the interdependence of european russian energy relations abstract the aim of this article is to explore this dynamic interdependent relationship between russia and europe in the field of energy based on the concept of interdependence and perspectives on the political aspects of trade relations we discuss how russia can exercise power based on its energy resources and how the eu can compensate for its lack of power in the energy game with other trade related capabilities in particular we explore the implications of the lack of a full fledged eu foreign energy policy towards russia with the somewhat counter intuitive conclusion that the eu countries on average not necessarily are better off with a common foreign energy policy

rethinking the optimal level of environmental quality justifications for strict environmental policy abstract traditional environmental theory suggests that the optimal level of a pollution emission occurs when the marginal damage created by the emissions is equal to the marginal cost of reducing the emissions we argue that the benefits from reducing pollution should be much more broadly defined to include at least three other sources of benefits first we develop a game theoretic model in which firms may under invest in cost saving green technologies second we demonstrate that consideration of future damages and abatement costs leads to a lower current optimal pollution level than that obtained in traditional models finally we show that ecological complexity creates indirect pathways by which greater pollution increases the likelihood of generating irreversible environmental damage this broader definition of the benefits of pollution abatement yields an optimal level of pollution that may actually be less than the level at which conventionally measured marginal damages are equal to marginal abatement costs thus environmental policy should be stricter

the implications of competition among jurisdictions does tiebout need politics the paper investigates whether compensation among local jurisdiction is by itself sufficient to ensure efficient provision of local public goods jurisdictions have fixed boundaries and each has an entrenched government with the power to tax and supply the public good residents can move costlessly among jurisdictions it is shown that competition among numerous jurisdictions is not sificient to guarantee public sector efficiency though residents can vote with their feet land is immobile hence governments can unsurp some land rents for their own ends increasing the number of jurisdictions limits but cannot completely eliminate the ability to exercise discretionary governmental power

capital structure and sustainability an empirical study of microfinance institutions abstract the capital structure of lending institutions has become an increasingly prominent issue in the world of finance contemporaneously microfinance institutions mfis have risen to the forefront as invaluable lending institutions in the development process since capital constraints have hindered the expansion of microfinance programs and microfinance organizations have had various degrees of sustainability the question of how best to finance these organizations is a key issue this paper explores how changes in capital structure could improve mfi efficiency and financial sustainability i find causal evidence supporting the assertion that increased use of grants by large mfis decreases operational self sufficiency

monetisation of external socio economic costs of industrial production a social lca based case of clothing production abstract the purpose of this study is to benchmark production processes and production chains of clothing products by means of social life cycle assessment s lca in this paper we present the socio economic costs s eco costs method for monetisation of external socio economic burden for workers the method is applied to six cases of garment production chains the s eco costs are the marginal prevention costs to reach a sustainable level the performance reference point prp for wages and are the monetary compensation costs beyond the prp to account for unacceptable exploitation of workers the s eco costs in include five sub indicators proposed as a base line for several social issues in s lca minimum acceptable wage based on minimum wages in rich countries and statistics on economic migrants child labour forced labour not able to attend school extreme poverty derived from world bank absolute poverty line excessive working hours forced labour involuntary occupational safety and health based on statistics of ilo these s eco costs have been calculated for cotton t shirts and pairs of jeans for three garment production chains usa europe western w india bangladesh asian a china india bangladesh asian best practice abp revealing the hotspots in these chains and enabling benchmarking the total results for the s eco costs of t shirts are w 0 05 a 1 46 and abp 0 33 the results for the jeans are w 0 38 a 12 56 and abp 2 67 the most important hotspots are in the cotton fields in india and the garment production phase in bangladesh the authors hope that the proposed system will inspire others in the field of s lca to proceed with the development of quantitative indicator systems

a new product growth for model consumer durables this article originally appeared in management science january 1969 volume 15 number 5 pp 215 227 published by the institute of management sciences a growth model for the timing of initial purchase of new products is developed and tested empirically against data for eleven consumer durables the basic assumption of the model is that the timing of a consumer s initial purchase is related to the number of previous buyers a behavioral rationale for the model is offered in terms of innovative and imitative behavior the model yields good predictions of the sales peak and the timing of the peak when applied to historical data a long range forecast is developed for the sales of color television sets

aggregation in variance of shared responsibility a case study of australia abstract this article deals with shared producer and consumer responsibility a concept aimed at overcoming the non additivity or double counting problem in corporate and national sustainability reporting it reports on the potentially distorting effects that varying sector and business classifications could have on the apportioning of emissions or other sustainability measures amongst producers and consumers in an economy a quantitative in variance analysis is provided which shows that shared responsibility formulations are remarkably stable under extreme aggregation of the underlying input output data value added pegging of the sharing parameters generally reduces variance in comparison to constant sharing parameters these results help in substantiating the robustness of the shared responsibility concept a feature which is critically important if shared responsibility were to become corporate and national reporting practice

communicating the eco efficiency of products and services by means of the eco costs value model abstract at the delft university of technology a new model has been developed to describe the sustainability of products the evr model this model comprises two concepts the virtual eco costs as a lca based single indicator for environmental impact the evr eco costs value ratio as an indicator for eco efficiency in this publication an experiment is described to test whether the evr model leads to a good understanding of the eco efficiency of a product service combination in this experiment three separate groups of 8 11 people were asked to rank four alternative solutions of a product service system the after sales service and the maintenance service of an induction plate cooker both in terms of sustainability and of general preference the three respective groups were customers among whom representatives of consumer organizations business representatives from the manufacturing company of the induction plate cookers governmental representatives employees of the dutch ministries of environmental affairs and economic affairs and of the dutch provinces as well as consultants involved in governmental policies all experts in the field of sustainability the basic idea was to ask each group to rank the four alternatives after three levels of information input level 1 basic explanation of the four alternatives some major features and characteristics such as price were given but no environmental data level 2 on explanation of an lca of the four alternatives given in nine impact classes and the eco indicator 95 level 3 an explanation of the evr model and the evr data of the four alternatives each time the group was asked to rank the proposed alternatives in terms of expected environmental performance and of best choice in general which system would you have bought in a real life situation from the experiments it can be concluded that the concept of eco costs was accepted by the majority of the non experts they based their ranking on it and they preferred it rather than direct lca output or the damage based eco indicator 95 data the environmental experts in the governmental group did not directly accept the concept of eco costs model they wanted in depth information first they tended to stick to their existing knowledge of lca data and the eco indicator 95 overall preferences of the customers and business representatives were primarily ranked on the perceived value costs ratio of the product service combination the sustainability of the product service combination played a secondary role

business incentives for sustainability a property rights approach abstract public and private demands for sustainable development put pressure on firms to develop strategies that include environmental concerns environmental effects from products often appear as externalities outside the legal boundary of the producing company these companies often possess the best competence to optimise the total life cycle environmental performance of its products they are however neither obliged nor stimulated enough by policy incentives to do so from a sustainable development perspective the policy instruments used today are mostly of a control and demand type i e they do not create sufficient incentives to go further than hedging over set requirements environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have mostly been associated with the notion of additional costs and thus a restriction on economic performance however since the mid 1990s several papers have called for corporate win win situations as well as instruments giving up stream incentives for change but not enough abatement of environmental impacts has emerged in reality perhaps this is due to the lack of proper connection between economic theory on the one hand and incentive advocating articles and instruments on the other we propose a concept for trading of product life cycle plc emission rights based on property rights and transaction cost theories considering the problem with asymmetric information over the value chain the initial financial impacts from such plc instruments are shown to be significant for the system provider since emissions and resource use become production costs this provides economic incentives to take an increased responsibility for information flow as well as initiatives for product innovations

design of sustainable supply chains under the emission trading scheme increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment this paper introduces a mixed integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment lca principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain indeed the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems the framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry the results suggest that current legislation and emission trading schemes ets must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy moreover the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost effective manner

tightening environmental standards the benefit cost or the no cost paradigm ms ff ichael porter and claas van der linde have written a paper that is interesting and to us at least somewhat astonishing it is a defense of environmental regulation indeed an invitation to more stringent regulation that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation this approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs the traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits for environmental regulation the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water quality improvements the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards from this benefit cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook porter and van der linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a static mindset in their view economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

upstream pollution downstream waste disposal and the design of comprehensive environmental policies abstract many policymakers are shifting their focus from media specific pollution problems to product specific life cycle environmental problems in this paper we develop a model of production and consumption that incorporates life cycle externalities and use it to solve for alternative policies to achieve a social optimum in general we find that no single instrument can solve multiple problems contrary to what some observers have suggested however we find that there are alternative ways of reaching the social optimum we also discover that an integrated approach to policy appears to be important no matter what policy options are adopted and finally we find that there is only a limited role for so called product life cycle assessments

on the existence of an optimal capital structure theory and evidence one of the most contentious issues in the theory of finance during the past quarter century has been the theory of capital structure the geneses of this controversy were the seminal contributions by modigliani and miller 18 19 the general academic view by the mid 1970s although not a consensus was that the optimal capital structure involves balancing the tax advantage of debt against the present value of bankruptcy costs no sooner did this general view become prevalent in the profession than miller 16 presented a new challenge by showing that under certain conditions the tax advantage of debt financing at the firm level is exactly offset by the tax disadvantage of debt at the personal level since then there has developed a burgeoning theoretical literature attempting to reconcile miller s model with the balancing theory of optimal capital structure e g deangelo and masulis 5 kim 12 and modigliani 17 the general result of this work is that if there are significant leverage related costs such as bankruptcy costs agency costs of debt and loss of non debt tax shields and if the income from equity is untaxed then the marginal bondholder s tax rate will be less than the corporate rate and there will be a positive net tax advantage to corporate debt financing the firm s optimal capital structure will involve the trade off between the tax advantage of debt and various leverage related costs the upshot of these extensions of miller s model is the recognition that the existence of an optimal capital structure is essentially an empirical issue as to whether or not the various leverage related costs are economically significant enough to influence the costs of corporate borrowing the miller model and its theoretical extensions have inspired several timeseries studies which provide evidence on the existence of leverage related costs trczinka 28 reports that from examining differences in average yields between taxable corporate bonds and tax exempt municipal bonds one cannot reject the miller hypothesis that the marginal bondholder s tax rate is not different from the corporate tax rate however trczinka is careful to point out that this finding does not necessarily imply that there is no tax advantage of corporate debt if the personal tax rate on equity is positive indeed buser and hess 1 using a longer time series of data and more sophisticated econometric techniques estimate that the average effective personal tax rate on equity is statistically positive and is not of a trivial magnitude more importantly they document evidence that is consistent with the existence of significant leverage related costs in the economy

eco efficiency approach for global warming in the context of kyoto mechanism abstract this study discusses an approach to measuring and improving the economic and ecological efficiency of kyoto mechanism projects the approach consists of global warming eco efficiency gwee clean development mechanism cdm joint implementation ji environmental efficiency ee and cdm ji economic productivity ep the gwee indicator is based on the ratio of the value added of a system to its global warming influence in order to measure the eco efficiency of a product in terms of the global warming issue in addition cdm ji ee and cdm ji ep are proposed to measure the environmental and economic performances of cdm and ji projects respectively while ee is defined as the ratio of the certified emission reductions cer obtained from a cdm project or emission reduction unit eru from a ji project to total global warming influence relevant to the cdm or ji implemented ep is defined as the ratio of the total of cer profit and eru profit and the sales revenue to the costs of the cdm and ji implemented then the feasibility of these indicators is examined through a case study for the power generations in the field of alternative energy

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

asymmetric tax competition abstract the paper analyzes nash equilibrium when two jurisdictions set tax rates on a tax base which is mobile between them population differences imply tax differences the smaller jurisdiction levies a lower tax rate in equilibrium and its residents are better off than those in the larger jurisdiction the nash equilibrium is inefficient if the two jurisdictions merged the resulting allocation would be efficient however if differences in population are great enough residents of the small jurisdiction would be made worse off by such a merger

a game theory framework for cooperative management of refillable and disposable bottle lifecycles abstract firms engaged in industrial ecology hope to reduce environmental impacts and costs improve resource efficiency and create symbiotic relationships that reduce transaction costs and enhance information flow however current lca tools do not explain firms incentives to implement the principles of industrial ecology or how an individual or firm can affect the products and processes at other firms game theory on the other hand allows investigation of the willingness of producers and consumers to seek strategies that promote the common interest of the system while not harming their own interests this paper applies game theory to the lifecycle of bottle packaging and presents a framework for analysis of the choice between refillable and disposable bottles although refillable bottles may be more cost effective in the long run bottlers only have incentive to use refillable bottles when they are sure that consumer return rates will be reasonably high it has been found that consumers who keep or dispose of refillable bottles or respond to deposit refund return incentives by reducing their demand may drive costs up and encourage adoption of disposables a simple model is provided which finds the optimal bottler strategy as a function of the bottler s expectations for consumer cooperation

what type of microfinance institutions supply savings products abstract recent evidence shows that the poor desperately need access to savings products but despite this general consensus microfinance institutions mfis offering savings products are still under studied using random effect probit estimation on a dataset of 722 mfis active over the 2005 2010 period we try to identify the characteristics of those that collect voluntary savings our results suggest that these mfis have received fewer subsidies than their credit only counterparts in other words subsidies would crowd out micro savings products suggesting that donors generate negative externalities on product diversification

mission drift and ethical crisis in microfinance institutions what matters abstract in recent years financial interests have increasingly influenced microfinance institutions mfis with financial gain overshadowing service to the poor this phenomenon which we can term mission drift has caused apprehension among academicians as well as policy makers for its negation of the fundamental social ethos of mfis and the mandate of sustainable financial inclusion hence this study aims to identify the factors of mission drift with special emphasis on the role of funding sources we collect data from a sample of 169 mfis in bangladesh from the period of 2009 2014 and deploy static and dynamic panel data estimation techniques the results suggest that commercial fund is susceptible to mission drift as average loan size over gni per capita increases when mfis use more commercial fund in their operation the finding also revealed that when mfis focus more on commercial interest return on assets and operational sustainability they tend to depart further from the original aim of serving the poorest of the poor the findings further suggest that mission drift is influenced by other factors such as macroeconomic conditions and regulatory environment this study underscores the importance for policy to ensure that poor people have viable access to financial services from mfis toward promoting long term sustainable development

an exploratory game theoretic analysis of biomass electricity generation supply chain this study proposes a game theoretic approach to model and analyze the process of utilizing biomass for power generation considering three players distributor facility developer and participating farmer we characterize the nash equilibrium of the sequential game and discuss its features a special attention is devoted to the analysis of the impact of incentives and initial target on the equilibrium in which the biomass is part of electricity production

market structure and the multinational enterprise a game theoretic approach since at least the late 1950s it has been recognized that multinational enterprises operate in imperfect markets characterized by oligopoly the dominant transactions cost theory of multinational enterprises does not wholly account for why this is so the reductio ad absurdum of this theory would predict imperfect markets to be sure but they would be monopolistic rather than oligopolistic in this article a simple model based on noncooperative game theory shows how oligopolistic markets can evolve from monopolistic ones also shown is that it is neither necessary nor sufficient that a firm have lower costs than its rivals in order to have an incentive to become multinational

does the source of capital affect capital structure prior work on leverage implicitly assumes capital availability depends solely on firm characteristics however market frictions that make capital structure relevant may also be associated with a firm s source of capital examining this intuition we find firms that have access to the public bond markets as measured by having a debt rating have significantly more leverage although firms with a rating are fundamentally different these differences do not explain our findings even after controlling for firm characteristics that determine observed capital structure and instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of having a rating firms with access have 35 more debt copyright 2006 oxford university press

searching for leviathan an empirical study in several papers and a recent book geoffrey brennan and james buchanan 1977 1978 1980 have put forth a striking and controversial view of the public sector drawing by analogy on the conventional theory of monopoly in the private sector they envision a monolithic government that systematically seeks to exploit its citizenry through the maximization of the tax revenues that it extracts from the economy from this perspective they develop a fiscal constitution whose central purpose is to constrain leviathan by limiting in various ways its access to tax and other fiscal instruments while the leviathan hypothesis has been the source of lively debate and a wide range of policy proposals it has not been the subject of much systematic empirical work or testing this is a matter of some importance since the policy implications of the leviathan view are disturbing to put it mildly in particular brennan and buchanan virtually stand on their heads many of the basic theorems in public finance for an efficient and equitable tax system if in fact the leviathan view is an inaccurate depiction of the functioning of the public sector the introduction of their policy proposals is likely to make a sorry mess of the fiscal system the leviathan model does however have some straightforward implications for observable fiscal behavior it is the purpose of this paper to examine one of these testable implications brennan and buchanan stress that fiscal decentralization is itself a powerful constraint on leviathan competition among governments in the context of the interjurisdictional mobility of persons in pursuit of fiscal gains can offer partial or possibly complete substitutes for explicit fiscal constraints on the taxing power 1980 p 184 such competition among governments in a federal system that places heavy reliance on local fiscal decisions will greatly limit the capacity of leviathan to channel resources into the public sector in short as indicated by the epigraph to this paper the leviathan model implies that other things equal the size of the public sector should vary inversely with the extent of fiscal decentralization 2

manufacturer s revenue sharing contract and retail competition this paper investigates a revenue sharing contract for coordinating a supply chain comprising one manufacturer and two competing retailers the manufacturer as a stackelberg leader offers a revenue sharing contract to two competing retailers who face stochastic demand before the selling season under the offered contract terms the competing retailers are to determine the quantities to be ordered from the manufacturer prior to the season and the retail price at which to sell the items during the season the process of pricing and ordering is expected to result in an equilibrium as in the bayesian nash game on the basis of anticipated responses and actions of the retailers the manufacturer designs the revenue sharing contract adopting the classic newsvendor problem model framework and using numerical methods the study finds that the provision of revenue sharing in the contract can obtain better performance than a price only contract however the benefits earned under the revenue sharing contract by different supply chain partners differ because of the impact of demand variability and price sensitivity factors the paper also analyses the impact of demand variability on decisions about optimal retail price order quantity and profit sharing between the manufacturer and the retailers lastly it investigates how the competition between retailers factor influences the decision making of supply chain members in response to uncertain demand and profit variability

security independence and sustainability imprecise language and the manipulation of energy policy in the united states abstract this article examines the impact of imprecise terminology on the energy policymaking process in us focusing on the manipulation of discourse by different political economic interests seeking to sway popular opinion using the 2012 us presidential elections as a backdrop the analysis highlights the cooption of the concepts security independence and sustainability in energy debates by different and often opposing interest groups the article s first section traces the malleability of energy terminology to the vagueness of the term energy itself and notes how qualifying words like security independence and sustainability have been selectively exploited to introduce further ambiguity to an already fungible concept the second section notes that while energy is a critical and complex factor of macroeconomic production its main public visibility comes via a few partially representative numbers like gasoline prices this mismatch of broad social importance and piecemeal public understanding enables organized interests to leverage vague terminology in support of particular policy ideas the third section examines three policymaking tools 1 taxation 2 regulation and 3 technology promotion and compares these administrative instruments ultimately the article concludes that loosely defined terminology inhibits energy policy discussion and stifles meaningful public debate over and action on energy issues

proposal for a methodology to monitor sustainability in the production of soft drinks in ref pet this study proposes a methodology to view and monitor the economic social and environmental impacts of operational and strategic decisions in reverse logistics rl industries factor analysis was conducted to form indexes in these three dimensions of an integrated rl process unlike other research the proposed methodology is oriented towards managers decisions on all aspects of the triple bottom line simultaneously and is adaptable to various industries the methodology was tested in a retail company in brazil that markets the world s largest carbonated soft drink brand in ref pet the results provide a holistic view of the impact of decisions on the use of economic social and environmental resources enabling direct operational decisions and strategies in the search for a better balance of the triple bottom line thus managers can seek improvements in the inputs of the rl process avoiding undesirable outputs this study contributes to the implementation of the concept and the adoption of sustainability practices in the corporate strategy improving the communication flow between operational activities and economic performance regarding the consumption of scarce resources and reducing the negative social and environmental impacts for the benefit of the company the business community society and nature

the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

reverse channel design the case of competing retailers the economical and environmental benefits of product remanufacturing have been widely recognized in the literature and in practice in this paper we focus on the interaction between a manufacturers reverse channel choice to collect postconsumer goods and the strategic product pricing decisions in the forward channel when retailing is competitive to this end we model a direct product collection system in which the manufacturer collects used products directly from the consumers e g print and copy cartridges and an indirect product collection system in which the retailers act as product return points e g single use cameras cellular phones we first examine how the allocation of product collection to retailers impacts their strategic behavior in the product market and we discuss the economic trade offs the manufacturer faces while choosing an optimal reverse channel structure when a direct collection system is used channel profits are driven by the impact of scale of returns on collection effort whereas in the indirect reverse channel supply chain profits are driven by the competitive interaction between the retailers subsequently we show that the buy back payments transfered to the retailers for postconsumer goods provide a wholesale pricing flexibility that can be used to price discriminate between retailers of different profitability

sustainability in electrical and electronic equipment closed loop supply chains a system dynamics approach abstract in this paper we examine the impact of ecological motivation and technological innovations on the long term behavior of a closed loop supply chain with recycling activities ecological motivation manifests through legislation and green image factor whereas technological innovations manifest through design for environment we adopt system dynamics methodology applied to many environmental systems seeking long term gains the developed model is implemented to a real world supply chain of electrical equipment in greece numerical analysis illustrates the factors concerned like the delay of the legislation enforcement to achieve a sustainable future through non renewable resources and landfill preservation

interdependent international relations and the expansion of ethanol production and consumption the brazilian perspective abstract the global production and consumption of ethanol are expected to increase the growing interdependence of markets and nations producers and consumers of biofuels has led actors to seek and devise mechanisms intended to develop the sector this paper aims to analyze the interdependent international relations between brazil and other ethanol biofuel producer and consumer countries to do so the paper explores the theory of complex interdependence and the game theory a quali quantitative study was conducted involving the application of two questionnaires to experts on biofuels and documentary analysis aided by qda miner software the results show that brazil shares highly interdependent relations with the united states an intermediate degree of interdependence with europe and a low degree of interdependence with china the dimensions of those interdependent relations can be ranked according to importance in the following order first the political then the economic technical and finally the social environmental dimensions a number of actions can be envisaged that could lead ethanol to achieve an increasingly strategic position in the diversification of the energy matrix in different countries technological efforts to improve production efficiency the creation of globally integrated policies designed to provide security and develop the production and consumption infrastructure the reduction of international tariffs on the product and the transformation of ethanol into a global commodity with a large number of countries buying and selling the product this paper faced the challenge of integrating approaches and concepts from two complex theoretical areas complex interdependence theory and game theory the research methodology and the insights gained from the ethanol case contribute to the literature on the applicability of these two theoretical approaches

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

industrial eco efficiency regional disparity and spatial convergence of china s regions abstract in this study the industrial eco efficiency measures of 30 chinese provinces municipalities and autonomous regions from 2001 to 2015 were estimated based on a proposed data envelopment analysis dea model and the non convex metafrontier undesirable outputs super efficiency slacks based measure ncmeta us sbm which simultaneously incorporates non convex metafrontier technology undesirable outputs and super efficiency into slacks based measure subsequently dynamic spatial econometric models were employed to test the spatial convergence of industrial eco efficiency the empirical results show that 1 the average value of industrial eco efficiency was the highest in the eastern region 0 67 followed by the western region 0 30 and central region 0 27 indicating the existence of a significant regional disparity 2 strong evidence for global and club spatial convergence of industrial eco efficiency was found with regard to regional heterogeneity provinces in the eastern region converged faster than those in the central and western regions while the convergence speed of industrial eco efficiency increased after 2008 with respect to temporal heterogeneity 3 the ownership structure appeared to have a higher impact on industrial eco efficiency than other controls in the presence of spatial conditional convergence these findings are robust with regard to both spatial econometric model and spatial weighting matrix specifications based on the empirical analysis the following policies promote industrial eco efficiency in china have been recommended first relevant authorities must take effective measures to encourage the central western regions to adopt clean energy technologies the energy subsidy policies should strive to break through the technological lock in and turn to regional green development second full advantage of the spatial effects must be taken and technological exchanges and cooperation among neighboring areas must be strengthened to ensure that the industrial eco efficiency of the central and western regions converge with those of the eastern coastal areas policy implications of multidimensional heterogeneity and adjustment of industrial structure should be highlighted while promoting industrial eco efficiency finally it is crucial to emphasize factors such as foreign direct investment fdi ownership and industrial structures to attract fdi and optimize the current industrial structure

import demand for brazilian ethanol a cross country analysis abstract this study presents an empirical analysis of the import demand for brazilian ethanol by its six major foreign buyers the primary objectives of this study were to identify the economic factors affecting the demand for ethanol imports and to derive long run price and income elasticities of import demand these elasticities could be used to analyze the impact of government policies such as mandatory gasoline ethanol blends and import tariffs import demand models were estimated with ordinary least squares ols using quarterly time series data for the 1997 2007 time period the results suggest that the factors influencing the import demand for ethanol vary across countries markets adopting mandatory blends of renewable fuels tend to have less price elastic import demand schedules ethanol imports were found to be price elastic and statistically significant in the caribbean region 1 66 mexico 2 08 japan 1 44 and nigeria 1 38 while import demand was price inelastic and not statistically different from zero in the us 0 76 and europe 0 21 the regression results could not determine the impacts of import tariffs for the united states mexico and nigeria on the quantity of imports because tariffs did not vary during the time period studied results show that mandatory gasoline ethanol blends have been an important determinant of ethanol imports

do interest rates matter credit demand in the dhaka slums abstract best practice in microfinance holds that interest rates should be set at profit making levels based on the belief that even poor customers favor access to finance over low fees despite this core belief little direct evidence exists on the price elasticity of credit demand in poor communities we examine increases in the interest rate on microfinance loans in the slums of dhaka bangladesh using unanticipated between branch variation in prices we estimate interest elasticities from 0 73 to 1 04 with our preferred estimate being at the upper end of this range interest income earned from most borrowers fell but interest income earned from the largest increased generating overall profitability at the branch level

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

government size and decentralization evidence from disaggregated data public choice models of government behavior draw heavily from the economics literature of industrial organization following the argument that private monopoly in production leads to relatively high prices and profits the public choice literature suggests that similar analysis of government structure may be useful in the modeling of public production brennan and buchanan 3 4 model government as leviathan a public entity which seeks to maximize its revenue the leviathan hypothesis is motivated by the desire to successfully understand government behavior as well as to recommend effective means of controlling its behavior among other suggestions brennan and buchanan offer the private monopoly corollary that competition among different fiscal units is an effective means of controlling the aggregate size of leviathan the resulting decentralization hypothesis is total government intrusion into the economy should be smaller ceteris paribus the greater the extent to which taxes and expenditures are decentralized 3 15 this paper tests the decentralization hypothesis by examining a data set which considers all units of government by disaggregating federal spending on a state by state basis we construct a cross section of state data on federal state and local government activity all previous examinations of the decentralization hypothesis at the level of the state have excluded the activity of the federal government however given that federal government expenditures greatly exceed those of state and local governments previous cross sectional tests of the decentralization hypothesis may have employed grossly incomplete measures of governmental activity in each state our study provides two extensions to the debate one by testing the decentralization hypothesis at the level of state aggregation we suggest that previous cross sectional studies do not report strong evidence in support of the hypothesis because of their exclusion of the federal sector two our study suggests the importance of including all potential competitors in the government arena state local and federal governments our study does not solve all issues concerning aggregation

supplier selection order allocation a two stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach this paper proposes a two stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach for two of the most critical tasks in supply chain management namely supplier selection and order allocation in the first stage to address multiple decision criteria in supplier ranking the analytic hierarchy process ahp is employed in the second stage supplier ranks are fed into an order allocation model that aims at maximizing a utility function for the firm as well as minimizing the total supply chain costs subject to constraints on demand capacity and inventory levels a dynamic programming approach is crafted to solve the proposed bi objective model

currency crashes in emerging markets an empirical treatment we use a panel of annual data for over 100 developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes we define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation we examine the composition of the debt as well as its level and a variety of other macroeconomic factors external and foreign crashes tend to occur when output growth is low the growth of domestic credit is high and the level of foreign interest rates are high a low ratio of fdi to debt is consistently associated with a high likelihood of a crash

revenue sharing coordination in reverse logistics a reverse supply chain as a post consumption activity aims at extracting value from products at the end of their life cycle it could be comprised of reusing refurbishing remanufacturing and recycling activities in this paper we revisit the issue of revenue sharing in reverse supply chains to formulate the decision problems of coordinating parties manufacturer and retailer the coordination is formed in a dynamic setting where a feedback relationship exists between the return incentive policy of the retailer and the revenue sharing incentive strategy of the manufacturer to model this process we have adopted the use of a system dynamics sd approach sd is well suited for studying the behavior of complex systems over time and where internal feedbacks and delays exist we first identify pareto optimal solutions for individual players and from environmental perspectives of landfill diversion and carbon offset we then focus on revenue sharing as a widely practiced coordination scheme in reverse supply chains it resembles a leader follower stackelberg strategic decision making game with an equilibrium solution that yields lower performance for environmental criteria in this context we investigate if how a revenue sharing mechanism can be coordinated to achieve a higher environmental performance

2 the institutional structure of production 1 prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 9 1991 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

commodity tax competition between member states of a federation equilibrium and efficiency we first describe regional market equilibria whereupon consumers of each region allocate their purchases of private goods between domestic and nondomestic ones according to the structure of relative prices taxes and transportation costs next regional optimal tax levels and public good quantities are derived the tax of the other region being held constant fiscal competition arises from the ability of one region in choosing its tax to alter the tax base of the other

controlling stock externalities flexible versus inflexible pigovian corrections abstract this paper examines the use of inflexible pigovian taxes subsidies to correct a stock externality an optimal control framework is first used to characterize the first best path for a pigovian correction that varies continuously this first best path is then contrasted with inflexible second best paths in which the level of the correction can be set only once or twice the optimal timing of a fixed one time correction is also studied a deferment of this correction is desirable when the initial state of the environmental stock is less deteriorated than the first best steady state or the adjustment costs are sufficiently great

energy property and the industrial revolution narrative the industrial revolution ir story is the core of a mainstream economic history narrative of energy development relationships celebrating modern economic growth meg as the increase in per capita energy consumption in the last two centuries such a narrative emphasizes mineral technology and private property as the key elements of growth processes i will criticize the above narrative from a socio environmental history perspective for its inability to account for two crucial aspects of energy history 1 the role of social power as key determinant in how energy sources are used and to what ends 2 the socio ecological costs associated with the increase of energy consumption i will then review environmental history studies on energy industrialization and highlight possible future developments in the field the article makes a strong point for the need to look at energy transitions as social processes and to include the unequal distribution of environmental health and social costs of mineral energy into global history narratives

stock externalities pigovian taxation and dynamic stability abstract stock externalities represent a type of consumption externality in which individual consumption of a particular good leads to production of a public bad such as in the arms race and in the greenhouse effect certain of these stock externalities can be regulated by pigovian taxation of the good that produces the externality for others however depending on an ordinal property of preferences the equilibrium becomes dynamically unstable so it is necessary to use direct regulation to support an optimal equilibrium

do microfinance institutions fulfil their promise evidence from cross country data abstractthe concept of microfinance promises poverty reduction and economic growth we empirically challenge this economic and social promise in an attempt to prove its fulfilment our multivariate regressions of economic development variables such as per capita gross national income based on ppp converted to international dollars gni per capita ppp gdp growth as well as gross capital formation and labour participation rate against specific microfinance institutions mfi variables show that the success and performance of mfis significantly influence economic development microfinance directly influences economic growth through the value that mfi performance adds to purchasing power an indirect impact comes from an improvement in capital accumulation and employment rates these insights are valuable as the interdependencies between microfinance and economic development that this article verifies offer new and progressive insights into purposeful action that can be taken to stimulate economic develop

theoretical contribution of industrial ecology to circular economy abstract circular economy ce currently represents a viable option for countries governments academia and society to transform the linear and semi circular materials and energy flows into circular flows and obtain better sustainable benefits in this sense industrial ecology ie with its tools can assist in the transition to ce therefore the main goal of this paper is to present the theoretical contribution of ie to ce the methodology used was based on bibliometric analysis in the international context with regard to the bibliometric analyses we have identified that the evolution of ce would not be possible without the existence of ie concepts and tools especially with tools such as industrial symbiosis is and eco industrial parks eips furthermore three levels of ie contribution to ce were identified such as conceptual technical and policy aspects finally new ce based researches from an ie perspective with bibliometric analysis and with co citation networks are possible including solid waste management and policies

determinants of margin in microfinance institutions abstractmicrofinance institutions mfis lend to the poor however microfinance clients suffer from high interest rates a type of poverty penalty this article analyses the margin determinants in mfis a banking model has been adapted to microfinance this model has been tested using 9 year panel data some factors explaining bank margin also explain mfi margin with operating costs being the most important factor specific microfinance factors are donations and legal status as regulated mfis can collect deposits it has also been found that mfis operating in countries with a high level of financial inclusion have low margins

a two echelon sustainable supply chain coordination under cap and trade regulation this paper analyses the decision behaviour and coordination mechanisms for a two echelon sustainable supply chain under a cap and trade regulation in a make to order setting carbon emissions are generated primarily by the downstream manufacturing process and the market demand of the supply chain is affected by two decision variables the sustainability level and the selling price the impact of the unit emissions trading price on the optimal decision variables in both centralized and decentralized systems is revealed the comparison of decentralized and centralized systems shows that the increase in total profit in centralized system is at most 1 3 that in decentralized system to achieve the same profit as the centralized system we consider two contracts to coordinate the sustainable supply chain revenue sharing and two part tariff contracts by analysing the conditions for a win win outcome we prove that only the two part tariff contract can lead to perfect coordination finally sensitivity analysis of the key parameters is undertaken as part of a numerical example illustrating the theoretical results

efficiency and equalization payments in a federal system of government a synthesis and extensions of recent results this paper investigates the rationale for a system of equalization transfers in a federal system of government the existing sources of inefficiency of resource allocation in economies with more than one level of government are synthesized in the framework of a simple decentralized multiprovince model with mobile factors of production the sources of inefficiency arise first because migrants respond at the margin to incorrect signals owing to the phenomena of rent sharing and fiscal exterality and second because of global rather than local inefficiencies the model is then extended to consider the role of the federal government in providing intergovernmental transfers in the face of such inefficiencies in addition to synthesizing the sources of inefficiency in federal models the equity arguments for equalization are briefly recounted efficacite et paiements de perequation dans un systeme federal de gouvernement synthese et extensions de certains resultats recents ce memoire examine la logique qui soustend un systeme de paiements de perequation dans un systeme fdderal de gouverement les auteurs utilisent un modele simple d un systeme multi provincial decentralise avec des facteurs de production mobiles pour definir les sources d inefficacite dans l allocation des ressources dans les dconomies qui possedent plus d un niveau de gouvernement ces inefficacites proviennent de ce que d abord ceux qui se deplacent le font en reponse a la marge a des signaux incorrects engendres par le partage de la rente sur la base de la residence et par les phenomenes d exteralites fiscales elles sont aussi le resultat d inefficacites globales plutot que locales dans le cadre de ce modele les auteurs analysent le role du gouvernement federal effectuant des transferts inter gouverementaux pour corriger ces inefficacites en plus de presenter une synthese des sources d inefficacite dans les regimes federaux les auteurs font un bref rappel en passant a l ensemble des arguments fondes sur l equite qu on utilise pour rationaliser les paiements de perequation this paper is a linear combination of two papers presented at the may 1982 meetings of the canadian economics association in halifax entitled the case for equalization payments by the authors and recent developments in the theory of regional economic policy in canada by boadway the authors are grateful for comments by the discussants jim johnson and baxter macdonald and by jack mintz brian scarfe gerard belanger david sewell tom courchene and the referees we are especially heavily indebted to dan usher for many stimulating comments and suggestions while the work was in progress some of the above persons will undoubtedly disagree with the emphasis we have chosen to put on various aspects of the analysis for policy purposes support for some of this work has been provided by the economic council of canada and is gratefully acknowledged canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xv no 4 november novembre 1982 printed in canada imprimd au canada 0008 4085 82 0000 0613 01 50 1982 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 127 on wed 12 oct 2016 04 27 47 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 614 robin boadway and frank flatters

nash equilibria in models of fiscal competition abstract this paper analyzes nash equilibria in a simple model of an economy with jurisdictions engaging in fiscal competition small number nash equilibria in which tax rates are the strategic variables are shown not to coincide with nash equilibria in which public expenditure levels are the strategic variables

is there a leviathan in your neighborhood this paper measures effects of decentralization in local government hierarchies on local public sector size this sector shrinks if decentralization encourages competition among governments it expands if decentralization sacrifices scale economies in a sample of 3 022 counties larger county governments reduce competition and increase aggregate local public sector size relative to aggregate county income more cities and towns increase competition and reduce its size more special and school districts sacrifice scale economies and increase it two recent articles have attempted to identify the effects of decentralization in state and local government on the size of the state and local public sector wallace oates 1985 finds no important effects michael nelson 1987 finds modest evidence that increased competition among government units reduces the size of the public sector this article demonstrates that the effects of decentralization are important and complex decentralization which encourages competition reduces the size of the local public sector decentralization which discourages scale economies increases it

taxing variable cost environmental regulation as industrial policy abstract conventional wisdom has it that a country that enacts strict environmental regulations will place its firms at a competitive disadvantage this view has been challenged recently some commentators argue that stricter regulation will enhance domestic competitiveness strict regulations induce innovation we evaluate this argument in a strategic trade model in very special cases a strengthening of regulation may result in a shift of profits from foreign to domestic firms this is not a general result however environmental regulation should of course be imposed to control externalities but it is unlikely that it will serve to generate industrial advantage

pollution prevention strategy a study of indian firms abstract strategy that targets pollution prevention shall be the first one among sustainability strategies to be implemented to achieve early cost advantages and mitigate litigation risk this article aims to isolate pollution prevention strategy pps from other similar sustainability strategies and provides an independent scope of pps a questionnaire based survey was conducted among 689 managers of 60 indian firms known for their orientation towards sustainability factorial analysis delivered five factors highlighting the composition of associated variables descriptive statistics was used to understand the relative importance of various aspects of pps and status of implementation of this strategy in indian firms the results show that firms are paying higher attention to structured waste management and the priority is early cost advantages hence prefer less investment prone processes modifications the initiatives are geared mainly due to short term advantages than top management commitment and pro activeness to comply with environmental regulations firms believe in developing expertise and deploying standard practices it is evident that firms specifically train employees for pps implantation but lags in empowerment of employees resources allocation cross functional team formations and rewards for the employees also pps strategy is implemented as stand alone strategy and lacks the integration with core corporate strategy the study adds to existing literature by segregating pps from other similar strategies like product stewardship and cleaner technology tested measure of pps shall help managers to assess their performance to achieve pollution prevention goals further the paper discusses some important managerial implications

brazilian biofuels and social exclusion established and concentrated ethanol versus emerging and dispersed biodiesel increasing interest in biofuels trade between developed and developing countries has spurred worldwide discussions on issues such as subsidies and the food for fuel crisis one issue missing in recent discourse is the pressure exerted on developing countries to adopt large scale mechanized farming practices to increase economic efficiencies such approaches often exclude small scale farmers from participating in the emerging biofuels market thus exacerbating poverty and social exclusion drawing on both qualitative and technical data we discuss such pressures using brazilian ethanol and biodiesel production pressure from international markets to become more economically efficient may contribute towards the erosion of recent schemes to encourage social benefits for small farmers in biodiesel production we conclude with trade and policy implications

the mis allocation of capital is capital allocated so that its marginal product is equated to the market interest rate is the marginal product of capital equalized across its alternative uses this paper attempts to answer both of these questions using data from india and concludes that both these standard properties fail by a wide margin jel o16 g2

environmental relevance and use of energy indicators in environmental management and research this thesis aim is to develop an approach for scoping of environmental aspects regarding the material use in a large organisation in order to contribute to a strategic environmental management the study object is the swedish national rail authority the transport sector is closely linked to the environmental pressures caused by our society consequently a lot of studies have been made regarding the contribution from different transport sectors however the bulk of these studies concerns only the transports and thus omits the environmental pressures from the material use needed to support these sectors i e building and maintaining the infrastructure the rail transport sector is generally conceived to be the most environmentally adapted land transport mode however this notion commonly only includes environmental pressures from the traffic phase the method uses material related energy use and co2 emissions as a proxy to environmental pressures from material use furthermore the robustness of the method is tested by the use of scenarios and sensitivity analysis in particular the environmental relevance of the energy indicator is studied the approach developed in this thesis can be used to introduce new perspectives such as upstream environmental pressures to an organisation s environmental management it can be employed to identify hot spots in an organisation s material use consequently this new knowledge can be used to influence the design of new products to set environmental demands for purchasing and to focus further environmental analyses of the hot spots the approach can also be used to broaden the perspectives in for instance environmental impact assessments strategic environmental assessment and environmental reviews in the studied rail building project 3 products constituted 99 5 weight of the total material use these products were steel rails concrete ties and ballast materials they share the common characteristics of being noncomplex non toxic and made out of very few materials

the eclectic paradigm of international production a restatement and some possible extensions this article reviews some of the criticisms directed towards the eclectic paradigm of international production over the past decade and restates its main tenets the second part of the article considers a number of possible extensions of the paradigm and concludes by asserting that it remains a robust general framework for explaining and analysing not only the economic rationale of economic production but many organisational and impact issues in relation to mne activity as well

social construction and physical nihilation of the keystone xl pipeline lessons from international relations theory abstract if a prime goal of energy policy is to achieve energy security why is there a controversy over the proposed keystone xl pipeline designed to deliver new supplies of oil from within north america this viewpoint seeks answers in the debate over the underlying purposes of energy policy how does one answers the question what do we want from energy policy perceptions of feasible answers and policy options change over time as witnessed in the 1970s analogous shifts in opinion are changing today s policy debates and widening the contradictions in policy purposes attention to the existence of these contradictions without illusions is necessary to meet the policy challenges of the future effectively

a game theory analysis of market incentives for us switchgrass ethanol the renewable fuel standard 2007 set aggressive cellulosic biofuel goals that have not been realized corn ethanol dominates the market and penetration of cellulosic ethanol is unlikely in the near term due to economic and technical barriers this paper uses game theory to model biomass and ethanol production decisions and calculate the incentives that would be necessary to drive the industry to obtain the cellulosic ethanol goals after identifying the desired performance of a cellulosic ethanol supply chain a nonlinear optimization model is developed to analyze two major scenarios that estimate conservative and optimistic technological improvements in cellulosic biomass and ethanol production a potential carbon market is explored to determine its efficacy as an incentive mechanism results indicate that a carbon market would only be sufficient to incentivize a cellulosic ethanol industry under the optimistic improvement scenario with the highest switchgrass price for all other scenarios the carbon price needed to incentivize the industry would exceed the reasonable range and additional incentives would be needed to achieve the production goals of the renewable fuel standard

searching for leviathan comment and extension in a recent article wallace oates 1985 investigated whether fiscal decentralization tended to act as a constraining influence on the overall size of the public sector this hypothesis has been advanced by several alternative theories of government behavior including richard musgrave s 1959 model of how the distribution function of government would be carried out by subnational governments geoffrey brennan and james buchanan s 1980 leviathan model and the more traditional public choice model for example walter hettich and stanley winer 1984 all contend that the decentralization of tax and spending decisions introduces competition among governmental units seeking to attract citizens and other mobile resources and thereby constrains taxing power oates analyzed two data sets one pertaining to the state and local sector in the united states and the other consisting of a sample of 43 countries and found little empirical support for the decentralization hypothesis the purpose of this paper is to reconsider his analysis in the case of state and local governments specifically it will be argued that oates s measures of decentralization may be inappropriate to test the hypothesis furthermore by taking into account the structure or composition of local governmental jurisdictions within a state empirical support of the decentralization hypothesis can be marshaled for general purpose local governments such as counties and municipalities i measuring fiscal decentralization among the states

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

some pervasive challenges to sustainability by design of electronic products a conceptual discussion sustainability should encompass responsibility for unintended environmental consequences of modern developments this study examined some pervasive challenges to sustainability by design of electronic products namely i product and consumption redundancies i embodied environmental and social impacts occurring distant in time and space from the point of consumption and iii production and consumption dynamics this analysis identified essential developments in certain areas that can assist design practice in preventing unintended environmental consequences these were 1 complementing life cycle assessment studies with analyses of unintended environmental consequences and 2 exploiting the vital role of product design in fostering a circular economy indicators that provide information about a the increasing spatial and decreasing temporal separation of production consumption and waste management b constraints in raw materials supply and c marginal changes in money and time spent should be available to product designers and consumers furthermore information technology namely computer aided design cad tools should be refined to assist product designers in designing for effective circularity and end of waste and limiting hibernation of resources in the use phase

determinants of the performance of microfinance institutions a systematic review microfinance institutions mfis generally aim at improving the access of the poor to financial services while at the same time being financially sustainable but what do we know about how mfis reach and combine these two goals we carry out a systematic review of close to 170 papers discussing the determinants of the financial and social performance of mfis the review shows that the most important determinants addressed in the literature are mfi characteristics size age and type of organization their funding sources the quality of organizational governance and the mfis external context such as macro economic institutional and political conditions the evidence on these issues is rather mixed moreover the direction of the relationship between these drivers and mfi performance depends on the context particularly the country specific context finally there is a lack of consensus in the literature on the measurement of financial and social performance due to the complexity of the concept we argue that social performance should only be assessed by using a multidimensional perspective this can be done either by applying recent and holistic social performance measures such as the spi4 or at least by using a combination of proxies such as outreach gender and rural measures

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

performance of microfinance institutions does government ideology matter summary we draw on the political economy theory and examine whether incumbent government s political ideology affects the performance of microfinance institutions mfis we collect data on 619 mfis from 75 countries over the period of 1996 2012 and merge them with country level data on government ideology and other economic and institutional factors we find that mfis operating in a left wing regime have higher portfolio growth rates relative to the ones operating in a right wing or a centrist regime furthermore under leftist political leadership mfis have lower funding costs lower operating costs and lower default costs the electoral incentives of left wing governments however impair the capacity of mfis to increase financial revenue thus despite having lower costs these mfis are not more sustainable relative to those operating in right wing or centrist regimes academics and policymakers devote substantial resources to better understand the conditions under which mfis are more likely to flourish and deliver on their promises we contribute to this endeavor by empirically showing that government ideology is an important determinant of mfi performance

shifting chinese organizational responses to evolving greening pressures organizations are facing various evolving pressures to green their practices these pressures range from obligatory forces to voluntary measures environmental pressures traditionally influenced organizations to seek reactive and internal practices the adopted environmental management em practices have evolved to be more proactive and external as the focus has shifted to supply chains this paper aims to further understand the driving mechanisms for em practices under various external pressures to meet this research goal this study extends the theory of dynamic incentives of environmental policies and institutional theory to develop environmental pressures using an empirical study of 422 chinese manufacturers covering all 31 provinces and provincial cities an exploratory factor analysis reveals four em practices factors and four pressures drivers factors results of a hierarchical regression analysis show that coercive pressures positively relate to more reactive internal em practices less coercive pressures positively relate to more proactive external and green supply chain management practices the empirical findings provide further support that voluntary regulatory measures can help motivate companies in extending their em efforts to supply chains the work also provides insights into how organizations may respond to evolving regulatory regimes dynamic incentives of environmental regulatory policy and various institutional pressures

income redistribution in a common labor market when households are mobile among jurisdictions income redistribution by individual jurisdictions creates fiscal externalities a model of interjurisdictional migration is used to study the nature of this redistributive externality analysis of optimal redistribution and optimal corrective subsidies from higher level governments shows that benefit levels for the recipients of income transfers and tax rates on mobile taxpayers should be equalized across jurisdictions a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market can achieve welfare improvements through coordination of domestic redistributive policy or through the intervention of a higher level government copyright 1991 by american economic association

the double dividend second best worlds and real world environmental policy abstract the recent series of papers by bovemberg goulder parry and others argue that the double dividend is unlikely to exist because of second best problems they argue that the imposition of environmental tax in an economy already distorted by income taxes will further distort the economy by reducing incentives to supply labor our paper argues that this is not likely to be the case because of the restrictive assumptions made by these models and because of the role of the environment as a factor of production

information the cost of credit and operational eﬃciency an empirical study of microfinance we provide direct evidence on the impact of asymmetric information on both financing and operating activities through a study of credit evaluations of microfinance institutions mfis we employ a regression discontinuity model that exploits the eligibility criteria of an evaluation subsidy ofered by a nonprofit consortium evaluations dramatically cut the cost of financing this efect is strongest for commercial lenders and for short term mfi lender relationships the impact of evaluations on the supply of finance is mixed evaluated mfis lend more efciently extending more loans per employee the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

analyzing structure of two echelon closed loop supply chain for pricing quality and recycling management abstract this paper analyzes the effects of recycling and product quality level on pricing decision in a two echelon closed loop supply chain clsc where demand is sensitive with price and quality level of the product under stackelberg game setting this paper considers three possible collection activities of used product for recycling viz retailer led collection manufacturer led collection and third party led collection it is found that third party s involvement in used product collection activity is always disadvantageous in this proposed model cost parameters of the reverse channel play an important role in determining best channel structure quality level and price of the product directly vary with recycling a threshold of collection effort determines which party between manufacturer and retailer can provide the best quality product at least price to resolve channel conflict and to distribute surplus profit the concepts of sub game perfect equilibrium and alternative offer bargaining strategy are used the analysis reveals that the subgame perfect equilibrium retail price cuts out channel conflict and depicts particular profit split irrespective of the offering party the proposed model is also justified by illustrating numerical examples

industrial metabolism and the linkages between economics ethics and the environment abstract with industrialization the material flows in the world have grown enormously expanded geographically and become more open and complex traditionally the emissions have been strongly connected to earlier steps in the material flows extraction and raw materials intensive industry but during the last few decades the emissions from industrial pointsources have decreased radically in the western industrialized world the result of the industrial cleanup is a shift towards the latter steps of the societal material flows the relative importance of consumption emissions has increased as indicated in studies of the rhine basin important prerequisites for this development have been increasing environmental awareness and public opinion putting pressure on legislators authorities and companies and a dynamic industrial development with structural changes that have permitted investments in modern technology and emissions control despite the often radical emission reductions problems with acidification eutrophication diffusion of persistent organic chemicals and climate change still persist on a regional and global level during the last decade there has been an increasing emphasis on the international and global environmental problems the materials flow perspective has experienced a major breakthrough waste minimization recycling life cycle analysis and environmental auditing have become major themes in most european countries and have also started to influence industry the importance of the consumer and his attitudes and actions as well as the relationship between trade and environment are often emphasized in this context the industrial metabolism approach needs further development to be able to assist in meeting the modern challenges of environmental management to sum up flows of a few elements or products in a limited region is not sufficient it is necessary to develop the analysis of the context of the flows include industrial economic and geographical change in the analysis and more actively seek connection to political and industrial decision making and human behavior and attitudes the time geographical process landscape launched by torsten hagerstrand could be an important source of inspiration in this context

on distinguishing between leviathan and public interest governments in a federal state the purpose of this paper is to derive testable implications for the proposition that provincial governments in a specific federal system are leviathans that is revenue maximizers the leviathan model associated with brennan and buchanan 1980 hypothesizes that governments behave like monopolies who seek to maximize their revenue this model is contrasted with an alternative hypothesis the public interest theory a theoretical model of a federal state based on the canadian system is constructed and testable implications are derived the principal feature of the model is that it is set in the context of a particular game involving the federal government provincial governments and a consumer in attempting to model this situation care has been taken to try to incorporate as many institutional features of the canadian federal system as possible while still allowing the model to be somewhat parsimonious with some modification the model may be applicable to other countries with similar federal systems

shared savings contracts for indirect materials in supply chains channel profits and environmental impacts there are many materials for which the quantity needed by a firm is at best indirectly related to the quantity of final product produced by that firm such as solvents in manufacturing processes or office supplies for any such indirect materials an inescapable incentive conflict exists the buyer wishes to minimize consumption of these indirect materials while the supplier s profits depend on increasing volume both buyer and supplier can exert effort to reduce consumption hence making the overall supply chain more efficient however no supplier will voluntarily participate unless contract terms are fundamentally revised this can be done through a variety of shared savings contracts where both parties profit from a consumption reduction this paper analyzes several such contracts currently in use for chemicals purchasing we show that such contracts can always increase supply chain profits but need not lead to reduced consumption we analyze equilibrium effort levels consumption and total profits and show how these change with the contract parameters we find that the goals of maximizing joint profits and minimizing consumption are generally not aligned also surprisingly a decrease in a cost parameter can lead to a decrease in profits it may be necessary but is always possible to renegotiate the shared savings contract to reap the benefits of a cost decrease

between anarchy and leviathan a note on the design of federal states abstract recent research suggests a rationale for the autonomy retained by federal states lower and intermediate level governments by encouraging interjurisdictional competition federal structures constrain the pursuit by public officials of private objectives inconsistent with the public weal but using federal structures to achieve this end has a cost the more decentralized a nation s public sector the more likely that some of the externalities generated by the provision of public goods and services will be ignored this note investigates the balance between the costs and benefits of decentralization that must be struck by a federal state s designers

fujifilm kodak duopolistic competition in japan and the united states this article analyzes the duopolistic competition of fujifilm and kodak according to the product life cycle and game theoretic exchange of hostage hypothesis of international trade and investment it shows how each firm used its home team and first mover advantages to compete with the other it shows that fujifilm s strategic use of marketing logistics and innovative products reduced kodak s market share in japan and elsewhere this article has implications for the global competition of multinationals policies and for market competition and trade policies of the u s japan and other countries

federalism and the size of government over the last few decades the size of the public sector in both absolute and relative terms has increased in all of the western economies this has led to considerable investigation of the factors determining government size factors considered have included income elasticity of voter demand for public goods i e wagner s law relative price changes threshold effects e g wars or depressions interest group demands e g public sector employees or unions 17 productivity differentials 1 and redistributional motivations 18 10 one factor which has received little more than passing interest is government structure that is centralization of government activities as opposed to decentralization or federalism authors such as fratianni and spinelli 7 musgrave and musgrave 12 beck 2 and buchanan 4 make no mention of government structure as a factor in the determination of government size when considered the impact of government structure on government size is treated more as an afterthought for example mueller and murrell 11 incorporate a centralization variable in only two of their twenty two regression equations and then only in their two stage least squares equations and offer little analysis of its expected impact on government size exceptions to this standard treatment of federalism include brennan and buchanan 3 oates 15 nelson 13 14 and marlow 9 brennan and buchanan consider the structure of government and its impact on public sector size in the context of a revenue maximizing government model they argue that with mobile voters and local public goods decentralization of government taxing and expenditure powers would serve to constrain the size of the public sector in a tiebout like world any attempt on the part of one jurisdiction to exploit its citizenry would result in instantaneous and complete migration on the part of the citizenry to an alternative nonexploitive jurisdiction this competition among jurisdictions for the patronage of the citizenry limits the extent of fiscal exploitation possible and as such the size of the public sector brennan and buchanan note however that w ithin a constitutionally designed federal structure one would predict that there would be constant pressures by competitive lower level governments to secure institutional rearrangements that would moderate competitive pressures 3 182 these institutional rearrangements would take the form of collusive agreements between the central and lower level governments which assign to the central government what were previously lower level revenue raising powers subject to the revenues being returned to the lower level governments by

bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence a discussion on the coase theorem and the porter and van der linde hypothesis environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have been associated with the notion of additional costs of compliance rather than with innovation and sustainability the contrary has also been suggested claiming that strict environmental legislation merely serves as a catalyst for firms to retain obvious economic and environmental mutual gains so called win wins laying around waiting to be collected such implications can be seen from the porter and van der linde writings heavily criticised by palmer et al as being built on faulty examples this paper supports that conclusion and uses property rights and transactions costs theories to find private incentives to explore the win wins for those actors who have the largest potentials to diminish the pressure on our environment by applying the coase theorem emphasising transaction costs and property rights this paper argues that strong public support is needed to create private incentives for exploring economic and environmental win win innovations the public support suggested is to a extend producer responsibilities where the same costs which may be neglected by the end consumers will if transferred to the design owner be viewed as a production cost and to b enforce environmental public procurement both may be combined with a support to c actors such as non governmental organisations and consumer agencies positioning themselves as information bridges by informing the consumers the negative effects of asymmetric information among actors can thereby be diminished as well as the low interest to primarily care for the environment among common consumers