modified ecological footprint accounting and analysis based on embodied exergy a case study of the chinese society 1981 2001 abstract the resource consumption of the chinese society from 1981 to 2001 is investigated by ecological footprint ef as an aggregate indicator based on the theory of ecological thermodynamics a modified calculation of ecological footprint termed as embodied exergy ecological footprint eeef in contrast to the conventional one is performed and related overall trends of the chinese society 1981 2001 are analyzed the annual policy for the individual sector is described in detail corresponding to the ef and eeef components comparison of the conventional ef and the eeef based on different views of ecological production is outlined the ef intensity and eeef intensity are also presented to depict the resource consumption level corresponding to unit economic output finally eeef is suggested to serve as a modified indicator of ef towards illustrating the productions of the resource environment population and thereby reflecting the ecological overshoot of the general ecological system

democracy and human capital formation education spending in latin america 1980 to 1997 this article examines the relationship between democratic representation and spending on education in latin america the authors assess the impact that democracy has on the distribution of resources between different levels of schooling and on total spending on education specifically they test whether democratic governments allocate a greater share of resources to primary education the level that benefits the largest segment of the electorate and that is most critical for human capital formation in developing countries using time series cross sectional analysis the authors find that democracies devote a higher percentage of their educational resources to primary education and that they maintain higher absolute spending levels on education in the aggregate thereby enhancing the prospects of human capital formation

the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

the real effects of relational contracts abstract does the soft side of management matter many managers assert that firm culture is strongly correlated with productivity but there are few robust tests of this assertion in a set of

democracy and social spending in latin america 1980 92 what is the effect of regime type on public expenditures for social programs we investigate the relationship between democracy and the change in social spending controlling for gdp the debt inflation and age structure of the population through a time series cross sectional panel data set for 17 latin american countries from 1980 to 1992 the results show that especially in poor countries during economic crisis democracies increase the allocation of resources to social programs relative to authoritarian regimes this suggests that the latter are more constrained by economic forces whereas democracies are more constrained by popular demands hence calls to abandon broad categorizations of regime type appear to be premature democracy can matter in systematic and substantial ways

a defense of compulsive measures against child labor abstract this research characterizes policies likely to trigger the onset of a growth enhancing fertility transition even for an economy with initially a low per capita income the environment considered is one where children s time has an economic value and schooling and child labor are the main competing claims on a child s time using a one parent family overlapping generations model i argue that compulsive measures against child labor are justifiable as an integral part of an intervention that combines incentives and regulations in order to eliminate child labor the analysis highlights fertility and child labor dynamics as shaped by the relative cost of children

oligarchy democracy inequality and growth abstract this paper analyses the dynamics of inequality democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation in a context with imperfect capital markets we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor s education and to initiate a democratic transition we characterize the equilibrium patterns of political institutions income distribution and growth as a function of the initial income and inequalities in particular we identify circumstances under which the elite promotes the endogenous emergence of a middle class for purely political economy reasons a simple linear infinite horizon framework is then presented in this setting we discuss the importance of historical dependence for long run social stratification and redistribution

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

applying contingent valuation in china to measure the total economic value of restoring ecosystem services in ejina region abstract this paper reports an attempt to apply the contingent valuation method cvm in rural china the cvm was used to obtain estimates of willingness to pay for restoring ejina ecosystem services in our survey we used a payment card format and a 12 page survey booklet with maps depicting the reasons why ejina ecosystem deteriorated the means by which ecosystem services could be restored from their current level we used an in person interview along with the survey booklet we employed a parametric model to estimate the benefits of restoring ejina ecosystem results from 700 in person interviews indicate that households would pay an average of 19 37 rmb per year with 20 78 per household for the main river area and 16 41 per household for the rest of hei basin the aggregate benefit to residents of the hei basin is 8 84 million annually for 20 years taking into account an environmental discount rate calculated by using respondent s equivalent utility between periodical payments and lump sum payments the present value of aggregate benefit of restoring ejina ecosystem is 55 33 million these results suggest that the general public in hei valley would be willing to pay to restore the ejina ecosystem although this amount is substantially less than the estimated costs of restoration

creating integrated business and environmental value within the context of china s circular economy and ecological modernization abstract this paper investigates the challenges and opportunities of how firms and organizations can and will be able to strike a better balance between economic growth and environmental stewardship in the context of china s emerging circular economy policy paradigm and based on ecological modernization theoretic approaches based on three company case studies in the information technology and electronic industries in china we identify and demonstrate how a blended business and environmental value can be created from adopting a sustainable supply chain management approach the adoption of a sustainable supply chain management approach is rapidly becoming a key business challenge and opportunity in china and other large emerging economies around the world where our greatest environmental management challenges currently reside and will continue to exist for many years to come the value creation framework proposed in research focuses on evaluating three case study companies who appear in various stages of an electronic industry supply chain value creation within a supply chain can provide the impetus for organizations to adopt circular economy sustainable supply chain practices for competitive reasons in addition we describe how a value proposition can be evaluated at two levels of analysis a more specific micro level and a more general meso level of analysis the four major business value dimensions include cost reduction revenue generation resiliency and legitimacy and image the initial findings are that a variety of opportunities exist for electronic firms in emerging and developing countries while results from this study provide an important scholarly foundation to develop and refine sustainable supply chain management practices in emerging and developing economies

the economics of child labor if child labor as a mass phenomenon occurs not because of parental selfishness but because of the parents concern for the household s survival the popular argument for banning child labor loses much of its force however this assumption about parental decision making coupled with the assumption of substitutability in production between child and adult labor could result in multiple equilibria in the labor market with one equilibrium where children work and another where adult wage is high and children do not work the paper establishes this result and discusses its policy implications copyright 1998 by american economic association

political repression and child labour theory and empirical evidence most normative studies on child labour arrive at the conclusion that child labour is detrimental to social welfare child labour is however still prevalent in many developing countries even though in many of these countries it is forbidden by law in this paper we develop a political economic model that explains lenient enforcement of existing child labour legislation the most important implication of our model is that in countries with repressive political regimes enforcement is more lenient and child labour thus more prevalent than in countries enjoying political freedom we test this implication and find that it is confirmed by the data

effects of local legitimacy on certification decisions to global and national csr standards by multinational subsidiaries and domestic firms we explore the impact of local legitimacy on the imitation of certification by subsidiaries of foreign multinational enterprises and domestic firms we propose that mne multinational enterprise subsidiaries and domestic firms differ in their propensity to imitate geographically proximate firms when deciding whether to adopt national vs global csr corporate social responsibility certifications for two reasons first there are differences in the legitimacy they can expect to gain in different communities from adopting these certifications second there are differences in their knowledge about the local legitimacy of these certifications we test our hypotheses by studying the decisions of automotive suppliers in mexico to certify either to iso 14001 a global certification or to clean industry a national certification we find that geography matters mne subsidiaries imitate national certifications by geographically proximate firms to overcome a liability of foreignness while domestic firms imitate global certifications by proximate firms to overcome the disadvantages of localness we explore the implications of our findings for institutional theory and future research

parental altruism and self interest child labor among late nineteenth century american families intergenerational relationships within late nineteenth century industrial families are analyzed using several large scale contemporary household surveys nonaltruistic behavior by parents was pervasive even among families with positive assets child labor was common in certain industrial settings suggesting that child labor or nonschooling did not simply reflect parental borrowing constraints neither did physical asset transfers offset human capital losses among working youth a quantitative estimate of parental nonaltruism is derived from an equilibrium labor market model approximately 90 percent of all child earnings was implicitly competed away through lower adult wages as families migrated to areas with abundant child labor opportunities

firm level determinants of international certification evidence from ethiopia summary this paper investigates a wide range of plausible determinants of international certification ic in ethiopia while past studies focus on the effect of international laws the findings of this paper suggest that domestic pressure and firm capability are also equally important besides export orientation we find international connectivity sources of finance such as credit from local banks or local customers and manager s human capital as significant determinants of ic once such factors are controlled for firm size sector and nationality of owner appear not to matter furthermore we find that certification may not necessarily enhance business performance in the short run

child labor cause consequence and cure with remarks on international labor standards although the literature on child labor is enormous it lacks a common theoretical foundation in this paper analytical survey of this field is provided keeping in mind that this is an area where the primary reason for theorizing is ultimately to influence policy overall it is noted that the literature on child labor is an illustration of abundance and anarchy although empirical writings on child labor are numerous they are not usually founded on theory it is argued that there is much that can be done in curbing the issue of child labor several theories were studied in this paper including collaborative intervention such efforts include public action which alters the economic environment such that the parents of their own accord prefer to withdraw the child from labor force another strategy involves the government a legal intervention is enforcing a total ban on the subject although such interventions have good intentions some of them may not be feasible in general it is better to take economy wide measures against child labor and if there is to be a sector specific ban it should be based on the working conditions of that sector rather than the destination of the goods

is child labor inefficient we build a model of child labor and study its implications for welfare we assume that there is a trade off between child labor and the accumulation of human capital even if parents are altruistic and child labor is socially inefficient it may arise in equilibrium because parents fail to fully internalize its negative effects this occurs when bequests are zero or when capital markets are imperfect we also study the effects of a simple ban on child labor and derive conditions under which it may be pareto improving in general equilibrium we show that the implications of child labor for fertility are ambiguous

striving to be green the adoption of total quality environmental management many firms are undertaking environment friendly organizational change by applying the philosophy of total quality management with its emphasis on reducing waste and increasing efficiency their objective is to improve their management of pollution and increase customer satisfaction this article investigates the factors that lead to total quality environmental management tqem by large firms we find that internal considerations stemming from a firm s technical capability size absolute and relative to competing firms extent of operations and volume of past emissions are strongly associated with the tqem adoption decision the first four factors are proxies for the firm s costs and capabilities of adopting tqem while the fifth factor is related to the benefits from increasing efficiency and waste reduction and thus proxies for internally generated demand for tqem the desire to improve a firm s image with customers earning good will with regulators and the anticipation of future regulations do not a

why is child labor illegal abstract we present a theory of the emergence of laws restricting child labor or imposing mandatory education that is consistent with the fact that poor parents tend to oppose such laws we find that if altruistic parents are unable to commit to educating their children child labor laws can increase the welfare of higher income parents in an ex ante sense on the basis of an empirical analysis of latin american household surveys we demonstrate that per capita income in the country of residence has the predicted effect on child labor supply even after controlling for other household characteristics

child labor and coordination failures abstract in this note we show that a technology based coordination failure may explain the emergence of laws restricting child labor child labor may arise because of the lack of a coordination mechanism between parental decisions to invest in the human capital of their children and firms decisions to invest in skill biased technologies legislative intervention in many cases helps coordinate expectations towards a pareto superior outcome with investments both in human capital and in skill biased technologies

intergenerational earnings mobility inequality and growth abstract we examine a model in which per capita income inequality intergenerational mobility and returns to education are all determined endogenously individuals earn wages depending on their ability which is a random variable they purchase an education with transfers received from their parents and are subject to liquidity constraints in the model multiple steady state equilibria are possible countries with identical tastes and technologies can reach differing rates of mobility inequality and per capita income equilibria with higher levels of output also have lower inequality higher mobility and more efficient distribution of education

ecological economics in china origins dilemmas and prospects abstract this paper is a first step towards articulating a chinese version of ecological economics over the last decade ecological economics has attracted increasing attention in the west similarly since the early 1980s scholars in china have undertaken specific research on existing ecological economic issues in accordance with chinese political economic socio cultural and ecological conditions however this endeavor is hardly known in the west and little attention has been given so far to the potential role of chinese attitudes in the international ecological economics movement this paper is designed to make up for that neglect and attempts to address the following questions what social and cultural traditions are required for chinese ecological economics to operate what are the political and institutional implications of ecological economics in china will chinese ecological economists feel comfortable in a society where open debate is viewed as unacceptable behavior in order to clarify the chinese interpretation of ecological economics and its impact on the policy making process a preliminary overview of its emerging background evolutionary history key viewpoints and theories nature and policy influence is presented three major intellectual sources of chinese ecological economics are identified and the theoretical applications are emphasized then some theoretical and practical issues that may arise in future research are discussed along with implications of chinese ecological economics for the international community in addition to biophysical functions and ecological conditions socio political structures and processes need to be explicitly addressed in extending the research agenda of ecological economics

an explanation of the international variation in the prevalence of child labour it is hypothesized that the institutional acceptability of child labor will be more prevalent when the other members of a society gain from its use therefore the cross country variation in the prevalence of child labor depends on the degree to which child labor affects the welfare of the remaining members of a society it is demonstrated theoretically that the non child labor factors gain from child labor when the economy is closed as an economy becomes more open to international trade those gains diminish and even turn negative as the size of the economy increases child labor will not exist in capital abundant countries since in them child labor makes the non child labor factors worse off it is shown empirically that the cross country prevalence of child labor falls with increases in a nation s per capita income its openness to trade and its economic size it is argued that trade sanctions as a remedy for child labor may be counter productive since an open economy reduces the benefits of child labor to the other members of a society and thereby reduces the society s incentive to allow child labor the model also demonstrates that the economic changes brought on by democracy undermine the practice of child labor

determinants of proactive environmental management practices in indian firms an empirical study abstract the present study aims to empirically determine the primary factors that have a major influence on adoption of environmental management practices in indian firms for this purpose a theoretical framework has been proposed based on previous studies and a pilot survey that provides broad and specific variables that might have an impact of these practices this impact has been investigated by conducting factor analysis and stepwise regression analysis in order to collect the primary data a questionnaire has been designed for which 104 valid responses 8 5 response rate have been obtained the study reveals that internal holder ship and employees and market commercial buyers and suppliers of goods and services pressures are the significant drivers who govern the adoption of proactive environmental management practices however the external pressures from regulatory and societal stakeholders were not found to be important in the indian context the analysis further showed that firm s characteristic also play a significant role in defining the positive behavior of firms as large firms are more proactively engaged in environmental management initiatives moreover firms in the manufacturing chemical and agriculture sector are likely to have more comprehensive environmental management practices compared to the service sector

globalization and the environment determinants of firm self regulation in china critics assert that globalization is detrimental to the environment because it encourages location of polluting industries in countries with low environmental regulations we suggest that globalization might also have positive environmental effects because global ties increase self regulation pressures on firms in low regulation countries using survey data from firms in china we find that multinational ownership multinational customers and exports to developed countries increase self regulation of environmental performance

determinants of international standards in sub saharan africa the role of institutional pressure from different stakeholders abstract international environmental and quality standards in africa are seen as being driven by pressure from international markets and importers this study presents a conceptual framework where other stakeholders and plant resources are included in the argument for standards we argue that among other stakeholders international banks as creditors are important determinants international banks most of which are committed to sustainable practices facilitate the diffusion of standards they also perform sustainability related risk analysis urging customers to demonstrate corporate social responsibility our results also suggest that foreign ownership plant size and business communications through company website are important for the adoption of standards in africa

management practices relational contracts and the decline of general motors abstract general motors was once regarded as the best managed and most successful firm in the world however between 1980 and 2009 gm s us market share fell from 46 to 20 percent and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt we argue that the conventional explanation for this decline namely high legacy labor and healthcare costs is seriously incomplete and that gm s share collapsed for many of the same reasons that many highly successful american firms of the 1960s were forced from the market including a failure to understand the nature of the competition they faced and an inability to respond effectively once they did we focus particularly on the problems gm encountered in developing the relational contracts essential to modern design and manufacturing and we discuss a number of possible causes for these difficulties we suggest that gm s experience may have important implications for our understanding of the role of management in the modern knowledge based firm and for the potential revival of manufacturi

the macroeconomics of child labor regulation we develop a positive theory of the adoption of child labor laws workers who compete with children in the labor market support a child labor ban unless their own working children provide a large fraction of family income fertility decisions lock agents into specific political preferences and multiple steady states can arise the introduction of child labor laws can be triggered by skill biased technological change which induces parents to choose smaller families the theory can account for the observation that in britain regulations were first introduced after a period of rising wage inequality and coincided with rapid fertility decline

international and domestic pressures and responses of chinese firms to greening abstract organizational responses to international and domestic institutional pressures may help proactive corporate environmental practices and routines diffuse to chinese organizations who are key participants in global product chains using the 2006 survey data on 377 chinese manufacturers in six major industrial groups in suzhou dalian and tianjin cities we propose and test a relationship between normative coercive and mimetic international institutional pressures and the adoption of three important proactive corporate environmental practices routines iso 14001 tqem total quality environmental management and eco auditing by chinese firms we also argue for and find that this relationship is greater than that arising from corresponding normative coercive and mimetic internal domestic pressures finally we find a positive effect of international parenting or partnering on the adoption of proactive corporate environmental practices and routines these findings have important implications as chinese organizations continue to go global and international organizations seek global product supply chain partners within china

the contingent effect of management practices this article investigates how the success of a management practice depends on the underlying values articulated by the management a large u s transportation company is in the process of fitting its trucks with an electronic on board recorder eobr to provide drivers with information on their driving performance the company also has commenced a multi year initiative to remake its internal operations the first phase of which focuses exclusively on changing values toward a greater emphasis on teamwork and empowerment in this setting a natural question is whether the optimal managerial practice consists of 1 letting each driver know his or her individual performance only or also 2 providing drivers with information about their performance with respect to other drivers using the eobr provided driver performance data we randomize these practices across sites the main result of our experiment is that 2 leads to better performance than 1 in a particular site if and only if the site has not yet received the values intervention and worse performance if it has the result is consistent with the presence of a conflict between competition based managerial practices and a shift to a cooperation based value system more broadly it highlights the role of intangible factors in determining the optimal set of managerial practices

globalization domestic politics and social spending in latin america a time series cross section analysis 1973 97 this study examines the effects of globalization democratization and partisanship on social spending in fourteen latin american countries from 1973 to 1997 using a pooled time series error correction model the authors examine three sets of issues first following debates in the literature on oecd countries they want to know whether social spending has been encouraged or constrained by integration into global markets within this context they examine the extent to which such outcomes might be influenced by two additional sets of domestic political and institutional factors discussed in work on developed countries the electoral pressures of democratic institutions and whether or not popularly based governments are in power the authors show that trade integration has a consistently negative effect on aggregate social spending and that this is compounded by openness to capital markets this is the strongest and most robust finding in the study neither democratic nor popularly based governments consistently affect overall social spending the authors then disaggregate spending into social security transfers and expenditures on health and education they find that popularly based governments tend to protect social security transfers which tend to flow disproportionately to their unionized constituencies but they have a negative impact on health and education spending conversely a shift to democracy leads to increases in health and education spending which reaches a larger segment of the population the authors conclude by emphasizing the contrasting political logics of the different types of social spending

an economic analysis of child labor abstract this paper shows how poverty in combination with credit constraints can give rise to the phenomenon of child labor in developing countries it further shows how banning child labor can reduce the welfare of the households intending to send their children to work and suggests some alternative policies

do civil and political repression really boost foreign direct investments multinational enterprises are often accused of having a preference for investing in countries in which the working populations civil and political rights are largely disregarded this article presents an empirical investigation of the popular political repression boosts fdi hypothesis and arrives at the conclusion that the hypothesis is not supported on the contrary multinational enterprises rather appear to be attracted by countries in which civil and political freedom is respected

the rapid adoption of data driven decision making abstract we provide a systematic empirical study of the diffusion and adoption patterns of data driven decision making ddd in the u s using data collected by the census bureau for a large representative sample of manufacturing plants we find that ddd rates nearly tripled 11 30 between 2005 and 2010 this rapid diffusion along with results from a companion paper are consistent with case based evidence that ddd tends to be productivity enhancing yet certain plants are significantly more likely to adopt than others key correlates of adoption are size presence of potential complements such as information technology and educated workers and firm learning