evaluating decision strategies for equity of public risks many important decisions include the loss of life among their possible consequences alternative actions have different implications for the number of possible fatalities the equity of those eventual fatalities and the equity of the process resulting in those fatalities this paper defines a concept of ex ante risk equity to address the equity of the process and distinguishes this concept from the ex post risk equity of the fatalities the paper indicates that an analysis of decision strategies addresses ex ante equity in this context both types of equity as well as loss of life are included in a von neumann morgenstern utility model developed to evaluate public risks this approach provides a method to investigate the implications of different value judgments in examining alternatives and illustrates an appropriate use of von neumann morgenstern utility for problems involving social consequences such as public risks

on the industrial ecology potential in asian developing countries abstract this paper focuses on the current situation in the adaptation and adoption of industrial ecology in asian developing countries adcs the objective of this paper is to consider the possibilities to develop an eco industrial development eid strategy for these developing countries we review the regional indigenous resources of adcs and use the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats swot grouping to classify the preconditions of industrial ecology in adcs the authors of this paper argue that unlike the usual way of applying industrial ecology as a technical tool or a practical instrument adcs need to adopt industrial ecology as a strategic vision and as a strategic approach to plan the economic social and ecological development of their national economies in this way it can be possible for the adcs to avoid the same problems that occurred when the developed countries experienced industrialization and rapid economic growth and move toward more sustainable development

the causal effect of income on health evidence from german reunification we investigate whether there was a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of east and west germans in the years following reunification our data source is the german socio economic panel gsoep between 1984 and 2002 and we fit a recently proposed fixed effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition we find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction but the quantitative size of this effect is small this is the case with respect to current income and a measure of permanent income

the carnegie conjecture some empirical evidence this paper examines tax return generated data on the labor force behavior of people before and after they receive inheritances the results are consistent with andrew carnegie s century old assertion that large inheritances decrease a person s labor force participation for example a single person who receives an inheritance of about 150 000 is roughly four times more likely to leave the labor force than a person with an inheritance below 25 000 additional albeit weaker evidence suggests that large inheritances depress labor supply even when participation is unaltered warren kendall heir to an insurance company fortune says he s worth about 5 million and has an income of about oh 300 and some thousand a year h e has never held a job or wanted to going down to sea in cruise ships is his full time pursuit he estimates that he has taken about 250 cruises over the past couple of decades spending at least 50 percent to 70 percent of the year afloat morgenthaler 1991 p al

perspectives on finland s sustainable consumption and production policy abstract the finnish approach that is starting from the basic human needs of food housing mobility and related lifestyles enables us to address the social dimension of sustainable development alongside the ecological and economic dimensions in this context environmental problems cannot be resolved in isolation from people s everyday lives as can happen if environmental policies are based purely on emissions but it is also worth questioning the potential for national scp programmes in today s global markets over the last ten years domestic material flows within the finnish economy have remained fairly constant with gains in material efficiency cancelled out by increasing levels of material consumption however external material flows and the consequent environmental impacts have steadily increased and the magnitude and environmental impacts of both imports and exports are approximately the same as for domestic flows this means that the role of external material flows can no longer be ignored in national scp policies it is also important to integrate scp with climate policies finland s national climate and energy strategy is mainly based on the need to reduce co 2 emissions from energy production and industrial installations but there is also a need for complementary actions to reduce the carbon footprints caused by private and public consumption

a lifecycle perspective of stock market performance and wellbeing we estimate the effect of stock market fluctuations on subjective wellbeing and mental health using australian survey data over the period 2001 2012 which includes the global financial crisis a particular innovation of the paper is the use of three satisfaction measures overall financial employment and the use of a stylised lifecycle investment model these features coupled with a robust identification strategy based on comparing survey respondents interviewed in the same quarter and location allow us to better understand individual reactions to stock market changes we find that stock market increases lead to a significant but modest improvements in life satisfaction and mental health this effect is driven by young and middle aged males and is stronger for those with direct exposure to the stock market for young cohorts the stock market index acts as a leading indicator of employment prospects whilst for older cohorts it acts directly on financial satisfaction

promoting industrial symbiosis empirical observations of low carbon innovations in the humber region uk industrial symbiosis has been identified as a strategy to increase resource efficiency lower carbon emissions and increase business growth one type of industrial symbiosis is the innovative use of wastes from one company as a resource for another company however empirical understanding of implementing waste to resource innovations and hence how they can be promoted by public and private organisations is still limited therefore this study explored how companies implemented waste to resource innovations in the humber region uk five case studies were conducted with companies that used or supplied a secondary biomass resource for power generation or fuel manufacturing this article discusses how companies developed relations with biowaste resource suppliers or clients the results expanded operational understanding of waste to resource innovation processes as it revealed companies activities and their strategic considerations comparing the case studies the social processes through which relations between biowaste resource partners developed were largely similar however two different networking strategies were identified some companies had to engage new industries and therefore diversified their resource partners during the innovation process but strived to limit the number of resource partners once the innovation was realised conversely others expanded activities within their network and hence strengthened existing relations during the innovation but strived to increase the number of resource partners afterwards to manage risky over dependencies within their supply network finally resource security economic benefits and policy and regulation were of key importance to conclude operational and strategic insights to promote the uptake of waste to resource innovations are presented however further research is necessary before broad generalizations can be considered

the short term mortality consequences of income receipt many studies find that households increase their co nsumption after the receipt of expected income payments a result inconsistent wit h the life cycle permanent income hypothesis consumption can increase adverse healt h events such as traffic accidents heart attacks and strokes in this pape r we examine the short term mortality consequences of income receipt we find that mortality increases following the arrival of monthly social security payments re gular wage payments for military personnel the 2001 tax rebates and alaska permane nt fund dividend payments the increase in short run mortality is large potential ly eliminating some of the protective benefits of additional income

wealth and health behavior testing the concept of a health cost wealthier individuals engage in healthier behavior this paper seeks to explain this phenomenon by exploiting both inheritances and lottery winnings to test a theory of health behavior we distinguish between the direct monetary cost and the indirect health cost value of health lost of unhealthy consumption the health cost increases with wealth and the degree of unhealthiness leading wealthier individuals to consume more healthy and moderately unhealthy but fewer severely unhealthy goods the empirical evidence presented suggests that differences in health costs may indeed partially explain behavioral differences and ultimately health outcomes between wealth groups

the role of policy instruments in the innovation and diffusion of environmentally friendlier technologies popular claims versus case study experiences abstract moving towards sustainability will require that new environmentally friendlier technologies are developed and widely adopted policy instruments that promote eco efficiency are therefore necessary some claims frequently made in the literature on the relationship between policy instruments and technological development are examined the claims concern regulations environmental taxation and funding of research and development the claims are explored on the basis of empirical evidence from two sectors the pulp and paper industry and the marine engine industry little support was found for some of the claims in some cases even contradictory findings and for some claims the findings differed between the sectors and even within a sector depending on the issue

income and the utilization of long term care services evidence from the social security benefit notch this paper estimates the impact of income on the long term care utilization of elderly americans using a natural experiment that led otherwise similar retirees to receive significantly different social security payments based on their year of birth using data from the 1993 and 1995 waves of the ahead we estimate instrumental variables models and find that a positive permanent income shock lowers nursing home use but increases the utilization of paid home care services we find some suggestive evidence that the effects are due to substitution of home care for nursing home utilization the magnitude of these estimates suggests that moderate reductions in post retirement income would significantly alter long term utilization patterns among elderly individuals

exploring the health wealth nexus the causal links between health and economic resources have long concerned social scientists we use four waves of data from the panel study of income dynamics psid to analyze the impact of wealth upon an individual s health status the difficulty in approaching this task that has bedeviled previous studies is that wealth may be endogenous a priori it is just as likely that changes in health affect wealth as vice versa we argue that inheritance is a suitable instrument for the change in wealth and implement a straightforward instrumental variables strategy to deal with this problem our results suggest that the causal relationship running from wealth to health may not be as strong as first appears in the data wealth exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on health status but it is very small in magnitude instrumental variables estimation leaves the point estimate approximately the same but renders it insignificantly different from zero and even when the point estimate is increased by twice its standard error s e the quantitative effect is small we conclude that the wealth health connection is not driven by short run changes in wealth

the european commission s sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan abstract the promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns is enshrined as a key objective in the renewed european union sustainable development strategy eu sds sustainable consumption and production is arguably the most challenging aspect of the eu sds it requires changes to the way products and services are designed produced used and disposed of taking into account producer and consumer behaviours this paper reviews the european commission s communication on the sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan introduced on july 16 2008 the paper examines the priority areas identified for action the means adopted to improve energy and environmental performance of products as well as uptake by consumers the paper concludes that the absence of mandatory quantifiable targets and deadlines and a reliance on both cross sectoral and multi level relationships are likely to weaken the ability of the action plan s fundamental objective of decoupling economic growth from resource use

equity axioms for public risks from the perspective of a two person society we explain and analyze six axioms for equity among individuals who are exposed to the possibility of death from a public hazard the axioms are concerned with how a given total risk expected fatalities is distributed over the four possible life death consequences for the two people maximal subsets of mutually compatible equity axioms are identified first for a monotonic ordinal utility function and then for a more restrictive von neumann morgenstern utility function

health and wealth of elderly couples causality tests using dynamic panel data models a positive relationship between socio economic status ses and health the health wealth gradient is repeatedly found in many industrialized countries this study analyzes competing explanations for this gradient causal effects from health to wealth health causation and causal effects from wealth to health wealth or social causation using six biennial waves of couples aged 51 61 in 1992 from the us health and retirement study we test for causality in panel data models incorporating unobserved heterogeneity and a lag structure supported by specification tests in contrast to tests relying on models with only first order lags or without unobserved heterogeneity these tests provide no evidence of causal wealth health effects on the other hand we find strong evidence of causal effects from both spouses health on household wealth we also find an effect of the husband s health on the wife s mental health but no other effects from one spouse s health to health of the other spouse

key drivers for unsustainable resource use categories effects and policy pointers abstract prevailing resource use patterns of the global socio industrial metabolism are unsustainable an increasing number of people globally require ever more materials including energy carriers land and water for rising living standards and lifestyles converging towards western industrialised patterns therefore these resources will continue becoming both scarcer and depleted while environmental impacts associated with their consumption e g run away climate change will continue to rise for effective resource policies drivers for such unsustainable resource use and their effects need to be better understood and mapped by means of meta analysis of more than 60 sources of relevant literature we identified a set of ten driver categories that affect unsustainable resource use inter alia prevailing consumption and production patterns use and design of infrastructure and technology underlying paradigms and world views resource prices and the level of knowledge and information of resource users cumulative effects of the drivers contribute for instance up to 30 of phosphorus loss from soil and around 30 of building energy loss globally although the data does not allow clear cut causal attribution of effects it enables the distinction between direct and indirect drivers in relation to a multi dimensional network of drivers causing unsustainable resource use resource policy should combine policy objectives and instruments into policy mixes to target key drivers and their interrelations while policy mixes need to respond to context specific driver settings targeting consumer behaviour emerges as a general driver focus of policy mixes combining different instrument types and implementing them in a time dynamic sequence can mitigate trade offs between different instruments and in the longer term increase feasibility of profound behaviour changes

the increasingly mixed proportional hazard model an application to socioeconomic status health shocks and mortality we introduce a duration model that allows for unobserved cumulative individual specific shocks which are likely to be important in explaining variations in duration outcomes such as length of life and time spent unemployed the model is also a useful tool in situations where researchers observe a great deal of information about individuals when first interviewed in surveys but little thereafter we call this model the increasingly mixed proportional hazard imph model we compare and contrast this model with the mixed proportional hazard mph model which continues to be the workhorse of applied single spell duration analysis in economics and the other social sciences we apply the imph model to study the relationships among socioeconomic status health shocks and mortality using 19 waves of data drawn from the german socio economic panel soep the imph model is found to fit the data statistically better than the mph model and unobserved health shocks and socioeconomic status are shown to play

the effects of health events on the economic status of married couples this paper uses measures of exogenous health shocks to identify the different channels through which changes in health conditions affect income wealth and consumption behavior the results indicate that serious health conditions have strong effects on household wealth but that the effects for women are larger and more significant than the effects for men the source of the asymmetry arises from the fact that general living expenses increase when wives become seriously ill while for husbands health shocks do not affect these expenditures

do favorable land price policy affect renewable energy industry evidence from photovoltaics abstract renewable energy is necessary for sustainable social and economic development this is particularly so with global energy shortages the continuous deterioration of ecosystems and the environment as well as the world population explosion this article qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes the effects and problems of chinese favorable land price policy on photovoltaics in examining the favorable land price policy in china this study develops a multiple linear regression model to study the effects of favorable land price policy on photovoltaic power and photovoltaic industry data used in this research was mainly collected from 20 provinces in china it is found that the development of pv in china has been greatly affected by the favorable land price policy in the end it is highly recommended that favorable land price policy should be continued for renewable energy systemic deficiencies can be overcome through continual reform and innovation of mechanisms

the benefits of a brazilian agro industrial symbiosis system and the strategies to make it happen abstract alcohol fuel is generally presented as a sustainable fuel in comparison with other fossil fuel due to lower emissions during production and combustion steps as well as due to its assumed closed carbon cycle however assessing the brazilian traditional alcohol production cycle many social and environmental impacts may still be indicated burning pesticides biodiversity labor exploration high water consumption erosion and others based on the strategy of an agro industrial networking and symbiosis a project was designed to optimize the system by means of polygeneration and total integration of production steps the case presented in this paper is the project for a social and ecological agro industry model named geripa geracao de energia renovavel integrada a producao de alimentos which produces renewable fuel electricity and organic food besides the technical project an economic evaluation is also presented resulting into a five year pay back time in addition environmental and social aspects were evaluated by means the emergy synthesis methodology odum 1996 which assesses the value of all inputs through an estimate of the environmental work directly and indirectly required for their production and sustainable supply the emergy based comparison of geripa system and a traditional system in brazil indicates better performance of geripa with an emergy sustainability index of 1 26 much higher than for a traditional system 0 22 the project is presently under discussion with investors and government and if approved will be carried out in marginal and presently unused land in addition to providing an environmentally friendly process for food and energy production the project would generate new jobs opportunities for brazilian rural workers presently unemployed

do minimum wage increases influence worker health this study investigates whether minimum wage increases impact worker health in the united states we consider self reported measures of general mental and physical health we use data on lesser skilled workers from the 1993 to 2014 behavioral risk factor surveillance survey among men we find no evidence that minimum wage increases improve health instead we find that such increases lead to worse health outcomes particularly among unemployed men we find both worsening general health and improved mental health following minimum wage increases among women these findings broaden our understanding of the full impacts of minimum wage increases on lesser skill workers jel i1 i11 i18

a review on circular economy the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems el articulo muestra un estudio en donde se proporciona una revision extensa de la literatura de las dos ultimas decadas con el proposito de captar las principales caracteristicas y perspectivas de la ce economia circular origenes principios basicos ventajas y desventajas modelado e implementacion de ce en los diferentes niveles micro meso y macro en todo el mundo los resultados demuestran que los origenes de la ce se basan principalmente en la economia ecologica y ecologia industrial

differential mortality and wealth accumulation the issue of asset accumulation and decumulation is central to the life cycle theory of consumer behavior and to many policy questions one of the main implications of the life cycle model is that assets are decumulated in the last part of life most empirical studies in this area use cross sectional data of estimate mean or median wealth age profiles the use of cross sections to estimate the age profile of assets is full of pitfalls for example if wealth and mortality are related in that poorer individuals die younger one overestimates the last part of the wealth age profile when using cross sectional data because means or other measures of location are taken over a population which becomes richer as it ages this paper examines the effect of differential mortality on cross sectional estimates of wealth age profiles our approach is to quantify the dependence of mortality rates on wealth and use these estimates to correct wealth age profiles for sample selection due to differential mortality we estimate mortality rates as a function of wealth and age for a sample of married couples drawn from the survey of income and program participation sipp our results show that accounting for differential mortality produces wealth profiles with significantly more dissaving among the elderly

unexpected windfalls education and mental health evidence from lottery winners in germany this paper investigates the causal impact of large unexpected windfalls on individual mental health physical health as well as health behaviors i use a large individual level panel data set of l

the impact of income shocks on health evidence from cohort data we study the eect of permanent income innovations on health for a prime aged population using information on more than half a million individuals sampled over a twenty five year period in three dierent cross sectional surveys we aggregate data by date of birth cohort to construct a synthetic cohort dataset with details of income expenditure socio demographic factors health outcomes and selected risk factors we then exploit structural and arguably exogenous changes in cohort incomes over the eighties and nineties to uncover causal eects of permanent income shocks on health we find that such income innovations have little eects on health but do aect health behaviour and mortality

rich and healthy better than poor and sick an empirical analysis of income health and the duration of the pension benefit spell i analyze the relationship between duration of the pension benefit spell and pension benefit claims from the german public pension system with a special emphasis on differential results with respect to health this relationship is crucial for a potential structural pattern of redistribution between different income and health groups induced by the public pension system evidence for such redistribution from poor to rich is present for most of the specifications in my analysis the most adequate specification is partially linear does therefore not impose any parametrical restrictions between duration and benefit claims and allows for potential endogeneity the relationship i extract is clearly positive i also find that redistribution from low income individuals to individuals with high income is more pronounced the worse the health status is despite longer benefit spells for pensioners in ill health

eco industrial park initiatives in the usa and the netherlands first lessons abstract since the introduction of the industrial ecology concept by frosch and gallopoulos in 1989 and the apparent success of the kalundborg industrial symbiosis project attention to planned eco industrial park eip development projects has grown all over the world this article includes data from six of these eip development projects three of the projects discussed are located in the netherlands and three in the us this article compares the differences in project approach and results on a national level the approach suggested is derived from the available eip development literature initial research indicates that the dutch eip projects are more successful than their us counterparts this difference in success can be mostly attributed to the fact that the us projects are initiated by local and regional governments that see the project as a way to improve the local regional economy with access to substantial government funds because of this heavy government involvement us companies are in general not interested in the project the more successful dutch projects on the other hand are mostly initiated by the companies themselves with financial and advisory support from the local and regional government

wealth health and child development evidence from administrative data on swedish lottery players we use administrative data on swedish lottery players to estimate the causal impact of substantial wealth shocks on players own health and their children s health and developmental outcomes our estimation sample is large virtually free of attrition and allows us to control for the factors conditional on which the prizes were randomly assigned in adults we find no evidence that wealth impacts mortality or health care utilization with the possible exception of a small reduction in the consumption of mental health drugs our estimates allow us to rule out effects on 10 year mortality one sixth as large as the crosssectional wealth mortality gradient in our intergenerational analyses we find that wealth increases children s health care utilization in the years following the lottery and may also reduce obesity risk the effects on most other child outcomes including drug consumption scholastic performance and skills can usually be bounded to a tight interval around zero overall our findings suggest that in affluent countries with extensive social safety nets causal effects of wealth are not a major source of the wealth mortality gradients nor of the observed relationships between child developmental outcomes and household income jel codes i10 i14 j24

health and other asset holdings despite clear evidence of correlations between financial and medical statuses and decisions most models treat financial and health related choices separately this article bridges this gap by proposing a tractable dynamic framework for the joint determination of optimal consumption portfolio holdings health investment and health insurance we solve for the optimal rules in closed form and capitalize on this tractability to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which separation between financial and health related decisions is sensible and of the pathways through which wealth and health determine allocations welfare and other variables of interest such as expected longevity or the value of health furthermore we show that the model is consistent with the observed patterns of individual allocations and provide realistic estimates of the parameters that confirm the relevance of all the main characteristics of the model

mortality and immortality the nobel prize as an experiment into the effect of status upon longevity it has been known for centuries that the rich and famous have longer lives than the poor and ordinary causality however remains trenchantly debated the ideal experiment would be one in which extra status could somehow be dropped upon a sub sample of individuals while those in a control group of comparable individuals received none this paper attempts to formulate a test in that spirit it collects 19th century birth data on science nobel prize winners correcting for potential biases we estimate that winning the prize compared to merely being nominated is associated with between 1 and 2 years of extra longevity

health and financial strain evidence from the survey of consumer finances using data from the survey of consumer finances this study examines the relationship between health status and financial strain controlling for the dual endogeneity between the two factors simultaneous two stage probit models are estimated for self reported health status and three measures of financial strain the results from all three models indicate that poor health significantly increases the probability of financial strain there is little evidence that financial strain contributes to poor health the findings suggest that severe health conditions may result in larger financial burdens while large financial burdens are unlikely to accelerate a decline in health status in the end health may be contributing to widening financial disparities especially among the poor who are in poor health

healthy bodies and thick wallets the dual relation between health and economic status there is abundant evidence of a quantitatively large association between many measures of economic status including income and wealth and a variety of health outcomes such as mortality or morbidity however considerable and often heated debate remains especially across disciplines about the direction of causation and about why the association arises although medical scientists are often convinced that the dominant if not exclusive pathway is that variation in socioeconomic status produces health disparities they are increasingly debating among themselves about why low economic status might lead to poor health at least for modern industrial countries 1 the old standby arguments the less well to do have access to less or lower quality medical care or a stronger pattern of deleterious personal behaviors have been rejected as insufficient instead a series of intriguing competing theories have arisen that emphasize long term impacts of early childhood or even inter uterine environmental factors the cumulative effects of prolonged exposures to individual stressful events or reactions to macro societal factors such as rising levels of income inequality a common link is that each theory attempts to document the physiological processes through which low economic status leads to poorer health while these scientific questions are extremely important this research has taken place with little input from economists economists are now making contributions about the alternative pathway the impact poor health may have on economic resources poor health may restrict a family s capacity to earn income or to accumulate assets by limiting work or by raising medical expenses at a minimum this work should provide a caution against exaggerating the magnitude of causation from economic status to health outcomes but the potential contribution runs deeper as people age the evolving variation in individual health outcomes may offer additional statistical information to estimate parameters of household savings and consumption behavior that so far have proven to be somewhat elusive thus incorporating health uncertainty and risk into economic models should eventually enrich our understanding of basic tenets of household behavior the first section of this paper documents the size of the association between health and one prominent economic status measure household wealth section two deals with how health influences economic status by sketching out reasons why health may alter household savings and eventually wealth and then providing estimates of the empirical magnitude of these effects section three shifts attention to the alternative pathway the links between economic status and health and summarizes 2major controversies and evidence surrounding these issues

persistence in health limitations a european comparative analysis this paper investigates the persistence in health limitations for individuals within the member states of the european union we use the full eight waves of data available in the european community household panel echp to explore the relative contributions of state dependence unobserved heterogeneity and socioeconomic characteristics in particular income education and activity status and how these vary across countries we focus on binary measures of health limitations constructed from the answers to the question are you hampered in your daily activities by any physical or mental health problem illness or disability dynamic non linear panel data models are specified and estimated using both pooled and random effects probit and logit models together with complementary log log models the random effects probit specifications are preferred results reveal high state dependence of health limitations which remains after controlling for measures of socioeconomic status there is heterogeneity in the socioeconomic gradient across countries

industrial symbiosis the case for market coordination abstract despite the fact that all successful documented cases of industrial symbiosis to this day have been self organizing some authors and development officials have suggested that increased public planning might deliver better results in this respect than spontaneously evolved market coordination this paper takes an historical approach to suggest that comprehensive planning is unlikely to live up to the expectations of its proponents the essay is structured as follows the first section provides short case studies of industrial symbiosis in highly different economic and institutional settings the essentially free market regime of victorian england and communist hungary 1948 1989 the available evidence suggests that market coordination proved much more favorable to the emergence of industrial symbiosis despite the elaboration of a comprehensive policy to that effect in hungary insights derived from the so called austrian critique of central planning are then used to explain this paradox the analysis presented suggests that the hungarian planners failure was not so much the result of the bad implementation of sound policies but the logical outcome of a top down approach s shortcomings policy implications for the public planning of industrial symbiosis in a mixed economy are then derived and the case for self organization is found more compelling the creation of more innovative institutions that will force firms to internalize their externalities while leaving them the necessary freedom to innovate is viewed as an urgently needed and promising path towards increased sustainable reuse of industrial by products

decision analysis models for social attitudes toward inequity social preferences for equity in the distribution of net benefits are not represented in a cost benefit study by the sum of the individuals net present values this paper presents two different decision analysts models for representing such an equity issue for each model conditions on the tradeoffs between different individuals are shown to imply that preferences can be represented by a special type of group value function procedures are presented by which such a group value function can be determined and used as part of a public policy evaluation

does relative risk aversion vary with wealth evidence from households portfolio choice data we analyze whether relative risk aversion varies with wealth we first derive theoretical predictions on how risky shares respond to wealth fluctuations in a portfolio choice model with both external habits and time varying labor income our analytical results indicate that 1 for each household there are two channels through which the risky share responds to wealth fluctuations the habit channel and the income channel 2 across households there are heterogeneous responses through the habit channel those who experience large negative income shocks reduce their share of risky assets and 3 two potential mis identification problems arise when both the heterogeneity in responses through the habit channel and the income channel are ignored we then test the theoretical predictions with data from the panel study of income dynamics contrary to the existing literature our empirical results show evidence of relative risk aversion varying with wealth over time after correcting those two mis identification problems

using an optimization model to evaluate the economic benefits of industrial symbiosis in the forest industry in this work a model comprising a pulp mill a sawmill a district heating network and a biofuel upgrading plant is used to demonstrate how the mind method an optimization method based on mixed integer linear programming can be used to evaluate industrial symbiosis in the forest industry using this method both energy and material flows on both the supply and the demand side can be studied simultaneously the method can be used to find improvements in the structure of the modelled system to find the optimal operational strategy of a given system and to evaluate and compare different systems the total system costs for stand alone cases and integrated industrial symbiosis system configuration are compared generating results that can be used as decision support when planning industrial symbiosis initiatives in the forest industry the results of this study showed that there are financial benefits to industrial symbiosis compared to the same system operated in stand alone mode and that the industrial symbiosis configuration generates a more stable system however it is difficult to generalize the results from a case study and the main conclusion drawn is that it is possible to show that industrial symbiosis has economical benefits although the magnitude of these benefits needs to be evaluated from case to case

industrial symbiosis and the policy instruments of sustainable consumption and production abstract industrial symbioses iss and eco industrial parks eips are key concepts of industrial ecology ie the aim of iss and eips is to minimise inefficient material and energy use by utilising local by product and energy flows industrial symbioses tend to develop through spontaneous action of economic actors for gaining of economic benefit but these systems can be designed and promoted via policy instruments as well a literature review showed that national programmes for eco industrial parks can be found in different parts of the world in the action programmes and other sustainable consumption and production scp policy documents of the eu on the other hand industrial symbioses gain less recognition as a path to enhanced sustainable production in this article we consider this and also analyse how the evolution and environmental performance of an industrial symbiosis system centred on a finnish pulp and paper mill have been affected by scp policy instruments with regard to the system forming the subject of the case study and finnish industrial systems in general policy instruments have succeeded in reducing emissions but not in systematically encouraging operators toward symbiosis like activities all in all few studies exist on the overall impact of policy instruments promoting design of eco industrial parks it is not self evident that symbiosis like production systems would be sustainable in every case as the background assumptions for political promotion of eips suggest we concluded that industrial symbioses should be analysed and developed on a life cycle basis with documentation of the real environmental benefits due to efficient resource use and decreased emissions in comparison to standalone production iss can then bring eco competitiveness to companies in relation to scp tools such as environmental permits ecolabels and future product regulation based on the ecodesign directive in europe indirect encouragement of symbiosis through land use regulation and planning in such a way that material fluxes between companies are possible both in operations and in financial terms may prove effective the same holds for waste policies that encourage increased reuse of a company s waste by other enterprises

toward a research agenda for policy intervention and facilitation to enhance industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive literature review the normative question what role should governmental policy play to facilitate the development of industrial symbiosis has received considerable attention of researchers however for several reasons the effects of governmental policy actions on industrial symbiosis are still not clear this article proposes a research agenda to clarify the mechanisms of policy intervention and facilitation of industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive review of industrial symbiosis literature focusing on how policy is conceptualized and studied the results show that existing research lacks an explicit definition of policy and employs a static conceptualization of policy that is reinforced by comparative statics research methods we argue that a dynamic process perspective is crucial to reveal the actual mechanisms through which policy intervention and facilitation affect the evolution of industrial symbiosis building on this view industrial symbiosis research is connected with insights from policy sciences and the case of policy translation of circular economy and eco industrial park in china is investigated in order to illustrate that policy is at heart a dynamic process we conclude with a research agenda proposing that the key to reveal the mechanisms is to identify the sequence of events connecting policy process and industrial symbiosis practices

health status and portfolio choice causality or heterogeneity abstract this paper explores the role of unobserved individual characteristics in the health assets and health portfolio correlations we apply various econometrics models to a unique longitudinal dataset with rich information that allows for the exploitation of four different health indices our findings show strong cross sectional correlations between health and both financial and non financial assets but these correlations seem to be mainly driven by heterogeneity as the correlations largely disappear in the fixed effects model adverse health shocks however are found to motivate a safer portfolio choice even after individual fixed effects are controlled for a result consistent with the prediction made by the background risk theory our findings suggest that health shocks shift investment from risky assets toward other financial assets but keep the total financial assets unchanged

inheritances intergenerational transfers and the accumulation of health research on inheritances has largely focused on the motives of the bequeathing regardless of the motivations of the giving generation prior to death wealth is transferred and this additional money may have an impact on the receiving generation in particular inheritances may be correlated with individuals health for several reasons first there may be a causal effect inheritances provide additional financial resources allowing recipients to purchase inputs to health and health care a large literature on socioeconomic status ses and health investigates the effect of financial resources on health second inheritances may signal the overall strength of a dynasty this dynastic strength would manifest itself in both better health and more ability to leave a bequest inheritances could be associated with better health because parents who will eventually bequeath wealth to their children may have disproportionately higher ses which improves the health outcomes of the children third bequests and a bequest motive may signal a stronger interest in one s child this reminder to the child could improve his emotional well being this paper

money transfer and birth weight evidence from the alaska permanent fund dividend the positive relationship between income and health is well established however the direction of causality remains unclear do economic resources influence health or vice versa exploiting a new source of exogenous income variation this study examines the impact of the alaska permanent fund dividend apfd on newborns health outcomes the results show that income has a significantly positive but modest effect on birth weight we find that an additional 1 000 2 331 in 2011 dollars increases birth weight by 17 7 g and substantially decreases the likelihood of a low birth weight a decrease of around 14 of the sample mean furthermore the income effect is higher for less educated mothers based on a gestation weight profile in the sample increased gestation owing to the apfd could explain a maximum of 34 57 of the measured weight increase although we are unable to examine all the potential mechanisms jel i10 i18 i12

recession depression mental health effects of the 2008 stock market crash do sudden large wealth losses affect mental health we use exogenous variation in the interview dates of the 2008 health and retirement study to assess the impact of large wealth losses on mental health among older u s adults we compare cross wave changes in wealth and mental health for respondents interviewed before and after the october 2008 stock market crash we find that the crash reduced wealth and increased feelings of depression and use of antidepressant drugs and that these effects were largest among respondents with high levels of stock holdings prior to the crash these results suggest that sudden wealth losses cause immediate declines in subjective measures of mental health however we find no evidence that wealth losses lead to increases in clinically validated measures of depressive symptoms or indicators of depression

approaches and policies for promoting industrial park recycling transformation iprt in china practices and lessons abstract industrial park recycling transformation iprt was one of the major circular economy construction demonstration programs in the 12th five year plan issued by the china state council in 2012 it comprised of 7 major tasks to transform traditionally high resource and energy intensive production into high efficiency and low pollutant production by 2017 129 industrial parks had been approved for iprt by the national development and reform commission ndrc this paper presents a thorough review on iprt content policies and practices with some lessons and suggestions for further development six types of projects were supported by national funds which included industrial chain extension and complementary projects water conversion and recycling projects energy saving projects pollution prevention projects platform construction projects and infrastructure construction sharing projects case studies show success for each case however deficiencies in industrial development management policy making and information sharing also emerged two suggestions were put forward first investment should be diverted from traditional industries to new industries past cases have shown that traditional industries have a greater risk of obsolescence failure in one park has already created a cascading effect on other enterprises in the park secondly the government led model should be transformed into a government and market co led model the government could establish more effective incentive and restraint mechanisms to attract participation from enterprises and or social capital information sharing platforms for example benefit enterprises by increasing awareness for circular economy projects to both private and public actors