the demand for residential electricity new evidence on time varying elasticities this study employs a generalized functional form to examine demand for residential electiricity the appropriatenes of the conventional double log and linear forms are tested time varying elasicities are estimated major findings are summarized as follows 1 the double log and linear forms can be rejected at the 0 05 and 0 01 levels respectively 2 long run own price elasticities declined in absolute value consistently from 2 13 to 1 19 during the period 1950 87 3 long run income elasticities also decreased from 1 29 to 0 97 during the same period and 4 long run corss price elasticities with respect to the price of natural gas dropped form 0 40 to 0 29 these results may be heplful to decision makers in determining the change in total revenues owning to the change in prices pricing strategies the effectiveness of energy conservation programmes the effect of rising real income on the demand for residential electricity and future demand

spatial sustainability trade and indicators an evaluation of the ecological footprint the search for frameworks and indicators of sustainable development has taken a prominent place in this journal however some specific aspects have received little or no attention notably the spatial dimension and the role of international trade in indicator development moreover many sustainable development indicators comprise implicit valuations weighting schemes and policy objectives which are insufficiently recognised as such this contribution tries to highlight these issues by means of a review of a recently proposed indicator for ecological economic analysis namely the ecological footprint that has been developed by wackernagel and rees its concept and calculation procedure are criticised on a number of points and it is concluded that the ecological footprint is not the comprehensive and transparent planning tool as is often assumed in explaining our position we will argue that spatial sustainability and regional sustainable development have not been precisely discussed so far neither in the literature on trade and environment nor in that on sustainable development we will defend the view that trade can contribute positively and negatively to environmental unsustainability consequently indicators and models are needed that allow for analysing interactions and trade offs between such opposite effects 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

a first empirical comparison of energy footprints embodied in trade mrio versus plum abstract the ecological footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country including the impacts associated with trade the national footprint accounts nfa by global footprint network gfn calculate trade embodied footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a product land use matrix plum this article compares energy footprints embodied in trade from and to the united kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the nfa plum with the results from a recently developed multi region input output model mrio for the uk although totals for imports and exports are comparable breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods the omission of trade in services especially transport services and upstream impacts of energy goods fossil fuels and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the nfa plum method are identified as the main reasons for these differences in the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input output based approach i conclude that mrio models once fully developed will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the ecological footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter industry linkages international supply chains and multi national trade flows

the private sector in agricultural research systems will it fill the gap abstract this article examines whether the private sector can fill the gap of declining public research in developing countries economic theory suggests private for profit research will focus on areas where returns to research are appropriable and reasonable profits are generated actual private for profit research activities concentrate on countries and industries with large markets appropriable returns strong science infrastructure and favorable government policies governments and donors can promote private research by easing constraints to private entry and operations but if governments stop funding research on public goods and technologies with limited market potential the private sector is unlikely to fill the gap completely

responsibility and trade emission balances an evaluation of approaches this paper compares two concepts to evaluate the international responsibility of a country with respect to its emissions using a multi regional input output model we show that the trade emission balance and the responsibility emission balance yield the same result in practical work however a lack of data availability implies that the same technology assumption has been commonly adopted in that case also a third alternative exists which simply evaluates the emissions embodied in the trade balance of the country this third alternative yields the same results as the other two approaches at the aggregate level at the level of individual products however the results are clearly different and it turns out that the third alternative answers a different question that is it is appropriate for measuring the emission content of the products that cross the border in our empirical application we consider spain in 1995 and 2000 distinguishing nine different gases co 2 ch 4 n 2 o sf 6 hfcs pfcs so 2 nox and nh 3 c 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

additional precision provided by region specific data the identification of fuel use and pollution generation coefficients in the jersey economy turner k 2006 additional precision provided by region specific data the identification of fuel use and pollution generation coefficients in the jersey economy regional studies 40 347 364 a debate is currently ongoing in the uk regarding the need to collect and report data at the regional level one specific area of this debate is the extent to which region specific economic and environmental data are required to carry out analyses of devolved sustainability policy issues this paper uses the jersey economy as a case study to assess the added precision from using good quality region specific data compared with adjusted national uk data it is found that due to differences in polluting technology between jersey and the uk estimates based on national emissions intensities produce results that are misleading in terms of both absolute pollution levels and the relative contribution of different activities to total emissions in the economy while jersey may be regarded as atypical in many ways relative

new methodology for the ecological footprint with an application to the new zealand economy abstract sustainable development has become a primary objective for many countries throughout the world since the late 1980s a major difficulty associated with sustainable development objectives however is the absence of reliable indicators to measure progress towards the goal of sustainability the ecological footprint provides an estimate of the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption for a given population on an aggregate basis the ecological footprint may be compared with the amount of ecologically productive land available to give an indication of whether consumption patterns are likely to be sustainable this paper proposes the use of a modified form of input output analysis to calculate the ecological footprint the input output approach provides a consistent means of calculating an ecological footprint using data collected as part of the system of national accounts in most developed countries in addition it makes explicit the link between the level of economic activity in a country and its corresponding impact on the environment an application of this methodology to new zealand indicates that it takes 3 49 has of ecologically productive land per year to sustain the average new zealander s current level of consumption

using composition of land multiplier to estimate ecological footprints associated with production activity abstract ecological footprint ef a measure of sustainability represents the areas of land and water required to produce the goods and services for satisfying the consumption of a defined human population or economy and to provide environmental assimilation capacity for keeping its environmental quality at a given level production land footprint a main component of the ef represents the lands used by production sectors for producing the goods and services for the final consumption of a given human population there have been at least two alternatives in estimating the production land footprint one is based on the estimates of apparent consumption of each type of resource along the line of the methodology proposed by wackernagel and rees wackernagel m rees w e 1996 and its later refinement the other suggested by bicknell et al 1998 is based on the monetary values of products that are delivered to domestic final demand the information recorded in an input output table the former faces the challenge of distinguishing the commodities used as intermediate input from those as final consumption although its recent development has tried to calculate the raw materials used directly in traded manufactured products wackernagel m lewan l hansson c b 1999a it is not an easy job because the indirect input requirements are also involved using input output analysis which has been widely used to consider the direct and indirect input requirements of supporting final demand may alleviate this difficulty bicknell et al 1998 adopted input output analysis to estimate the footprint of new zealand in their calculation they used land multipliers to obtain the production land areas required to produce the outputs for domestic final consumption directly and indirectly and presented the estimates under three land categories agricultural land forest land and degraded land however this presentation causes errors in the concept and calculation this is because that the area requirement of sector j s production land is obtained by multiplying sector j s land multiplier with its output for domestic final consumption the result would contain not only sector j s own production land but also those of other sectors whose outputs sector j uses as inputs thus the ensuing estimates on sectoral production lands cannot be presented by land category using the hypothetical data in the article of bicknell et al 1998 this paper explains the reasons for using the composition of land multipliers instead of land multipliers in estimating the production land footprint so that the calculated areas can be expressed by land category the revised calculation is then applied to taiwan for estimating her two footprint components production land and energy land in 1991

profiting from business model innovation evidence from pay as you drive auto insurance the emergent business model literature revolving mainly around the mechanisms through which new business models create and deliver value has left the value capture challenge under explored this paper examines how an incumbent firm profits from business model innovation through the study of pay as you drive auto insurance although business models do not warrant formal intellectual property ip protection their constituent components e g business methods and brands often do drawing on the profiting from innovation framework we find that formal and strategic ip protection methods play complementary roles initially formal ip rights are used primarily as a defensive strategy as vehicles for packaging and trading know how and most importantly as a means of buying time to build specialised complementary assets long term competitiveness however depends on whether the innovator builds a strong position in specialised complementary assets and is capable of reconfiguring them over time in line with changes in the market environment thus we explicate the complex mechanism and dynamic capability for capturing value from business model innovation

r d and the growth of firms empirical analysis of a panel of italian firms abstract this paper deals with the growth of firms and with their innovative activities the main hypothesis of the paper maintains that firms with a strong commitment to r d have a higher rate of growth because they succeed in the product market after a review of the related literature the paper presents an econometric analysis of the r d growth of firms relation based on a database of italian firms data on a sample of 500 firms with time series in the range 1989 1997 were drawn from the mediocredito survey of italian manufacturing descriptive analysis shows that the sales growth rate of firms with r d is higher than that of firms without r d econometric analysis is performed in two steps first we apply a panel unit root test im k pesaran h shin y 1997 testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels dae university of cambridge mimeo to verify whether the firm size significantly affects firm growth the test confirms gibrat s law that firm size has a stochastic trend second we explore whether there are variables with stochastic trends that could account for firm size according to our estimates the growth rate of firms is positively correlated with research intensity in these estimates a further interesting result is that investment in ict is not significant or shows a parameter with negative sign

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

regional heterogeneous drivers of electricity demand in saudi arabia modeling regional residential electricity demand abstract this study investigates the drivers of residential electricity demand in saudi arabia at a regional level for the period 1990 2018 using structural time series modeling we find that saudi arabia s two waves of energy price reforms in 2016 and 2018 have had different impacts on residential electricity consumption across its regions the empirical estimation results show that the long run price responses of residential electricity demand vary across regions from 0 20 in the central region to 0 46 in the eastern region the short run elasticities are 0 10 for the central and western regions 0 15 in the southern region while the eastern region s demand does not respond to price changes in the short run the long run income elasticities of the regions residential electricity demand also differ considerably from 1 02 in the western region to 0 27 in the eastern region the short run income elasticities are 0 14 and 0 43 for the eastern and western regions respectively while the residential electricity demand in the central and southern regions does not react to income changes we further estimate that hot weather conditions significantly impact all regions residential electricity demand finally we find that all regions saw some efficiency improvements in light of the energy price reforms although there is a room for further improvements the findings of the study can be useful for policymakers through the ways that we discussed in the paper

applying physical input output analysis to estimate land appropriation ecological footprints of international trade activities in the last few years some studies have been presented which link land use accounting and input output analysis based on monetary input output tables miots for the calculation of direct and indirect land appropriation of production and consumption activities the compilation of the first comprehensive physical input output tables piots for some western european countries in the 1990s opened new possibilities for linking physical accounting and input output analysis using a physical multiplier for this kind of calculation is more appropriate as the most land intensive sectors are also the sectors with the highest amounts of material flows physical input output analysis illustrates land appropriation in relation to material flows of each of the sectors which is more appropriate from the point of view of environmental pressures than land appropriation in relation to monetary flows of a miot physical input output analysis has so far not been applied for any land related studies based on a physical input output model of the eu 15 physical input output analysis is applied in this paper in order to calculate direct and indirect land requirements for the production of exports from eu 15 to the rest of the world

ecologically unsustainable trade abstract international trade although balanced in monetary terms may be unequal in terms of the exchange of biomass and sink capacity it may also be unilaterally or mutually unsustainable if it implies the overuse of the biocapacity in either one or both of the trading partners in this article the ecological footprint concept is used to distinguish different types of ecologically unsustainable trade but the issue of the possible effects of trade on the ecological footprints is also raised we distinguish four such effects an allocative effect an income effect a rich country illusion effect and a terms of trade effect since international trade can be a subtle mechanism by which ecological sustainability is preserved locally by means of importing biomass and sink capacity from other countries it can also blur the view of responsibility for the ecological effects of production and consumption at the end of this article some ethical and political dilemmas related to these issues are raised

allocating ecological footprints to final consumption categories with input output analysis we present and discuss a method that allows the disaggregation of national ecological footprints by economic sector detailed final demand category sub national area or socio economic group this is done by combining existing national footprint accounts with input output analysis calculations in the empirical part are carried out by using supply and use tables for the united kingdom covering the reporting period 2000 ecological footprints are allocated to detailed household consumption activities following the coicop classification system and to a detailed breakdown of capital investment the method presented enables the calculation of comparable ecological footprints on all sub national levels and for different socio economic groups the novelty of the approach lies in the use of input output analysis to re allocate existing footprint accounts in the detail of disaggregation by consumption category and in the expanded use of household expenditure data this extends the potential for applications of the ecological footprint concept and helps to inform scenarios policies and strategies on sustainable consumption the method described in this paper can be applied to every country for which a national footprint account exists and where appropriate economic and environmental accounts are available the approach helps to save time in data collection and improves the consistency between ecological footprint estimates for a particular human society from different researchers for these reasons the suggested methodology includes crucial steps on the way towards a standardisation of ecological footprint accounts

water pollution in the spanish economy analysis of sensitivity to production and environmental constraints abstract in this paper we discuss the relationships between production processes and water pollution based on the recent satellite water accounts swa ine spanish national statistics institute 2002 and the 1997 input output tables for the spanish economy the study focuses on four pollutants biological oxygen demand bod metals nitrogen and phosphorus and seven sector blocks firstly we identify the roles of the various sector blocks as generators and consumers of each type of pollution secondly we examine how pollution responds to changes in unit coefficients of pollution and final demand patterns to obtain the shadow prices for the different pollutants the results obtained provide a sound basis for the design of improvements in environmental policy

sharing resources the global distribution of the ecological footprint abstract this paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands as measured by the ecological footprint is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable just and efficient currently different nations place different demands on the environment i e the ecological footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe calculation of the gini coefficient for total ecological footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use calculation of the atkinson index shows how inequality in the ecological footprint is related to the inequality of income and environmental intensity

testing for aggregation bias in linear models this paper discusses alternative methods of testing for aggregation bias and proposes direct tests of the discrepancy of the macroparameters from the average of the corresponding microparameters and derives tests of aggregation bias in the general case where the parameters of interest may possibly be nonlinear functions of the microparameters the paper also develops a durbin hausman type misspecification test of the disaggregate model these tests are then applied to disaggregate and aggregate specifications of employment functions for the u k economy disaggregated by forty industries copyright 1990 by royal economic society

arms race or detente how interfirm alliance announcements change the stock market valuation of rivals most prior event studies find that the announcement of a new alliance is accompanied by a positive stock market response for the partners this result has usually been interpreted as evidence for the prevailing view that alliances are effective vehicles for partners to acquire or access new skills and thus become stronger competitors however partners should also earn positive abnormal returns if alliances are used to shape competitive interactions attenuating competitive intensity industry wide in this study we disentangle these different mechanisms by examining how alliance announcements affect the stock market s evaluation of allying firms rivals if an alliance is expected to make partner firms more competitive this should lead to negative abnormal returns for partners rivals if an alliance is expected to facilitate a reduction in competitive intensity this should lead to positive abnormal returns for rivals results from an event study analysis of research and development alliances in the telecommunications and electronics industries during 1996 2004 provide evidence consistent with competition attenuation in some alliances our research thus challenges the increasingly narrow focus on learning and resource accumulation through alliances and calls for broader consideration of the roles and effects of collaboration both for individual firms and for industry structure

from ecological footprint to ecological rent an economic indicator for resource constraints abstract this paper takes as a starting point a combination of an input output model with a national ecological footprint account for germany in the spirit of wiedmann et al wiedmann t minx j barrett j wackernagel m 2006 allocating ecological footprints to final consumption categories with input output analysis ecological economics 56 28 48 footprint as well as biocapacity is dealt with at the industry level gross output of each industry and final demand for each industry can then be split up into a share that is reconcilable with biocapacity and another share that corresponds to the ecological deficit the ecological footprint concept is extended in this study by introducing the additional biocapacity necessary for sustaining the given level of economic activity it is assumed that each industry had to rent the corresponding areas and to apply a given technology in order to make this additional land biophysically productive that results in an additional technology for each industry leading to an increase in costs and prices the new price level is directly linked to the share of output that corresponds to biocapacity overshooting which is defined by the ecological deficit economic indicators can be derived by measuring the income difference brought about by the price increase this difference corresponds to a ricardian rent which is due to resource constraints on output growth

development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand abstract this paper reviews the development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand since its beginnings in the late 1970s a historical account is presented that focuses particularly on the activities of the australia new zealand society for ecological economics and key ecological economics research activities achievements of ecological economics in australia and new zealand are assessed using a range of quantitative and qualitative data the main areas of expertise developed by australian and new zealand ecological economists were found to be theoretical foundations and visions for ecological economics biodiversity and resilience input output analysis heterodox valuation approaches analysis of economy environment interactions sustainability indicators sustainable agriculture fisheries and oceans and energy thermodynamics both countries are ranked at the top or near the top of the world rankings in terms of per capita isee membership and publication rates in ecological economics a defining feature of ecological economics in australia and new zealand has also been its practical and problem solving focus and the level of end user engagement the paper concludes by discussing the challenges that face the future development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand

sustainability of nations by indices comparative study between environmental sustainability index ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices abstract the present work makes a comparison between the two most used environmental sustainability indices of nations ecological footprint and environmental sustainability index with two emergy ratios renewability and emergy sustainability index all of them are gaining space within the scientific community and government officials despite the efforts for obtaining an index that adequately represents the sustainability of a region according to the result of this research nowadays there is not yet a completely satisfactory index we consider that all of them need to be improved but the results point out the possibility of obtaining one better index of sustainability through the junction of ecological footprint with renewability emergy index

virtual land use and agricultural trade estimating environmental and socio economic impacts abstract liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services in particular the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased as the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies one reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies in this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of switzerland for our analysis we focus on arable crops the first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops the second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio economic impacts of agricultural land use we applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within switzerland and import to switzerland the major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from the results show that the calculation of land use is credible in spite of the problems related with data availability the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries in addition the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries agricultural polices the developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to switzerland we argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements still further research is required for fine tuning of the utility functions including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure for practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators in addition the average impact on a country level was assessed to refine that different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production for informed decision however information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required

total embodied energy requirements and its decomposition in china s agricultural sector abstract humanity faces the important challenge of understanding and integrating human and natural processes including agriculture in china the scarcity of arable land 0 09 ha per capita increasing population and migration of the workforce to cities pose a significant challenge for food security agricultural energy productivity has therefore become a key concern in this study we used input output analysis to measure energy productivity at a national agro ecosystem scale for china using the total embodied energy requirement teer to reveal hidden energy flows we introduced a structural decomposition technique that reveals how changes in teer for the agricultural sector were driven by changes in energy use technology and the inter relationships among two agricultural sectors farming and animal husbandry the results will help both policymakers and farmers to improve the efficiency and environmental compatibility of agricultural production declining teer for both sectors means that china s overall agro ecosystem has increased its energy productivity since 1978 due to improved relationships between the agricultural sectors and increased use of biological energy however the net positive energy income decreased in the farming sector and an increasing proportion of fossil energy use accompanied by increased energy income in the animal sector provide incentives to increase yield and decrease labor by using more fossil energy thus raising more animals in the animal husbandry sector overuse of fossil energy since 1990 has resulted in decreasing fossil energy efficiency requiring immediate measures to improve the use of fossil fuel intensive materials such as fertilizers

technology strategy for enhancing the public to private technology transfer evidence from the duration of patent patents are typically characterized as assets of great values nevertheless there are many patents that are actually never used in this article we claim that there is a relationship between the duration of patents and the characteristics of the underlying invention from the viewpoint of public research institutes the duration of patents may be a proxy of probability of technology transfer because the long lived patents have higher value and more chances to be transferred we characterize the patents along different dimensions captured by the renewal and application data i e collaboration scope competitiveness and attractiveness the results of hazard rate duration analysis tell us that long lived patents are characterized by being more focused having more competitiveness and being more collaborative in addition it is analysed that patents in chemical industry expire faster than those in electrical electronic industry though this fact is against the general intuition it may be reasonable fro

the regulation of electricity results from an event study in this paper event study methods are used to compare the stock market returns for the recs with general stock market returns to test the hypothesis that the regulatory package shows symptoms of capture by special interest groups over the 1991 95 period the results show that some capture by the recs may have occurred as they have earned abnormal market returns however regulatory events are heterogeneous in nature and actions taken over prices by the director general of electricity supply dges in 1995 appear to have reduced abnormal returns as part of the study we examine the impact on shareholders returns of the dges s controversial announcement in march 1995 of plans to tighten price controls on the recs the regulatory package appears to work reasonably well on balance

an examination of the intertemporal returns of patented inventions abstract this paper examines the intertemporal returns of patented inventions using estimates of patent value obtained from german employee inventors compensation records the paper finds heterogeneity in the mean age and dispersion of the annual returns by technology and cumulative patent value while the returns earned by most patents dissipate rapidly high valued patents tend to receive significant returns through the latter part of the patent term these high valued patents which account for the vast majority of the realized returns further can be identified based on past returns relatively early in the patent term these findings suggest that while shortening the length of the patent term could substantially reduce realized returns graduated maintenance fees may not adversely affect returns as firms would be able to identify and selectively renew the subset of high valued patents

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

a three perspective view of greenhouse gas emission responsibilities in new zealand abstract while responsibility for the environmental impacts of production has been commonly assigned to producers production is driven by consumer demand and it is valid to question whether impacts should instead be assigned to consumers however in each of these approaches producers and consumers either bear the full burden of responsibility or none at all an example of this is the kyoto protocol where all greenhouse gas emissions are assigned to the producer and no consideration is given to where goods are finally consumed rather than taking the conventional producer or consumer responsibility approach a third perspective is possible in which responsibility is shared we use input output analysis to apply all three of these responsibility perspectives to new zealand s domestic greenhouse gas emissions our main findings from the shared responsibility approach are that new zealand producers are responsible for 44 of domestic emissions new zealand consumers take 28 and 27 are exported a shared responsibility approach appears to distribute the burden of responsibility and associated liability between parties more fairly and is likely to be more widely acceptable than pure producer or consumer perspectives

applying input output analysis to scenario analysis of ecological footprints abstract application of input output analysis to ecological footprints efs is shifting from an ex post static calculation toward an ex ante scenario analysis for enhancing the policy relevance of ef analysis this change in application prompts two issues requiring careful examination 1 what is measured by leontief inverses or extended environmental leontief inverses and 2 whether a sector s land multiplier or compositions of land multiplier can appropriately reflect the effect of delivering one unit of the sector s output to final demand on the required area s of production lands used by the sector itself and by other producing sectors whose products are contributed directly and indirectly to its production the underlying message of these two questions is whether the assumed linear marginal relationship between a sector s output and its intermediate inputs input output coefficients a critical assumption made by w leontief to transform a transactions table from an accounting framework into the input output model can be extended to assume that the marginal relationship between a sector s output and the area of production land it uses for generating output is fixed land output marginal coefficient equal to average coefficient by reviewing the literature on input output analysis and its application to environmental issues and by theoretically and empirically examining the relation between sector output and land appropriation this study advises against the use of land multipliers or their compositions in the ef scenario analysis to apply the input output model to ef scenario analysis for enhancing policy relevance with due attention to the relationship between sector output and land appropriation this study suggests a two stage ef calculation procedure in the first stage the input output application estimates only the required raw materials or generated pollutants for meeting a given consumption pattern which is the objective of environmental input output analysis in the second stage the estimated amount of raw materials or pollutants is converted into land water area and a choice of conversion methods is suggested according to the research questions and the availability of conversion methods and required data

evaluating the effects of embodied energy in international trade on ecological footprint in china based on sub sectoral level of economy and detailed traded items embodied energy ee in international trade flow in china is estimated during 1996 2004 and the effects of ee on sustainability are quantified by using one of the most popular indicators ecological footprint ef a framework of ef method which is more relevant to realism of specific country is proposed in this paper the results show that china is a net importer of ee during the period covered by this study except for the year from 1997 to 1999 imported exported and net imported ee tends to increase sharply along time series net imported energy would increase 38 and energy consumption would increase 2 8 in 2004 if ee were taken into account footprint energy is the most important part of ef components and is significantly affected by ee and the effects of ee on ef are similar to that of footprint energy footprint energy ef and ecological deficit of 2004 will be underestimated about 2 92 1 36 2 83 respectively if ee is not taken into the national energy budget continuous increase of ef and ecological deficit along time series indicates that china is moving away from sustainability 1 47 times chinese territories are accurately occupied by china in 1996 while 1 71 times in 2004 obviously unsustainability procedure of china is accelerated by ee the contribution of ee to ef and ecological deficit is small in absolute terms expressed in per capita but the effects on whole nation are huge if the population of china multiplies them to curb the increase of ef and ecological deficit and to achieve the goal of sustainability some policy and measures are also proposed c 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved

product level embodied carbon flows in bilateral trade as increasingly complex modelling approaches to quantifying embodied carbon in trade have become popular the lack of disaggregation has been identified as a key weakness this paper quantifies embodied carbon in bilateral trade at the product level this is done using the material balance approach by collecting product carbon intensity factors from multiple data sources and combining with bilateral trade data in physical quantities the dataset covers trades between 195 countries for 1080 products in 2006 the detailed mapping of trade embodied carbon provides detailed insights into the nature of the flows that were previously masked or under reported for example it finds that the lion s share of global trade embodied emissions are concentrated in a relatively small number of product categories of traded goods suggesting that focusing mitigation efforts and trade measures on these products would be an effective strategy to address potential carbon leakage and to decarbonise international supply chains the results also highlight that embodied carbon is focused in regional trade thus regional harmonisation of climate mitigation policy will be effective in mitigating leakage

is urbanization eco friendly an energy and land use cross country analysis abstract urbanization imposes complicated and heterogeneous impacts on ecosystems with the purpose of reflecting the comprehensive influence of urbanization on the ecosystem we choose the ecological footprint to represent the ecosystem s integrated change and distinguish low income middle income and high income countries to reflect the nonlinear impact this paper uses both static and dynamic stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology models to analyze 72 countries at different income levels during the 1980 2008 period the results show that the overall ecological elasticity of urbanization at the global level is negative specifically results suggest urbanization associated to increased income to have eco friendly potential in terms of decreased ecological footprint to explain such results this paper answers two questions why does urbanization show ecological protection effects why does a more pronounced protection effect seem associated to increased income levels improved market mechanism increased resource use efficiency as well as increased environmental awareness in urban areas associated to increased income levels are likely to support an eco friendly urbanization process burden shift to low income countries also needs to be taken into account in order to avoid policies that increase wellbeing locally at the expenses of far away areas

trading spaces calculating embodied ecological footprints in international trade using a product land use matrix plum abstract nations import and export biophysical resources with many ecosystems worldwide under mounting stress countries may be increasingly interested in knowing the extent and origin of their ecological imports and dependencies in this paper the ecological footprint is used as a tool to measure the biophysical as opposed to financial value of international trade flows this paper attempts to answer the following question how large of an ecological footprint does a given country exert inside the borders of each of its trading partners records in the un comtrade bilateral trade database are multiplied by a matrix of per product footprint yield coefficients to translate from values in dollars and tonnes to units of hectares the results show that the largest interregional flows are from latin to north america and from north america to asia pacific grouping countries by gdp high and middle income countries appear in footprint terms to trade predominantly with other high and middle income countries and much less with low income countries

integrating the valuation of ecosystem services into the input output economics of an alpine region traditional economic accounting mostly ignores the benefits provided by nature and thus falls short in giving incentives for improving the way the economy uses natural resources in this study we develop a general framework for integrating the value of ecosystem services into an input output table in particular we integrate regionally valued ecosystem services on the supply side of an input output table to quantify what natural resources offer to economic development using several different indicators we show the benefits of the ecosystem services under the status quo and a scenario for regional development our results suggest that economic activities should be encouraged to use the ecosystem services more intensively while landscape development should aim at providing the required services we conclude that such an approach can provide a platform for decision makers to learn quantitatively about the dependency of the regional economy on natural services

can patent family size and composition signal patent value abstractrecent research has proposed a method of patent valuation based on weighting patent family size by the market size of the countries in the family the premise is that inventors tend to seek

the demand for electricity in israel quarterly data for israel are used to compare and contrast three dynamic econometric methodologies for estimating the demand for electricity by households and industrial companies these are the dynamic regression model and two approaches to cointegration ols and maximum likelihood since we find evidence of seasonal unit roots in the data we also test for seasonal cointegration we find that the scale elasticities are similar in all three approaches but the ols price elasticities are considerably lower moreover ols suggests non cointegration the paper concludes by stochastically simulating the drms to calculate upside risk in electricity demand