learning your earning are labor income shocks really very persistent in this paper we examine the risk situation facing individuals in the labor market the current consensus in the literature is that the labor income process has a large random walk component we argue two points first the estimates of persistence from income data appear to be upward biased due to the omission of heterogeneity in income pro les across the population that would be implied for example by a human capital model with heterogeneity when we allow for dierences in pro les the estimated persistence falls from 0 99 to about 0 8 moreover the main evidence against pro le heterogeneity in the existing literature that the autocorrelations of income changes are small and typically negative is also replicated by the pro le heterogeneity model we estimate casting doubt on the previous interpretation of this evidence second we embed this process in a life cycle model to examine how it alters individuals consumption saving decision we assume that as seems plausible individuals do not know their pro les exactly at the beginning of life but learn in a bayesian way with successive income observations we nd that learning is very slow and aects consumption decision throughout the life cycle the model generates substantial rise in consumption inequality over the life cycle which matches empirical observations deaton and paxson 1994 moreover the shape of the age inequality pro le is non concave as in the data but unlike in a model with very persistent shocks finally the consumption pro les of college graduates are steeper than those of high school graduates in the model consistent with the data because they face a wider dispersion of and hence uncertainty about income growth rates overall this evidence indicates that income shocks may be signi cantly less persistent than what is currently assumed

the physical dimension of international trade part 1 direct global flows between 1962 and 2005 abstract the physical dimension of international trade is attaining increased importance this article describes a method to calculate complete physical trade flows for all countries which report their trade to the un the method is based on the un comtrade database and it was used to calculate world wide physical trade flows for all reporting countries in nine selected years between 1962 and 2005 the results show increasing global trade with global direct material trade flows reaching about 10 billion tonnes in 2005 corresponding to a physical trade volume of about 20 billion tonnes adding both total imports and total exports the share from european countries is declining mainly in favour of asian countries the dominant traded commodity in physical units was fossil fuels mainly oil physical trade balances were used to identify the dominant resource suppliers and demanders australia was the principal resource supplier over the period with a diverse material export structure it was followed by mainly oil exporting countries with varying volumes as regards to regions latin america south east asian islands and central asia were big resource exporters mostly with increasing absolute amounts of net exports the largest net importers were japan the united states and single european countries emerging countries like the asian tigers with major industrial productive sectors are growing net importers some of them to an even higher degree than european countries altogether with the major exception of australia and canada industrialized countries are net importers and developing countries and transition countries are net exporters but there are important differences within these groups

subjective expectations and income processes in rural india this paper uses unique primary data on directly elicited individual subjective expectations to analyse and characterize the process that generates the income of poor rural indian households we validate and use responses to subjective expectations questions and a parametric assumption to fit a household specific probability distribution for future income combining computed moments from this distribution with data for actual current income we specify and estimate a dynamic model of household income we find that our households face a very persistent income process our paper is one of the first that uses subjective expectations data to model income processes

expected and realized income changes evidence from the dutch socio economic panel abstract income expectations play a central role in household decision making in the life cycle model for example consumption and savings decisions reflect expectations of future income in empirical applications where direct information on expectations is not available it is usually assumed that expectations are rational and reflected by observed future realizations in this paper we analyze direct subjective information on expected changes of household income in one panel wave of dutch families first we describe these data and investigate how the expectations can be explained by among other variables income changes in the past second we combine these data with information on realized income changes in the next panel wave and analyze the differences between expected and realized changes we find that on average households underestimate their future income changes significantly in particular this holds for those families whose income has fallen in the past

trade ecologically unequal exchange and colonial legacy the case of france and its former colonies 1962 2015 abstract the role of trade in global environmental change is receiving increasing attention and there is a lively debate about ecologically unequal exchange eue little is known however about the role of colonial legacy for the evolution of physical trade patterns this study provides empirical evidence on the basis of a systematic evaluation of global trade data we quantify in physical and monetary terms the development of trade relations between france its former colonies and the rest the world from the immediate post colonial period until 2015 we use a set of physical trade indicators including physical trade balance and terms of trade to analyse differences in trade patterns and eue the results indicate that colonial ties were very strong in the 1960s but thereafter quickly diminished we find strong evidence for eue between france and its former colonies in the post colonial period and that the colonial factor explains eue between centre and peripheries better than income differences until the 1970s in recent decades colonial legacy increasingly vanished our findings corroborate that socio political factors and in particular colonial legacy play an important role for eue relations and that they deserve more attention in quantitative empirical research on trade

structural changes and sustainability a selected review of the empirical evidence abstract the paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability we focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity changes of the sectoral composition of economies trade and international fragmentation of production technological change and innovation and demand we identify several empirical facts first only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency second the long term shift from manufacturing to services has not led in all cases to the de materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity third global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the pollution haven hypothesis which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries the pursuit by developing countries of a long term strategy of trading jobs for emissions is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies the review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

behind the life cycle of coal socio environmental liabilities of coal mining in cesar colombia abstract open pit coal mining in cesar colombia increased by 74 between 2000 and 2012 generating environmental and social damages unacknowledged by companies and the state this study aims to identify and value socio environmental liabilities from coal mining at different stages of the coal life cycle environmental liabilities can be operationalized under three types of responsibilities moral legal and economic the identification of environmental liabilities allocates moral responsibility the legal responsibility is needed for effective reparation and the economic valuation provides arguments to claim compensation seek remediation and mitigation of damages to identify socio environmental liabilities interviews were conducted and environmental mining conflicts were analyzed to estimate monetary values data were linked to existing literature on costs associated with damages results show that the economic values of socio environmental liabilities per ton of extracted and exported coal are higher than the market price of coal the main socio environmental liabilities arise from pollution local health deterioration water table depletion land and ecosystem services losses damages from transportation and shipping and coal reserve loss a comparison with studies in china and the united states indicates that values increase when other health impacts and climate change on a global scale are included

relative productivity and search unemployment in an open economy abstract using a panel of eighteen oecd countries we find empirically that the long run effects of higher productivity of tradables relative to non tradables vary across time space and stages of the business cycle more specifically our evidence reveals that elasticities of the relative wage and relative price of non tradables with respect to relative productivity of tradables increase over time our estimates also show that the fall in the relative wage is more pronounced whilst the appreciation in the relative price is less in countries where labor markets are more regulated and during periods of recession to rationalize the evidence we differentiate between labor mobility costs caused by job search efforts and hiring costs resulting from search frictions in the labor market in a two sector open economy model while time declining labor mobility costs can account for the time increasing effects of a productivity differential international differences in labor market regulation and variations of hiring costs across the business cycle respectively can rationalize the cross country and state dependent effects we estimate empirically finally labor market frictions have important implications for sectoral unemployment since labor mobility and hiring costs bias labor demand toward the traded sector which results in a greater decline in unemployment in tradables relative to unemployment in non tradables following higher relative productivity

material use and material efficiency in latin america and the caribbean different world regions have followed very different trajectories for natural resources use over the recent decades latin america has pursued a development path based largely on exports of primary resources adopting this path has characteristic environmental and social impacts in this paper we provide the first broad based estimate of material use and material efficiency for the region beginning in 1970 and extending to the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 the results show a region with rapidly growing primary materials consumption which is simultaneously becoming less efficient at converting those resources into national income using an ipat framework we found that population growth and rising per capita incomes made comparable contributions to growing material use while technological change as reflected in material intensity did not moderate consumption increasing materials intensity observed for the region as a whole is also observed for most individual countries this contrasts with some other world regions and implies that many countries in latin america and the caribbean will confront higher environmental pressures than expected when expanding their extractive industries to take advantage of new demand from other world regions while simultaneously supplying the requirements for their own domestic industrial transformations and urbanization

tracing the impacts of a northern open economy on the global environment the globalization of the world economy has increased resource flows around the planet raising pressures on the environment historically northern industrialized economies have been responsible for the majority of resource consumption while developing countries have suffered the associated social and environmental impacts this article analyzes the extra territorial responsibility of the basque economy europe to illustrate the responsibility of northern open economies towards the global environment to do this we i analyze the material and energy flows of the basque economy their source and impacts on other regions of the world ii study the impact of the economic and investment activities of basque companies abroad and iii examine together with other paradigmatic examples three case studies from latin america east africa and southeast asia that represent the liabilities of northern economies in the global south this approach allows us to connect production and consumption processes in affluent countries with associated socio ecological impacts in the extraction frontiers in order to better understand and potentially transform current economic patterns and their consequences in addition the study indicates how to bridge the gap between local and global scales creating a useful approach to raising social awareness and informing public policies in resource intensive societies

economic growth and the evolution of material cycles an analytical framework integrating material flow and stock indicators abstract understanding the relationship between material cycles and economic growth is essential for relieving environmental pressures associated with material extraction production and consumption we developed an integrated analytical framework of dematerialization analysis incorporating both material flow and stock indicators a four quadrant diagram is designed to classify different stages of dematerialization based on the elasticity of material flow stock to economic output or well being we then conducted a case study on the long term evolution of aluminum cycle in the u s and found that different material flow and stock indicators decoupled from gross domestic product gdp growth in a clear sequential pattern flows closer to the beginning of the aluminum cycle e g primary aluminum production decoupled from gdp earlier than flows closer to the final consumption stage e g consumption of final products in use stock of aluminum decoupled from gdp much more slowly than any flow indicator and had just reached the status of relative decoupling around 2000 this phenomenon is determined by the fact that different causes of dematerialization such as import substitution and secondary material recycling take effect at different stages of economic development comprehensive understanding of dematerialization depends on in depth analysis on material economy relationships from an integrated stock and flow perspective

the unequal exchange of dutch cheese and kenyan roses introducing and testing an lca based methodology for estimating ecologically unequal exchange the theory of ecologically unequal exchange eue posits that international trade is structurally organized in a manner that allows a net transfer of resources from peripheral developing to core industrialized countries the consequence it is argued is under development in the periphery and augmented productive capacity in the core eue thus challenges the neoliberal free market argument that exchange at market prices is symmetric and fair an lca based methodology for estimating eue that holds constant the variable market price is introduced and tested on contemporary trade of dutch cheese and kenyan coffee and roses specifically the exchange of embodied land water energy global warming potential and labor is assessed the results confirm the theory s hypothesis at a fixed market price more embodied kenyan resources are exchanged for less dutch resources however kenyan roses give different results from coffee eue between countries can only be conclusively determined by considering the total biophysical trade balance but by calculating quantities of embodied resources per unit of exchange value it is possible to detect unequal exchange even at the level of individual commodities while integration of biophysical metrics alongside monetary valuation is recommended ultimately rethinking the structure policies and politics of international trade is necessary

spatial polarization of the ecological footprint distribution abstract the international allocation of natural resources is determined not by any ethical or ecological criteria but by the dominance of market mechanisms from a core periphery perspective this allocation may even be driven by historically determined structural patterns with a core group of countries whose consumption appropriates most available natural resources and another group having low natural resource consumption which plays a peripheral role this article consists of an empirical distributional analysis of natural resource consumption as measured by ecological footprints whose purpose is to assess how strongly countries cluster together based on their ecological footprints this is the extent to which the distribution of consumption responds to polarization as opposed to mere inequality to assess this we estimate and decompose different polarization indices for a balanced sample of 119 countries over the period 1961 to 2007 our results point towards a polarized distribution which is consistent with a core periphery framework

u s real exchange rate fluctuations and relative price fluctuations abstract traditional theory attributes fluctuations in real exchange rates to changes in the relative price of nontraded goods this paper studies the relation between the united states bilateral real exchange rate and the associated bilateral relative price of nontraded goods for five of its most important trade relationships we find that this relation depends crucially on the choice of price series used to measure relative prices and on the choice of trade partner the relation is stronger when we measure relative prices using producer prices rather than consumer prices the relation is stronger the more important is the trade relationship between the united states and a trade partner even in cases where there is a strong relation between the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontraded goods however a large fraction of real exchange rate fluctuations is due to deviations from the law of one price for traded goods

international evidence on tradables and nontradables inflation abstract using 1970 1985 sectoral data for the oecd we find that inflation in nontradable goods exceeds inflation in tradables we identify a demand shift towards nontradables and faster growth of total factor productivity in the tradable goods sector as the prime causes of the differential inflation in addition disinflation attempts and the exchange rate regime appear to have exerted significant influence on the relative inflation rate

trends in european real exchange rates we study a newly created panel data set of relative prices for a large number of consumer goods among 31 european countries over a 15 year period the data set includes eurozone members both before and after the inception of the euro floating exchange rate countries of western europe and emerging market economies of eastern and southern europe we find that there is a substantial and continuing deviation from purchasing power parity ppp at all levels of aggregation both for traded and non traded goods even among eurozone members real exchange rates rer exhibit two clear properties in the sample a they are closely tied to gross domestic product gdp per capita relative to the european average at all levels of aggregation and for both cross country time series variation b they are highly positively correlated with variation in the relative price of non traded goods we then construct a simple two sector endowment economy model of real exchange rate determination which exhibits these two properties calibrated to match the data simulating the model using the historical relative gdp per capita for each country we find that for most countries there is a close fit between the actual and simulated real exchange rate in terms of policy relevance the model can offer suggestions of the degree to which real exchange rates in europe both in and out of the eurozone have been overvalued by approximately 15 in greece and portugal and 6 in italy and spain martin berka and michael b devereux

international prices costs and markup differences relative cross border retail prices in a common currency comove closely with the nominal exchange rate using product level prices and wholesale costs from a grocery chain operating in the united states and canada we decompose this variation into relative costs and markup components the high correlation of nominal and real exchange rates is driven mainly by changes in relative costs national borders segment markets retail prices respond to changes in costs in neighboring stores within the same country but not across the border prices have a median discontinuous change of 24 percent at the border and 0 percent at state boundaries jel f31 l11 l81

caloric unequal exchange in latin america and the caribbean the existence of an unequal exchange between rich and poor countries has been well studied in the literature explained by differences in labour costs that were reflected in the prices of traded goods research has also demonstrated that the failure to include environmental impacts in prices of traded goods concealed an ecologically unequal exchange this paper contributes to the discussion with the newly coined concept of caloric unequal exchange that defines the deterioration of terms of trade in food in units of calories exports and imports to and from latin america and the caribbean are analysed for the period 1961 through 2011 in volume value and calories for different groups of products the study concludes that although calories exported by the region to the rest of the world are more expensive than those imported the ratio is deteriorating over time this trend is found to be dependent of the trading partner involved the region is helping the rest of the world in supplying their diets at a lower cost a side result is that globalisation is homogenising diets over time concentrating most food consumption in a reduced number of products and therefore increasing interdependency among countries and affecting food security

trade development and sustainability a critical assessment of the free trade dogma abstract mainstream economic theory argues that trade and especially free trade isbeneficial to everyone involved this fundamental idea which has the character of a dogma still plays an important role in international discussions on trade issues notably in relation to development and environment the purpose of this article is to critically assess the free trade dogma and to investigate the validity of widely used arguments concerning the relations between trade and development and between trade and environment it is argued that the trading system is not something inherently good and especially the developing countries benefits from trade have been very dubious furthermore the trading system has contributed to environmental problems in several ways e g generating undervaluation of natural resources stimulating economic growth with environmental deterioration as a consequence and magnifying and creating externalities the critical approach makes a case for reducing trade

long run trends in 26 primary commodity prices abstract this paper uses time series techniques to re examine the prebisch singer hypothesis that there has been a secular deterioration in primary commodity prices in terms of manufactured goods instead of using price indices it considers 26 individual commodity prices over the period 1900 1983 this avoids possible aggregation and interpretation problems associated with the use of aggregate indices the study finds that 16 of the 26 prices are trendless five have statistically significant negative trends the remaining five have positive trends it concludes that the prebisch singer hypothesis should certainly not be considered a universal phenomenon or stylized fact

a panel data model for subjective information on household income growth abstract subjective expectations about future income changes are analyzed using household panel data the models used are extensions of existing binary choice panel data models to the case of ordered response we consider static models with random and fixed individual effects we also look at a dynamic random effects model which includes a measure for permanent and transitory income we find that income change expectations strongly depend on realized income changes in the past those whose income fell are more pessimistic than others while those whose income rose are more optimistic expected income changes are also significantly affected by employment status family composition permanent income and past expectations expectations are then compared to the head of household s ex post perception of the realized income change for the same period the main finding is that rational expectations are rejected and that in particular households whose income has decreased in the past underestimate their future income growth

long term trajectories of the human appropriation of net primary production lessons from six national case studies the human appropriation of net primary production hanpp is an integrated socio ecological indicator measuring effects of land use on ecological biomass flows based on published data for austria hungary the philippines south africa spain and the uk this paper investigates long term trends in aboveground hanpp and discusses the relations between population economic growth changes in biomass use and land use intensity and their influences on national hanpp trajectories during early stages of industrialization population growth and increasing demand for biomass drive land cover change often resulting in deforestation which raises hanpp during later stages industrialization of agriculture boosts agricultural yields often faster than biomass demand grows resulting in stable or even declining hanpp technological change improves agricultural area efficiency biomass provision per unit area thereby decoupling population and economic growth from hanpp however these efficiency gains require large inputs of fossil fuels and agrochemicals resulting in pressures on ecosystems and emissions our findings corroborate the argument that hanpp alone cannot as sometimes suggested be used as a simple measure of carrying capacity nevertheless analyses of long term hanpp trajectories in combination with accounts of material and energy flows can provide important insights into the sustainability of land use thereby helping to understand limits to growth

embodied pollution in trade estimating the environmental load displacement of industrialised countries abstract the present paper sets out to aid in the development of environmental load displacement indicators developing the notion of the environmental memory of physical flows we estimated embodied pollution in trade of 18 industrialized countries with a the rest of the world and b developing countries from 1976 to 1994 we found that in the last years of analysis total imports of japan usa and western europe have entailed in general larger air pollutant emissions than local exports the balance of embodied emissions in trade beet seems to follow an inverted u shape across time in japan and western europe and an n shape in the us in the period of analysis japanese and european environmental terms of trade with developing countries improved from the japanese and european point of view whereas american environmental terms of trade with developing countries deteriorated over time although there is no statistical trend between income and embodied emissions in imports in a cross section analysis there does seem to be a positive relationship between both variables at a national level the results suggest that despite many shortcomings this type of assessment may shed useful insights on the international aspects of sustainable development

international comparison of resource use and its relation to economic growth the development of total material requirement direct material inputs and hidden flows and the structure of tmr abstract resource flows constitute the materials basis of the economy at the same time they carry and induce an environmental burden associated with resource extraction and the subsequent material flows and stocks which finally end up as waste and emissions a reduction of this material throughput and the related impacts would require a reduction of resource inputs and breaking the link between resource consumption and economic growth would require an increase in resource productivity material flow analysis mfa can be used to quantify resource flows and indicate resource productivity in this article we study the available empirical evidence on the actual de linkage of material resource use and economic growth we compare resource use with respect to total material requirement tmr and direct material input dmi for 11 and 26 countries respectively and the european union eu 15 the dynamics of tmr as well as of the main components are analysed in relation to economic growth in order to show whether there is a decoupling relative or absolute from gdp and a change of the metabolic structure in the course of economic development dmi cap so far only decoupled from gdp cap in relative terms that is in most countries it reached a rather constant level but with the exception of czech republic showed no absolute decline yet tmr cap was reduced in two high income countries and one low income country due to political influence changes in tmr were more influenced by hidden flows hf than by dmi we analyse the dynamics of the structure and composition of tmr in the course of economic development in general the economic development of industrial countries was accompanied by a shift from domestic to foreign resource extraction different relations can be discovered for the share of biomass fossil fuel resources construction resources and metals and industrial minerals

international trade and the sustainability footprint a practical criterion for its assessment a simple and minimal criterion for sustainability is that the value of natural capital plus manufactured capital be not decreasing on the basis of any individual country or region the above simple comparison may be misleading as it does not take account of the production of goods for consumption in other countries regions via international trade in other terms the full environmental footprint of a country may not be properly assessed a method of calculating a weak sustainability criterion has been established for both a closed economy approach and an open economy approach there are significant differences between the open and closed economies measures for several regions particularly the middle east overall global sustainability on this criterion has been positive and increasing using a difference equation approach a further analysis has been made of the average proportional rate of change of global sustainability between 1980 and 1990 and its various regional and structural components have been determined these indicate that most of global sustainability growth can be attributed to western europe other asia and japan particularly through high savings ratios the usa on the other hand has made a very small net contribution to the growth in global sustainability

latin america and the global financial crisis the current world economic crisis has hit latin america very hard although financial conditions have deteriorated particularly since september 2008 the financial shock has been less severe than during the two previous crises thanks to improvements in external balance sheets there has been room for counter cyclical credit and monetary policies the decision to absorb large capital inflows during the boom as foreign exchange reserves is one of the major sources of the increased room to manoeuvre however these strengths have been insufficient in the face of a strong trade shock the region s economies should therefore seriously think again in the domestic market with regional integration and active production sector policies as engines of growth copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

commercial and biophysical deficits in south america 1990 2013 abstract this article analyses the physical trade balances ptb of five south american economies since 1990 both exports and imports measured in tonnes increased but exports were consistently much larger than imports such large physical trade deficits ptd persisted throughout the 1990s and 2000s export prices of primary goods increased but by 2013 export prices had declined and the exports could no longer pay for imports countries started to show commercial trade deficits in money terms these findings hold for all the south american countries analysed and they show that the optimism generated by the improving terms of trade in south america at the beginning of the 21st century was premature first there were ptds even in the boom years second the deterioration in the terms of trade after 2012 was accompanied by a counterproductive deficit in the monetary trade balance it is counterproductive because in principle it leads to greater external debts or to outflows of currency reserves it can also create pressure to increase physical exports we argue that deficits in the monetary trade balances tend to be compensated by increasing the deficit in the ptb which can lead to enhanced environmental pressures and therefore to local protests

real exchange rates and sectoral productivity in the eurozone we investigate the link between real exchange rates and sectoral total factor productivity measures for countries in the eurozone real exchange rate patterns closely accord with an amended balassa samuelson interpretation both in cross section and time series we construct a sticky price dynamic general equilibrium model to generate a cross section and time series of real exchange rates that can be directly compared to the data under the assumption of a common currency estimates from simulated regressions are very similar to the empirical estimates for the eurozone our ndings contrast with previous studies that have found little relationship between productivity levels and the real exchange rate among high income countries but those studies have included country pairs which have a oating nominal exchange rate

linking political ecology with ecological economics in tree plantation conflicts in cameroon and ecuador abstract industrial tree plantations are rapidly expanding worldwide and notably causing a growing number of conflicts between companies and local populations such conflicts the focus of the article have been neglected by ecological economists although there is a proliferation of related reports by environmental non governmental organizations this paper uses empirical evidence to show how elements of political ecology and ecological economics can be combined for understanding the languages of valuation deployed in tree plantation conflicts in southern countries combining qualitative fieldwork on a cameroonian rubber plantation and an ecuadorian eucalypt plantation with a methodological framework taken from the study of social metabolism we find that both conflicts although with different emphasis arise because of land and biomass appropriation ground clearing pollution from agrochemicals and water shortage and are expressed as conflicts on valuation the metabolism of such tree plantations through the exchanges of materials with the local environment explains the bio physical basis of such conflicts in the cameroon case resistance is mainly sporadic and individual while in ecuador a grassroots organization has been able to respond to rural demands in a structured way both patterns of resistance are found in other present day resource extraction conflicts

material implication of chile s economic growth combining material flow accounting mfa and structural decomposition analysis sda abstract over the last three decades the economic integration of the chilean economy into global markets has been taking place at a rapid pace for example in 1986 exports represented 29 of gdp while in 1996 they had increased to 38 of gdp this period of time was characterized by strong economic growth with an average annual growth rate of about 10 from a physical perspective material requirements more than doubled from 220 to 500 million tons of direct material inputs dmi during the same decade the rate of material growth requirements was around 13 per year the main objective of this study is to explain the changes in dmi by using a structural decomposition analysis sda the changes in material flow accounting mfa were broken down into the effects caused by changes in resource use per unit of output material intensity effect changes between and within sectors structural change effect changes in the composition of final demand mix effect changes due to shifting shares of domestic final demand and export categories category effect and finally changes in the overall level of economic activities level effects the results as a percentage of the total level of dmi used in 1986 indicate that economic growth was the major source of material changes 109 the material intensity and category effects explained 31 and 14 of the increase respectively the increase in the material intensity is mainly due to a declining quality of ores in copper production however these components were partly compensated by the structure 14 and mix 13 effects therefore for a southern american country such as chile the main causes of these changes in material consumption have been a combination of the nature of economic growth along with an increase in export production and material intensity of production

saving and income smoothing evidence from panel data abstract in this paper we use data from a panel of dutch households to investigate the behavior of savings as in campbell 1987 we examine whether the pattern of savings is consistent with the predictions of the rational expectations permanent income model we consider one important prediction of the model whether savings anticipate future income changes we test the predictions of the permanent income model in several ways first we propose some informal tests that exploit directly the information on expected future income changes available in the data we then perform a test of the model by setting up a vector autoregression var in terms of savings and income changes and by using euler equations expressed in terms of savings the empirical evidence shows that in all the specifications used in this paper the permanent income model is rejected contrary to the evidence from u s macro data we do not find that the excess sensitivity of consumption to income is responsible for the rejection of the model

the poor stay poor household asset poverty traps in rural semi arid india summary although identifying household level poverty dynamics would have important implications for poverty reduction policies empirical evidence is still scant this paper employs a novel semiparametric panel data estimator that combines the advantages of estimation methods in the existing literature and applies it to a uniquely long panel data set to examine poverty dynamics in three villages in rural semi arid india structural immobility is pervasive the currently poor are likely to remain poor suggesting a structural poverty trap while all households face static asset holdings higher castes larger landholders and more educated households are significantly less likely to be poor

logging conflicts in southern cameroon a feminist ecological economics perspective abstract growing attention has been paid to gender in ecological economics political ecology and development studies but a focus on gender in resource extraction conflicts is still rare this article explores women led resistance movements to commercial logging in south eastern cameroon focusing on the moabi tree baillonella toxisperma the latter provides oil medicine and other non timber products and use values to local forest societies and particularly to women resistances arise because most socio environmental costs of the international logging trade are imposed on the rural populations and especially on women of the extractive regions the aim of this paper is to analyze the root causes of the gender structure of such mobilisations as well as the impacts on gender relations induced by such resource extraction conflicts after proposing a typology of different environmental currents and their gender counterparts this paper focuses on the gender construction of local bantu societies taking as a point of departure paola tabet s thesis that masculine control over production tools is the objective factor revealing the sexual division of work in our case study we found that the men s control over technology not only highlights the sexual work division but also the gendered division of access rights to natural resources thereby we argue that the sexual division of access rights and work revealed through differentiated control over technology are two key institutions explaining the gendered structure of local mobilizations we then discuss the empowerment allowed by the new forms of women s organizations with a particular focus on the appropriation of new production tools by women this highlights a non western form of environmental feminism

structural changes and the real exchange rate dynamics abstract since china joined the wto in 2001 the chinese economy has grown very rapidly especially the tradable goods sector however the chinese real exchange rate did not exhibit a persistent and stable appreciation until 2005 this is a puzzling fact that is inconsistent with theories this paper documents several stylized facts during the economic transition and argues that two features of chinese economy may help explain the puzzling real exchange rate pattern for chinese economy i the faster total factor productivity tfp growth in export sector compared with the import sector ii excess supply of unskilled labor our hypotheses are supported by cross country evidence furthermore we construct a small open economy model with an h o trade structure and show that due to heterogeneous skilled labor intensity in export and import sectors the faster tfp growth in the export sector over that in the import sector will lead to the decline of return to capital and the rise of skilled wage therefore the decrease of return to capital and the low unskilled wage which is caused by the excess supply of unskilled labor inhibit the rise in the relative price of non tradable goods to tradable goods as well as the appreciation of real exchange rate finally we show that a dynamic small open economy model with multiple tradable goods sectors does fairly well in explaining the chinese real exchange rate and other stylized facts in the economic transition

real exchange rate adjustment in and out of the eurozone it is often suggested that currency unions unduly inhibit the efficient adjustment of real exchange rates recently this has been seen as a key failure of the eurozone this paper presents evidence that throws doubt on this conclusion our evidence suggests that real exchange rate movement within the eurozone was at least as compatible with efficient adjustment as the behavior of real exchange rates for the floating rate countries outside the eurozone this interpretation is consistent with a model in which nominal exchange rate movements give rise to persistent deviations from the law of one price in traded goods

the physical dimension of international trade part 2 indirect global resource flows between 1962 and 2005 global trade is increasingly being challenged by observations of growing burden shifting in particular of environmental problems this paper presents the first worldwide calculations of shifted burden based on material flow indicators in particular direct and indirect physical trade balances this study covers the period between 1962 and 2005 and includes between 82 and 173 countries per year the results show that indirect trade flow volumes have increased to around 41 billion tonnes in 2005 the traded resources with the highest share of associated indirect flows are iron hard coal copper tin and increasingly palm oil regarding the burden balance between regions europe is the biggest shifter whereas australia and latin america are the largest takers of environmental burden due to resource extraction to evaluate the findings from a global perspective the results are analysed in terms of resource flow induced environmental pressure related to a country s land area in terms of total and per capita area resource endowment and population density seem to be more relevant in determining the physical trade balance including indirect flows than income level

food regimes and their trade links a socio ecological perspective abstract the concept of food regimes has become a prominent theory in political economy we here provide socio ecological underpinning of the food regimes theory and thereby connect it closer to an ecological economics perspective we quantify physical trade with main agricultural commodities between world regions from the mid 19th century to 2016 and ask how trade patterns relate to issues of resource use in particular to land use soil fertility and the energetic basis of agriculture agricultural exports rose from a few million t yr around 1870 to 1 4 billion t yr in 2016 growth in trade and production did not follow a continuous trend periods of accelerated growth alternating with phases of relative stability can be distinguished rather than directed modernization we observe shifts in unequal relations of power physical exchange and environmental pressure between changing centers and peripheries the periods of growth in trade match with the periodization of food regimes we find that regime shifts are closely related to changes in societies energy metabolism in the resource base of agricultural production and also to agro ecological crisis our analysis emphasizes that food regimes not only reflect changes in power relations in the world system but also changes in societies natural relations

colombian international trade from a physical perspective towards an ecological prebisch thesis abstract prebisch s approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while centre countries export industrial goods the terms of trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate this approach can be extended to ecological issues the international centre periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital but also the physical exchange in which southern countries provide materials and energy so that northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism this metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods this paper aims to apply and extend prebisch s thought on unequal exchange both monetary and ecological in relation to colombian trade in the period 1970 2002 using material flow analysis

poverty traps and nonlinear income dynamics with measurement error and individual heterogeneity theories of poverty traps stand in sharp contrast to the view that anybody can make it through hard work and thrift however empirical detection of poverty traps is complicated by the lack of long panels measurement error and attrition this paper shows how dynamic pseudo panel methods can overcome these difficulties allowing estimation of non linear income dynamics and testing for the presence of poverty traps the paper explicitly allows for individual heterogeneity in income dynamics to account for the possibility that particular groups of individuals may face traps even if the average individual does not these methods are used to examine the evidence for a poverty trap in labor earnings income and expenditure in mexico and are compared to panel data estimates from a short rotating panel the results do find evidence of nonlinearities in household income dynamics and demonstrate large bias in the panel data estimates nevertheless even after allowing for heterogeneity and accounting for measurement error the paper finds no evidence of the existence of a poverty trap for any group in the sample

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

growth in global materials use gdp and population during the 20th century the growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change we present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting mfa on the grounds of published statistical data data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass fossil energy carriers metal ores industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005 this period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth the paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy population growth and primary energy consumption we show that during the last century global materials use increased 8 fold humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons gt of materials per year in particular the period after wwii was characterized by rapid physical growth driven by both population and economic growth within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy but faster than world population as a consequence material intensity i e the amount of materials required per unit of gdp declined while materials use per capita doubled from 4 6 to 10 3 t cap yr the main material groups show different trajectories while biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace we show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions so far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development

ecological economics marxism and technological progress some explorations of the conceptual foundations of theories of ecologically unequal exchange abstract almost regardless of ideological persuasion the seemingly self evident concept of technological progress inherited from early industrialism is resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth the increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power i discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about mainstream understandings of what technology really is technological utopianism raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relation between thermodynamics and theories of economic value while marxism and some ecological economics share the ambition of grounding notions of economic value in physical parameters notions of economic value and physical processes should be kept analytically distinct

shipbreaking at alang sosiya india an ecological distribution conflict article i nfo article history more than 80 of international trade in goods by volume is carried by sea the shipping industry constitutes a key element in the infrastructure of the world s social metabolism ocean going ships are owned and used for their trade by developed countries but are often demolished together with their toxic materials in developing countries ship breaking is the process of dismantling an obsolete vessel s structure for scrapping or disposal the alang sosiya yard india one of the world largest shipbreaking yards is studied here with particular attention to toxic waste management ship owners and ship breakers obtain large profits dumping the environmental costs on workers local farmers and fishers this unequal distribution of benefits and burdens due to an international and national uneven distribution of power has led to an ecological distribution conflict the controversy at the indian supreme court in 2006 over the dismantling of the ocean liner blue lady shows how the different languages of valuation expressed by different social groups clashed and how a language that expresses sustainability as monetary benefit at the national scale dominated shipbreaking in the developing world is not just an externality but a successful case of cost shifting or else profit accumulation by contamination

european product market integration after the euro using a detailed data set of prices of consumer goods in european cities from 1990 to spring 2003 we investigate the question of whether the introduction of the euro in january 1999 increased integration of consumer markets as reflected by consumer prices in fact we find no tendency for prices to converge after january 1999 this finding holds even when we control for a number of factors that might affect price dispersion on the other hand we find that there has been a significant reduction in price dispersion throughout the decade of the 1990s suggesting that efforts to reduce economic barriers initiated early in the decade may have in fact had the effect of significantly increasing the integration of consumer markets charles engel and john h rogers

earnings expectations revisions and realizations during the spring and the fall of 1993 respondents to a national household survey were asked to report expectations of spring 1994 weekly earnings elicited in the form of subjective probabilities these data are potentially much more informative than are typical reports of economic expectations subjective probability distributions of future weekly earnings are estimated for each respondent based on his or her reports of a series of subjective probabilities this paper analyzes the cross sectional variation in expectations revisions of expectations between the spring and the fall of 1993 and the relationship between 1993 expectations and the distribution of spring 1994 earnings realizations generally positive findings on the validity of the data bode well for the prospects of eliciting expectations in future surveys

ecuador s energy policy mix development versus conservation and nationalism with chinese loans abstract ecuador s energy policy faces a complex variety of political and economic objectives that are difficult to reconcile in a consistent manner ecuador is a small oil producer and exporter with significant renewable mainly hydropower resources hosting some of the richest biodiversity areas in the world part of which are inhabited by so far indigenous un contacted people being a developing country tensions arise between conservation aims and development imperatives as well as between resource nationalism and much needed foreign financing however the really limiting factor for the country s energy development seems to be its constraints in financing the government s development and redistributive policies resorting to chinese loans for oil may be part of the solution in the short term but it does not substitute for a more consistent energy policy ecuador s case illustrates the dilemmas of energy policy in natural resource rich developing countries when confronted with diverging political economy social environmental and macro financial goals

towards an ecological theory of unequal exchange articulating world system theory and ecological economics abstract the focus of this paper is on how an ecological perspective might provide us with an analytically more precise way of defining unequal exchange it is only by looking at the ecological conditions of human economies that we can adequately conceptualize the mechanisms which generate inequalities in distribution considerations of market power aside neoclassical economic ideology has dispelled all possible criteria for assessing a market transaction as unequal or unfair one way to assess the occurrence of unequal exchange may be to look at the direction of net flows of energy and materials concrete productive potential but without falling into the trap of equating productive potential with economic value on the contrary it can be analytically demonstrated that unequal exchange emerges from a kind of inverse relationship between productive potential and economic value the notion of a reasonable market price conceals the fact that what is being exchanged are intact resources for products representing resources already spent if we consider longitudinally along the production process any given set of fuels and raw materials destined to be transformed into a given product plus waste its content of available energy will be inversely related to its utility or price in other words the more of its original energy that has been dissipated the higher its price this means that production i e the dissipation of resources will continuously be rewarded with ever more resources to dissipate generating ecological destruction and global core periphery inequalities as two sides of the same coin

how does future income affect current consumption this paper tests a straightforward implication of the basic life cycle model of consumption that current consumption depends on expected lifetime income the paper projects future income for a panel of households and finds that consumption is closely related to projected current income but unrelated to predictable changes in income however future income uncertainty has an important effect consumers facing greater income uncertainty consume less the results are consistent with buffer stock models of consumption like those of deaton 1991 or carroll 1992a 1992b where precautionary motives greatly reduce the willingness of prudent consumers to consume out of uncertain future income

unequal raw material exchange between and within countries galicia nw spain as a core periphery economy abstract a global multi regional input output model with sub national resolution for galicia north west spain was used to study physical and value added trade balances between galicia the rest of spain and the world within the framework of ecologically unequal exchange theory we argue that a region such as galicia can play a twofold role as core and periphery in the global division of extractive activities we show that galicia is a sink i e net importer of natural resources from middle and low income economies and that the lower the income of the trade partner the more raw material intensive the imports measured as upstream kg per usd imported value added however this physical deficit is less accentuated than for the rest of spain and galicia s material footprint is significantly lower 14 2 compared with 24 5 t capita moreover galicia is a source i e net exporter of raw materials compared with more thriving european union economies and even for some key trade partners such as germany uk and the rest of spain it is a net importer of value added

expectations and perceptions in developing countries their measurement and their use in recent years much attention has been devoted to the debate between two groups of applied researchers the first stresses the need for empirical work to rely on variation in the data that is truly and surely exogenous to estimate a well defined if narrow set of parameters the second is willing to impose structure on data to estimate behavioral parameters the conduct and design of economic policy rely heavily on the identification of structural behavioral parameters as they are crucial to understanding how individuals react to incentives in different contexts however the estimation of structural models often relies on very strong assumptions the availability of rich datasets that include credible measurements of variables that are relevant to the decision making process such as expectations perceptions and beliefs can shift the weight of this debate as it allows the estimation of structural models of individual behavior using much weaker assumptions moreover in the case of development measurement of this type of variables goes straight to the core of issues that are fundamental for the understanding of the causes of the lack of development and the imperfections in markets knowledge and information that may prevent growth the availability of hard data on expected returns on certain investments and how individuals act upon these expectations gives direct information on whether individuals have reasonable beliefs on returns and crucially on whether credit and insurance market imperfections might be playing an data watch data initiatives

the physical economy of the european union cross country comparison and determinants of material consumption abstract in this paper we investigate what determines observed differences in economy wide material use among the eu 15 member states the empirical basis for our analysis is an extended and revised material flow data set for each of the eu 15 countries in time series from 1970 to 2001 this data set comprises consistent data for domestic extraction imports and exports as well as for derived material flow indicators broken down by 12 types of materials we compare the level and composition of domestic material consumption dmc in the eu 15 member states and identify determinants of the observed differences across the european union member states overall dmc per capita varies by a factor of three ranging between 12 tonnes per capita in italy and the united kingdom and 37 tonnes per capita in finland this variability of dmc in the eu 15 is in a similar order of magnitude as the variability of gdp per capita or total primary energy supply per capita linear correlation analysis reveals that national income and final energy consumption relate to material use but cannot fully account for the observed differences in material consumption by breaking down overall material flow indicators into 12 categories of materials and analysing their use patterns in detail we identified a number of factors socio economic and natural that influence the level and composition of economy wide material use many of these factors are specific for certain types of materials others are more general and quite some driving factors counteract each other regarding the direction of their influence concluding we summarize the most important driving factors for domestic material consumption stressing population density as largely neglected but important explanatory variable for material use patterns discuss issues of environmental significance aggregation and the use of different denominators in material flow accounting and suggest a re interpretation of dmc

disentangling insurance and information in intertemporal consumption choices the textbook version of the life cycle perma nent income hypothesis with no liquidity con straints predicts that consumption should react very mildly to unanticipated transitory income changes and very strongly to permanent ones this prediction has important policy implica tions in understanding the response of consum ers to tax rebates or increases that are made for stabilization purposes in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in estimating these important parameters either using quasi experimental data such as randomization of the timing when tax rebate checks are received by households see david johnson jonathan parker and nicholas souleles 2006 or imposing struc tural restrictions on the stochastic income pro cess faced by consumers orazio attanasio and nicola pavoni 2008 richard blundell luigi pistaferri and ian preston 2008 jonathan heathcote kjetil storesletten and giovanni l violante 2007 giorgio primiceri and thijs van rens forthcoming the main objection of quasi experimental stud ies is that the results may be context specific the main problem with the second strand of the litera ture is that estimates of the response of consump tion to income shocks may confound two issues insurance and information on the one hand the estimate reflects the ability or lack thereof of the household to smooth consumption through a variety of channels such as self insurance gov ernment provided insurance credit markets or other informal mechanisms on the other hand the identification strategy requires the ability to statistically separate what is a shock from what is an anticipated event when seen from the point of

buen vivir vs development ii the limits of neo extractivism like the entire andean region ecuador has an economic structure that is dependent on primary exports during the last boom in commodity prices the neo extractivist development strategy generated economic growth and simultaneously reduced inequality however this bonanza was not used to advance in economic diversification or for transition towards buen vivir sumak kawsay good living as postulated in the constitution and the national development plans we establish that neo extractivism is not compatible with buen vivir analysing three concrete aspects to this end the failure to fulfill the rights of nature and ecological sustainability the lack of advances in transforming the productive matrix insufficient results in matters of redistributive social policies

comparing the point predictions and subjective probability distributions of professional forecasters we use data from the survey of professional forecasters spf to compare point predictions of gross domestic product gdp growth and inflation with the subjective probability distributions held by forecasters we find that most spf point predictions are quite close to the central tendencies of forecasters subjective distributions tend to be asymmetric with spf forecasters tending to report point predictions that give a more favorable view of the economy than do their subjective means medians modes

uncertainty persistence and heterogeneity a panel data perspective the purpose of this paper is to review newly developed identification and estimation tools that are relevant for the analysis of dynamic dependence structures of income risk i present an application to nonlinear permanent transitory models of household income using data from the panel study of income dynamics psid but the empirical approach is more generally applicable household income processes are of interest because the size of shocks the nature of their persistence and crosshousehold heterogeneity are all important to understand how income inequality varies with age and cohort and how it translates into consumption inequality i argue that going from an econometrics of autocovariances to an econometrics of flexible distributions is feasible and has the potential to reveal richer aspects of risk for example nonlinear persistence of unusual shocks jel c23 d31 d12

the biophysical perspective of a middle income economy material flows in mexico abstract we analyse natural resource use dynamics in the mexican economy during the last three decades despite low and uneven economic growth the extraction and use of materials in the mexican economy has continuously increased during the last 30 years in this period population growth rather than economic growth was the main driving force for biophysical growth in addition fundamental changes have taken place in the primary sectors in manufacturing and in household consumption and these are reflected in an increasing emphasis on the use of fossil fuels and construction materials mexico s economy has been strongly influenced by international trade since the country commenced competing in international markets in the 1970s mexico mainly exported primary resources this pattern has changed and manufactured goods now have a much greater importance due to a boom in assembling industries in contrast with other latin american countries mexico has achieved a diversification of production moving towards technology intensive products and a better mix in its export portfolio however crude oil exports still represent the single most important export good mexico s material consumption is still well below the oecd average but is growing fast and the current resource use patterns may well present serious social and environmental problems to the medium and long term sustainability of mexico s economy and community information on natural resource use and resource productivity could provide valuable guidance for economic policy planning in mexico

energy and carbon embodied in the international trade of brazil an input output approach abstract all goods and services produced in an economy are directly and or indirectly associated with energy use and according to the type of fuel utilized with co2 emissions as well international trade is an important factor in shaping the industrial structure of a country and consequently in affecting a country s energy use and co2 emissions this study applies input output techniques to the brazilian economy to evaluate the total impacts of international trade on its energy use and co2 emissions a commodity by industry io model in hybrid units energy commodities in physical units and non energy commodities in monetary units is applied to the brazilian economy in 1995 results show that total energy embodied in the exports of non energy goods of brazil equals 831 pj while total carbon embodied is 13 5 mtc these amounts are larger than the relevant amounts embodied in the imports of non energy goods respectively 679 pj and 9 9 mtc these figures are better understood by contrasting them with the total energy use and the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 estimated by this work 6781 pj and 99 4 mtc respectively this means that international inflows and outflows of energy embodied in non energy goods are in the order of 10 and 12 of the total energy use while inflows and outflows of carbon embodied in non energy goods are approximately 10 and 14 of the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 the general picture is that brazil is not only a net exporter of energy 153 pj and of carbon 3 6 mtc embodied in the non energy goods internationally traded by the country in 1995 but also that each dollar earned with exports embodied 40 more energy and 56 more carbon than each dollar spent on imports these findings suggest that brazilian policy makers should be concerned about the extra impacts international trade policy may have on energy use and carbon emissions of the country

international dimensions of optimal monetary policy abstract this paper provides a baseline general equilibrium model of optimal monetary policy among interdependent economies with monopolistic firms and nominal rigidities an inward looking policy of domestic price stabilization is not optimal when firms markups are exposed to currency fluctuations such a policy raises exchange rate volatility leading foreign exporters to charge higher prices vis a vis increased uncertainty in the export market as higher import prices reduce the purchasing power of domestic consumers optimal monetary rules trade off a larger domestic output gap against lower consumer prices optimal rules in a world nash equilibrium lead to less exchange rate volatility relative to both inward looking rules and discretionary policies even when the latter do not suffer from any inflationary or deflationary bias gains from international monetary cooperation are related in a non monotonic way to the degree of exchange rate pass through

foreign trade and early industrialisation in the habsburg monarchy and the united kingdom two extremes in comparison the concept of socio ecological transitions is used to analyse the quantitative importance of physical imports and exports for the habsburg empire and the united kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries for the habsburg empire a new dataset of foreign trade and social metabolism is presented for the united kingdom the analysis relies on previously published data foreign trade volumes increased in both countries in the long run total trade volumes were much higher in the united kingdom throughout the entire time period on average by around a factor four physical factors explaining the disparities in structure and volume of foreign trade in the two countries are differences in 1 the temporal patterns of the socio ecological transition and 2 domestic resource endowments in both countries energy carrying materials i e fossil fuels and biomass were the dominant resources in physical foreign trade the analysis focuses on the physically most important material groups coal wood and cereals and discusses the role of imports and exports in relation to domestic resource provision and environmental pressures physical foreign trade increased at a faster pace than domestic resource extraction and consumption the socio ecological transition was thus accompanied by rising international integration of resource supply

international copper flow network a blockmodel analysis industrial ecology is looking for new tools to combine social and economic dimensions with the already well developed physical flow analysis of the human economic system this article introduces a tool from social network analysis as complementary to the existing multilevel substance flow analysis by exploring the concept of space and region in which substance flows happen we use the blockmodel from network analysis in the characterization of the multilevel anthropogenic copper cycle to group countries according to their structural equivalence in the international trade networks related to copper instead of using a priori aggregation standards such as geographical proximity gdp per capita or widely accepted classification of industrial developing countries this approach depicts the patterns of material movement through trade which reflects the inherent structure of the world system regarding copper production and consumption the results highlight the uneven distribution of global copper stocks and flows across countries in the middle 1990s and illustrate the core peripheral structure among different country groups in which a close interconnected core exist with sparse ties to peripheral groups and copper are flowing from the peripheral to the core in terms of net flows

home production labor wedges and international business cycles non separabilities due to home production break the link between market consumption and its marginal utility and help explain several stylized facts of the open economy in an estimated two country model with complete asset markets in which home production generates a labor wedge that mimics its empirical counterpart output is more correlated than consumption across countries labor inputs and labor wedges are positively correlated across countries and relative market consumption is negatively related to the real exchange rate evidence from time use surveys corroborates some of the predictions of the model

stochastic wealth dynamics and risk management among a poor population we use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern ethiopia to study stochastic wealth dynamics among a poor population although covariate rainfall shocks plainly matter household specific factors including own herd size account for most observed variability in wealth dynamics we find no support for the tragedy of the commons hypothesis past studies may have conflated costly self insurance with stocking rate externalities biophysical shocks move households between multiple dynamic wealth equilibria the lowest suggesting a poverty trap according to nonconvex path dynamics these findings have broad implications for development and relief strategies among a poor population vulnerable to climatic shocks a vast economic literature on risk management rests explicitly or implicitly on the classic friedmanite permanent income hypothesis studies of portfolio management consumption smoothing social insurance and the like all depend on the canonical assumption that stochastic income realisations are drawn from a stationary income distribution leading to consumption smoothing off a stable asset base the possibility of asset accumulation connects this literature to the immense literature on the theory and empirics of economic growth

biophysical structure of the ecuadorian economy foreign trade and policy implications abstract at the core of this paper lays the notion that a systematic analysis of material flow accounts enables us to discuss the sustainability of an economic model ecuador is going through a socio ecological transition from an agrarian towards an industrial regime based on the use of nonrenewable sources of materials and energy direct material flow indicators are used in this article to analyze the ecological dimension of the economy of ecuador during 1970 2007 this approach enables the concept of societal metabolism to become operative the paper compares societal metabolic profiles showing that per capita use of materials is still at about one fifth of the average in the high income countries of the world physical flows of trade indicate that there is an ecologically unequal exchange whereas a positive trade balance is desirable from an economic policy its counterpart in physical units has been a persistent net outflow of material resources the extraction of which causes environmental impacts and social conflicts

twin deficit or twin divergence fiscal policy current account and real exchange rate in the u s abstract in spite of concerns about twin deficits fiscal and the current account deficits for the united states economy empirical evidence suggests that twin divergence is a more usual feature of the historical data i e when fiscal accounts worsen the current account improves and vice versa this paper empirically studies the effects of fiscal policy government budget deficit shocks on the current account and the real exchange rate during the flexible exchange rate regime period based on var vector auto regression models we identified exogenous fiscal policy shocks after controlling for business cycle effects on fiscal balances in contrast to the predictions of most theoretical models the u s results suggest that an expansionary fiscal policy shock or a government budget deficit shock improve the current account and depreciate the real exchange rate increases in private savings and declines in investment contribute to the current account improvement while a nominal exchange rate depreciation as opposed to a relative price level change is mainly responsible for the real exchange rate depreciation the twin divergence of fiscal balances and current account balances is also explained by the prevalence of output shocks i e output shocks more than fiscal shocks appear to drive the co movements of the current account and the fiscal balance

intellectual mercantilism and franchise equity a critical study of the ecological political economy of international payments for ecosystem services abstract this text addresses the ecological political economy of international payment for ecosystem services ipes taking the united nations collaborative programme on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries redd as a case in point it asks in what ways may ipes schemes impinge upon the political and economic autonomy of local and indigenous peoples in tropical countries it is argued that pes schemes like redd should be assessed not only with respect to questions of distributional equity does everyone have enough pie but also with respect to franchise equity does everyone want pie and that failure to take questions of franchise equity into account in ipes schemes reflects a form or intellectual mercantilism where wealth transfers from new economies to old ones are achieved by redefining existing locally available resources as internationally tradable speculative commodities this proposition is considered through exploration of two illustrative cases the redd social and environmental standards redd ses and the yasuni itt initiative and through normative political theory recommendations building on dryzek and stevenson s discussion of deliberative systems regarding how it might be possible to ensure franchise equity within redd in particular and within global environmental governance more generally

competition for land a sociometabolic perspective abstract possible negative effects of increased competition for land include pressures on biodiversity rising food prices and ghg emissions however neoclassical economists often highlight positive aspects of competition e g increased efficiency and innovation competition for land occurs when several agents demand the same good or service produced from a limited area it implies that when one agent acquires scarce resources from land less resource is available for competing agents the resource competed for is often not land but rather its function for biomass production which may be supplanted by other inputs that raise yields increased competition may stimulate efficiency but negative environmental effects are likely in the absence of appropriate regulations competition between affluent countries with poor people in subsistence economies likely results in adverse social and development outcomes if not mitigated through effective policies the socioecological metabolism approach is a framework to analyze land related limits and functions in particular with respect to production and consumption of biomass and carbon sequestration it can generate databases that consistently link land used with biomass flows which are useful in understanding interlinkages between different products and services and thereby help to analyze systemic feedbacks in the global land system

ecological footprint inequality across countries the role of environment intensity income and interaction effects recently white 2007 analysed the international inequalities in ecological footprints per capita ef hereafter based on a two factor decomposition of an index from the atkinson family atkinson 1970 specifically this paper evaluated the separate role of environment intensity ef gdp and average income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities however in addition to other comments on their appeal this decomposition suffers from the serious limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation york et al 2005 this paper proposes by way of an alternative a decomposition of a conceptually similar index like theil s 1967 which in effect permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an inter factor correlation in line with duro and padilla 2006 this decomposition might in turn be extended to group inequality components shorrocks 1980 an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the atkinson indices the proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the international inequalities in ef per capita for the 1980 2007 period and amongst other results we find that indeed the interactive component explains to a significant extent the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall international inequalities

bayesian herders updating of rainfall beliefs in response to external forecasts summary temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world s poor model based climate forecasts could benefit such populations provided recipients use forecast information to update climate expectations we test whether pastoralists in southern ethiopia and northern kenya update their expectations in response to forecast information the minority of herders who received these climate forecasts updated their expectations for below normal rainfall but not for above normal rainfall this revealed preoccupation with downside risk highlights the potential value of better climate forecasts in averting drought related losses but realizing any welfare gains requires that recipients strategically react to these updated expectations

socio ecological regime transitions in austria and the united kingdom we employ the concepts of socio ecological regime and regime transition to better understand the biophysical causes and consequences of industrialization for two case studies the united kingdom and austria we describe two steps in a major transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio ecological regime and the resulting consequences for energy use land use and labour organization in a first step the coal based industrial regime co existed with an agricultural sector remaining within the bounds of the old regime in a second step the oil electricity based industrial regime agriculture was integrated into the new pattern and the socio ecological transition had been completed industrialization offers an answer to the input and growth related sustainability problems of the agrarian regime but creates new sustainability problems of a larger scale while today s industrial societies are stabilizing their resource use albeit at an unsustainable level large parts of the global society are in midst of the old industrial transition this poses severe problems for global sustainability

new developments in trade theory and ldcs abstract this paper surveys the new literature on international trade relevant to the north south controversy in the first part two types of north south models are considered the unequal exchange theory of lewis and emmanuel and the models of dynamic interaction of findlay taylor and others the analysis focuses on the determinants of growth the terms of trade and relative employment in the world economy in the second part the paper reviews the empirical literature on south north and south south trade and the theories of north south technological gaps intra industry trade and external economies finally we analyze the literature on exports and economic growth and the neo classical keynesian and disequilibrium approaches to the theory of import controls

boom goes the price giant resource discoveries and real exchange rate appreciation we estimate the effect of giant oil and gas discoveries on bilateral real exchange rates the size and plausibly exogenous timing of such discoveries make them ideal for identifying the effects of an anticipated resource boom on prices we find that a giant discovery with the value of a country s gdp increases the real exchange rate by 14 within 10 years following the discovery the appreciation is nearly exclusively driven by an appreciation of the prices of non tradable goods we show that these empirical results are qualitatively and quantitatively in line with a calibrated model with forward looking behaviour and dutch disease dynamics

the commodification of nature and socio environmental resistance in ecuador an inventory of accumulation by dispossession cases 1980 2013 abstract this article aims to advance understanding of the relationship between social metabolism the commodification of nature local regime changes and patterns of resistance to accumulation by environmental dispossession during the most recent phase of global capitalism ecuador is a resource rich periphery country that has moved after 2007 from a neoliberal to a post neoliberal policy regime by analyzing 64 socio environmental resistance cases in the period 1980 2013 we focus on the continuities and changes in the relationship between environmental dispossession and resistance under the two regimes we find that while resistance to agri food projects has diminished having enjoyed some success under during the post neoliberal regime resistance to infrastructure and mineral extraction projects has remained steady with the impacts from environmental dispossession remaining much like those observed before 2007 at the same time major social investments financed through natural resource extraction and export combined with the introduction of constraints on the media and public assembly have created a political climate in which the resistance observed during the neo liberal period is now a socially deviant behavior

income variance dynamics and heterogeneity recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance in this paper the assumption of i i d income innovations used in previous empirical studies is removed and the focus of the analysis is placed on models for the conditional variance of income shocks which is related to the measure of risk emphasized by the theory we first discriminate amongst various models of earnings determination that separate income shocks into idiosyncratic transitory and permanent components we allow for education and time specific differences in the stochastic process for earnings and for measurement error the conditional variance of the income shocks is modelled as a parsimonious arch process with both observable and unobserved heterogeneity the empirical analysis is conducted on data drawn from the 1967 1992 panel study of income dynamics we find strong evidence of sizeable arch effects as well as evidence of unobserved heterogeneity in the variances

decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth scenarios for energy use materials use and carbon emissions in recent decades economic growth and increased human wellbeing around the globe have come at the cost of fast growing natural resource use including materials and energy and carbon emissions leading to converging pressures of declining resource security rising and increasingly volatile natural resource prices and climate change we ask whether well designed policies can reduce global material and energy use and carbon emissions with only minimal impacts on improvements in living standards we use a novel approach of combined economic and environmental modelling to assess the potential for decoupling for 13 world regions and globally we apply a production territorial and consumption approach to discuss regional differences in natural resource use and carbon emissions across three stylized policy outlooks a reference case with no significant changes to environment and climate policies a high efficiency outlook involving a global carbon price rising from 50 to 236 constant price per tonne of co2 between 2010 and 2050 and improvements in resource efficiency rising from 1 5 historically to between 3 5 and 4 5 in the scenarios and a medium efficiency outlook midway between the no change and high outlooks we find that global energy use will continue to grow rapidly under all three scenarios from 17 billion tonnes of oil equivalent toe in 2010 to between 30 and 36 billion toe carbon emissions would be considerably lower with a global carbon price less than half the level of the reference case 29 37 billion tonnes of co2 instead of 74 billion tonnes and also material use would grow much more slowly under a carbon price and significant investment to increase resource efficiency 95 instead of 180 billion tonnes of materials we find that oecd economies have significant potential to reduce their material throughput and carbon emissions with little impact on economic growth and that developing economies such as china could expand their economies at much lower environmental cost globally the effects of very strong abatement and resource efficiency policies on economic growth and employment until 2050 are negligible our study suggests that decarbonization and dematerialization are possible with well designed policy settings and would not contradict efforts to raise human wellbeing and standards of living the research demonstrates the usefulness of scenarios for unpacking environmental and economic outcomes of policy alternatives the findings have important implications for future economic opportunities in a highly resource efficient and low carbon global economy to set human development and achieving the sustainable development goals on a more resilient path

on the north south trade in the americas and its ecological asymmetries there has been a long and intensive debate within the scientific community about the role of international trade in the development of countries during the last decades the focus of attention has moved from the pure economic level to the environmental aspects of international trade establishing a simplified system of north south trade for one reference period 2003 this paper attempts to test empirically the extent of potential asymmetries with regard to extracted material flows and contrasts the results with the economic benefits from trade in terms of value added the south is thereby represented by a selection of latin american countries brazil chile colombia ecuador and mexico the north comprises one of their main commercial partners the united states at the methodological level a multi regional input output analysis is used as the tool of investigation results generally support the hypothesis that the south was feeding the north s societal metabolism south north material exports were 1 6 times larger than north south material exports resulting in a net deficit for the south of 324 million tons moreover material intensity of exported commodities from the south was twice as high as that from the north it is worth highlighting however that part of the north south hypothesis fails for the sample of countries since the larger part of the economic surplus has remained in the south contrarily to what would have been expected

a land of milk and honey with streets paved with gold do emigrants have over optimistic expectations about incomes abroad millions of people emigrate every year in search of better economic and social opportunities anecdotal evidence suggests that emigrants may have over optimistic expectations about the incomes they can earn abroad resulting in excessive migration pressure and in disappointment among those who do migrate yet there is almost no statistical evidence on how accurately these emigrants predict the incomes that they will earn working abroad in this paper the authors combine a natural emigration experiment with unique survey data on would be emigrants probabilistic expectations about employment and incomes in the migration destination their procedure enables them to obtain moments and quantiles of the subjective distribution of expected earnings in the destination country the authors find a significant underestimation of both unconditional and conditional labor earnings at all points in the distribution this underestimation appears driven in part by potential migrants placing too much weight on the negative employment experiences of some migrants and by inaccurate information flows from extended family who may be trying to moderate remittance demands by understating incomes