new human resource management practices complementarities and the impact on innovation performance in this paper we take our theoretical point of departure in recent work in organisational economics on systems of human resource management hrm practices we develop the argument that just as complementarities between new hrm practices influence financial performance positively there are theoretical reasons for expecting them also to influence innovation performance positively we examine this overall hypothesis by estimating an empirical model of innovation performance using data from a danish survey of 1 900 business firms using principal component analysis we identify two hrm systems which are conducive to innovation in the first one seven of our nine hrm variables matter almost equally for the ability to innovate the second system is dominated by firm internal and firm external training of the total of nine sectors that we consider we find that the four manufacturing sectors correlate with the first system firms belonging to wholesale trade and to the ict intensive service sectors tend to be associated with the second system

energy market liberalization and renewable energy policies in oecd countries abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy liberalization compared to other drivers on policies that support renewable energy in a long panel of oecd countries we estimate this effect by accounting for the endogeneity of liberalization related to joint decisions within a country s energy strategy using regulation in other industries as instruments we find that energy liberalization increases public support for renewable energy the effect of liberalization is the second largest after the effect of per capita income and is mostly driven by reductions in entry barriers while the effect of privatization is unclear this finding suggests that a reduction in the monopolistic power of state owned utilities has a positive effect on renewable energy policies when various types of actors are ensured access to the grid instead of it being provided to only a few large private firms

nonconvexities in the production of timber biodiversity and carbon sequestration abstract fixed logging costs and administrative constraints on logging regulations can create nonconvexities in forestry production sets that include timber and nontimber products managing forests to produce multiple values at a landscape level through the aggregation of stands that are completely or partially specialized in the production of timber or nontimber products can consequently be superior to management systems that treat all stands uniformly even when all stands are identical both fixed costs and administrative constraints are empirically important sources of nonconvexity in tropical rainforests the former is more important when the nontimber product is carbon sequestration while the latter is more important when the nontimber product is biodiversity protection uniform management appears to be superior for the joint production of timber and carbon sequestration while specialized management might often be superior for the joint production of timber and biodiversity at least at low discount rates

the farmers home administration s social discount rate the aim was to estimate the sdr revealed by past decisions by the farmers home administration fmha concerning their farm ownership programme in new york state these decisions involved trading off a current loan against a long stream of future farm profits the ratio of the coefficients to these two variables in a logit equation produced the estimate of the sdr the main finding was that a very high rate of discount was uncovered in the range 70 73 these high rates may be explained by individual risk and the life cycle context in which the estimates were made

waste performance of nuts 2 regions in the eu a conditional directional distance benefit of the doubt model abstract this paper attempts to benchmark the municipal solid waste msw management performance of the nuts 2 regions in the eu by constructing a composite indicator in order to account for commensurability weighting and aggregation issues of the performance indicators in regional waste and materials management this paper advocates a conditional directional distance version of the benefit of the doubt weighting technique in addition the waste management hierarchy defined by the eu is strongly embedded in the construction of our composite indicator the results reveal considerable differences in the aggregate performance of the regions even within member states in general waste sectors of the nuts 2 regions in austria belgium and germany generally do well in terms of msw management our results also reveal that some differences in the operating environment of the regions such as the number of tourist overnight stays are related to the aggregate performance of the regions however the observation that other conditions are not significantly related to the performance on a regional level is interesting as many policy makers frequently argue that the level of performance in their regions cannot be compared to that in other regions precisely due to this difference in operating conditions

the environmental kuznets curve and flow versus stock pollution the neglect of future damages in this paper we offer a possible explanation for the empirical finding that the pollution income relationship pir for flow pollutants is an environmental kuznets curve ekc i e inverted u shaped but that the pir for stock pollutants is monotonically rising we analyse an overlapping generations model with two pollutants the flow pollutant causes immediate damages but the stock pollutant harms the environment only in the future hence a succession of myopic governments lets stock pollution grow with income in contrast the flow pollutant follows an ekc whose downturn might be caused by the neglect of future damages and by ever rising stock pollution without the stock pollutant the pir for the flow pollutant can increase monotonically we also show that the turning point of the ekc for the flow pollutant lies at lower levels of income and of flow pollution if stock pollution is high and harmful this casts doubts on most empirical ekc studies because they assume that the turning point occurs at the same income level in all countries however it is consistent with recent empirical findings that the income level at the turning point of the ekc varies across countries

the wage effects of high performance work organization in manufacturing an unresolved question about now widespread innovative work systems such as teams and quality programs is whether they influence wage determination this study examines that possible association in manufacturing the author uses data from the 1997 national establishment survey that allow examination of how new work systems affected not only employees who were directly involved in them but other workers as well the key finding is that for core blue collar manufacturing employees higher wages were associated with high performance work organization hpwo systems while higher skill levels and computer based technologies were associated with higher wages the key mechanism appears to have been productivity gains independent of skill and technology that were shared via various across the board wage payment systems hpwo systems appear to have increased managers wages as well although through different channels the author finds no evidence that hpwo related wage gains led to greater wage inequality amon

labour market deregulation flexibility and innovation labour flexibility is often portrayed as important to competitive success using evidence from an original survey of uk firms this paper investigates the relationships between firms use of on the one hand various flexible work practices human resource management techniques and industrial relations systems and on the other hand the innovative activities of those firms our results suggest that the sort of low road labour flexibility practices encouraged by labour market deregulation short term and temporary contracts a lack of employer commitment to job security low levels of training and so on are negatively correlated with innovation

innovation complementarity and environmental productivity effects reality or delusion evidence from the eu abstract innovation is a key element behind the achievement of desired environmental and economic performances regarding co2 mitigation strategies would require cuts in emissions of around 80 90 with respect to 1990 by 2050 in the eu we investigate whether complementarity namely integration between the adoption of environmental innovation measures and other technological and organizational innovations is a factor that has supported reduction in co2 emissions per value added that is environmental productivity we merge new eu innovation and wiod data to assess the innovation effects on sector co2 performances at a wide eu level we find that jointly adopting different innovations is not a widespread factor behind increases in environmental productivity nevertheless even though complementarity is not a low hanging fruit a case where innovation complementarity arises is for manufacturing sectors that integrate eco innovations with product innovations one example of this integrated action is a strategy that pursues energy efficiency with product value enhancement we believe that the lack of integrated innovation adoption behind environmental productivity performance is a signal of the current weaknesses economies face in tackling climate change and green economy challenges incremental rather than more radical strategies have predominated so far the latter have been confined to industrial niches in terms of the number of involved firms this is probably insufficient when we look at long term economic and environmental goals

generation of household solid waste in oecd countries an empirical analysis using macroeconomic data while there are numerous studies that use household level and community level data to examine the determinants of household solid waste generation rates little empirical work has been previously undertaken using macroeconomic data using a cross sectional time series database of solid waste in countries that are part of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd we provide evidence on the economic and demographic determinants of generation rates of household solid waste with respect to economic activity and population density the results are largely consistent with results found in previous studies however additional insights are gained on the effects of factors such as household size and composition as well as the degree of urbanization

complementarities of innovation activities an empirical analysis of the german manufacturing sector abstract innovation strategies in manufacturing often involve internal rd it is based on data from the german part of the community innovation survey cis 3 the results provide evidence for significant complementarities between internal r d and r d cooperation but cast doubt on the complementarity of internal and contracted r d since a productivity effect on firms patenting probability or sales with new products cannot be found

an economic analysis of household waste management abstract this paper provides a comprehensive model of household waste management policy incorporating the possibility of waste reduction effort by the firm and the household and of illegal waste disposal by the household when household waste reduction effort is insignificant the first best optimum can be achieved using various combinations of environmental tax on the firm and waste collection charge on the household however when household waste reduction effort is significant the first best optimum is not achievable and explicit monitoring of illegal waste disposal is needed rendering a simple pigouvian tax sub optimal this paper solves for the second best optimal policy and provides some comparative statics of the optimal policy

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

a new approach to valuing a life abstract because the issue of how to put a monetary value on a life will always be controversial this paper presents an alternative approach that can in certain circumstances avoid the use of monetary values the alternative approach uses time as the numeraire this numeraire can handle both the ex ante and ex post approaches to valuing a life after showing how a simple two period consumer choice problem can be translated into terms of time the paper considers an application that involves reformulating the data used to evaluate the 55 mph speed limit decision in the united states

linking namea and input output for consumption vs production perspective analyses evidence on emission efficiency and aggregation biases using the italian and spanish environmental accounts we integrate input output and namea tables for spain and italy in 1995 2000 and 2005 in order to address the hot policy issue of sustainable consumption and production a comparison of production and consumption perspectives may have relevant policy implications we deal with the domestic technology assumption and primarily the aggregation bias that may result when calculating indirect emission using different sector aggregations in the analyses e g 16 30 50 extended input output analysis provides analyses of the emissions embodied in domestic consumption and domestic production by considering the structure of intermediate inputs and environmental efficiency in each production sector our empirical findings show that different sectoral aggregation significantly biases the amount of emissions for the consumption perspective though differently in the two countries italy surprisingly show consumption production ratios around or lower than one but in line with some major work at eu level our results thus suggest that special attention must be paid when interpreting the ee ioa of country estimated amounts of embodied emissions both in domestic final demand and those directly associated with the production sectors when the sectoral aggregation level has a low definition as considered in some recent similar studies

the historical fertility transition a guide for economists the historical fertility transition is the process by which much of europe and north america went from high to low fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this transformation is central to recent accounts of long run economic growth prior to the transition women bore as many as eight children each and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes was positive today many women have no children at all and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes is zero or even negative this paper discusses the large literature on the historical fertility transition focusing on what we do and do not know about the process i stress some possible misunderstandings of the demographic literature and discuss an agenda for future work jel i12 j13 n30

does european union environmental policy pass a costâ benefit test most european union countries are committed to some form of regulatory impact assessment and in some cases these assessments involve the formal use of cost benefit analysis the european treaty of union also calls for a comparison of costs and benefits for all european regulations despite this only a limited number of regulations have been subject to cost benefit analysis using a variety of sources this paper investigates whether or not a selection of major environmental regulations would pass a cost benefit test the general answer is that while some do most do not this finding has major implications for the efficiency of european environmental legislation and reflects on the willingness of member states to sign up to inefficient regulation

complementarities in organizational design and the diffusion of information technologies an empirical analysis we use a specially designed survey on french firms located in haute savoie to provide empirical evidence suggesting that information and communication technologies adoption is not only influenced by the traditional factors of technology diffusion but also by complementarity effects between strategies organization and information technologies the data collected permitted several advances firstly we could study authentic ict while the recent literature has mainly focused on computer capital stocks or automation tools secondly we constructed measures of the determinants put forward by the models of technology diffusion thirdly we studied three kinds of practices organizational and strategic practices technological choices

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

a post consumer waste management model for determining optimal levels of recycling and landfilling the present study examines the optimal recycling rate for municipal solid waste first an optimal control model is developed to account for the physical costs of recycling the social costs of landfilling and consumers environmental preferences second an optimal solution is simulated using waste disposal data from the helsinki region in finland the benefits from recycling are included in the simulation using the results of a recent contingent valuation study the results of the present research suggest that mandates for achieving 50 recycling in municipalities are not far fetched and are both economically and environmentally justified

natural versus manufactured capital win lose or win win a case study of the finnish pulp and paper industry abstract the effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win win rhetoric specifically in micro level analysis on the macro level the win win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital intensive industry over time the paper shows that rather than generalise the existence of win win situations or the substitutability of capital these positions are determined by purely situational factors as a result in the assessment of substitutability the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account this implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment

towards a green economy through innovations the role of trade union involvement abstract in this paper we address the overlooked issue of whether and how industrial relations might play a role in the process of greening the economy primarily through the levers of innovation adoption and organisational change we address our objective econometrically assessing the quality of industrial relations as a driver of environmental innovation adoption through the use of micro data on manufacturing firms the results yield two interesting main findings being a unionised firm is not associated with the adoption of environmental innovation however when we consider the industrial relations climate we observe a positive relationship between a cooperative industrial relations climate union involvement and the propensity to introduce environmental innovation two models are relevant a managerially oriented model unions are informed and a participatory model unions bargain on innovation adoption the contents of environmental innovations are also important union involvement is more relevant for adopting more complex and radical innovations to abate co2 and ems and iso practices

a consumption based theory of the environmental kuznets curve abstract most theories about the inverted u relationship between pollution and income termed the environmental kuznets curve ekc are production side theories emphasizing pollution and abatement technologies production side theories are implicitly based on the assumption of low factor mobility and the absence of pollution as a variable in the utility function both assumptions are called into question by the empirical evidence of ekcs for i pollutants that are long lived and not easily shiftable and ii regional cross sections with free labor mobility hazardous waste sites are a prime example this paper develops a stylized model of the ekc based on perfect mobility of households and labor it represents the first attempt at developing a consumption side model of the ekc

an econometric analysis of global waste paper recovery and utilization the main purpose of this paper is to provide aneconometric analysis of the most importantdeterminants of inter country differences inwaste paper recovery and utilization rates byemploying pooled t

comparative statics of the firm abstract complementarities arise naturally in diverse models of optimal decision making in a firm theoretical properties of supermodular functions provide a powerful tool for analyzing qualitative properties in such circumstances this paper considers a general model of the firm and gives sufficient conditions for complementarities to hold and for optimal decisions to be monotone with a parameter a variety of specific models of the firm are shown to satisfy these conditions necessary conditions delimit those models of the firm that may exhibit monotone optimal decisions journal of economic literature classification numbers b41 c61 d20 l00

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for e waste in the eu28 2 countries abstract this paper investigates the kuznets curve hypothesis for e waste using a balanced panel of 30 european countries eu28 2 over the period 2000 2016 to account for the dynamic and the time invariant characteristics we employed the generalized method of moments gmm estimator as a core method and used the 2sls estimator and cross section method to analyze the robustness of results we found that the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is well supported for e waste generated in the eu28 2 area in addition this relationship is robust and is not sensitive to the choice of control variables and the estimation methods all three methods evidenced ekc in e waste for the studied european area this reveals that e waste generation increases with an increasing gdp up to a certain gdp level turning point but thereafter decreases despite further economic growth while this suggests that e waste generation and the related adverse environmental impacts will decline at elevated gdp levels the results of this study highlight that the turning point occurs at rather exceptionally high levels of gdp the evidence of ekc in e waste contributes to better understanding the interlinkage between economic growth and e waste generation but it does not diminish the urgent need to implement effective e waste collection and valorization schemes

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

short run fluctuations in fertility and mortality in pre industrial sweden abstract this paper describes and interprets annual swedish data from 1750 to 1869 on weather harvests real wages birth rates and death rates using vector autogression impulses due to unexplained increases in wealth whether this occurred through increased real wages improved agricultural yields or warmer winters led in the short run to increased fertility and decreased infant and non infant mortality and hence to increased rates of population growth unexplained or unanticipated fluctuations in infant mortality led to replacement cycles in fertility within one to three years although only a negligible cumulative effect on fertility persisted after five to ten years fluctuations in deaths among persons older than one year evoked a fertility response several years later but this replacement response persisted after more than a decade although vector autoregression is not designed to account for long term trends and their consequences the interrelationships found here among exogenous weather shocks and fluctuations in economic conditions and demographic rates provide support for the homeostatic mechanisms hypothesized by classical economists and discussed by malthus the methodology of vector autoregression appears useful for studying historical series on climatic economic and demographic variables where we do not yet have a sufficient theoretical foundation for specifying and estimating structural models

testing for complementarities in reduced form regressions a note abstract in many cases it is important to know whether choice variables for a decision maker are mutual complements but a structural model cannot be estimated a unified framework for testing for complementarity through reduced form regressions is provided

explaining the variation in household recycling rates across the uk household waste recycling rates vary significantly both across and within regions of the uk this paper attempts to explain the variation by using a new data set of waste recycling rates and policy determinants for all of the uk s 434 local authorities over the period 2006q2 to 2008q4 our results suggest that the method of recycling collection chosen by policy makers is an important factor influencing the recycling rate we also find an inverse relationship between the frequency of the residual waste collection and the recycling rate

embedding landfill diversion in economic geographical and policy settings we analyse the process of landfill diversion embedding the dynamics in a frame where economic geographical and policy variables enter the arena we aim at investigating in depth what main drivers may be responsible for such a phenomenon we exploit a rich panel dataset covering all the 103 italian provinces the case study on italy is worth being considered provided that italy is a main country in the eu thus offering important pieces of information on the evaluation of policies evidence shows that the observed decoupling between economic growth and landfilling is driven by a mix of structural factors as population density and waste management strategies if on the one hand the landfill tax is not arising as a significant driver of the phenomenon other waste management instruments are associated with high significant negative effect on landfilled waste in association to the features of the tariff system we also underline the key role played by the share of separated collection in driving down land

the siting of hazardous waste facilities in federal systems the political economy of nimby this paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system we first show that a decentralized systemyields the first best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions in our model each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions this leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large and in thegovernment s weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities the centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level since compensation has proved difficult a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system

investigating policy and r d effects on environmental innovation a meta analysis in the last decades a wide research effort has been devoted at the analysis of the determinants of environmental innovation ei whereas agreement seemed to emerge around a cluster of determinants mainly technology push market pull policy push pull and firm specific factors empirical analyses have failed to provide strong confirmation on the relevance of some core variables after a qualitative discussion of this literature we empirically assess it by exploiting meta regression analysis techniques to test the effectiveness of two determinants policy and r d our findings are clear as for the first we show that only certain types of policy have proven to affect ei in particular regulatory stringency as for r d we show that the use of estimation methods is not neutral to the outcome of the primary studies

an empirical examination of the pollution haven hypothesis for india towards a green leontief paradox using input output analysis we examine whether india can be regarded as a pollution haven we calculate the extra co2 so2 and nox emissions induced by 1 billion rupees of additional exports this is compared with the reduction of indian pollution caused by an import increase of equal size in contrast to what the pollution haven hypothesis states for developing countries we find that india considerably gains from extra trade comparing 1996 1997 with 1991 1992 the gains have only increased indicating that india has moved further away from being a pollution haven the outcome is robust to changes in the underlying assumptions

environmental efficiency and labour productivity trade off or joint dynamics a theoretical investigation and empirical evidence from italy using namea in this paper we test an adapted ekc hypothesis to verify the relationship between environmental efficiency namely emissions per unit of value added and labour productivity value added per employee we exploit namea data on italy for 29 sector branches and 6 categories of air emissions for the period 1991 2001 we employ data on capital stock and trade openness to test the robustness of our results on the basis of the theoretical and empirical analyses focusing on innovation firm performances and environmental externalities we would expect a positive correlation between environmental efficiency and labour productivity a negative correlation between the emissions intensity of value added and labour productivity which departs from the conventional mainstream view the hypothesis tested is a critical one within the longstanding debate on the potential trade off or complementarity between environmental preservation and economic performance which is strictly associated with the role of technological innovation we find that for most air emission categories there is a positive relationship between labour productivity and environmental efficiency labour productivity dynamics then seem to be complementary to a decreasing emissions intensity in the production process taking a disaggregate sector perspective we show that the macro aggregate evidence is driven by sector dynamics in a non homogenous way across pollutants services tend always to show a complementary relationship while industry seems to be associated with inverted u shape dynamics for greenhouse gases and nitrogen oxides this is in line with our expectations in any case ekc shapes appear to drive such productivity links towards complementarity the extent to which this evidence derives from endogenous market forces industrial and structural change and policy effects is discussed by taking an evolutionary perspective to innovation and by referring to impure public goods arguments

the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments a typical case of the blind men and the elephant abstract in this paper we examine the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments in four literatures theoretical models on incentives for eco innovation econometric studies based on observed data survey analysis based on stated information and technology case studies the aim of this paper is to critically examine the methods and the results we argue that the case studies literature even when its results are specific and difficult to generalise is a necessary source of empirical evidence about policy impacts and the factors responsible for these impacts pointing to issues that are neglected in the theoretical and econometric literature such as the specifics of the innovation context and policy interaction effects the paper states five synthesised findings and makes a plea for multi method analysis one other important synthesised finding is that the influence of market based instruments on innovation such as emission trading and taxes is far weaker than assumed

did the great recession affect fertility examining the impact of job displacements on the timing of births in the united states we examine the impact of job losses during the great recession on fertility in the united states we find that for married cohabiting couples job losses of males during the recession decreased the likelihood of birth in contrast job losses of married cohabiting females had no impact on average on fertility because of opposing age specific effects although younger women were reducing fertility after job losses to cope with the loss of income older women aged 40 and above were more likely to have a child following their job loss moreover we find that job losses of single noncohabiting females decreased the likelihood of birth particularly for women below the age of 25 this negative effect on fertility persisted in the medium term up to three years following the job losses overall these results suggest that job losses during the recession may be partly responsible for the recent decline in the u s birth rates

environmental innovations in services manufacturing services integration and policy transmissions abstract this paper investigates the relevant factors behind the almost unexplored realm of environmental innovation in services using a dataset of 8161 italian service firms specifically we test whether manufacturing services integration matters for environmental innovations in addition taking account for the heterogeneity of the service industries we analyse whether environmental policies for manufacturing transmit induced innovation effects to services our findings show that i the drivers of environmental innovations related to carbon abatement and energy efficiency differ across industries and ii cooperation training environmental management systems and public funding play key roles in these processes the integration of services and manufacturing through push and pull effects and the environmental policy transmission effect from manufacturing to services generally do not seem to have a positive impact on the diffusion of environmental innovations

the effects of child mortality changes on fertility choice and parental welfare empirical studies have overwhelmingly shown that a lower child mortality rate leads to lower fertility yet it has not been possible to satisfactorily analyze this relationship in even the simplest theoretical models this paper attempts to bridge this gap between theory and the empirical literature the paper also presents results on the effects of child mortality changes on parental welfare the analysis captures the dynamic stochastic feature of fertility choice subsumes other endogeneous choices e g the quality of the children and treats the number of children as a discrete variable this added realism is important for the analysis

landfill construction and capacity expansion we study the optimal capacity and lifetime of landfills taking into account their sequential nature such an optimal capacity is characterized by the so called optimal capacity condition particular versions of this condition are obtained for two alternative settings first if all the landfills are to have the same capacity and second if each of them is allowed to have a different capacity in the second case we obtain an optimal control problem with mixed elements of both continuous and discrete time the resulting optimization problems involve dividing a time horizon of planning into several subintervals of endogenously decided length the results obtained may be useful to address other economic problems such as private and public investments consumption decisions on durable goods etc

complementarities between obstacles to innovation evidence from france abstract this paper investigates obstacles to innovation faced by french manufacturing firms using cis2 data we distinguish between obstacles in postponed projects and obstacles in abandoned projects first we highlight the most important barriers to innovation faced by firms and find that lack of skilled personnel is one of these second based on descriptive analysis correspondence analysis and multivariate probit models we explore factors explaining the perception of obstacles and study complementarities between those obstacles we show that while adopting a package of policies increases the pace of innovation a more targeted choice among policies is needed to encourage firms to persevere in their innovative efforts

income shocks contraceptive use and timing of fertility abstract this paper examines the relationship between income shocks and fertility decisions using panel data from tanzania we estimate the impact of agricultural shocks on pregnancies births and contraception use the likelihood of pregnancies and childbirth are significantly lower for households that experience a crop shock furthermore women have significantly higher contraception use after crop losses the increase in contraceptive use comes almost entirely from traditional contraceptive methods such as abstinence and the rhythm method we argue that these changes in behavior are the result of deliberate decisions of the households rather than the shocks effects on other factors that influence fertility such as women s health status the absence or migration of a spouse the dissolution of partnerships or the number of hours worked we also show that although traditional contraceptives have low overall efficacy households with a strong incentive to postpone fertility are very effective at using them

adopting a unit pricing system for municipal solid waste policy and socio economic determinants concerns about the environmental and aesthetic damages of municipal solid waste pollution have triggered policy reform at all levels of government as part of this effort public officials are integrating market based policy instruments such as unit pricing into their solid waste plans despite the economic advantages of unit pricing constituency response has been mixed and hence adoption rates have been below expectations if the associated gains are to be realized public officials must identify the key factors that influence this decision to that end this research empirically estimates the determinants of unit pricing adoption at the community level of analysis based on data for all cities and towns in massachusetts the results indicate that demographics socio economic attributes fiscal capacity and policy instruments influence this decision

the economic benefits of reducing the environmental effects of landfills heterogeneous distance decay effects this paper estimates the economic benefits of different alternative policies considered for reducing the external effects caused by the utilization of landfills in solid waste management the preferences of the local population in the surrounding areas of a landfill are evaluated utilizing a discrete choice experiment in which subjects are presented with alternative policy decisions that involve reducing the material processed through the landfill various models were employed in order to capture heterogeneous preferences resulting in a mixture of normals modelling approach mn mnl outperforming other alternative models of heterogeneity the results show that the policy of moving the landfill away from the population does not provide the most benefits when compared to a policy of increasing recycling in the household the economic benefits of the waste management policies are heterogeneous across the population surrounding the landfill and so the distance decay functions thus the economic benefits for most waste management policies can increase or decrease the further away the subject lives from the landfill depending on the preferences of his her segment and the type of policy employed

economic instruments and induced innovation the european policies on end of life vehicles abstract the paper addresses the mechanisms by which specific economic instruments based on the producer responsibility principle prp can influence innovation when environmental policy has impact on very complex industrial subsystems we consider the eu policy on end of life vehicles directive 2000 53 ec on elvs as a representative case study of multiple industry prp instrument dynamic efficiency problems in order to achieve ambitious policy targets on elv recovery recycling reuse interrelated sequences of single innovations in both upstream car making and downstream car recycling recovery should take place we explore the extent to which the introduction of a free take back ftb instrument can influence industrial actors in contributing to innovation paths that are still marked by technological uncertainty evolving capabilities and different cost benefit balances for actors themselves we conclude that differently from static approaches in which the ei and its formulation is neutral with respect to policy effectiveness the dynamic efficiency of eis in elv like problems depends both on where along the production to waste chain and how in terms of net cost allocation the specific incentive is introduced consequently in order to generate a policy desired innovation path the way in which the ei related incentive allocated to a certain industry is transmitted to other industries whether upward or downward along the chain is also relevant disregarding these effects can imply a dissipation of innovation incentives and the generation of regulation induced rents for some actors cannot be ruled out policies based on prp should consider eis in conjunction with enforceable voluntary agreements

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

schooling information and nonmarket productivity contraceptive use and its effectiveness information from two u s fertility surveys on couples knowledge about and use of specific contraceptives are used to estimate the technology of human reproduction in order to examine the association between schooling and productivity in the household sector the results indicate that more schooled couples have a wider knowledge of contraceptive methods use more efficiently those contraceptive methods for which there is little information and large scope for misuse and are better able to mitigate the effects of their biological constraints fecundity on their fertility compared to less schooled couples excerpt

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

smoothing consumption by smoothing income hours of work responses to idiosyncratic agricultural shocks in rural india while research has demonstrated that farm households in developing economies are able to protect consumption from idiosyncratic crop shocks little evidence shows how this is achieved this paper examines the extent to which labor markets allow households to shift labor from farm to off farm employment and the extent to which such a shift explains the observed lack of correlation between consumption and idiosyncratic crop shocks the empirical analysis uses a novel measure of the idiosyncratic crop income shock which utilizes information on start of season cropping choices to more accurately estimate household expectations of weather

landfilling versus backstop recycling when income is growing the paper considers a dynamic model in which an income stream growing over time is optimally divided into consumption andexpenditures on waste disposal the latter being optimally dividedbetween recycling and landfilling recycling is thoughtof as a backstop waste disposal technology it does notrequire landfill space but is a relatively expensive method ofwaste disposal landfilling uses up scarce landfill capacity while conserving landfill space is the major reason themunicipality recycles another motive for recycling might be thatrecycling itself generates utility our analysis suggests thatthe optimal recycling program varies considerably with bothlandfill capacity and initial income for example richermunicipalities are likely to introduce recycling much earlier inthe planning period than poorer municipalities thus whenlegislating recycling national or regional governments must besensitive to the differences between municipalities

municipal waste kuznets curves evidence on socio economic drivers and policy effectiveness from the eu waste generation and waste disposal are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis in general waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation incineration and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the eu25 to assess the effects of different drivers economic structural policy and the eventual differences between western and eastern eu countries we show that for waste generation there is still no waste kuznets curve wkc trend although elasticity to income drivers appears lower than in the past landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention and in terms of landfill and incineration as expected they are respectively decreasing and increasing with policy acting as a strong driver eastern countries appear to be performing generally quite well thus benefiting from eu membership and related policies in terms of environmental performance we can conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation there are some first positive signs of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and robust landfill diversion and varying evidence of a significant role of the eu waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s our evidence suggests that if while landfill diversion is currently associated to a delinking partly explained by eu policies waste prevention must be the next objective of waste regulation efforts

sustainability in a post keynesian growth model for an open economy the paper expands the bop constraint growth model and kaldorian regimes productivity and demand regimes in order to include some of the concerns raised by ecological economics in post keynesian models for open economies the demand regime is modified by taking into account porter s hypothesis which suggests that environmental innovations spurred by environmental policies can foster competitiveness as a result the equilibrium bop constrained rate of growth increases leading to a different version of thirlwall s law which opens room for analyzing the impact of environmental innovations on convergence between developing and developed economies the productivity regime in turn considers the growth and employment implications of innovations in labor productivity standard innovations and environmental efficiency environmental innovations it is argued that the fiscal policy and composition of public expenditure matter for long run growth employment and sustainability

complementarities in innovation policy this paper develops a framework for testing discrete complementarities in innovation policy using european data on obstacles to innovation we propose a discrete test of supermodularity in innovation policy leading to a number of inequality constraints we apply our test to two types of innovation decisions to innovate or not and if so by how much we find that the evidence regarding the existence of complementarity in innovation policies depends on the phase of innovation that is targeted getting firms innovative or increasing their innovation intensity as well as on the particular pair of policies that is being considered the two phases of the innovation process i e the probability of becoming an innovator and the intensity of innovation are subject to different constraints interestingly there seems to be a need to adopt a package of policies to make firms innovate while a more targeted choice among policies is necessary to make them more innovative

using choice question formats to determine compensable values the case of a landfill siting process abstract siting noxious facilities such as community landfills is a challenging problem for local planners who recognize the importance of economic efficiency and equity political acceptance and meeting federal regulatory standards meeting these criteria requires technical and socio economic analyses in conjunction with public input planners may also recognize that political acceptance requires compensation for the host community either in the form of monetary or in kind transfers following breffle and rowe breffle w s rowe r d 2002 comparing choice question formats for evaluating natural resource tradeoffs land econ 78 2 298 314 we use a resource to resource paired comparison survey method to estimate compensatory values associated with an in county landfill for both the host and non host communities our results indicate that while a host community household s minimum willingness to accept payment for hosting a landfill may exceed a non host community household s maximum willingness to pay a large difference in population sizes between the two communities enables the landfill to pass a kaldor potential compensation test

firm organization industrial structure and technological innovation abstract the formal and informal structures of firms and their external linkages have an important bearing on the rate and direction of innovation this paper explores the properties of different types of firms with respect to the generation of new technology various archetypes are recognized and an effort is made to match organization structure to the type of innovation the framework is relevant to technology and competition policy as it broadens the framework economists use to identify environments that assist innovation

changing world prices women s wages and the fertility transition sweden 1860 1910 this time series analysis examines during 1860 1910 the impact of changes in local prices of agricultural commodities on wages among men and women in sweden and the impact of changes in wages on fertility decline child mortality urbanization and improved social conditions linear ordinary least squares models are set up to determine whether demand induced increases in womens wages relative to mens are significant factors in explaining swedish total fertility rates data are obtained from 25 counties and the city of stockholm among pooled observations for six time periods during 1860 64 and 1910 14 this period is marked by a total fertility decline of 28 a marital fertility decline of 26 and a child mortality decline of 52 explanatory variables are the relative prices of main agricultural outputs employment outside of agriculture the proportion of urban population and the child mortality rate findings indicate a significant relationship between child mortality and total fertility and specific fertility rates among women aged 20 39 years a doubling of the male real wage rate was significantly associated with earlier marriage higher birth rates among women aged 15 29 years and lower birth rates among women aged 35 49 years the ratio of male wages to female wages was associated with a decline in birth rates at all ages with the exception of teenagers 66 of fertility increase was due to declines in child mortality but this increase was counterbalanced by fertility decline among older women child mortality and urbanization depressed marital fertility male wages increased the proportion married a 10 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 25 reduction in the total fertility rate another 25 increase in the male female wage rate was associated with a 50 reduction in child mortality it is concluded that the value of womens time had a key impact on the swedish fertility transition

measurement of health state utilities for economic appraisal health status measurement for use in economic appraisal of health care programmes is reviewed in this paper with particular emphasis on utility measurement a framework for economic appraisal is presented displaying the various components that must be measured and showing how the three forms of analysis cost effectiveness analysis cost benefit analysis and cost utility analysis relate to the framework and to each other one of the components in the framework is health status it can be measured using ad hoc numeric scales willingness to pay receive or health state utilities the determination of health state utilities is reviewed covering the following issues alternative sources of utilities health state descriptions multi attribute utility approach determination of appropriate subjects utility aggregation and accuracy three measurement techniques for health state utilities are described in detail rating scale standard gamble and time trade off the use of these methods is described for both chronic and temporary health states and for both health states considered better than death and those considered worse than death

effects of environmental regulation on separate waste collection dynamics empirical evidence from italy abstract this paper aims to evaluate the extent to which current italian legislation has been able to achieve the goals set for separate waste collection within the context of the ongoing revision of european union eu policy in italy waste management is regulated by legislative decree 152 2006 which has set the main regulatory pillars the responsibilities among the actors at different territorial levels regions provinces and municipalities the waste tariff structure penalties and incentives such as the landfill tax and green certificates to promote energy recovery focussing on separate collection of municipal waste the italian law set three targets to achieve 35 by 2006 45 2008 and 65 by 2012 we propose a two step analysis focussing on 103 italian provinces using the longitudinal data provided by the italian national institute of statistics istat for the period 1999 2011 first using the transition probability matrix we analyse the transition probabilities among three different separate waste collection states low medium and high second by using a generalised ordered probit model we verify the magnitude and significance of the parameter associated to the legislative decree 152 2006 and of some other selected variables in allowing provinces to move from a low separate collection state to a higher one our results show that the legislative decree has had the positive effect of driving italy s provinces towards higher separate waste collection rates but has not proved effective in lowering the gap among provinces those in southern italy remain the least dynamic finally we show that citizen participation in ecological associations and voluntary activities has a positive effect on separate collection rates

information appropriability and the generation of innovative knowledge four decades after arrow and nelson an introduction this introduction sets in context the works that follow which are meant to take stock of the theoretical advances and also historical changes since the seminal arrow 1962 and nelson 1959 first we summarize some of the original arrow nelson insights second we map the subsequent developments shorthanded as the stanford yale sussex synthesis a particularly controversial issue concerns the relationships between notional opportunities of innovation private appropriability of return from innovating and realized rates of innovation hence third we briefly offer a framework for its discussion in general and with reference to the private appropriation of scientific knowledge copyright 2006 oxford university press

on impatience economic growth and the environmental kuznets curve a dynamic analysis of resource management the paper presents a dynamic analysis of natural resource management and investigates some key factors that affect optimal management and resource conservation using a recursive specification of time preferences we show how endogenous discounting and impatience can affect the motivation for both capital investments and environmental preservation we examine the relationships between economic growth and environmental quality endogenous discounting provides new insights in the economic dynamics underlying the environmental kuznets curve by treating growth as endogenous we examine how externalities and economic growth interact with each other we investigate how economic development can contribute to an increased demand for environmental preservation as an important new result we also show how poverty can contribute to environmental degradation

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

tracking environmental innovations and policy regulations in japan case studies on dioxin emissions and electric home appliances recycling taking dioxin emissions from incineration and the recycling of home electric appliances in japan as two case studies this paper aims to clarify the impact of environmental policy on technological innovation for our case studies relevant japanese patent data were gathered and analyzed for the period 1990 2008 to demonstrate that environmental regulations induce technology innovation we conducted statistical analysis to compare the number of patents related to each regulation between the period under regulation and period outside the regulation the results show that after the regulations were introduced new technological developments occurred for most technological types and the total number of related patent applications was larger even when controlling for other exogenous and endogenous factors such as business cycles and expenditures in research and development r d we finally argue that while a possible weakness in these types of direct regulations is the lack of incentives for further innovations they can still induce innovation if they are flexible and with specific targets

shifting chinese organizational responses to evolving greening pressures organizations are facing various evolving pressures to green their practices these pressures range from obligatory forces to voluntary measures environmental pressures traditionally influenced organizations to seek reactive and internal practices the adopted environmental management em practices have evolved to be more proactive and external as the focus has shifted to supply chains this paper aims to further understand the driving mechanisms for em practices under various external pressures to meet this research goal this study extends the theory of dynamic incentives of environmental policies and institutional theory to develop environmental pressures using an empirical study of 422 chinese manufacturers covering all 31 provinces and provincial cities an exploratory factor analysis reveals four em practices factors and four pressures drivers factors results of a hierarchical regression analysis show that coercive pressures positively relate to more reactive internal em practices less coercive pressures positively relate to more proactive external and green supply chain management practices the empirical findings provide further support that voluntary regulatory measures can help motivate companies in extending their em efforts to supply chains the work also provides insights into how organizations may respond to evolving regulatory regimes dynamic incentives of environmental regulatory policy and various institutional pressures

is environmental innovation embedded within high performance organisational changes the role of human resource management and complementarity in green business strategies abstract this paper investigates whether firms joint implementation of organisational innovation and training may foster their adoption of environmental innovation ei and if this correlation falls within porter hypothesis ph framework we study the relationship of complementarity between strategies of high performance work practices hpwp and human resource management hrm when ei adoption is the firms objective using an original dataset on 555 italian industrial firms regarding ei hpwp and hrm coherent with the last cis2006 2008 survey results show that sector specificity matter the only case in which strict complementarity is observed in organisational change concerns co 2 abatement a relatively complex type of ei but this is true only when the sample is restricted to more polluting and regulated sectors this evidence is coherent with the porter hypothesis complementarity related adoption of ei is an element of organisational change in firms that are subject to more stringent environmental regulations nevertheless the fact that strict complementarity is not a diffuse factor behind the adoption of all environmental innovation indeed does not come as a surprise at this stage in the development of green strategies the share of eco firms is still limited even in advanced countries that are seeking tools for a new competitiveness the full integration of eis within the internal capabilities and firm s own assets is far from being reached even in advanced and competitive industrial settings

under the weather health schooling and economic consequences of early life rainfall life in rural areas of developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as illness or mortality of household members crop or other income loss due to natural phenomena weather insect infestations or fire for example and civil conflict in addition to their contemporaneous effects the effects of certain types of shocks may still be felt many years or even decades later from a public policy standpoint it is particularly important to identify shocks that have large long run effects moreover the mechanics underlying the persistence of shocks may be of con siderable interest for example a health shock may have a long run effect simply because the health shock itself persists over time alternately the health shock may not directly affect long run outcomes but it could affect some other outcome such as educational attainment that helps determine long run well being in this paper we focus on shocks that occur at the very beginning of life we ask how sensi tive long run individual well being is to environmental conditions around the time of birth in particular we examine the effect of weather shocks around the time of birth on the adult health education and socioeconomic outcomes of indonesian women and men born between 1953 and 1974 in addition we attempt to shed light on the intervening pathways connecting early life rainfall to adult outcomes illuminating the roles of health and educational attainment in deter mining adult socioeconomic status this investigation has considerable data requirements it necessitates information on weather shocks experienced by individuals several decades earlier as well as detailed current informa tion on adult outcomes we use information in the indonesian family life surveys ifls on an individual s year and location of birth and link each individual in that survey to locality specific rainfall data for their birth year for individuals born in rural areas on whom we focus rainfall variation across space and time should generate corresponding variation in agricultural output and thus household income to deal with measurement error in the rainfall data we run instrumental variables regressions where variables for rainfall measured at slightly more distant rainfall stations serve as instruments for rainfall in the individual s birthplace and birth year we examine the impact of early life rainfall on a range of adult outcomes observed in 2000 we find that higher early life rainfall leads to improved health schooling and socioeconomic status for women women with 20 percent higher rainfall relative to normal local rainfall in their year and location of birth are 3 8 percentage points less likely to self report poor or very poor health they attain 0 57 centimeters greater height attain 0 22 more completed grades of

a cost benefit analysis of the 55 mph speed limit this article presents the results of an empirical study which estimates the number of reduced fatalities as a result of the imposed 55 mph speed limit time series data for the us from 1952 to 1979 is employed in a regression model capturing the relation between fatalities average speed variability of speed and the speed limit also discussed are the alternative approaches to valuing human life and the value of time provided is a series of benefit cost ratios based on alternative measures of the benefits and costs from life saving the paper concludes that the 55 mph speed limit is not cost efficient unless additional time on the highway is valued significantly below levels estimated in the best reasearch on the value of time 12 references 1 table

dynamics of energy technologies and global change technological choices largely determine the long term characteristics of industrial society including impacts on the natural environment however the treatment of technology in existing models that are used to project economic and environmental futures remains highly stylized based on work over two decades at iiasa we present a useful typology for technology analysis and discuss methods that can be used to analyze the impact of technological changes on the global environment especially global warming our focus is energy technologies the main source of many atmospheric environmental problems we show that much improved treatment of technology is possible with a combination of historical analysis and new modeling techniques in the historical record we identify characteristic l such network e ects yield high barriers to entry even for superior competitors these simple observations allow three improvements to modeling of technological change and its consequences for global environmental change one is that the replacement of long lived infrastructures over time has also replaced the fuels that power the economy to yield progressively more energy per unit of carbon pollution from coal to oil to gas such replacement has d they also include endogenous generation of s we show that doing so can yield projections with lessened environmental impacts without necessarily incurring negative e ect on the economy arriving on that path by the year 2100 depends on intervening actions such as incentives to promote greater diversity in technology and lower barriers to entry for new infrastructures that could accelerate historical trends of decarbonization 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

what drives eco innovators a critical review of the empirical literature based on econometric methods abstract the aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on the econometric analyses of firm level determinants to eco innovation the review reveals some gaps in knowledge first an integrated theoretical framework which merges the insights from different approaches is missing second the influence of some variables is still unsettled demand pull and cost savings whereas others have hardly been included in previous analyses internal and international factors third studies on the drivers to eco innovation versus general innovation are relatively scarce with respect to those on the drivers to eco innovation in general fourth analyses of the relevance of different determinants to eco innovation for distinct eco innovator and eco innovation types have largely been missing fifth studies on middle income and developing countries are still scarce sixth the econometric analyses have relied on microeconometric methods based on cross section data mostly logit and probit models whereas the use of panel data is virtually absent seventh detailed econometric analyses on the distinct drivers and barriers to eco innovation in different sectors and regions have not been performed so far finally whether the position of the firm in the value chain and the market structure influence the propensity to eco innovate are largely unexplored topics