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

a context based procedure for assessing participatory schemes in environmental planning the efficiency of participatory schemes in environmental planning is an emerging research area and many issues are not solved yet regarding the assessment of such procedures it is essential for decision makers to identify improvement opportunities of participatory schemes we propose an original procedure to address such issue through a bargaining model from the signaling game literature which accounts for participation design as well as for agents preferences beliefs and bargaining power the model is calibrated using qualitative data from surveys in french local communities involved in municipal solid waste management model simulations are used to test for assumptions on the stakeholder dialogue and explore sensitivity of game outcomes to structural parameters we propose a set of performance indicators to identify the most effective participatory schemes in achieving convergence in stakeholder positions regarding environmental and land use planning

a field study of sales forecasting accuracy and processes abstract as might be expected surveys show accuracy is the most important criterion in selecting a forecasting strategy this may lead to the expectation that computer based software would be used to aid the forecasting effort however despite the wide availability of forecast software management judgement appears to be the preferred method this leads to the question does management judgement provide the most accurate forecast estimates this paper reports a field study of judgemental sales forecasting over thirteen manufacturing organisations to investigate whether these forecasts are accurate unbiased and efficient and whether better ex ante forecasts could have been developed using a computer based model the study shows that the company forecasts were not uniformly more accurate than a simple un seasonally adjusted naive forecast most of the source of error is due to both inefficiency a serial correlation in the errors and bias in the forecasts these two factors seemed to mask any contribution of contextual information to accuracy the results are also discussed in terms of forecasting objectives the organisations may have other than accuracy

a comparison of petroleum futures versus spot prices as predictors of prices in the future abstract even though studies have indicated that the futures market leads the spot market in price discovery this paper hypothesizes that the predictive significance of each should be the same a number of different statistical tests are presented to test this hypothesis when deseasonalized data is employed the predictive significance of each series is found to be the same but when actual prices are employed futures prices did correctly anticipate the observed seasonal pattern

valuation languages in environmental conflicts how stakeholders oppose or support gold mining at mount ida turkey abstract this paper analyses an ongoing environmental conflict over the prospect of gold mining at mount ida turkey and aims to unpack the valuation languages social actors in the conflict use to either support or oppose gold mining based on a field study consisting of 37 in depth interviews three focus groups and a survey administered to a total of 738 citizens the factors that affect local public s positions vis a vis gold mining at mount ida and their choice of valuation languages are examined assessing the conflict at mount ida in terms of valuation languages enables us to better comprehend the various dimensions of the conflict and differentiate between the disagreements that can be controlled and solved via technical measures or bargaining over the amount of monetary compensation and those that cannot we also intend to provide a useful and general methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative research methods for understanding a broad range of environmental conflicts the results are in line with earlier findings in that local people oppose such projects for various distinct reasons and monetary and or technical compensatory schemes do not suffice to solve the disagreements that arise in a satisfactory way

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

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

accuracy and efficiency in the u s department of energy s short term supply forecasts one step ahead forecasts of quarterly crude oil natural gas electricity and coal supplies are evaluated under two general approaches accuracy based measures and classification or directional based measures results suggest the u s department of energy doe supply forecasts for u s domestic energy products are generally more accurate than a naive alternative there is only limited evidence of bias and inefficiency in the forecasts although there is some evidence of error repetition directional forecasts for supply changes are statistically better than random but they generally do not outperform a naive forecast

rationality testing under asymmetric loss abstract this paper shows that if agents have an asymmetric loss function standard empirical tests for the rationality of their expectations are in general invalid we further show that under a popular class of asymmetric loss functions the linex family a valid test can be carried out by estimating an appropriate arch in mean model the contrast between the standard test and our arch m test is illustrated using the goldsmith nagan forecasts of us treasury bill yields

footprints in the cotton fields the industrial revolution as time space appropriation and environmental load displacement this paper offers a method for quantifying the global exchange of natural space and labor time underlying the economic success of the british textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century using historical statistics on inputs of land and labor embodied in cotton and wool production respectively estimates are made of the amount of british land and labor that were saved by displacing fibre production to north america by comparing inputs of land and labor in the textile exports of england with those in some commodities imported from its colonial periphery and juxtaposing these data with exchange rates estimates are also made of unequal exchange using such methods it is possible to bring together the marxist concern with unequal exchanges of labor time on one hand with the more recent concern with ecological footprints on the other

global effects of national biomass production and consumption austria s embodied hanpp related to agricultural biomass in the year 2000 global trade of biomass related products is growing exponentially resulting in increasing teleconnections between producing and consuming regions sustainable management of the earth s lands requires indicators to monitor these connections across regions and scales the embodied human appropriation of npp ehanpp allows one to consistently attribute the hanpp resulting from production chains to consumers hanpp is the sum of land use induced npp changes and biomass harvest we present the first national level assessment of embodied hanpp related to agriculture based on a calculation using bilateral trade matrices the dataset allows 1 the tracing of the biomass based products consumed in austria in the year 2000 to their countries of origin and quantifying the hanpp caused in production and 2 the assigning of the national level hanpp on austria s territory to the consumers of the products on the national level the dataset is constructed along a consistent system boundary between society and ecosystems and can be used to assess austria s physical trade balance in terms of ehanpp austria s ehanpp trade balance is slightly negative imports are larger than exports import and export flows are large in relation to national hanpp our findings show how the ehanpp approach can be used for quantifying and mapping the teleconnections related to a nation s biomass metabolism

unravelling the argument for bioenergy production in developing countries a world economy perspective this paper offers a critical look at how energy security food and agriculture and climate change oriented international organizations frame biomass energy production in developing countries in particular ethanol production in brazil using the world economy system as a theoretical lens the paper raises a concern as to whether the way these global institutions frame bioenergy s role in developing regions manifests energy and ecological inequalities between the core and the periphery as well as creates internal contradictions that perpetuate unequal exchange embedded in the system simultaneously these organizations frame brazil as a semi peripheral state that while successful in finding a niche concurring with the core s demand for cheap energy and cost effective decarbonization strategies is not necessarily a suitable role model for the periphery s socio economic development

what do we learn from the price of crude oil futures summary despite their widespread use as predictors of the spot price of oil oil futures prices tend to be less accurate in the mean squared prediction error sense than no change forecasts this result is driven by the variability of the futures price about the spot price as captured by the oil futures spread this variability can be explained by the marginal convenience yield of oil inventories using a two country multi period general equilibrium model of the spot and futures markets for crude oil we show that increased uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls under plausible assumptions causes the spread to decline increased uncertainty also causes precautionary demand for oil to increase resulting in an immediate increase in the real spot price thus the negative of the oil futures spread may be viewed as an indicator of fluctuations in the price of crude oil driven by precautionary demand an empirical analysis of this indicator provides evidence of how shifts in the uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls affect the real spot price of crude oil copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

the ambiguous effect of new and improved goods on the cost of living abstract i show that the income share weighted average of individual cost of living indexes can diverge sharply from the equally weighted ordinary average when quality improvements are embodied in discrete goods it is possible for the income share weighted mean to decline while the ordinary mean rises

payments for ecosystem services as commodity fetishism abstract payments for ecosystem services pes economically reward resource managers for the provision of ecosystem services and are thus characterised by i an ecological function subject to trade ii the establishment of a standard unit of exchange iii and supply demand and intermediation flows between those who sell and buy ecosystem services this paper departs from the term commodity fetishism broadly understood as the masking of the social relationships underlying the process of production to illuminate three invisibilities in the commodification of ecosystem services firstly we argue that narrowing down the complexity of ecosystems to a single service has serious technical difficulties and ethical implications on the way we relate to and perceive nature secondly the commodification of ecosystem services denies the multiplicity of values which can be attributed to these services since it requires that a single exchange value is adopted for trading finally we suggest that the process of production exchange and consumption of ecosystem services is characterised by power asymmetries which may contribute to reproducing rather than addressing existing inequalities in the access to natural resources and services

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

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

testing the rationality of doe s energy price forecasts under asymmetric loss preferences this paper examines the rationality of the price forecasts for energy commodities of the united states department of energy s doe departing from the common assumption in the literature that doe s forecasts are based on a symmetric underlying loss function with respect to positive vs negative forecast errors instead we opt for the methodology of elliott et al 2005 that allows testing the joint hypothesis of an asymmetric loss function and rationality and reveals the underlying preferences of the forecaster results indicate the existence of asymmetries in the shape of the loss function for most energy categories with preferences leaning towards optimism moreover we also examine whether there is a structural break in those preferences over the examined period 1997 2012

valuation languages along the coal chain from colombia to the netherlands and to turkey environmental goods and bads are accumulated and unequally distributed along the coal supply chain producing environmental injustices where actors deployed values and representations of coal to either resist or legitimize its extraction and consumption this paper analyzes those valuation languages along the coal chain and their relationships with the territory where coal is extracted and burned the paper examines and compares the coal chains between colombia netherlands and colombia turkey assessing the various dimensions of the ecological distribution conflicts the coal chain is analyzed through different layers and scales to identify the valuation languages along both coal chains semi structured interviews and secondary data analysis were conducted discourse analysis methodologies were used to determine the frequency and relevance of the valuation languages results show that multiple valuation languages appear which are peculiar to each country and to the economic and political contexts in which the different stages of coal chain are embedded environmental justice actions taken along the coal chain with the focus on acknowledging these multiple valuation languages are also discussed in conclusion the analysis reveals that these actions depend on the willingness of social actors to give up or negotiate their valuation languages or on the power to impose them

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

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

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

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

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

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

the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments a typical case of the blind men and the elephant abstract in this paper we examine the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments in four literatures theoretical models on incentives for eco innovation econometric studies based on observed data survey analysis based on stated information and technology case studies the aim of this paper is to critically examine the methods and the results we argue that the case studies literature even when its results are specific and difficult to generalise is a necessary source of empirical evidence about policy impacts and the factors responsible for these impacts pointing to issues that are neglected in the theoretical and econometric literature such as the specifics of the innovation context and policy interaction effects the paper states five synthesised findings and makes a plea for multi method analysis one other important synthesised finding is that the influence of market based instruments on innovation such as emission trading and taxes is far weaker than assumed

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

weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics the main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values should be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics the formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability implying strong or weak commensurability and weak comparability implying incommensurability will be clarified multicriteria evaluation offers the methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis the concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition in economics moreover we will show that analytic philosophy theories of complexity post normal science and the recent theories of rationality lead with different trajectories to a non algorithmic approach which in our view could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the ecological economics of economic democracy abstract ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the intertwined social and ecological crises we face we argue that the discipline should engage with the thinking and practices around alternatives to capitalism more substantially as this is essential and invaluable for the discipline s ability to contribute to a just and sustainable future we outline an agenda for future ecological economics research on economic alternatives that are shaped by the concrete ways in which economic democracy deals with issues of uncertainty complexity and value incommensurability and contribute to a kind of political economy that ecological economics would advocate we lay out how this question could be operationalised within the context of allocation and exchange i e alternatives to market production and investment i e alternatives to capitalist firm and economic subjectivities i e alternatives to self interest

contesting legitimacy of voluntary sustainability certification schemes valuation languages and power asymmetries in the roundtable on sustainable palm oil in colombia voluntary certification schemes aimed at assuring producer compliance with a set of sustainability criteria have emerged as market based instruments mbis of sustainability governance however the impacts they tackle can be part of a complex arena of socio environmental conflict where values and powers of business and local actors compete legitimacy of these schemes not only results from compliance by business actors but also depends on acceptance by local actors affected by or resisting the industries that these mechanisms aim to govern this paper explores the influence of different local actors values and powers on legitimacy granting or contestation by local actors during national processes of sustainability criteria development we analyse the case of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil rspo in colombia using an approach that combines concepts of ecological economics and political ecology with the legitimacy literature based on critical sociology in colombia the palm oil industry led the initiative to implement certification under national interpretation of rspo principles and criteria however the national interpretation process revealed power asymmetries among stakeholders and clashes between their different values this resulted in strong contestation of rspo legitimacy by local actors who resist expansion of oil palm cultivation

foreign exchange rate expectations micro survey data this paper analyzes the panel data of biweekly surveys on the yen dollar exchange rate expectations of forty four institutions for two years and contains four major findings first market participants are heterogeneous that is significant individual effects exist in their expectation formation second the individual effects have a characteristic of wishful expectations exporters expect yen depreciation and importers expect yen appreciation relative to others third many violate the rational expectations hypothesis fourth forecasts with long horizons show less yen appreciation than those with short horizons cross equation constraints implied by the consistency of the forecast term structure are strongly rejected in the data copyright 1990 by american economic association

assessing the prudence of economic forecasts in the eu we estimate the eu commission loss preferences for major economic forecasts of 12 member states based on a recently proposed method by elliott komunjer and timmermann 2005 the paper provides evidence of asymmetries in the underlying forecast loss preference of the commission that tend to vary across member states in some cases our results show that eu forecasts tend to display a rather optimistic picture for main economic variables e g government balance thus allowing a certain degree of leeway in the fiscal adjustment path towards the medium term objective of close to balance or in surplus of the recently revised stability and growth pact over the period of our sample 1970 2004 this apparent asymmetry in the underlying loss preferences tends to deter prudent advice over economic policy lastly we provide an analysis on the trade off between loss and distribution asymmetries for which simulation results show that the testing method is robust in the presence of skewness copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

the role of markets and policies in delivering innovation for climate change mitigation this paper identifies market incentives and international and domestic policies that could technologically alter energy systems to achieve greenhouse gas stabilization targets while also meeting other societal goals i consider the conceptual basis and empirical evidence on the effectiveness and efficiency of climate technology policies the paper reviews the literature on trends and prospects for innovation in climate change mitigation and examines the evidence on induced innovation and the implications for the choice of technology policy i then consider the impact of technological advances on the environment the role of direct government support for r d and the complementarities between policies internalizing

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

evaluating information in multiple horizon forecasts the doe s energy price forecasts abstract the united states department of energy s doe quarterly price forecasts for energy commodities are examined to determine the incremental information provided at the one through four quarter forecast horizons a direct test for determining information content at alternative forecast horizons developed by vuchelen and gutierrez vuchelen j and gutierrez m i a direct test of the information content of the oecd growth forecasts international journal of forecasting 21 2005 103 117 is used the results suggest that the doe s price forecasts for crude oil gasoline and diesel fuel do indeed provide incremental information out to three quarters ahead while natural gas and electricity forecasts are informative out to the four quarter horizon in contrast the doe s coal price forecasts at two three and four quarters ahead provide no incremental information beyond that provided for the one quarter horizon recommendations of how to use these results for making forecast adjustments is also provided

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

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

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

the rationality of usda forecasts under multivariate asymmetric loss a large number of previous studies suggest that many usda forecasts are biased and or inefficient these findings however may be the result of the assumed loss function of usda forecasters we test the rationality of the usda net cash income forecasts and the wasde production and price forecasts between 1988 and 2018 using a flexible multivariate loss function that allows for asymmetric loss and non separable forecast errors our results provide robust evidence that usda forecasters are rational expected loss minimizers yet demonstrate a tendency to place a greater weight on under or overprediction as a result this study provides an alternate interpretation of previous findings of forecast irrationality

oil price forecasting under asymmetric loss based on the approach developed by elliott et al 2005 we found that the loss function of a sample of oil price forecasters is asymmetric in the forecast error our findings indicate that the loss oil price forecasters incurred when their forecasts exceeded the price of oil tended to be larger than the loss they incurred when their forecast fell short of the price of oil accounting for the asymmetry of the loss function does not necessarily make forecasts look rational

the identity of ecological economics retrospects and prospects the paper first reveals the relevance of ecological economics in the time of a triple crisis ecological social and economic and promotes it as a distinct paradigm comprised of two interconnected and interdependent aspects the qualitative framework within which it operates and the quantitative models and techniques it uses to observe ecosystem resilience measure progress towards sustainability and evaluate policies while acknowledging the progress that has so far been made the paper argues that divergences in understanding the meaning and content of ecological economics hinder its effectiveness and influence on real world policy making and calls for a unified framework as a common ground that would strengthen the field and direct research the implication of this position then follows pointing out what has so far been missing from the ecological economics analysis and what should be done for it to become a more problem oriented and policy relevant alternative copyright oxford university press

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

estimation and testing of forecast rationality under flexible loss in situations where a sequence of forecasts is observed a common strategy is to examine rationality conditional on a given loss function we examine this from a different perspective supposing that we have a family of loss functions indexed by unknown shape parameters then given the forecasts can we back out the loss function parameters consistent with the forecasts being rational even when we do not observe the underlying forecasting model we establish identification of the parameters of a general class of loss functions that nest popular loss functions as special cases and provide estimation methods and asymptotic distributional results for these parameters this allows us to construct new tests of forecast rationality that allow for asymmetric loss the methods are applied in an empirical analysis of imf and oecd forecasts of budget deficits for the g7 countries we find that allowing for asymmetric loss can significantly change the outcome of empirical tests of forecast rationality