the economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting congress confronts two major organizational problems that affect the behavior of legislators party leaders and groups doing business with congressional committees the costly nature of monitoring and the absence of explicit mechanisms for upholding agreements the problem of monitoring implies that party leaders will have a difficult time influencing decisions made in decision making arenas where the actions of legislators are less visible as in congressional committees while legislators can evade leadership monitoring of their actions within committees once an issue leaves a committee the costs of monitoring decline and leadership influence increases the absence of mechanisms for assuring that legislators keep their bargains means that groups will place an emphasis on dealing with reliable legislators those who can be counted upon to uphold their end of a bargain thus party leaders are more effective in influencing floor voting because of their better ability to monitor legislator behavior however obligations to important interest groups will be more immune to leadership influence because of the incentives for committee members to adhere to their bargains

reputational capital opportunism and self policing in legislatures this paper examines the question of whether reputational capital can deter opportunistic behavior among legislators preparing to exit the house of representatives i create a measure of reputational trustworthiness based upon pooled samples of constituency opinion derived from the national election studies surveys i then examine the extent to which such reputational good will among constituents deters lame duck foreign travel by exiting house incumbents within the context of a quasi experimental research design the analysis suggests that legislators may be self policed by their reputations for honesty and trustworthiness to the point of discouraging unethical activity urveys i then examine the extent to which such s derived from the national election studies

biofuel investment in tanzania omissions in implementation abstract increasing demand for biofuels as a component of climate change mitigation energy security and a fossil fuel alternative attracts investors to developing countries like tanzania ample unused land is critical for first generation biofuels production and an important feature to attract foreign direct investments that can contribute towards agricultural modernization and poverty reduction initiatives despite the economic justifications the existing institutional and infrastructural capacities dictate the impacts of biofuels market penetrations furthermore exogenous factors like global recessionary pressure depressed oil prices below the level at which biofuel production were profitable in 2007 making tanzania s competitiveness and potential benefits questionable this paper investigates the extent that first generation jatropha based biofuels industry development in tanzania observed during fieldwork in kisarawe and bahi may fulfill policy objectives this paper argues that without strong regulatory frameworks for land investment management and rural development biofuel industrialization could further exacerbate poverty and food insecurity in tanzania the paper concludes with policy recommendations for first generation biofuel development while keeping in mind implications of second generation production since the topic is broad and multifaceted a multidisciplinary approach is used that includes political institutional and agricultural economics to analyze and conceptualize biofuel industry development and food security

bioeconomics and post keynesian economics a search for common ground abstract bioeconomics and post keynesian economics a search for common ground by john m gowdy published in this journal vol 3 1991 calls for an active income policy to ensure that a no growth economy would not condemn a large percent of the population to perpetual poverty such an active income policy has an interesting side effect if there is unemployment in the economy it reduces unemployment thus pushing the non pareto optimal economy toward optimality

the inverted pyramid a neo ricardian view on the economy environment relationship abstract in ecological economics natural resources which may contribute only a small amount to gdp are viewed as fundamental to the functioning of the economy they are sometimes pictured as sitting at the base of an inverted pyramid with the rest of the economy balanced on top of them in this paper we show that when prices are set by markup a standard heterodox assumption then the inverted pyramid picture of the economy emerges naturally in a neo ricardian model we demonstrate the use of the model with brief applications to biophysical economics the paper is one of a growing number that use heterodox macroeconomics to address questions in ecological economics

factors affecting drivers willingness to pay for biofuels the case of italy biofuels represent a promising alternative to substitute fossil fuels and given the relevance of environmental impacts of the transport sector policy initiatives worldwide aim at supporting the shift towards such cleaner energy source acknowledging the crucial role that biofuels will play in years to come in the energetic paradigm the study aims at investigating key determinants of drivers willingness to pay for biofuels focusing on a sample of 260 individuals from northern italy n 260 in line with recent research on consumer behavior socio demographics are not good predictors of drivers willingness to pay surprisingly on the other hand knowledge of the topic is negatively correlated to willingness to pay so that the more people know about biofuels the less they are willing to pay a premium price moreover certification is not an effective tool to convince drivers of the eco friendliness of biofuels hence spurring willingness to pay possible explanations of the research findings as well as policy implications are discussed in detail along with suggestions for future research on the topic

local acceptance and heterogeneous externalities of biorefineries biofuels can potentially reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from energy use and help address the climate change problem however the siting and operation of a biofuel production facility can impact the members of the host community both positively e g local jobs and income and negatively e g pollution and noise such ambivalent and heterogeneous external impacts result in either local support or opposition to the facility which in turn becomes a key factor affecting biorefinery location decisions and subsequent success of biorefineries while a number of prior studies have analyzed economic and environmental impacts of biofuels systematic analysis of local acceptability of biofuel production facilities is lacking our study explores factors that influence community attitudes towards biofuel facilities we assess the strength of acceptability or opposition by estimating the local community s willingness to pay wtp either to support or to oppose a proposed biorefinery we posit that such wtp estimates provide a more comprehensive measure of local acceptability results also suggest that county level socio economic characteristics significantly influence these attitudes and wtp

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

life cycle value analysis for sustainability evaluation of bioenergy products abstract bioenergy products appear to be practical effective and environmentally sustainable renewable energy resources which simultaneously reduce fuel associated environmental impacts and increase economic value of the products the use of bioproducts may not always have a net positive environmental or economic attributes therefore an adequate sustainability evaluation tool for the products which incorporates life cycle approach is generally desired this paper presents an informative value analysis which couples concepts of life cycle energy efficiency and production cost ratios for a feasible assessment of function value for bioenergy products bioenergy products that are selected for the value assessment in this study include biodiesel bioethanol and biocharcoal this study is divided into two parts value factor development along with discussions on the results of value analysis for bioenergy products and a sensitivity analysis in determining influential factors for value factor estimations the results showed that microalgae biodiesel and biochar had the lowest and the highest function values respectively among assessed bioenergy systems this was mainly due to the significant difference in energy input in manufacturing design and production cost future improvements in bioenergy production can be anticipated for developing bioenergy products with high value factors which demonstrate high economic viability environmental performance and social acceptability this analysis can be of interest to bioenergy production planners for sustainable product development

shirking and political support in the u s senate 1964 1984 several empirical studies have suggested that legislators engage in a surprisingly large degree of on the job consumption or ideological behavior these findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that legislators can be modelled as though they seek to maximize political support this paper attempts to determine whether commonly used proxies for ideology in fact represent behavior to which voters are averse the results show that legislators who engage in more of this behavior lose general election support without generally receiving compensating increases in partyprimary support a corollary to this result is that voters punish shirking legislators significantly

brand names and barriers to entry in political markets the most obvious implication of this discussion is that barriers to entry in politics will raise the costs of governments transferring wealth more generally it will raise the cost of public provision of goods and services in the case of transfers the inefficiency created by barriers depends on whether one values government transfers the total transfer the transfer to the beneficiaries plus the politician s commission is maximized by the politician who can create support the most efficiently for other governmental services which are viewed as efficiency creating e g national defense these barriers reduce the amount of a valuable output we desire to purchase this result also supplies a possible efficiency explanation for the limitation on the number of terms imposed on the presidency and many governorships brand names are not really the barriers information costs are what cause brand name to be used and are the more fundamental barrier to entry what we are arguing is that private and not public organizations can in certain respects better overcome these information costs

searching for symptoms of political shirking congressional foreign travel despite the hypothesized propensity for shirking to marklegislative institutions the evidence is rather equivocal moreover most of the research has focused exclusively onlegislator voting thereby constraining whatevergeneralizations might emerge the purpose of this paper is tocontribute to the debate over the question of politicalshirking by extending the range of phenomena examined toinclude congressional foreign travel our analysis providesevidence that opportunism is a problem in congress we findthat last period problems have arisen in the area of foreigntravel and that increased scrutiny to the problem on the partof congress only shifted consumption patterns i e legislators began taking foreign junkets near but not at theend of their legislative careers not all foreign travelshould be construed as worthless junketing since there isstrong evidence that some foreign travel is related tomembers responsibilities on congressional committees

shirking and sorting in a political market with finite lived politicians this paper analyzes principal agent slack in the context of a political market composed of voters challengers and incumbents the introduction of a last period via finite livedness in combination with voters imperfect information about politicians preferences causes time varying shirking behavior on the part of politicians political markets eventually sort out those politicians with significantly deviant policy preferences potentially providing a solution to the last period problem and enabling politicians to make credible commitments in the extreme sorting can insure that it is not worthwhile for potential shirkers to run for office a systematic relationship between political shirking and number of terms in office may exist and depends on how quickly sorting takes place we show that evidence of little if any shirking is quite consistent with politicians having diverse and strongly held policy preferences in addition if sorting is a significant feature of political markets cross sectional studies will tend to oversample little and non shirking politicians compared to longitudinal studies reinterpretations of existing empirical work are also discussed

how efficient is the voting market it is by now well established that good macroeconomic conditions benefit the incumbent president and his congressional party confreres at the polls this result is not unanimous see for example stigler or arcelus and meltzer2 and may not be universal 3 however the basic results in kramer 4 the progenitor of the modern literature on the effect of economic conditions on elections seem to have stood the test of time the broad consensus of this literature is that voters in presidential and congressional elections 1 reward income growth and punish unemployment and inflation 2 probably give greater weight to income growth than to unemployment and inflation and 3 myopically ignore any information beyond the recent past say prior to the election year 5 so far however the data have outrun interpretation while economic conditions seem to matter we do not know why they matter or how plausibly to characterize the process by which voters translate information about economic conditions into voting decisions this article tries to fill that gap though it extends the empirical literature to gubernatorial elections its main con

support for renewable energy in china a survey experiment with internet users abstract mitigating climate change requires reductions of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases because china is the world s largest emitter of greenhouse gases global efforts to stop climate change depend on china s policies while renewable energy can replace coal in power generation to reduce carbon pollution the perceptions of renewable energy among the chinese public have not been studied people s perceptions are important because although china is not a democracy existing studies have shown that the government s legitimacy depends on popular support this article reports results from an online survey experiment among 2086 chinese internet users this methodology allows the exploration of the responsiveness of chinese respondents to various frames of the benefits and costs of renewable energy the levels of support for renewable energy among the respondents were high there was a positive and statistically significant response to an energy security framing while neither the air pollution nor the climate change frames had a statistically significant effect on the levels of public support economic concerns are also salient to the respondents as a counter frame emphasizing the cost of renewables undermined the effectiveness of the energy security frame similar to studies from other countries the cost and security of energy generation are priorities for the respondents if these findings apply more broadly to the chinese public the government can create public support for renewables by emphasizing energy security in communication

final voting in legislatures in representative democracies such as the united states legislatures provide the transmission mechanism through which pressure from private interests becomes public policy considerable attention has been given in the literature to explanations of the relevant forces that appear to be driving the legislative process for example much research has focused on the relative impact of economic vs ideological influences on congressional voting behavior in this approach the way that legislators vote on proposed legislation is modeled as a function of the preferences of various economic and ideological interests groups including the legislator s own preferences for wealth and ideology james kau and paul rubin 1979 joseph kalt and mark zupan 1984 sam peltzman 1985 missing from this approach is the idea that when legislatures are the transmission mechanism they are costly and imperfect organizations for generating political influence gary becker 1983 as such rules and institutions will emerge that are related to problems of internal control within the organization of a legislature in this paper we focus on the role of floor voting from the standpoint of legislator organization and control we seek to expand the interpretation of the meaning of floor voting activity by examining the timing sequence and outcomes of such votes specifically we look at final floor voting in the u s congress the patterns described in the analysis below suggest that a broader analytical perspective on the economic function of floor voting is required the findings also suggest that to identify more precisely the forces that are driving legislator voting behavior it is important to recognize the role of legislative transactional costs and institutional constraints in section i the conceptual framework for the empirical results is discussed in more detail the purpose is not to develop a fullblown theory of legislative organization rather it is to focus the reader s attention on several hypotheses about the function of final floor voting as a device for controlling legislator behavior within the legislature empirical results including an explanation of the timing and sequence of final votes on bills are reported in section ii the data for these tests are drawn from legislative activities in the u s house of representatives during the 96th and 98th congresses some concluding remarks are offered in section iii

employment creation and green development strategy employment creation has received surprisingly little attention in the literature on environmental economics this paper argues for closer ties between sustainable development and employment creating development at both the global and the national levels of planning and policy the paper briefly reports on the employment challenge confronting indonesia to highlight the jobs versus environment dilemma facing a developing country that is rich in natural resources but densely populated it is argued that the high income countries of the north should take the initiative in raising funds through ecotaxes levies on international trade and other appropriate income policies in order to increase investment flows for job creating development in the south to make sustainability a practical reality

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

public attitudes toward political and technological options for biofuels abstract this paper explores detailed public attitudes regarding the expanding range of biofuels technologies and policy options subjects from 34 in depth focus groups in central indiana were fairly knowledgeable about biofuels technologies but uninformed about biofuels policies despite being from a state where biofuels are a salient political issue a narrow majority was supportive of biofuels in general but expressed greater enthusiasm about second generation biofuels subject beliefs about biofuels economic and environmental impacts were most important in shaping these opinions rather than concerns about energy independence or other issues in terms of policy options subjects were most supportive of an alternative fuels standard and least supportive of a fixed subsidy and a cap and trade policy in contrast to arguments about technologies participants primarily framed their attitudes toward policies in terms of fairness although discussion did not substantially change aggregate preferences for most policies it did increase support significantly for at least one policy proposal a variable subsidy for ethanol it is particularly noteworthy that subjects generally did not support the most common biofuel technology corn based ethanol or the most prominent biofuels policy option the fixed subsidy despite residing in a state hosting a strong corn industry and staunch political advocates for both positions

an explanation for why senators from the same state vote differently so frequently abstract this paper explains why rational well informed voters elect politicians with divergent platforms given well defined constituencies and the costliness of any individual politician creating transfers across all interest groups we show that different politicians from the same district can successfully represent vastly different constituencies and still have each politician producing the support maximizing level of transfers our explanation focuses on how obtaining wealth transfers reduces successful constituencies returns to obtaining additional transfers the evidence strongly rejects alternative explanations based upon the median voter and polarized policy preference approaches

political parties and political shirking using ada roll call voting scores for the 1947 2006 period i find that senators shirk in their last term the degree of shirking is limited by political parties which constrain the politician in his last term and varies by post senate career choices the results highlight the importance of political parties in the repeated game that is electoral politics

labeling renewable energies how the language surrounding biofuels can influence its public acceptance abstract despite growing interest and investments in biological fuels little is known of how the public form opinions toward this alternative fuel technology this study examines public opinion of biofuels by focusing on several factors that can be expected to influence citizens opinions about the issue first we tested the results of a framing experiment that was embedded within a public opinion survey this experiment explored how the public responded to the term biofuels as compared to the term ethanol our results suggest that overall respondents tended to react more favorably to the former as opposed to the latter term second we examined the impacts of sociodemographics on public attitudes toward biofuels we found that while sociodemographics did little to consistently explain attitudes toward biofuels there was clear evidence of ideological influences on attitudes with self identifying democrats showing more positive attitudes overall finally we explored the interaction between political partisanship and our experimental manipulation we found evidence that our wording manipulation differed based on the political party identification of our respondents with democrats fluctuating greatly in their assessments depending upon whether they were asked to evaluate biofuels or ethanol

complex biofuels related scenarios generated by qualitative reasoning under severe information shortages a review abstract there is a broad spectrum of br biofuel related models however the models are highly specific such models cannot flexibly support complex decision making activities to identify feasible trade offs among many objective functions they represent just one point of view e g engineering company economics therefore cbrms complex biofuel related model are studied in this paper cbrms must cover additional aspects e g macroeconomic ecology sociology and politics such models are inevitably unique partially subjective inconsistent vague and multidimensional ai artificial intelligence has developed a number of tools to solve such problems qualitative reasoning is one of them it is based on the least information intensive quantifiers i e trends there are just three trend qualitative values plus increasing zero constant negative decreasing there are many cbrm items related to soft aspects e g politics taxation etc which cannot be quantified by numbers they are too vague for example if the political sociological sensitivity of land ownership is increasing then the cost of biofuels is increasing such verbal knowledge item cannot be incorporated into a traditional numerical model the paper describes developments of cbrms based on expert knowledge and common sense a consensus among experts is often not reached because of substantial subjectivity of experts knowledge a qualitative intersection of cbrms developed by several experts is simple the case study presents a model based on integration of 10 heuristics using 9 variables e g refinery capacity cost of biofuel production and biofuel demand the result is represented by 13 scenarios the paper is self contained no a prior knowledge of qualitative models is required

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

public acceptance of biofuels abstract the public acceptance of biofuels in greece is examined in this work the analysis of 571 face to face interviews shows that 90 7 of the respondents believe that climatic changes are related to fossil fuel consumption while only 23 8 know the difference between biodiesel and bioethanol 76 1 believe that energy saving should precede the use of an alternative source of energy only 27 3 believe that priority must be given to biofuels over other renewable energy sources only 49 9 think that the use of biofuels can be an effective solution against climatic changes and 53 9 believe that the use of biofuels can be an effective solution for the energy problem finally 80 9 of the car owners are willing to use biofuels 44 8 are willing to pay the supplementary amount of 0 06 l of the fuel market price while the average amount reported as willing to pay was 0 079 l on top of the fuel market price furthermore eight models correlating the eight main responses with several socioeconomic variables are developed and analyzed those findings heave important policy implications related to the use and promotion of biofuels

does electoral accountability affect economic policy choices evidence from gubernatorial term limits this paper analyzes the behavior of u s governors from 1950 to 1986 to investigate a reputation building model of political behavior we argue that differences in the behavior of governors who face a binding term limit and those who are able to run again provides a source of variation in discount rates that can be used to test a political agency model we find evidence that taxes spending and other policy instruments respond to a binding term limit if a democrat is in office the result is a fiscal cycle in term limit states which lowers state income when the term limit binds

bioeconomics and post keynesian economics a search for common ground abstract this paper is concerned with the links between two schools of economic thought which challenge the neoclassical synthesis bioeconomics refers to that school of economics stressing the fact that the human species is a part of the larger biosystem of the planet and ultimately subject to the same laws and limitations as other life forms post keynesian economics is a specific school of macroeconomics stressing the fundamental ideas of keynes marx and kalecki concerning uncertainty the nature of production and the role of government in economic affairs bioeconomics and post keynesian economics have much in common in terms of their methodological framework their emphasis on production rather than exchange and their interpretation of the social rate of discount a potential area of conflict between the two schools is their attitude toward economic growth the areas of commonality between the two schools are discussed and a research and policy program which combines the insights of both approaches is suggested

implementation of biofuels in malaysian transportation sector towards sustainable development a case study of international cooperation between malaysia and japan abstract modern transportation nowadays has evolved into an important economic activity for human civilisation even though various alternative energy solutions have been put forward to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels biofuels remain one of the few options which are capable of replacing the roles of fossil fuels in transportation sector without suffering from major economic losses malaysia with a huge supply of palm oil for biofuels production is intended to implement mandatory biodiesel blends in its transportation sector in 2011 in order to achieve its carbon reduction commitment towards a more sustainable development this implementation was originally targeted to start in 2009 but had to be postponed due to several obstacles such as expensive cost lack of sufficient infrastructure and low public demand on the other hand japan is also trying to fulfil its carbon reduction obligation as outlined under kyoto protocol with the usage of biofuels to replace fossil fuels in the transportation sector however it lacks sufficient biofuels supply to support its high transportation energy demand in this case study the mutual cooperation between malaysia and japan in the implementation of biofuels in transportation sector will be studied and analysed in order to overcome the challenges presented in both countries it is hope to ascertain potential cooperation opportunities amongst those two countries to promote biofuels energy as malaysia is rich in natural resources whilst japan has the relevant expertise and technology it is believed that the strengths from one country can help to cover for the weaknesses from the other and vice versa via closer bilateral partnership which will be extremely crucial when dealing with global energy issues ultimately it is hope that this case study will enable both malaysian and japanese government to achieve their renewable energy target in domestic transportation sector

the industrial organization of congress or why legislatures like firms are not organized as markets this paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions like market institutions legislative institutions reflect two key components the goals or preferences of individuals here representatives seeking reelection and the relevant transactions costs we present three conclusions first we show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators second we explain why given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange third our approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue

a critical review and an extension of the political shirking literature after substituting actual and real changes for proposed and nominal changes in budgetary and employment levels it is clear that the size and scope of the federal leviathon had not been reduced over 1982 83 it is also clear that the agencies which witnessed real budget cuts over this period were of minor importance in terms of the total u s budget future research on why only small agencies receive real budget cuts will provide us with a better understanding of the budgetary process

conceptualizing the acceptance of wind and solar electricity drawing from research interviews and the academic literature this article conceptualizes the conditions that promote investor confidence and the social acceptance of wind and solar sources of electricity it explores the factors influencing the acceptance of commercial wind turbines in denmark and india and residential solar panels in germany and the united states the article begins by justifying its selection of case studies and explaining the methodology behind its research interviews and field visits it then summarizes some of the key findings in recent surveys of public attitudes and market acceptance concerning renewable energy with a focus on why some investors and communities reject wind and solar systems whereas others rapidly approve and adopt them the article proposes that acceptance has multiple dimensions socio political community and market that must be met holistically in order for investors and users to embrace renewable energy the article argues that acceptance hinges upon the prevalence of nine factors the lack of such factors creates environments where they are rejected the theory is tested against four case studies that explore the forces driving renewable energy in denmark germany india and the united states

external governance and the eu policy for sustainable biofuels the case of mozambique growing demand for transport biofuels in the eu is driving an expansion of the industry in developing countries large scale production of energy crops for biofuel if mismanaged could cause detrimental environmental and social impacts the aim of this study is to examine whether the newly adopted eu directive 2009 28 ec and its sustainability certification system can effectively ensure sustainable production of biofuels outside the eu mozambique a least developed country with biofuels ambitions is selected as empirical case the effectiveness of the eu policy in analysed employing ideal models of external governance hierarchical market and network governance as analytical framework the findings show that the eu attempts to impose its rules and values on sustainable biofuels using its leverage through trade the market approach adopted by the eu is expected to produce only unstable subject to abrupt changes of market prices and demand and thin limited to climate and biodiversity issues policy results stronger emphasis on a network oriented approach based on substantial involvement of foreign actors and on international policy legitimacy is suggested as a way forward

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

outlook on biofuels in future studies a systematic literature review abstract foresight methods are useful for long range planning such as strategic energy management energy policy and renewable and sustainable energy planning to manage uncertainties futures studies may affect the anticipation and speculation of future and emerging technologies in this paper biofuels futures are explored based on a critical evaluation of the literature to draw the state of the art for the future oriented biofuel research a six fold typology mapping from two main futures studies methodologies is used i descriptive scenarios forecasts and statistical scenarios as descriptive methods ii roadmaps visions and backcasts as prescriptive methods the expectations embodied in the literature are then explored through deriving research challenges about the future of biofuels 1 the main motives and driving forces in a biofuel era 2 the main obstacles or difficulties confronting a biofuel era 3 the plausibility and importance of each of different scenarios 4 key technological breakthroughs for the bioeconomy 5 details about development maturity and flourish 6 biofuel era s significant achievement the literature explains a wide range of plausible futures from centralized systems related to technological breakthroughs to decentralized systems based on small scale renewable fundamental technological elements are uncovered and a plausible biofuel economy is drawn along with the necessary pathway to reach it the review shows a general agreement that a biofuel economy would develop gradually and a prompt shift to biofuels would require powerful governmental support coupled with significant disruptions such as changes in environmental principles of countries technology breakthroughs higher oil prices and urgency of climate change

attendance rates political shirking and the effect of post elective office employment attendance rates political shirking and the effect of post elective office employment i introduction political shirking the degree to which a politican s actions deviate from the wishes of his constituents can take many different dimensions economists e g amacher and boyes 1978 davis and porter 1989 dougan and munger 1989 kalt and zupan 1984 lott 1987d nelson and siberberg 1987 and peltzman 1984 have debated whether shirking exists in how a politician votes when he does vote this divergence is measured through some particular special interest voting ratings e g american conservative union americans for democratic action etc however shirking can obviously take as many forms as there are outputs that a politician produces besides how he votes he also produces services for his constituents involving everything from being personally available to listen to the constituents grievances to ensuring effective handling of case work by his staff see for example fiorina 1977 fenno 1978 and cain et al 1987 1 one dimension that has not been sufficiently examined is the extent to which politicians shirk by failing to vote on pending legislation 2 no attention has been given to which mechanisms will make this particular type of shirking relatively more costly most economists agree that opportunitic behavior by politicians is limited by the threat of reelection e g amacher and boyes 1978 barro 1973 kalt and zupan 1984 nelson 1976 and telser 1976 3 by implication the level of shirking should be the greatest when a politician decides to leave office however this opportunistic behavior might be reduced to the extent that political parties or constituencies impose costs for shirking through affecting politicisns post elective office career or the careers of their children thus a politicians last term in elective office may not represent his last period in any meaningful sense the next section outlines the differing views on how politicians act when they no longer face the threat of reelection section iii describes some empirical evidence on what mechanisms may prevent this last period problem the final section discusses the impliactions of these results ii the last period whether economists view politicians as ideologues e g kau and rubin 1979 and kalt and zupan 1984 or as simply attempting to maximize political support e g barro 1973 ferejohn 1986 nelson 1976 and peltzman 1984 the threat of reelection is seen as preventing shirking as kalt and zupan 1984 298 phrase it it appears that the proximity of the next election inhibits ideological shirking even those who do not view the last period as affecting how a politician votes argue that it will affect how often he votes lott 1987a 1987b has argued that if voters can determine and elect politicians that have ideological preferences corresponding exactly to the wishes of constituents politicians voting patterns should continue to reflect those values even when the cost of shirking in terms of forgone future votes is low the penalty to ideologues of not votingfor their constituency in the last period when they no longer face reelection is the forgone utility from not doing what they personally value assuming that politicians also desire leisure politicians should continue to vote for what they believe in but they should vote less frequently since they no longer receive the additional return of larger future support mechanisms to overcome this last period problem have been suggested by becker and stigler 1974 9 10 they argue that opportunistic behavior can be controlled if officeholders face the loss of a pension or equivalently a posted bond in the event of opportunistic behavior in their last term however the actual pension system does not effectively eliminate the last period for politicians since retirement payments are not based on cheating in the last period

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

a reexamination of the principal agent relationship in politics abstract that senators from the same state often have a large difference in their ideological voting records has proven inconvenient for a literature that has largely relied on a median voter model of elections one exception is palfrey review of economic studies 1984 51 139 156 whose analysis implies the hypothesis that the expected difference in such voting records varies directly with the variance of that state s density function of constituent ideological preferences this paper provides empirical testing consistent with this hypothesis the paper then argues that currently accepted methodology for measuring senatorial shirking is systematically biased towards indicating shirking and provides empirical analysis consistent with this argument

the last period problem in politics do congressional representatives not subject to a reelection constraint alter their voting behavior this study of roll call voting behavior in the u s house of representatives empirically documents the existence of an important simultaneity bias in the heretofore much investigated relationship between legislator ideological shirking and the security with which a legislator holds office the results indicate that while greater security allows a policymaker more leeway for ideological consumption increases in ideological on the job consumption also diminish a policymaker s security in office

voting for protection does direct foreign investment influence legislator behavior the political economy of trade protection has long been of interest to economists and policy makers the idea that levels of protection may be endogenous with trade flows has been a particularly important issue in the literature in general the endogenous protection literature postulates that import penetration will cause domestic interests to lobby more intensely for protection thus higher levels of import penetration lead to increased protection as a result a number of papers see for example arye l hillman 1982 wolfgang mayer 1984 robert e baldwin 1985 stephen p magee et al 1989 ronald d fischer 1992 have established that foreign firms will import less under a regime of endogenous protection than one where the level of protection is exogenous to trade flows on the empirical side daniel trefler 1993 finds that ignoring the endogeneity of trade and protection understates the impact of u s protection on imports by a magnitude of ten this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

social impacts of community renewable energy projects findings from a woodfuel case study there is much current interest in the potential of community based renewable energy projects to contribute to transition towards low carbon energy systems as well as displacing fossil fuel consumption by increasing renewable energy generation projects are expected to have a range of social impacts which may result in additional positive sustainability outcomes these include potential to increase acceptance of renewable energy developments awareness of renewable and sustainable energy technologies and issues uptake of low carbon technologies and sustainable pro environmental behaviours to date however there has been little investigation of whether and how these impacts occur this paper presents results from qualitative research investigating the social impacts of a community woodfuel project as experienced by project participants and other local stakeholders findings show projects can raise awareness of renewable energy technologies and increase uptake of renewables overall the case study project successfully changed the local social context for development of woodfuel heating reducing risk for all involved in the future development of this sector particularly in the immediate locality there was some evidence of increased engagement with wider sustainability issues but this was limited to direct participants suggesting local projects need to be supported by wider systemic change to maximise impacts

consumer choice between ethanol and gasoline lessons from brazil and sweden the introduction of flex fuel vehicles since 2003 has made possible for brazilian drivers to choose between high ethanol blends or gasoline depending on relative prices and fuel economies in sweden flex fuel fleets were introduced in 2005 prices and demand data were examined for both brazil and sweden bioethanol has been generally the most cost efficient fuel in brazil but not for all states in any case consumers in brazil have opted for ethanol even when this was not the optimal economic choice in sweden a different behavior was observed when falling gasoline prices made e85 uneconomical in late 2008 in a context of international biofuels expansion the example of e85 in sweden indicates that new markets could experience different consumer behavior than brazil demand falls rapidly with reduced price differences between ethanol and gasoline at the same time rising ethanol demand and lack of an international market with multiple biofuel producers could lead to higher domestic prices in brazil once the limit curve is crossed the consumer might react by shifting back to the usage of gasoline

social problems of green buildings from the humanistic needs to social acceptance abstract in the past few decades scholars have conducted research and held discussions on green building to highlight their vital significance in addressing environmental economic and social challenges it is recognized that public attitudes and views towards green building may affect its application in daily lives although studies on consumers cognition are rarely carried out the social problems related to green building such as consumers basic understanding purchase intention social and humanistic needs public attitudes and behaviors rebound effects and furthermore social acceptance are therefore studied based on three research methods including literature review questionnaire and inductive analysis through the analysis following results can be obtained i green building s sustainable design has quite important influence over consumers decision making process the general public maintains a high regard for the advantages of green building where better ventilation and lighting is a major benefit saving energy and water are the second rated and then land and construction material saving ii although the general public is not being familiar with the concept of green building the majority of participants would pay more for green buildings over the standard building when they know the environmental impacts of them iii green building should not only be limited to energy performance oriented but also be user oriented the social and humanistic needs model is thus well established based on maslow s hierarchy of needs in the life cycle of green building social and humanistic needs show a trend of dynamics which means social processes with consumer engagement and participation needs to be considered in aspects of conceptual design planning and design operation and maintenance to improve users happiness and productivity iv current user oriented solutions to green building are always based on a hypothesis that consumers are readily motivated or prefer expensive goods for reducing energy use to really reflect preference and influenced actions social acceptance should be analyzed to fully gauge interest and perspective of the people v rebound effects of post occupant building performance including energy performance human comfort indoor environmental quality greenhouse gas emission and workplace productivity can be divided into two stages at present it is necessary to establish appropriate samples methods and parameters for an unbiased and valid post occupant evaluation system in addition the social acceptance of green building framework is established based on wustenhagen et al triangular model for renewable energy innovation all the explorations to social problems of green building in this article are expected to provide a healthy social basis for the development of this green strategy

public attitudes to biofuel use in aviation evidence from an emerging tourist market abstract aviation generates substantial carbon footprint which is projected to increase due to the continuous growth in international tourism especially in emerging markets this carbon footprint should be mitigated to bring the tourism industry towards its sustainability goals within a portfolio of prospective carbon mitigation measures biofuels represent a technological innovation which holds substantial potential to reduce the carbon significance of aviation the success of technological innovations often depends on public opinion the role of public opinion is particularly relevant in the aviation context where safety considerations of technological innovations may determine consumer choice focusing on poland an emerging tourist market in europe this study explored public opinion on biofuel use in aviation it found that public understanding of the perspectives of aviation biofuel technology including its safety is limited and needs to be reinforced public distrust in the national institutions of power and the industry sector representatives in poland calls for educational and public awareness raising campaigns to be delivered by the third sector organisations

towards a positive theory of political rhetoric why do politicians lie this paper presents a model in which politicians can increase the probability of election by making exaggerated claims about the benefits of their own platform referred to as positive campaigning and by exaggerating the undesirable characteristics of their rival i e negative campaigning such lies may be detected at some point in the future and thus result in a costly loss in reputation thus the politician must tradeoff immediate benefits against potential future costs of course this problem is similar to any commercial endeavor a car maker for example is tempted to claim that his car is better and the competition s is worse than it is but it is shown that the lack of transferable property rights to political office makes lying more likely in political markets it is also shown that there is a natural tendency for politicians to engage in more negative campaigning

overcoming the barriers for biodiesel use in spain an analysis of the role of convenience and price abstract the aim of the paper is to analyse biodiesel market acceptance in spain in particular we study the intention to use biodiesel by spanish diesel car drivers and the factors explaining this intention to achieve this goal we developed a model of the intention to use biodiesel based on the theory of planned behaviour but extended in two ways the first one consists of the inclusion of two new predictors of the intention to use environmental self identity and biodiesel knowledge and the second the extension of the model to take into account the two barriers in the adoption of biodiesel in the market potential price premium and limited availability in the petrol stations this model has been specified as an ordered probit and estimated using data from a survey conducted in spain results indicated that apart from the attitudes towards biodiesel use the most important factors explaining the intention to use biodiesel are the biodiesel knowledge and the environmental self identity in other words the new predictors in the theory of planned behaviour model in addition the effects of all the factors attitudes subjective norms perceived behavioural control biodiesel knowledge environmental self identity and socio demographic characteristics on the intention to use were different depending on the price and the availability of the biodiesel in the market thus we can conclude that to analyse the intention to use biodiesel different price and availability scenarios should be taken into account empirical results indicated that to increase biodiesel use the best option is to increase biodiesel knowledge and environmental self identity

political shirking opponent quality and electoral support several recent papers in the public choice literaturesuggest that legislators shirk or vote in a mannercontrary to constituent interest this paper exploresthe relationship between senatorial shirking andelectoral consequences i model political shirking opponent quality and election outcomes assimultaneous and find significant evidence of arelationship between shirking over the senatorial termand electoral outcomes however i find that voterspunish recent shirking much more than they punishearly term shirking and that senators apparently actconsistently with this relationship

issues of social acceptance on biofuel development alongside with biofuel development social acceptance issues have been underestimated while social acceptance can emerge as powerful barrier for biofuel development this article provides discussion on social acceptance in biofuel context an acceptance framework based on life cycle biofuel production had been referred for a better understanding on social acceptance issues malaysia has been referred for the discussion as the country has faced with acceptance issue in their biofuel program the discussion point out different societal groups will demand specific consideration for either support or oppose biofuel this paper concludes that biofuel development will be constraint if social acceptance issues remain neglect

malaysian biofuels industry experience a socio political analysis of the commercial environment this study examines the jatropha adoption process in sarawak malaysia a land rich in biological and ethnic diversity but highly impoverished attempts to alleviate poverty through oil palm plantation development resulted in internationally condemned destruction of peat lands sarawak subsequently turned to the inedible low input exportable biodiesel feedstock jatropha this case study argues that jatropha is unlikely to make more significant socio economic contributions than oil palm or other cash crops the analysis suggests that companies use social capital to aggressively expand their jatropha business among the native population in order to gain access to native customary lands which are often underproductive peat lands global biofuels sector development dynamics are examined through the lenses of political economics and social agricultural and energy studies the research finds that farmers 39 decisions to participate in the biofuels global value chain may result in negative income effects household food security reduction and biodiversity loss from peat land destruction the paper concludes with a proposal for an alternative approach to evaluate both social and financial drivers in order to prevent the negative effects of biofuel based agribusiness on human and environmental systems c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the electoral effects of incumbent wealth abstract the absence of limits on own source campaign contributions is widely thought to give wealthy candidates an advantage in congressional elections we employ a unique data set on the wealth of house incumbents running for reelection in 1992 we find that wealthy incumbents do not raise or spend more campaign funds and do not win greater vote shares in their reelection bids further incumbent wealth does not deter high quality challengers

renewable energy policy and public perceptions of renewable energy a cultural theory approach abstract public opposition to the siting of renewable energy re facilities and public reluctance to invest in re remain key obstacles to the expansion of the renewables sector in the uk and a number of other european countries although there is a growing body of qualitative research on factors that inform public attitudes towards re the majority of studies have tended to be quantitative and to view the public and public opinion as homogeneous wholes this study uses a cultural theory framework and focus groups conducted in the south west uk to develop deeper understandings of how individuals worldviews can inform opinions and behaviour in relation to re these findings are used to explore ways in which government policies on re might be tailored to engender greater public support and participation issues discussed include the provision of economic incentives information on climate change and re linking renewables to overall energy behaviour and landscape aesthetics

time series evidence on shirking in the u s house of representatives this paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the u s house of representatives from 1975 to 1990 the empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time we find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns the most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district