crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

does economic recession reduce material use empirical evidence based on 157 economies worldwide abstract the research on economic recession has been more focused on the interactions between macroeconomic and financial variables however whether material use has been affected during the recession period has remained under explored in order to fill up this gap this study investigates the relationship between material use and economic recession as well as other socio economic drivers by using the material flow analysis and the system generalized method of moments for 157 economies worldwide during 1980 2011 results show that economic recession poses significant and negative impact on domestic material consumption at 1 level illustrating its role as a determinant factor on material mitigation by dividing the research sample into extractive and non extractive economies as well as high mid and low income groups we again confirmed the significant negative correlations as expected no significant sign is found between recession and physical trade balance besides other drivers such as population gross domestic production gdp per capita and technological variables also exert marked effects at different situations this research work provides an empirical study on how recession and other factors affect material use at various scenarios which have essential implications for understanding material flow dynamics in different economic cycles

sustainable innovation business models and economic performance an overview sustainable development requires radical and systemic innovations such innovations can be more effectively created and studied when building on the concept of business models this concept provides firms with a holistic framework to envision and implement sustainable innovations for researchers the concept provides an analytical tool that allows them to assess the interplay between the different aspects that firms combine to create ecological economic and social value in addition the business model concept provides a link between the individual firm and the larger production and consumption system in which it operates this paper provides an introduction to the special issue which emerged from selected papers presented at the erscp emsu 2010 conference held in delft the netherlands papers in the special issue cover a broad range from a conceptual discussion resulting in a research agenda the assessment of diffusion of specific business models such as product service systems the introduction of new management tools for business transition management to case studies on how specific business models evolved in specific communities together these papers provide insight into the promise of the business model concept for understanding and advancing sustainable innovation

the impact of systemic factors on the deployment of cooperative projects within renewable electricity production an international comparison while cooperative organizations created with the aim to initiate develop and operate renewable electricity re projects have received attention for their roles in the transition to a sustainable

integrating replenishment decisions with advance demand information there is a growing consensus that a portfolio of customers with different demand lead times can lead to higher more regular revenues and better capacity utilization customers with positive demand lead times place orders in advance of their needs resulting inadvance demand information this gives rise to the problem of finding effective inventory control policies under advance demand information we show that state dependent s s and base stock policies are optimal for stochastic inventory systems with and without fixed costs the state of the system reflects our knowledge of advance demand information we also determine conditions under which advance demand information has no operational value a numerical study allows us to obtain additional insights and to evaluate strategies to induce advance demand information

degrowth a missile word that backfires language use and cognition are generally underappreciated topics in ecological economics even if effective communication is essential for social and political impact to challenge the economic growth paradigm the concept and term degrowth has recently been embraced by various activists and scholars drawing on a body of evidence from cognitive science psychology and related fields we argue that using the word degrowth might be disadvantageous in public communications about alternatives to growth we begin by reviewing arguments in favor of the term then we outline three main counterarguments first degrowth has a downward orientation which triggers negative initial feelings due to the basic conceptual metaphor up is good down is bad this puts advocates of an alternative to the growth paradigm in an unfavorable starting position given that subsequent thought will be unconsciously biased by the initial feeling second more conscious reactions are likely to be negative as well because people unfamiliar with the term will mis interpret it as a contraction of the economy even though it is not always meant as such third degrowth repeats and possibly strengthens the growth frame and may activate undesirable frames associated with economic recessions to conclude we briefly discuss alternative terms and summarize key aspects to be considered for more effective communication

capitalist diversity and de growth trajectories to steady state economies abstract growth critical scholarship has done much to both expose the environmentally unsustainable nature of the capitalist growth economies of the overdeveloped part of the world and to develop an alternative vision of a de growth transition leading to a steady state economy however this scholarship fails to adequately take into consideration that if planned de growth actually materialised it would do so in societies that differ considerably from one another and that this would have implications both for the transition processes and the nature of their outcomes in other words not enough importance is ascribed to capitalist diversity and the nature of institutional change in the growth critical literature against this background the purpose of the present article is to make the concrete utopia of de growth scholars and steady state economists more specific by utilising insights from scholarship on capitalist diversity and institutional change on the basis of a typology of different models of capitalism the article suggests that if de growth transitions took place they would take different forms and lead to a variety of types of steady state economies sses to illustrate this point three ideal typical sses are delineated

customer order information leadtimes and inventories we have an inventory to manage the scenario is standard in all respects save one instead of arriving unannounced customers provide advance warning of their demands how should we use this information and what is its effect on system performance the answers turn out to be strikingly simple there are very simple policies which perform effectively in some cases optimally also such demand leadtimes improve performance in precisely the same way that replenishment leadtimes degrade it

degrowth from theory to practice abstract the collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best contributions from the second international conference on degrowth exemplifying recent debates in the field and touching on different aspects of the multi dimensional transition at stake moving beyond theory and the construction of the degrowth proposal the articles in this special issue look at particular applications new methodologies and fresh policy options for example social enterprises are evaluated as primer candidates for a sustainable degrowth economy in the north lessons are also drawn from very different parts of the world such as cuba s experience with an oil and commodity shock to which it adapted through the introduction of ecological labour intensive agriculture in urban regions this special issue approaches from a degrowth perspective important sectoral issues in agriculture resource consumption and water the unsustainable fuel dependence of the spanish agrarian sector where the energy input for the production process is six times higher than the energy contained in finished food products is analysed in the context of the industrialization of food production rather than efficiency sufficiency in consumption is proposed as an organising societal principle and a call is made for stronger ngo action and coalition building in the direction of absolute rather than relative consumption reduction the obstacles to sufficiency policies are illustrated with a case study on water in the city of barcelona where a growth discourse is still dominant and a source of a technological and institutional deadlock against softer decentralized and more participatory forms of water management finally many of the contributions in this issue focus on work the policy option of a job guarantee scheme is examined as a tool to decouple jobs from economic growth and fiscal policy by bringing them to the realm of political rights this is complemented by a discussion of the social benefits of an amateur economy through work sharing and a socially beneficial reduction in labour productivity original data from barcelona analysed for this special issue shows that household activities an essential component of a more amateur economy have a much lower intensity of energy use than the paid sector delivery of equivalent services especially government and privatized caring services interesting research questions are identified concerning work under a degrowth trajectory not least whether reducing paid work will be possible in an energy scarce future put together the diverse contributions of this issue show that there is a vibrant and fertile degrowth research agenda with a range of open questions to which the community of this journal has much to offer

societal metabolism working hours and degrowth a comment on sorman and giampietro can we choose whether to degrow sorman and giampetro in this special issue argue that degrowth can only be forced upon us it will never be the outcome of voluntary or collective choice in this commentary i argue instead that although sooner or later we will have to degrow because of bio physical limitations we still have a choice of how to do it constructing a positive vision of degrowth as an inspirational political project that mobilizes citizens increases the likelihood of a prosperous way down i agree with the authors that in an energy scarce world we will have to work more to maintain the same level of material affluence but i contend that under conceivable conditions we might be equally happy with less work less energy and less material affluence a multi scalar analysis of societal metabolism is essential for the evaluation of degrowth policies and trajectories however unlike what sorman and giampietro suggest there is nothing in existing metabolic analyses that suggests that a prosperous degrowth trajectory is a priori impossible

framing the future of fracking discursive lock in or energy degrowth in the netherlands abstract hydraulic fracturing is a technology developed to improve and increase the production of natural gas in many countries including the netherlands it has caused environmental controversies in these controversies futurity framing may open up debates for alternative paradigms such as degrowth which is the pursuing of collective and deliberative downscaled production of natural resources and less consumption for convivial living based on a frame analysis it is demonstrated that opponents and proponents of fracking have envisaged pessimistic energy futures either to promote or devaluate fracking technology in addition the results show that dominant technological enthusiasm has enabled the introduction of degrowth technology which are downscaled decentralized and renewable energy technologies degrowth technology framing may provide a means of access for more radical degrowth thinking in the energy debates this empirical finding also indicates that the degrowth paradigm could include controversies as entry points for creating support for degrowth thinking

towards sustainable de growth medical survey data as predictors for estimation of niche market value gluten free beer market case abstract big brewing companies often look for sustainable resource and energy management rather than for minimization of negative social impact or maximization of positive ones that s why sustainable degrowth in production sounds like nightmare to them several activities on market such as demand for product personalization force manufacturers response but few niche markets with huge personalization potential are still underestimated by big producers to bridge the gap between company profits and sustainable de growth the useful tools for niche market value estimation which could help in investments decision making have been worked out the medical data reports were used to assess the socio demographic characteristic of customer of gluten free beer this market is still in its starting phase as big producers are not especially interested in beer products which require significant investments in production process a celiac disease cd is chronic inflammatory enteropathy induced with presence of gluten its prevalence is estimated as 1 100 which suggest that 1 person per 100 absolutely can t drink typical barley wheat beer the equations for calculation model were elaborated based on medical reports of cd occurrence in poland and then in europe total population and adult population data in 2013 eurostat the bart haas report of beer production in 2013 and average prices of gluten free beers manufactured and sold in europe the final formulas of beer production increase and the value of gluten free beer market have been elaborated results reveal that almost 6 5 million of adult people in europe must comply with gluten free diet value of gluten free beer market in europe is estimated as 3 3 billion eur annual for average price 3 eur for 0 5 l introduction of gluten free beer into market will increase production by at least 0 1 up to even 1 it is a value in range of 0 55 5 5 million hectolitres per year

measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy article i nfo in order to determine whether degrowth is occurring or how close national economies are to the concept of a steady state economy clear indicators are required within this paper i analyse four indicator approaches that could be used 1 gross domestic product 2 the index of sustainable economic welfare 3 biophysical and social indicators and 4 a composite indicator i conclude that separate biophysical and social indicators represent the best approach but a unifying conceptual framework is required to choose appropriate indicators and interpret the relationships between them i propose a framework based on ends and means and a set of biophysical and social indicators within this framework the biophysical indicators are derived from herman daly s definition of a steady state economy and measure the major stocks and flows in the economy environment system the social indicators are based on the stated goals of the degrowth

economic crisis and social learning for the provision of public services in two spanish municipalities economic crises pose challenges for the provision of public services but may also open up opportunities for social learning about how to achieve a sustainable society the main research question addressed in this paper is can economic crises catalyse social learning for a sustainable society the hypothesis of the paper is that social learning emerges in association with the reduction of consumption levels that follows degrowth or with the reconfiguration of infrastructure management practices and sustainable innovation that could lead to a transition to sustainability following this we empirically examine whether the crisis has led to social learning about the sustainable provision of public services in two similar municipalities in the north of spain after the economic crisis of 2008 we develop an interpretative analysis of individual experiences of learning from the crisis using a set of qualitative interviews with individuals who were involved in key decisions about public service delivery during or immediately after the crisis the analysis suggests that there has been a broader cultural change which is challenging institutional models of regional development that there has been a drive towards greater resource efficiency and that some opportunities have opened for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable innovations the findings support the view that the crisis may have fostered learning responses that could lead to either degrowth or a sustainable transition

the rhetorics of ecological economics since the early 1980s there has been a lively discussion about the rhetoric of economics ecological economists however so far have not tried to incorporate this discussion into their work this paper is a first step towards including the discourse on rhetoric into the self awareness of ecological economics after a brief outline of what this discourse is about the importance of metaphors as one aspect of rhetoric is examined connections of the rhetorical discourse to ecological economics as a post normal science are shown it is argued that two rhetorics of ecological economics can be distinguished internal and external rhetoric while the former refers mostly to methodological issues the latter is of particular importance for the political impact that ecological economics can have finally some suggestions for research are made

environment versus growth a criticism of degrowth and a plea for a growth in recent debates on environmental problems and policies the strategy of degrowth has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth this new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it one conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept another is that degrowth may not be an effective let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure it is subsequently argued that a growth i e being indifferent about growth is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth given that gdp per capita is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare in addition focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic political support than an ex ante explicit degrowth strategy in line with this a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

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

a degrowth transition pathways for the degrowth niche to replace the capitalist growth regime abstract facing the intertwined environmental social and economic crisis requires us to seriously consider alternatives to the current capitalist system including the emerging concept of degrowth existing understandings of degrowth have focused on characterizing the shape the key elements and the proposals for a degrowth society however its dynamic and evolving nature as an alternative vision of the future and the dynamics of a transition toward degrowth are inadequately considered this paper seeks to address this conceptual gap through a reconceptualisation of degrowth as a radical niche innovation to the capitalist growth regime by extending the multi level perspective framework to the capitalist growth system we undertake a critical reconsideration of the multi level perspective exposing key assumptions of this framework grounded in capitalist economic theory through this we propose a pluriversal potential pathway for change to consider this further a bibliometric analysis is used to measure and visualize research activity in degrowth as a proxy for the processes of development of the degrowth niche then we return to the multi level perspective to consider two potential pathways for change involving the degrowth niche and the capitalist growth regime finally we point to areas for further research that build on this new conceptualisation of a degrowth transition

value of information in capacitated supply chains we incorporate information flow between a supplier and a retailer in a two echelon model that captures the capacitated setting of a typical supply chain we consider three situations 1 a traditional model where there is no information to the supplier prior to a demand to him except for past data 2 the supplier knows the s s policy used by the retailer as well as the end item demand distribution and 3 the supplier has full information about the state of the retailer order up to policies continue to be optimal for models with information flow for the finite horizon the infinite horizon discounted and the infinite horizon average cost cases study of these three models enables us to understand the relationships between capacity inventory and information at the supplier level as well as how they are affected by the retailer s s s values and end item demand distribution we estimate the savings at the supplier due to information flow and study when information is most beneficial

on the tradeoff between optimal order base stock levels and demand lead times abstract we investigate the tradeoff between finished goods inventory and advance demand information for a model of a single stage make to stock supplier who uses an order base stock replenishment policy to meet customer orders that arrive a fixed demand lead time in advance of their due dates we show that if the replenishment orders arrive in the order that they are placed then the tradeoff between the optimal order base stock level and the demand lead time is exhaustive in the sense that the optimal order base stock level drops all the way to zero if the demand lead time is sufficiently long we then provide a sufficient condition under which this tradeoff is linear we verify that this condition is satisfied for the case where the supply process is modeled as an m m 1 queue we also show that the tradeoff between the optimal order base stock level and the demand lead time is linear for the case where the supply process is modeled as an m d 1 queue more specifically for this case we show that the optimal order base stock level decreases by one unit if the demand lead time increases by an amount equal to the supplier s constant processing time finally we show that the tradeoff between the optimal order base stock level and the demand lead time is exhaustive but not linear in the case where the supply process is modeled as an m d queue we illustrate these results with a numerical example

in defence of degrowth abstract this article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth a starting premise is that resource and co2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable if degrowth is inevitable the question is how it can become socially sustainable i e a prosperous and stable rather than a catastrophic descent pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required including among others policies for a basic income reduction of working hours environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising policies like these that threaten to harm the economy are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies whose basic institutions financial property political and redistributive depend on and mandate continuous economic growth an intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less

the wellbeing consumption paradox happiness health income and carbon emissions in growing versus non growing economies abstract we investigate the relationships between carbon intensive consumption and two dimensions of human wellbeing physical health and happiness for 120 countries over the 2005 2015 period long term 10 year relationships are analysed to re assess the happiness income paradox i e easterlin paradox which states that changes in national income and happiness are correlated in the short term but not in the long term we broaden the scope of easterlin s analysis in two novel ways first the evidence for a health income paradox is explored second a parallel analysis using national consumption based carbon footprints instead of income is conducted to explore complementary relationships with both of the wellbeing indicators we show that countries with declining per capita consumption measured in terms of either gross domestic product gdp or carbon footprint have significant reductions in average happiness in contrast countries with growing per capita consumption have no significant change in happiness there is no relationship between changes in per capita consumption and health irrespective of whether gdp or carbon footprint is growing or not these findings apply to rich and poor countries alike and are robust to the inclusion of other social indicators such as social support and autonomy we find that happiness is less sensitive to declines in carbon footprint than declines in gdp thus lending support to calls for decoupling carbon emissions from economic growth however observed decoupling trends are insufficient to meet climate targets if the 2 target is to be met without a decline in wellbeing then either decoupling must be vastly improved or happiness levels must be made less sensitive to declining consumption

the total cost of transactions on the nyse this paper develops a measure of execution costs market impact of transactions on the nyse the measure is the volume weighted average price over the trading day it yields results that are less biased than measures that use single prices such as closes the paper then applies this measure to a data set containing more than 14 000 actual trades we show that total transaction costs commission plus market impact costs average twenty three basis points of principal value for our sample commission costs averaging eighteen basis points are considerably higher than execution costs which average five basis points they vary slightly across brokers and significantly across money managers though brokers do not incur consistently high or low transaction costs money managers experience persistently high or lost costs finally the paper explores the possible tradeoff between commission expenditures and market impact costs paying higher commissions does not yield commensurately lower execution costs even after adjusting for trade difficulty we cannot determine whether other valuable brokerage services are being purchased with higher commission payments or whether some money managers really are inefficient consumers of brokerage trading services recent years have witnessed an explosion of institutional trading on the nation s stock exchanges in 1970 only 17 000 trades of blocks of 10 000 or more shares were done on the new york stock exchange these accounted for merely fifteen percent of total volume in 1984 there were 433 000 such block trades accounting for fifty percent of volume these trades are costly and in an informationally efficient stock market cannot help but have a deleterious effect on the investment performance of institutional investors

u k and u s trading of british cross listed stocks an intraday analysis of market integration this article analyzes intraday patterns for u k and u s trading of british cross listed stocks for each market the intraday patterns for these stocks closely resemble those of otherwise similar non cross listed stocks there is a 2 hour period each day when cross listed stocks are traded both in new york and in london this overlap is characterized by concentrated trading as private information originating in new york gets incorporated into prices in both markets cross border competition for order flow tends to reduce already declining spreads in london by contrast new york specialists maintain high spreads during the overlap overall the evidence indicates that order flow for cross listed securities is segmented article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

centralised order books versus hybrid order books a paired comparison of trading costs on nsc euronext paris and sets london stock exchange this article compares the cost of trading large capitalisation equities on the hybrid order driven segment of the london stock exchange and the centralised electronic order book of euronext using samples of stocks matched according to economic sector free float capitalisation and trading volume our study shows that transaction costs are lower on the centralised order book than on the hybrid order book the presence of dealers outside the electronic order book favours the frequency of large trades but is associated with higher execution costs for all other trades and higher adverse selection and inventory costs inside the order book

challenges in assessing public opinion on economic growth versus environment considering european and us data abstract the enduring scientific debate about economic growth versus the environment has recently received new impetus nonetheless there is virtually unanimous support for growth in politics this may partly be due to an assumed social consensus about the desirability of growth here we examine public perceptions relevant to the growth debate by using data from a large number of representative surveys conducted in europe and the us the main findings are i a relative majority of respondents seem to believe that economic growth and environmental protection are compatible even though a fraction of the population might have unstable opinions ii when people have to choose environmental protection is prioritized in most surveys and countries and iii the public has limited factual knowledge of relevant concepts and data such as the meaning of economic growth and past gdp growth rates these findings are discussed and further qualified we highlight the importance of methodological aspects such as question wording and format in the interpretation of the results and draw implications for political debate and future research on economic growth and the environment

degrowth business framework implications for sustainable development abstract recent years have seen a revival in growth scepticism yet degrowth in relation to the macroeconomic level has received almost exclusive attention this resulted in a lack of literature on how post growth and specifically degrowth visions of economy could be implemented including from the perspective of firms and other organisations this paper focuses on degrowth literature and fields of knowledge which share a similar or sympathetic perspective regarding the undesirability of economic growth and desirability of living within planetary boundaries while pursuing wellbeing it then applies degrowth vision to firms and identifies potential elements of a business for a degrowth economy here referred to as a degrowth business these elements comprise a degrowth business framework the framework is centred around the following groups 1 environment 2 people and non humans and 3 deviation from profit maximisation imperative it aims to contribute to an emerging discussion on what firms should be like for a degrowth economy and society to be possible

the effect of foreknowledge of demand in case of a restricted capacity the single stage single product case abstract one of the important aspects of supply chain management is the possibility to realize advance demand information deeper in the chain foreknowledge of demand is useful in the control of a production inventory system knowing the customer orders in advance makes it possible to anticipate properly it is an important condition to produce and deliver the right quantity of the right product just in time it reduces the need of safety stock and spare capacity and it helps to reduce the bullwhip effect through the chain but the question of the effectiveness of foreknowledge is not an easy one having foreknowledge of the customer orders does not remove the demand uncertainty completely and the effect of the advance demand information may be hampered by the restricted flexibility of the resources the subject of this paper is the influence of a restricted production capacity on the effect of advance demand information the single stage single product case is considered here the lost sales version as well as the backlogging version the main result is that for high utilization rates and small forecast horizon the inventory reduction due to foreknowledge is equal to 1 h r with h the forecast horizon and r the production speed connected with that is the result that for small forecast horizon it is allowed to aggregate the demand information over the forecast horizon this leads to a heuristic that appears to be close to optimal for the case with a larger forecast horizon

degrowth taking stock and reviewing an emerging academic paradigm degrowth has evolved within a decade from an activist movement into a multi disciplinary academic paradigm however an overview taking stock of the peer refereed degrowth literature is yet missing here we review 91 articles that were published between 2006 and 2015 we find that the academic degrowth discourse occupies a small but expanding niche at the intersection of social and applied environmental sciences the discourse is shaped by authors from high income mainly mediterranean countries until 2012 articles largely constitute conceptual essays endorsed by normative claims more recently degrowth has branched out into modelling empirical assessments and the study of concrete implementations authors tend to agree in that economic growth cannot be sustained ad infinitum on a resource constraint planet and that degrowth requires far reaching societal change whether degrowth should be considered as a collectively consented choice or an environmentally imposed inevitability constitutes a major debate among degrowth thinkers we argue that the academic discourse could benefit from rigid hypotheses testing through input output modelling material flow analysis life cycle assessments or social surveys by analyzing the potentials for non market value creation and identifying concrete well being benefits the degrowth discourse could receive wider public support and contribute to a paradigmatic change in the social sciences

can degrowth overcome the leakage problem of unilateral climate policy abstract unilateral climate policy suffers from carbon leakage i e the partial offset of the initial emission reduction by increases in other countries different than most typically discussed climate policies degrowth not only aims at reducing the fossil fuel use in an economy but rather besides other social and political goals at a reduction of all factor inputs which may lead to different leakage implications we conduct the first investigation of degrowth in a multi country setting in order to i compare the leakage effects of national pure emission reduction policies to degrowth scenarios ii identify underlying channels by decomposing the implied emission changes into scale composition and technique effects and iii investigate which country characteristics determine degrowth s relative effectiveness to overcome the leakage problem using a structural gravity model we find that degrowth indeed significantly reduces leakage by keeping the sectoral composition of the country more stable and reducing uncommitted countries incentives to shift towards more energy intensive production techniques the higher effectiveness of degrowth in reducing carbon emissions is most pronounced for small and trade open economies with comparatively clean production technologies

an equilibrium framework for the analysis of a degrowth society with asymmetric agents sharing and basic income abstract this paper presents a novel equilibrium framework allowing for asymmetries in the initial wealth allocations labour supplies as well as in the preferences of optimizing agents the framework is applied to study a degrowth society where a subset of agents voluntarily limit their material consumption thereby complying with voluntary simplicity vs at micro level the utility maximization problems of asymmetric agents are formulated and solved for optimal labour supplies new macro level equilibrium solutions accounting for wealth inequality are presented based on different labour supply models the equilibrium welfare is measured using a bernoully nash aggregate an increase in the share of the vs type agents implies a degrowth transition to a lower level of average consumption analysis of the equilibrium framework shows that degrowth whereby average market based consumption falls improves the equilibrium welfare assuming the vs type agents have sufficient resources enabling a reduction in labour supplies sharing collaborative consumption and basic income support welfare increasing degrowth any growing economy can eventually reach the size at which degrowth would improve the welfare simulations suggest that degrowth can also yield a pareto improvement in welfare

degrowth and public health in cuba lessons from the past after the collapse of the communist bloc in the 1990s cuba experienced a severe economic crisis in its drastic reduction in fuels its negative economic growth data due to declining production and consumption rates and in its adaptations to shrinking resources and to local and labor intensive production modes this so called special period had elements of an experiment in degrowth looking at economic social and agricultural reactions to the crisis this paper identifies a consistent commitment to social services a shift in agricultural methods and a high level of social capital as main reasons for this outcome balancing this result with negative implications of the crisis notably the lack of political freedom and of long term sustainability the paper seeks to draw lessons for future degrowth scenarios

assessing the degrowth discourse a review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals abstract debates on ecological and social limits to economic growth and new ways to deal with resource scarcity without compromising human well being have re emerged in the last few years central to many of these is a call for a degrowth approach in this paper a framework is developed to support a systematic analysis of degrowth in the academic literature this article attempts to present a clearer notion of what the academic degrowth literature explores by identifying organising and analysing a set of proposals for action retrieved from a selection of articles the framework is applied to classify proposals according to their alignment to ecological economics policy objectives sustainable scale fair distribution and efficient allocation type of approach top down versus bottom up and geographical focus local national or international a total of 128 peer reviewed articles focused on degrowth were reviewed and 54 that include proposals for action were analysed the proposals identified align with three broad goals 1 reduce the environmental impact of human activities 2 redistribute income and wealth both within and between countries and 3 promote the transition from a materialistic to a convivial and participatory society the findings indicate that the majority of degrowth proposals are national top down approaches focusing on government as a major driver of change rather than local bottom up approaches as advocated by many degrowth proponents the most emphasised aspects in the degrowth literature are related to social equity closely followed by environmental sustainability topics such as population growth and the implications of degrowth for developing nations are largely neglected and represent an important area for future research moreover there is a need for a deeper analysis of how degrowth proposals would act in combination

the total cost of trading belgian shares brussels versus london abstract since 1990 london s seaq international seaq i has attracted considerable trading volume in belgian equities this paper investigates competition between the brussels cats market and london s seaq i toward this end we gathered extensive limit order book data as well as transactions and quotation information with regard to liquidity indirect costs measured by the quoted and effective bid ask spread the paper concludes that cats outperforms seaq international for both measures the effective spread is of course substantially smaller than the quoted spread with the cats effective spread showing a u shaped form this paper unique in employing an extensive data set that includes all hidden orders and the whole limit order book produces results in line with the different market microstructure models total trading costs on cats are lower higher for small large trade sizes

a further critique of growth economics is aggregate physical growth still economic as it was in the empty world or has it become uneconomic as we have moved into the full world era first i discuss why this critical question has been ignored by mainstream economists and policy makers second i consider 11 fallacies or anomalies that confuse reasoning about economic growth and undercut the current policy presumption in its favor

does slow growth lead to rising inequality some theoretical reflections and numerical simulations this paper explores the hypothesis most notably made by french economist thomas piketty that slow growth rates lead to rising inequality if true this hypothesis would pose serious challenges to achieving prosperity without growth or meeting the ambitions of those who call for an intentional slowing down of growth on ecological grounds it would also create problems of social justice in the context of a secular stagnation the paper describes a closed demand driven stock flow consistent model of savings inequality and growth in a macroeconomic framework sigma with exogenous growth and savings rates sigma is used to examine the evolution of inequality in the context of declining economic growth contrary to the general hypothesis we find that inequality does not necessarily increase as growth slows down in fact there are certain conditions under which inequality can be reduced significantly or even eliminated entirely as growth declines the paper discusses the implications of this finding for questions of employment government fiscal policy and the politics of de growth

the prerequisites for a degrowth paradigm shift insights from critical political economy abstract what would it take for a degrowth paradigm shift to take place drawing on contemporary critical political economy scholarship this article identifies four prerequisites for socio economic paradigm shifts deep crisis an alternative political project a comprehensive coalition of social forces promoting the project in political struggles and broad based consent it is argued that on the one hand there is much to suggest that current crises cannot be resolved under existing institutional frameworks and that degrowth is a political project that provides solutions to some of the key problems currently facing humanity on the other hand the prospects for a degrowth paradigm shift remain bleak unlike political projects that became hegemonic in the past degrowth has neither support from a comprehensive coalition of social forces nor any consent to its agenda among the broader population