crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

technological regimes schumpeterian patterns of innovation and firm level productivity growth the paper investigates the relationships between technological regimes and firm level productivity performance and it explores how such a relationship differs in different schumpeterian patterns of innovation the analysis makes use of a rich dataset containing data on innovation and other economic characteristics of a large representative sample of norwegian firms in manufacturing and service industries for the period 1998 2004 first we decompose tfp growth into technical progress and efficiency changes by means of data envelopment analysis we then estimate an empirical model that relates these two productivity components to the characteristics of technological regimes and a set of other firm specific factors the results indicate that 1 tfp growth has mainly been achieved through technical progress while technical efficiency has on average decreased 2 the characteristics of technological regimes are important determinants of firm level productivity growth but their impacts on technical progress are different from the effects on efficiency change 3 the estimated model works differently in the two schumpeterian regimes technical progress has been more dynamic in schumpeter mark ii industries while efficiency change has been more important in schumpeter mark i markets

the effect of changes in reserve requirements on bank stock prices abstract the present study re examines the tax burden effects of reserve requirements on bank profitability it differs from previous work in two ways 1 changes in stock prices rather than accounting data are used to measure profitability effects and 2 emphasis is placed on changes in reserve requirements as opposed to their level regarding the latter distinction two kinds of changes are considered 1 temporary changes in reserve requirements for the purpose of discretionary monetary policy and 2 more permanent changes in reserve requirement levels based on the event study methodology temporary changes were found to have little effect on security prices whereas more permanent changes had a stronger influence on bank stock prices reflecting a tax burden effect

enhancing socio ecological value creation through sustainable innovation 2 0 moving away from maximizing financial value capture abstract there is considerable consensus that a key to addressing the serious socio ecological crises facing the world is for organizations to implement innovations that foster sustainable development drawing from the sustainability innovation and resource based view literature this paper aims to examine the organizational capabilities associated with promoting a particular sustainable innovation conservation agriculture among small scale farmers in low income countries findings suggest that a paradigm shift is needed to what we call sustainable innovation 2 0 sustainable innovation 2 0 is associated with a double bottom line approach to sustainability that seeks to enhance positive socio ecological externalities while maintaining financially viable organizations i e financial well being is subservient to socio ecological well being we describe how sustainable innovation 2 0 is associated with i making rare sustainable innovations commonplace ii making inimitable emerging sustainable innovations transferable and iii developing institutional infrastructures and bundles of resources that counteract the non substitutability of sustainable innovations we discuss the implications of these ideas for the associated literature and for future research

reserve requirements bank share prices and the uniqueeness of bank loans abstract this study examines the impact of changes in reserve requirements on large banks stock returns it finds statistically and economically significant abnormal returns on the day following the announcement of such changes this finding is consistent with the notion that reserve requirements are a tax on deposits it indicates however that bank s shareholders bear at least part of the tax thus it does not support the hypothesis advanced by some authors that the tax falls exclusively on banks borrowers the evidence further suggests that part of the tax falls on demand depositors these findings undercut the case for the uniqueness of bank loans insofar as it is based on the incidence of the deposit tax

a note on interest on required reserves as an instrument of monetary control abstract the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the potential role of interest on required reserves as a monetary control instrument it is found that an increase in the interest rate paid on reserves held at the federal reserve has counteracting effects on the variability of the money stock hence there is an optimal setting for the interest rate on required reserves that theoretically may include or lie anywhere between the extreme cases of no interest payment and the payment of interest at the maximum feasible level

sustainable innovation business models and economic performance an overview sustainable development requires radical and systemic innovations such innovations can be more effectively created and studied when building on the concept of business models this concept provides firms with a holistic framework to envision and implement sustainable innovations for researchers the concept provides an analytical tool that allows them to assess the interplay between the different aspects that firms combine to create ecological economic and social value in addition the business model concept provides a link between the individual firm and the larger production and consumption system in which it operates this paper provides an introduction to the special issue which emerged from selected papers presented at the erscp emsu 2010 conference held in delft the netherlands papers in the special issue cover a broad range from a conceptual discussion resulting in a research agenda the assessment of diffusion of specific business models such as product service systems the introduction of new management tools for business transition management to case studies on how specific business models evolved in specific communities together these papers provide insight into the promise of the business model concept for understanding and advancing sustainable innovation

from a systematic literature review to integrated definition for sustainable supply chain innovation ssci publisher elsevier articletitle from a systematic literature review to integrated definition for sustainable supply chain innovation ssci journaltitle journal of cleaner production articlelink http dx doi org 10 1016 j jclepro 2016 11 153 content type article copyright 2016 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

technological innovation and the distribution of employment growth a firm level analysis this work studies the firm level relationship between different types of innovative activities and employment growth rates improving on previous investigations on the topic it combines a detailed analysis of the effects of product and process innovation on average employment growth with a broader outlook on the whole conditional employment growth distribution results show that product innovation especially in terms of good new to the entire market has a positive effect on employment growth this role is likely to be particularly relevant for both fast growing and shrinking firms process innovation appears instead to have less clear cut dynamics consistently with existing evidence among different types of process innovation the introduction of novel auxiliary processes appears to be more positively linked with employment growth

innovation and productivity across four european countries nber working paper seriesinnovation and productivity across four european countriesrachel griffithelena huergojacques mairessebettina petersworking paper 12722http www nber org papers w12722national bureau of economic research1050 massachusetts avenuecambridge ma 02138december 2006we would like to thank laura abramovsky manuel arellano rupert harrison jordi jaumandreu elizabeth kremp pierre mohnen helen simpson the analysis contained in this paper was fundedby the european commission the esrc and esf under grant res 000 23 0901 and the advancedinstitute of management research aim all errors and omissions remain the responsibility of theauthors the views expressed herein are those of the author s and do not necessarily reflect the viewsof the national bureau of economic research 2006 by rachel griffith elena huergo jacques mairesse and bettina peters all rights reserved short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs may be quoted without explicit permission providedthat full credit including notice is given to the source

what do college seniors know about economics if college seniors who have taken an economics course were asked questions that test their knowledge of basic economics what would the results show would seniors give correct answers to most questions or would they show significant deficiencies students are exposed to many ideas during their undergraduate education so one would not expect them to retain all of the economic content they were taught but one would hope that they would retain at least a knowledge of basic economics this study investigates whether that is the case two data sources were used for the study the first was from a gallup survey of a national random sample of 300 college seniors walstad and max larsen 1992 the survey includes 15 multiple choice questions testing economic knowledge the responses from that survey can be separated according to whether students took economics the second data set came from the economics scores for 12 854 students who took the major field test in business ii mftb sponsored by higher education assessment of the educational testing service ets 1998 the mftb covers content typically taught in an undergraduate program in business and contains about 20 multiple choice questions on basic economics although there are differences between the two data sets we viewed this as an advantage for our study our hypothesis is that most college seniors would show relatively limited knowledge of basic economics no matter what questions were asked or how the data were collected we expected students responding to the gallup questions to score higher than students taking the mftb because the gallup questions were simpler and designed for telephone in

classroom experiments not just fun and games i introduction historically economics was the classic example of a science in which laboratory methods are impossible consistent with this view economics has traditionally been taught as a theory intensive science rather than as an experimental one however the view that economics is not a laboratory science has been changing in large part due to the increase in research conducted using experimental methods in addition as evidence of the benefits of active learning for students has been gathered leaders in the field of education have been urging faculty to actively engage students in the process of learning introducing experimental methods into the economics classroom is a natural step warranted both by the evolution of the discipline itself and the need to more actively involve students in the learning process this paper presents results from a research project examining the effectiveness of using economics experiments in the classroom the project involved designing course packages for the principles of microeconomics and principles of macroeconomics classes that integrate basic economic experiments into the curricula and then evaluating their success as a teaching tool the evaluation phase focused on assessing the impact of this curriculum on student performance student attitudes towards economics and economic knowledge retention the project was conducted over a three year period during the initial phase of the research project both the course materials and an assessment instrument for evaluating the effectiveness of those materials were developed 1 next a controlled experiment using students at the university of arkansas was conducted students who enrolled in principles of macroeconomics and principles of microeconomics courses were separated into control and treatment classes both groups were taught using a general lecture class discussion format but experiments designed to illustrate specific economic concepts were used in the treatment sections in place of the additional lecture class discussion and examples used in the control classes for those topics relative performance on the assessment instrument serves as the basis for evaluating the impact of the new curricula on student learning while controlling for other factors that might affect student performance an attitude survey was administered to the students at the beginning and at the end of the courses in both the treatment and control groups to gain insight into their attitudes towards the study of economics and whether those attitudes changed over the course of the semester 2 in addition to assessing the impact of classroom experiments on student performance and attitudes towards economics their impact on knowledge retention was also investigated students were tracked into a required advanced business course where their performance on a test of material covered in the introductory economics courses was used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments on their retention of this material although we had no a priori expectations of what the specific outcomes from the evaluative portion would be we hypothesized that students would benefit overall from the use of experiments and that this benefit would be dispersed differentially based on student learning styles we also anticipated that we would find an improved attitude towards the study of economics and an increase in knowledge retention when experiments were implemented as active learning tools ii background in their 1985 edition of principles of economics samuelson and nordhaus argued one possible way of figuring out economic laws is by controlled experiments economists unfortunately cannot perform the controlled experiments of chemists or biologists because they cannot easily control other important factors like astronomers or meteorologists they generally must be content largely to observe

sustainable supply chain management in emerging economies environmental turbulence institutional voids and sustainability trajectories abstract although research on supply chain management has made many valuable contributions there is a dearth of empirical evidence and theoretical reflection on the characteristics of supply chains that operate mainly in developing and emerging economies the aim of this paper is to help to fill this gap by exploring how supply chain sustainability can be implemented and managed in these settings an in depth case study of the upstream oil and gas industry supply chain in brazil was used to develop propositions about supply chains that operate in developing settings drawing from institutional theory evolutionary theory complexity theory and from the organizational learning innovation and strategy literatures this paper offers four key findings and contributions to the supply chain literature first it shows that becoming a sustainable supply chain is not a destination but a journey where trajectory and time matter given the evolutionary nature of supply chain sustainability trajectories this paper highlights that supply chains learn and evolve just as organizations do second this research indicates that although globalization is a trend natural resource based supply chains are often more geographically bounded and susceptible to local social demands than other supply chains third this paper extends the supply chain literature by arguing that supply chains face additional barriers to sustainability in developing and emerging economies which contribute to a higher degree of complexity and uncertainty due to the existence of highly turbulent business environments and institutional voids these factors in turn hinder supply chain learning and innovation and reduce the slope of supply chains sustainability trajectories finally this research contributes to the literature by claiming that due to the highly complex and uncertain business environments in these settings focal companies play an even more important role in managing the escalating ambiguity stimulating supply chain learning and promoting innovation towards supply chains enhanced sustainability performance

do online homework tools improve student results in principles of microeconomics courses recent technological advances in education have made it possible for instructors to use new tools in their attempt to enhance student interest and improve understanding of economic principles a substantial body of economic education literature has examined the effectiveness of these tools in influencing student performance generally these studies compare student performance between a control group and a test group in the last decade or so these new tools have tended to focus on different aspects of computer technology and whether or not use of the technology enhances student learning along these lines agarwal and day 1998 found that use of the internet in economics instruction had a positive effect on student learning as measured by improvement in the test of understanding in college economics tuce scores in both graduate and undergraduate economics courses similarly sosin et al 2004 suggest that tuce scores of students in classes using extensive technology showed a small but significant improvement over those students in classes using little technology this paper contributes to and extends the literature by reporting the results of an empirical study investigating the effect on student learning of an online homework tool aplia compared to the more traditional instructor assigned and graded homework do online homework tools improve student results in principles of microeconomics courses

the effects of attendance on student learning in principles of economics does attendance affect performance in college economics courses david romer 1993 found that attendance did contribute significantly to the academic performance of students in a large intermediate macroeconomics course that he taught in the fall of 1990 see the summer 1994 journal of economic perspectives vol 8 no 3 pp 205 15 for numerous comments on romer this conclusion held even after controlling for student motivation which it may be argued is the true factor determining performance and is only approximated by attendance an earlier study by kang park and peter kerr 1990 found that attendance was a determinant of student performance in a money and banking course but not as important as a student s gpa and the percentile rank on a college entrance exam a study by robert schmidt 1983 reported that time spent attending lectures contributed positively to performance in a macroeconomic principles course on the other side of the ledger is evidence from neil browne et al 1991 showing that students who did not attend a typically structured class with lectures did just as well on the test of understanding college economics tuce as those students who attended a standard microeconomic principles course they also reported however that those students who attended the lectures performed better on essay questions than those who did not a similar study by campbell mcconnell and c lamphear 1969 found no significant difference in the performance of students with no classroom attendance vis a vis those attending class finally stephen buckles and m e mcmahon 1971 found attendance at lectures that simply explained material covered in reading assignments did not enhance students understanding of economics in this paper we present new evidence on the effects of class attendance on student performance our results pertain to the principles of economics course as it is taught in a two semester sequence at a medium size comprehensive state university

the market valuation effects of the financial institutions reform recovery and enforcement act of 1989 abstract this paper evaluates the stock market effects of events leading to the passage of the financial institutions reforms recovery and enforcement act of 1989 the evidence suggests that the signing of the act by president bush produced positive abnormal returns for both banks and s ls and that the addition of tougher capital standards produced positive returns for s ls in addition the act increased the risk of both banks and s ls

the governance of sustainable socio technical transitions a quasi evolutionary model of socio technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these pressures the articulation of pressures and the degree to which responses are coordinated and based on resources available within the regime define the transition context four alternative contexts are described endogenous renewal re orientation of trajectories emergent transformation and purposive transitions agency and power in the governance of regime transformation are analysed power to affect change depends on regime membership the distribution of resources for change and expectations

sustainability in mining minerals and energy new processes pathways and human interactions for a cautiously optimistic future the supply of minerals and energy is critical to global society however this supply is associated with social and environmental impacts leading to concerns of generational and intergenerational equity in light of these concerns a call for papers for a special volume on the mining industry was issued with the view that such academic work could assist in reducing the negative impacts associated with this industry this paper introduces the special volume the sustainability agenda of the minerals and energy supply and demand network an integrative analysis of ecological ethical economic and technological dimensions the special volume contains 84 articles divided into several themes sustainability accounting and reporting corporate social responsibility future mining challenges integrative frameworks for sustainability management aspects mining in a developing context and new frontiers in the oil and gas industry the special volume also includes two letters on contemporary issues with commentaries on these from experts in the fields viz community conflict and land rehabilitation insights obtained across these themes are summarized and recommendations are made of what is needed to build upon the findings of this special volume a research agenda is proposed for the future from the gaps and synergies identified the overall contribution of this special volume is that it renews the debate on the sustainability challenges for the mining industry and provides transdisciplinary insights into resolving some of these challenges

innovation process of new ventures driven by sustainability abstract since the brundtland report appeared in 1987 various approaches to realising sustainable consumption and production have come into practice while more traditional approaches like ecodesign and design for sustainability often emphasize optimizing existing products processes and businesses more radical approaches like product service systems and system innovation for sustainability emphasize developing new innovative products and services with higher environmental gains although these studies increased our understanding of sustainability in relation to product design they are criticized for failing to draw on existing theoretical frameworks in the organizational innovation literature berchicci 2005 this paper seeks to explore the innovation process within new ventures driven by sustainability since 1 conventional wisdom suggests that young and new firms have advantages in innovation acs and audretsch 1990 and as such they are the potential candidates of offering radical solutions to the challenges of sustainability and 2 there are few studies that address exploiting sustainable product ideas through new organizations the paper reports on the results of an explorative study involving the use of generative techniques during 19 individual semi structured interviews with eight entrepreneurs and seven innovation support organizations the results suggest that the relative impact of internal and external factors on the innovation process change over time as the new organization forms in addition creating new businesses from sustainability ideals is influenced by the firms ability in understanding and managing the differences between intended and created value and in finding an overlap between customer benefits and clearly defined prioritized sustainability goals

a note on the stock market effects of the adoption of risk based capital requirements on international banks in different countries abstract the present note provides empirical evidence on the relative competitive effects of the adoption of risk based capital requirements on large international banks in the u s canada u k and japan a two index regression model is used to calculate prediction errors in periods with numerous announcements concerning the new capital rules including the basle conference we find significant declines in equity returns for u s canadian and u k banks in response to news announcements with u s bank stocks exhibiting the largest negative reaction for japanese banks the equity return results are mixed which may be due to uncertainty among investors regarding the handling of their sizeable hidden reserves under the new risk adjusted capital rules

towards sustainable consumption and production competitive pricing of modular products for green consumers abstract concern for unsustainable development has peaked and promoting and devising sustainable production and consumption is vital therefore via an analytical model we examine the impact of modularity and consumer sensitivity to sustainability on the pricing decisions of two competing firms consider an environmentally conscious green consumer who will buy one of two available horizontally differentiated products a modular product m manufactured by firm m or a standard product s manufactured by firm s firm m can take advantage of its modular production technology and product return policy for such a consumer driven demand setting we develop a model and solve to optimality a single stage non cooperative game where both firms simultaneously set their competitive prices in addition to analytical expressions for the optimal prices and the profits for both firms we provide structural results and numerical examples to render practical insights the refund rate has a strong impact on profits sensitivity of product greenness can be increased by conscientious advertising and the reusability of modular parts encourages lower pricing and higher market share we assert that modularity is a strong concept and practice in developing sustainable products and thereby in production which in turn may enhance sustainable consumption this study s findings have direct implications for reverse supply chain management and firms should take these findings into account early in the product design phase

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

constructing sustainable palm oil how actors define sustainability abstract biofuels as a renewable source of energy have gained considerable importance in recent years the use of biofuels is expected to rise since national governments of developed nations like the us and european countries see it as one of the ways to fulfill climate targets and increase the security in their energy supply production of biofuels is also expected to rise as developing nations see in biofuels the opportunity for connecting to international markets through supplying a new demand in the energy market several studies report on the environmental social and economic gains and detriments that can arise from increased biofuel production and consumption however research that provides insight into the way in which such issues are defined by actors within the product chain is scarce in this article we analyse how the strategies and value definitions of actors involved in the production and consumption of biofuels lead to specific definitions of sustainability the empirical material concerns the chain of palm oil production in colombia and electricity generation in the netherlands it is analysed using the method of action in context which allows us to uncover the level and source of diversity of sustainability definitions in the product chain while the current growth in production of palm oil is definitely buyer driven the analysis of various activities in the chain shows that several aspects of sustainability are defined in more complex actor fields throughout the product chain

the paradox of sustainable innovation the eroom effect moore s law backwards innovation has been widely acknowledged as a key mechanism for addressing sustainable development concerns however less attention has focused on downstream commercialization challenges such as achieving increasingly complex and stringent regulatory approval such challenges may hinder the development of more sustainable technologies especially those coming from smaller or publically funded institutes as well they may obstruct the development of applications that could provide societal benefits but may only have limited commercial viability due to small market niches or applicability to customers with limited financial means we explore this apparent paradox using the concept of the eroom effect moore s law backwards i e where improved price performance due to technological advances are outweighed by increasing costs of regulatory approval and other commercialization costs we illustrate this phenomenon with two cases of publically funded institutes one developing transgenic cotton and the other lignin transformation technology that can replace petroleum based feedstocks in a number of industrial applications we discuss the unintended consequences of the eroom effect and conclude with implications for industry policy and ngos

business models of heat entrepreneurship in finland abstract this paper presents the business models of small scale heat energy production in finland firstly the development of heat entrepreneurship in the country is presented including the remarkable growth of small and medium size enterprises smes in the last 15 years secondly the concept of business model business architecture of product service flows and earning logics is modified to the framework of wood heat production the business model concept and its sub concepts is applied in a brief review of current heat energy businesses in finland we arrive at a business model of heat entrepreneurships that are public companies utilities public private partnerships private companies and cooperatives energy saving company esco network model of large enterprise and franchising descriptive cases of these models are presented finally the paper concludes with a discussion on the applicability of the business models in different operational environments and geographical contexts

technological infrastructure and international competitiveness the paper is probably the first written paper using the concept of the national innovation system and it analyses how technological infrastructure differs between countries and how such differences are reflected in international competitiveness it makes a critical review of new in the 1980s developments in the theory of international trade and confronts them with recent empirical results it shows how competitiveness cannot be explained by wage rates prices currency rates technological leadership gives absolute rather than comparative advantage and technological leadership will reflect institutions supporting coupling creating clustering comprehending and coping in connection with technology the analysis is rooted in historical context through references to friedrich list and his criticism of adam smith and laissez faire special emphasis is put on list s concept of mental capital finally the analytical arguments are illustrated by the catching up and forging ahead of first germany and later japan the paper concludes that disequilibria in international trade will be persistent and that for laggard economy the free trade doctrine may be unduly restrictive another conclusion is that public investment in technological infrastructure and intellectual capital is crucial for successful economic development it is pointed out that there is a need to couple education science trade and industry policy in order to build competitiveness

a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input output model for optimal crisis operations in industrial complexes abstract industrial complexes may be subject to significant risk of cascading failure caused by various disruptions and emerging economies are potentially more susceptible to the impacts as less established policies are in place to deal with these issues in particular there is a need to develop adaptation strategies to ensure the resilience of industrial activities to various perturbations that may result from climate change the inherent complexity of such systems makes decision making for risk management a non trivial task that is best facilitated with the aid of mathematical models enterprise input output models have been used extensively to model production systems at different scales in this work a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input output model is developed to determine optimal adjustments in production levels of multi product systems when a crisis is induced by a loss of resource inputs the model allows for adjustments that are equitable for different decision makers that may comprise an industrial complex or a supply chain capabilities of the model are illustrated with a case study on the effect of water shortage on an aluminum production system

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

privatization of electricity distribution in the northeast of brazil the good the bad the ugly or the naive this paper analyzes the evolution of five electricity distribution companies in the northeast of brazil using technical and financial indicators three privatized and two public firms were analyzed between 1997 and 2008 the financial indicators are used as proxies for the capacity of the business to generate value for shareholders while the technical indicators are used as proxies for service quality provided to consumers we observed that the privatized firms had their financial indicators improved after privatization increasing the value of the firm for the shareholders however there is no evidence that privatization affected the quality of service provided to consumers

overcoming barriers to innovation and diffusion of cleaner technologies some features of a sustainable innovation policy regime despite a deepening understanding of systems and processes by which the innovation and diffusion of cleaner technologies occurs relatively little attention has been given to the development of policy processes that reflect this deeper understanding a set of guiding principles for improving sustainable innovation policy processes has been formulated and disseminated by the authors and colleagues in research drawing on theoretical and empirical analysis including a case study of low carbon energy innovation in the uk and interactions with policy makers and other stakeholders through a series of workshops this paper elaborates on two of the guiding principles 1 stimulating the development of a sustainable innovation policy regime bringing together innovation and environmental policy regimes 2 applying systems thinking engaging with the complexity and systemic interactions of innovation systems and policy making processes to promote a transition to sustainability

the impact of technological and organizational innovations on employment in european firms by using firm level data provided by the fourth community innovation survey cis4 for a selected number of eu countries this article explores the employment impact of innovation extending the analysis to organizational change the empirical evidence presented shows that both technological and organizational innovation exert a positive impact on employment mainly indirectly that is by improving growth performances in firms the strength of these indirect effects have been found to vary across different types of innovations despite the limits imposed by data at our disposal the evidence presented seems to somewhat diminish the relevance of the labor displacing effects of the process innovation the latter being strong and clearly visible only within the manufacturing industry and only when process innovations are combined with organizational changes copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

an analysis of the impact of deposit rate ceilings on the market values of thrift institutions this paper examines the impact of changes in deposit interest rate regulations on the common stock values of savings and loan institutions the analysis indicates that stockholder owned savings and loans s l s have experienced statistically significant declines in equity market values at the announcement of the removal of ceilings on certain consumer small saver certificate accounts and the introduction of short term variable rate money market certificates we find the evidence to be consistent with the hypothesis that s l s have earned economic rents from restrictions on interest rates paid to small saver accounts and that relaxation of interest rate ceilings has reduced these rents a central issue in the economics of regulation is whether regulators behave in a way that primarily benefits the economic agents whose actions they are supposed to regulate the proposition that regulation is demanded and acquired by the regulated and that regulations are designed and administered primarily for their benefit was originally put forth by stigler 19 and has come to be known as the capture theory of regulation an alternative view is that regulators adopt policies which serve some other perhaps public or possibly the regulators own interest and that administration of these policies does not benefit the regulated entities this paper examines the regulation of savings and loan associations deposit interest rates and reports evidence pertaining to the impact of the administration of regulation regulation of interest rates paid to depositors in federally insured savings and loan associations began in 1966 since that time several changes in the maximum allowed interest rates deposit rate ceilings have been made these changes present an opportunity to observe the impact of one form of regulatory action on savings and loan institutions deposit rate regulation has been the subject of extensive previous research the empirical investigations have focused primarily on two issues 1 the allocational efficiency and wealth redistribution effects of rate ceilings and 2 the impact of deposit rate ceilings on the flow of funds into the residential

a hard nut to crack implementing supply chain sustainability in an emerging economy abstract in the last decade sustainable supply chain management has become a key topic in the sustainability literature as well as a buzzword in industry and policy circles although research has made substantial contributions there is a lack of understanding on how focal companies operating in emerging economies can lead the implementation of sustainability into their supply chains this research connects and advances the constructs of cleaner production sustainability and supply chains by exploring a classic case of a focal company operating in an emerging economy that even facing considerable challenges has been able to succeed in transforming its entire supply chain drawing from stakeholder theory and contingency theory this research offers four key contributions to the sustainability and supply chain discourses as follows 1 it proposes an innovation centered approach to sustainable supply chain management by adapting and extending the tcos uncertainty framework 2 it suggests that the way a focal company manages and is influenced by its established network of relationships shape the evolution of the supply chain sustainability trajectories 3 it argues that supply chains are dynamic entities and should then be considered and understood through the lenses of evolutionary approaches and 4 it suggests that the implementation and management of sustainable supply chains are context specific challenges and therefore theoretical managerial and policy generalizations are difficult to be achieved

validity of sustainability framework for china s mining cities a structural equation modelling approach abstractmany studies developed their framework for sustainability through indicator systems but the interactions and relationships within these indicators have not been studied yet in this article based on indicator systems we use a sample of 78 mining cities in china and employ structural equation modelling sem method to explore the validity of sustainability framework our empirical results show that resources abundance positively affects urbanization level significantly but negatively affects cleaner production level and environmental protection level significantly economic strength positively affects urbanization level significantly cleaner production level has a significant effect on economic strength and non mineral resources conversion efficiency we also find that when economic strength is low resources abundance might weaken the positive effect of economy on urbanization

on corporate governance a study of proxy contests abstract this paper examines a sample of firms experiencing proxy contests for seats on their board of directors dissident shareholders usually fail to obtain a majority of board seats nevertheless they capture some seats via mechanisms such as cumulative voting in over half of the sample contests regardless of proxy contest outcome positive and statistically significant share price performance is associated with the contest that finding is predicted by the standard economic analysis of proxy contests in which the challenges benefit shareholders by improving corporate performance the finding runs counter to the claim of berle 1962 that the economists view of proxy contests is a wholly imaginary picture a portion of the positive share price changes taking place in the early stages of some proxy contests is not permanent however and as suggested by manne 1962 is at least partially attributable to temporary increases in the market value of the vote attached to corporate shares

bank reserve requirements and monetary aggregates the paper criticizes the traditional belief in the usefulness of reserve requirements for the control of monetary aggregates it is shown that the efficacy of this policy tool is maintained only if the incentive it provides for financial innovations is ignored if the relevant monetary aggregate is broader than that which is reserve constrained we show that reserve requirements may be counter productive an alternative policy involving the payment of interest on voluntarily held reserves is proposed and analyzed it is shown that this approach has the stabilization effects attributed to reserve requirements but without any of the latter s adverse incentives

chalk and talk a national survey on teaching undergraduate economics reports on the desirable goals and characteristics of economics programs and reforms proposed to attain such programs e g w lee hansen 1991 hirschel kasper et al 1991 have ignored the issue of how economics is to be taught that is surprising because several popular trade books have recently appeared condemning teaching practices at american colleges and universities some of these books were written by economists e g martin anderson s 1992 impostors in the temple and used economics courses as notable examples of these problems long before these reports and books appeared the national council on economic education ncee together with the american economic association s aea committee on economic education began sponsoring programs to improve the teaching of economics and to promote innovative teaching methods in becker and watts 1995 we describe many of these improvements and explain how economists could use alternative teaching methods in different undergraduate courses until now however we could not provide data on how widely those approaches were used we do that here based on responses to a national survey

the taxation of domestic and foreign banking abstract using bank level data for 80 countries in the 1988 1995 period this paper examines taxation of domestic and foreign owned banks the profitability of foreign banks is found to rise relatively little with their domestic tax burden perhaps reflecting the availability of foreign tax credits and profit shifting opportunities the paper also examines whether domestic and foreign banks pay different amounts of domestic tax taxes paid by foreign banks are shown to rise relatively little with the local statutory tax this evidence supports the hypothesis that foreign banks engage in relatively extensive profit shifting

classroom experiments is more more studies have demonstrated that classroom experiments have a positive effect on student achievement in economics courses questions remain regarding the appropriate number of experiments in the current study we attempt to determine whether more intensive use of classroom experiments is associated with greater student achievement our data contains variation in the number of experiments administered in a principles of microeconomics course we find that participation in classroom experiments has a positive but diminishing marginal benefit on students final course scores we also find that classroom experiments can bridge some achievement gaps between older and younger students between whites and minorities

competitiveness of nations a knowledge discovery examination this paper presents the insights gained from the use of data mining and multivariate statistical techniques to identify important factors associated with a country s competitiveness and the development of knowledge discovery in databases kdd models to predict it in addition to stepwise regression and weighted non linear programming techniques intelligent learning techniques artificial neural networks and inferential techniques classification and regression trees were applied to a dataset of 43 countries from the world competitiveness yearbook wcy the dataset included 55 variables on economic internationalization governmental financial infrastructure management science and technology as well as demographic and cultural characteristics exploratory data analysis and parameter calibration of the intelligent method architectures preceded the development and evaluation of reasonably accurate models mean absolute error 5 5 and subsequent out of sample validations the strengths and weaknesses of each of the kdd techniques were assessed along with their relative performance and the primary input variables influencing a country s competitiveness our analysis reveals that the primary drivers of competitiveness are lower country risk rating and higher computer usage in entrepreneurial urbanized societies with less male dominance and basic infrastructure with higher gross domestic investment savings and private consumption more imports of goods and services than exports increased purchase power parity gdp larger and more productive but not less expensive labor force and higher r d expenditures without diminishing the role and importance of wcy reports our approach can be useful to estimate the competitiveness of many countries not included in wcy while our findings may benefit policy makers and international agencies to expand their own abilities insights and establish priorities for improving country competitiveness

assessing the relationship between economic and ecological performance distinguishing system levels and the role of innovation in this article we critically discuss the different perspectives that are currently in use for assessing the relationship between ecological and economic performance based on a review of the literature we propose that research up till now has made use of four distinct system boundaries the firm markets production and consumption systems and economic systems making these boundaries explicit is helpful in interpreting the mixed results that have been obtained we describe the consequences of the choice for each of these system boundaries and look at implications for innovation we also argue that the production and consumption system boundary offers potential for further advances in the field and deserves more attention in future research

technology improves learning in large principles of economics classes using our wits much recent innovation in teaching economics has focused on active learning strategies and on the use of technology at the same time budget realities make large lecture classes a fact of life for principles of economics courses at many universities unfortunately neither active learning strategies nor teaching with technology tend to work well in large classes active learning is difficult to facilitate with many students and learning with technology in economics has been limited for the most part to classes small enough to fit in computer labs we have developed a system that uses handheld devices and wireless technology to facilitate interactive learning in large classes by putting technology in the hands of the students during class the wireless interactive teaching system wits consists of handspring visors a hand held pda equipped with wireless capabilities a laptop server a wireless access point and projector and proprietary software this intranet uses the 802 11b wireless standard wits allows students to trade in markets play standard economics games prisoner s dilemma public goods 2 2 matrix etc take multiple choice quizzes and communicate with the instructor during class see http lshta vt edu index html for a sample exercise and instructional material we report the results of a controlled experiment to test the impact of wits facilitated active learning exercises our study differs from previous work in three important ways first use of the wits system allows us to implement experiments in larger classes than previous studies using hand run exercises second we measure learning using exam scores rather than the test of understanding in college economics tuce so that improved results are understandable in terms of students grades the metric that students and universities use to evaluate performance finally to isolate whether changes in learning are from substituting experiment based material for standard lectures or whether gains are the result of active learning the control class held parallel research days where students discussed the same experiment students in the wits class earned final grades that averaged 3 2 points higher than the control class though impact varies by gender and class level the impact on learning is highest for freshmen and women groups that often struggle with introductory economics and lowest for male seniors who in our sample tend to be engineering majors satisfying a general education requirement teaching evaluations are also significantly higher in the experimental class

organisational capabilities and learning in complex product systems towards repeatable solutions this paper suggests that chandler s chandler a d 1990 scale and scope the dynamics of industrial capitalism belknap press of harvard univ press cambridge ma organisational capabilities framework can be modified to explain how suppliers of complex product systems cops build the capabilities necessary to expand successfully into new lines of business in addition to chandler s functional and strategic capabilities we propose the concept of project capabilities to refer to important cops activities of bid preparation and project execution an organisational learning cycle model is presented to show cops firms can move from the first bid or project of its kind in a new domain of business to achieve what we call economies of repetition by putting in place organisational changes routines and learning processes to provide a growing number of similar bids and projects more efficiently and effectively

employment innovation and productivity evidence from italian microdata italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their european competitors this paper presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor performance we use firm level data from the last three surveys on italian manufacturing firms conducted by mediocredito capitalia which cover the period 1995 2003 using a modified version of the model proposed by harrison jaumandreu mairesse and peters 2005 which separates employment growth rates into those associated with old and new products we provide robust evidence that there is no employment displacement effect stemming from process innovation the sources of employment growth during the period are split equally between the net contribution of product innovation and the net contribution from sales growth of old products however the contribution of product innovation is somewhat lower than that for the four comparison european countries considered by harrison et al

integrating cleaner production into sustainability strategies an introduction to this special volume abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2013 the 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns the authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies raw material replacement renewable energy technological developments product and policy changes the central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric scale some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of cleaner production into policies and practice multiple examples of successful integration of cp in national and local policy structures exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community at large the authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local regional national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well being

sustainable innovations in the corporate sector the empirical evidence from ibex 35 firms abstract sustainable innovation practices those which simultaneously contribute to environmental social and economic value creation have drawn increased attention from academics industry leaders and policy makers around the globe there is a general agreement that innovation is a very important part of the puzzle in achieving long term sustainability thus a critical question to be answered is what factors actually differentiate and appear to contribute to sustainable innovations si at the firm level this paper addresses the question by examining empirical evidence from the ibex 35 companies from the years 2010 2015 our results obtained from multivariate regression model indicate that the intensity of a firm s si activity is strongly and statistically significantly associated with the sector in which a given firm operates with a rising level of environmental footprint acting as a stimulant for innovation additionally firms characterized by higher net profit margins and returns on equity were also much more likely to introduce sis the findings also suggest that factors like size and age of a given company as well as level of competition in a sector in which it operates are not significant predictors for the implementation of sustainable innovations overall this study contributes to our understanding of the main characteristics of companies active in the area of si

valuation effects of the international banking act on foreign banks operating in the united states note this study empirically evaluates the daily stock price behavior of thirty one major foreign banks operating in the united states at the time of the passage of the international banking act of 1978 statistically insignificant abnormal returns are observed during the months of debate over this legislation however negative and statistically significant abnormal returns are found after the bill was signed by president carter the empirical results of this analysis taken together with those of previous research suggest that the international banking act was perceived at the time as having reduced the regulatory inequities between u s banks and foreign banks operating in the united states copyright 1991 by ohio state university press

organisational change technology employment and skills an empirical study of french manufacturing this paper analyses the correlations between technological change organisational change and skill change using a survey on organisational change in manufacturing firms conducted in 1993 considerable diversity is allowed for in terms of the measure of technological and organisational change and the analysis shows a positive correlation between technological change and reorganisations whatever their types the paper then analyses the relationships between these changes and the employment behaviour of firms it shows that changes in the required skills and in the occupational structure of firms are more closely connected to organisational than to technological change although organisational change affects the work content and skill requirements of blue collar workers it is mainly indirect workers that are affected in terms of the number employed finally the analysis shows that technology tends to stabilise the workforce whereas the move towards the model of flexible enterprise favours its renewal copyright 2003 oxford university press

employment and technological innovation evidence from u k manufacturing firms this article uses british firm level panel data on actual innovative activity drawn from different statistical sources to identify the effect of technical change on jobs previous work tends to find positive associations of proxies for technical change and employment but such studies suffer from various statistical drawbacks in this study even when one controls for fixed effects dynamics and endogeneity innovations have a positive and significant effect on employment which persists over several years there seems to be little direct role for spillover effects from industry innovations or any role for industry wages or union power

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

university industry relations and research group production is there a bidirectional relationship this study aims to analyze if there is a bidirectional relationship between university industry collaboration and scientific production the results from a sample of 137 research groups at a university in an ultra peripheral region reveal the existence of this bidirectional relationship scientific production has a positive influence on university industry relations thus when the articles published by the research groups increase the contracts between university and industry also increase moreover the results reflect a nonlinear relationship between contracts and scientific production university industry relations are complementary to scientific production up to a certain level and after that point there is a substitution effect the results also show the moderating effect of the knowledge area on this relationship because groups belonging to technology oriented areas have higher scientific production in response to university industry relations

the impact of an unexpected political resignation on exchange rates based on the theory of economic regulation political shocks are examined as unexpected events in the light of the efficient markets hypothesis and a political resignation is taken as an example of such an event the hon j dawkins mp resigned as the federal treasurer of the australian government on friday 17 december 1993 there have been a number of studies on the effect of economic and political events on stock prices this study considers the impact of dawkin s resignation on the foreign exchange rates of the major traded currencies in australia the traditional event study methodology based on the market model and the lesser used multivariate methodology of seemingly unrelated regressions are used for the analysis the sample of currencies is considered both as a portfolio and on an individual basis with efficiency of the currency markets being tested for anticipatory event related and persistence effects the paper concludes by contrasting the findings of the two methodologies the study repo

the impact of classroom experiments on the learning of economics an empirical investigation i introduction in economics experimental research is still less common than in the natural sciences therefore it is not surprising that economists also make much less use of experiments for teaching purposes yet intuitively it is by no means clear that confronting a group of students with rules and incentives and observing what happens has a lower marginal impact on learning than demonstrating what happens when you put some chemicals together in a test tube however fels 1993 365 and deyoung 1993 348 49 recently called on those who actually use classroom experiments to provide evidence of the impact on students learning of economics this paper provides some limited evidence section ii describes the method used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments section iii describes the experiment and offers some hints for those who want to try it section iv provides the results ii method a first indication that experiments might be useful as a teaching tool comes from isaac and walker s 1991 experiment they found that those with experience in the experiment behave differently from those without presumably due to some reflection on the problem the approach of this study is more straightforward and not confined to those who actually take part in the experiment our hypothesis is that merely following the experiment and its outcome also has an impact on learning seven instructors teaching courses in environmental economics or public finance were asked to give their usual lecture on the tragedy of the commons afterwards the control group about half of the students filled out a multiple choice test on that topic as an incentive to put some thought into that task in each course one of those students with no mistakes won a book on environmental economics namely beckenbach 1991 worth 26 80 german marks 1 the questions are reported in section iv the same questions were answered by the other students following the classroom experiment iii the experiment the experiment itself which takes only five to ten minutes was a simple take some game of which a more general account is given by mitter 1986 it involves five students who volunteer before the rules are explained in order to give the participants a chance to clarify remaining open points the experimenter should not forget to mention that tabular data for table i omitted on average the volunteers will not be worse off or might even carry off a small profit but that nevertheless they need to have some change in their pockets because there might be losers each receives two cards with the stylized picture of one cow on one card and five on the other the rules are explained roughly as follows imagine you are peasants using a common field every one of you has to decide how many cattle to keep on the commons one cow or five cows if you give me the card which shows one cow you receive one german mark if you give me the card which shows five cows you receive five marks however for every five cow card i receive every one of you gets one mark less for example if two of you put five cows on the common those two will each receive three marks i e five minus two for the others the payoff is one mark minus two marks which means they have to pay one mark now you can calculate for yourself what the payoffs for other constellations will be please make your decision secretly the participants were placed at some distance from each other and it was ensured that they could not communicate immediately after the experiment the payments were made and the experiment was repeated once with a different group of students five cows is the dominant strategy but the collective payoff would be greater if no one played it this method of demonstrating the commons dilemma is less complicated than the procedures reported in powers 1987 and tsai 1993

are cleaner production innovations the solution for small mining operations in poor regions the case of padua in brazil abstract mining in santo antonio de padua a city located in the underdeveloped northeast area of the rio de janeiro state in brazil is currently the most important economic activity in the region unfortunately companies lag behind technologically and use rudimentary production methods which cause serious environmental problems social implications and poor competitiveness in order to seek sustainable solutions for the padua mining region local support organizations have created initiatives to develop endogenous cleaner production innovations to enhance the industry s sustainability performance during this process some barriers for mining companies to adopt these developed technologies have emerged this research draws on the cleaner production sustainability and innovation literature and uses a qualitative research with multiple sources of evidence to understand the dynamics behind the padua mining region more specifically this research explores how initiatives to improve the sustainability performance led by local support organizations took place analyzes their outcomes i e cleaner production innovations and identifies some of the barriers to technology adoption this paper offers three key research contributions first we claim that cleaner production approaches alone cannot create sustainable mining regions in emerging and developing countries but they are definitively a step in the right direction since they provide the base for expanding the scope towards sustainability second we argue that technology cannot be understood as the panacea for sustainability because it will never represent the complete solution for companies sustainability problems third we claim that companies can face a managerial trap if they pursue enhanced sustainability performance solely through the adoption of cleaner production innovations

r d innovation and productivity new evidence from italian manufacturing microdata italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their european competitors this article presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor performance we use firm level data from the last three surveys on italian manufacturing firms conducted by mediocredito capitalia which cover the period 1995 2003 using a slightly modified version of the model proposed by harrison jaumandreu mairesse and peters harrison et al 2005 which separates employment growth rates into those associated with old and new products we find no evidence of significant employment displacement effects stemming from process innovation the sources of employment growth during the period are split equally between the net contribution of product innovation and the net contribution from sales growth of old products however the contribution of product innovation to employment growth is somewhat lower than in the four european countries considered in harrison et al 2005 and the contribution of innovation in general to productivity growth is almost nil in italy during this period

cleaner production towards a sustainable transition abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production was built principally upon articles submitted for the 5th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2015 the 43 articles emphasize the imperative need for shifting from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new technological and or management related approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns efforts on defining and solving problems with the special accent upon a sustainable solution for the use of raw materials and energy technological advances product and policy changes are presented and deeply discussed improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions is discussed highlighting consumer empowerment in sponsoring implementation of innovative cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries multiple examples are provided relating the successful combination of cleaner production in policy structures illustrating on how the focused work in production sectors is delivering multiplier benefits and creating conditions to facilitate a leapfrogged path toward sd

paradoxes and dilemmas for stakeholder responsive firms in the extractive sector lessons from the case of shell and the ogoni this paper examines some of the paradoxes and dilemmas facing firms in the extractive sector when they attempt to take on a more stakeholder responsive orientation towards issues of environmental and social responsibility we describe the case of shell and the ogoni and attempt to draw out some of the lessons of that case for more sustainable operations in the developing world we argue that firms such as shell rio tinto and others may well exhibit increasingly stakeholder responsive behaviours at the corporate strategic level however for reasons of strategy lack of competency or institutional will this increasing level of corporate responsiveness may not be mirrored effectively in dealings between subsidiary business units and their most important direct stakeholders for example local communities and in the developing world we contrast the struggles of shell to replicate its corporate stakeholder responsiveness at the local level in nigeria with the experiences of other firms that seem to have developed managerial capabilities at a somewhat deeper level throughout the firm with consequent benefits both for stakeholders and the business

cleaner technology diffusion case studies modeling and policy abstract the development and application of cleaner technologies environmental technologies offer multiple benefits for the adopter reduced emissions less waste and cost savings from reduced resource use and savings on waste costs the question here is if cleaner technologies offer such great benefits why they are diffusing so slowly across the economy this special issue is about answering this question by presenting a collection of contributions that lay down a good foundation for students scholars practitioners and policy makers interested in making sustainable development more than a metaphor the contributions range from surveys of literature identifying gaps and directions in the field cleaner technology diffusion case studies advances in diffusion modeling and diffusion policy issues and recommendations in general the set of papers present an overview of the advances in the field of cleaner technologies diffusion research

productivity effects of organizational change microeconometric evidence this paper analyzes the relationship between investment in information and communication technologies ict non ict investment labor productivity and workplace reorganization firms are assumed to reorganize workplaces if the productivity gains arising from workplace reorganization exceed the associated reorganization costs two different types of organizational change are considered enhancement group work and flattening of hierarchies empirical evidence is provided for a sample of 411 firms from the german business related services sector we develop and estimate a model for labor productivity and firms decision to reorganize workplaces that allows workplace reorganization to affect any parameter of the labor productivity equation our general and flexible methodology allows us to properly take account of strategic complementarities between the input factors and workplace reorganization the estimation results show that changes in human resources practices do not significantly affect firms output elasticities with respect to ict non ict capital and labor although most of the point estimates of the individual output elasticities and of the control variables for observable firm heterogeneity are larger if workplace reorganization is realized we therefore apply the kernel density estimation technique and demonstrate that for firms with organizational change theentire labor productivity distribution shifts significantly out to the right if workplace reorganization takes place indicating that workplace reorganization induces an increase in labor productivity that is attributable to complementarities between the various input factors and workplace reorganization by contrast firms without organizational change would not have realized significant productivity gains if they had reorganized workplaces