the interbank market after august 2007 what has changed and why after the onset of the financial crisis spreads between interbank interest rates on unsecured and secured deposits for the major world currencies became exceptionally large and volatile first we find that the phenomenon was mainly driven by aggregate rather than bank specific factors notably risk aversion and accounting practices by contrast funding liquidity capital shortage and central bank interventions were not important determinants second prior to august 2007 the spread was broadly insensitive to key borrower characteristics whereas afterward it became somewhat more reactive to measures of creditworthiness third conditions for big borrowers became relatively more favorable during the crisis suggesting that moral hazard risks related to the too big to fail argument have increased these results are discussed in the light of theories on the interbank market during a crisis

food energy intake and cost of basic needs measuring poverty in bangladesh past estimates of poverty in bangladesh based on the food energy intake method found decreasing poverty over time and similar poverty in urban and rural areas using the cost of basic needs method we find increasing poverty for 1984 92 and higher poverty in rural than urban areas examples of lack of consistency in past estimates are highlighted a method is introduced to assess the gap narrowing and re ranking impacts on poverty measures of changes in poverty lines the article also estimates the marginal impact of household characteristics such as household size education occupation and land ownership on the probability of being poor

exploring futures for amazonia s sierra del divisor an environmental valuation triadics approach to analyzing ecological economic decision choices in the context of major shifts in boundary conditions abstract this text presents a new methodological approach to ecological economic analysis employing georgescu roegen s flow fund theory of economic process it offers an alternative to monetary valuation based analyses and aims to contribute toward advancing work concerned with addressing complex ecological economic questions as complete wholes the methodology is demonstrated through reference to the empirical case of a proposed rail link between peru and brazil which would cut across the sierra del divisor of western amazonia connecting the pacific and atlantic coasts and further opening up the amazon commodity frontier in order to analyze the potential impacts of the rail link four flow fund representations of economic process two at the regional and two at the local level are developed in order to juxtapose two alternative political economy contexts that might govern the rail link s impacts in the region one where conservation is prioritized over cash income and one where it is not our results suggest that completion of the rail link under the current political economy context which prioritizes cash income over conservation is likely to have substantial negative consequences for forest conservation in both peru and brazil and for local livelihoods throughout the region

quantification of interdependencies between economic systems and ecosystem services an input output model applied to the seine estuary abstract the aim of this paper is to assess the possible contribution of an input output model towards two of the basic principles of the sustainability strategy of integrated coastal zone management iczm and post normal science according to these principles decision support tools should offer a holistic perspective and handle high uncertainty the difficulties in reaching sustainability are due partly to the prevailing use of narrow system boundary tools that are non holistic consequently they fail to capture important ecosystem services and ignore interdependencies between them to comply with the basic principles our method allows environmental assets to be evaluated in multiple units and integrates results from recent researches in natural sciences both enable coverage of interdependencies between ecosystem services thereby we enlarge input output modelling from the two conventional ecosystem services of sink and provisioning to the most vital ones the supporting services an application to the seine estuary addresses the impacts of maritime transportation infrastructures on nursery habitats for commercial fish the ecosystem services covered are life support and resource provisioning our results show that the restoration of a total of 73 7 km 2 of nursery areas over the period 2004 2015 would result in a stock of sole in 2015 that exceeds the business as usual scenario by 44 2 uncertainty range 35 9 69 9 in spite of high restoration costs the negative macro economic impact is very low however on the sector level a trade off results between nurseries and three economic sectors the quantification of such trade offs in our model is particularly useful to public participation in decision making

technology driven inequality leads to poverty and resource depletion the rapid rise in inequality is often seen to go in hand with resource overuse examples include water extraction in pakistan land degradation in bangladesh forest harvesting in sub saharan africa and industrial fishing in lake victoria while access to ecosystem services provided by common pool resources mitigates poverty exclusive access to technology by wealthy individuals may fuel excessive resource extraction and deplete the resource thus widening the wealth gap we use a stylised social ecological model to illustrate how a positive feedback between wealth and technology may fuel local inequality the resulting rise in local inequality can lead to resource degradation and critical transitions such as ecological resource collapse and unexpected increase in poverty further we find that societies may evolve towards a stable state of few wealthy and many poor individuals where the distribution of wealth depends on how access to technology is distributed overall our results illustrate how access to technology may be a mechanism that fuels resource degradation and consequently pushes most vulnerable members of society into a poverty trap

the social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics abstract ecological economists accept that the global population cannot grow forever but papers discussing the relevance of population growth and the prospects for minimising it are rare in the literature on ecological economics even these papers treat population almost exclusively as an issue relating to the scale of human activity the many ways in which population growth rate and local demographic pressures drive negative social and environmental trends remain largely unarticulated the mistaken belief that action to reduce population growth requires involuntary control of people s reproduction has fostered a taboo on the topic and deterred analysis of demographic influences on issues such as inequality unemployment debt social cohesion and conflict this paper discusses how some of these influences relate to ecological economics discourses on natural resources labour capital and governance it argues that population stabilisation is not only ultimately required for a steady state economy but can be a powerful lever in a virtuous cycle of effects diminishing resource consumption and environmental impacts reversing income inequality and undermining the leverage enjoyed by capital over labour a richer more integrated treatment of population dynamics would greatly enhance the ecological economics research agenda in the coming decades

social multi criteria evaluation methodological foundations and operational consequences in order to address contemporary issues economics and decision sciences need to expand their empirical relevance by introducing more and more realistic thus more complex assumptions in their models one of the most interesting research directions in the field of public economics is the attempt to introduce political constraints interest groups and collusion effects explicitly j j laffont incentives and political economy 2000 the main argument developed here is the proposal of the concept of social multi criteria evaluation smce as a possible useful framework for the application of social choice to the difficult policy problems of our millennium where as stated by funtowicz and ravetz facts are uncertain values in dispute stakes high and decisions urgent this paper starts from the following main questions 1 why social multi criteria evaluation 2 how should such an approach be developed the foundations of smce are set up by referring to concepts from complex system theory and philosophy such as reflexive complexity post normal science and incommensurability to give some operational guidelines on the application of smce basic questions to be answered are 1 how is it possible to deal with technical incommensurability 2 how can we deal with the issue of social incommensurability to answer these questions using theoretical considerations and lessons learned from real world case studies is the main objective of the present article

capitals and capabilities a framework for analyzing peasant viability rural livelihoods and poverty abstract on the basis of themes emerging in current debates on rural development in latin america this paper develops an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty the framework argues that our analyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of a people s access to five types of capital asset b the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs c the ways in which people are able to expand their asset bases through engaging with other actors through relationships governed by the logics of the state market and civil society and d the ways in which they are able to deploy and enhance their capabilities both to make living more meaningful and to change the dominant rules and relationships governing the ways in which resources are controlled distributed and transformed in society particular attention is paid to the importance of social capital as an asset through which people are able to widen their access to resources and other actors

on stock market illiquidity and real time gdp growth this study examines whether stock market illiquidity forecasts real uk gdp growth using data over the period 1989q1 2012q2 apart from standard linear model specifications we also utilize non linear models which allow for regime switching behavior in terms of a liquid versus an illiquid market regime and over the phases of the business cycle our findings support a statistically significant negative relationship between stock market illiquidity and future uk gdp growth over and above the usual control variables this relationship is found to be stronger during periods of highly illiquid market conditions and weak economic growth our out of sample forecasting analysis indicates that a regime switching model of illiquid versus liquid market conditions predicts uk growth better than any other model actually this model is the only one to significantly outperform the gdp growth forecasts published in the bank of england s inflation report

the approach of ecological economics this paper discusses the major tenets of ecological economics including value pluralism methodological pluralism and multi criteria policy assessment ecological economics offers viable alternatives to the theoretical foundations and policy recommendations of neoclassical welfare economics a revolution in neoclassical economics is currently taking place and the core assumptions of welfare economics are being replaced with more realistic models of consumer and firm behaviour this paper argues that these new theoretical and empirical findings are largely ignored in applied work and policy applications in environmental economics as the only heterodox school of economics focusing on the human economy both as a social system and as one imbedded in the biophysical universe and thus both holistic and scientifically based ecological economics is poised to play a leading role in recasting the scope and method of economic science

the role of demandable debt in structuring optimal banking arrangements demandable debt finance by banks warrants explanation because it entails costs of bank suspension liquidation and idle reserve holdings an explanation is developed in which demandable debt provides incentive compatible intermediation where the banker has comparative advantage in allocating investment funds but may act against the interests of uninformed depositors demandable debt attracts funds by giving depositors an option to force liquidation its usefulness in transacting follows from information sharing between monitors and nonmonitors copyright 1991 by american economic association

environmental and ecological economics a citation analysis this study looks at two distinct questions dwhat have been the most influential journal articles in environmental economics and ecological economics over the 10 year period 1994 2003 t and dhow much overlap is there between the fields of environmental and ecological economics t we examine the references in all articles published in jeem and ecological economics ee over this period for each of these two fields a list of the top articles and top journals cited by articles published in jeem and ee is presented we also present some results based on our study of the isi journal citation reports we find that there is a significant overlap between the two fields at the journal level the two journals cite similar journals there is a correlation of 0 34 between the number of citations received by the journals that are most cited and the correlation is even higher if journal self citation is excluded the main differences are that ecological economics tends to cite but not be cited by general natural science journals more often than environmental economics does environmental economics cites more heavily from journals rather than other publications and citations in environmental economics are more concentrated on particular journals and individual publications however there is much less similarity at the level of individual articles nonmarket valuation articles dominate the most cited articles in jeem while green accounting sustainability and the environmental kuznets curve are all prominent topics in ee d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

building an incentive compatible safety net abstract bank safety nets originally proposed as a means of stabilizing financial systems have become an important destabilizing influence government protection of bank debts encourages banks to undertake excessive risk particularly in response to adverse shocks to asset values reforms that would remove the destabilizing moral hazard consequences of government protection are considered both from the perspective of economic desirability and political feasibility requiring banks to maintain a minimal proportion of subordinated debt finance and restricting the means by which government recapitalization of insolvent banks occurs are the central features of promising reforms to the safety net

the shallow or the deep ecological economics movement ecological economics and its policy recommendations have become overwhelmed by economic valuation shadow pricing sustainability measures and squeezing nature into the commodity boxes of goods services and capital in order to make it part of mainstream economic financial and banking discourses there are deeper concerns which touch upon the understanding of humanity in its various social psychological political and ethical facets the relationship with nature proposed by the ecological economics movement has the potential to be far reaching however this is not the picture portrayed by surveying the amassed body of articles from this journal or by many of those claiming affiliation a shallow movement allied to a business as usual politics and economy has become dominant and imposes its preoccupation with mainstream economic concepts and values if instead ecological economists choose a path deep into the world of interdisciplinary endeavour they will need to be prepared to transform themselves and society the implications go far beyond the pragmatic use of magic numbers to convince politicians and the public that ecology still has something relevant to say in the 21st century author s abstract

small scale cooperative banking and the production of capital reflecting on the role of institutional agreements in supporting rural livelihood in kampot cambodia this paper explores the ecological economics of small scale cooperative banking sscb through reference to the empirical case of a rice farming village in kampot cambodia it combines georgescu roegen s discussion of an economy s capacity to produce economic processes with ostrom s concept of institutional performance in order to address the implications and functioning of sscb within a small farmer economy the local collective action situation of maintaining and making use of a sscb system a specific finance model provides the studied community with access to a pooled capital fund that may play an important role in ensuring its capacity to produce and reproduce economic processes according to its own specifications the coordinated action among the villagers which matches up well with ostrom s criteria for effective institutional performance of common pool resource use governance is found to include social and environmental dimensions which we understand to be necessary for achieving transformations toward more sustainable economic activity while we do not wish to suggest that the adoption of sscb guarantees either improved ecological or social impacts our results suggest that this finance model could play a supporting role in enhancing the potential of small farming communities to improve both should they wish to do so

ecological economics at a crossroads during the past decade theoretical and empirical advances in neoclassical economics have resulted in the virtual rejection of the two pillars of traditional welfare economics rational economic man and perfect competition surprisingly many ecological economists are moving closer to the discredited neo walrasian welfare model just at the time it is being replaced within the mainstream we call for a return to the roots of ecological economics and an engagement with current developments in mainstream theory this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

corporate tax integration in the united states a general equilibrium approach this paper presents estimates of static and dynamic general equilibrium resource allocation effects for four alternative plans for corporate and personal income tax integration in the united states a medium scale numerical general equilibrium model is used which integrates the u s tax system with consumer demand behavior by household and producer behavior by industry results indicate that total integration of personal and corporate taxes would yield an annual static efficiency gain of around 6 billion 1973 dollars partial integration plans yield less dynamic effects are larger and our analysis indicates that full integration may yield gains whose present value is as large as 500 billion or about 1 0 percent of the discounted present value of the gnp stream to the u s economy after correction for population growth plans differ in their distributional impacts although these findings depend on the nature of replacement taxes used to preserve government revenues the size of dynamic resource allocation effects is sensitive to the choice of the replacement tax while static gains are reasonably robust

poverty and resource dependence in rural india abstract previous studies of rural households in developing countries have tended to find that the dependence of these households on common pool resources declines with income our study of households in jhabua india finds a more complex relationship using the share of resource income in total long run or permanent income as our dependence measure which we argue is more appropriate than the short run income based measure commonly used in the literature we find that for households that collect any resources at all dependence exhibits a u shaped relationship with income that is the poorest and richest households depend more on resources than households with intermediate incomes the poorest and richest households are also found to be least likely to collect however indicating that resource use at the income extremes is bimodal either zero or above average moreover the observed trends for resources as a whole are not mirrored in those for individual resources dependence on fuelwood and dung declines with income for example while dependence on fodder and construction wood increases these findings suggest that common pool resources are a productive source of income not just for the poor but also for the rich and that improvements in the stocks of these resources can potentially form the basis of poverty reduction efforts in these economies

influential publications in ecological economics revisited we revisit the analysis of costanza et al 2004 ecological economics of influential publications in ecological economics to discover what has changed a decade on we examine which sources have been influential on the field of ecological economics in the past decade which articles in the journal ecological economics have had the most influence on the field and on the rest of science and on which areas of science the journal is having the most influence we find that the field has matured over this period with articles published in the journal having a greater influence than before an increase in citation links to environmental studies journals a reduction in citation links to mainstream economics journals and possibly a shift in themes to a more applied and empirical direction

what is ecological economics ecological economics addresses the relationships between ecosystems and economic systems in the broadest sense these relationships are the locus of many of our most pressing current problems i e sustainability acid rain global warming species extinction wealth distribution but they are not well covered by any existing discipline environmental and resource economics as it is currently practiced covers only the application of neoclassical economics to environmental and resource problems ecology as it is cur rently practiced sometimes deals with human impacts on ecosystems but the more common tendency is to stick to natural systems ecological economics aims to extend these modest areas of overlap it will include neoclassical environmental economics and ecological impact studies as sub sets but will also encourage new ways of thinking about the linkages between ecological and economic systems we have chosen the name ecological economics for this area of study because it implies a broad ecological interdisciplinary and holistic view of the problem of studying and managing our world the earth from space cover of the journal reflects this global holistic perspective we did not intend to imply with the ordering of the two words in the title that the journal is mainly an economics journal it is intended to be a new approach to both ecology and economics that recognizes the need to make economics more cognizant of ecological impacts and dependencies the need to make ecology more sensitive to economic forces incentives and constraints and the need to treat integrated economic ecologic systems with a common but diverse set of conceptual and analytical tools there was much discussion of other possible names such as economic ecology or ecology and economics or some conjoining of the two words that to me end up being confusing tongue twisters like ecolnomics or econology but ecological economics seemed to get closest to the mean ing we desired while still being evocative to the uninitiated

environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century an age adjusted citation analysis of the influential articles journals authors and institutions we investigate the influence of articles authors journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics we depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field we adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article s publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors we analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009 we provide rankings of the influential articles authors journals and institutions and find that ecological economics energy economics and the journal of environmental economics and management have the most influential articles they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most the university of maryland resources for the future the university of east anglia and the world bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics

strong sustainability critical natural capital and the capability approach this article is an attempt to conceptually improve the notion of strong sustainability by creating a rapprochement between its core concept critical natural capital and the capability approach we first demonstrate that the capability approach constitutes a relevant framework for analysing the multiple links between human well being and critical natural capital second we demonstrate that the rapprochement between critical natural capital and the capability approach can form both the normative basis and the informational basis for a deliberative approach to human development which embraces a strong sustainability perspective this conceptual rapprochement as illustrated in our case study opens up avenues of research towards the practical implementation of human development projects from a strong sustainability perspective

trends in the development of ecological economics from the late 1980s to the early 2000s abstract as the contributions to ecological economics are very diverse recent years have seen some discussion on both how to delimit the field and in which direction it should develop the intention with this paper is to contribute to the discussion by outlining important trends in the development of the field from the late 1980s to the early 2000s the study is inspired by other studies in the sociology and history of science in particular by the theoretical framework regarding scientific fields as reputational organizations which draws attention to both cognitive and social aspects of the formation of a field the basis for the paper is a combination of literature studies interviews with key researchers in the field and participant observations the paper outlines the characteristic cognitive features of ecological economics at the time of the birth of the field it is then described how the development in ecological economics was influenced by broader social factors during the following years and how the field was shaped by the inflow and outflow of different groups of researchers the emergence of different research programmes is outlined as is the organizational development finally the characteristics of ecological economics are summarized and the future prospects are briefly assessed

identifying relationship lending in the interbank market a network approach abstract relationship lending is broadly interpreted as a strong partnership between a lender and a borrower nevertheless we still lack consensus regarding how to quantify the strength of a lending relationship while simple statistics such as the frequency and volume of loans have been used as proxies in previous studies here we propose statistical tests to identify relationship lending as a significant tie between banks application of the proposed method to the italian interbank networks reveals that the fraction of relationship lending among all bilateral trades has been quite stable and that the relationship lenders tend to impose high interest rates at the time of financial distress

the 1986 us tax reform and the world capital market the 1986 u s tax reform was a policy of tax cut cum base broadening among other things the corporate and personal tax rates were reduced the investment tax credit itc was lifted the depreciation periods of the accelerated cost recovery system acrs were lenghtened and realized capital gains became fully included in the personal tax base this paper gives a brief overview of the main effects on international capital movements that these measures may have drawing on related and more elaborate discussions of the subject in sinn 1987a ch 7 and 1987b the analysis focuses on the interactions between the real and financial spheres of the economy and unlike most of the existing literature on taxation and international capital flows it is based on a microfoundation of the tax influence on the firms marginal investment conditions the main result is that in the presence of accelerated depreciation and the residence principle for interest income taxation not only the base broadening but also the tax cuts may expel capital from the united states

a participatory approach to sustainable energy strategy development in a carbon intensive jurisdiction the case of nova scotia the need for governments to reduce the exposure of energy consumers to future increases in fossil fuel prices places urgent pressure on policy makers to deliver fundamental transformations in energy strategies particularly in jurisdictions with high dependency on fossil fuel sources dorian et al 2006 this transformation is unlikely without a high level of stakeholder engagement in the policy development process this paper describes two policy development processes recently undertaken in nova scotia in which the inclusion of stakeholder views was central to the approach the first delivered a new institutional framework for electricity energy efficiency involving the inception of an independent performance based administrator the second required the delivery of a strategy to significantly increase renewable energy generation in the province it involved recommendations for changes in institutional arrangements financial incentives and technological options this process was followed by new commitments to renewable energy developments new infrastructure for the importation of hydro electricity and the announcement of fits for ocean energy in both cases recommendations were made by an independent academic institution and the government responded directly to a majority of recommendations the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and the implications for future energy policy making in carbon intensive jurisdictions

why ecological economics needs to return to its roots the biophysical foundation of socio economic systems abstract ecological economics was formally established in 1989 with the ambitious vision of developing a new economic paradigm embedding the social and economic systems in the biophysical world ecological economics had its roots in the biophysical understanding of economics that pioneers of the field georgescu roegen 1971 odum 1971 daly 1977 jansson 1984 martinez alier 1987 and others developed while studying the thermodynamic bedrocks shared by natural and social systems subsequently however ecological economics has explicitly but controversially adopted a big umbrella approach to methodological pluralism focusing more on topics such as valuing nature and its functions rather than attempting to understand and quantify the biophysical roots of economic activities biophysical economics was established in response to these concerns focusing more on developing analyses and models of the transformations of nature to generate wealth and approached mostly from an energy and material flows perspective the present paper argues that to achieve its original vision ecological economics must return to its biophysical roots collaboration between the two fields will help the next generation of thinkers to address the socio ecological challenges of the 21st century requiring an energy transformation called for by aspirations such as the green new deal and the un sustainable development goals

new foundations for ecological economics abstract ecological economics has been repeatedly described as transdiciplinary and open to including everything from positivism to relativism i argue for a revision and rejection of this position in favour of realism and reasoned critique looking into the ontological presuppositions and considering an epistemology appropriate for ecological economics to meaningfully exist requires rejecting the form of methodological pluralism which has been advocated since the start of this journal this means being clear about the differences in our worldview or paradigm from others and being aware of the substantive failures of orthodox economics in addressing reality this paper argues for a fundamental review of the basis upon which ecological economics has been founded and in so doing seeks improved clarity as to the competing and complementary epistemologies and methodologies in part this requires establishing serious interdisciplinary research to replace superficial transdisciplinary rhetoric the argument places the future of ecological economics firmly amongst heterodox economic schools of thought and in ideological opposition to those supporting the existing institutional structures perpetuating a false reality of the world s social environmental and economic systems and their operation

ecological economics as a policy science rhetoric or commitment towards an improved decision making process on sustainability abstract with sustainability issues currently attracting increasing political and policy attention this paper examines the impact of the rise of ecological economics in the policy world and its potential influence on the decision making process this study emphasises that ecological economics development is coevolved with and modified to fit specific social economic political and cultural contexts as a policy science ecological economics is context sensitive and action oriented explaining why it is so and what to do about it has become imperative for ecological economists this paper attempts to address the questions such as what are the macroeconomic conditions and political processes that make the formulation and implementation of ecological economic policy possible how should this alternative social reality engage with the dominant decision making process does ecological economics provide the necessary means for prescribing policy measures to achieve sustainable development endeavouring to understand these dimensions of ecological economics has been a dynamic social process and understanding this complex process might provide an opportunity to bridge the divide between policy rhetoric and reality in practice rather than maintain the status quo in order to achieve an improved decision making process on sustainability it highlights the imperative to explicitly study the institutional setting through which sustainable development policy discourse is mediated

economics for the future beyond the superorganism abstract our environment and economy are at a crossroads this paper attempts a cohesive narrative on how human evolved behavior money energy economy and the environment fit together humans strive for the same emotional state of our successful ancestors in a resource rich environment we coordinate in groups corporations and nations to maximize financial surplus tethered to energy tethered to carbon at global scales the emergent result of this combination is a mindless energy hungry co2 emitting superorganism under this dynamic we are now behaviorally growth constrained and will use any means possible to avoid facing this reality the farther we kick the can the larger the disconnect between our financial and physical reality becomes the moment of this recalibration will be a watershed time for our culture but could also be the birth of a new systems economics and resultant different ways of living the next 30 years are the time to apply all we ve learned during the past 30 years we ve arrived at a species level conversation

african evidence on the relation of poverty time preference and the environment abstract it is typically argued in the economics literature that the poor operate with a higher rate of time preference than their wealthier counterparts the poor it is suggested have a higher rate of time preference because they are more concerned about present survival than they are about saving for the future such thinking is also central to the economic growth for environmental conservation and the poverty induced environmental degradation arguments according to these assertions wealth allows people to consider the future and invest in environmental conservation and poverty leaves people with no alternative but to exploit the environment so that they may feed their families today evidence from the food security and famine early warning fields suggests that households in many african contexts behave quite to the contrary during periods of food shortage poor households will often undertake extreme measures in the present including depriving the family of needed calories in order to preserve productive capital for the future such as a plough oxen or seed stock this evidence suggests that poor african households may in fact have very low rates of time preference this calls into question our general assumptions about discount rates for developing countries for which rates of time preference are a theoretical determinant

searching for sustainability the poverty of spontaneous order abstract traditional approaches to sustainability rely on models that depend upon judgments of welfare across future generations right prices and some sense as to what future persons will find giving of utility these models both accept the spontaneous order of market processes and rely on that order to derive optimal consumption paths into the future sustainability is however not a problem of divining optimal paths predicated upon right prices rather sustainability to be operational requires a prior constructed order predicated upon rights for future persons and duties for those now living who sit in a position as dictator over the settings and circumstances that will be passed on to future persons rights based approaches to sustainability do not rely upon unknowable preferences of future persons but rather upon an environmental regency in which those now living agree to preserve settings and circumstances for the future this reminds us that the issue of sustainability concerns not how much to preserve but what to preserve

the energy metabolism of countries energy efficiency and use in the period that followed the global financial crisis this paper discusses how the deceleration of economic growth that followed the financial crisis of 2008 influenced the energy efficiency allocation and use of 18 european countries by using a multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem the relationships between energy requirements economic trends and population are investigated for the years 2008 and 2015 the analyses are performed for the entire society level n for the household and the paid sectors level n 1 and for the agricultural the industrial and the service activities level n 2 results show that two main groups of countries performed the largest energy reductions namely the country most affected by the global financial crisis such as greece romania and spain where the total energy throughput decreased by 19 6 15 8 and 12 1 respectively and the countries such as ireland and united kingdom that experienced the largest energy intensity reductions 38 7 and 19 2 together with the highest gdp increases 44 8 and 10 2 by providing an overview of the relationships existing between socio economic and energy variables this paper contributes to the debate around growth and efficiency and can support the design of policies oriented to promote the achievement of a more sustainable and competitive economy

in search of substantive economics comparing today s two major socio metabolic approaches to the economy mefa and musiasem ecological economics is largely about the substantive in kind study of the economy as opposed to a purely formal economic analysis in money following kapp polanyi and others this article argues that substantive economics is interested in the biophysical and politico institutional structure of the economy rather than in correct prices within a particular axiomatic conformity as in formal economics after outlining the history of the substantive vs formal dichotomy we point out that socio metabolic analyses are ecological economics most significant contribution towards substantive economics the core of this article then compares what could be today s two best candidates for offering a distinctive foundation to ecological economics as substantive economics material and energy flows analyses mefa and multi scale integrated analyses of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem while mefa is more easily comparative and historical musiasem is more integrative and comprehensive yet we also argue that socio metabolic analyses represent one of the three pillars of substantive economics and that both mefa and musiasem are still weak in integrating the politico institutional structure second pillar and a theory of needs third pillar if such an integration was done ecological economics would be in a position to offer a full fledge alternative substantive economic theory

flows funds and the complexity of deprivation using concepts from ecological economics for the study of poverty abstract poverty has been increasingly conceptualized as being multidimensional involving deprivation in many dimensions of life this paper discusses issues and implications of multidimensional poverty by adopting concepts commonly used in ecological economics in particular poverty is approached as an irreducible complex phenomenon for which many legitimate but non equivalent descriptions exist issues of social and technical incommensurability are illustrated for different meanings and measurement types of poverty georgescu roegen s flow fund framework is interpreted informed by the capability approach of amartya sen the paper argues that a predominant focus on flows as a proxy to analyze poverty represents rather a short term perspective on access to satisfiers to fulfill particular needs contrary to that focusing on valued funds may provide useful information for the analysis of capabilities that persons and societies might pursue in the long term furthermore it is argued that strong poverty alleviation needs to adopt analytical tools that can deal with non trade off cases improvements in one poverty dimension cannot always compensate for the deterioration of other poverties this implies to rethink the usefulness of aggregate multidimensional poverty indices as well as the predominant use of income measures

a credit score system for socially responsible lending ethical banking microfinance institutions or certain credit cooperatives among others grant socially responsible loans this paper presents a credit score system for them the model evaluates social and financial aspects of the borrower the financial aspects are evaluated under the conventional banking framework by analysing accounting statements and financial projections the social aspects try to quantify the loan impact on the achievement of millennium development goals such as employment education environment health or community impact the social credit score model should incorporate the lender s know how and should also be coherent with its mission this is done using multi criteria decision making mcdm the paper illustrates a real case a loan application by a social entrepreneur presented to a socially responsible lender the decision support system not only produces a score but also reveals strengths and weaknesses of the application

editorial human capital and human capability i would like to comment on the connection as well as contrast between two distinct but related areas of investigation in understanding the processes of economic and social development the accumulation of human capital and the expansion of human capability the former concentrates on the agency of human beings through skill and knowledge as well as effort in augmenting production possibilities the latter focuses on the ability of human beings to lead lives they have reason to value and to enhance the substantive choices they have the two perspectives cannot but be related since both are concerned with the role of human beings and in particular with the actual abilities that they achieve and acquire given her personal characteristics social background economic circumstances etc a person has the ability to do or be certain things that she has reason to value the reason for valuation can be direct the functioning involved may directly enrich her life such as being well nourished or being healthy or indirect the functioning involved may contribute to further production or command a price in the market the human capital perspective can in principle be defined very broadly to cover both types of valuation but it is typically defined by convention primarily in terms of indirect value human qualities that can be employed as capital in production in the way physical capital is in this sense the narrower view of human capital approach fits into the more inclusive perspective of human capability which can cover both direct and indirect consequences of human abilities consider an example if education makes a person more efficient in commodity production then this is clearly an enhancement of human capital this can add to the value of production in the economy and also to the income of the person who has been educated but even with the same level of income a person may benefit from education in reading communicating arguing in being able to choose in a more informed way in being taken more seriously by others and so on the benefits of education thus exceeds its role as human capital in commodity production the broader human capability perspective would record and value these additional roles the two perspectives are thus closely related but distinct the significant transformation that has occurred in recent years in giving greater recognition to the role of human capital is helpful for understanding the relevance of the capability perspective if a person can become more productive in making commodities through better education better health and so on it is not unnatural to expect that she can also directly achieve more and have the freedom to achieve more in leading her life both perspectives put humanity at the center of attention altogether this involves to a great extent a return to an integrated approach to economic and social development championed particularly by adam smith both in the wealth of nations and in the theory of moral sentiments in analysing the determination of production possibilities smith emphasized the role education as well as division of labor learning by doing and skill formation the development of human capability in leading a worthwhile life as well as in being more productive is quite central to smith s analysis of the wealth of nations indeed adam smith s belief in the power of education and learning was peculiarly strong regarding the debate that continues today on the respective roles of nature and nurture smith was an uncompromising nurturist and this fitted in with his massive confidence in the improvability of human capabilities

the second generation of ecological economics how far has the apple fallen from the tree this paper examines the discourse produced in the academic journal ecological economics from its inception in 1989 and compares this discourse with that of the field of environmental economics i used methods for discourse analysis alceste and iramuteq on 6308 abstracts of papers published in four journals namely ecological economics the journal of environmental economics and management environmental values and environmental and resource economics published between 1989 and 2013 the results suggest that the discourses of ecological economics and environmental economics have grown closer over time the semantic classification of co occurrent terms used in ecological economics indicates increasing significance of the notions of ecosystem services and of monetary valuation i argue that this trend is parallel to costanza s career path which suggests the rise of a tacit recognition of the new environmental pragmatic scientific approach i conclude with some of the implications for ee of promoting this kind of discourse to such an extent

financial crises payment system problems and discount window lending in a developed economy financial crises are rapidly conveyed to the payment system which tends to rely on private credit extensions in most countries while many authors recommend that the central bank do no more than provide adequate aggregate liquidity during a crisis this policy requires well functioning private credit markets to channel liquidity to solvent but illiquid firms this paper presents a model of private lending which defines a crisis as a time when lenders become uncertain about how to assess financial risks and therefore rationally withdraw from making new loans in such an environment a government lender of last resort can improve social welfare copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

announcements of ecb unconventional programs implications for the sovereign spreads of stressed euro area countries abstract this paper studies the effects of ecb communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the sovereign spreads of greece ireland italy portugal and spain relative to germany between 2008 and 2012 more than fifty events concerning non standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ecb program the empirical results suggest that the ecb announcements about unconventional monetary policies substantially reduced long term government bond yield spreads relative to german counterparts in all countries except greece particularly among the different types of measures news about the securities markets programme strongly affected the perceived sovereign risk of the five stressed euro area countries while the announcements of the outright monetary transactions seem to have a significant impact only in italy and spain

take it to the limit innovative cvar applications to extreme credit risk measurement abstract the global financial crisis gfc demonstrated the devastating impact of extreme credit risk on global economic stability we develop four credit models to better measure credit risk in extreme economic circumstances by applying innovative conditional value at risk cvar techniques to structural models called xtreme s transition models xtreme t quantile regression models xtreme q and the author s unique itransition model xtreme i which incorporates industry factors into transition matrices we find the xtreme s and xtreme q models to be the most responsive to changing market conditions the paper also demonstrates how the models can be used to determine capital buffers required to deal with extreme credit risk

the early history of modern ecological economics abstract this paper provides a historical perspective for the discussion on ecological economics as a special field of research by studying the historical background of ecological economics the present discussions and tensions inside the field might become easier to understand and to relate to the study is inspired by other studies of the emergence of new research areas done by sociologists and historians of science and includes both cognitive and social aspects macro trends and the role of individuals the basis for the paper is a combination of literature studies and interviews with key researchers from the field the story opens with the emergence of the new environmental agenda in the 1960s which was influenced by the scientific development in biology and ecology then it is outlined how the environmental challenge was met by economics in the 1960s around 1970 the basic ideas of ecological economics were given modern formulations but it took a long gestation period from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of the 1980s before ecological economics took shape during this gestation period the personal relationships between the actors were formed and the meetings that were decisive for the formal establishment of ecological economics took place

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

measuring the liquidity effect this paper measures the effect on the federal funds rate of an open market operation the paper deals with simultaneous equations bias by developing a proxy for the errors the federal reserve makes in forecasting the extent to which treasury operations will add or drain reserves available to private banks these errors induce fluctuations in bank reserves which have measurable consequences for the federal funds rate the paper estimates that a reduction in nonborrowed reserves of 30 million if sustained for an entire fourteen day reserve maintenance period will cause the federal funds rate to rise by ten basis points copyright 1997 by american economic association

the rhetorics of ecological economics since the early 1980s there has been a lively discussion about the rhetoric of economics ecological economists however so far have not tried to incorporate this discussion into their work this paper is a first step towards including the discourse on rhetoric into the self awareness of ecological economics after a brief outline of what this discourse is about the importance of metaphors as one aspect of rhetoric is examined connections of the rhetorical discourse to ecological economics as a post normal science are shown it is argued that two rhetorics of ecological economics can be distinguished internal and external rhetoric while the former refers mostly to methodological issues the latter is of particular importance for the political impact that ecological economics can have finally some suggestions for research are made

a matter of opinion how ecological and neoclassical environmental economists and think about sustainability and economics abstract the differing paradigms of ecological and neoclassical environmental economics have been described in various articles and books and are also embedded in different professional associations however we cannot take for granted that the paradigm debates described in the literature are actually mirrored in exactly the same way in the perceptions and opinions of researchers looking at sustainability from an economic perspective this paper presents empirical results from a german case study on how economists and others involved in sustainability research from different schools of thought think about the issues of sustainability and economics how they group around these issues how they feel about the current scientific divide and what they expect to be future topics of sustainability research we analyze the data using cluster analysis based on a literature survey we generated forty sustainability economics related statements and asked 196 sustainability researchers about their degree of agreement or disagreement with these statements in evaluating our survey results we discuss to what extent the clusters that we identified do or do not represent the two schools of thought of ecological and neoclassical environmental economics we also propose some fields of research that can help to bridge the gaps amongst sustainability economics researchers while clearly marking others that are more suitable for a scientific competition of ideas key results of the study are we identify two primary scientific clusters one clearly confirming the existence of the ecological economics school of thought and the other largely capturing the neoclassical environmental view yet there are some surprising exceptions both schools of thought share a conceptual definition of sustainability that is integrative in considering ecological societal and economic dimensions three pillar concept and is geared at preserving the development potentials of society we also find a shared critique of pure economic growth strategies in our sample these shared opinions may provide bridging concepts between the schools of thought also both clusters agree with respect to a wide range of future fields of sustainability economics research yet the research agenda of the ecological economics cluster contains a large number of additional topics primarily related to social distributional and evolutionary aspects of sustainable development strong divides between the clusters that seem to be more suitable for a scientific competition of ideas are primarily related to the question of how to achieve sustainability including appropriate environmental policies

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

the challenge of measuring biofuel sustainability a stakeholder driven approach applied to the french case measuring biofuel sustainability requires dealing with a wide variety of complex and conflicting values at stake consequently the biofuel capacity to contribute to one specific value cannot lead to any absolute conclusion about the overall sustainability of biofuel the scope of the sustainability concept may vary depending on individuals preferences the time scale and the geographical region based on the 5 pillars sustainability concept that includes social economic environmental legal and cultural considerations the present study proposes to assess several biofuel sustainability options for france by 2030 through a stakeholder driven approach rather than seeking to reach a consensus our approach allows us to capture the wide diversity of stakeholders perspectives and preferences french stakeholders perceive 22 different sustainability criteria for biofuels with a very low level of agreement between the different segments of professions feedstock producers biofuel producers refining industry fuel distributors car manufacturers end users government and ngos in order to operationalize the sustainability assessment a set of indicators has been identified with stakeholders that allows us to measure the capacity of biofuels to fulfill each of their criteria seventeen biofuel options were assessed with regards to economic social environmental cultural and legal considerations allowing the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of each biofuel

financial intermediation and macroeconomic analysis a macroeconomic framework in which fi nancial intermediation matters for the allocation of resources allocation of resources in this paper i fi rst discuss why neither standard macroeconomic models that in this paper i fi rst discuss why neither standard macroeconomic models that abstract from fi nancial intermediation nor traditional models of the bank lending abstract from fi nancial intermediation nor traditional models of the bank lending channel are adequate as a basis for understanding the recent crisis i argue that channel are adequate as a basis for understanding the recent crisis i argue that instead we need models in which intermediation plays a crucial role but in which instead we need models in which intermediation plays a crucial role but in which intermediation is modeled in a way that better conforms to current institutional intermediation is modeled in a way that better conforms to current institutional realities in particular we need models that recognize that a market based fi nan realities in particular we need models that recognize that a market based fi nan cial system one in which intermediaries fund themselves by selling securities in cial system one in which intermediaries fund themselves by selling securities in competitive markets rather than collecting deposits subject to reserve require competitive markets rather than collecting deposits subject to reserve require ments is not the same as a frictionless system ments is not the same as a frictionless system i then sketch the basic elements of an approach that allows fi nancial inter i then sketch the basic elements of an approach that allows fi nancial inter mediation and credit frictions to be integrated into macroeconomic analysis in a mediation and credit frictions to be integrated into macroeconomic analysis in a straightforward way i show how the model can be used to analyze the macroeco straightforward way i show how the model can be used to analyze the macroeco nomic consequences of the recent fi nancial crisis and conclude with a discussion of nomic consequences of the recent fi nancial crisis and conclude with a discussion of some implications of the model for the conduct of monetary policy some implications of the model for the conduct of monetary policy

monetary policy in exceptional times this paper describes the way in which the european central bank ecb the federal reserve and the bank of england conducted monetary policy since the beginning of the financial crisis in august 2007 we argue that both quantitative easing and the other non standard measures introduced by central banks that changed the composition of the asset side of their balance sheets so called qualitative easing acted mainly through their effects on interest rates and in particular on money market spreads rather than solely through quantity effects in terms of the money supply we perform a quantitative exercise on the euro area which estimates the effect of the reduction of these spreads to the broader economy michele lenza huw pill and lucrezia reichlin

the role of bank relationships in the interbank market this paper empirically explores the effect of bank lending relationships in the interbank market we use data from the e mid market that represents the only transparent electronic platform in europe and usa unaffected by search costs and other fictions we show that stable relationships exist and that they played a significant role during the 2007 2008 financial crisis trading with preferred counterparts is associated with more favorable rates for both lenders and borrowers and carries larger trading volumes the results point to a peer monitoring role of relationship lending which contributes at a time of financial distress to a smooth liquidity redistribution among banks relationship lending thus plays an important positive role for financial stability

the meaning of poverty matters trade offs in poverty reduction programmes abstract poverty has many different dimensions yet few poverty reduction policies take an integrated approach to multidimensional poverty many continue to focus predominantly on income and employment issues whereas others address different aspects of poverty separately in this paper we illustrate that while such policies may be effective at reaching their objectives individually they may clash with other dimensions of poverty targeted by other policies to achieve our aims we employ a case from rural guatemala where a series of development policies have pursued different targets based on different narratives of poverty reduction we apply a multidimensional assessment framework and analyze the household typologies of three rural communities to address how these typologies perform in relation to the contrasting goals of different rural development policies while for some household types classic indicators such as monetary income and employment did increase a series of further issues targeted by other policies such as self sufficiency disposable time for community activities or access to land worsened hence the problem of focusing predominantly on one dimension is not only that it provides an incomplete picture the main problem is rather that it can obscure the creation of new types of poverty

the micromechanics of the federal funds market implications for day of the week effects in funds rate variability the federal funds rate arguably is the most important interest rate in the u s capital market because it plays a central role in monetary policy and the term structure this paper examines the micromechanics of the funds market we show that in a continuous market with asynchronous trading regulatory constraints and accounting conventions that focus agents attention on discrete time instants have important implications for the dynamics of trading activity and realized market prices we also exhibit a model of the market that explains observed regularities in the intertemporal behavior of the funds rate

beyond chayanov a sustainable agroecological farm reproductive analysis of peasant domestic units and rural communities sentmenat catalonia 1860 abstract we present a sustainable agroecological farm reproduction analysis that links two methodologies kept separated so far optimization modelling and social metabolism accounting of the biophysical turnover from a fund flow approach this socio agro ecological model combines two scales at farm gate and municipal levels and formalizes all relevant flows interlinking three living funds that have to be reproduced over time the domestic unit livestock and soil fertility from the requirements and capacities of each fund constraints we run the model under different scenarios objective functions to see the different configurations that the landscape structure and the flow patterns can take variables ensuring the reproducibility of funds by changing the objectives we obtain an intensive optimum that minimizes the land required an extensive optimum that minimizes labour and a monetary optimum that maximizes a prevailing cash crop the model is applied to a past advanced organic farming of a catalan village c 1860 to generate a set of counterfactual scenarios that confronted with historical data help to reveal how institutional settings and landownership inequality played a role in maintaining the real socio agro ecological structure away from these optima and the existing potential of possible eco functional intensification practices aimed at reducing the land cost of agrarian sustainability

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

day to day monetary policy and the volatility of the federal funds rate we propose a model of the interbank money market with an explicit role for central bank intervention and periodic reserve requirements and study the interaction of profit maximizing banks with a central bank targeting interest rates at high frequency the model yields predictions on biweekly patterns of the federal funds rate s volatility and on its response to changes in target rates and in intervention procedures such as those implemented by the fed in 1994 theoretical results are consistent with empirical patterns of interest rate volatility in the u s market for federal funds

banks as monitors of other banks evidence from the overnight federal funds market this study provides evidence that banks are effective monitors of their peers by showing that the interest rate paid on federal funds transactions reflects differences in credit risk across borrowers in addition the size and relative importance in the funds market of the trading institutions are shown to affect the rates charged for overnight borrowing thereby providing insight into the nature of competition in the federal funds market transaction volume and size of transaction effects are uncovered as is evidence of relationship banking between banks these results are made possible by unique data identifying individual federal funds transactions copyright 2001 by university of chicago press

experienced poverty and income poverty in mexico a subjective well being approach summary this paper uses a life satisfaction conception of well being to define experienced poverty based on a domains of life approach it shows that experienced poverty is a broader concept than income poverty and that they lead to substantial dissonance in the classification of persons as poor it is argued that experienced poverty better captures the complexity of being human it is shown that raising the income received by persons does not automatically translate into greater well being it states that public policy should be concerned not only about getting people out of income poverty but also about placing them in a life satisfying situation

interbank lending and systemic risk systemic risk refers to the propagation of a bank s economic distress to other economic agents linked to that bank through financial transactions banking authorities often prevent systemic risk through an implicit insurance of interbank claims or by reducing interbank transactions and centralizing banks liquidity management this paper investigates whether the flexability afforded by decentralized bank interactions can be preserved while protecting the central banks from the necessity of conducting undesired rescue operations it develops a model in which decentralized interbank leading is motivated by peer monitoring in this context the paper derives the optimal prudential rules and in particular looks at the impact of interbank monitoring on the solvency and liquidity ratios of borrowing and lending banks last it provides conditions which a too big to fail policy is or is not justified and studies the possibility of propagation of a bank s liquidity shock throughout the financial system copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

economic schools of thought on the environment investigating unity and division how do ecological and heterodox economists differ if at all from each other and from neoclassical economists addressing environmental problems in 2009 we probed this question by conducting an international survey across these communities namely at conferences of the european society for ecological economics the association for heterodox economics and the european association of environmental and resource economists the research was designed to gain insight into the extent to which ecological economics can be described as heterodox and a distinct field from orthodox environmental and resource economics conflicting visions of ecological economics have led to a prevalence of neoclassical articles and thought mixed in amongst more heterodox work we introduce a novel classification of work in the field of environmental policy in order to test for the existence of differences in terms of methodological and ideological approaches how heterodox economists understand environmental issues is also an important question to answer if there is to be more collaboration between them and ecological economists the findings have implications for cooperation and the future direction of both ecological and heterodox economics

ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

interbank market liquidity and central bank intervention we develop a simple model of the interbank market where banks trade a long term safe asset when there is a lack of opportunities for banks to hedge idiosyncratic and aggregate liquidity shocks the interbank market is characterized by excessive price volatility in such a situation a central bank can implement the constrained efficient allocation by using open market operations to fix the short term interest rate it can be constrained efficient for banks to hoard liquidity and stop trading with each other if there is sufficient uncertainty about aggregate liquidity demand compared to idiosyncratic liquidity demand

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

the value base of water governance a multi disciplinary perspective some scholars promote water governance as a normative concept to improve water resources management globally while others conceive of it as an analytical term to describe the processes systems and institutions around the management of water resources and water supply critics often highlight how specific water governance scenarios fail to deliver socially desirable outcomes such as social justice or environmental sustainability while water governance is often perceived as a technical matter its conceptual and practical components are in fact based on multiple values that nonetheless often remain implicit the present paper seeks to uncover this value base and discusses existing research on values from multiple perspectives using material from economics philosophy psychology and other social sciences in different disciplines values can be understood as fundamental guiding principles governance related values or as values assigned to water resources together they shape complex relationships with water governance which from an analytical perspective is understood as a combination of policy politics and polity introducing a new conceptual framework this study seeks to provide a theoretical foundation for empirical research on water governance processes and conflicts

the limits of monetization in valuing the environment a reply to gsottbauer et al we welcome the attention of gsottbauer logar and van den bergh thereinafter glv to our contribution however their critique misrepresents what our article was trying to do so it merits a response our article offered a framework for assessing the conditions under which one may or may not engage with processes that value nature in money terms glv argue that first we confuse monetary valuation methods with pricing policies and that most of what we have to say may be relevant for the latter but not for the former second they argue that the assessment criteria we propose are either obvious or unconvincing third they contend that the examples we give to illustrate the applicability of our criteria are not representative and finally they suggest that our concern with whether a particular monetary valuation study or pricing policy contributes to enclosures and neo liberalism is ideological an

the interbank network across the global financial crisis evidence from italy abstract this study examines the effects of the global financial crisis gfc on interbank market connectivity using network analysis more specifically using data on italian banks bilateral interbank positions between 1998 and 2013 we analyze the impact of the following events on each bank s network centrality the liquidity crisis in august 2007 the collapse of lehman brothers in september 2008 eurosystem s long term refinancing operations ltros between 2009 and 2012 the sovereign debt crisis in july 2011 and the announcement of outright monetary transactions omt in 2012 the results show that the 2007 liquidity crisis and especially the collapse of lehman brothers are associated with a marked reduction of the relative interconnectedness of the italian banking sector i e a shift in the distribution of banks centrality to the left away from the most connected bank in the following years the system progressively recovered its initial patterns of integration among banks which coincided with the main eurosystem s monetary policy interventions however the average outcome conceals different results across banks depending on their characteristics and initial positions within the system

policy incentives for switchgrass production using valuation of non market ecosystem services abstract this study presents a linear profit model with combined economic and environmental factors for a switchgrass for biofuels agricultural system in the southeastern u s the objectives are to establish conversion to switchgrass thresholds for various market prices and identify policy incentives that would ensure economic profit while also maximizing environmental benefits carbon sequestration displacement of fossil fuels and minimizing negative impacts global warming potential nitrate loss weighting factors are chosen to represent incentives and penalties by assigning value to the impacts with no other incentives switchgrass market prices of at least 51 and 58 dton would be needed in order to make a profitable switch from corn conservation reserve program crp lands and cotton respectively at a mid range offering of 50 dton feasible carbon credit prices of 3 8 23 per metric tonne co 2 e would incentivize conversion from corn crp or cotton respectively similarly a water quality penalty of 0 20 3 2 per kilogram no 3 n leached would incentivize the same conversions with resultant watershed improvement at a lower price of 30 dton switchgrass incentives based on valuation of ecosystem services begin to exceed feasible ranges of these valuations

the case for methodological pluralism abstract ecology and economics share the same greek root both address complex systems ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems energetics population biology food web models hierarchy theory to mention just a few within ecology field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected economics on the other hand is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of proof the market model and econometrics within economics field knowledge and observations per se are little valued agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science the argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies the agreement on method within economics however seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided

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

why northern income growth is not the solution to southern poverty abstract decreasing southern poverty is arguably today s main goal of economic development the two main views on how this can be achieved are not compatible the traditional view held by most economists and development agencies is not working well the traditional view is that rich northern high consumption societies should consume yet more in order to help the south by providing larger markets this paper outlines the alternative view that the north should stabilize its resource consumption and reduce its damage to global life support systems any higher consumption must come from productivity improvements rather than from increased throughput growth if natural resources were infinite then growth would be unreservedly good since resources are finite more northern growth inevitably means less room for southern growth for example the north has consumed much global sink capacity by its co 2 and cfc emissions productivity improvements must replace throughput growth as the path of progress for the north and eventually for the south as well

do central bank liquidity facilities affect interbank lending rates in response to the global financial crisis that started in august 2007 central banks provided extraordinary amounts of liquidity to the financial system to investigate the effect of central bank liquidity facilities on term interbank lending rates near the start of the crisis we estimate a six factor arbitrage free model of u s treasury yields financial corporate bond yields and term interbank rates this model can account for fluctuations in the term structure of credit and liquidity spreads observed in the data a significant shift in model estimates after the announcement of the liquidity facilities suggests that these central bank actions did help lower the liquidity premium in term interbank rates

winter is possibly not coming mitigating financial instability in an agent based model with interbank market abstract we develop a macroeconomic agent based model to study how financial instability can emerge from the co evolution of interbank and credit markets and the policy responses to mitigate its impact on the real economy the model is populated by heterogenous firms consumers and banks that locally interact in different markets in particular banks provide credit to firms according to a basel ii or iii macro prudential frameworks and manage their liquidity in the interbank market the central bank performs monetary policy according to different types of taylor rules we find that the model endogenously generates market freezes in the interbank market which interact with the financial accelerator possibly leading to firm bankruptcies banking crises and the emergence of deep downturns this requires the timely intervention of the central bank as a liquidity lender of last resort moreover we find that the joint adoption of a three mandate taylor rule tackling credit growth and the basel iii macro prudential framework is the best policy mix to stabilize financial and real economic dynamics however as the liquidity coverage ratio spurs financial instability by increasing the pro cyclicality of banks liquid reserves a new counter cyclical liquidity buffer should be added to basel iii to improve its performance further finally we find that the central bank can also dampen financial instability by employing a new unconventional monetary policy tool involving active management of the interest rate corridor in the interbank market

the world distribution of income falling poverty and convergence period we estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 138 countries between 1970 and 2000 country distributions are constructed by combining national accounts gdp per capita to anchor the mean with survey data to pin down the dispersion poverty rates and head counts are reported for four specific poverty lines rates in 2000 were between one third and one half of what they were in 1970 for all four lines there were between 250 and 500 million fewer poor in 2000 than in 1970 we estimate eight indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income all of them show reductions in global inequality during the 1980s and 1990s

ecological economics in relation to democracy ideology and politics two recent studies and policy documents are discussed in the present article one is a un report prepared by experienced politicians as input into the 2012 rio de janeiro conference the other a st

access policy and money market segmentation abstract deviations between interest rates paid in the swiss franc unsecured money market and the respective libor rate are analysed for a period spanning the financial crisis first banks that have access to sources of secured central bank and interbank funding pay less than other banks second foreign banks not chartered in switzerland pay more than domestic banks third both lines of segmentation are economically relevant but limited due to open access to sources of secured funding thus access policy matters for monetary policy implementation and financial stability

taxation corporate financial policy and the cost of capital the cost of capital plays an important role in the allocation of resources among competing uses in a decentralized market system the purpose of this paper is to organize and present what is known and what is hypothesized about the effects of taxation on the incentive to invest via the cost of capital taking full account of important issues that arise independently from the question of taxation included in the analysis is a discussion of empirical findings about the interaction of inflation and taxation in influencing the incentive to invest and a treatment of taxation and uncertainty this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

credit and liquidity in interbank rates a quadratic approach a bank that lends on the unsecured market requires compensations for facing the default risk of the borrowing bank credit risk and the risk associated to its own future funding needs liquidity risk in this paper we propose a quadratic term structure model of the spreads between unsecured and risk free interbank rates our no arbitrage econometric framework allows us to decompose the term structure of spreads into credit and liquidity components and to identify risk premia associated with each of these two risks our results suggest that over the period 2012 2013 most of the reduction in interbank spreads comes from a decrease in liquidity related risk components

influencing the perception of what and who is important in ecological economics abstract in a recent article using citation analysis hoepner et al 2012 make strong claims to have identified the most influential works authors journals and institutions in a hypothetical field they call environmental and ecological economics this paper shows that their work is biased by its framing far from the non subjective approach they claim and highly sensitive to minor data errors more than this the exercise can be seen as another example of how ecological economics is susceptible to suppression by a dominant mainstream economic perspective which attempts to override belittle and dismiss a whole range of alternative thought including that which is heterodox interdisciplinary from the natural sciences and based in the non economic social sciences ecological economics is not the same as agricultural resource or environmental economics and if it were it would be pointless neither can it be understood or treated as a subfield of resource and environmental economics as done by hoepner et al 2012 i argue that the study promotes a limited perspective on social environmental and economic problems that includes an implicit political and ideological framing what is most influential important or high quality in ecological economics is certainly not defined by such work

dynamic multidimensional assessment of sustainability at the macro level the case of austria abstract this paper explores the issue of sustainability at the macro scale employing multi criteria decision aid mcda methods the incommensurability of values and the essentially multi dimensional and dynamic nature of sustainability challenge the use of composite measurement indices this determined the choice of mcda methods austria was chosen as a case study due to the wide availability of data especially on indicators of strong sustainability the structure of the multi criteria problem comprised the evolution of different sustainability dimensions over time the process for selecting criteria included a critical assessment of institutional sustainability agendas un eu and austrian government and theoretical recommendations after an assessment of mcda methods the naiade method demonstrated the most suitable properties for sustainability assessment the application of this outranking approach was undertaken in three separate settings long term from 1960 to 2003 medium term 1970 1995 and short term 1995 2003 with varying numbers of criteria the response of results to the addition of evaluating criteria and periods was tested the degree of credibility for accepting preference relations was also employed for sensitivity analysis according to the results of long term and medium term assessments especially in the weak sustainability setting sustainable progress is taking place in austria in the short term in the stronger sustainability setting and especially as the number of criteria increases more incomparable periods appear and trends are less determined moreover it is shown how results crucially depend on the methodological choices this is one of the first applications of the multi criteria tools to the dynamic analysis of sustainability at the macro scale