sustainable de growth mapping the context criticisms and future prospects of an emergent paradigm article i nfo sustainable de growth is both a concept and a social grassroots northern movement with its origins in the fieldsofecologicaleconomics socialecology economicanthropologyand environmentalandsocialactivistgroups this paper introduces the concept of sustainable de growth by mapping some of the main intellectual influences fromthese fields with special focus on the francophone and anglophone thinking about this emergent notion we propose hypotheses pertaining to the appeal of sustainable de growth and compare it to the messages enclosed within the dominant sustainable development idea we scrutinize the theses contradictions and consequences of sustainable de growth thinking as it is currently being shaped by a heterogeneous body of literature and as it interacts with an ample and growing corpus of social movements we also discuss possible future paths for the de growth movement compared to the apparent weakening of the sustainable development paradigm

economics psychology and the history of consumer choice theory this paper examines elements of the complex place role influence of psychology in the history of consumer choice theory the paper reviews and then challenges the standard narrative that psychology was in consumer choice theory early in the neoclassical revolution then strictly out during the ordinal and revealed preference revolutions now possibly back in with recent developments in experimental behavioural and neuroeconomics the paper uses the work of three particular economic theorists to challenge this standard narrative and then provides an alternative interpretation of the history of the relationship between psychology and consumer choice theory copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

household energy and climate mitigation policies investigating energy practices in the housing sector abstract one central aim of climate change mitigation in the european union is to reduce energy consumption in the housing sector in order to ensure effectiveness of policies targeting household energy conservation it is important to investigate existing energy practices of different social groups this article describes and explains energy practices in three leading states in environmental politics technological innovation and support for renewable energy production denmark austria and the united kingdom based on a longitudinal analysis of housing utility costs from the european community statistics on income and living conditions we show that income plays a central role in households energy practices while high income households have higher overall energy consumption low income groups spend a larger share of their income on utility costs the variation of energy consumption across income groups is related to household characteristics characteristics of the dwellings and cross national differences in the housing sector

on sustainability and materiality homo faber a new approach abstract this paper explicitly engages with recent debates in ecological economics on what mode of humanity and person the sustainability project requires e g becker 2006 siebenhuner 2000 and responds to calls to widen our understanding of the human being beyond homo economicus e g bina and guedes vaz 2011 using the example of the increasing attention to well being both within policy and academic circles we seek to contribute to current critical considerations of the sustainable person becker 2010 2012 we do this by incorporating often neglected perspectives from disciplines rooted in the arts and humanities specifically anthropology and philosophy introducing to debates on sustainability the notion of homo faber our aim is threefold 1 to invite creative thinking about the role that materiality and practice play in the constitution of alternative notions of being 2 to soften the anthropocentrism of western worldviews by considering the possibility of a different mode of humanity based upon connection rather than separation interdependence rather than autonomy gibson graham 2011 2 and 3 to encourage deeper reflection about the need for and the challenge of interdisciplinary sustainability research

renewable energy as a luxury a qualitative comparative analysis of the role of the economy in the eu s renewable energy transitions during the double crisis the european union eu faces a double crisis both economic and environmental which has brought into stark relief the question of whether climate change mitigation and economic growth are mutually exclusive is saving the environment a luxury reserved for wealthy countries with less affluent countries being too poor to be green we seek to address this important and timely question using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis fsqca to analyse the causal relationship between economic growth and stability and the expansion of renewable electricity shares among the european union s eu 28 member states during the recent economic recession 2008 2013 our paper analyses the recent economic and financial crisis and its effects on sustainability transitions and establishes a new indicator for progress in renewable electricity transitions in the context of europe s 2020 targets it therefore extends the sustainability as a luxury debate to include renewable energy the analysis reveals an ambivalent picture of the role of wealth in renewable energy transitions ret in europe indeed driven by the eu s common renewable energy targets the findings suggest that rets are promoted both because and in spite of the means

organic labelling private label and u s household demand for fluid milk abstractthe u s fluid milk market has been experiencing two trends in the recent decade the fast growth of private label milk and organic milk using the data from nielsen homescan panel we estimate a censored demand system to study the demand relations among types of milk differentiated by brand types and organic status we find that sociodemographic factors still play important roles in household choice of milk types and fluid milk as a whole is an inferior good moreover as income increases households are more likely to shift from buying conventional milk to organic milk and from private label conventional milk to branded conventional milk as indicated by the asymmetric cross price elasticities corresponding implications for milk producers and marketers are discussed

equity based natural resource allocation for infrastructure development evidence from large hydropower dams in africa and asia abstract large hydropower infrastructure development is a key energy priority in low and middle income countries as a means to increase energy access and promote national development nevertheless hydropower dams can also negatively impact people s livelihoods by reducing access to local natural resources such as land water and food this paper analyses equity based resource allocation from an ecological economics perspective by looking at local resource use competition between different uses food energy livelihoods and users villagers urban settlers local government and dam builders in selected case studies in asia and africa it also illustrates from a political ecology approach divergences between national priorities of energy production and growth and local development needs

a review essay about foundations of neuroeconomic analysis by paul glimcher neuroeconomics aims to discover mechanisms of economic decision and express them mathematically to predict observed choice while the contents of neuroeconomic models and evidence are obviously different than in traditional economics some of the goals are identical to explain and predict choice the effects of comparative statics and perhaps make interesting new welfare judgments that are defensible to this end paul glimcher s important book carefully describes how economics psychological and neural levels of explanation can be linked a structure which has been successful in visual neuroscience as glimcher shows the neural evidence is quite strong for a process of learning valuations through prediction error and a simple model of neural valuation and comparison that corresponds to random utility though subject to normalization which produces menu effects there is also rapidly growing evidence for more complicated constructs in behavioral economics including prospect theory s account of risky choice hyperbolic time discounting level k models of games and social preferences corresponding to internal reward based on what happens to other agents

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

measuring and testing advertising induced rotation in the demand curve advertising can rotate the demand curve if it changes the dispersion of consumers valuations we provide an elasticity form measure of the advertising induced demand curve rotation in five demand models and test for its presence in the us nonalcoholic beverage market the almost ideal demand system aids model reveals that doubling advertising spending rotates the demand curves clockwise for milk and coffee and tea with associated slope changes of 7 and 12 soft drink advertising rotates its demand curve counterclockwise our policy suggestion is that milk and soft drink firms time advertising to coincide with high and low price periods respectively

equity effects of alternative assignments of global environmental rights abstract through a thought experiment in which members of different generations trade with each other in a virtual market we examine the effects of alternative assignments of global environmental rights on prices interest rates and the global distribution of income the model is semi calibrated to current and projected levels of the output of produced goods and to present and future quantities of global environmental goods income classes in each country are disaggregated to the quintile level multiple equilibria are possible for some rights assignments with implications for intergenerational equity the model projects bounds on the degree of future economic inequality depending on how the environmental rights are assigned a policy that assigns the environmental rights in such a way as to leave the present day distribution of income unchanged while moving in the direction of equal per capita endowments of environmental rights can result in future inequality comparable to today s average within country inequality

beyond environmental and ecological economics proposal for an economic sociology of the environment the vast majority of approaches in environmental economics attribute the current ecological crisis to the fact that from its inception the industrial economic system was founded on premises that made no allowance for the limits and regulatory functions of ecosystems according to these approaches we must therefore remedy the historical error of dissociating the fields of economics from the natural sciences notably by restoring the links between these two disciplines distinguishing themselves from the two historic approaches environmental economics and early ecological economics the emerging institutionalist schools evoke not only the constructed nature of the environmental crisis generally viewed as an objective fact by both traditional environmental economists and ecological economists but also the socially constructed nature of the economy and its institutions an actionalist regulationist approach allows us to formalize this twofold construction and lays the groundwork for a new economic sociology of the environment in which the technical modalities of ecological modernization are studied in light of social relations with the understanding that social relations are also affected by the materiality of the environmental crisis this actionalist regulationist approach also lends itself to anticipating likely trajectories in the future ecological modernization of economic institutions

the environment and the ethics of discounting an empirical analysis abstract this paper examines the application of discount rates by individuals and by governments when they make decisions about environmental resource use the paper is presented in the context of ethics as determined by what is good and also by what is right for society since in this instance there appears to be no conflict between the two perspectives in addition the paper assesses whether ethical considerations are included in decision making frameworks at the individual and community levels consistency of discount rate applications between individuals and governments is also investigated since consistency is an element of ethical arguments empirical data from a study of soil conservation adoption by philippines upland farmers are used in the analysis individual discount rates are assessed in relation to income and poverty interest rates paid on debt purpose of borrowings land tenure income inequality and soil conservation adoption some of the results appear to be counter intuitive and reasons for this phenomenon are sought the overall results have policy implications and suggestions are made about how an ethical perspective might be developed by governments to help ensure that decision making criteria are more consistent with the practices of individuals within the communities they serve it is suggested that this approach would lead to greater intergenerational and intragenerational equity and better environmental quality

decision making under uncertainty capturing dynamic brand choice processes in turbulent consumer goods markets we construct two models of the behavior of consumers in an environment where there is uncertainty about brand attributes in our models both usage experience and advertising exposure give consumers noisy signals about brand attributes consumers use these signals to update their expectations of brand attributes in a bayesian manner the two models are 1 a dynamic model with immediate utility maximization and 2 a dynamic forward looking model in which consumers maximize the expected present value of utility over a planning horizon given this theoretical framework we derive from the bayesian learning framework how brand choice probabilities depend on past usage experience and advertising exposures we then form likelihood functions for the models and estimate them on nielsen scanner data for detergent we find that the functional forms for experience and advertising effects that we derive from the bayesian learning framework fit the data very well relative to flexible ad hoc functional forms such as exponential smoothing and also perform better at out of sample prediction another finding is that in the context of consumer learning of product attributes although the forward looking model fits the data statistically better at conventional significance levels both models produce similar parameter estimates and policy implications our estimates indicate that consumers are risk averse with respect to variation in brand attributes which discourages them from buying unfamiliar brands using the estimated behavioral models we perform various scenario evaluations to find how changes in marketing strategy affect brand choice both in the short and long run a key finding obtained from the policy experiments is that advertising intensity has only weak short run effects but a strong cumulative effect in the long run the substantive content of the paper is potentially of interest to academics in marketing economics and decision sciences as well as product managers marketing research managers and analysts interested in studying the effectiveness of marketing mix strategies our paper will be of particular interest to those interested in the long run effects of advertising note that our estimation strategy requires us to specify explicit behavioral models of consumer choice behavior derive the implied relationships among choice probabilities past purchases and marketing mix variables and then estimate the behavioral parameters of each model such an estimation strategy is referred to as structural estimation and econometric models that are based explicitly on the consumer s maximization problem and whose parameters are parameters of the consumers utility functions or of their constraints are referred to as structural models a key benefit of the structural approach is its potential usefulness for policy evaluation the parameters of structural models are invariant to policy that is they do not change due to a change in the policy in contrast the parameters of reduced form brand choice models are in general functions of marketing strategy variables e g consumer response to price may depend on pricing policy as a result the predictions of reduced form models for the outcomes of policy experiments may be unreliable because in making the prediction one must assume that the model parameters are unaffected by the policy change since the agents in our models choose among many alternative brands their choice probabilities take the form of higher order integrals we employ monte carlo methods to approximate these integrals and estimate our models using simulated maximum likelihood estimation of the dynamic forward looking model also requires that a dynamic programming problem be solved in order to form the likelihood function for this we use a new approximation method based on simulation and interpolation techniques these estimation techniques may be of interest to researchers and policy makers in many fields where dynamic choice among discrete alternatives is important such as marketing decision sciences labor and health economics and industrial organization

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

discounting and distributional considerations in the context of global warming the economics of global warming is reviewed with special emphasis on how the cost depends on the discount rate and on how costs in poor and rich regions are aggregated into a global cost estimate both of these factors depend on the assumptions made concerning the underlying utility and welfare functions it is common to aggregate welfare gains and losses across generations and countries as if the utility of money were constant but it is not if we assume that a e co2 equivalent dlubling implies costs equal to 1 5 of the income in both high and low income countries a pure rate of time preference equal to zero and a utility function which is logarithmic in income then the marginal cost of co2 emissions is estimated at 260 590 usd ton c for a time horizon in the range 300 1000 years an estimate which is large enough to justify significant reductions of co2 emissions on purely economic grounds the estimate is approximately 50 100 times larger than the estimate made by nordhaus in his dice model and the difference is almost completely due to the choice of discount rate and the weight given to the costs in the developing world as well as a more accurate model of the carbon cycle finally the sensitivity of the marginal cost estimate with respect to several parameters is analyzed

retrospectives edgeworth s hedonimeter and the quest to measure utility in this article i discuss some earlier debates about the foundations of utility and its measurement focusing on the contributions of francis y edgeworth 1845 1926 a famous british economist who was a leader in the development of a more mathematically structured economics in the late 1800s and irving fisher 1867 1947 one of the first quantitative u s economists best known today for his work on the quantity theory and interest rate theory edgeworth argued that utility was directly measurable and that new developments in physio psychology would make it possible to develop a hedonimeter that would allow economists to develop a firm physiological underpinning of utility fisher while agreeing with edgeworth that it was important to have a workable measure of utility disagreed with edgeworth about the possibility of doing so with a hedonimeter and hence of having any physiological underpinnings of utility he argued that instead of searching for physiological underpinnings of utility economists should instead rely upon backward induction from observed behavior to measured utility neither of these views about the possibility of utility measurement carried through and attempts to measure utility were abandoned in the 1930s when utility measurement and happiness considerations were determined to be outside the purview of economics both edgeworth and fisher knew that their approaches to utility measurement opened up a pandora s box of problems they opened that box nonetheless because they felt that theoretical economics had to be relevant to policy and to be relevant it had to face the problems

a just and efficient reduction of resource throughput to optimum abstract resource throughput in the economy e g of energy or materials must be progressively reduced by at least one order of magnitude to achieve an optimal level although this would solve the resource distribution conflict between the generations it would also aggravate the resource distribution conflict between persons of the same generation it is shown here that a solution to these two conflicts and efficient resource allocation are only possible if resource certificates are distributed to consumers free of charge and traded between them this paper builds on and integrates ideas developed in h daly s daly h e 1992 allocation distribution and scale towards an economics that is efficient just and sustainable ecological economics 6 185 193 article on allocation distribution and scale adding insights from the ecological footprint concept to propose a mechanism for facilitating intergenerational equity and drastically reducing resource throughput basically the mechanism involves rationing throughput equitably internalizing environmental and social externalities and substituting labour for resource use this can be achieved almost without a drop in prosperity both unemployment and dependence on scarce resources decline

promise and shortcomings of a green turn in recent policy responses to the double crisis abstract the paper analyses six international scale responses to the financial and climate change double crisis in order to review how they define problems and solutions analyse what underpins the policy choices revealed in these responses the green turn reflect on the implications of the proposed solutions in terms of sustainability and global environmental justice and to suggest three elements for a paradigm shift towards an alternative turn embedded in ecological economics theory the analysis reveals that responses by leading international organisations continue to appeal to the precepts of neoclassical economy we argue that from an ecological economics perspective policy responses under the various labels of green economy green growth sustainable growth green new deal fall well short of what is needed to fight the environmental crisis and rising inequality across and within countries the idea of justice and equity that underpins the mainstream approach seems inadequate in terms of sustaining our environmental base and global environmental justice based on this critical review we propose an alternative turn centred on three elements of a paradigm shift leading to a new economy where the environmental base and global environmental justice are at the centre of the discourse

humans environment and economies from vicious relationships to virtuous responsibility abstract the debates questioning the meaning of growth point to a need for a more holistic understanding of human beings and of the economic actor fundamental to economic theory and practice this contribution turns to virtue ethics in order to reframe the self in more reflexive relational and environmental terms we explore the significance of understanding humans sense of responsibility that is quintessentially relational and of their capacity and need to relate to nature as well as community and society we begin by reviewing the main arguments in the thriving debate in ecological economics around what the characteristics of the human being can contribute to implement an ecologically sustainable development our aim is then to draw a link between this debate and that of virtue ethics that leads to a different understanding of the human being of what can contribute to individual wellbeing and a good life responsibility we argue is not only a value but a virtue that enables individuals to find meaning in acting responsibly towards the environment emphasising the multiple benefits that arise from framing good lives in active terms we conclude reflecting on the challenges to and implications of our proposition for government institutions particularly education

modelling milk purchasing behaviour with a panel data double hurdle model in this study the double hurdle model typically used in cross sectional data is extended to panel data structures the new double hurdle model can account not only for the censored nature of commodity purchases but also for the dynamics of the purchase process in this model a flexible error structure is assumed to account for state dependence and household specific heterogeneity in the empirical application for milk purchases it is found that generic advertising increases the probability of market participation as well as the purchase quantity and incidence temporal dependence is also found in both purchase and participation equations

an economic evaluation of market development programmes for us dairy products abstract this study measured the effectiveness of us dairy export promotion programmes on increasing foreign demand and enhancing producers revenues an import demand equation based on panel data was used to test whether export promotion has a positive and significant impact on us dairy exports the effects of various promotion scenarios on the dairy market were then simulated and benefit cost ratios bcrs for these programmes were estimated there were three key findings first the combined effort of public and private dairy export promotion expenditures had a positive and statistically significant impact on demand for us dairy products in the world market the findings indicated that export promotion stimulated total dairy exports by 4 14 billion pounds on average per year which represented 55 8 of total exports second us dairy export promotion has been highly profitable for the nation s dairy farmers the calculated bcrs based on assumed elasticity of supply ranged from a low of 8 54 for th

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

on the conceptual foundations of ecological economics a teleological approach abstract nature is characterised by the emergence and continued existence of far from equilibrium self organizing dissipative structures ffesods which can be described in terms of their genotypes potentialities and phenotypes realizations if a ffesods genotype is contained within its phenotype we call it an organism we can describe the behaviour of organisms as being teleological we offer three tele for organisms first telos self maintenance development and self realization second telos replication and renewal third telos service to other organisms to other species or to the whole of nature sustainability of an ecosystem requires a balance and harmony between these mutually supporting tele we define the related concepts of stock store and fund we can interpret all living activity be it natural or economic in terms of relationships between funds through the three tele we can characterise the environmental problems in the first world as stemming from too great an emphasis by humans on the first telos through consumerism and too little emphasis on the third telos in the third world we can identify environmental problems with an imbalance towards the second telos reproduction leading to a de emphasis of the third telos the long run solution to global environmental problems must lie in the re establishment of global harmony between the three tele of both humans and non humans

human development and economic sustainability abstract this paper attempts to integrate the concern for human development in the present with that in the future in arguing for sustainable human development it appeals to the notion of ethical universalism an elementary demand for impartiality of claims applied within and between generations economic sustainability is often seen as a matter of intergenerational equity but the specification of what is to be sustained is not always straightforward the addendum explores the relationship between distributional equity sustainable development optimal growth and pure time preference

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

allocation distribution and scale towards an economics that is efficient just and sustainable abstract the practical policy of issuing tradeable permits for depletion and pollution requires for its implementation the clear separation of the three basic economic goals of efficient allocation equitable distribution and sustainable scale economic theory needs to catch up with policy in recognizing that scale issues cannot be reduced to either allocation or distribution

green economy and related concepts an overview for the last ten years the notion of a green economy has become increasingly attractive to policy makers however green economy covers a lot of diverse concepts and its links with sustainability are not always clear in this article we focus on definitions of green economy and related concepts and an evaluation of these concepts against the criterion of strong and weak sustainability the article serves three purposes firstly we identify and describe diverse theories concepts approaches and tools related to a green economy among these are the theories of environmental economics and ecological economics the concepts and approaches of cleaner production waste hierarchy bio economy industrial ecology circular economy nature based solutions and dematerialization through product servicizing and tools like life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis secondly we develop a framework that shows the capacity of the green economy concepts approaches and tools to support the transition towards sustainability such a framework can serve as a heuristic to embed diverse concepts and approaches into a green economy framework thirdly we briefly discuss green economy concepts with respect to their impact on strong and weak sustainability depending on the different concepts approaches and tools identified in the green economy framework different degrees of substitutability and trade offs between environmental and economic benefits are allowed and more or less structural changes of our modes of living are required by discussing the notion of green economy and related concepts approaches and tools we seek to make a contribution to their definitions and relationships as a prerequisite for operationalizing green economy

spending on alcohol evidence from the family expenditure survey 1970 1983 this paper reports on the investigation of a model of the determination of the share of household expenditure on alcohol using fes data for the united kingdom 1970 83 i e a time series of cross sections the authors pay special attention to the occurrence of zero expenditure variations in characteristics across the population and the modeling and interpretation of the stochastic term this term is modeled using the gamma distribution replacing the normal in tobit estimated parameters indicate strong positive skewness interactions between household characteristics and expenditure propensities are important copyright 1990 by royal economic society

the greenhouse effect and intergenerational transfer abstract the scientific basis for understanding the economic issues involved in the greenhouse effect is outlined four important aspects of the problem are identified and discussed irreversibility international and institutional constraints uncertainty and intergenerational equity attention is focused upon the intertemporal choice problem a model describing the potential for intergenerational transfers under the uncertainty of climatic change due to fossil fuel combustion is presented we conclude intergenerational compensation can be achieved by investment in capital or technology or by bequest and is ethically required regardless of any other action

are you happy while you work using a new data source permitting individuals to record their well being via a smartphone we explore within person variance in individuals well being measured momentarily at random points in time we find paid work is ranked lower than any of the other 39 activities individuals can report engaging in with the exception of being sick in bed precisely how unhappy one is while working varies significantly with where you work whether you are combining work with other activities whether you are alone or with others and the time of day or night you are working

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

agreeing to pay under value disagreement reconceptualizing preference transformation in terms of pluralism with evidence from small group deliberations on climate change abstract plural values contribute to multiple arrays of expressed preferences conventionally preference convergence toward consensus among initially disagreeing decision makers is understood in terms of diminishing value differences a cogent account of consensual decision that respects non diminishing value plurality is lacking instead there is a theoretic expectation for categorical consistency between subjective values and expressed preferences valuing agents in social interaction are expected to indicate identical preference orderings only if they hold correspondingly identical categories of values this expectation precludes meaningful conceptualization of preference convergence under divisive normative dispositions an alternative framework is proposed and illustrated by results from a designed deliberative forum on australia s climate change policy data were analyzed based on q methodology results show that small group deliberations enabled effective communication between distinctive subjective positions and broadened understandings between individuals while a consensual decision gained progress no identified value discourse diminished below a significant degree observed changes in values did not run parallel to the converging preferences suggesting a decline in value preference consistency these changes nonetheless are amenable to the principle of value pluralism an alternative rationality concept is needed to account for this moral ideal within economics

ecology and valuation big changes needed abstract ecological economics has developed as a transdisciplinary science but it has not taken significant steps toward a truly integrated process of evaluating anthropogenic ecological change the emerging dominance within ecological economics of the movement to monetize ecological services when combined with the already well entrenched dominance of contingent pricing as a means to evaluate impacts on amenities has created a monistic approach to valuation studies it is argued that this monistic approach to evaluating anthropogenic impacts is inconsistent with a sophisticated conception of ecology as a complex science that rests on shifting metaphors an alternative pluralistic and iterative approach to valuation of anthropogenic ecological change is proposed

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

values ideology and politics in ecological economics abstract ecological economics is built on a value commitment to study environmental issues and to contribute constructively to a more sustainable development path however many ecological economists still hesitate it appears to depart too much from other scholars by openly addressing issues of values and ideology in this essay the role of the scholar s orientation with respect to values and ideology is addressed it is observed that not only scholars but also actors in society are guided by their ideological orientation this leads to the idea that some of the weaknesses of economic man and profit maximising firm assumptions can be mitigated by introducing a political economic person and a political economic organisation

modeling heterogeneity and state dependence in consumer choice behavior in frequently purchased consumer goods markets consumer brand choices exhibit substantial persistence across purchase occasions in this article i estimate a choice model that admits of both heterogeneity in preferences and true state dependence as sources of this persistence using nielsen scanner data on ketchup i find evidence for true state dependence in the choice process even after controlling for a rich heterogeneity structure simulation of the model indicates that the long term effect of a promotion induced purchase on future purchase probabilities is positive but small

beyond homo economicus evidence from experimental economics environmental policies are generally based on a model of the human actor taken from neoclassical economic theory this paper reports on laboratory experiments suggesting weaknesses in this model and describes alternative models correcting these weaknesses one finding is that economic actors tend to be hyperbolic as opposed to exponential discounters who discount the immediate future at a higher rate than the more distant future another finding is that economic actors are not self regarding but rather in many circumstances are strong reciprocators who come to strategic interactions with a propensity to cooperate respond to cooperative behavior by maintaining or increasing cooperation and respond to free riders by retaliating against the offenders even at a personal cost and even when there is no reasonable expectation that future personal gains will flow from such retaliation we discuss some implications for policy analysis 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

statistical models for zero expenditures in household budgets household budget surveys are an important source of data on consumer s expenditure not just for individual consumers but also for estimating national aggregates however it is a widespread finding that for certain commodities most notably tobacco and alcohol the estimate from the household survey falls short of the known consumption total calculated with some confidence from data on production imports exports and excise duties for example in the british family expenditure survey with which we shall largely be concerned total tobacco expenditure was underestimated in 1976 by 21 percent see kemsley redpath and holmes 1980 p 51 much of this understatement together with that on alcohol is thought to occur because of the design of the survey which excludes many persons amongst whom consumption of such items is thought to be atypically high e g prisoners hoteliers and their residents merchant seamen even so the possibility remains that some of the understatement is due to various types of misreporting by households included in the survey in this paper we consider a model in which the standard tobit specification tobin 1958 is supplemented by the operation of a simple binary censor the tobit model is essentially a linear regression model in which non positive observations of the dependent variable are replaced by zero we take this specification as our starting point but add a second censoring process that randomly replaces a fraction of the observations generated by the tobit model bv zeroes the combined model can serve as a representation of several types of

biofuel as social fuel introducing socio environmental services as a means to reduce global inequity the increasing cultivation of energy crops for biofuel production has significantly altered the focus of the agricultural sector but the impact of biofuel production and use is not merely an agricultural one even more importantly it is an issue which likely promotes inequitable conditions and the social conflict of different basic needs within this context the dominant argument criticizes the growing demand for biofuels in the north to compromise food security and sovereignty in the south in order to address these trade offs and conflicts the objective of this paper is the introduction of a conceptual framework of socio environmental services by expanding the construct of environmental services to explicitly include the social dimension it shall accommodate for the fact that the provision of environmental services is often embedded in a complex system of global economic ecological as well as social interdependencies recently the concept of payments for environmental services pes has received much attention with respect to its potential contribution to both environmental sustainability and the economic alleviation of poverty by linking the idea of payments for socio environmental services pses to the three functions of justice its beneficial impact may be more fully tapped

macroeconomic narratives in a world of crises an analysis of stories about solving the system crisis since the financial crisis in 2008 a series of publications on macroeconomic responses to the compound crises of the economy and the environment have emerged under labels such as green new deal green growth and the great transition attempts at offering coherent responses to the crises have been made these responses have in common that they all present a large number of policy proposals for ways in which to solve the current crises and achieve a sustainable economy this article provides a mapping of a selection of such responses and an analysis of their content the analysis combines discourse theory and narrative analysis and investigates discourses by studying the narratives they produce the study thus contributes to the long line of analyses on discourses on sustainable economy empirically by investigating and analysing a number of macroeconomic proposals for solving the system crisis and theoretically by elaborating on the concept of narrative dynamics in relation to persuasive strength in political decision making

microeconomic degrowth the case of community supported agriculture in this paper we attempt to build a new microeconomic approach that could be considered as a basis of the degrowth macroeconomic view as degrowth is a critique of the dominant macroeconomic model of the endless search for economic growth its microeconomic foundations can be built by searching a relevant grass root economic initiative to theorise our approach is based upon the case study research of a self harvesting community supported agriculture in belgium the mainstream microeconomic model is based on the well known homo economicus assumption of individual self interest and competitive behaviour by contrast our model is based on a holistic approach of producers and consumers based upon trust cooperation and ecologically responsible behaviours this contribution participates to the flourishing literature on degrowth in ecological economics we begin by reviewing the debate on degrowth and economic behaviour we discuss the case study and its accounting expression that departs from the capitalist profit seeking model we conclude by explaining the limits and challenges of our model that implements degrowth on a small scale and in a capitalist environment

a double hurdle model of cigarette consumption this paper shows the importance of the double hurdle approach for modelling individuals cigarette consumption using data from the uk general household survey and argues that participation and consumption should be treated as separate individual choices the likelihood function for the full double hurdle is derived and it is shown how restrictions on the stochastic specification of the model and auxillary information which identifies ex smokers allow it to be decomposed the empirical results highlight the value of the sample separation information and the need to model starting and quitting as separate decisions

are we consuming too much this paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive we consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness or insufficiency of current consumption one is an intertemporal utility maximization criterion actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility the other is a sustainability criterion which requires that current consumption be consistent with non declining living standards over time we extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change in applying this formula we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion in these regions genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital

ageing and private transport fuel expenditure do generations matter abstract an ageing population is generally associated with decreasing private transport related energy demand however we hold that besides this pure age effect other cultural elements should be considered in order to understand and forecast energy related choices individuals react to the pressure of several factors that define the concept of energy culture stephenson et al 2015 among which are sociodemographic and economic transformations and changes in lifestyle and pro environmental attitudes in this paper we analyse the use of fuels for private mobility in italy in our view this case is particularly interesting because of the country s very high car and motorcycle ownership rates and the very fast ageing of its population because of this demographic shift various generations coexist and a relevant share of the elderly population are still driving a car we use several waves of the italian household budget survey to run a double hurdle model augmented by age and cohort effects according to our estimates baby boomers exhibit a positive cohort effect so that their transport fuel expenditure is significantly higher compared with younger generations we interpret this result as a confirmation of evolving generational energy culture towards a sustainable transport system speeding up the decarbonisation process

class racial conflict intolerance and distortions in urban form lessons for sustainability from the detroit region in this qualitative analysis into the equity conditions of urban sustainability an examination is presented into the complexity of one particular aspect of intra generational equity racial and class discrimination and its role in distorting urban form and in generating resource inefficient and environmentally destructive human activity patterns the article therefore focuses on the role of discrimination itself in encouraging ecological degradation the detroit region shows that racial and class conflicts can facilitate the shaping of the urban built environment as one population sub group largely white and upper income attempts to distance itself from another sub group that is largely black lower income and considered a threat the outcome is not only disinvestment and decline in the urban core but also excessive suburbanization as whites seek homogenous urban environments and use space to increase the distance between themselves and the black population the study shows that the lack of cooperation and tolerance across ethnic racial and class subgroups facilitates inefficient low density and scattered developments and excessive degradation of natural ecological systems

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

property relations and economic development the other land reform abstract continued concern for development has led to the suggestion that private property rights should be created to stimulate economic development this suggestion derives from an incomplete understanding of the property relations on the public domain lands in the arid tropics and from a confusion of cause and effect between property and economic productivity a model of the private public boundary in land is developed that challenges the view that wealth would increase if land at the extensive margin were privatized the various types of property regimes in land are defined and explained

information and consumer perception of the organic attribute in fresh fruits and vegetables using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3 200 danish households monthly observations for 2002 2007 we study the effects of health related media information on the demand for organic fruit and vegetables we find that negative information about pesticides contained in conventional fruit and vegetables mainly influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market not the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market positive information that links health and the consumption of organic food influences both steps of the decision process our dataset includes information about consumers media habits which allows us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population our results suggest that directly obtained information is the main type of information influencing consumers while information loadings by dissemination through the population have almost no effect on consumption

a consumption based approach to environmental kuznets curves using the ecological footprint indicator recent research suggests that consumption based measures offer an insightful perspective on the debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment in this article we deepen the

environmental sustainability as the first principle of distributive justice towards an ecological communitarian normative foundation for ecological economics abstract the ecological economic concern with environmental sustainability embodies the normative orientations of the field this concern is foremost a matter of distributive justice the definition of which determines the relevance of the appropriate scale and efficient allocation criteria yet it would appear that the discipline lacks a shared internally consistent set of ethical premises by which this concern might be legitimized various authors have embraced a rawlsian conception of liberal justice as the appropriate banner for ecological economics in place of the consequentialist libertarian foundations of neoclassical economics including environmental economics it is argued here that this is insufficient in so far as it is premised on a vision of a discrete self sufficient economic actor instead it is posited that an ecological economic ethic must proceed from an understanding of the economic actor as community member a recognition implicit in recent ecological economic contributions focused on discourse ethics and deliberative democracy an ecological communitarian conception of distributive justice which views the well being of the individual as inseparable from the integrity of its implicate mutually constituting human and non human natural communities is advanced as the appropriate basis for the ecological economic world view in this light the thermodynamic foundations of ecological economics are seen to provide the necessary departure point for normative decision making oriented towards ensuring sustainability in economic organization

distributive fairness in paying for clean energy infrastructure despite the rapid rise in public expenditure on clean energy infrastructure there has been little discussion about what constitutes a fair distribution of this new spending burden we examine four ethical principles that speak to different notions of fairness in the way this burden can and should be shared and use them to produce three normative criteria for pursuing fairness in the clean energy fiscal policy context we use these criteria to examine the extent to which fairness is being achieved in large clean energy roll out programs in australia california and the united kingdom maintaining a close focus on providing practical guidance for decision makers in similar policy contexts we find that fairness is more achievable when program design explicitly considers which households should pay for the program and which should be exempt when the idea of proportionality guides the distribution of the cost across paying households and when the interests of low income households are protected by ensuring that they share in the benefits of the program for example

diet and the distribution of environmental impact abstract this paper examines the relationship between scale and distribution issues it is argued that since achieving a sustainable scale requires economic activity to stay within biophysical limits considerations of equity should not be limited to the distribution of monetary measures such as income but should include the distribution of scarce environmental services as well in order to make this point this paper examines how differences in diet across populations lead to inequality in the distribution of environmental impact first the distribution of food consumption across the world s population is examined using national data next ecological footprints are estimated in order to ascertain how differences in diet affect the distribution of environmental impact the results show that the meat intensive diet enjoyed by many in the industrialized world leads to a greater degree of inequality in the use of environmental services than is apparent from examination of the distribution of food consumption across countries

fairness stewardship and sustainable development abstract the welfare economic concept of fairness offers an attractive axiomatic foundation for the popular notion of stewardship fairness emphasizes the ex ante equal standing of all persons across and within generations this highlights the inextracability of poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability especially in the agrarian tropics where biodiversity loss deforestation and desertification are growing global concerns

intergenerational equity and environmental decisions a model using rawls veil of ignorance abstract four general strategies for resource use exploitationism conservationism naturalist preservationism and extensionist preservationism are sketched and a two step model for deciding resource policy issues is proposed the model based on a modification of rawls hypothetical rational decision model posits a self interested chooser who decides the rules constituting a fair society in the first stage the chooser places pre emptive constraints on each generation s use of resources these constraints embodying leopold s conception of whole ecosystem health limit the options available to individuals of any generation in the pursuit of economic welfare in the second stage each generation may choose a strategy of resource use from those possibilities fulfilling the first stage constraints it is argued that a exploitationism is not in general an acceptable strategy because it violates constraints that would be imposed on all generations by a chooser who is ignorant regarding the generation he will inhabit b extensionist preservation which recognizes values inherent in wild species and natural ecosystems provides no operationalizable guide for environmental policy c conservationism fails to protect the biotic heritage of future generations because applications of the sustainable yield criterion can cause simplification and eventual breakdowns of natural ecosystems and therefore d a broadly naturalist preservationist strategy which imposes constraints on the pervasive exploitation of ecological systems and thereby protects biological diversity in the long run would be chosen by the rational chooser who is ignorant of the generation he will inhabit