finance inflation and employment a post keynesian kaleckian analysis the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the post keynesian kaleckian macroeconomic literature we develop a macroeconomic model that explicitly integrates the role of borrowing and cash payment commitments on outstanding debt interest plus principal repayment into the consumption and investment expenditures as well as into the inflation generating process we explore the way that finance influences the distribution effects of inflation in the demand side of a money credit using economy we suggest a new phillips curve that encapsulates the impact of financial commitments on wage and profit claims we argue that high debt and cash payment commitments are likely to be associated with a positive demand side effect of inflation on the rate of employment and that they might be conducive to a negative supply side effect of employment on the inflation rate the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved

dynamic animal economics market equilibrium dynamics of herd inventory management are derived for homogenous female populations short run supply is backward bending in response to permanent changes in demand and is rising in response to transitory changes in demand increasing inventories are associated with high and falling prices and decreasing inventories with low and rising prices but there is no market instability in this these unusual intertemporal substitution effects follow from both rational expectations and appropriately formulated cobweb models and go part of the way toward explaining hog and cattle inventory cycles

are we risking too much perspectives on risk in farm modelling risk and uncertainty have been extensively studied by agricultural economists in this paper we question a the predominant use of static frameworks to formally analyse risk b the predominant focus on risk aversion as the motivation for considering risk and c the notion that explicitly probabilistic models are likely to be helpful to farmers in their decision making we pose the question for a risk averse farmer what is the extra value of a recommendation derived from a model that represents risk aversion compared to a model based on risk neutrality the conclusion reached is that for the types of the decision problems most commonly modelled by agricultural economists the extra value of representing risk aversion is commonly very little

uncertainty in the theory of renewable resource markets the natural growth rate of most renewable resource stocks is in part stochastic this paper examines the implications of such ecological uncertainty for competitive equilibrium in a market with property rights we show that stochastic fluctuations add a risk premium to the rate of return required to keep a unit of stock in situ and we examine the effects of fluctuations on resource rent examples are used to show that extraction can increase decrease or be left unchanged as the variance of the fluctuations increases depending on the extent of market self correction regulatory implications are also discussed renewable resource economics has traditionally been concerned with the study of dynamically optimal harvesting policies given a deterministic function for the natural growth of the resource stock issues have included the existence and characteristics of steady state equilibria for the optimally managed resource the need for and design of regulatory policies to prevent over exploitation and conditions under which as a social optimum or otherwise the resource will be exploited to extinction 1 much of this work has been based on the assumption of a fixed and exogenous price for the harvested resource typically resulting in bang bang solutions for the harvesting policy however some recent papers make price endogenous and thereby describe how the extraction rate and the rate of return and asset value of the resource behave in a competitive market with property rights 2

sheep as capital goods and farmers as portfolio managers a bioeconomic model of scandinavian sheep farming a model analyzing the economics of sheep farming is formulated the basic idea is simple sheep are capital and they are held by farmers as long as their capital value exceeds their slaughter or meat value farmers are therefore portfolio managers aiming to find the optimal combination of different categories of animals yields are compared with the yields from other assets the model is formulated within a northern scandinavian economic and biological setting with a crucial distinction between the outdoors grazing season and the indoors season and with adult sheep and lambs being different categories in the first step the management problem is analyzed with only the meat income of the farmers taken into account in the next step income from wool production is considered as well the analysis provides several results that differ from standard harvesting theory jel classifications c61 d21 q12 q29

the tree cutting problem in a stochastic environment the case of age dependent growth abstract harvest policies are derived for growing biological assets e g forests livestock subject to stochastic age dependent growth and price uncertainty the task posed is analyzed as a continuous time optimal stopping problem for diffusion processes both single and ongoing rotation problems are considered qualitative comparative static and numerical results are provided

a context based procedure for assessing participatory schemes in environmental planning the efficiency of participatory schemes in environmental planning is an emerging research area and many issues are not solved yet regarding the assessment of such procedures it is essential for decision makers to identify improvement opportunities of participatory schemes we propose an original procedure to address such issue through a bargaining model from the signaling game literature which accounts for participation design as well as for agents preferences beliefs and bargaining power the model is calibrated using qualitative data from surveys in french local communities involved in municipal solid waste management model simulations are used to test for assumptions on the stakeholder dialogue and explore sensitivity of game outcomes to structural parameters we propose a set of performance indicators to identify the most effective participatory schemes in achieving convergence in stakeholder positions regarding environmental and land use planning

technical change uncertainty and investment the expected investment dynamics of the risk neutral firm is examined in the presence of uncertainty in the future evolution of the real wage and the stock of technical knowledge a model of the adjustment cost firm is developed that is characterized by quasi fixed factor augmenting technical change that is taken exogenously by the firm the effect of wage and technical change uncertainty on investment behavior is assessed using comparative stochastic dynamic analysis

interest rate pass through and monetary transmission evidence from individual financial institutions retail rates official interest rate changes should influence short rates on money market instruments and retail products such as deposit accounts and mortgages but complete pass through is often taken for granted this paper provides a theoretical and econometric framework for assessing the evidence for this assumption using seventeen years of monthly data for rates on thirteen deposit and mortgage products offered by individual uk financial institutions the methodology allows for asymmetries and non linearities in adjustment and the results show that the speed of adjustment in retail rates depends on whether the perceived gap between retail and base rates is widening or narrowing

valuation languages in environmental conflicts how stakeholders oppose or support gold mining at mount ida turkey abstract this paper analyses an ongoing environmental conflict over the prospect of gold mining at mount ida turkey and aims to unpack the valuation languages social actors in the conflict use to either support or oppose gold mining based on a field study consisting of 37 in depth interviews three focus groups and a survey administered to a total of 738 citizens the factors that affect local public s positions vis a vis gold mining at mount ida and their choice of valuation languages are examined assessing the conflict at mount ida in terms of valuation languages enables us to better comprehend the various dimensions of the conflict and differentiate between the disagreements that can be controlled and solved via technical measures or bargaining over the amount of monetary compensation and those that cannot we also intend to provide a useful and general methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative research methods for understanding a broad range of environmental conflicts the results are in line with earlier findings in that local people oppose such projects for various distinct reasons and monetary and or technical compensatory schemes do not suffice to solve the disagreements that arise in a satisfactory way

empirical evidence on inflation expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve abstract we review the main identification strategies and empirical evidence on the role of expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve paying particular attention to the issue of weak identi

quantifying the uncertainty about the fit of a new keynesian pricing model abstract recent studies by gali and gertler 1999 inflation dynamics a structural econometric analysis journal of monetary economics 44 195 222 and sbordone 2002 prices and unit labor costs testing models of pricing journal of monetary economics 49 265 292 conclude that a theoretical inflation series implied by a forward looking new keynesian pricing equation fits post 1960 u s inflation closely their theoretical inflation series is conditional on i a reduced form forecasting process for real marginal cost and ii the calibration of the pricing equation the present paper shows that both of these determinants are surrounded by considerable uncertainty when quantifying the impact of this uncertainty on theoretical inflation we can no longer say whether the forward looking pricing equation explains observed inflation dynamics very well or very poorly

behind the life cycle of coal socio environmental liabilities of coal mining in cesar colombia abstract open pit coal mining in cesar colombia increased by 74 between 2000 and 2012 generating environmental and social damages unacknowledged by companies and the state this study aims to identify and value socio environmental liabilities from coal mining at different stages of the coal life cycle environmental liabilities can be operationalized under three types of responsibilities moral legal and economic the identification of environmental liabilities allocates moral responsibility the legal responsibility is needed for effective reparation and the economic valuation provides arguments to claim compensation seek remediation and mitigation of damages to identify socio environmental liabilities interviews were conducted and environmental mining conflicts were analyzed to estimate monetary values data were linked to existing literature on costs associated with damages results show that the economic values of socio environmental liabilities per ton of extracted and exported coal are higher than the market price of coal the main socio environmental liabilities arise from pollution local health deterioration water table depletion land and ecosystem services losses damages from transportation and shipping and coal reserve loss a comparison with studies in china and the united states indicates that values increase when other health impacts and climate change on a global scale are included

an economic model of soil conservation by introducing soil depth and soil loss into a simple model of agricultural production this paper seeks to determine when the private path of erosion differs from the socially optimal path considering the depletion of soil only and abstracting from the environmental disruption caused by erosion the paper argues that under most institutional arrangements the social and private rates of erosion are the same the paper concludes that public policy should be directed toward reducing erosion only when it leads to significant pollution externalities

footprints in the cotton fields the industrial revolution as time space appropriation and environmental load displacement this paper offers a method for quantifying the global exchange of natural space and labor time underlying the economic success of the british textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century using historical statistics on inputs of land and labor embodied in cotton and wool production respectively estimates are made of the amount of british land and labor that were saved by displacing fibre production to north america by comparing inputs of land and labor in the textile exports of england with those in some commodities imported from its colonial periphery and juxtaposing these data with exchange rates estimates are also made of unequal exchange using such methods it is possible to bring together the marxist concern with unequal exchanges of labor time on one hand with the more recent concern with ecological footprints on the other

supply side effects of monetary policy and equilibrium multiplicity abstract empirical evidence indicates that changes in the nominal interest rate significantly affect lending costs of firms introducing working capital into an otherwise conventional new keynesian model active interest rate policy remains necessary but should be moderate to ensure real determinacy the likelihood for the latter can approach zero when utility is linear in leisure

dynamic decisions under risk application of ito stochastic control in agriculture in agricultural economics most studies of dynamic decisions under risk have been empirical with less emphasis on theory in finance resource economics and general economics however ito stochastic control is popular for theoretical work optimal decisions can be characterized using the powerful ito stochastic calculus this paper describes the assumptions and methods of ito control constructs a dynamic model of agricultural decisions under risk and illustrates with four examples

principles of dynamic optimization in resource management abstract the type of resource problem amenable to static analysis is distinguished from that requiring dynamic analysis possibly due to the apparent complexity of optimal control theory methods often dynamic models have not been applied where they would be appropriate in this article dynamic programming arguments are used to derive optimality conditions directly and simply they are derived for a renewable resource such as a fishery but they have application to resource management in general the approach is illustrated by examples to the extraction of a depletable resource to feeding for weight gain and to applying fertilizer when some fertilizer carriers over from one crop season to another conditions for the optimal replacement of biological units are also considered

the cost channel reconsidered a comment using an identification robust approach we re examine the empirical relevance of the cost channel of monetary policy e g ravenna andwalsh 2006 employing recently developed moment conditions inference meth ods including identi cation robust procedures using us data our results suggest that the cost channel e ect is poorly identi ed and we are thus unable to corroborate the previous results in the literature

global effects of national biomass production and consumption austria s embodied hanpp related to agricultural biomass in the year 2000 global trade of biomass related products is growing exponentially resulting in increasing teleconnections between producing and consuming regions sustainable management of the earth s lands requires indicators to monitor these connections across regions and scales the embodied human appropriation of npp ehanpp allows one to consistently attribute the hanpp resulting from production chains to consumers hanpp is the sum of land use induced npp changes and biomass harvest we present the first national level assessment of embodied hanpp related to agriculture based on a calculation using bilateral trade matrices the dataset allows 1 the tracing of the biomass based products consumed in austria in the year 2000 to their countries of origin and quantifying the hanpp caused in production and 2 the assigning of the national level hanpp on austria s territory to the consumers of the products on the national level the dataset is constructed along a consistent system boundary between society and ecosystems and can be used to assess austria s physical trade balance in terms of ehanpp austria s ehanpp trade balance is slightly negative imports are larger than exports import and export flows are large in relation to national hanpp our findings show how the ehanpp approach can be used for quantifying and mapping the teleconnections related to a nation s biomass metabolism

do interest rates drive inflation dynamics an analysis of the cost channel of monetary transmission abstract this paper proposes a novel approach to empirically assessing the impact of the cost channel of monetary transmission on the dynamics of inflation within a new keynesian phillips curve framework according to the cost channel higher interest rates translate into higher marginal costs of production and eventually into higher inflation we exploit the present value implications of the model to derive a series of fundamental inflation that is contrasted with actual inflation we show that the cost channel adds significantly to the explanation of inflation dynamics in forward looking sticky price models for the us the uk and the euro area moreover the cost channel can explain inflation episodes that cannot be accounted for by the standard new keynesian model

long run versus short run planning horizons and the rangeland stocking rate decision reduced future forage production diminished range condition and reduced animal performance have been major factors considered when setting rangeland stocking rates the relative economic importance of diminished current period animal performance versus intertemporal forage production impacts was investigated using a dynamic optimal control model the model is applied to yearling stocker production in eastern colorado results indicate that intertemporal grazing impacts to forage production are not that important reduced weight gain during the current period drives the economic stocking rate decision further ranchers have no economic incentive as profit maximizers to continually overgraze the range

investment and disinvestment principles with nonconstant prices and varying firm size applied to beef breeding herds variable beef breeding herd sizes are found to be optimal given cyclical beef prices traditional replacement theory does not allow variable firm size because unequal investment replacement and disinvestment culling rates are not possible if firm size changes cost of production per unit endogenously changes given a u shaped cost curve optimal investment and disinvestment rules for variable firm size are developed based upon the firm s cost curve and discounted net revenue flows for a finite rolling planning horizon current and future investment and disinvestment decisions are linked by their mutual effect on firm size and hence production cost per unit

animal health inputs endogenous risk general infrastructure technology adoption and industrialized animal agriculture abstract this paper develops a microeconomic model of concentrated animal feeding operations that admits roles for all of animal health inputs genetic profile choices and the pertaining economic infrastructure the basic model emphasizes how time on feed feed density and biosecurity choices interact as well as how these choices respond to i input prices and ii attributes regarding animal productivity parameters that might be influenced by policy choices such as animal welfare strictures and restraints on use of medication we show that ostensibly substituting inputs in protecting against animal health risks may in fact be complements and that the model s production choices come as a complementary package we then extend the model to endogenize the choice of animal genetics a finding is that innovations in general infrastructure encourage herd owners to choose more feed efficient but less hardy animals higher feed conversion efficiency then induces the use of denser feed rations accelerated finishing and greater levels of biosecurity actions at farm perimeters our theory provides a coherent framework for explaining associations among inputs and outcomes that are linked with confined animal agriculture it also explains how animal protein supply chain technology adoption and performance can differ according to a region s state of infrastructure why responses to a change in infrastructure may be large and why public sector efforts to reduce production risk may beget private sector effort to do so

a bio economic analysis of the benefits of conservation agriculture the case of smallholder farmers in adami tulu district ethiopia this study analyses the potential impact of conservation agriculture ca and its binding constraints for adoption in smallholder farming systems in a drought prone district of central ethiopia we develop a dynamic household bio economic model by taking into account the existing farming system resource constraints and market imperfections climate induced production risk is introduced into the model by estimating a weather specific production function using data generated from a crop simulation model it is found that the full package of ca which consists of minimum tillage mulching and crop diversification does not appear to be in the best interest of smallholder farmers however loosely defined ca practises such as sole maize production with conservation tillage and maize bean intercropping with conventional tillage which are not currently practised in the study area are likely to be adopted by the farmers the results further demonstrate that time preference risk aversion limited credit and market access are key constraints to ca uptake however merely addressing these constraints may be insufficient incentives for smallholder farmers to fully adopt ca practises it is important to identify conditions under which the full package ca can be effectively adopted before it is widely promoted

stochastic rangeland use under capital constraints the stocking density on kazakhstan s extensive rangelands is well below traditional levels to analyze dynamic flock performance we develop a stochastic dynamic programming model for livestock systems with stochastic forage production the model contains continuous five state and 12 control variables allowing improved characterization of the biophysical relationships and economic tradeoffs inherent in such systems most kazakhstan herders have restricted access to capital the model indicates that the cost of capital strongly affects flock size and productivity we conclude that capital constraints are important to explaining the current low stocking density improving capital markets in rural areas warrants policy attention

balancing conservation and economic gain a dynamic programming approach abstract we optimize the trade off between economic and ecological concerns in conservation biology by using a novel method to link a spatially explicit individual based model to a dynamic programming model to date few optimality models have been presented to optimize this trade off especially when the common currency cannot be easily measured in dollars we use a population simulation model e g spatially explicit individual based model to model a hypothetical forest bird population s response to different cutting and planting regimes we then link these results to a dynamic programming model to determine the optimal choice a manager should make at each time step to minimize revenue foregone by not harvesting timber while maintaining a given population of birds our results show that if optimal management choices are made further back in time future terminal reward may be greater as the end of the management period approaches past management practices influence the terminal reward more than future practices can thus if past revenue lost is high the future reward will be low as compared to when past revenue lost is low the general strategy of setting some minimum viable population size and then using a population simulator linked to a dynamic programming model to ask how to maintain such a population size with minimum economic loss should have nearly universal applicability in conservation biology

an open economy new keynesian phillips curve for the u k abstract we estimate a pricing equation or new keynesian phillips curve nkpc obtained from a structural dynamic model of price setting based on rotemberg 1982 sticky prices in the united states journal of political economy 90 6 1187 1211 and extended to capture employment adjustment costs and the openness of the united kingdom this model nests the baseline gali and gertler 1999 inflation dynamics a structural econometric analysis quarterly journal of economics 110 127 159 and sbordone 2002 prices and unit labor costs a new test of price stickiness journal of monetary economics 49 265 292 relationship between inflation and marginal cost in the limiting case of no employment adjustment costs no impact of relative prices of imported inputs on real marginal cost and a constant equilibrium markup our findings indicate that each of our modifications to the baseline nkpc model is important for u k data so that inflation in the u k is explained both by changes in employment and by changes in real import prices in general and real oil prices in particular external competitive pressures also seem to affect u k inflation via their impact on the equilibrium price markup of domestic firms

the time varying cost channel of monetary transmission abstract this paper studies the time varying role of the cost channel of monetary transmission i e the supply side effect of monetary policy based on firms costs of holding working capital for that purpose we provide rolling window estimates of an augmented new keynesian phillips curve and show that the cost channel exhibits important time varying dynamics we find as a general pattern that the cost channel was most important in the pre volcker period and less important in the volcker greenspan era recently however the cost channel regained importance since the cost channel is based on the transmission of policy impulses through bank lending it is likely that the time varying cost channel reflects the cyclical nature of financial frictions

inflation dynamics and the cost channel of monetary transmission evidence from vector autoregressions indicates that the impact of interest rate shocks on macroeconomic aggregates can substantially be affected by the so called cost channel of monetary transmission in this paper we apply a structural approach to examine the relevance of the cost channel for inflation dynamics in g7 countries we augment the so called hybrid new keynesian philips curve by letting firms costs for external funds rise with the short run nominal interest rate our estimates reveal that the magnitude of this cost channel strongly varies between countries including member countries of the emu in accordance with differences in their financial systems simulations of a new keynesian model further show that the presence of the cost channel substantially affects the transmission of monetary policy shocks in particular the inflation response

linking political ecology with ecological economics in tree plantation conflicts in cameroon and ecuador abstract industrial tree plantations are rapidly expanding worldwide and notably causing a growing number of conflicts between companies and local populations such conflicts the focus of the article have been neglected by ecological economists although there is a proliferation of related reports by environmental non governmental organizations this paper uses empirical evidence to show how elements of political ecology and ecological economics can be combined for understanding the languages of valuation deployed in tree plantation conflicts in southern countries combining qualitative fieldwork on a cameroonian rubber plantation and an ecuadorian eucalypt plantation with a methodological framework taken from the study of social metabolism we find that both conflicts although with different emphasis arise because of land and biomass appropriation ground clearing pollution from agrochemicals and water shortage and are expressed as conflicts on valuation the metabolism of such tree plantations through the exchanges of materials with the local environment explains the bio physical basis of such conflicts in the cameroon case resistance is mainly sporadic and individual while in ecuador a grassroots organization has been able to respond to rural demands in a structured way both patterns of resistance are found in other present day resource extraction conflicts

material implication of chile s economic growth combining material flow accounting mfa and structural decomposition analysis sda abstract over the last three decades the economic integration of the chilean economy into global markets has been taking place at a rapid pace for example in 1986 exports represented 29 of gdp while in 1996 they had increased to 38 of gdp this period of time was characterized by strong economic growth with an average annual growth rate of about 10 from a physical perspective material requirements more than doubled from 220 to 500 million tons of direct material inputs dmi during the same decade the rate of material growth requirements was around 13 per year the main objective of this study is to explain the changes in dmi by using a structural decomposition analysis sda the changes in material flow accounting mfa were broken down into the effects caused by changes in resource use per unit of output material intensity effect changes between and within sectors structural change effect changes in the composition of final demand mix effect changes due to shifting shares of domestic final demand and export categories category effect and finally changes in the overall level of economic activities level effects the results as a percentage of the total level of dmi used in 1986 indicate that economic growth was the major source of material changes 109 the material intensity and category effects explained 31 and 14 of the increase respectively the increase in the material intensity is mainly due to a declining quality of ores in copper production however these components were partly compensated by the structure 14 and mix 13 effects therefore for a southern american country such as chile the main causes of these changes in material consumption have been a combination of the nature of economic growth along with an increase in export production and material intensity of production

commercial and biophysical deficits in south america 1990 2013 abstract this article analyses the physical trade balances ptb of five south american economies since 1990 both exports and imports measured in tonnes increased but exports were consistently much larger than imports such large physical trade deficits ptd persisted throughout the 1990s and 2000s export prices of primary goods increased but by 2013 export prices had declined and the exports could no longer pay for imports countries started to show commercial trade deficits in money terms these findings hold for all the south american countries analysed and they show that the optimism generated by the improving terms of trade in south america at the beginning of the 21st century was premature first there were ptds even in the boom years second the deterioration in the terms of trade after 2012 was accompanied by a counterproductive deficit in the monetary trade balance it is counterproductive because in principle it leads to greater external debts or to outflows of currency reserves it can also create pressure to increase physical exports we argue that deficits in the monetary trade balances tend to be compensated by increasing the deficit in the ptb which can lead to enhanced environmental pressures and therefore to local protests

do expected future marginal costs drive inflation dynamics abstract this article discusses a more general interpretation of the two step minimum distance estimation procedure proposed in sbordone 2002 the estimator is again applied to a version of the new keynesian phillips curve where inflation dynamics are driven by the expected evolution of marginal costs the article clarifies econometric issues addresses concerns about uncertainty and model misspecification raised in recent studies and assesses the robustness of previous results while confirming the importance of forward looking terms in accounting for inflation dynamics it suggests how the methodology can be applied to extend the analysis of inflation to a multivariate setting

valuation languages along the coal chain from colombia to the netherlands and to turkey environmental goods and bads are accumulated and unequally distributed along the coal supply chain producing environmental injustices where actors deployed values and representations of coal to either resist or legitimize its extraction and consumption this paper analyzes those valuation languages along the coal chain and their relationships with the territory where coal is extracted and burned the paper examines and compares the coal chains between colombia netherlands and colombia turkey assessing the various dimensions of the ecological distribution conflicts the coal chain is analyzed through different layers and scales to identify the valuation languages along both coal chains semi structured interviews and secondary data analysis were conducted discourse analysis methodologies were used to determine the frequency and relevance of the valuation languages results show that multiple valuation languages appear which are peculiar to each country and to the economic and political contexts in which the different stages of coal chain are embedded environmental justice actions taken along the coal chain with the focus on acknowledging these multiple valuation languages are also discussed in conclusion the analysis reveals that these actions depend on the willingness of social actors to give up or negotiate their valuation languages or on the power to impose them

stochastic modeling of short term cattle operations rangeland productivity is influenced primarily by fluctuating rainfall precipitation which together with market price volatility determine the major sources of variability in profitability of rangeland cattle production much research in range science has dealt with long term planning based on annual management models cotner sharp burt stevens and godfrey karp and pope and fisher among others short run decisions such as stocking rate stocking density over a length of grazing season and optimal forage at the beginning end of the grazing season have been considered static through time this study emphasizes short run decisionmaking strategies to better understand complex cattle and forage management decisions within a grazing season dynamic programming dp is used to test the certainty equivalence ce property of these intertemporal decisions to allocate scarce resources under fluctuating conditions involved in cattle production the objectives of this study are threefold a to develop a model of forage livestock dynamics b to evaluate the effect of price fluctuations on cattle and forage management policies principally stocking density and c to incorporate risk into a sequential decision making process such as a yearling operation to test the ce property our study is focused on testing ce and its applications for risk management using a forward recursive dp process

logging conflicts in southern cameroon a feminist ecological economics perspective abstract growing attention has been paid to gender in ecological economics political ecology and development studies but a focus on gender in resource extraction conflicts is still rare this article explores women led resistance movements to commercial logging in south eastern cameroon focusing on the moabi tree baillonella toxisperma the latter provides oil medicine and other non timber products and use values to local forest societies and particularly to women resistances arise because most socio environmental costs of the international logging trade are imposed on the rural populations and especially on women of the extractive regions the aim of this paper is to analyze the root causes of the gender structure of such mobilisations as well as the impacts on gender relations induced by such resource extraction conflicts after proposing a typology of different environmental currents and their gender counterparts this paper focuses on the gender construction of local bantu societies taking as a point of departure paola tabet s thesis that masculine control over production tools is the objective factor revealing the sexual division of work in our case study we found that the men s control over technology not only highlights the sexual work division but also the gendered division of access rights to natural resources thereby we argue that the sexual division of access rights and work revealed through differentiated control over technology are two key institutions explaining the gendered structure of local mobilizations we then discuss the empowerment allowed by the new forms of women s organizations with a particular focus on the appropriation of new production tools by women this highlights a non western form of environmental feminism

investment and disinvestment principles with nonconstant prices and varying firm size applied to beef breeding herds comment optimal investment and disinvestment principles have received considerable attention in both general and agricultural economics for over two centuries notable are the works of faustmann samuelson 1937 hirschleifer burt and perrin which establish the basic replacement principle recently trapp presented a reformulation of this basic replacement principle by relaxing the assumptions of constant prices and firm size the purpose of this comment is to discuss a possible misinterpretation of the replacement principle underlying trapp s model specifically the link between trapp s article and previous literature is established with the hope of clarifying any misunderstandings of optimal investment principles trapp states that his equations 3 and 4 which are derived from the discrete time form of the net present value formula for a single asset constitute the appropriate addition and culling investment and disinvestment decision rules for a firm with nonconstant size trapp p 694 this formulation is analogous to perrin s equation 2 which maximizes the returns from an asset over a single rotation in contrast chavas kliebenstein and crenshaw present the asset replacement decision as an optimal control problem with an infinite planning horizon transversality conditions for optimal asset rotation as given in chavas kliebenstein and crenshaw s equation 12 correspond to perrin s equation 4 2 which maximizes the returns from an asset over an infinite horizon reid and bradford in an investigation of investment and disinvestment in farm machinery also derive optimal rotation criteria analogous to perrin s formulation thus it appears that an inconsistency exists in the journal associated with the appropriate replacement rule when expansion and contraction of an operation is endogenously determined should replacement rules be derived from an infinite horizon specification or from a single asset specification the merits of an investment decision must be based not only on earnings from the next production period but also on the rents which can be extracted from the firm s fixed factors failure to consider future assets in a replacement decision implies that changes in replacement costs have absolutely no effect on the optimal life of assets up to the point where it is no longer profitable to operate specifically maximizing over a single asset rotation corresponds to maximizing the internal rate of return of an investment decision with a discount rate quivalent to the internal rate of return samuelson 1976 the quantitative effects of considering only a single asset specification are minimal depending on the length of the asset rotation and the discount rate employed as the rotation length increases or a larger discount rate is employed representation of the optimal replacement rule will converge to perrin s equation 2 samuelson 1976 the turnpike theorem states that if the asset rotation is of sufficient length where the end of the horizon has o influence on period decisions the system then converges towards the von neumann path boussard too short a length may result in the system never converging toward the von neumann path alternatively if the salvage and acquisition values are equal at any point in time then the von neumann path will be reached at the beginning of the last period however in general asset replacement is costly and thus access to the von neumann path is not instantaneous the apparent inconsistent use of a single asset specification in contrast to basic replacement principles associated with an infinite horizon may be resolved by investigating the theoretical results in chavas and klemme employing an optimal control methodology with a finite planning horizon t a distinction among rules derived from alternative specifications is evident using perrin s terminology chavas and klemme generalize the replacement criteria for a system with multiple constraints

colombian international trade from a physical perspective towards an ecological prebisch thesis abstract prebisch s approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while centre countries export industrial goods the terms of trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate this approach can be extended to ecological issues the international centre periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital but also the physical exchange in which southern countries provide materials and energy so that northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism this metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods this paper aims to apply and extend prebisch s thought on unequal exchange both monetary and ecological in relation to colombian trade in the period 1970 2002 using material flow analysis

dynamic adjustment in the u s dairy industry a dual model is used to examine the dynamic structure of the u s dairy industry properties implied by the theory of the competitive firm and independent adjustment of two quasi fixed inputs labor and herd size are tested and not rejected instantaneous adjustment however is soundly rejected for each quasi fixed input input adjustment to optimal levels is estimated to take about two years for labor and ten for cows quality adjustments of the labor and cow series do not fully embody the technological change that has occurred in this industry over the study period

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

ecological economics marxism and technological progress some explorations of the conceptual foundations of theories of ecologically unequal exchange abstract almost regardless of ideological persuasion the seemingly self evident concept of technological progress inherited from early industrialism is resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth the increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power i discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about mainstream understandings of what technology really is technological utopianism raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relation between thermodynamics and theories of economic value while marxism and some ecological economics share the ambition of grounding notions of economic value in physical parameters notions of economic value and physical processes should be kept analytically distinct

shipbreaking at alang sosiya india an ecological distribution conflict article i nfo article history more than 80 of international trade in goods by volume is carried by sea the shipping industry constitutes a key element in the infrastructure of the world s social metabolism ocean going ships are owned and used for their trade by developed countries but are often demolished together with their toxic materials in developing countries ship breaking is the process of dismantling an obsolete vessel s structure for scrapping or disposal the alang sosiya yard india one of the world largest shipbreaking yards is studied here with particular attention to toxic waste management ship owners and ship breakers obtain large profits dumping the environmental costs on workers local farmers and fishers this unequal distribution of benefits and burdens due to an international and national uneven distribution of power has led to an ecological distribution conflict the controversy at the indian supreme court in 2006 over the dismantling of the ocean liner blue lady shows how the different languages of valuation expressed by different social groups clashed and how a language that expresses sustainability as monetary benefit at the national scale dominated shipbreaking in the developing world is not just an externality but a successful case of cost shifting or else profit accumulation by contamination

the learning curve and optimal production under uncertainty this article examines the implications of the learning curve in a world of uncertainty we consider a competitive firm whose costs decline with cumulative output because the price of the firm s output evolves stochastically future production and cumulative output are unknown and are contingent on future prices and costs we derive an optimal decision rule that maximizes the firm s market value produce when the price exceeds a critical level which is a declining function of cumulative output we show how the shadow value of cumulative production the total value of the firm and the decision to produce depend on the volatility of the price and other parameters uncertainty increases the critical price required for the firm to produce but also increases the value of thefirm thus during periods of high volatility firms facing a learning curve ought to be producing less but are worth more

a dynamic adjustment model for u s agriculture 1948 79 abstract a multioutput model is developed within the adjustment cost framework to analyze the structure of dynamic adjustments in u s agriculture during the post war period an important feature of this model is that the econometric model is consistent with dynamic economic theory fluctuations in capital stocks variable inputs and outputs are explained by changing opportunity costs empirical results indicated that durable equipment farm produced durables and family labor exhibited significant rigidity in adjustment as a response to exogenous shocks surprisingly the hypothesis that real estate was a variable input could not be rejected the univariate flexible accelerator hypothesis which is widely maintained in most agricultural adjustment studies is inconsistent with the data

excess liquidity bank pricing rules and monetary policy abstract this paper studies the implications of excess bank liquidity for the effectiveness of monetary policy in a simple model with credit market imperfections the demand for excess reserves is determined by precautionary factors and the opportunity cost of holding cash it is argued that excess liquidity may impart greater stickiness to the deposit rate in response to a monetary contraction and induce an easing of collateral requirements on borrowers which in turn may translate into a lower risk premium and lower lending rates as a result asymmetric bank pricing behavior under excess liquidity may hamper the ability of a contractionary monetary policy to lower inflation

the multivariate flexible accelerator model its empirical restrictions and an application to u s manufacturing this paper derives an exhaustive set of restrictions implied by the multistock flexible accelerator specification of the adjustment cost model for the firm the flexible accelerator specification of the demand for capital and labor is estimated using u s manufacturing annual data for the 1947 1976 period the consistency of the data with the model is examined by testing the validity of the derived restrictions finally the conditions which permit aggregation over firms are determined and tested empirically the flexible accelerator specification has been popular in the empirical literature on interrelated investment and employment decisions see nadiri and rosen 38 coen and hickman 10 and schramm 40 more recent examples include sargent 39 berndt fuss and wavermann 4 berndt and morrison 6 and meese 34 under suitable assumptions the specification may be rationalized by the adjustment cost model of the firm eisner and strotz 13 lucas 30 mortensen 35 extends the work of lucas and derives some empirically testable restrictions of the accelerator specification that are implied by the adjustment cost framework the broad objective of this paper is to provide a more rigorous and comprehensive test of the adjustment cost model than is presently found in the literature this objective is achieved in three stages first we offer an alternative derivation of the mortensen restrictions and more importantly we prove theorem 1 that his restrictions are exhaustive i e we establish an integrability result for the flexible accelerator adjustment cost model second the flexible accelerator specification of the demand for capital and labor is estimated using total u s manufacturing annual data for the 1947 76 period it is assumed that firms minimize expected production costs subject to a technology which implies that capital and labor stocks are costly to adjust while a third factor materials is freely adjustable the consistency of the data with the adjustmentcost framework is examined by testing for the validity of the derived restrictions further we test the validity of some separability restrictions on the adjustmentcost technology that to varying degrees are imposed a priori in all of the cited empirical studies finally we provide a complete characterization of the individual firm technologies which justify the common assumption of the existence of a representative firm this problem of aggregation over firms which has been

towards an ecological theory of unequal exchange articulating world system theory and ecological economics abstract the focus of this paper is on how an ecological perspective might provide us with an analytically more precise way of defining unequal exchange it is only by looking at the ecological conditions of human economies that we can adequately conceptualize the mechanisms which generate inequalities in distribution considerations of market power aside neoclassical economic ideology has dispelled all possible criteria for assessing a market transaction as unequal or unfair one way to assess the occurrence of unequal exchange may be to look at the direction of net flows of energy and materials concrete productive potential but without falling into the trap of equating productive potential with economic value on the contrary it can be analytically demonstrated that unequal exchange emerges from a kind of inverse relationship between productive potential and economic value the notion of a reasonable market price conceals the fact that what is being exchanged are intact resources for products representing resources already spent if we consider longitudinally along the production process any given set of fuels and raw materials destined to be transformed into a given product plus waste its content of available energy will be inversely related to its utility or price in other words the more of its original energy that has been dissipated the higher its price this means that production i e the dissipation of resources will continuously be rewarded with ever more resources to dissipate generating ecological destruction and global core periphery inequalities as two sides of the same coin

optimal sequential plantings of corn and soybeans under price uncertainty we examine crop choice and fertilizer applications as the solution to stochastic dynamic optimization problem for an innite stream of discounted prots the ecient decision rule depends on the stochastic evolution of commodity prices fertilizer prices and the agronomic eects of rotation versus monoculture this decision rule includes an account of real option values associated with maintaining soil quality and disposition in an environment with highly uncertain future prices and irreversible past planting decisions we parameterize a baseline model for a representative acre in iowa and compare the model s predictions and prots to relatively naive shorter horizon decision rules and a eld managed with optimal fertilizer applications conditional on corn and soybeans always being rotated we also examine the

on the north south trade in the americas and its ecological asymmetries there has been a long and intensive debate within the scientific community about the role of international trade in the development of countries during the last decades the focus of attention has moved from the pure economic level to the environmental aspects of international trade establishing a simplified system of north south trade for one reference period 2003 this paper attempts to test empirically the extent of potential asymmetries with regard to extracted material flows and contrasts the results with the economic benefits from trade in terms of value added the south is thereby represented by a selection of latin american countries brazil chile colombia ecuador and mexico the north comprises one of their main commercial partners the united states at the methodological level a multi regional input output analysis is used as the tool of investigation results generally support the hypothesis that the south was feeding the north s societal metabolism south north material exports were 1 6 times larger than north south material exports resulting in a net deficit for the south of 324 million tons moreover material intensity of exported commodities from the south was twice as high as that from the north it is worth highlighting however that part of the north south hypothesis fails for the sample of countries since the larger part of the economic surplus has remained in the south contrarily to what would have been expected

principles of stochastic dynamic optimization in resource management the continuous time case abstract a wide range of problems in economics agriculture and natural resource management have been analyzed using continuous time optimal control models where the state variables change over time in a stochastic manner using a firm level investment model and a model of environmental degradation this paper provides a concise introduction to continuous time stochastic control techniques the process used to derive the differential of a stochastic process is stressed and in turn is used to explain ito s lemma bellman s equation the hamilton jacobi equation the maximum principle and the expected dynamics of choice variables a basic extension of the dynamic duality literature is also provided where the hamilton jacobi equation is used to derive a stochastic and dynamic analogue of hotelling s lemma

is there a cost channel of monetary policy transmission an investigation into the pricing behavior of 2 000 firms the paper exploits a unique panel covering some 2 000 italian manufacturing firms and 14 years of data on individual prices and individual interest rates paid on several types of debt to address the question of the existence of a channel of transmission of monetary policy operating through the effect of interest expenses on the marginal cost of production it has been argued that this mechanism may explain the dimension of the real effects of monetary policy give a rationale for the positive short run response of prices to interest rate increases the price puzzle and call for a more gradual monetary policy response to shocks we find robust evidence in favor of the presence of a cost channel of monetary policy transmission proportional to the amount of working capital held by each firm the channel is large enough to have non trivial monetary policy implications

optimal monetary policy with the cost channel in the standard new keynesian framework an optimizing policy maker does not face a trade off between stabilizing the inflation rate and stabilizing the gap between actual output and output under flexible prices an ad hoc exogenous cost push shock is typically added to the inflation equation to generate a meaningful policy problem in this paper we show that a cost push shock arises endogenously when a cost channel for monetary policy is introduced into the new keynesian model a cost channel is present when firms marginal cost depends directly on the nominal rate of interest besides providing empirical evidence for a cost channel we explore its implications for optimal monetary policy we show that its presence alters the optimal policy problem in important ways for example both the output gap and inflation are allowed to fluctuate in response to productivity and demand shocks under optimal monetary policy

optimal replacement policies for rejuvenated assets the faustmann samuelson solution for optimal asset rotation is extended to consider both asset rejuvenation and nonconstant prices a dynamic theoretical model is developed in terms of an optimal control problem with discontinuous control variables and numerical solution procedures are outlined the model is applied to layer hen replacement where hen rejuvenation by forced molting is a common industrial practice results indicate a sensitivity between the decision to rejuvenate or replace a hen and the egg price cycle suggesting a mixed rotation strategy

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

the role of sticky prices in an open economy dsge model a bayesian investigation in this paper we use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model for an open economy to examine the role of sticky prices in explaining the joint behaviour of inflation and a fairly large set of macroeconomic variables we find that price stickiness is an important feature for firms active in the domestic export and import sectors even though the model embodies variable capital utilisation a working capital channel and a time varying inflation target we also document that price stickiness in all sectors is important even if the markup shocks are allowed to be autocorrelated although the implied average contract duration falls substantially under this assumption jel e40 e50 c11

contesting legitimacy of voluntary sustainability certification schemes valuation languages and power asymmetries in the roundtable on sustainable palm oil in colombia voluntary certification schemes aimed at assuring producer compliance with a set of sustainability criteria have emerged as market based instruments mbis of sustainability governance however the impacts they tackle can be part of a complex arena of socio environmental conflict where values and powers of business and local actors compete legitimacy of these schemes not only results from compliance by business actors but also depends on acceptance by local actors affected by or resisting the industries that these mechanisms aim to govern this paper explores the influence of different local actors values and powers on legitimacy granting or contestation by local actors during national processes of sustainability criteria development we analyse the case of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil rspo in colombia using an approach that combines concepts of ecological economics and political ecology with the legitimacy literature based on critical sociology in colombia the palm oil industry led the initiative to implement certification under national interpretation of rspo principles and criteria however the national interpretation process revealed power asymmetries among stakeholders and clashes between their different values this resulted in strong contestation of rspo legitimacy by local actors who resist expansion of oil palm cultivation

a note on endogenous risks and exhaustibility abstract this paper demonstrates that stock dependent risks do not qualify to be treated as a resonance problem of certainty equivalent exhaustibility it shows that this result holds without assuming risk aversion

does inflation increase after a monetary policy tightening answers based on an estimated dsge model abstract this paper estimates the importance of the cost channel of monetary policy in a new keynesian model of the business cycle a model with nominal and real rigidities is extended by assuming that a fraction of firms need to borrow money to pay their wage bill hence a monetary policy tightening increases effective unit labor costs of production and might imply an increase in inflation the paper examines the conditions under which the model can generate a positive response of inflation to a monetary contraction and estimates the model s parameters using bayesian methods the paper shows that the estimated demand side effects of monetary policy dominate the estimated supply side effect even if restrictions are imposed that make occurrence of a positive inflation response to a monetary contraction more likely

disinflation inequality and welfare in a tank model we investigate the redistributive and welfare effects of disinflation in a two agent new keynesian tank model characterized by limited asset market participation lamp and wealth inequality we highlight two key mechanisms driving our long run results i the cash in advance constraint on firms working capital cia ii dividends endogeneity these two channels point in opposite directions lower inflation softens the cia and by raising labor demand lowers inequality but the disinflation also raises dividends and this increases inequality the disinflation is always welfare improving for asset holders we obtain ambiguous results for non asset holders who suffer substantial consumption losses during the transition

european inflation dynamics abstract we provide evidence on the fit of the new phillips curve npc for the euro area over the period 1970 1998 and use it as a tool to compare the characteristics of european inflation dynamics with those observed in the u s we also analyze the factors underlying inflation inertia by examining the cyclical behavior of marginal costs as well as that of its two main components namely labor productivity and real wages some of the findings can be summarized as follows a the npc fits euro area data very well possibly better than u s data b the degree of price stickiness implied by the estimates is substantial but in line with survey evidence and u s estimates c inflation dynamics in the euro area appear to have a stronger forward looking component i e less inertia than in the u s d labor market frictions as manifested in the behavior of the wage markup appear to have played a key role in shaping the behavior of marginal costs and consequently inflation in europe

interest rates exchange rates and present value models of the current account this paper develops a testable intertemporal model of the current account that allows for variable interest rates and exchange rates these additional variables are channels through which external shocks may influence the domestic current account the restrictions from the theoretical model are subjected to present value tests using quarterly data from three small open economies the paper finds that including the interest rate and exchange rate improves the fit of the intertemporal model over what was found in previous studies the model predictions better replicate the volatility of current account data and better explain historical episodes of current account imbalance

foreign trade and early industrialisation in the habsburg monarchy and the united kingdom two extremes in comparison the concept of socio ecological transitions is used to analyse the quantitative importance of physical imports and exports for the habsburg empire and the united kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries for the habsburg empire a new dataset of foreign trade and social metabolism is presented for the united kingdom the analysis relies on previously published data foreign trade volumes increased in both countries in the long run total trade volumes were much higher in the united kingdom throughout the entire time period on average by around a factor four physical factors explaining the disparities in structure and volume of foreign trade in the two countries are differences in 1 the temporal patterns of the socio ecological transition and 2 domestic resource endowments in both countries energy carrying materials i e fossil fuels and biomass were the dominant resources in physical foreign trade the analysis focuses on the physically most important material groups coal wood and cereals and discusses the role of imports and exports in relation to domestic resource provision and environmental pressures physical foreign trade increased at a faster pace than domestic resource extraction and consumption the socio ecological transition was thus accompanied by rising international integration of resource supply

when does the cost channel pose a challenge to inflation targeting central banks abstract in a sticky price model where firms finance their production inputs there is both a lower and an upper bound on the central bank s inflation response necessary to rule out the possibility of self fulfilling inflation expectations this paper shows that real wage rigidities decrease this upper bound but coefficients in the range of those on the taylor rule place the economy well within the determinacy region however when there is time variation in the share of firms who finance their inputs i e markov switching then inflation targeting interest rate rules frequently result in indeterminacy even if the central bank also targets output adding a nominal growth target to the policy rule can often alleviate this indeterminacy and therefore anchor inflation expectations

modeling dynamic agricultural production response the case of swine production crop and livestock production processes are typically dynamic and involve growing biological assets which are eventually marketed this study presents a production model of biological growth based on a differential equation specification economic implications for optimal input use and optimal replacement policy are discussed in this context the approach is applied to the growing finishing phase of a swine production enterprise the results demonstrate that the knowledge of the growth function is crucial in evaluating dynamic production decisions

existence value and optimal timber wildlife management in a flammable multistand forest abstract the problem of determining the optimal age at which to cut trees on four stands and optimal fire protection expenditure is posed the objective is to maximise the resulting expected returns from timber and the expected value of the continued existence of an endangered possum species that relies on old growth for nesting dynamic programming is used to solve the problem existence values for the possum are based on the results of a detailed contingent valuation survey a stochastic metapopulation model is developed for estimating end stage survival probabilities of the possum dependent on start of stage tree ages and occupancies the sensitivity of optimal cutting and fire protection policies to possum existence values the rate of discount and the cost of reducing fire risk is investigated the study demonstrates the scope of the combined use of simulation and dynamic optimisation for addressing land management problems involving conservation of species threatened with extinction

international copper flow network a blockmodel analysis industrial ecology is looking for new tools to combine social and economic dimensions with the already well developed physical flow analysis of the human economic system this article introduces a tool from social network analysis as complementary to the existing multilevel substance flow analysis by exploring the concept of space and region in which substance flows happen we use the blockmodel from network analysis in the characterization of the multilevel anthropogenic copper cycle to group countries according to their structural equivalence in the international trade networks related to copper instead of using a priori aggregation standards such as geographical proximity gdp per capita or widely accepted classification of industrial developing countries this approach depicts the patterns of material movement through trade which reflects the inherent structure of the world system regarding copper production and consumption the results highlight the uneven distribution of global copper stocks and flows across countries in the middle 1990s and illustrate the core peripheral structure among different country groups in which a close interconnected core exist with sparse ties to peripheral groups and copper are flowing from the peripheral to the core in terms of net flows

biophysical structure of the ecuadorian economy foreign trade and policy implications abstract at the core of this paper lays the notion that a systematic analysis of material flow accounts enables us to discuss the sustainability of an economic model ecuador is going through a socio ecological transition from an agrarian towards an industrial regime based on the use of nonrenewable sources of materials and energy direct material flow indicators are used in this article to analyze the ecological dimension of the economy of ecuador during 1970 2007 this approach enables the concept of societal metabolism to become operative the paper compares societal metabolic profiles showing that per capita use of materials is still at about one fifth of the average in the high income countries of the world physical flows of trade indicate that there is an ecologically unequal exchange whereas a positive trade balance is desirable from an economic policy its counterpart in physical units has been a persistent net outflow of material resources the extraction of which causes environmental impacts and social conflicts

competition for land a sociometabolic perspective abstract possible negative effects of increased competition for land include pressures on biodiversity rising food prices and ghg emissions however neoclassical economists often highlight positive aspects of competition e g increased efficiency and innovation competition for land occurs when several agents demand the same good or service produced from a limited area it implies that when one agent acquires scarce resources from land less resource is available for competing agents the resource competed for is often not land but rather its function for biomass production which may be supplanted by other inputs that raise yields increased competition may stimulate efficiency but negative environmental effects are likely in the absence of appropriate regulations competition between affluent countries with poor people in subsistence economies likely results in adverse social and development outcomes if not mitigated through effective policies the socioecological metabolism approach is a framework to analyze land related limits and functions in particular with respect to production and consumption of biomass and carbon sequestration it can generate databases that consistently link land used with biomass flows which are useful in understanding interlinkages between different products and services and thereby help to analyze systemic feedbacks in the global land system

approach paths to the steady state a performance test of current period decision rule solution methods for models of renewable resource management this paper compares the perfor mance of approximately optimal current period analytical solution methods for models of re newable resource management focus is placed on linear quadratic analytical dynamic pro gramming and on steady state based current period decision rules based on taylor s series approximation of the value function these are compared against an intertemporal decision rule used with backward induction in the context of a discrete time stylized model of the northern anchovy fishery of california decision rules based on taylor s series track the optimal ap proach path very well with social surplus less than one percent below the optimum surplus in comparison the linear quadratic formulation failed to track the optimal path as well with social surplus of more than seven percent below the optimum these results are interesting in light of the common conviction that approximat ing the value function with a taylor s series is not appropriate for discrete time renewable re source modeling

a stochastic asset replacement model for rejuvenated assets stochastic returns generated by a productive asset are investigated for the replacement problem with rejuvenation optimal replacement and rejuvenation conditions given collinearities among multiple outputs are considered for alternative levels of producer risk preference this methodology is applied to a laying hen replacement problem results indicate that risk averse producers should consider less rejuvenation and shorter rejuvenation production periods also replacement decisions should occur later in the year for peak production to coincide with high output prices

the identity of ecological economics retrospects and prospects the paper first reveals the relevance of ecological economics in the time of a triple crisis ecological social and economic and promotes it as a distinct paradigm comprised of two interconnected and interdependent aspects the qualitative framework within which it operates and the quantitative models and techniques it uses to observe ecosystem resilience measure progress towards sustainability and evaluate policies while acknowledging the progress that has so far been made the paper argues that divergences in understanding the meaning and content of ecological economics hinder its effectiveness and influence on real world policy making and calls for a unified framework as a common ground that would strengthen the field and direct research the implication of this position then follows pointing out what has so far been missing from the ecological economics analysis and what should be done for it to become a more problem oriented and policy relevant alternative copyright oxford university press

deforestation and agricultural productivity in the cote d ivoire an optimal control model is used to determine the optimal steady state forest stock in the cote d ivoire this stock is shown to increase with increases in the forestry returns relative to those in agriculture technological progress in agriculture and increases in the social discount rate serve to lower the optimal steady state forest stock based on an estimated aggregate yield function the optimal forest stock is shown to be most sensitive to changes in the social rate of discount assuming current 1985 technology deforestation appears socially optimal only for values of the discount rate greater than 8

inflation output and markup dynamics with forward looking wage and price setters abstract medium scale new keynesian models are sometimes criticized for their use of backward looking wage and price setting mechanisms and for assuming several types of disturbances including some that would be difficult to interpret economically we propose a dsge model with purely forward looking wage and price setters and parsimoniously chosen disturbances our model emphasizes an interplay between production firms networking and working capital firms can use working capital to finance all or a fraction of their outlays on production factors and use the output of other firms as an input in a what is often called a roundabout production structure our model generates a response of inflation which is mute on impact of a monetary policy shock but highly persistent and very hump shaped afterwards it also yields a large contract multiplier for output two times larger than the one implied by a model relying on indexation only we also show that the response of the price markup can be positive on impact of an expansionary monetary policy shock which differs from the standard countercyclical markup channel emphasized in conventional new keynesian models in contrast to models relying on indexation to past inflation our model produces non inertial responses of inflation to productivity and investment shocks a finding which is broadly consistent with the existing var evidence