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

sustainable de growth mapping the context criticisms and future prospects of an emergent paradigm article i nfo sustainable de growth is both a concept and a social grassroots northern movement with its origins in the fieldsofecologicaleconomics socialecology economicanthropologyand environmentalandsocialactivistgroups this paper introduces the concept of sustainable de growth by mapping some of the main intellectual influences fromthese fields with special focus on the francophone and anglophone thinking about this emergent notion we propose hypotheses pertaining to the appeal of sustainable de growth and compare it to the messages enclosed within the dominant sustainable development idea we scrutinize the theses contradictions and consequences of sustainable de growth thinking as it is currently being shaped by a heterogeneous body of literature and as it interacts with an ample and growing corpus of social movements we also discuss possible future paths for the de growth movement compared to the apparent weakening of the sustainable development paradigm

complementarities in the search for innovation managing markets and relationships abstract extant research has characterized a firm s search for external knowledge in its innovation activities as either relational or transactional in nature the former implies that a firm chooses and develops collaborative relationships with knowledge sources like universities customers or suppliers while the latter suggests transactions governed by markets for technology we argue that prior literature has ignored that both search strategies are interrelated and complementary adopting one strategy has a higher marginal return on innovation performance if the other one is present moreover we suggest the benefits from complementarity to be higher when a firm is more distant to the technological frontier in the industry and when markets for technology in that industry are shallow we test our hypotheses on a sample of 3921 german firms from 2001 to 2009 and find support for our hypotheses

shifting priorities in degrowth research an argument for the centrality of human needs we present an argument for the deprioritization of subjective well being and a prioritization of human needs within degrowth research first we discuss empirical evidence methodological problems and theoretical shortcomings of subjective well being concepts while data for one country over time suggest a flattening of the happiness curve relative to gdp growth cross country comparisons reveal that the richest and most environmentally unsustainable countries are also the happiest methodologically we point to the issue of adaptability a limitation in the use of positional goods is unlikely to be accompanied by short term increases in subjective well being theoretically we question happiness where it helps promote growth and disguise structural relationships of inequality secondly we sketch out an alternative degrowth research agenda oriented at the satisfaction of human needs here doyal and gough s theory of human needs is especially useful due to its systematic account of environmental limits and the policy auditing approach that follows from it finally we illustrate such a needs based research agenda at the example of food by reviewing recent research on the environmental impacts of different diets and kinds of food production and on how these forms compare in terms of scale and land use

economic growth and greenhouse gases in europe a non radial multi sector nonparametric production frontier analysis abstract energy use has become a topical issue when assessing the economic growth of countries indeed energy use gives rise to greenhouse gas emissions which are undesirable side products of economic growth in this paper we present a non radial multi sector nonparametric production frontier approach specially tailored for addressing this issue our approach is consistent with previous works and in line with recent policy and regulation implementations we also make use of second stage country and sector level regression analyses to investigate how the efficiency results are affected by exogenous factors we apply our method to the case of 10 sectors in 19 european countries our results highlight the need for policy and regulation implementations for each sector individually indeed our efficiency and regression results show that there exists a sector heterogeneity and that the room for increasing economic growth reducing greenhouse gas emissions is clearly different for each sector in every country finally our results highlight two sectors 1 agriculture and 2 electricity gas and water and that the europe 2020 objectives are well set since they target the most inefficient countries sectors

one market one number a composite indicator assessment of eu internal market dynamics we consider the lack of consensus about an appropriate theoretical framework linking sub indicators as a defining characteristic of composite indicators this intrinsic feature implies uncertainties about the appropriate normalization and aggregation of the raw data the two are related index theory offers some valuable guidelines about their connection yet these do not fully solve the basic problem of expert disagreement we embed such residual disagreement in the aggregation method itself specifically we apply an impartial benefit of the doubt weighting procedure where weight restrictions incorporate the available information on experts opinions we apply this procedure to the dynamic performance assessment of eu internal market effects thereby highlighting its capacity to disaggregate member states observed performance shifts into changes relative to benchmarks and performance changes of the benchmarks i e catching up versus genuine progress our results indicate that the latter factor is more important in explaining the observed progress

multinational operation ownership and efficiency differences in the international oil industry abstract although state involvement in market systems often leads to inefficiency this influence in the oil industry is not dwindling due to strong growth of some state oil companies based on this background there are concerns about how state firms can continue to stay relevant in the international oil industry by offsetting inefficiencies due to state control this study assesses the effects of multinational operations on the performance of oil firms this is achieved by comparing productive and scale efficiencies of state and private oil companies as well as state multinationals and private multinationals a dataset of 50 firms each year from 2001 to 2010 reveals that although multinational operation is important in reducing productive inefficiencies of state firms it does not mitigate scale inefficiencies of state owned firms state firms should therefore make multinational operations a key policy direction since this will provide a transformative agenda towards equally competing with their private counterparts however better efforts need to be paid in reducing scale inefficiencies that are pervasive among state owned oil firms providing better controls on firm size will provide better drive towards future efficient production levels

changing energy intensity of economies in the world and its decomposition abstract this paper decomposes energy intensity change across countries into five components attributable to technological catch up technological progress and changes in capital energy ratio labor energy ratio and output structure it is found that 1 technological progress capital accumulation and output structure change contributed to the decline of energy intensity from 1980 to 2010 2 changes in labor energy ratio drove up energy intensity and 3 spatial and temporal heterogeneity existed regarding relative importance of the five components

ceo compensation and bank efficiency an application of conditional nonparametric frontiers the paper investigates in a dynamic context the effect of chief executive officer ceo bonus and salary payments on banks technical efficiency levels our methodological framework incorporates the latest developments on the probabilistic approach of efficiency measurement as introduced by b din et al 2012 we apply time dependent conditional efficiency estimates to analyse a sample of 37 us banks for the period from 2003 to 2012 the empirical evidence reveals a non linear relationship between ceo bonus and salary payments and banks efficiency levels more specifically it is reported that salary and bonus payments affect differently banks technological change and technological catch up levels finally the empirical evidence suggests that higher salary and bonus payments are not always aligned with higher technical efficiency levels

growth of factor productivity in the turkish manufacturing industry at provincial level karadag m onder a o and deliktas e 2005 growth of factor productivity in the turkish manufacturing industry at provincial level regional studies 39 213 223 this paper estimates the total factor productivity tfp change of the private and public sectors in the turkish manufacturing industry in the selected provinces for 1990 98 it uses data envelopment analysis to compute malmquist productivity indices decomposed into two components namely efficiency change and technical change the results show that many of the provinces show improvement in tfp on average for the public sector while in the private sector only half the provinces show growth in tfp overall evidence of catching up can be observed only in the private sector the results also reveal that technical progress plays the main role in productivity growth

measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy article i nfo in order to determine whether degrowth is occurring or how close national economies are to the concept of a steady state economy clear indicators are required within this paper i analyse four indicator approaches that could be used 1 gross domestic product 2 the index of sustainable economic welfare 3 biophysical and social indicators and 4 a composite indicator i conclude that separate biophysical and social indicators represent the best approach but a unifying conceptual framework is required to choose appropriate indicators and interpret the relationships between them i propose a framework based on ends and means and a set of biophysical and social indicators within this framework the biophysical indicators are derived from herman daly s definition of a steady state economy and measure the major stocks and flows in the economy environment system the social indicators are based on the stated goals of the degrowth

understanding solow residuals in latin america despite some improvements in recent years long term economic growth in latin america and the caribbean lac has been rather disappointing over the past decades since 1960 gaps in the gdp per capita of lac countries with respect to not only the united states but also their peers twin economies have widened steadily see table 1 while the typical latin american country1 was around 4 4 times poorer than the united states in 1960 as of 2008 it was 5 5 times poorer the comparison with twin economies countries that in 1960 had a gdp per capita comparable to that in latin america2 is even more remarkable the average lac economy was just 20 percent poorer than its typical twin economy in 1960 in 2008 gdp per capita in latin america was less than half that in the twin economies this persistent decline in relative gdp per capita has been common to all countries in the region with some exceptions of the nineteen lac econo mies in my sample five managed to grow faster than the united states during the 1960 2008 period brazil chile colombia the dominican republic and panama however progress has been quantitatively modest for example if benchmarked to twin economies only the dominican republic and panama managed to grow faster over the same period furthermore in several cases for example brazil progress was made mainly during the 1960s and 1970s with growth being subpar from the debt crisis in the early 1980s onward while the 2000s have been good years in terms of relative growth performance for the region it will still take around 27 years to cut by 50 percent the gdp per capita gap with respect to the united states if the growth differential during 2000 08 of around 1 5 percent per year is to be maintained with respect to the twin economies it will take around 108 years therefore low potential growth continues to be a significant challenge for the region this paper contributes to the understanding of what drives this poor per formance by using new databases and analytical tools to explore the relative importance of productivity and factor accumulation across lac countries with regard to analytical tools the paper provides new evidence from three viewpoints first i perform a careful analysis of different ways of decom posing gdp per capita levels into physical capital human capital and a residual the solow residual often interpreted as a measure of total fac tor productivity tfp representing aggregate economic efficiency but also often viewed as a measure of our ignorance under different assumptions regarding the production function and measurement second i present non parametric estimations of efficiency based on a data envelope analysis that does not rely on the traditionally used cobb douglas production function instead it recognizes that the relevant production possibilities frontier may be a function of factor endowments and thus differ across countries with regard to new data sets this paper uses three newly available sources first in contrast to previous studies focusing on latin america it uses the new version of the barro and lee 2010 data set on educational attainment which addresses several concerns on data quality that arose over the previous ver sion see cohen and soto 2007 as well as de la fuente and domenech 2006 second i also use the latest version of the penn world tables version 7 0 extending the analysis until 2008 doing so allows me to cover the 2000s a decade that has been quite successful for the region in terms of economic growth compared with its past third i use the pisa 2009 test scores from the organization for economic cooperation and development oecd to analyze the importance of cognitive skills and adjust human capital indicators for differences in quality the paper focuses on the decomposition of gdp per worker into physical capital human capital and the solow residual through the use of alternative methods as policy recommendations might differ substantially according to the source of income disparities in particular if policymakers have to estab lish priorities and have limited political capital to implement reforms

decomposition of the effect of government size on growth empirical results through a fixed effects regression model show that government size has a negative effect on growth mainly through hampering capital accumulation when a sample is divided into oecd and non oecd countries the negative effect of government size on capital accumulation persists for non oecd countries but not for oecd countries

is corruption grease grit or a gamble corruption increases variance of productivity across countries the effect of corruption on economic growth has attracted interest in empirical development economics the conventional view of corruption as impediment for growth has been challenged by the grease on the wheels hypothesis we take a new perspective on the issue and suggest corruption as macro risk referred to as a gamble hypothesis using cross country data and two alternative indicators of corruption we find corruption to be a significant driver of heteroscedasticity in total productivity this supports the new gamble hypothesis we also note some misleading interpretations in the previously published frontier applications to avoid these shortcomings we apply a flexible semi nonparametric estimator

environment versus growth a criticism of degrowth and a plea for a growth in recent debates on environmental problems and policies the strategy of degrowth has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth this new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it one conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept another is that degrowth may not be an effective let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure it is subsequently argued that a growth i e being indifferent about growth is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth given that gdp per capita is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare in addition focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic political support than an ex ante explicit degrowth strategy in line with this a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters

how ambitious are china and india s emissions intensity targets abstract several developing economies have announced carbon emissions targets for 2020 as part of the negotiating process for a post kyoto climate policy regime china and india s commitments are framed as reductions in the emissions intensity of the economy by 40 45 and 20 25 respectively between 2005 and 2020 how feasible are the proposed reductions in emissions intensity for china and india and how do they compare with the targeted reductions in the us and the eu in this paper we use a stochastic frontier model of energy intensity to decompose energy intensity into the effects of input and output mix climate and a residual technology variable we use the model to produce emissions projections for china and india under a number of scenarios regarding the pace of technological change and changes in the share of non fossil energy we find that china is likely to need to adopt ambitious carbon mitigation policies in order to achieve its stated target and that its targeted reductions in emissions intensity are on par with those implicit in the us and eu targets india s target is less ambitious and might be met with only limited or even no dedicated mitigation policies

productivity across industries and countries time series theory and evidence the authors examine whether convergence in aggregate productivity is also occurring at the industry level in fourteen oecd countries from 1970 to 1987 using both cross section and time series methods they find convergence in some sectors such as services however surprisingly the authors find that convergence does not hold for the manufacturing sector decomposing aggregate convergence into industry productivity gains and changing sectoral shares of output they find the service sector to be responsible for the bulk of cross country convergence to the united states the authors develop a new result on the asymptotic normality of panel unit root estimators to formally test within sector convergence copyright 1996 by mit press

from lotka s biophysics to georgescu roegen s bioeconomics abstract alfred lotka was one of the founders of modern ecology this paper explores lotka s contribution to biophysical economics resulting from the marriage of the three disciplines biology physics and economics lotka founded the concept of exosomatic evolution to characterise the economic activities in their biophysical environment as a continuation of biological processes like vernadsky he adopted a holistic perspective of planet system the biosphere georgescu roegen was one of the founders of ecological economics he explained the entropic nature of evolution and adopted lotka s exosomatic evolution concept in his bioeconomic approach georgescu roegen had several warnings for economists about the irrevocability of the entropic degradation of matter energy and the pressure on natural resources that goes hand in hand with economic processes in general this article aims at drawing a parallel between lotka s contribution and georgescu roegen s bioeconomics by shedding light not only on their similarities but also on the divergences that testify the novelty of georgescu roegen s approach

value added educational accountability approaches and their effects on schools rankings evidence from chile abstract value added models have been proposed to analyze different aspects related to school effectiveness on the basis of student growth there is consensus in the literature about the need to control for socioeconomic status and other contextual variables at student and school level in the estimation of value added for which the methodologies employed have largely relied on hierarchical linear models however this approach is problematic because results are based on comparisons to the school s average implying no real incentive for performance excellence meanwhile activity analysis models to estimate school value added have been unable to control for contextual variables at both the student and school levels in this study we propose a robust frontier model to estimate contextual value added which merges relevant branches of the activity analysis literature namely metafrontiers and partial frontier methods we provide an application to a large sample of chilean schools a relevant country to study due to the reforms made to its educational system that point out to the need of accountability measures results indicate not only the general relevance of including contextual variables but also how they contribute to explaining the performance differentials found for the three types of schools public privately owned subsidized and privately owned fee paying also the results indicate that contextual value added models generate school rankings more consistent with the evaluation models currently used in chile than any other type of evaluation models

trophically balanced sustainable agriculture considering an economy without fossil fuels literally built from the ground then up we developed several interactive research models of biointensive farms that use no fossil fuels quantifying and summarizing total human labor energy input and total caloric energy output we demonstrate that a successfully designed farm can produce a positive energy return on investment eroi leaving excess caloric energy available for building economic community structures e g schools and hospitals farm products with negative eroi must be coupled with other products with positive eroi to assure nutritionally balanced diets are maintained while still achieving an overall positive eroi for the total agroecological operation we show that similar to the ecosystem energy budgets are tight which makes for difficult decisions on diet farm plot diversity and energy profitability for future growth considering the totality of this low energy agro system based economy we simplify many operational variables into a unique graphical solution space which reveals both reasonable expectations of agroecological eroi performance and extreme asymptotes beyond which indicate regions of system failure

technological change technological catch up and capital deepening relative contributions to growth and convergence we decompose labor productivity growth into components attributable to 1 technological change shifts in the world production frontier 2 technological catch up movements toward or away from the frontier and 3 capital accumulation movement along the frontier the world production frontier is constructed using deterministic methods requiring no specification of functional form for the technology nor any assumption about market structure or the absence of market imperfections we analyze the evolution of the cross country distribution of labor productivity in terms of the tripartite decomposition finding that technological change is decidedly nonneutral and that both growth and bipolar international divergence are driven primarily by capital deepening jel o30 o47 d24

why european banks are less profitable than u s banks a decomposition approach abstract the low profitability of european banks relative to their u s counterparts has recently raised concerns among policy makers and researchers this paper attempts to shed light on this issue by using the o donnell 2012 decomposition approach this approach enables us to decompose the relative profitability of european banks into an output input price index and a total factor productivity index with the former further decomposed into two price indexes and the latter further into four productivity and efficiency measures our results show that european banks profitability was not only weak but also deteriorated over time our further analysis shows that the decline in the output input price index was due to declines in relative lending rate and relative return on securities and an increase in funding costs while the decline in the productivity index was driven by declines in technical efficiency scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency

energy productivity convergence within the australian construction industry a panel data study abstract energy productivity reflecting the volume of goods and services with one unit consumption of energy has become an important indicator of production and competitiveness within the construction industry in order to understand the long run growth patterns of energy productivity in the australian construction industry this study investigates the convergence of the construction energy productivity across a sample of seven australian regions from 1987 to 2014 and identifies regional clubs for future effective energy consumption strategy of production using a panel data approach the study presents a picture of the impacts of the influential components on the equilibrium and growth patterns of construction energy productivity across the studied regions the findings provide a better understanding of the impact of booms and busts on the australian construction energy productivity at the state level this adds to the body of knowledge on construction productivity by adapting a panel data approach of the convergence study into construction energy productivity

public capital and total factor productivity new evidence from the italian regions 1970 98 destefanis s and sena v 2005 public capital and total factor productivity new evidence from the italian regions 1970 98 regional studies 39 603 618 this paper analyses the relationship between industrial total factor productivity and public capital across the 20 italian administrative regions it adds upon the existing literature in a number of ways it analyses a longer period 1970 98 it allows for the role of human capital accumulation it tests for the existence of a long run relationship between total factor productivity and public capital through previously suggested panel techniques and for weak exogeneity of public capital and it assesses the significance of public capital within a non parametric set up based on the free disposal hull the results confirm that public capital has a significant impact on the evolution of total factor productivity particularly in the southern regions this impact is mainly ascribed to the core infrastructures road and airports harbours railroads w

in defence of degrowth abstract this article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth a starting premise is that resource and co2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable if degrowth is inevitable the question is how it can become socially sustainable i e a prosperous and stable rather than a catastrophic descent pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required including among others policies for a basic income reduction of working hours environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising policies like these that threaten to harm the economy are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies whose basic institutions financial property political and redistributive depend on and mandate continuous economic growth an intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less

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

rank dynamics and club convergence of sustainable development for countries around the world abstract assessment of country level sustainable development is a critical research topic entrenched in the global battle against climate change this study employs the frontier approach combined with convergence analysis to assess the sustainable development for a set of 121 countries over 1990 2014 focusing on analyzing the countries rank dynamics and convergence behavior the levels of the countries sustainable development are captured by data envelopment analysis a nonparametric frontier approach that can jointly assess a country s economic and environmental performance reflecting the divergent views on the importance of economic and environmental objectives in the pursuit of sustainability the proposed approach generates the countries sustainability scores by prioritizing either economic or environmental criterion this study finds that developed countries have significantly outperformed developing countries if environmental criterion takes precedence over economic criterion in performance assessment moreover regardless of the model employed there is strong evidence of club convergence i e convergence in subgroups of countries to different steady states rather than convergence in full sample we analyze the pattern of convergence paths and discuss policy implications obtained from our empirical findings

climate change and sustainable welfare the centrality of human needs since climate change threatens human well being across the globe and into the future we require a concept of well being that encompasses an equivalent ambit this article argues that only a concept of human need can do the work required it compares need theory with three alternative approaches preference satisfaction theory is criticised on the grounds of subjectivity epistemic irrationality endogenous and adaptive preferences the limitlessness of wants the absence of moral evaluation and the non specificity of future preferences the happiness approach is found equally wanting the main section shows how these deficiencies can be addressed by a coherent theory of need human needs are necessary pre conditions to avoid serious harm and are universalisable objective empirically grounded non substitutable and satiable they are broader than material needs since a need for personal autonomy figures in all theoretical accounts whilst needs are universal need satisfiers are most often contextual and relative to institutions and cultures the satiability and non substitutability of needs is critical for understanding sustainability finally it is argued that human needs provide an indispensable foundation for many current ethical arguments for global and inter generational justice in the face of threats from climate change an appendix compares this theory with the capability approaches of sen and nussbaum and argues it to be more fundamental

not irrational but habitual the importance of behavioural lock in in energy consumption abstract a substantial body of literature has shown that our behaviour is often guided by habits the existence of habits not fully conscious forms of behaviour is important as it contradicts rational choice theory their presence thus calls for the setting of new instruments as they make it unlikely that consumers be capable of exercising control over their energy consumption in reaction to given incentives this is further increased in the evolutionary perspective where the current carbon based socio technical system constrains and shapes consumers choices through structural forces habits being potentially counterintentional they may explain the efficiency paradox in energy as well as the continued increase of energy consumption despite the rising environmental awareness among the population policies aiming at reducing energy consumption should thus specifically address the performance context of habits for instance targeting new residents has proven to be more effective given that their preceding habits have been disturbed the results of our empirical analysis confirm this idea by showing how a change of context makes people more receptive to a proposed measure our analysis of the role played by habits also suggests that individuals do not consider the need to change existing habits as an obstacle even though this is contradicted implicitly in the answers they provided to open questions this unconsciousness is one of the most delicate features of habits and it should thus be accounted for when designing measures given the other characteristics of habits the joint use of feedbacks and commitment strategies appears promising

total factor productivity differences appropriate technology vs efficiency abstract recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross country differences in income levels and growth rates this paper makes two contributions first it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to the cobb douglas specification of the production function second within the cobb douglas framework it weighs evidence of the two alternative explanations of total factor productivity differences the inefficiency view and the appropriate technology view to accomplish these tasks the world production frontier is estimated using a nonparametric deterministic approach known as data envelopment analysis i find that the fraction of income differences explained by physical and human capital increases from 32 to 55 when departing from the cobb douglas assumption there is also evidence consistent with the appropriate technology view countries with an inadequate mix of inputs are unable to access the most productive technologies moreover the world technology frontier appears to be shifting out faster at input combinations close to that of the rd it explains 43 of output variation in 1995 and its importance has increased over time

hypercongestion in production correspondences an empirical exploration this empirical contribution reviews the rather limited existing literature measuring congestion in production it first compares current ways to measure congestion using nonparametric specifications of technologies in particular it focuses on the magnitude and incidence of the congestion detected in empirical studies using traditional radial efficiency measures thereafter it shows the limitations of this radial measurement and how alternative measurement schemes may reveal higher amounts of congestion then the new more general methodology of measuring s congestion is presented in particular we first present a numerical example to illustrate the way the s disposable technologies allow to capture more extreme forms of congestion by setting empirically determined upper bounds to the wasting of inputs then an empirical illustration is presented based on an existing sample of data a final section concludes

textile manufacturing in eight developing countries does business environment matter for firm technical efficiency abstract production frontiers with technical inefficiency determinants are estimated using stochastic models for textile manufacturing in eight developing countries encompassing about 800 firms inefficiency determinants are considered either on an individual basis or in the form of composite indicators reflecting in house or managerial factors and various dimensions of the external environment although each of these two categories of factors is statistically significant the former proves more influential in the explanation of the difference in efficiency between firms simulations are then proposed to assess the efficiency levels that would occur if firms had the opportunity to produce in the most favourable productive environments

entrepreneurship and advancing national level economic efficiency we explore the channels under which entrepreneurship fosters productivity by disentangling its impact on national level economic efficiency and find that more entrepreneurship in aggregate is not always good for economic growth and most importantly identifying the form and activity of entrepreneurship is critical for policy makers to better manage changes in their economies our national level results also suggest that the new product entrepreneurship and to a lesser extent improvement driven opportunity entrepreneurship both significantly contribute to the improvement of national level efficiency however both measures would benefit from further development and it seems a higher coincidence of both is more likely to advance a nation s economic efficiency

growth and inequality are the 1990s different abstract the paper examines the empirical relationship between growth inequality it concludes that while pre 1990 the growth process was not accompanied by increases in inequality after 1990 a positive and significant correlation appears this finding survives a number of robustness checks

need entitlement and desert a distributive justice framework for consumption degrowth abstract post growth societies seek socio ecological transformations towards a just and sustainable redistribution and reduced consumption of natural capital there is no one universally just and ecologically sustainable way of fulfilling these redistribution and consumption objectives it depends on the criteria used and their underlying ethical teleology we suggest three distribution criteria borrowed from the foundations of the environmental justice ej movement need entitlement and desert by juxtaposing and problematising the needs entitlements and deserts of nature and society these criteria comprise an ethical framework for consumption degrowth praxis in communities we present arguments for how each distribution criterion fulfils the aims articulated in the degrowth corpus based on these arguments we propose seven justice based community action principles for redistribution under degrowth in our discussion of these derived principles we demonstrate that like ej degrowth seeks consequential as well as deontological justice underscoring their deep complementarity therefore our need entitlement desert framework may serve as a useful guiding frame to include ethical distribution considerations in societies pursuit of post growth futures

human capital and convergence a production frontier approach using nonparametric production frontier methods we decompose labor productivity growth into components attributable to technological change shifts in the world production frontier technological catch up movements toward or away from the frontier and physical and human capital accumulation movements along the frontier we find that 1 technological change is decidedly nonneutral 2 productivity growth is driven primarily by physical and human capital accumulation 3 the increased international dispersion of productivity is explained primarily by physical capital accumulation and 4 international polarization the shift from a unimodal to a bimodal distribution is brought about primarily by efficiency changes technological catch up

the benefit of efficiency improvement on growth and convergence a study using japan panel data abstract empirical results through a fixed effects regression model show that technological catch up is three times as effective as capital deepening but both have done much to cause economic convergence among japanese prefectures regions results are contrary to existing research on east asian growth experience

estimation of growth convergence using a stochastic production frontier approach abstract in this paper we estimate stochastic world production frontiers econometrically taking country heterogeneity into account from the estimated frontier we obtain estimates of technical change technological catch up efficiency improvement convergence and scale related components of total factor productivity tfp growth

the energetic metabolism of societies and the degrowth paradigm analyzing biophysical constraints and realities the belief that it is possible to have a perpetual economic growth based on fossil energy has been challenged since the 1970s however only in the last decade is this issue re emerging once again because of the predicaments of climate change and peak oil many finally start to perceive that an economic degrowth entailing a downscaling of the current size and pattern of socio economic systems seem unavoidable in this paper we analyze the implications the feasibility and the desirability of possible trajectories of downscaling from an energetic perspective the quantitative analysis is based on the methodological approach of societal metabolism and it provides a dynamic accounting of the profile of energy flows required and consumed by societies in relation the expression of a given set of societal functions this analysis makes it possible to check two types of constraints external constraints supply and sink side limits for the whole and internal constraints the feasibility of energy budget of the various parts of the society expressing the required functions the analysis of the metabolic pattern of a sample of developed countries is used to discuss possible implications of i demographic changes ii the declining supply of net energy sources and iii the effects of the jevons paradox within such an analysis a few assumptions and recipes of the degrowth movement seem problematic i population is and will remain as a relevant variable to be considered ii the proposed reduction in working hours seem to be impractical unless a major catastrophe will reset current civilization to pre industrial standards and iii voluntary reduction of personal energy consumption even if a welcome adjustment alone will not solve the existing problems in the final part of the paper future energetic road maps are questioned within the realm of post normal science can we plan degrowth if we are serious about the need of doing something completely different societies will have to learn how to deliberate under uncertainty within the realms of flexible management and stop planning for either growth or degrowth moreover before suggesting policies it would be wise first to try to understand the option space

discursive synergies for a great transformation towards sustainability pragmatic contributions to a necessary dialogue between human development degrowth and buen vivir abstract there is a growing awareness that a whole societal great transformation of polanyian scale is needed to bring global developmental trajectories in line with ecological imperatives the mainstream sustainable development discourse however insists in upholding the myth of compatibility of current growth based trajectories with biophysical planetary boundaries this article explores potentially fertile complementarities among trendy discourses challenging conventional notions of un sustainable development human development degrowth and buen vivir and outlines pathways for their realization human development presents relative transformative strengths in political terms while degrowth holds keys to unlocking unsustainable material structural entrenchments of contemporary socio economic arrangements and buen vivir offers a space of cultural alterity and critique of the euro atlantic cultural constellation the weaknesses or blind spots achilles heels of each discourse can be compensated through the strengths of the other ones creating a dialogical virtuous circle that would open pathways towards a global new great transformation as one of the main existing platforms for pluralist and strong sustainability discussions ecological economics is in a privileged position to deliberately foster such strategic discursive dialogue a pathway towards such dialogue is illuminated through a model identifying and articulating key discursive docking points

the effects of economic and policy incentives on carbon mitigation technologies the ability to estimate the likely effects of potential climate change policies on energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions requires an improved understanding of the relationship between different policy alternatives and energy saving and ghg reducing changes in technology a particularly important and understudied aspect of this set of issues is the conceptual and empirical modeling of how the various stages of technological change are interrelated how they unfold over time in response to market forces and the differential impact of various policies for example r d subsidies environmental taxes information programs we summarize several contributions to this literature and suggest promising areas for continued research on empirical analysis and modeling of induced technological change

on the evolution of the world income distribution the post world war ii period has seen substantial changes in the distribution of gdp per worker around the world in the upper half of the distribution a number of countries have exhibited large increases in income relative to the richest countries in the bottom half several countries have seen incomes fall relative to the richest countries the net result of these changes is a movement in the shape of the world income distribution from something that looks like a normal distribution in 1960 to a bi modal twin peaks distribution in 1988 projecting these changes into the future suggests a number of interesting ndings first it seems likely that the united states will lose its position as the country with the highest level of gdp per worker second growth miracles have been more common in recent decades than growth disasters if these dynamics continue the future income distribution will involve far more rich countries and far fewer poor countries than currently observed

nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality an empirical analysis of deforestation we use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972 1994 period to study the deforestation process relying on both parametric and semiparametric models we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process we first study the existence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc and then analyze determinants of deforestation our data sample provides no evidence of an ekc we also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries

do all countries grow alike abstract this paper investigates the driving forces of output change in 77 countries during the period 1970 2000 a flexible modeling strategy is adopted that accounts for i the inefficient use of resources and ii different production technologies across countries the proposed model can identify technical efficiency and input change for each of three endogenously determined regimes membership in these regimes is estimated rather than determined ex ante this framework enables explorations into the determinants of output growth and convergence issues in each regime

relative sources of european regional productivity convergence a bootstrap frontier approach enflo k and hjertstrand p relative sources of european regional productivity convergence a bootstrap frontier approach regional studies this paper addresses the issue of western european regional productivity growth and convergence by means of data envelopment analysis dea decomposing labour productivity into efficiency change technical change and capital accumulation the decomposition shows that most regions have fallen behind the production frontier in efficiency and that capital accumulation has had a diverging effect on the labour productivity distribution using bootstrapping methods the paper also accounts for the inherent bias and the stochastic elements in the efficiency estimation it is found that the relative ranking of the efficiency scores remains stable after the bias correction even after controlling for spatially correlated measurement errors and that the dea successfully identifies the regions on the production frontier as significantly more efficient than other regions enfl

the economic and financial dimensions of degrowth abstract we respond to the call for future research on degrowth and specifically analyze the implications of economic degrowth on the monetary and financial system we argue that any early indications of degrowth would cause the stock market to crash which would trigger further deleveraging contagion and a deflation as a result the economy would implode which would eventually allow for a new rapid growth cycle given the likely extraordinary fiscal and monetary policy response during the implosion thus in our view degrowth as an explicit strategy option is economically unsustainable and unfeasible as a limitation our analysis centers on the examples of unplanned crisis leading to an economic implosion which imperfectly represent the idea of planned voluntary degrowth

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

regulation via the polluter pays principle we consider the problem of regulating an economy with environmental pollution we examine the distributional impact of the polluter pays pp principle which requires that any agent compensates all other agents for the damages caused by his or her pollution emissions with constant marginal damages we show that regulation via the pp principle leads to the unique welfare distribution that induces non negative individual welfare change and renders each agent responsible for his or her pollution impact we extend both the pp principle and this result to increasing marginal damages due to pollution we also compare the pp principle with the vickrey clark groves scheme

technical change and the von neumann coefficient of uniform expansion abstract we study technical change for multi product technologies to examine its effect on economic growth for 27 oecd organization for economic cooperation and development countries during 1951 2014 we review the malmquist index and reexamine von neumann s model of an expanding economy we estimate the coefficient of uniform expansion via dea data envelopment analysis and use it to measure technical change via a solow residual and an alternative von neumann technical change index which equals the difference between the growth rates of the slowest growing output and the fastest growing input we also exploit a property of constant returns to scale in order to examine technical change of the average technology during 2005 2014 the solow residual shows relatively fast technical change in contrast the malmquist average technology and alternative von neumann technical change indexes show negative or stagnant technical change

growth and convergence of the oecd countries a multi sector production frontier approach abstract kumar and russell 2002 henderson and russell 2005 and badunenko henderson and russell 2013 have proposed a production frontier methodology to analyze the economic growth and the convergence of growth rates across countries they see two main advantages to this methodology 1 it reconstructs the world production frontier without relying on any particular typically unverifiable assumptions on any aspects of the growth process and 2 it allows to decompose labor productivity growth into several parts in this paper i extend the previous approach by considering a multi sector setting this setting allows to propose a more realistic and complete country level analysis while keeping the same advantages as with the previous methodology i also tackle the criticism of less reliable data at the sector level than at the country level by showing how the multi sector approach can easily be adapted i apply it to the oecd countries from 1995 to 2008 the results confirm the non neutrality of technological change i also find that capital accumulation plays the biggest role in the increase of output labor productivity while technological change and human capital accumulation also play an important role but it is twice as small as capital accumulation interestingly these results suggest the emergence of two groups eastern and central european countries and the eu15 and korea the two groups seem to diverge over time

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