a combined input output decision making trial and evaluation laboratory method for evaluating effect of the remanufacturing sector development abstract the increasingly intensive industrial activities in emerging economies like china have caused serious resource depletion and pollution issues as remanufacturing practices effectively solve common environmental problems in recycling and processing stages by minimizing emissions of wastes remanufacturing has become an important eco industry and it has been gradually adopted in recent years in china based on the input output theory and previous studies this paper establishes an input output model with multiple remanufacturing sectors and develops a combined input output and decision making trial and evaluation laboratory method then using the input output table of china in 2007 the combined method is used to examine the role of the remanufacturing sector in the national economy as well as its symbiotic effects with other sectors for energy saving and emissions reduction the results show that the remanufacturing development is far below the average development level of other sectors in china with the rising market share of remanufacturing the demand of some energy intensive and pollution intensive sectors including smelting and rolling of metals and production supply of electric power heat power can be significantly decreased but the demand of traffic transport and storage is increased the results can provide a scientific basis in formulating economic policies to promote the remanufacturing development and the macro adjustment of the industrial structure for the government

evaluating the comprehensive benefit of eco industrial parks by employing multi criteria decision making approach for circular economy abstract with the increasing conflicts among economic growth environmental deterioration and resource shortage as an effective way to achieve the sustainable development and circular economy the eco industrial park gradually becomes a critical research issue in the field of recycling economy in this paper a hybrid framework for evaluating the comprehensive benefit of eco industrial parks from the perspective of circular economy was proposed firstly the evaluation index system for eco industrial parks was constructed by employing the grey delphi method according to the opinions provided by experts from relevant fields which includes economic benefit criteria social benefit criteria environmental benefit criteria ecology industry construction criteria and management level criteria consisting of seventeen quantitative sub criteria and nine qualitative sub criteria secondly in order to solve complicated uncertain and ambiguous problems under the fuzzy background a hybrid multi criteria decision making mcdm approach was put forward on the basis of superiority linguistic ratings and entropy weight method for weight determination as well as fuzzy vikor for ranking alternatives finally the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed hybrid mcdm approach was demonstrated through a case analysis of six representative eco industrial parks in china and the comprehensive benefits of six eco industrial parks were prioritized effectively the hybrid mcdm approach in this paper presents a great potential in evaluating and ranking the comprehensive benefits of eco industrial parks through solving complex and ambiguous problems in a fuzzy environment and varying mcdm tools the evaluation findings by employing the proposed mcdm approach can provide references for the construction and management of eco industrial parks and relevant policy formulation

consensus consumer and intertemporal asset pricing with heterogeneous beliefs le fichier attache est egalement edite dans les cahier de la chaire les particuliers face aux risques de l institut de finance de dauphine cahier n 7 mars 2007

the impact of international outsourcing on unionization and wages evidence from the apparel export sector in central america it is often assumed that manufacturing workers in developing countries as recipients of outsourced jobs would achieve economic benefits and organizational power the author argues that job growth in developing countries through outsourcing to competing firms has often actually resulted in declining unionization and lower wage rates relative to traditional integrated manufacturing firms using time series data on union membership from 1980 2003 for honduras and el salvador as well as 2004 household survey data for el salvador he examines the determinants of unionization rates and wages in the manufacturing sectors he finds that that competitive outsourcing hurts labor at the plant level in three ways 1 it reduces labor s strike leverage by geographically dispersing the production process 2 it increases the threat of plant mobility by decreasing plant level investments and 3 it increases labor costs relative to total costs which creates an incentive for employers to keep wages low and unions out

how do scholars approach the circular economy a systematic literature review abstract circular economy ce aims to overcome the take make dispose linear pattern of production and consumption proposing a circular system in which the value of products materials and resources is maintained in the economy as long as possible in recent years there has been a proliferation of scholars publications on the topic this study presents the results of a systematic literature review exploring the state of the art of academic research on ce the paper examines the ce body of literature with a systematic approach to provide an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon with rigorous and reproducible research criteria the revisited material consists of 565 articles collected through the web of science and scopus databases and has been evaluated using specific structural dimensions to group literature into analytical categories starting from being a concept studied in connection with industrial ecology ce has slowly acquired its independent role in academic research framed mainly into environmental sustainability related studies as a result of policies implementation academic production is mainly concentrated in china and europe employing tools and methods for modelling processes and supporting decision making for ce implementation e g life cycle assessment and material flow analysis ce studies follow three main lines of action the first aims to change the social and economic dynamics at macro and administrative level the second to support firms in circular processes implementation at micro level to spread new forms of consumption and product design the third developed at meso level discusses industrial symbiosis experiences ce is associated with a variety of concepts and waste management emerges as the most relevant sub sector ce is also strongly connected with the concept of sustainability proposing ways to operationalize its implementation at the environmental and economic level while scholars only marginally consider social and institutional implications the most explored practices are those related to cleaner production aiming at reducing environmental impact and waste production along the life cycle of a product and optimizing the performance and efficiency of processes conversely studies on ce may devote greater attention to strategies for social and institutional changes able to transform the upstream process of production and consumption considering business model strategies scholars mainly focus on studying closing material loops strategy while slowing the loops which requires a radical change of consumption and production patterns is only marginally included with respect to ce implementation this study s findings highlight ce as an evolving concept that still requires development to consolidate its definition boundaries principles and associated practices

effects of financial innovations on market volatility when beliefs are heterogeneous abstract consider a model with two logarithmic utility maximizer agents that observe aggregate consumption but disagree about its expected rate of change markets are incomplete we first show that volatility of the interest rate in an economy with additional information is higher in a complete markets economy with no additional information there are two differences in volatility with the previous the first one due to the increase in volatility of the wealth share of the individuals is always positive the second difference is the change in covariance between the components of the interest rate volatility and can be positive or negative

a bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995 2014 abstract natural resource accounting plays a critical role in sustainable utilization and conservation of natural resources this paper aims to review research progress on natural resource accounting for the period of 1995 2014 the main research methods for this study include bibliometric analysis and social network analysis covering publications performances characteristics of related journals countries institutions authors and keywords the results show that the total amount of publications on natural resource accounting has increased rapidly since 2001 the most productive journal country institution and author are journal of environmental management usa university of california and dr chen respectively all of them have higher academic influence meanwhile natural resources that attract most attentions are water and energy the six main research methods in this field include mathematic modeling emergy exergy ecological footprint ef life cycle assessment lca and material flow analysis mfa reasons for the prominent performance of key countries and institutions are then discussed and uncovered as well as for six methods finally suggestions on how to further promote the development of this research field are raised

mfca extension from a circular economy perspective model modifications and case study abstract as an innovative method of environment management accounting ema a model of material flow cost accounting mfca is widely used in the field of cost calculation in the manufacturing process industry and it has obtained a level of achievement in recent years based on the existing literature in the field this report argues that the application of the current mfca model in the process industry has defects such as content restrictions a single accounting index simple methodology and one sided conclusions among others this paper combines the current mfca model with the 3r principle of a circular economy ce and the industry characteristics of high consumption and pollution the research focuses on the iron and steel industry as a representative of a process manufacturing industry and forms a modified mfca model for an iron and steel enterprise according to the perspective of ce the modifications we make to the model occur in the fields of model content the accounting index the methodology of application and the extension of functionality finally through a specific case study this report verifies the comprehensive utility of the proposed modified model in general the modified mfca may to a certain extent be considered innovative in its approach to information and data connections extension of methods and procedures modes of disclosing information construction of evaluation analysis and management of circular decision making each of these elements is conducive to realizing a triple win situation for the conservation of resources energy providing an economic value add reducing the environmental load and enhancing the sustainable development of a resource constrained process industry

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 circular economy swings and roundabouts abstract in the last few decades the circular economy has increasingly been advertised as an economic model that can replace the current linear economy whilst addressing the issues of environmental deterioration social equity and long term economic growth with the explicit suggestion that it can serve as a tool for sustainable development however despite the individual prominence of the circular economy and sustainable development in the academic and wider literature the exact relationship between the two concepts has neither been thoroughly defined nor explored the consequent result is various inconsistencies occurring across the literature regarding how the circular economy can serve as a tool for sustainable development and an incomplete understanding of how its long term effects differ from those of the linear economy a literature review was conducted to interpret the current conceptual relationship between the circular economy and sustainable development the review highlights numerous challenges concerning conceptual definition economic growth and implementation that inhibit the use of the circular economy as a tool for sustainable development in its current form the review concludes by providing suggestions for how research concerning the circular economy should proceed if it is to provide a potential approach for achieving sustainable development

heterogeneous expectations and bond markets this paper presents a dynamic equilibrium model of bond markets in which two groups of agents hold heterogeneous expectations about future economic conditions the heterogeneous expectations cause agents to take on speculative positions against each other and therefore generate endogenous relative wealth fluctuation the relative wealth fluctuation amplifies asset price volatility and contributes to the time variation in bond premia our model shows that a modest amount of heterogeneous expectations can help explain several puzzling phenomena including the excessive volatility of bond yields the failure of the expectations hypothesis and the ability of a tent shaped linear combination of forward rates to predict bond returns the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please email journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

option smiling when investors estimates of asset volatility disagree this study sheds light on why heterogeneous beliefs in volatility manifest the smile effect of options and how the degree of belief disagreement influences option implied volatility it is found that when investors level of heterogeneous beliefs increases agents who over estimate volatility raise their subjective probability about those outer dividend states and hence increase more consumption to those states as a result an increase of consumption causes a decrease of their marginal rate of transformation in outer states the raising subjective probability increases the prices of outer states while the lower marginal rate of transformation decreases the prices of that however the influence of the former dominates the latter causing a fatter tail of the state price density as a consequence the values increase for those call options with high strike prices and put options with low strike prices leading to a u shaped implied volatility and hence causes a smell effect

irrational exuberance and option smiles disagreement among investors is pervasive some investors see a trend and predict continuation others see the same trend and predict reversal some investors overreact others underreact i explain how disagreement can and does cause markets to be inefficient and i argue that option markets are particularly vulnerable in this respect the volatility smile associated with index options is one manifestation of inefficiency stemming from heterogeneous beliefs as part of the argument i discuss an event study about irrational exuberance the term alan greenspan chair of the u s federal reserve board used in late 1996 to describe stock market sentiment to study this event i combined the information gleaned from option pricing data with other information about market sentiment to assess the impact of heterogeneous beliefs on market efficiency

the circular economy an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context there have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development the circular economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way this set of ideas has been adopted by china as the basis of their economic development included in both the 11th and the 12th five year plan escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and ngos this paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the circular economy tracing its meanings and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology and discusses how the circular economy has been operationalized in business and policy the paper finds that while the circular economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials which may contribute to more sustainable business models it also encapsulates tensions and limitations these include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions and some unintended consequences this leads us to propose a revised definition of the circular economy as an economic model wherein planning resourcing procurement production and reprocessing are designed and managed as both process and output to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well being

eco innovation in the transition to a circular economy an analytical literature review abstract in the ongoing sustainability debate the circular economy ce has been steadily gaining ground as a new paradigm at the same time eco innovation ei has been recognised as a key element in carrying out the transition from a linear to a circular system of production and consumption however little information can be found concerning whether and how ei can actually facilitate the change to a ce while extensive literature on ei and a growing body of research exploring the ce already exist there is as yet no comprehensive understanding concerning the connections between these two concepts drawing on academic contributions from the fields of ei and ce this analysis seeks to clarify and synthesise findings at the intersection of these two fields the aim is threefold derive literature based working definitions of ce and ei review the role of ei at ce s macro meso and micro levels and characterise ce inducing ei in terms of targets mechanisms and impacts our literature review shows that an ei driven techno economic transition to a ce requires specific solutions i e different forms of ei driven clean congruence at distinct levels of operation generally speaking movement toward a ce is found to be contingent on systemic ei that is not only intense in technology but also involving dynamic and holistic combinations of service innovations and novel organisational set ups

state price densities under heterogeneous beliefs the smile effect and implied risk aversion abstract it has been widely noted in the empirical literature that state price densities implicit in financial asset prices are not log normal this paper shows that this phenomenon can be caused by heterogeneity in investors beliefs it derives the state price density under heterogeneous beliefs in closed form and demonstrates that heterogeneous beliefs can give rise to multimodal state price densities consequences for the smile effect in implied option volatility and for measures of risk aversion inferred from empirical state price densities are discussed

towards a new taxonomy of circular economy business models abstract circular economy has undoubtedly become one of the hot topics in public debates about new and more sustainable industrial paradigms and strategies in this respect the fashion of circular economy is in the fact that it aims at overcoming the dominant linear take make disposal economy model i e a traditional open ended economy model developed with no built in tendency to recycle which is reflected by treating the environment as a waste reservoir su et al 2013 circular economy indeed bases on the establishment of closed production systems where resources are reused and kept in a loop of production and usage allowing generating more value and for a longer period despite the interest for circular economy by politicians and practitioners scholars particularly in the strategic management field are still struggling with a lack of a framework explaining how companies willing to become circular adapt their existing business model or create a new one by extensively reviewing through the lens of business model literature the extant contributions on circular economy we propose a taxonomy of circular economy business models based on the degree of adoption of circularity along two major dimensions i the customer value proposition interface i e the implementation of the circularity concept in proposing value to customers ii the value network i e the ways through which interacting with suppliers and reorganizing the own internal activities the taxonomy is then initially tested through some explorative case studies showing in practice the ability of the framework to properly distinguish different modes of adoption of circular economy

common trends and drivers of co2 emissions and employment a decomposition analysis in the industrial sector of selected european union countries the countries of the european union face the challenge of reversing the declining role of industry and achieving their targets for sustainable development combining industrial growth with fewer environmental repercussions and more jobs this paper uses a decomposition analysis in order to quantify the effect of the driving factors on two indicators of sustainable industrial development co2 emissions and employment in five european union countries during 2000 2011 the decomposition method applied is the log mean divisia index i and the models developed comprise some common or closely related driving factors the parallel investigation of the factors affecting the two indicators offers useful insights into relevant complementary and or antithetical effects the timeframe of the study is divided into two time periods before and after the start of the economic crisis 2000 2007 and 2007 2011 respectively this time division enables the evaluation of the impacts of the economic crisis directly on the drivers and indirectly on the two indicators it was deduced that in both time periods the two main drivers of industrial co2 emissions and employment were economic growth and resource intensity which counterbalance each other structural changes appeared to have a rather marginal effect even if the general tendency was the expansion of less energy labour intensive sectors finally changes in the fuel mix used in industry were beneficial to emissions reduction in all the examined countries especially in the second time period the results obtained show that the examined eu countries have not found a solid path towards sustainable and inclusive industrial development yet the stronger economies seem to move faster to this direction though

emergy based ecological footprint analysis for a mega city the dynamic changes of shanghai abstract to move towards sustainable urban development interactions between economic and ecological systems should be further investigated due to their coupled relations in this study we propose an emergy based ecological footprint eef analysis framework shanghai was selected as a case study city to see its dynamic changes from 2007 to 2016 the results show that shanghai had a large ecological deficit an extremely high ecological footprint intensity and a poor coordination relationship between its ecological system and its economic system indicating a great ecological challenge that it is facing the uneven distribution of its emergy ecological footprint is mainly due to the large share of fossil fuels land type but with the city s great efforts the overall ecological pressure has been reduced and the coordination relationship has also been improved while the local economy is still booming pearson correlation analysis further indicates that the city s policy on developing tertiary industry has resulted in a positive effect on improving the coordinating relationship the ratio between the output value of heavy industry and gross industrial output value has the most negative correlation with the coordinating relationship finally policy recommendations are raised by considering the local realities these recommendations can also provide valuable insights to other megacities with similar challenges

a review on circular economy the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems el articulo muestra un estudio en donde se proporciona una revision extensa de la literatura de las dos ultimas decadas con el proposito de captar las principales caracteristicas y perspectivas de la ce economia circular origenes principios basicos ventajas y desventajas modelado e implementacion de ce en los diferentes niveles micro meso y macro en todo el mundo los resultados demuestran que los origenes de la ce se basan principalmente en la economia ecologica y ecologia industrial

towards a national circular economy indicator system in china an evaluation and critical analysis abstract it is widely acknowledged that china s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment in order to deal with this problem the circular economy ce has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development national laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of ce and national ce demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed china is the first country to release nationally focused ce indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of ce implementation can be recognized these ce indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision makers and can help achieve ce goals and outcomes this unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities this paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national ce indicator system china s ce efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system a critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented we show that certain benefits can be gained but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social business indicators urban industrial symbiosis absolute material energy reduction and prevention oriented indicators concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper the knowledge gained from chinese efforts on ce indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies

the effects of circular economy on economic growth a quasi natural experiment in china abstract this study aims to assess the impact of circular economy on economic growth in the process of rapid economic growth china has been facing with the pressure of insufficient supply of resources and environmental pollution which makes the development model of circular economy ce an imperative transformation china has carried out two batches of ce pilot cities to promote the construction of ecological economy and change the traditional economic development model which is employed as a quasi natural experiment in this study the effect of this ce policy on the local economic growth is explored using the propensity score matching psm method and difference in differences did model and a panel data of 163 chinese cities from the year of 2001 2012 has been used the results show that the growth rate of gdp of the pilot cities decreases significantly but the economic decline gradually recovers as time goes on in addition this study further conducts the regional heterogeneity analysis to compare the economic growth of ce pilot cities in three economic zones i e eastern central and western economic zones and the sectoral heterogeneity analysis to compare the economic growth of three main industries i e primary secondary and tertiary industries finally discussion of above results is presented and recommendations for the promotion of urban ce are proposed

towards a consensus on the circular economy abstract the growing importance of the concept of the circular economy as a way to attain sustainable development has encouraged scholars to propose different ways to understand it given the large number of studies done on the circular economy their differing approaches and their multiple applications this paper attempts to propose a consensus view of the basic notions of the circular economy framework and highlight its relationship with eco innovation to that end this study carried out a systematic literature review that resulted in four main outputs a knowledge map of the circular economy an analysis of the main notions of the concept principles and determinants of a circular economy finally this study brings to light some remarkable examples of eco innovations developed for implementation in the circular economy

intertemporal asset pricing with heterogeneous beliefs abstract we examine the behaviour of the interest rate asset prices and asset holdings in an economy with heterogeneous rationally updated beliefs about the expected rate of production growth the equilibrium interest rate is a weighted average of the interest rates that would prevail in economies populated by homogeneous agents with the beliefs of the respective agents in the heterogeneous model the weights are given by the fractions of total wealth held financial innovation affects the dynamics of allocations and prices but preserves the aggregate output process and the structure of equilibrium asset prices also display the wealth weighted average characterization journal of economic literature classification numbers c60 d52 d91 g12

european option pricing and hedging with both fixed and proportional transaction costs abstract in this paper we provide a systematic treatment of the utility based option pricing and hedging approach in markets with both fixed and proportional transaction costs we extend the framework developed by davis et al siam j control optim 31 1993 470 and formulate the option pricing and hedging problem we propose and implement a numerical procedure for computing option prices and corresponding optimal hedging strategies we present a careful analysis of the optimal hedging strategy and elaborate on important differences between the exact hedging strategy and the asymptotic hedging strategy of whalley and wilmott risk 7 1994 82 we provide a simulation analysis in order to compare the performance of the utility based hedging strategy against the asymptotic strategy and some other common strategies

the history and current applications of the circular economy concept abstract the challenges of balancing industrial development environmental and human health and economic growth in china and elsewhere in the world are drivers for recent resource use and low carbon development strategies that include the application of the circular economy ce concept a central theme of the ce concept is the valuation of materials within a closed looped system with the aim to allow for natural resource use while reducing pollution or avoiding resource constraints and sustaining economic growth the objectives of this study are 1 to review the history of the ce concept to provide a context for 2 a critical examination of how it is applied currently thematic categories are used to organize the literature review results including policy instruments and approaches value chains material flows and products and technology organizational and social innovation the literature review illustrates the variability in ce project success and failure over time and by region ce successes key challenges and research gaps are identified the literature review results provide useful information for researchers as well as multi stakeholder groups who seek to define the ce concept in practical terms and to consider potential challenges and opportunities it presents when implemented

resource duration as a managerial indicator for circular economy performance abstract this paper provides a new indicator for environmental assessment performance linked to circular economy almost all existing techniques evaluate resource use based on their burden relative to value while the central point of circular economy is to create value through material retention the existing burden orientated techniques are therefore unsuitable for guiding managers in relation to circular economy objectives this paper presents a new performance metric the longevity indicator which measures contribution to material retention based on the amount of time a resource is kept in use the measure is composed of three generic components initial lifetime earned refurbished lifetime and earned recycled lifetime management of these components can be used for decision making and performance assessment in the circular economy the example of precious metals in mobile phone handsets is used to illustrate the general application and suitability of this indicator findings show that for materials to be retained managers should encourage longer lifetime use increase product return levels for initial use and refurbished phones and select the most effective recycling processes available this paper advances performance indicators for circular economy and provides a tool which can be applied at managerial and organizational levels to measure the impact of business decisions on the longevity of precious materials

irrational exuberance and option smiles disagreement among investors is pervasive some investors see a trend and predict continuation others see the same trend and predict reversal some investors overreact others underreact i explai

heterogeneous beliefs asset prices and volatility in a pure exchange economy abstract this paper extends the lucas 1978 asset prices in an exchange economy econometrica 46 1429 1445 model to a setting in which investors have heterogeneous beliefs about the structure of a dividend process by assuming that all investors have logarithmic preferences and different subjective discount rates we can obtain a closed form representation of the stock price this closed form solution enables us to analyze the dynamics of the stock price and its volatility the model can simultaneously generate several well known empirical facts excessive volatility leverage effects and positive relationships between price and trading volume and between volatility and volume all of these effects are driven by the different beliefs of investors

stock market volatility in a heterogeneous information economy the informational role of prices contributes positively to their variability in a noisy rational expectations equilibrium traders rationally respond to price changes by revising their estimates of other traders private signals and hence their own expectations of future dividends the resultant shifts in traders demands amplify any supply shock induced price changes we develop an infinite horizon noisy rational expectations model and calibrate simulate and test it using u s stock market data the price variability in a heterogeneous information economy is shown to be 20 to 46 higher than in an otherwise equivalent economy in which all signals are publicly announced i introduction a common theme of the rational expectations literature is the ability of prices to convey information a question is the extent to which this informational role induces additional variability in prices grundy and mcnichols 1989 present a rational expectations model with multiple rounds of trade preceding a final consumption date they show that the revelation of existing private information through price changes can be the sole cause of the price variability equilibrium prices can change even in the absence of any change in supply or the arrival of any new information beyond the observation that the price itself has changed we examine the link between the informational role of prices and price variability in a multi period model with heterogeneous information arriving and consumption taking place at each trading date our goal is to obtain a comparison of price variability in a world of heterogeneous information with variability in an otherwise equivalent homogeneous information economy in which in effect all private signals are publicly announced and

the social metabolism of scotland an environmental perspective abstract the paper presents the results of a study that developed and applied social metabolism methods to assess the sustainability of a regional economy particularly the dynamics related to changes in the production and use of energy the first objective of the study was to assess the feasibility of using existing secondary data sources as a basis for sub nation state and regional analysis with the regions in this case differentiating the area based on rurality the second was to structure the outputs of the analysis in ways that provided comprehensive yet succinct and interpretable assessments of the balance of flows of material energy and money that underpin the economy with the intention that ultimately these assessments would be used to inform policymaking the paper provides an introduction to the key concepts used within social metabolism analysis particularly the use of emergy a measure of the cumulative environmental support provided to a social ecological system this is a unifying metric into which the myriad flows within an economy can be translated and combined in meaningful ways it does so by preserving information on both the quantity and quality of flows and so avoiding the need for arbitrary weightings the paper presents a range of options for the use of emergy based metrics that could be used to inform policy making comparisons for the years 2001 and 2010 are made at country level for scotland and for three degrees of rurality the analysis highlights how decisions on the share of the offshore energy sector attributed to scotland and on the share of services particularly those imported from beyond u k have profound effects on the sustainability trajectory of the economy and the conclusions that might be drawn for policy the paper concludes that the methods have the potential to add value to existing administrative datasets and provide new perspectives that may be of value to policy making but acknowledges that challenges remain in translating this potential into tangible use within policymaking

a sustainable biogas model in china the case study of beijing deqingyuan biogas project according to the paris agreement china has the ambition to develop non fossil energy which will account for 20 of the total energy consumption in 2030 china has abundant biomass potential implying the bioenergy should be an important option of non fossil energy in this analysis we present an representative biogas project the deqingyuan project dqy in beijing and conduct a cost benefit analysis for the whole value chain dqy is the first large scale biogas project in china that utilizes 100 chicken manure as a feedstock and integrates biogas production with ecological agriculture using advanced technologies dqy uses 80 000 t of chicken manure and 100 000 t of sewage each year to produce biogas which generates 14 million kwh of power annually and obtains an additional revenue of rmb 8 million yuan each year through the clean development mechanism cdm operating as an example of a sustainable bioenergy model dqy accomplishes the full use of a recycled resource while showing consideration for animal welfare during the entire production which is a fundamental component of the new rural energy strategy the circular economy model of dqy plays a prominent role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions mitigating pollution and increasing employment among other benefits this paper aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the typical demonstration model dqy in utilization of agricultural waste in china and further proposes a general development model of chinese biogas in the future

the role of policy labels keywords and framing in transitioning waste policy abstract the last decade has seen a new wave of ambitious policies in order to address the mounting ecological damage caused by high levels of consumerism and the depletion of resources to manufacture short life cycle products in this paper zero waste and sustainable materials management are examined as prominent labels of an evolving waste policy discourse towards waste prevention and reduction and material cycles using discourse analysis key documents are comparatively assessed presenting the origins of these two concepts and how they entered the waste policy domain the different framing tactics and governance models are then presented the findings demonstrate that the different discourse paradigms around the concept of waste and materials influences what policy initiatives measurement tools and outcomes are pursued although zero waste and sustainable materials management are gaining popularity as indicators of shifting waste policy towards sustainable production and consumption policy particularly with increasing discussion and application of circular economy governance models in europe and china a distinction still exists between the conceptualisation and implementation within and across the two concepts it is in this transition towards a circular economy that it is valuable to review the role of policy labels keywords and framing context in waste policy and the ability of enhanced waste management to assist in the development of more sustainable and environmentally acceptable economic and social behaviour models

toward a research agenda for policy intervention and facilitation to enhance industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive literature review the normative question what role should governmental policy play to facilitate the development of industrial symbiosis has received considerable attention of researchers however for several reasons the effects of governmental policy actions on industrial symbiosis are still not clear this article proposes a research agenda to clarify the mechanisms of policy intervention and facilitation of industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive review of industrial symbiosis literature focusing on how policy is conceptualized and studied the results show that existing research lacks an explicit definition of policy and employs a static conceptualization of policy that is reinforced by comparative statics research methods we argue that a dynamic process perspective is crucial to reveal the actual mechanisms through which policy intervention and facilitation affect the evolution of industrial symbiosis building on this view industrial symbiosis research is connected with insights from policy sciences and the case of policy translation of circular economy and eco industrial park in china is investigated in order to illustrate that policy is at heart a dynamic process we conclude with a research agenda proposing that the key to reveal the mechanisms is to identify the sequence of events connecting policy process and industrial symbiosis practices

how the brazilian government can use public policies to induce recycling and still save money abstract public policies can leverage the recycling of materials however there is no clear guidance on how to use such policies and still spare public funds to fill this gap a multiple case study was undertaken in brazil eleven companies that can produce new products using the waste generated by their customers were investigated the findings contribute by suggesting how governments can economically use taxes sanctions incentives and other public instruments to induce recycling tax exemptions are not required when the waste recycled reduces the manufacturer s costs or generates revenue for customers who produce it and or for the scrap dealers who collect it sanctions or penalties imposed on the manufacturer s customers can increase the recycling efforts of such manufacturers when the recycling is technically feasible but not economically attractive sanctions are ineffective when wastes have a good market value or are widespread over millions of generation points for such cases the public policies should focus on community awareness campaigns and attention on waste pickers incentives for the technological development can be provided to wastes that present a good market value but do not have an economical recycling technology available granting resources to universities and technological institutes will help spread the solution to sme companies by better understanding how to apply public instruments the governments will be able to save funds on tax exemptions better define sanctions focus its community awareness campaigns focus its waste pickers support and better allocate funds to support the development of new recycling technologies

a case study of a phosphorus chemical firm s application of resource efficiency and eco efficiency in industrial metabolism under circular economy abstract circular economy plays an essential and useful role in china in considering economic and ecological sustainability individual firms as the primary implements of a circular economy are facing many obstacles at present in aspects of resource and ecological efficiency therefore this study presents a set of tools to help decision makers better solve these problems and to guide resource based chemical industries in sustainable development first this study describes resource efficiency based on the sfa of a selected p chemistry firm and identifies the key potential opportunities for improvement using analysis tools and assessment tools furthermore by applying eco design and decision tools a firm level p chemical circular economic system is designed and constructed a phosphorus chemical optimization model is established and relevant successive scenarios are generated finally the corresponding feasible solutions and policy recommendations are proposed to improve economic benefit resource efficiency waste recycling rate and eco efficiency after industry design planning and technological progress the total economic benefit increases dramatically and the recycling efficiencies of accompanying resources f si i and s improve by different degrees the results demonstrate that the economic benefit of phosphorus products increases by 28 5 and p utilization efficiency correspondingly increases from 81 1 to 94 7 the comprehensive utilization efficiency of phosphor gypsum increases to 100 and the eco efficiency could be improved significantly by eliminating the phosphor gypsum stack this study demonstrates that technological progress in mineral processing and the production of associated products is the endogenic motivation to increase economic benefit and improve resource efficiency the method proposed in this paper can be applied duplicated and spread not only within the p chemical industry but also in other resource based chemical industries

an insight into the italian chemical sector how to make it green and efficient abstract the present research moves from the consideration that the implementation and the dissemination of circular economy processes is a hotspot in european ecosystem management and that eu countries must converge towards the same targets considering the relevance of chemical sector economic and environmental impact we aim at unveiling the economic and institutional determinants of sectoral performances in terms of circular economy and resource efficiency by means an oecd procedure we built a circular economy index for the chemical sector following a panel data model has been applied on 20 italian regions in order to test two economic hypotheses and a politico institutional one this allowed us to capture the features most likely to affect circular performances within the regions the findings reveal that regional socio economic background plays a fundamental role in improving firm performance level while institutions and sectoral economic dynamic are not strong flywheel of circular economy