resolving new keynesian anomalies with wealth in the utility function at the zero lower bound the new keynesian model predicts that output and inflation collapse to implausibly low levels and that government spending and forward guidance have implausibly large effects to resolve these anomalies we introduce wealth into the utility function the justification is that wealth is a marker of social status and people value status since people partly save to accrue social status the euler equation is modified as a result when the marginal utility of wealth is sufficiently large the dynamical system representing the zero lower bound equilibrium transforms from a saddle to a source which resolves all the anomalies

ecological economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty strong sustainability according to the common definition requires that different natural and economic capital stocks be maintained as physical quantities separately yet in a world of uncertainty this cannot be guaranteed to therefore define strong sustainability under uncertainty in an operational manner we propose to use the concept of viability viability means that the different components and functions of a dynamic stochastic system at any time remain in a domain where the future existence of these components and functions is guaranteed with sufficiently high probability we develop a unifying and general ecological economic concept of viability that encompasses the traditional ecological and economic notions of viability as special cases it provides an operational criterion of strong sustainability under a mild form of uncertainty and for medium spatial and temporal scales we illustrate this concept and demonstrate its usefulness by applying it to livestock grazing management in semi arid rangelands publication ecological economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty available from https www researchgate net publication 46490456 ecological economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty accessed apr 3 2017

status in markets this project tests for the effect of social status in a laboratory experimental market we consider a special box design market in which a vertical overlap in supply and demand ensure that there are multiple equilibrium prices we manipulate the relative social status of our subjects by awarding high status to a subset of the group based on one of two procedures in the first a subject s score on a trivia quiz determines his or her status in another subjects are assigned randomly to a higher status or lower status group in both treatments we find that average prices are higher in markets where higher status sellers face lowerstatus buyers and lower when buyers have higher status than sellers across all sessions the higher status side of the market captures a greater share of the surplus earning significantly more than their lower status counterparts

increasing the capital income tax may lead to faster growth this paper shows that under rather mild conditions higher capital income taxes lead to faster growth in an overlapping generations economy with endogenous growth government expenditures are financed with labor income taxes as well as capital income taxes since capital income accrues to the old taxing it reliefs the tax burden on the young and leaves them with more income out of which to save we argue that savings are sufficiently interest inelastic so that higher savings and therefore higher growth result the basic argument is not seriously challenged by a grandfather clause for initial capital or by the old receiving some labor income as well the reasoning is similar to feldstein 1978 auerbach 1979 and in particular jones and manuelli 1992 but in contrast to the conventional wisdom about the effect of capital income taxation as say in lucas 1990

occupation induced status social norms and economic growth abstract we analyse a monetary growth model where entrepreneurs borrow funds to invest in projects that produce capital goods in addition to their varying pecuniary returns different projects also vary with respect to the status they confer to the entrepreneurs who operate them we show that i social status increases the growth rate but this effect is mitigated by a social norm that inversely links overall levels of employment in the high return project with the status conferred to it ii the combined effect of social status and inflation is a source of transitional dynamics in an environment where such dynamics would not emerge if considerations of occupational prestige were absent iii when the social norm affects social status the economy s dynamics may be manifested in the form of endogenous volatility iv the presence and characteristics of social status can generate a negative correlation between volatility and growth

a model of educational investment social concerns and inequality we consider a model in which educational investments entail productivity gains signaling power and social status the latter depends on the agent s relative achievement in one of three dimensions innate skills level of schooling and income we study the three scenarios separately and characterize the conditions under which social concerns increase or decrease educational and income inequality inequality increases decreases if education lowers the stigma suffered by low skilled workers less more than it boosts the prestige enjoyed by high skilled workers we discuss the expected results of some policies in light of these findings

advances in supervision technology and economic welfare a general equilibrium analysis abstract we analyze the impact of improvements in the technology by which employers monitor their workers it is unclear a priori whether workers should benefit or not from such advances on the one hand they decrease the total costs of hiring workers and stimulate labor demand on the other hand as supervision becomes less costly employers tend to substitute monitoring for wages as a means of motivating workers we show how the impact on firms and workers of such technological progress depends on the nature of the labor market equilibrium i e whether there is full employment or not and the cost technology of monitoring a distinct possibility is that unemployed workers welcome the changes in supervision because they promote employment while employed workers resist such changes and the more intensive supervision they encourage

keeping up with the ageing joneses in this paper we consider the implications of relative consumption externalities in the blanchard yaari overlapping generations framework unlike most of the macroeconomic literature that studies this question the differences between agents and thus in their relative position persist in equilibrium we show in our fixed employment model that consumption externalities lower consumption and the capital stock in long run equilibrium a result in sharp contrast to the recent findings of liu and turnovsky 2005 in addition we solve for the intertemporal path of the economy to investigate its response to demographic shocks specifically to permanent changes in the birth and death rates

social norms and moral hazard the probability of income loss depends on talent and effort effort has positive externalities and therefore individuals are awarded status in proportion to their perceived diligence the social no

optimal dynamic taxation with distinctive forms of social status attainment we examine the role of both consumption and wealth induced social comparisons in setting dynamic optimal income taxation under complete information state invariant labor income taxes are used to remedy the externality caused by consumption induced social comparisons while state contingent capital income taxes are used to remedy the externalities caused by both consumption and wealth induced ones under incomplete information distinct types of agents are subject to an identical marginal capital income tax which removes social comparisons to solve the information problem low productivity agents could be subject to a lower marginal labor tax than high productivity agents which contradicts the traditional result in the mirrlees stiglitz models this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

macroeconomic implications of conspicuous consumption a sombartian dynamic model this chapter presents a dynamic general equilibrium model in which consumers have status preference i investigate the manner in which capital accumulation is impeded by conspicuous consumption a la corneo and jeanne j public econ 66 55 71 1997a following the literature social norms are given as either bandwagon type or snob type i then show that when the economy is characterized by a bandwagon type social norm capital accumulation exhibits interesting patterns those patterns include for example an oscillating convergence path the rise of the economy feeds its decay through conspicuous consumption and that decay suppresses conspicuous consumption and engenders prosperity as predicted by sombart liebe luxus und kapitalismus reprinted 1967 deutscher taschenbuch verlag munchen 1912

gender differentiation in risk taking behavior on the relative risk aversion of single men and single women we relate an observed difference between single men sm and single women sw in attitudes towards risk to the higher value assigned to social status by sm than by sw in the marriage market low status carries a harsher penalty for sm than for sw because when selecting a partner the social status of a man is more important to a woman than the social status of a woman is to a man correlating social status with relative wealth we show how intensified distaste at experiencing low relative wealth reduces relative risk aversion

viable ramsey economies the ramsey model of economic growth is revisited from the perspective of viability theory the ramsey model augmented with minimal consumption and sustainability criteria becomes a viability problem the framework allows for a clear picture of optimal viable optimal non viable and viable non optimal paths the drastic sacrifices in terms of present consumption required by the implementation of brundtland sustainability are visualized the rich countries bearing the major part of the burden the econometric analysis of viability sets enhances the role of technological progress in ensuring brundtland sustainability preference parameters such as the pure time preference rate are statistically non significant

social status in economic theory social distinction or status is an important motivation of human behaviour this paper provides a selective survey of recent advances in the economic analysis of the origins and consequences of social status concerns first a selection of empirical research from a variety of scientific disciplines is discussed to underpin the further theoretical analysis i then consider the origins and determinants of tastes for status discuss the endogenous derivation of such preferences for relative standing and assess the different formalizations of these preferences subsequently the consequences of preferences for status are studied for a variety of problems and settings the last section discusses a number of implications of status concerns for normative economics and public policy

why countries with the same technology and preferences can have different growth rates abstract a standard ak model of endogenous growth has been extended to allow for an intertemporal conflict between capitalists and workers for the dynamic game thus obtained an equilibrium solution in feedback nash markovian strategies have been computed however many equilibria in trigger strategies can dominate the former there are dominating strategies that depend on the country specific bargaining power of the workers versus capitalists they are both pareto optimal and subgame perfect this provides an explanation why countries which are completely identical in preferences technology and factor endowments can experience different long term growth rates

jealousy and underconsumption in a one sector model with wealth preference abstract the present paper examines the effects of consumption externalities on economic performance in a one sector model with wealth preference the presence of the wealth preference generates a wealth effect in consumption growth which plays a crucial role for consumption externalities to have impacts on the economy our main findings are i regardless of the assumption of inelastic labor supply the distortionary effect of consumption externalities stays in the long run ii the income tax as well as the consumption tax can modify the efficiency and iii the numerical simulations supplement theoretical findings

how income transfer programs affect work savings and the income distribution a critical review for helpful comments on earlier drafts we thank without implicating moses abramovitz yves balcer john bishop alan blinder richard burkhauser michael darby irwin garfinkel alan gustman daniel hamermesh martin holmer george jakubson robert lampman paul menchik robert moffitt michael murray joseph quinn timothy smeeding eugene smolensky barbara wolfe and two anonymous referees

ethics and the economist what climate change demands of us abstract climate change is changing not only our physical world but also our intellectual social and moral worlds we are realizing that our situation is profoundly unsafe interdependent and uncertain what then does climate change demand of economists as human beings and as professionals a discipline of economics based on enlightenment notions of mechanism and disembodied rationality is not suited to present problems this essay suggests three major requirements first that we take action second that we work together and third that we focus on avoiding the worst rather than obtaining the optimal the essay concludes with suggestions of specific steps that economists should take as researchers teachers and in our other roles

an environmental economic measure of sustainable development abstract a central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy this paper investigates the relationship among current consumption sacrifice and sustainability improvement in a general context and in two canonical stylized economies we argue that the maximin value of utility measures what is sustainable and provides the limit to growth maximin value is interpreted as a dynamic environmental economic carrying capacity and current utility as an environmental economic footprint the time derivative of maximin value is interpreted as net investment in sustainability improvement it is called durable savings to distinguish it from genuine savings usually computed with discounted utilitarian prices

how much does absenteeism cost this paper presents evidence on the output loss resulting from absenteeism hedonic wage equations are estimated over two different data sets the 1972 1973 quality of employment survey and the pooled may 1973 1975 current population survey to calculate the cost in terms of reduced output and increased labor costs per payroll hour also a manufacturing production function is estimated to directly compute the productivity loss the results indicate that the effect of absenteeism on output is quite small a 10 percentage point increase in the absence rate is associated with at most a 2 1 percent decrease in the wage

social status education and growth this paper investigates the implications of social rewards on the allocation of talent in society and consequently on the process of economic growth we consider two sources of heterogeneity among workers nonwage income and innate ability a greater emphasis on status may induce the wrong individuals that is those with low ability and high wealth to acquire schooling causing workers with high ability and low wealth to leave the growth enhancing industries this crowding out effect taken alone discourages growth growth may be enhanced by a more egalitarian distribution of wealth which reduces the demand for status

talent growth and income distribution a model with heterogeneous individuals and bequests between generations is constructed to analyze income distribution and educational choice the introduction of an imperfection in the credit market is shown to influence the allocation of talent both ability and bequest are of relevance in deciding whether or not to invest in education with learning by doing between generations the allocation of talent affects not only the level of production but also the growth rate copyright 1993 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

international status seeking trade and growth leadership we study a two country endogenous growth model where the utility of agents in developing countries is affected by consumption gaps with advanced economies international status seeking tends to revert growth differentials in favour of the developing country preferences with endogenous status desire generate convergence in growth rates in the presence of structural gaps and convergence in income levels if productivity differences disappear this process is driven by declining terms of trade and faster capital accumulation of the status seeker the model predictions are shown to be consistent with the stylized facts that characterized the growth performance of east asian economies

the rate of time preference and dynamic economic analysis strong restrictions on the structure of preferences are a central feature in the received theory of intertemporal allocation in fact most of the modern literature concerned with capital theoretic problems represents preferences by a functional in which an additive utility function is discounted by a constant rate of time preference this specification is attractive because it is analytically tractable in dynamic models and it clearly delineates how tastes and opportunities interact to determine an economy s household s paths of consumption and capital formation however its rigid structure constancy of time preference severely limits the conclusions and explanatory power of the corresponding models this paper considers a class of utility functionals in continuous time which have the appealing feature that the rate of time preference depends systematically on an index of aggregate future consumption the more flexible structure embodied in these functionals leads to important generalizations and

risk versus economic performance in a mixed fishery balancing bio economic risks and high profit expectations is often a major concern in fisheries management we examine this trade off in the context of the australian northern prawn fishery npf the fishery derives its revenue from different prawn species with different dynamics and recruitment processes a multi species bio economic and stochastic model is used to examine the trade offs between mean profitability of the fishery and its variance under a range of economic scenarios fishing capacities and distributions of fishing effort across the various sub fisheries that comprise the npf simulation results show that the current fishing strategy diversifying catch across sub components of the fishery entails a compromise between expected performance and risk furthermore given the current economic conditions increases in fleet size would improve the expected economic performance of the fishery but at the cost of increased variability of this performance

social status culture and economic performance in analysing the differences in productive capacity among economies it is usual to concentrate on the physical aspects of the population the different attributes of capital including human capital and on the available production technologies societies also differ in culture in ways which are relevant for economic performance the sociological literature recognises that different occupations have different social status and that workers benefit not only from the wage they receive but also from being associated with a particular occupation cultural differences among societies may translate into different status of occupations and can therefore affect the choice of education and occupation and consequently the equilibrium level of output and wages conversely the economic choices of individuals influence the social status of occupations in particular it is well established by sociological research that the social status of an occupation is influenced by economic attributes such as the average wage and the average level of education in the occupation a major objective of our work is to illustrate that sociological and economic approaches can be combined within a unified framework this is in contrast to some social scientists who view the two approaches as competing with each other phelpsbrown i 977 ch 4 in this paper we construct a simple general equilibrium model in which both wages and status are determined endogenously we show that changes in the demand for status triggered by changes in preferences or in income distribution influence the wage structure the level of aggregate output and economic welfare the link between status and aggregate output is created by the fact that differences in occupational status imply occupational wage differences among workers of the same skill the larger is the demand for status the larger is the wage gap and the lower is aggregate output our discussion of status is closely related to the economic analysis of discrimination against ethnic or racial groups becker i 97 i arrow i 973

attitudes and allocations status cognitive dissonance and the manipulation of attitudes abstract economic studies of social status have typically focused on individuals engaging in relative comparisons based on certain characteristics e g consumption wealth without considering why these characteristics are deemed status worthy in this paper individuals choose a status earning characteristic in order to reduce mental discomfort dissonance as a result those individuals with the highest marginal utility from income are often the first to misconstrue or abandon these incentives in favor of alternate forms of seeking status the model provides an explanation for endogenous class formation and highlights the role of redistributive taxation in manipulating individuals attitudes towards status

new evolutionary foundations theoretical requirements for a science of sustainability abstract ecological economics stands in theoretical and ethical opposition to many aspects of neoclassical economic theory despite their sound critiques of that theory ecological economists have not settled on an alternative theory of human behavior as a potential alternative norgaard s socioecological coevolutionary framework remains underspecified in terms of variation heredity and selection i review concepts and insights on human behavior from evolutionary biology and evolutionary social science in order to supply new theoretical tools for ecological economic problems and help refine the coevolutionary framework i argue that a synthetic evolutionary theory of human behavior provides a sufficient alternative to the neoclassical perspective and that cultural evolutionary theory is a necessary prerequisite of a mature economic science ecological coevolutionary or otherwise finally i suggest some potential topics that such a mature theory might begin to tackle

optimal saving interest rates and endogenous growth the main point of this paper is that the apparent failure of economists thus far to establish a positive empirical link between interest rates and saving does not by itself discredit the hypothesis of a direct structural relationship between the two ceteris paribus because this structural relationship may be shifting about in response to changes in exogenous variables such as tastes and technology in a way that is consistent with any type of reduced form correlation between interest rates and saving in the data this point is demonstrated within a simple model of optimal saving interest rates and economic growth the different implications of endogenous versus exogenous growth are explored in this context

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

the ultrasocial origin of the anthropocene abstract the current geological epoch has been dubbed the anthropocene the age of humans we argue that the roots of the anthropocene lie in the agricultural revolution that began some 8000 years ago unique human psychological and cultural characteristics were present in our distant hunter gatherer past but in terms of the biophysical impact of our species agricultural represented an unequivocal and decisive evolutionary break with the transition to agriculture human society began to function as a superorganism functioning as a single unit designed by social natural selection to produce economic surplus where environmental conditions were permitted early human agricultural societies followed the same pattern as a few social insects and exhibited explosive population growth complex and detailed division of labor intensive resource exploitation territorial expansion and a social organization favoring the survival and growth of the supergroup over the well being of individuals within the group similar economic forces lie behind ultrasociality in social insects and humans increased productivity from the division of labor increasing returns to scale and the exploitation of stocks of productive resources exploring the evolutionary mechanisms behind ultrasociality offers insights into the growth imperative that threatens the stability of the earth s life support systems

keeping one step ahead of the joneses status the distribution of wealth and long run growth assuming that the utility of each agent depends on its relative wealth position in the society this chapter constructs an endogenous growth model it is shown that even if the subjective discount rates differ across agents there exists a unique balanced growth equilibrium in which each agent owns a positive share of the world wealth it is also shown that if the agents are identical then an increase in savings incentives always raises the long run growth rate but if they are heterogeneous then an increase in savings incentives may lower the long run growth rate

adaptive policy framework through the lens of the viability theory a theoretical contribution to sustainability in the anthropocene era the earth is an evolutionary system that can be viewed as a social ecological system built around money sesm because of the coupling of the anthropocene era with globalization given the simultaneous environmental economic risks of total uncertainty and systemic aftermath several paradigmatic turns are required ecological economics is a cutting edge field that tackles this issue an integrative framework involving co evolutionary modelling offers methods for addressing the regulation issue that arises from the significant uncertainty driven by global economic and ecological risks we tackle the issue of adaptive policy for sesm regulation by answering the call for paradigmatic turns which leads us to support tychastic vs stochastic uncertainty in time adaptation vs optimal belated solutions viability vs stationary equilibrium and interdisciplinarity and participatory processes in modelling and policy action we describe step by step how to conceive sesm modelling through the lens of the mathematical viability theory mvt and we argue that this lens when adjusted for anticipatory and adaptive governance aag is relevant to examining sustainability for complex adaptive sesms from a local or global perspective

capital income taxation and the current account in a small open economy abstract this paper analyzes the effects of capital income taxation on the current account noting the difference between two international tax rules the residence principle and the source principle an increase in the residence tax rate reduces foreign asset holdings in the long run and creates a current account deficit on the other hand an increase in the source tax rate increases long run foreign asset holdings because the king fullerton 1984 effective tax rate responds positively to the increase in both taxes it does not predict the effects of taxation on the direction of international capital investments

conspicuous conservation the prius halo and willingness to pay for environmental bona fides abstract this paper develops a theory of conspicuous conservation a phenomenon related to conspicuous consumption in which individuals seek status through displays of austerity amid growing concern about environmental protection we identify a statistically and economically significant conspicuous conservation effect in vehicle purchase decisions and estimate a mean willingness to pay for the green signal provided by the distinctively designed toyota prius in the range of 430 4200 depending upon the owner s location results are related to the growing literature on green markets and suggest that policy should target less conspicuous conservation investments that will be under provided relative to those that confer a status benefit

signalling inequality and the social structure this paper proposes a theory of endogenous transmission of social status through signalling in the labour market a signalling game is analysed in which education acting as a signalling good determines one s position in society the economy s degree of inequality is shown to be a determinant of whether a society is aristocratic where high income is the source of social standing or meritocratic bestowing status on high ability each social structure shows a different balance between production efficiency and social factors such as equality or mobility

conspicuous consumption snobbism and conformism abstract we develop a model in which consumers purchase a conspicuous good in order to signal high income and thereby achieve greater social status in equilibrium the signalling value of conspicuous consumption depends in an identifiable way on the number of consumers and consumer behaviour is characterized by either snobbism or conformism the market demand curve for the conspicuous good may exhibit a positive slope if consumers are conformist we derive some unconventional policy implications concerning the taxation of luxuries and the voluntary provision of public goods

heterogeneity stratification and growth macroeconomic implications of community structure and school finance this paper examines how socioeconomic stratification and alternative systems of education finance affect inequality and growth agents interact through local public goods or externalities school funding neighborhood effects and economywide linkages complementary skills knowledge spillovers sorting families into homogeneous communities often minimizes the costs of existing heterogeneity but mixing reduces heterogeneity faster integration therefore tends to slow down growth in the short run yet raise it in the long run a move to state funding of education presents society with a similar intertemporal trade off local and global complementarities play major roles in determining the efficient social and educational structures copyright 1996 by american economic association

the spirit of capitalism and stock market prices in existing theory wealth is no more valuable than its implied consumption rewards in reality investors acquire wealth not just for its implied consumption but for the resulting social status max m weber 1958 refers to this desire for wealth as the spirit of capitalism the authors examine both analytically and empirically implications of weber s hypothesis for consumption savings and stock prices when investors care about relative social status propensity to consume and risk taking behavior will depend on social standards and stock prices will be volatile the spirit of capitalism seems to be a driving force behind stock market volatility and economic growth copyright 1996 by american economic association

status the distribution of wealth private and social attitudes to risk this paper supposes an individual cares about his her own wealth not only directly but also via the relative standing that this wealth induces the implications for risk taking are investigated in particular such a model provides a natural explanation of the concave convex concave utility described by friedman and savage however there are a number of key differences between the present model and any model based on own wealth alone for example an equilibrium wealth distribution here may have a middle class further the status interaction involves an externality and an equilibrium wealth distribution may be pareto inefficient but also about the implied relative standing in the distribution of wealth has a long but checkered history an early exponent of such ideas was of course veblen 1899 it is indeed a notion which most economists reject albeit usually without explicit comment a notable and articulate exception however is frank 1985 for example see also the references frank cites on pp 33 34 it is however a notion with substantial intuitive appeal and it seems useful to ascertain its consequences before coming to a final judgement as to its merits the present paper is concerned with deriving the consequences of such valuation of status for risk taking what seems to be the sharpest possible model is adopted here this assumes that what is essentially ordinal rank in the wealth distribution enters von neumann morgenstern utility as an argument in addi tion to wealth itself thus higher wealth increases utility not only directly but also indirectly via higher status in the interests of both simplicity and drama it is typically assumed here that all individuals have identical utility functions which are concave in wealth but convex in status section 2 discusses how the model provides a natural explanation of the fundamental phenomenon addressed by friedman and savage 1948 that individuals may simultaneously purchase insurance and participate in lotteries although each individual here has a utility function which is concave in wealth itself utility can nevertheless be convex in wealth over some range when the indirect effect via status is included this effect is enhanced by the convexity of utility in status but will follow in any case if increasing wealth entails moving up in status much more rapidly than losing wealth entails moving down it is shown

endogenous fiscal policies environmental quality and status seeking behavior abstract this paper analyzes endogenous fiscal policy in an endogenous growth model where agents care about social status and environmental quality the quest for a higher status is assimilated to a preference for capital wealth the government uses income tax to finance infrastructure and environmental protection we find that accounting for preferences for social status and environmental quality may lead to an allocation of tax revenue in favor of a cleanup effort to the detriment of infrastructure economic growth is not necessarily and negatively affected by this allocation as it is partly explained by an excessive accumulation of capital wealth due to the quest of status status seeking can however harm economic growth and environmental quality when its motive is important enough finally we show that economic growth may be consistent with environmental preservation but is not necessarily welfare improving as in the case of absence of status seeking behavior

luxury and wealth i develop a dynamic theory of luxury consumption particularly emphasizing the causal effect that pursuit of luxury goods has on wealth accumulation a quasi luxury is defined as a good whose marginal rate of substitution is increasing in a utility index under certain conditions it is indeed a luxury good when current wealth holding falls short of exceeds long run needs luxury consumption is postponed more less easily than necessity consumption due to a lower higher time preference for luxury and or a higher intertemporal elasticity of substitution thereof preferences for quasi luxuries lead to a higher steady state value of wealth or capital

good and bad institutions is the debate over cross country firm level evidence from the textile industry using firm level data from nine developing countries we demonstrate that certain institutions like restrictive labour market regulations that are considered bad for economic growth might be beneficial for production efficiency whereas good business environment which is considered beneficial for economic growth might have an adverse impact on production efficiency we argue that our results suggest that there might be significant difference in the macro and micro impacts of institutional quality such that the classification of institutions into good and bad might be premature

relative consumption relative wealth and growth abstract in a growth model where individuals care about their social status measured both by consumption and wealth comparisons we show that status comparison in wealth heightens economic growth while status comparison in consumption may affect negatively economic growth

a stochastic viability approach to ecosystem based fisheries management academia and management agencies show a growing interest for ecosystem based fishery management ebfm however the way to operationalize this approach remains challenging the present paper illustrates how the concepts of stochastic co viability which accounts for dynamic complexities uncertainties risk and sustainability constraints can be useful for the implementation of ebfm in the present case this concept is used to identify fishing strategies that satisfy both ecological conservation and economic sustainability in a multi species multi fleet context economic viability analysis eva and the broader co viability analysis cva are proposed to expand the usual population viability analysis pva and precautionary approach an illustration is proposed using data on the fisheries of bay of biscay france exploiting the stocks of nephrops and hake stochastic simulations show how cva can guarantee both ecological stock and economic profit sustainability using 2008 as a baseline the model is used to identify fishing efforts that ensure such co viability c 2012 elsevier b v all rights reserved

individual well being in a dynamic perspective this paper explores the determinants of individual well being as measured by self reported levels of satisfaction with income making full use of the panel data nature of the german socio economic panel we provide empirical evidence for well being depending on absolute and on relative levels of income in a dynamic framework this finding holds after controlling for other influential factors in a multivariate setting the main novelty of the paper is the consideration of dynamic aspects individual s own history as well as the relative income performance with respect to the others living in the society under analysis do play a major role in the assessment of well being