new light on an old problem reflections on barriers and enablers of distributed energy this viewpoint article new light on an old problem aims to stimulate thought and discussion on pathways to rapid emission reduction trajectories it considers briefly the history of the australian energy system and recent attempts to support emerging distributed energy supply systems before exploring the importance of new energy supply models and how they may emerge organically ahead of further policy and regulatory shifts in australia the article is shaped by extensive primary research literature review and engagement with policy makers industry and community organisations energy market institutions colleagues and others over a period of four years it outlines how new business models may reduce emissions ahead of policy and regulation and the importance of keeping an open mind when considering barriers to distributed energy we hope this article will spark interest and dialogue with colleagues who may be experiencing and grappling with similar challenges

a framework for scaling and framing policy problems in sustainability abstract it is argued that a necessary but lacking component of our approach in seeking policy responses to sustainability issues is some repeatable means whereby the relative magnitude and characteristics of these various policy problems faced in a given context can be analysed and described to this end a simple and tentative framework is constructed based on the definition of the key attributes which shape policy problems pertaining to environmental change these are spatial scale of cause and effect magnitude timing and longevity of possible impacts reversibility mensurability complexity and connectivity nature of cause s relevance to the given polity tractability availability and acceptability of means public concern and existence of goals these attributes inform a general taxonomy of micro meso and macro problems the attributes and the taxonomy are described with supporting examples to illustrate possible application of the framework it is discussed briefly in the contexts of operationalising the precautionary principle and policy instrument choice it is concluded that the framework can help focus debate and operationalise vague principles introduce relativity into the notion of sustainability and make policy choice more efficient

evidencing the waste effect of product service systems psss this paper adopts a waste centric analysis of product service systems psss to demonstrate that they do not automatically contribute to a dematerialization of the economy a decoupling of production from material and energy consumption and thus a transition toward sustainability a qualitative analysis of various nordic fashion psss that uses a combination of tukker s 2004 classification of psss and the european waste hierarchy model demonstrates that the waste effect of a pss is independent of its being product oriented use oriented or result oriented rather the effect depends on how the business model of the pss organizes material flows at production distribution use and post consumption stages in relationship to prevailing waste regimes where the pss operates we suggest that if a pss is to reduce its waste effect and contribute to dematerialization its business model should design material flows that fit with the prevailing waste regimes within the area it operates and prioritize waste prevention before considering reuse recycling energy recovery and landfilling

sustainable homeservices toward household services that enhance ecological social and economic sustainability abstract the idea of services replacing products is increasingly offered as a solution to making the production and consumption patterns of the affluent consumers more sustainable however the discussion about sustainable services or sustainable product service systems tends to emphasize the eco efficiency perspective rather than explicitly capture all sustainability aspects social or socioeconomic considerations are often forgotten or by passed without scrutiny this paper argues that there is the need for a concept of sustainable services in which the social sustainability aspect is also recognized with equal attention since a major part of private consumption occurs in the household context living at home and moving to and from it this paper will put forth the concept of sustainable homeservices and will suggest a way to assess sustainability of services directed to households for assessing the sustainability of services directed to households a set of indicators relating to the ecological social and economic dimensions of sustainability is proposed with the aim of giving an idea of how to assess homeservices in practical terms the paper will also exemplify how one could operationalize these indicators on an ordinal rating scale the conclusion is that it is possible to assess the sustainability of a homeservice in a relative fashion using no service or the product alternative as the point of comparison households alone have a limited capacity to influence their consumption choices because other actors set the frame for this reason institutional arrangements for making services easily available to households are outlined it appears that housing organizations have a central role in the alternative option for organizing the supply of service provision they are involved in five of the seven alternative ways of supplying services that could be identified the role of the housing organization can vary from direct supply to lighter forms such as cooperative arrangements with external service providers or resident involvement

from groundless universalism to grounded generalism improving ecological economic indicators of human environmental interaction abstract ecological economics occasionally makes universal claims about how to understand and measure change in systems of human environmental interaction in terms of environmental policy one of the most influential universal concepts that has come out of the ecological economics literature recently is ecological efficiency or eco efficiency this article uses eco efficiency as a vehicle to illustrate that universal indicators of human environmental interaction are theoretically unfounded and practically problematic population ecology and neo classical economics are identified as two theoretical approaches that have contributed to the emergence of universal concepts such as eco efficiency the limited applicability of the approaches is highlighted by putting them in comparative context with approaches that make less universal claims namely systems ecology and institutional economics investigating indicators of human environmental interaction from disciplinary perspectives that are rarely found in indicator literature offers novel insights on what indicators are for and how they should be applied the article concludes with a call for scale sensitive generalization in the development of future indicators

technology and health expenditures a demand approach applied to a process innovation there is controversy among economists as to whether the diffusion of new medical technologies has been a contributing factor to rising health expenditures the economic literature is critically reviewed and another approach is advocated this alternative approach rests on the distinction between product and process innovations it is argued that the relationship between process innovations and health expenditures can be illuminated by determining if the process innovation and the original procedure are utilized as substitutes the empirical results provide no indication that alternative technologies for diagnosing diseases conditions of the upper gastrointestinal tract have been utilized as substitutes by australian medical practitioners operating on a fee for service basis this study finds no evidence to indicate that the process innovation of fibre optic endoscopy has reduced health expenditures associated with diagnosis of diseases conditions of the upper gastrointestinal tract

health care expenditures and gdp panel data unit root test results abstract this short paper presents unit root test results for time series on per capita national health care expenditures and gross domestic product in the oecd unlike the country by country test used by hansen p king a 1996 the determinants of health care expenditure a cointegration approach j health econ 15 127 137 the test we employ exploits the panel nature of the oecd data using this approach we are able to reject the null hypothesis that these series contain unit roots no single test is likely to be definitive in this rapidly evolving area of econometric research however our results help to mitigate concern that panel data analyses of national health care expenditures are misspecified

towards sustainable household consumption exploring a practice oriented participatory backcasting approach for sustainable home heating practices in ireland current attempts to encourage sustainable consumption are failing to make significant advancements and consumption by households in daily practices continues to grow interventions in this area are often based on simplistic behavioural assumptions which overlook the embeddedness of daily consumption practices and fail to challenge escalating consumption demands and expectations against this background there is a need to consider more radical socio cultural technological and organisational innovations that may fulfil the goals of daily practices more sustainably in the future taking the case of home heating the most energy intensive practice in irish households this paper reports on a participatory backcasting study that developed future scenarios and action plans for sustainable heating in contrast to conventional behavioural change models and forecasting techniques this study adopted a social practice orientation this paper focuses on the operationalisation of the social practice approach with special reference to the iterative processes around scenario development and the resultant backcasting outputs participant evaluations of the procedure are presented which indicate that despite significant operational complexity the process was strongly valued and provided significant opportunity for learning amongst stakeholders involved whether such approaches can be integrated into governing systems however will depend on a willingness amongst stakeholders to embrace a radical reconceptualisation of behaviour

willing consumers or locked in policies for a sustainable consumption postmodern explanations of consumer behaviour stress social and psychological factors to the neglect of explanations based on structural issues such as the working life conditions which favour a work and spend lifestyle the conditions of urban living or the effects of pervasive marketing this paper argues that consumers may not be so keen and willing but are rather locked in by circumstances some of these circumstances are deliberately created by other interests and a policy to limit consumption must look for adequate means over a large and varied field in the end shorter working hours may be an important key to a more sustainable future 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

aggregate health care expenditure in the united states evidence from cointegration tests unlike recent studies that are based on international cross sectional series this paper attempts to quantify the role of the determinants of aggregate health care expenditure per capita using time series data for the period of 1960 87 for the united states the paper applies the relatively new procedures of unit root testing cointegration and error correction modelling the evidence supports cointegration although the results indicate that per capita income age of the population number of practising physicians and public financing of health care are important determinants the age structure of the population and number of practising physicians emerge as the major determinants of aggregate health care expenditure in the united states

aggregate health care expenditures and national income is health care a luxury good it is well known that a strong relationship exists between national expenditures on health care and national income this has been used to suggest that health care is a luxury good and that factors such as the type of health care delivery system in a country are of little importance in determining expenditure levels this paper argues that these implications rely upon the application of microeconomic analysis to macroeconomic data and that this is not appropriate as well as raising questions about the inferences drawn from previous studies new empirical evidence is presented which casts some doubts on previous findings international comparisons are based on purchasing power parity rather than exchange rate conversions underlining the importance of prices as well as quantities in the relationship and leading to the conclusion that the aggregate data show health care to be if anything a necessity rather than a luxury good

physicians choices of specialty location and mode a reexamination within an interdependent decision framework in this paper physicians decisions regarding the specialty community size and mode of their first practices are analyzed in a simultaneous decision model using a nested logit specification physicians face a choice set consisting of eight specialties seven community sizes and three practice settings data come from the longitudinal survey of the class of 1960 income is found to be statistically significant and the average income elasticity is 1 05 which is considerably larger than previous estimates however the elasticity estimate is very sensitive to the assumed decision process a series of policy simulations are then performed to estimate the effect of specified income based policies on the predicted distribution of physicians across specialties community sizes and modes

pricing profits and technological progress in the pharmaceutical industry the decades old debate over pharmaceutical industry prices profits and innovation has again intensified a number of events coalesced to refocus public interest on pharmaceuticals contributing to public concern were bureau of labor statistics price index increases for pharmaceuticals far outpacing those for the products of other industries another prominent characteristic of the pharmaceutical industry has been its extraordinarily high reported profitability this article examines the phenomena that precipitated the current pharmaceuticals debate their historical antecedents and the principal questions at issue in the author s considered judgment a pell mell march toward regulation of pharmaceutical industry pricing could seriously impair the industry s incentives for investment in new products

the role of social processes for sustainable consumption abstract rethinking the role consumption plays in individual well being and societal development is key for addressing pressing environmental problems we perceive the need to envision consumption as a social activity which requires the active engagement of consumers in order to better enhance their quality of life the paper focuses on the framework of product service systems one particular programme for more sustainable consumption after reviewing the potential benefits and limitations of this programme we explore the opportunities to learn from participatory and community based strategies like lets

economic reform and comparative advantage in agriculture in the newly independent states in this paper i examine whether the newly independent states nis of the former soviet union fsu could have a comparative advantage in agriculture after successful economic reform the analysis has two steps first using empirical estimates i examine comparative production costs of the fsu s main imported goods in the 1980s second i discuss how reform could change the goods relative productivity and costs thereby altering the structure of profitable agricultural trade analysis and estimates are for the aggregate fsu vis a vis the world market

recasting alternative agriculture as a management model the value of adept scaling abstract this paper identifies the significance of scale considerations as applied to agricultural resource management scaling is the act of defining the spatiotemporal level or levels of interest when attempting problem solving a goal commonly proposed by the diverse interests working toward an alternative agriculture is sustainability to date advocates of sustainability have failed to scale meaningfully both their critique of conventional agriculture and the alternatives they represent because sustainability is inherently sensitive to changes in analytic context i e is scale relative in the absence of explicit scaling sustainability is unworkable as a measure of system performance the importance of scale as applied to the concept of sustainability in hierarchical systems has been noted lowrance et al 1986 am j altern agric 1 169 173 however the implications of this finding have not been confronted in the subsequent literature going beyond lowrance et al 1986 this paper describes the error that accompanies improperly scaled assessment of agricultural sustainability and identifies two important considerations that emerge through explicit scaling 1 the necessity of consistent and timely integration of local information into upper level decision making and 2 the necessity of recognizing the scalar level of the downside of resource allocation trade offs and addressing them accordingly the first of these considerations suggests the need for agricultural systems that are resilient to collapse from unpredictable and potentially fundamental disturbance through incorporation of local information it is possible to maintain coherent strategies aimed at upper level objectives e g biodiversity conservation while supporting the integrity of lower level sub systems e g community economic vitality the second consideration that arises from explicit scaling indicates the value of developing systems which are buffered against political paralysis caused by negative impacts of resource allocation decisions victims or losers result from allocation and reallocation functions these individuals and or institutions must be addressed recent enthusiasm regarding win win scenarios in many cases is buoyed by scaling error explicit recognition of the implications of necessary trade offs both positive and negative promotes the development of mechanisms to support losers failure to confront the fact that losers are consistently produced exaggerates the negative impact they have on system performance we define holistic management as identifying assimilating and acting on information in a manner consonant with the contextual spatiotemporal scale of the problem at hand the fundamental challenge facing agriculture is integration of multiple considerations across levels in the system explicitly scaled analysis and action in a holistic setting is proposed as a means by which alternative agriculture can respond to this challenge

the use of physical indicators for industrial energy demand scenarios abstract scientific information on the size and nature of the threat of climate change is needed by politicians in order to weight their decisions computerised models are extremely useful tools to quantify the long term effects of current policies this paper describes a new modelling approach that allows formulation of industrial energy demand projections consistent with the assumptions for scenario drivers such as gdp and population in the model a level of industrial production is used as a key variable and we define it in physical units rather than in monetary units the aim of this research is to increase insights that come with long term energy demand scenarios this research clearly shows that physical indicators provide additional insights in scenario analysis the use of physical indicators instead of monetary indicators seems to affect the energy scenarios significantly the differences with monetary indicators are larger in developing regions than in oecd regions we conclude that an integrated energy and materials approach reveals developments that are hardly visible using a monetary approach moreover this research shows the potential and benefits of the use of physical indicators for scenario development

the transfer and application of product service systems from academia to uk manufacturing firms the servicisation of many advanced economies is thought by many commentators to provide opportunities to move society away from unsustainable patterns of production and consumption the concept of the product service system pss has been conceptualised in academic circles to assist in the attainment of such desirable futures this paper reports the findings of research conducted as part of the solid project which considered the transfer and application of the pss concept from academia to industry in the united kingdom it draws upon theories from evolutionary economics to provide a rationale for the transfer of the pss concept and the role of this in achieving desirable technological change the paper also identifies an appropriate methodology to transfer the pss concept from uk academic circles to industry and the factors which impact upon and importantly lead to the successful completion of this process the combination of theoretical insight with case study research is used to develop a framework that could help uk based intermediaries to complete the transfer of the pss concept this is seen as an integral part of public policies aimed at stimulating sustainable patterns of production and consumption

environmentally sustainable household consumption from aggregate environmental pressures to priority fields of action unsustainable consumption patterns of the north or rather of the global affluent consumers class have been identified by agenda 21 as one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development however neither accounting based on the system of national accounts sna nor household economics provide the proper instruments to assess the environmental impact of household decision making eco efficiency assessments as familiar in the business sector provide no appropriate tool for households as an alternative an environmental space based assessment scheme is suggested covering the major pressures on the environment caused by household decisions the methodology is used twice once to analyse the environmental relevance of the main activity clusters of household consumption and once to identify the dominant acts of consumption within each cluster the latter provide the basis for deriving environmental performance indicators a rough analysis of household influence potentials permits to identify housing eating and mobility as the three priority fields for action for minimising the environmental impact of households extending the influence analysis actor matrixes are derived allocating influence and thus responsibility for environmental pressures to different groups of economic agents

receptivity to the production of product service systems in the uk construction and manufacturing sectors a comparative analysis abstract trajectories of service innovations emanating from manufacturing sectors have been of particular interest to those wishing to improve resource productivity and promote sustainable development research has focused on product service systems psss which are a category of service innovations deliberately designed to offer superior environmental performance this paper draws on research which explored whether trajectories of pss can be induced on new uk housing developments to satisfy household demand and prevent household waste the research was undertaken with a uk speculative house builder and facilities management service providers from its supplier network qualitative data were collected via interviews and focus groups to enable rich accounts of the range of factors in these firms selection environments which affect receptivity to pss production to be developed these were compared with factors affecting receptivity to pss production identified in a study of uk manufacturers the results show that in contrast to the manufacturing study clear drivers for pss delivery on new housing developments are absent in external selection environments of participating firms and uncertainty associated with the potential of pss concepts to satisfy household demand inhibits development of requisite competence for pss delivery within these thus further research is needed to explore new pss supply arrangements involving a range of household service providers

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

on the determination of the us aggregate health care expenditure per capita real health care expenditure is examined against three major groups of explanatory variables economic demographic and health stock and it is found that the three groups of variables have an impact on real health care spending other subcategories such as real private and government health care pharmaceutical dental home nursing ambulatory personal medical consumption and in patient expenditures have also been examined and have been found to be affected by the explanatory variables for several subcomponents there is evidence of supplier inducement of the demographic group of variables the ageing population had an impact only on the per capita real overall and private health care outlay and pharmaceutical spending also cointegrating relationships were found and consistent estimators of the elasticities found

product services as a research field past present and future reflections from a decade of research in the last decade many researchers institutes and programs in the eu paid attention to product service systems pss given this massive effort it is time to take stock is pss research a theoretical field in its own right is the pss concept indeed the road to the factor 10 world is it the road to enhanced competitiveness what is needed to really use the potential of the concept this paper discusses these questions summarizing the analysis done in the pss review book new business for old europe various eu sponsored projects and the conceptual approach chosen in a new research network on sustainable consumption and production called score 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the substitution bias of the laspeyres price index an analysis using estimated cost of living indexes the most commonly used measure of the cost of living the consumer price index cpi published by the bureau of labor statistics is essentially a laspeyres price index it is well known however that a laspeyres price index provides an upward biased estimate of the cost of living because in keeping the same base period basket of goods as weights it does not take into account substitution among commodities induced by relative price changes the magnitude of the bias is an empirical question which is the focus of this study an estimate of the substitution bias may be obtained by taking the difference between the laspeyres price index and an estimated true cost of living index the true cost of living index cli is based on the theory of consumer demand it is the ratio of the minimum expenditures under two different price regimes necessary to maintain a constant level of utility as opposed to the constant basket of goods in the laspeyres index the size of the bias depends on two factors 1 the size of consumption substitution elasticities if there is no commodity substitution then the cli and laspeyres index coincide regardless of changes in relative prices and 2 the magnitude of relative price changes if all prices move together then the cli and laspeyres index again coincide regardless of the size of substitution elasticities in order to compute a true cli it is necessary to specify a particular utility function and estimate the parameters of the resulting system of demand equations see for example louis phlips p 135 several estimates of the magnitude of the substitution bias have appeared in the literature but all previous studies suffer from a common weakness they are all based on a very small number of commodities essentially because of econometric problems involved in estimating large systems of demand equations in one group of studies demand models have been estimated using highly aggregated data in which total consumption is grouped into four to nine aggregate commodites such as housing durables or clothing arthur goldberger and theodore gamaletsos for example estimate the linear expenditure system les demand model using data on five aggregate goods for several european countries and compare the resulting cli for one of the countries greece to the corresponding laspeyres price index tran van hoa estimates costof living indexes for six australian provinces using data on nine aggregate goods phlips cites work by r sanz ferrer who computed a cli for belgium from data on eight aggregate commodities in such studies using highly aggregated data the estimate of the substitution bias may be understated because the aggregation obscures substitution in consumption within categories which is perhaps more prevalent than substitution between gross aggregates another shortcoming of these three aggregate studies is the fact that they use only a single demand system and hence do not explore the sensitivity of the cli to a priori u s bureau of labor statistics the groundwork for this study was my dissertation i would like to thank the chairman and members of my committee r robert russell llad phillips and robert deacon for their support and helpful suggestions and jack triplett robert pollak richard j mcdonald and a referee for valuable comments on an earlier version the views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the bureau of labor statistics for a theoretical discussion of cost of living indexes see robert pollak 1971b and paul samuelson and subramanian swamy

an empirical model of the demand for health care in belgium the paper presents an empirical model of the demand of health care in belgium the analysis pertains to 17 categories of medical care and to two subgroups of health insurance beneficiaries namely the active and the widows orphans pensioners and invalids the estimation results show that income and relative prices matter in the demand for medical care supplier induced demand is also detected for a number of medical care categories other explanatory variables in the model include the size of the child population climatic conditions and a time trend representing technological advances in health care

a time use perspective on the materials intensity of consumption abstract the ecological requirements to drastically increase the productivity of materials use call for improvements in the efficiency of consumption this eco efficiency discussion often takes a functional view on consumption noting that present consumption is inefficient and that it is not the products that the consumers want but the services that the products yield however contemporary consumption serves many needs that are not functional and universal but subjective and obscured from the producers this paper develops a time use approach towards consumption which makes allowance for the subjectivity of needs while still enabling the analysts to approach the concept of a sustainable lifestyle a distinctive premise of the analysis is that it assumes time and money not to be interchangeable and consumption to be limited by available consumption time instead of purchasing power this approach is demonstrated by linking the direct and the indirect energy use of finnish two person households to the data of a national time use survey the results are used to point out some of the potential time use rebound effects of such new eco efficient services that transfer activities from private households to the market actors

the economics of health and health care what have we learned what have i learned victor fuchs and i have been talking with each other about the economics of health and health care since we met nearly 30 years ago i was pleased therefore when he asked me to organize this session of his american economic association annual meeting but then rather dismayed by his suggestion that as one of the papers in the session i offer an overview of what i have learned about the subject during those 30 years as a profession we have indeed learned a great deal in these three decades the rapid growth of health care spending that doubled its gdp share to one seventh of the economy and the 1966 medicare and medicaid programs that have made federal health care spending exceed the combined total of all domestic discretionary federal outlays have attracted a generation of researchers to a subject that had been largely neglected by economists before the 1960 s 1 econometric research and conceptual developments have been mutually reinforcing helped by advances in econometric theory and by the government s creation of a rich array of detailed data although there remains substantial controversy about many issues in this field as in most other parts of economics there is no doubt that anyone setting out to teach a course on health economics or to do policy analysis in this area would start from a very different base today than 30 years ago