escaping the green prison entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development abstract while entrepreneurial activity has been an important force for social and ecological sustainability its efficacy is dependent upon the nature of market incentives this limitation is sometimes explained by the metaphor of the prisoner s dilemma which we term the green prison in this prison entrepreneurs are compelled to environmentally degrading behavior due to the divergence between individual rewards and collective goals for sustainable development entrepreneurs however can escape from the green prison by altering or creating the institutions norms property rights and legislation that establish the incentives of competitive games we provide a variety of evidence of such entrepreneurial action and discuss its implications for theory and practice

sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy beyond green growth and green economies abstract in 1992 one unambiguous result of the unced conference was the need for changing consumption and production patterns with affluent countries taking the lead 20 years later at the 2012 uncsd little is left over and instead the green economy has been the theme pursued by the oecd the eu and other countries so the question needs to be answered if this is finally an attempt to put into practice what was promised 20 years ago or another diversion from what needs to be accomplished sustainable development is still a convincing concept if the original definition is taken avoiding the confusion caused by partisan interests reinterpreting the concept focussing on human needs fulfilment and respecting environmental limits it can still guide strong sustainable consumption green economy green growth on the other hand is a new terminology for what is known since 40 years as ecological modernisation it is indeed overdue but with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the brundtland sustainability criteria a factor analysis based on the i p a t formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept consequently the authors pledge for a pragmatic risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy this requires strong sustainable consumption including production as resource consumption which in turn requires a change of the societies institutional settings formal and informal mechanisms and orientations finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out with special emphasis on the role of non governmental organisations ngos through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption

toward a theory of sustainable entrepreneurship reducing environmental degradation through entrepreneurial action this article explains how entrepreneurship can help resolve the environmental problems of global socio economic systems environmental economics concludes that environmental degradation results from the failure of markets whereas the entrepreneurship literature argues that opportunities are inherent in market failure a synthesis of these literatures suggests that environmentally relevant market failures represent opportunities for achieving profitability while simultaneously reducing environmentally degrading economic behaviors it also implies conceptualizations of sustainable and environmental entrepreneurship which detail how entrepreneurs seize the opportunities that are inherent in environmentally relevant market failures finally the article examines the ability of the proposed theoretical framework to transcend its environmental context and provide insight into expanding the domain of the study of entrepreneurship

how sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change insights from biomass torrefaction in the netherlands sustainable entrepreneurship often requires a purposeful change to the existing business environment market regulations and societal norms and values institutions to ensure sustainable products and services become legitimate and competitive yet how sustainable entrepreneurs alter or create institutions remains unclear we employ a two year comparative case study with four entrepreneurs commercializing torrefied biomass in the netherlands consistent with insights from institutional entrepreneurship research findings show that sustainable entrepreneurs create new symbols theorize construct new measures build consensus and forge new relations to alter or create new institutions moreover we find that entrepreneurial collaboration in the form of a trade association has three feedback effects it creates accessible modes diversity of scope and an increased scale of institutional change strategies we conclude that future studies should further connect sustainable and institutional entrepreneurship research and take group and individual factors into account when explaining how sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change

convergence and spillover of house prices in chinese cities abstractthe issue of house price convergence in 34 chinese cities is investigated we augmented the convergence model with contemporaneous spatial dependence in house prices and found that price convergence and positive spatial spillover are both present we explicitly addressed the endogeneity problem by introducing a bayesian instrumental variable setup which was estimated with particle filtering techniques from a growth poles perspective the empirical evidence indicates that the spread effect in regional house prices outweighs the backwash effect the identified positive spatial spillover has two effects on the growth of house prices in chinese cities first the spillover elevates the trajectories of the steady state growth paths of house prices second the spillover narrows the gaps between the growth paths of house prices in neighbouring cities shocks to the socio economic variables of a city generate their own effects on domestic house prices that dominate the effects arising from cross city p

sustainable development in practice abstract the semi annual european environment sustainable conference in aalborg denmark brought together from primarily europe but also other parts of the world the conference focused on sustainability but one panel focused on practical applications for public policy and private industry the papers from this panel are presented in this special issue of the journal they cover topics ranging from corporate sustainable programs to government plans including feed in laws some papers are more academic oriented but clearly derived from practical political experiences such as those of the california energy crisis these theories argue the need for agile energy systems whereby regions cities and communities must have combinations of on site or distributed energy generation like combined heat and power cph along with central grid power generation finally there is a clear message in all the papers that market forces alone do not develop monitor or even provide level playing fields for communities in short there needs to be continuous government or public involvement in the sustainable communities

sustainable development in a transition economy business case studies from poland abstract in general examples from developed countries are cited when making reference to good practice in sustainable development while there is limited access to case studies from transition economies our aim is to analyse case studies from poland which has recently undergone the transition to a market based economy in order to identify and critically assess both the drivers of and barriers to sustainable development in polish business by demonstrating that evidence of good practice is available within poland we also aim to motivate key stakeholders to follow these examples in an addition to importing practice from developed countries together the 11 case studies analysed in the article demonstrate that while constraints exist to sustainable development there are nonetheless positive examples of best practice from which to learn this review therefore complements other studies conducted on sustainable development in transition economies by indicating that lessons can be drawn on promoting sustainable development within this context and in other similar states undergoing economic political and social transition

economic crisis and social learning for the provision of public services in two spanish municipalities economic crises pose challenges for the provision of public services but may also open up opportunities for social learning about how to achieve a sustainable society the main research question addressed in this paper is can economic crises catalyse social learning for a sustainable society the hypothesis of the paper is that social learning emerges in association with the reduction of consumption levels that follows degrowth or with the reconfiguration of infrastructure management practices and sustainable innovation that could lead to a transition to sustainability following this we empirically examine whether the crisis has led to social learning about the sustainable provision of public services in two similar municipalities in the north of spain after the economic crisis of 2008 we develop an interpretative analysis of individual experiences of learning from the crisis using a set of qualitative interviews with individuals who were involved in key decisions about public service delivery during or immediately after the crisis the analysis suggests that there has been a broader cultural change which is challenging institutional models of regional development that there has been a drive towards greater resource efficiency and that some opportunities have opened for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable innovations the findings support the view that the crisis may have fostered learning responses that could lead to either degrowth or a sustainable transition

a social and environmental approach to microfinance credit scoring microfinance institutions provide loans to low income individuals their credit scoring systems if they exist are strictly financial although many institutions consider the social and environmental impact of their loans they do not incorporate formal systems to estimate these social and environmental impacts this paper proposes that their creditworthiness evaluations should be coherent with their social mission and accordingly should estimate the social and environmental impact of microcredit thus a decision support system to facilitate microcredit granting is proposed using a multicriteria evaluation the assessment of social impact is performed by calculating the social net present value the system captures credit officers experience and addresses incomplete and intangible information the model has been tested in a microfinance institution the paper shows how a small institution can include social and environmental issues in its decision making systems to evaluate credit applications a gap in the preferences was found between members of the board who are socially driven and managers and credit officers who are financially drifted this mission drift was corrected the approach followed contributed to creating a culture of social and environmental assessment within the institution especially among credit officers thereby translating microfinance institutions social mission into numbers

re evaluating the impact of immigration on the u s rental housing market abstract previous studies provide evidence that immigration increases housing prices and rents to deal with endogenous location choices of immigrants these studies often use a shift share instrumental variable approach this approach however fails to adequately account for the natural attraction of immigrants to cities with thriving economies high immigration cities provide more economic opportunities and thus exhibit persistently rising housing prices and rents this paper improves upon the traditional empirical approach by explicitly controlling for initial city characteristics that lead to both increases in immigration and the evolution of rents results suggest that after controlling for endogenous sorting of immigrants the positive effect of immigration on rents is attenuated while the impact of immigrant inflows is smaller an extension of the main results suggests the effects of immigration on rents remains larger than that of native inflows

cross sectional seasonalities in international government bond returns abstract we are the first to document the cross sectional return seasonality effect in international government bonds using a variety of tests we examine fixed income securities from 22 countries for the years 1980 2018 the bonds with high low returns in the same calendar month in the past continue to overperform underperform in the future the effect is robust to many considerations including controlling for established predictors of bond returns our results support the behavioural story of the anomaly demonstrating its highest profitability in the periods of elevated investor sentiment and in the market segments of strong limits to arbitrage nonetheless investment application of bond seasonality might be challenging due to high trading costs and the required short holding periods

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

behaviour preferences and cities urban theory and urban resurgence summary the resurgence of big old cities and their regions is real but it is merely a part of a broader pattern of urban change in the developed countries whose broadest tendency is urban emergence including suburbanisation and movements of population to certain sunbelt regions the problem is that it is difficult to accommodate explanation of both resurgence and emergence using the main explanations in the field today these include theories of the knowledge or creative economy urban amenities diversity and tolerance and urban beauty in most of their common specifications they do well for either resurgent or emergent cities but not for both at the same time this suggests that these ideas interesting as they are require much greater specification and in some cases overhaul in order to offer satisfactory responses to the diversity of patterns of urban growth by examining some of these deficiencies we conclude that urban theory needs a better understanding of urban choice behaviours and especially the effects of bundling the limits to preference substitutions and the relationship between past and present preferences in order to become fully effective in explaining urban resurgence and urban emergence when these aspects of choice and preference are better integrated into urban theory then the exogenous causes of urbanisation can be made more endogenous and in addition they can be applied better to both emergence and resurgence urban research can by so doing also potentially become more policy relevant

a simple test for convergence of metropolitan income in the united states abstract the prevalent test for income convergence used in many recent studies of convergence across spatial economic units in the united states is to use a regression equation in which income growth is regressed against the initial level of income this is known as convergence that method however has been crtiticized as an instance of galton s fallacy of regression we devise a simple test for the income convergence hypothesis which does not suffer from galton s fallacy and apply it to all of the metropolitan areas of the united states for the period 1969 1995 for the test we use two income measures per capita personal income and average wages our results conclusively support convergence of per capita personal income and of wage per worker for metropolitan areas in the united states we also test for convergence the hypothesis of diminishing dispersion in income among places over time and find no support for the hypothesis

institutional entrepreneurship in sustainable urban development dutch successes as inspiration for transformation sustainable urban development is a wicked problem on the basis of three case studies we conclude that institutional entrepreneurs play an important role in sustainable urban development the question we address is how institutional entrepreneurs do this we theorize and find six tactics that entrepreneurs employ to influence both formal and informal institutions to create a favourable institutional context for sustainable development we do so by combining insights from both institutional theory and institutional economics through framing and theorizing institutional entrepreneurs create new visions on sustainable urban developments whereas collaboration and lobbying are important for the realization of the projects the study adds new insights into how negotiation private governance contracts property rights and standardization certification standards form a key to altering incentive schemes and to create a competitive advantage through the joint changes in both informal institutions and the formal institutions the entrepreneurs are able to change the institutional context in which projects are embedded thereby increasing the feasibility of their projects 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

sustainability driven entrepreneurship principles of organization design abstract concern about whether the social ecological processes that provide for human wellbeing can be sustained has given rise to sustainable development as a broad social goal as a dynamic force for change entrepreneurship is increasingly expected to contribute to this goal this article reports on the results of an intensive empirical study investigating the organization design expertise necessary for sustainability driven entrepreneurs to succeed in a competitive market context results reveal five principles of organization design that diverge in important ways from the conventional principles of entrepreneurship suggesting the expertise required for venture success differs depending on entrepreneurial values and motives

market imperfections opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship this research develops the argument that four types of market imperfections i e inefficient firms externalities flawed pricing mechanisms and information asymmetries at once contribute to environmental degradation and that they also provide significant opportunities for the creation of radical technologies and innovative business models we show that these opportunities establish the foundations for an emerging model of sustainable entrepreneurship one which enables founders to obtain entrepreneurial rents while simultaneously improving local and global social and environmental conditions to advance this new field we offer suggestions for a research agenda focusing on two areas the relationship between market imperfections and entrepreneurial opportunities and the emerging field of sustainable entrepreneurship

possible sources of wage divergence among metropolitan areas of the united states much of the literature on sub national income convergence relates to states and regions this paper focuses upon metropolitan areas as the germane geographical units for studying income convergence evidence of metropolitan wage divergence the opposite of convergence is presented a theoretical basis for wage divergence is found in endogenous growth models and in two sector trade models cross section regression equations are estimated in which the level and the growth of metropolitan wages are related to variables that the empirical evidence and the theory suggest may be important sources of wage divergence

diversification specialization convergence and divergence of sectoral employment structures in the british urban system 1991 2001 o donoghue d and townshend i j 2005 diversification specialization convergence and divergence of sectoral employment structures in the british urban system 1991 2001 regional studies 39 585 601 this paper examines the changing employment structure of 150 travel to work areas ttwas in britain from 1991 to 2001 using data from the annual employment survey and the annual business inquiry 20 sectors of economic activity are defined and investigated the analysis clearly identifies the continued shift away from primary and manufacturing employment as increasingly more people are employed in the so called service based and informational economy clear spatial patterns emerge associated with employment change across sectors and these are also explored given the changing pattern of employment and the spatial characteristics of each sector new patterns of specialization and diversification are expected to emerge the analysis identifies these patterns and places their explanation into the context

mobility and modality trends in us state personal income we examine the mobility and modality trends in us state per capita personal income and its components during the 1929 1999 period we find strong evidence of convergence for states but that the tendency towards convergence and the associated mobility within the distribution varies during the period and especially for the 1980s our analysis of convergence by income component suggests that transfer income contributes more to the observed convergence than does asset income we also note that distributional mobility need not be accompanied by high rank mobility and find that trends toward convergence in the us have tended to preserve rank ordering cet article cherche a examiner les tendances de mobilite et de modalitequant aux revenus personnels par tete et a ses composants aux etats unis pendant la periode qui va de 1929 a1999 il s avere de fortes preuves d une convergence entre etats qui varie au cours de la periode etudiee et qui va de pair avec une variation de la mobilite associee au sein de

subsidies in carbon finance for promoting renewable energy development abstract faced with decreasing exhaustible nonrenewable resources and climate change resulting from the use of fossil energy it is urgent to accelerate the development of renewable energy but the development of renewable energy requires abundant financial support both from banks and governments this article considers bank loans to develop renewable energy and highlights the effects of government subsidies by using a microeconomic model and taking all stakeholders including the government banks and shareholders of the firm into consideration this study finds that government subsidies raise outputs and debt levels of renewable energy firms and improve shareholder value as well more importantly financial debts stimulate firms outputs but decrease the net profit per unit of debt due to the limited liability effects finally subsidy policy plays a critical role in renewable energy development because environmental efficiencies of subsidies decrease with the subsidy degree other valuable conclusions would be achieved if principal agent problem and other corporate governance factors are employed

exogenous shocks social skill and power urban energy transitions as social fields abstract the constantly growing scholarship on urban energy transitions needs a framework to analyze these transitions this article proposes the field perspective fp as an approach for the study of urban energy transitions fp analyses how the interplay of actors who are dedicated to a similar purpose and the structures guiding this interplay co evolve by applying fp to the energy transition in the german city emden the article shows how the transition evolves through a alterations in the exogenous context of the city e g national feed in tariffs for renewables b the social skill and changing interplay of local actors engaged in the transition and c the emergence of power constellations and rules

the interruption of income convergence and income growth in large cities in the 1980s recent studies have documented the divergence of per capita personal income among regions of the us in the 1980s following many decades of income convergence this paper establishes the same patter

the wider impacts of high technology employment evidence from u s cities abstract innovative high technology industries are commonly described as drivers of regional development tech workers earn high wages but they are also said to generate knock on effects throughout the local economies that host them spurring growth in jobs and wages in nontradable activities at the same time in iconic high tech agglomerations like the san francisco bay area the home of silicon valley the success of the tech industry creates tensions in part as living costs rise beyond the reach of many non tech workers across a large sample of u s cities this paper explores these issues systematically combining annual data on wages employment and prices from the quarterly census of employment and wages the department of housing and urban development and the consumer price index it estimates how growth in tradable tech employment affects the real living cost deflated wages of local workers in nontradable sectors results indicate that high technology employment has significant positive but modest effects on the real wages of workers in nontradable sectors these effects appear to be spread consistently across different kinds of nontradable activities in terms of substantive wider impacts tech appears benign though fairly ineffectual

start up sustainability an insurmountable cost or a life giving investment abstract an outstanding question in the entrepreneurship literature reigns given recent emphases on sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility if small start ups are generally stretched for time and resources does it enhance their chances for survival and success to be sustainable and socially responsible new firms can aid in rectifying pressing environmental and social issues by being more sustainable while many entrepreneurs like a sustainable business model and or mission investment may not follow so willingly this paper examines a sample of 300 start ups across thirty cities around the world to consider whether sustainability is rewarded by investors investors signal confidence in start ups when they infuse life extending investments into them this analysis also considers whether a more sustainable national context affects investor confidence and whether a sustainable firm within a sustainable national context gains more investor attention and investment results show that investors avoid sustainable firms particularly those that are environmentally sustainable moreover investors enjoy national contexts that are socially responsible but pay no attention to those that are environmentally conscious in addition firms that are sustainable in a sustainable national context are not better off for attracting investment insights for policy are that mainstream investors are attracted by national social policies but these investors are unlikely to be the main force behind sustainable venture growth under today s conditions

sustainable development and entrepreneurship past contributions and future directions this article discusses the emerging research concerned with sustainable development and entrepreneurship which is the focus of this special issue of the journal of business venturing entrepreneurship has been recognized as a major conduit for sustainable products and processes and new ventures are being held up as a panacea for many social and environmental concerns however there remains considerable uncertainty regarding the nature of entrepreneurship s role and how it may unfold we begin with an overview of sustainable development and the role of entrepreneurship and outline recent contributions exploring this role we then summarize the papers presented in this special issue and conclude with suggestions for further research

green entrepreneurship in transition economies a case study of bosnia and herzegovina abstract the countries with transition economies are under pressure to increase entrepreneurial activities that will enable fast growth with minimum impact on natural resources despite specific challenges the economies in transition face development of sustainable entrepreneurship has not been in focus of the academic research this leaves some open questions such as those concerning the role and mode of operation of public policies level of risk and its influence on entrepreneurship creativity role of knowledge in diffusing entrepreneurial values and fostering aspirations externalities created for the society and the connection between sustainability and entrepreneurship this paper aims to introduce a discussion on sustainable entrepreneurship in countries with economies in transition the research carried out included i review of literature and statistical data on entrepreneurial environment ii structured interviews with representatives of government civil society business sector and academia to understand the society s perception of green entrepreneurship and iii analysis of case studies on green entrepreneurs it can be concluded that entrepreneurs in economies in transition do not seem to be ready to respond to the challenges or to take any risks by investing in green business but also that the government and educational institutions do not recognize their own role and fail to support the development of green entrepreneurship for those green oriented businesses the key sociological constructs are personal motivation and mission locality and a forward thinking orientation in terms of sustainability all businesses managed to achieve the economic environmental and social value creation without any support from the government

another look on bond market seasonally a note abstract this note provides evidence that there exists business cycle effects on the monthly returns of long term government bond and low grade corporate bond in addition the results of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch models suggest that the returns series exhibit significant autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity