armington elasticities for energy policy modeling evidence from four european countries elasticities of substitution among imports and competing domestic production armington elasticities play an important role in computable general equilibrium cge assessments of energy and climate policy this paper provides estimates of armington elasticities for 15 commodity groups in four european countries since armington elasticities are found to be rather low on average researchers may want to reconsider the device of using high values of armington elasticities in cge models to avoid unrealistic competitiveness effects or emission leakage rates associated with energy or carbon taxes or other forms of energy related regulation estimated elasticities tend to be higher in the case of machinery and other investment goods than in the case of primary products ores and chemicals as well as consumer goods

armington models and terms of trade effects some econometric evidence for north america elasticities of substitution among u s imports from mexico canada the rest of the world and competing domestic production are estimated for twenty two mining and manufacturing sectors based on quarterly data for 1980 88 these elasticities will provide a benchmark for computable general equilibrium models of north american trade liberalization the authors also find that estimated armington elasticities are low and therefore researchers may want to reconsider the device of using high values of armington elasticities in multicountry computable general equilibrium models to avoid large terms of trade losses associated with preferential trade liberalization

spatial sustainability trade and indicators an evaluation of the ecological footprint the search for frameworks and indicators of sustainable development has taken a prominent place in this journal however some specific aspects have received little or no attention notably the spatial dimension and the role of international trade in indicator development moreover many sustainable development indicators comprise implicit valuations weighting schemes and policy objectives which are insufficiently recognised as such this contribution tries to highlight these issues by means of a review of a recently proposed indicator for ecological economic analysis namely the ecological footprint that has been developed by wackernagel and rees its concept and calculation procedure are criticised on a number of points and it is concluded that the ecological footprint is not the comprehensive and transparent planning tool as is often assumed in explaining our position we will argue that spatial sustainability and regional sustainable development have not been precisely discussed so far neither in the literature on trade and environment nor in that on sustainable development we will defend the view that trade can contribute positively and negatively to environmental unsustainability consequently indicators and models are needed that allow for analysing interactions and trade offs between such opposite effects 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the finance growth nexus evidence from bank branch deregulation this paper provides evidence that financial markets can directly affect economic growth by studying the relaxation of bank branch restrictions in the united states we find that the rates of real per capita growth in income and output increase significantly following intrastate branch reform we also argue that the observed changes in growth are the result of changes in the banking system improvements in the quality of bank lending not increased volume of bank lending appear to be responsible for faster growth

import price elasticities reconsidering the evidence recent economic geography and trade empirical studies based on monopolistic competition suggest high levels of trade price elasticities between 3 and 1 1 however price elasticity estimations in trade equations using unit values as price proxies usually lead to lower values of around unity we show that those inconclusive results may be due to some misspecification in these equations as well as measurement errors in prices when suit able instrumental variables are used within a panel of industrialized countries we obtain high price elasticities the majority ranging from i to 13 the highest estimates correspond to industries producing homogeneous goods jel classification c2 c3 and f 1

a cost function analysis of import demand for nigeria the article uses a translog cost function to examine the substitution relations among capital labour and imports the results show that capital has a substitute relation with domestic labour and import however labour and import have complementary relationship the implication of this finding is that liberalization policies if pursued vigorously could impart positively on the demand for labour in addition it suggests that economic growth could be enhanced through trade liberalization

does economic structure determine financial structure abstract in this paper we examine the relationship between the structure of the real economy and a country s financial system we consider whether the development of the real economic structure can predict the direction of evolution of a country s financial structure using data for 108 countries we find a significant relationship between real economic structure and financial structure next we exploit shocks to the economies in india finland and sweden and south korea and show that changes in the economic structure of a country influence the evolution of its financial system this suggests that financial institutions and capital markets change in response to the structure of industries

stock markets banks and growth panel evidence this paper investigates the impact of stock markets and banks on economic growth using a panel data set for the period 1976 98 and applying recent gmm techniques developed for dynamic panels on balance we find that stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth and these findings are not due to potential biases induced by simultaneity omitted variables or unobserved country specific effects

system optimization for eco design by using monetization of environmental impacts a strategy to convert bi objective to single objective problems abstract eco design is an essential way to reduce the environmental impacts and economic cost of processes and systems as well as products until now the majority of eco design approaches have employed multi objective optimization methods to balance between environmental and economic performances however the methods have limitations because multi objective optimization requires decision makers to subjectively assign weighting factors for objectives i e environmental impacts and economic cost this implies that depending on decision makers preference and knowledge different design solutions can be engendered for the same design problem thus this study proposes an eco design method which can generate a single design solution by developing mathematical optimization models with a single objective function for environmental impacts and economic cost for the formulation of the single objective function environmental impacts are monetized to external cost by using the environmental priority strategies this enables the tradeoffs between environmental impacts and economic cost in the same unit i e monetary unit as a case study the proposed method is applied to the eco design of a water reuse system in an industrial plant this study can contribute to improving the eco efficiency of various products processes and systems

perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital economics from an ecological footprint perspective this paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality far from encouraging investment in natural capital actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks moreover conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem this paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept to develop the argument the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses it shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital it picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles it draws lessons for current development

a system dynamics approach for the photovoltaic energy market in spain abstract the goal of this paper is to contribute to understanding the behaviour of the photovoltaic pv sector in spain and its expectations under possible scenarios currently pv solar energy is not a profitable sector by itself therefore the spanish government like the governments of other countries has stimulated investment with subsidies the spectacular increase of pv facilities exceeded all forecasts and the government decided to curb the trend the present hypothesis is that continuing with this support to pv energy the technological advances and the economy generated from the production of panels would be able to make the sector profitable in the future without the necessity of subventions based on this hypothesis a computer simulation model was built using the system dynamics methodology to test its utility the model was challenged to fit the historical data and to explore several futures over the next few years the model allows an understanding of the sector s behaviour under the latest policies of the spanish government thus helping to design future public policies the simulation results are different depending on the adopted policy and the scenario therefore these factors will determine the success or failure of the investments in this type of energy

a decade s debate on the nexus between corporate social and corporate financial performance a critical review of empirical studies 2002 2011 abstract theoretical discussions and empirical studies on the nexus between corporate social responsibility corporate social performance and corporate financial performance have never ceased since the origin of the concepts the development trajectories of such studies should be articulated with a view to informing practical corporate social responsibility applications and theoretical studies in the future this paper presents a critical review of relevant empirical research articles on the nexus between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance published during the ten year period from 2002 to 2011 using mixed methods of content analyses and statistical analyses the paper reviews 84 empirical studies of this kind published during the period the results indicate that despite the enormous amount of previous studies the corporate social performance and corporate financial performance nexus is a line of inquiry that remains inconclusive the pattern of corporate social performance corporate financial performance relationship research in the decade examined has shifted towards exploring the linkages between specific aspects of the two constructs the positive relationships between these specific aspects in dual directions are confirmed by most of the studies examined in this paper the paper also examines the impact of time and space change on the corporate social performance corporate financial performance nexus the findings show that researchers have gradually recognized that the relationship is not static but changes over time furthermore the paper finds that corporate social responsibility has been increasingly debated in developing countries and in specified industrial settings the review concludes that to explore the corporate social performance corporate financial performance nexus by contextualizing it in a specified community and or examine its dynamics is a promising research area that can yield significant academic and practical values

impact of trade liberalization on import demands in india a panel data analysis for commodity groups the objectives of this study are to examine the impact of liberalization on price elasticities of imports at a commodity level for broad commodity groups and at an aggregate level for the indian economy over the period 1993 1997 liberalization is implemented by reducing tariff and non tariff barriers and relaxing exchange controls the impact of tariffs and market based exchange rate is introduced in the import price of the commodity relative price import domestic elasticities for each commodity group using panel data of six countries over five years are estimated for the indian economy relative price elasticities for each of the years at an aggregate level using data for twenty commodity groups as observations are obtained and these show that the price elasticity tends to rise with the increase in liberalization when tariff rates are reduced

the unequal exchange of dutch cheese and kenyan roses introducing and testing an lca based methodology for estimating ecologically unequal exchange the theory of ecologically unequal exchange eue posits that international trade is structurally organized in a manner that allows a net transfer of resources from peripheral developing to core industrialized countries the consequence it is argued is under development in the periphery and augmented productive capacity in the core eue thus challenges the neoliberal free market argument that exchange at market prices is symmetric and fair an lca based methodology for estimating eue that holds constant the variable market price is introduced and tested on contemporary trade of dutch cheese and kenyan coffee and roses specifically the exchange of embodied land water energy global warming potential and labor is assessed the results confirm the theory s hypothesis at a fixed market price more embodied kenyan resources are exchanged for less dutch resources however kenyan roses give different results from coffee eue between countries can only be conclusively determined by considering the total biophysical trade balance but by calculating quantities of embodied resources per unit of exchange value it is possible to detect unequal exchange even at the level of individual commodities while integration of biophysical metrics alongside monetary valuation is recommended ultimately rethinking the structure policies and politics of international trade is necessary

the demand for ldc exports of manufactures estimates from hong kong exports of manufactures from developing countries are generally believed to be sensitive to changes in the level of income in the developed countries their major market this belief is grounded on both casual observation especially from the experience of recent recessions and on extensive econometric evidence of low price elasticities and high income elasticities of demand for ldc exports in developed countries this paper argues that both casual observation and previous econometric evidence are misleading the aim of the paper is to show the order of magnitude of the bias contained in previous econometric estimates of price and income elasticities of demand for ldc exports of manufactures due to neglect of supply side influences previous econometric work has neglected the supply side of ldc exports for the simple reason that it is difficult to model it is difficult to model properly the supply of aggregate ldc exports since the determinants of export supply differ from country to country even for a single country modelling export supply is complicated since in addition to foreign demand and domestic supply exports are determined in part by domestic demand for exportables furthermore in most ldcs the incentive to export is strongly influenced by complex and continually changing industrial and trade policy measures there is one major exception hong kong one of the developing world s largest and most successful exporters of manufactured goods the manufacturing sector in hong kong is almost completely specialised exporting 95 of output consequently domestic demand plays no part in determining the volume of exports furthermore factor markets and the manufacturing sector are almost completely free from government intervention the main exception being the textile export restraints imposed at the insistence of importing countries the voluntary restraint agreements vras to which hong kong is subject no doubt affect the composition of exports but not necessarily the volume of aggregate exports if resources in the restrained sectors can easily be redeployed elsewhere in the economy judging from past export growth rates the vras do not appear to have had a significant effect on aggregate export growth in hong kong the results reported below also suggest that hong kong has effectively circumvented the trade barriers it faces the hong kong manufacturing sector in many ways resembles a firm in the

human appropriation of natural capital a comparison of ecological footprint and water footprint analysis the water footprint concept introduced in 2002 is an analogue of the ecological footprint concept originating from the 1990s whereas the ecological footprint ef denotes the bioproductive area hectares needed to sustain a population the water footprint wf represents the freshwater volume cubic metres per year required in elaborating the wf concept into a well defined quantifiable indicator a number of methodological issues have been addressed with many similarities to the methodological concerns in ef analysis the methodology followed in wf studies is in most cases analogous to the methodology taken in ef studies but deviates at some points well reasoned it has been chosen for instance to specifically take into account the source and production circumstances of products and assess the actual water use involved thus not taking global averages as a result one can exactly localise the spatial distribution of a water footprint of a country with respect to the outcome of the footprint estimates one can see both similarities and striking differences food consumption for instance contributes significantly to both the ef and the wf but mobility and associated energy use is very important only for the ef from a sustainability perspective the wf of a country tells another story and thus at times will put particular development strategies in a different perspective the paper reviews and compares the methodologies in ef and wf studies compares nation s footprint estimates and suggests how the two concepts can be interpreted in relation to one another the key conclusion is that the two concepts are to be regarded as complementary in the sustainability debate

openness to trade in manufactures in the oecd abstract how open are the advanced economies to trade with each other in this paper openness is calculated relative to the predictions of the monopolistic competition trade model using data on manufacturing trade and production in the oecd in 1985 the paper finds that 1 japan imports much less than other large oecd countries while the european countries have larger import volumes than does the us 2 japan and the us engage in less intra industry trade than the rest of the oecd and 3 the eu countries are less open to imports from japan and the us than those countries are open to imports from the eu

demand for india s manufactured exports abstract surprisingly few estimates exist of disaggregated world demand functions for ldc exports despite the obvious policy importance of the inherent price elasticities time series simultaneous equation estimates are herein presented of world demand for 23 categories of manufactured exports from india tests for homotheticity separability whether price elasticity of demand differs during world recession and for effects of foreign learning about india s exports are reported estimated price elasticities range from below unity to infinity revealing important variations masked by aggregate studies these results raise considerable doubts about policy design from a uniform small country assumption

demand and supply factors in the determination of nie exports a reply in their comment on muscatelli srinivasan and vines msv i992 athukorala and riedel challenge our conclusions regarding the estimated longrun elasticities of export demand for hong kong and our suggestion that estimating a system of export demand and supply could provide a solution to the normalisation problem unfortunately by focusing only on a subset of the issues raised by msv athukorala and riedel tend to ignore some of the key econometric evidence against their preferred small country assumption and their chosen normalisation price dependent export demand there are three key pieces of evidence which tend to point against the small country assumption first let us turn to the normalisation issue as athukorala and riedel note least squares methods such as the phillips hansen procedure will not yield estimates of cointegrating vectors which are independent of normalisation and that is why msv point out that the phillips hansen procedure may only alleviate not solve the normalisation problem ideally when estimating a simultaneous cointegrated model scm one should attempt to test and impose identifying restrictions on the h matrix in a johansen type multi variate var framework

the determinants of import demand in pakistan abstract this paper examines the factors influencing the demand for pakistan s imports during the period from 1959 1960 to 1985 1986 a general approach is used to determine empirically the appropriate formulation of the import demand functions and leads to the choice of the loglinear form the estimated price and income elasticities are distinctly different from those of the developed and middle income countries

the optimal tax on antebellum us cotton exports abstract the us produced about 80 of the world s cotton in the decades prior to the civil war how much monopoly power did the us possess in the world cotton market and what would have been the effect of an optimal export tax this paper estimates the elasticity of foreign demand for us cotton exports and uses the elasticity in a simple partial equilibrium model to calculate the optimal export tax and its effect on prices trade and welfare the results indicate that the export demand elasticity for us cotton was about 1 7 and that the optimal export tax of about 50 would have raised us welfare by about 10 million about 0 3 of us gdp or about 1 of the south s gdp

the transition towards renewable energies physical limits and temporal conditions abstract the perspectives of the depletion of fossil energy resources together with the consequences of climate change have provoked the development of numerous national and pluri national energy policies however there have been few overall studies on the evolution of these resources this paper uses a dynamic model to study the exhaustion patterns of world fossil and nuclear fuels and their possible replacement by renewable energy sources the results show that peak oil will be the first restriction and it will not be easily overcome electric vehicles can produce some interesting savings but they are insufficient to avoid the decline in oil biofuels are even more limited due to the enormous extensions of fertile land they require and their low productivity this shows that overcoming the decline in oil will need much more ambitious policies than the mere substitution of technology if the oil economy relationship does not change substantially world economic growth may be seriously limited or even negative in contrast the production of electrical energy is not such a worrying problem in the short and middle term

demand and supply factors in the determination of nie exports a simultaneous error correction model for hong kong a comment v a muscatelli t g srinivasan and d vines 1992 purported to refute j riedel s 1988 finding that hong kong is a small price taking country in world markets this comment shows however that muscatelli srinivasan and vines s results are due entirely to an unjustifiable restriction they imposed on the estimated export demand equation and not the result of using a superior estimation technique as they asserted copyright 1994 by royal economic society

the future of food scenarios and the effect on natural resource use in agriculture in 2050 do we have the natural resource base to feed future populations this study gives a quantification of global land use water use and fertilizer use for the year 2050 for a complete diet and four different futures agriculture will need to develop substantially to feed future populations it is shown that there is a negative correlation between fertilizer use and land use which makes the necessity of incorporating both in such assessments clear water use increases relative to total production and this is going to be a problem unless drastic measures are taken the high wastage and high consumption of animal products in the developed regions are major contributors to the total global demand developing countries aspirations to such practices are a major factor in increases in diet demand as are population increases in those regions in creating a more sustainable food system a one solution approach will not do and solutions should combine supply side and demand side options demand side solutions should target wastage and animal product consumption on the supply side technological development and better feeding efficiency will increase yields feeding the future global population which is necessary to increase living standards worldwide will require a concerted effort

the effects of the u s mfa on small exporters this paper tests two hypotheses regarding the impact of the u s multifiber arrangement restrictions on developing countries exports of textiles and clothing to the united states that the multifibre arrangement is a binding constraint on exporters and that the arrangement encourages the growth of smaller exporters by restricting exports from major sellers pooled data on eight small asian exporters over the period 1975 84 is used results strongly support the hypothesis that the multifibre arrangement has been a binding constraint although the arrangement appears to have diverted demand toward these smaller sellers this effect is counteracted by slow growth in their own restraints copyright 1990 by mit press

can imperfect competition explain the difference between primal and dual productivity measures estimates for u s manufacturing it is well known that under the assumptions of constant returns to scale perfect competition and the absence of factor hoarding primal and dual productivity measures should be highly correlated the apparent lack of correlation is usually attributed to fixed factors of production in this paper i propose an alternative explanation by relaxing the assumption of perfect competition by controlling for the presence of a markup component i demonstrate that both productivity measures are in fact highly correlated for u s manufacturing the analysis also provides an alternative method of estimating a markup of prices over marginal cost that avoids certain difficulties inherent in some existing methods of estimation

the demand for ldc exports of manufactures estimates from hong kong a comment in the march i 988 issue of this journal riedel claims that the findings of relatively low price elasticity of demand by the bulk of time series work are based on the assumption of infinite price elasticity of export supply and that the demand parameters derived from a fully specified simultaneous equation model strongly contradict the consensus view on the basis of his results suggesting infinitely price elastic demand for exports of manufactures from hong kong in this comment both of his claims and his results are disputed the author s conclusion concerning infinite price elasticity of demand for exports can be objected to on at least three grounds first in the context of his formulation it implies an abnormally large degree of money illusion on the part of the importers of manufactures second in using the inverse form of the demand function rather than the normal form he would necessarily produce a much larger estimate of price elasticity than otherwise using his approach one can quite easily produce an estimate of the marginal propensity to consume in excess of unity or an implausibly large estimate of the marginal propensity to save third infinite price elasticity is inferred from the statistical nonsignificance of the coefficient of export quantity in the inverse form of demand which represents the inverse of price elasticity however it can be argued that the estimate of the coefficient of export quantity is not statistically significant because of the high intercorrelation multicollinearity between quantity and income in view of the obvious upward bias involved in his approach to the estimation of price elasticity of export demand it is not only possible but also most probable that the adoption of his approach will also yield very high estimates of price elasticities of demand generally it is conceivable that one can produce a highly elastic demand for primary exports not only at individual country level but also at the world level using his approach if ldcs wrongly believe that demand for their primary exports is price elastic when in fact it is not unwarranted expansion of production could cause a significant fall in their export earnings with grave consequence for their economic development it is therefore most important to point out the weaknesses of his approach before it is widely adopted by other researchers keen to get high price elasticities of demand

a review of progress in empowerment of women in rural water management decision making processes abstract the authors of this paper explore the links between water infrastructure water policies processes and protections along with mechanisms for women s leadership and decision making for contributing to rural well being the broad brush strokes approach is our attempt to reveal the breadth and complexity of the interdisciplinary nature of problems which canonly be solved via interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches poor rural women are disproportionally and adversely impacted by domestic and public gendered roles in relation to water accessibility system design and management as well as by the high costs of water distribution the inadequacy of fair water distribution channels is compounded by the growing influence of water privatization advocates the significant changes in climate and global warming also threaten accessibility to safe water and add levels of competitiveness and vulnerability for people in many regions of the world the recommendations proposed in this paper underscore the need for proper management of water resources to prevent and to reduce water conflicts and to increase all dimensions of well being this paper builds upon literature from four interconnected strategies 1 investing in water infrastructure to increase well being 2 establishing policies and legislation to protect the global commons human rights and enhance economic well being 3 embedding gender equality and women s leadership in water management and 4 developing strategic interventions to reduce and mitigate adverse global affects by educating for sustainable development preventing and planning around climate change and enhancing local water management through resisting global privatization approaches

corporate social responsibility sustainable water use freshwater scarcity is no longer limited to sub saharan developing countries also in western society access to unlimited amounts of freshwater is not assured at all times it has been argued and laid down in many national legal systems that access to freshwater is a basic human right what if corporate freshwater use threatens to interfere with this human right the main focus of the article is to explore the role of today s companies in relation to freshwater a number of tools have been developed to attend to the necessity to reduce corporate use of freshwater the article discusses specialised water reporting instruments such as the 2007 global water tool and the water footprint calculation method in addition attention is paid to a ceres report 2010 revealing that the majority of the 100 world s leading companies in water intensive industries still has weak management and disclosures of water related risks and opportunities to obtain concrete information about corporate water strategies and practices an explorative analysis was conducted on 20 dutch multinational companies the article highlights various innovative practices in sum it is demonstrated that companies are expected to bear responsibility for their impact on water resources in particular when it influences public access to water in areas with freshwater scarcity and or weak government notwithstanding the critical conclusions of the ceres report it is interesting to see an evolution in corporate research concerning sustainable water use and the development of greener products and greener ways of production

innovations in the water chain experiences in the netherlands innovations in water chain are discussed based on experiences in the netherlands the available and new technological options as well as their dissemination in the netherlands are presented for the prevailing system with add on technologies elongation and for the emerging separation system with technologies at the source numerous new options are available for both systems but these options are rarely used the low use is explained using economic theories and with practical examples from the netherlands in order to foster innovations the mainstream evolutionary and behavioral theories pinpoint respectively the pricing of common goods broad support of concerted action and support for innovators entry these actions may all be needed experiences with a stakeholder cluster in water management suggest that markets for high value water use invoke innovations and low cost technology adaptations the systematic development of services that foster high value water based activities is recommended

embodied agricultural water use in china from 1997 to 2010 abstract water is an important element in agricultural production the recent population growth rapid urbanization and fast industrialization present increasing challenges for china s agricultural water use embodied water has been promoted as a substantial indicator for the assessment of water consumption induced by human activities however few studies have investigated the dynamic change in embodied agricultural water use by time series data the findings of such studies may facilitate the development of comprehensive sustainable water usage strategies thus this study quantifies the embodied agricultural water trade as well as production and consumption based agricultural water footprints in china by using an input output model during 1997 2010 according to the results china s average embodied agricultural water intensity shows a declining trend from 43 33 m3 thousand yuan in 1997 to 32 66 m3 thousand yuan in 2010 the average embodied agricultural water intensity of the primary industry is larger than those of the secondary and tertiary industries china has always been a net exporter of agricultural water at the industrial level the primary industry is a net importer because of the increasing food demand in china the secondary industry has consistently been a net exporter and the tertiary industry has maintained a trade balance the production and consumption based embodied agricultural water uses demonstrate similar changing trends both decrease from 1997 to 2007 and then significantly increase in 2010 the embodied agricultural water consumed by the primary industry shows a downward trend whereas those consumed by the secondary and tertiary industries demonstrate an opposite trend therefore in addition to the improvement of agricultural water efficiency adjustments in consumption and trade structure are highly instrumental to the conservation of local agricultural water resources

price competition short termism and environmental performance this paper studies the relationships between the intensity of price competition time horizon and environmental performance we hypothesize that more intense price competition discourages environmental performance by inducing short termism in companies we test the hypotheses on a sample of 3152 companies from twelve european countries using structural equation modeling test results show that price competition significantly shortens the time horizon that companies apply in strategic decisions and that long time horizon significantly increases their environmental performance however the net negative effect of the intensity of price competition on environmental performance is small in absolute terms the policy implication is that there is no serious dilemma between fostering environmental performance on one hand and increasing consumer surplus by encouraging price competition on the other hand

trade preferences to small developing countries and the welfare costs of lost multilateral liberalization the proliferation of preferential trade liberalization over the past 20 years has raised the question of whether it slows down multilateral trade liberalization recent theoretical and empirical evidence indicates this is the case even for unilateral preferences that industrial countries provide to small and poor countries but there is no estimate of the resulting welfare costs to avoid this stumbling block effect the authors suggest replacing unilateral preferences by a fixed import subsidy they argue that this scheme would reduce the drag of preferences on multilateral liberalization and generate a pareto improvement more important the authors provide the first estimates of the welfare cost of preferential liberalization as a stumbling block to multilateral liberalization by combining recent estimates of the stumbling block effect of preferences with data for 170 countries and over 5 000 products they calculate the welfare effects of the united states european union and japan switching from unilateral preferences to the developing countries to the import subsidy scheme even in a model with no dynamic gains to trade the authors find that the switch produces an annual net welfare gain for the 170 countries 4 354 million and for each group the united states european union and japan 2 934 million the developing countries 520 million and the rest of the world 900 million

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

financial development structure and dynamics this paper analyzes the bright and dark sides of the financial development process through the lenses of the four fundamental frictions to which agents are exposed information asymmetry enforcement collective action and collective cognition financial development is shaped by the efforts of market participants to grind down or circumvent these frictions a process further spurred by financial innovation and scale and network effects the analysis leads to broad predictions regarding the sequencing and convexity of the dynamic paths for a battery of financial development indicators the method used also yields a robust way to benchmark the financial development paths followed by individual countries or regions the paper explores the reasons for path deviations and gaps relative to the benchmark demand related effects past output growth financial crashes and supply related effects the quality of the enabling environment all play an important role informational frictions are easier to overcome than contractual frictions not least because of the transferability of financial innovation across borders

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

sustainable utilization of water resources in china a system dynamics model water resources play an important role in demographic social and economic development the present study divides the macroeconomic factors that affect the sustainable use of water resources into five major subsystems economy population water supply and demand land resources and water pollution and management it then constructs a feedback loop and stock flow chart of the systems with the system dynamics model to simulate water supply and demand conditions and future changes in the gap between supply and demand from 2005 to 2020 further this study designs different development programs to simulate the changes to the key variables by changing the value of important model parameters it is found that a balanced development program can achieve not only steady economic growth provide a demographic dividend and protect arable land resources but also maximize the sewage treatment rate and improve the reutilization efficiency of water moreover we find that the fundamental way in which to bridge the gap between the supply and demand of water resources is to improve water supply rather than control demand

can corporate social responsibility resolve the sanitation question in developing asian countries abstract the existing state of sanitation in developing asian countries fails to deliver a level of service that is adequate for meeting the human right to a standard of living consistent with dignity and health or for sustaining the capacity for future generations to have access to clean water resources and healthy ecosystems we argue that translating the current neo centralised technologies and institutional arrangements mainstreamed by industrialised countries would not resolve the problem in the context of developing countries instead it is necessary to leap frog to the emerging technological and institutional arrangements that are responsive to current needs and contexts and to potential risks the sustainability focus and often decentralised technologies of this emergent stage in sanitation present many opportunities for new actors to enter the urban sanitation industry at the same time there are many barriers to entry particularly from the perspective of conventional business management focused on increasing shareholder value we propose that perspectives from the corporate social responsibility discourse have the potential to provide both the pull for seizing the business opportunity for profit while serving social needs and the push to overcome the barriers in order to serve a wider social purpose for corporations the wealth of nations at least as reported in ubiquitous gdp terms has greatly increased through the activities of corporations driven by a profit motive but the increased poverty injustice and ecosystem degradation that have resulted from economic activity suggest that corporations perhaps ought to have regard for broader concerns beyond shareholder value we explore how the alternative relational view of a corporation as a metaphorical person within society who adopts a moral code consistent with both buddhist economics and adam smith s philosophy may facilitate profitable corporations that provide better economic ecological and social outcomes in serving the need for sustainable sanitation services in developing asian countries

the effects of macroeconomic factors on south african agriculture significant research efforts have been devoted to understanding the effects of macroeconomic factors on the agriculture sector analysing the sources of volatility in the industry is critical for designing appropriate policies to stabilize agricultural markets reduce poverty and increase economic growth agriculture is a competitive sector with prices that are more flexible than those in nonagricultural sectors this article uses annual data over the 1957 2004 period and a vector error correction model in investigating the dynamic effects of exchange rates money supply and other macroeconomic variables on the agricultural sector in south africa overall real exchange rates interest rates inflation and money supply m3 shocks have significant and persistent impacts on agricultural output prices received by farmers and farm input prices m3 and interest rate shocks tend to put agriculture in a cost price squeeze agricultural price movements are a source of macroeconomic instability in the country r

assessing alternative solutions to carbon leakage abstract a modified version of the computable general equilibrium gtap e model is developed in order to assess the economic and carbon emission effects of alternative trade policy measures aimed at reducing carbon leakage we compare several unilateral policy measures implemented by countries subject to an emissions level cap results provide evidence of the scarce effectiveness of these policies in reducing the carbon leakage rate and conversely some of the trade measures that are discussed seem to be more consistent with the goal of protecting market shares of national firms in the domestic markets of abating countries assessing environmental and competitiveness outcomes jointly confirms that a global cooperative solution would be the most effective as well as an efficient policy option for reducing carbon leakage

explaining armington what determines substitutability between home and foreign goods for decades trade economists have modeled imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods in consumption often called the armington assumption with little analysis of what explains the wide variation in these substitution elasticities across sectors using a varying coefficients model the authors estimate armington elasticities between u s domestic and foreign goods across over one hundred industrial sectors from 1980 to 1988 and examine the role of product industry political and home bias factors as determinants they find strong support that the presence of foreign owned affiliates affects armington elasticities in important ways and some support that entry barriers and union presence have an effect

determinants of the demand for imports of venezuela abstract in this study we use disaggregated annual data to estimate real income and relative price elasticities of demand for imports of venezuela after comparing our estimates with those of previous studies we conclude that 1 venezuela has made progress in developing domestic substitutes for imports and 2 the degree of openness in venezuela increased after 1961 we also find evidence that during the period 1974 1979 the increase in the market value of venezuela s oil reserves led to an increase in all categories of imports

evaluation of the soft measures effects on ambient water quality improvement and household and industry economies abstract various ecological footprint calculators carbon footprint calculators and water footprint calculators have been developed in recent years the basic concepts of ecological behaviour record notebooks and of carbon dioxide emission calculators have been developed since the late 20th century the first carbon dioxide emission calculator was developed in 1991 likewise water pollutant discharge calculators have been developed to estimate the effects of soft measures introduced into households to reduce pollutant discharge since 2004 the soft measures which have been developed in japan may consist of a wider framework household sustainable consumption which has been developed in europe and can be referred to cleaner consumption in this research summarisation of the short history of ecological behaviour record notebooks and ecological footprint calculators in japan since the 1980s was conducted and the soft measures in households to reduce pollutant discharge were evaluated for their effects on ambient water quality improvement as well as household and industry economies effects of the soft measures on related industry economies were investigated using an input output table analysis and the effects of the imported goods were evaluated with an import effect matrix which was developed in this research the effects of the soft measures on household expenditures were estimated to be a decrease by 2 5 or usd 285 person 1 year 1 in 2003 2006 the results show that the soft measures positively affect the chemical fibre industry and significantly affect the detergent industry analysis of the import effect matrix proved that the six industries were tightly related through extensive amounts of imported goods the soft measures in households may lead to household sustainable consumption and thus reduce disadvantageous human impacts on water environments the effects of the measures introduced to improve the environment should be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated to avoid redundant concerns and discord between the environment and the economy which may be worried when the relationship is not well understood

the optimal export tax for a primary commodity in a vertical market the conventional formula for the optimal export tax derived from a partial equilibrium model that ignores importers welfare is extended to include the deadweight loss to the domestic economy associated with the tax applying the extended formula to the tax russia imposes on its exports of logs results suggest ignoring the marketing channel causes the optimal export tax for a primary commodity to be understated the degree of understatement increases as the supply of logs and processing marketing inputs become less price elastic and as buyer and seller power in the downstream lumber industry increases for plausible values of model parameters however the degree of understatement is modest less than 19

can we obtain realistic parameter estimates for the protection for sale model in the grossman and helpman 1994 model of endogenous trade protection sectoral lobbies try to influence an incumbent government that maximizes a weighted sum of political contributions and aggregate welfare we empirically investigate this model using u s and turkish data our specification is more tightly tied to theory than those in existing studies additionally we assume all specific factor owners to be organized into different lobbies these changes validated by hypothesis tests yield more realistic parameter estimates of the government s concern for aggregate welfare and of the fraction of population organized into lobbies peut on obtenir des calibrations realistes des parametres du modele de protection en vue d augmenter les ventes dans le modele de protection commerciale endogene de grossman helpman 1994 des lobbys sectoriels tentent d influencer un gouvernement en place qui maximise une somme ponderee des contributions politiques et du bien etre collectif les auteurs utilisent ce modele pour analyser les donnees pour les etats unis et la turquie on specifie le modele d une maniere qui serre de plus pres la theorie que ce qui a ete le cas dans les etudes anterieures de plus on assume que tous les proprietaires de facteurs de production specifiques sont organises en lobbys differents ces changements valides par des tests d hypotheses engendrent des estimations plus realistes des parametres de la fonction d interet du gouvernement pour le bien etre collectif et pour la fraction de la population organisee en lobbys

demand and supply factors in the determination of nie exports a simultaneous error correction model for hong kong this paper considers the issue of whether a small developing economy such as hong kong faces a perfectly elastic demand for its exports of manufactured goods we construct a simultaneous demand and supply system which is estimated using full information maximum likelihood methods and which allows us to clearly identify demand and supply factors in determining export volumes and prices our empirical findings differ from previous studies conducted with this data set in that they suggest that even a small dynamic newly industrialized economy such as hong kong may not face infinitely elastic demand for its manufactured goods we also advance some reasons to explain why the small country assumption may not be applicable in the case of most industrialized economies

demand elasticities in international trade are they really low the authors analyze the u s demand for bangladeshi imports for products restricted under the multifiber arrangement because bangladesh is only a small supplier of these products and latin american and asian countries can supply close substitutes the authors expected a high elasticity of demand for bangladeshi imports and they found consistently high estimates based on statistically significant coefficients their finding accords with trade theorists prejudice that small countries can essentially behave as price takers but conflicts with the empirical literature view that demand elasticities are low rarely exceeding 3 and generally between 1 and 2 the authors analysis differs from the existing literature in three ways they derive a set of estimation equations from an explicit utility maximization model and use the estimated parameters of the utility function to obtain the marshallian own price and cross price elasticities as well as the income elasticity of demand they take explicit account of u s imports from competitors of bangladesh relying directly on competitors prices and they use highly disaggregated data that make the unit value of exports a better proxy for price than using aggregated export data commonly used in this literature the authors outline their theoretical model for deriving their estimated equations in section 1 preliminarily determine who bangladesh s competitors are in section 2 and estimate the demand equation derived in section 1 and derive the price and income elasticities facing bangladesh in section 3

import competition from developed and developing countries separate demand equations for imports from less developed countries ldcs and imports from developed countries dcs were estimated for each of eleven representative product groups imports were found to compete quite readily with domestically produced goods with plausible own price and cross price elasticities whereas the quantity of each type of import was found to be quite responsive to changes in the price of us home goods each appears to be less sensitive to the price of the alternative import an explanation that is consistent with this observation and that finds support from detailed industry information is that dcs and ldcs supply goods that are at different stages in the product or technology cycle whereas us producers compete in all submarkets this suggests that trade creation rather than trade diversion provides the predominant inroad for ldcs into the us market 25 references 3 tables

trade creation and trade diversion in the canada united states free trade agreement in this paper the changes in trade patterns introduced by the canada united states free trade agreement are examined variation in the extent of tariff liberalization under the agreement is used to identify the impact of tariff liberalization on the growth of trade both with member countries and non member countries data at the commodity level are used and the results indicate that the canada united states free trade agreement had substantial trade creation effects with little evidence of trade diversion jel classification f13 f14

exploring new ways of assessing the effect of regulation on environmental management abstract studies indicate that while a variety of factors positively influence voluntary environmental management regulatory pressures are among the most important however most research examines samples representing large manufacturers or single industries essentially assuming a level of regulatory constraint using a sample of heterogeneous facilities this study finds that facilities can be classified according to the level of regulatory constraint and that group membership impacts the choice of environmental management strategy when assessed within a utility maximization framework more extensively regulated facilities implement more individual environmental management practices but participate in fewer formal voluntary environmental programs veps compared to other facilities

going green trade specialisation dynamics in the solar photovoltaic sector abstract the present study aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of trade flows and the domestic value creation of the major solar photovoltaic industry at the world level solar technologies convert light and heat from the sun into useful energy the use of the sun s energy can not only reduce the consumption of conventional fuels thus reducing the emission of detrimental greenhouse gases but it can also enable a gain in enhanced fuel and energy security along with lessening costs in addition green technologies and industries can promote economic growth and international competitiveness and can offer new business and employment opportunities it becomes therefore extremely important to deeply explore the dynamics of the solar photovoltaic sector specifically the present work analyses the main global trends of this sector and sketches the key players on the world market including producers installers and top traders based on an analysis of trade flows at the 6 digit level the international specialisation patterns are investigated and the role of various market and trade drivers including subsidies in the uptake of solar technologies is identified and examined

a system dynamics analysis of technology cost and policy that affect the market competition of shale gas in china abstract in order to ease environment pressure and alleviate the scarce problem of energy chinese government has begun to exploit and develop shale gas sg since 2009 however the formation of competitive market is bristled with difficulties due to its infancy imperfect and lack of standardization this paper firstly analyzes the status quo of technology policy cost and competition of sg industry in china then a system dynamics sd model is built to show various trends of chinese sg industry under different scenarios which shows that technology policy and cost all have effects on competitiveness at last the simulations reveal that the number of competitors in chinese sg industry will arrive at its peak from 2019 to 2020 the corresponding recommendations have been presented chinese government should pay more attention on the perfection of laws and regulations of sg industry and competitors should focus on increasing r d investment

reconsidering the relevance of social license pressure and government regulation for environmental performance of european smes whereas social license pressure is held as a strong motive for the corporate social performance csp of large enterprises it is argued in literature that it will not sufficiently motivate small and medium sized enterprises smes in this view government regulation is the most effective way to improve the environmental performance of smes other studies argue that social license pressure is also important for smes because of the strong embeddedness of smes in their local communities a large scale empirical study into the effects of social license pressures and government regulation on the environmental performance of smes that could help solve this debate is however still lacking this paper contributes to the scientific literature by using structural equation modeling on a sample of 4929 smes from twelve european countries to test both views for micro small and medium sized enterprises another contribution to scientific literature is that our model includes direct as well as indirect effects from social license pressures on environmental performance the indirect effects are mediated by perceived market benefits of csr the estimation results show that social license pressures as perceived by smes significantly affect the environmental performance of micro small and medium sized enterprises directly as well as indirectly through mediation by perceived market benefits of csp in all cases the perceived social license pressure provides a stronger stimulus to improving environmental performance than the motive to comply with government regulation the policy implication is that governments should not rely on direct regulation of environmental performance only but also aim to improve the transparency of environmental performance by soft regulations that induce smes to publish key performance indicators on environmental issues

perspectives of natural resource sector firms on collaborative approaches to governance for water firms in the natural resource sector forestry mining oil and gas and hydroelectric power production are dependent on water in their operations they also affect water quality and quantity through their practices in response to rising costs increasingly restrictive regulations reduced water availability and growing public criticism of industrial water use and management practices companies are attempting to improve their environmental performance one approach being used by firms in the natural resource sector is participation in collaborative multi actor approaches to governance for water a policy delphi survey of 22 representatives from firms in canada s natural resource sector was used to explore the benefits and challenges flowing from natural resource sector firm participation in multi actor collaborative processes the panel identified and then evaluated 67 positions regarding roles benefits and challenges panelists clearly saw many benefits and challenges to companies from becoming engaged in collaborative processes they also were also aware of ways in which the participation of large firms in multi actor collaborative initiatives can create both benefits and challenges for those initiatives the fact that natural resource sector firms do not have to give up their traditional avenues of influence to participate in collaborative initiatives raises concerns about the long term viability of collaboration as a governance strategy

taxing international emissions trading we investigate the efficiency and effectiveness consequences of emissions trading taxation a theoretical partial equilibrium model is developed showing that permits taxation distorts the equilibrium price and abatement efforts potentially counterintuitive conclusions concerning the tax revenue are also derived a cge model complements theoretical results suggesting that the change in the equilibrium permits price brought about by taxation can be significant finally we conclude that policy design based on cost effectiveness might lead to wrong conclusions the socially desirable design of emissions trading taxation requires homogenous tax rates applied to net sellers and no rebate rates allowed for net buyers