on the economics of these models in the uk the associated barriers to micro generation investment and the scope for overcoming these barriers through changes in fiscal rules having conducted this economic analysis the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the wider implications of these models for consumer behaviour in particular it considers the impact of it and control systems that might be employed to facilitate energy service co provision that includes micro generation

structured pluralism in ecological economics a reply to peter soderbaum s commentary abstract peter soderbaum argues in his commentary concerning my article on sustainability economics remig 2015 for more open and radical ecological economics i agree with that statement however i reject soderbaum s interpretation that my arguments foster mainstreamed ecological economics or dictatorship in my critique of sustainability economics i raised several issues that have remained unspecified and that potentially lead to unsustainable development patterns once put into practice soderbaum does not reply to these conceptual challenges of sustainability economics in this commentary i argue that structured pluralism dow 2004 is a constituent element of ecological economics i welcome peter soderbaum s proposal for a discussion about the definition of economics and suggest to rely on ronald coase s proposal to define economics as a science that studies the working of the economic system i conclude that sustainability economics in its current form is closer to neoclassical than ecological economics

varieties of ecological economics do we need a more open and radical version of ecological economics abstract should we aim at one single economics paradigm for all purposes or is it wise to accept the existence of more than one theoretical perspective is one ecological economics perspective enough or should we encourage competing paradigms as part of a pluralist perspective moritz remig expresses his preference for mainstreaming ecological economics in the january 2015 issue of ecological economics suggesting that alternative perspectives and alternative terminologies such as sustainability economics lead to confusion in this reply i am arguing that there is no value free or value neutral ecological economics and that therefore limiting economics or ecological economics to one paradigm is not compatible with democracy we have to live with some complexity when dealing with sustainability issues and should not avoid issues of paradigm ideology and political economic system

hybrid rice innovation in china a study of market demand induced technological innovation in a centrally planned economy this paper uses the innovation of hybrid rice in china as a case study to test the validity of the griliches schmookler hypothesis of market demand induced technological innovation in a centrally planned economy the empirical evidence indicates that the size of rice acreage in a province is the major factor in determining the amount of resource allocation for rice research and the adoption intensity of hybrid rice in that province this evidence is consistent with the implication of the griliches schmookler hypothesis copyright 1992 by mit press

women s participation in local organizations conditions and constraints abstract civic organizations have a capacity to contribute to economic growth and an equitable distribution of welfare by reducing information asymmetries and transaction costs while donors increasingly recognize that group based projects are a means to advocate organizational capacities of target groups it is not clear whether group based organizations always increase efficiency and equity this article analyses the determinants of participation in local development groups ldgs using data from two projects funded by undp in kashmir and gtz in chad a major result of the empirical analysis is the identification of a middle class effect of participation the exclusion of the majority of the poor can be explained by high opportunity costs to join the group especially for income earning women in addition it can be shown that an existing social network is a pre condition for participation finally the assumption has been confirmed that bargaining power of the members is important for their decision to participate in groups

unraveling the veil of fuzziness a thick description of sustainability economics this article provides a thick description geertz 1973 of sustainability economics baumgartner and quaas 2010a b have proposed as an alternative to ecological economics the new field of sustainability economics which has triggered various replies the purpose here is to order and to review these contributions building upon a literature review of sustainability economics the paper argues that the concept currently has more of a fuzzy and declamatory character the rhetoric mccloskey 1998 of sustainability economics contains general issues of sustainability economics externalities and the capability approach the article argues that it is currently not clear how the solutions for science and policy proposed by sustainability economics differ from those of ecological economics efforts should be directed towards further development of the theory and the operationalization of sustainability principles the systemic view of co evolutionary development social learning and sustainability economics normative underpinning merits more consideration in the debate about sustainability economics

the political economy of coal subsidies in europe abstract both the mining and the burning of coal is polluting so we might expect to observe taxes on coal production and consumption yet several countries of western europe subsidize coal production and most east european countries subsidize coal consumption the first part of this paper shows that those subsidies which are emulated by other rich and poor countries respectively have become enormous neoclassical political economy is used to examine why governments adopt such inappropriate policies when they are so wasteful of resources and damaging to the environment several new and offsetting political forces have been at work in western europe in recent years though causing some countries to dismantle their coal producer subsidies the paper concludes that these pressures for reform will continue to operate in the few remaining protectionist countries if coupled with more commercial diplomatic pressure from coal exporting countries they could be sufficient to see the end of such protection by early next century