can we use the energy intensity indicator to study decoupling in modern economies abstract the economic energy intensity of a country defined as the ratio between the energy consumed and the gross domestic product of a country is a widely adopted indicator of economic performance often applied to sustainability analysis the usefulness of this indicator has been challenged on the basis of the fact that the two variables making up this ratio are correlated this implies that when considered in isolation each one of these two variables energy consumption p c and gdp p c maps on to typologies of socio economic systems e g developed countries vs less developed countries however calculating their ratio produces an indicator which does not map on to any meaningful typology of economic system a number without an external referent this paper checks the validity of this criticism by looking at the economic energy intensity eei of 133 countries over the period 1960 2009 two approaches are used for this task 1 an analysis at a given point in time year 2009 after excluding countries with real gdp p c

the inequalities of public utility products in china from the perspective of the atkinson index abstract the chinese households make up approximately a quarter of the world s total compared with its size of population china s reserves of natural resources are relatively limited with the actual concerns about sustainable development in china we should pay more attention to the unequal distribution of energy which may result low efficiency and wasting of energy therefore how to best allocate the scarce public utility products pups for the household usage should be closely addressed in terms of equity and efficiency based on the micro household level data from crecs which investigated in 2013 in different scales city all over the country we measure the distribution of pups consumption quantitatively and evaluate the inequality of household income expenditures on electricity gas and water in the china s residential sector by using the atkinson index the results show that the atkinson index of households total pups consumption in medium scale city is equal to 0 0261 which is 83 0 higher than that of large scale city and 35 6 higher than that of small scale city it indicates that the inequalities of pups and income are greater in medium scale cities than in large scale and small scale cities considering the sustainability of pups we suggest further reform in china s public utility sectors the government should take more consideration on equality and efficiency of distribution and ensure that people have equal living standards especially for the low income households who serve as the main anchor for the sustainable development of china

racial earnings disparities and family structure one explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period this explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the institute for research on poverty s current population survey log earnings equations corrected for selection bias and for the endogeneity of labor force participation are estimated for blacks and whites in 1976 and 1985 if the impact of rising female family headship on labor force participation is ignored one finds support for the family structure explanation but support for alternative explanations is also found there are substantial impacts of within race gender discrimination and of market racial discrimination when the endogeneity of family structure is taken into account further support is found for the view that endowment differences only explain a modest portion of the rising gap in earnings between black and white family heads

temporary emancipation from land from the industrial revolution to the present time abstract ecological and thermodynamic analysis shows that the tremendous speed of matter and energy degradation of the earth is the genuine cause of land deterioration the temporary emancipation from land since the industrial revolution still heavily depends upon land based resources especially fossil fuels stored in the past the prophetic views of liebig and marx concerning land deterioration are reconsidered not only the essential differences but also similarities between manufacturing and farming will be presented several technological proposals for a secure food supply will be critically appraised this study suggests a drastic reorientation of economic activites in the future to preserve our land

employment discrimination in northern ireland and the good friday agreement abstract the paper analyses employment differences between northern ireland s catholics and protestants and examines whether the good friday agreement signed in 1998 was followed by an improvement in the relative position of catholics

racial discrimination in the labor market theory and empirics we review theories of race discrimination in the labor market taste based models can generate wage and unemployment duration differentials when combined with either random or directed search even when strong prejudice is not widespread but no existing model explains the unemployment rate differential models of statistical discrimination based on differential observability of productivity across races can explain the pattern and magnitudes of wage differentials but do not address employment and unemployment at their current state of development models of statistical discrimination based on rational stereotypes have little empirical content it is plausible that models combining elements of the search models with statistical discrimination could fit the data we suggest possible avenues to be pursued and comment briefly on the implication of existing theory for public policy jel j15 j31 j64 j71

information technology effects on firm performance as measured by tobin s q despite increasing anecdotal evidence that information technology it assets contribute to firm performance and future growth potential of firms the empirical results relating it investments to firm performance measures have been equivocal however the bulk of the studies have relied exclusively on accounting based measures of firm performance which largely tend to ignore it s contribution to performance dimensions such as strategic flexibility and intangible value in this paper we use tobin s q a financial market based measure of firm performance and examine the association between it investments and firm q values after controlling for a variety of industry factors and firm specific variables the results based on data from 1988 1993 indicate that in all of the five years the inclusion of the it expenditure variable in the model increased the variance explained in q significantly the results also showed that for all five years it investments had a significantly positive association with tobin s q value our results are consistent with the notion that it contributes to a firm s future performance potential which a forward looking measure such as the q is better able to capture

lessons from the united states s antitrust history abstract the united states s antitrust policy spans more than 100 years for most of its history the united states has had the toughest antitrust laws and enforcement policies of any country in the world a shift to a more permissive attitude with regard to antitrust matters has occurred in recent years however this paper traces the changes in antitrust policy that have occurred and the concurrent shifts in thinking among economists on antitrust questions following this review the paper offers a critical appraisal of both the economic underpinning of the new learnings on antitrust matters and the changes in antitrust policy that have accompanied them it closes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for european antitrust competition policy

energy in the development strategy of indian households the missing half there is a growing consensus that universalization of modern energy services is central to reducing major elements of poverty and hunger to increase literacy and education and to improve health care employment opportunities and lives of women and children in india as per 2011 census over 700 million people lack access to modern energy services for lighting cooking water pumping and other productive purposes devoid of these services people mostly women are forced to spend significant amounts of their time and effort on subsistence activities like firewood collection carrying these head load for miles and then burning these hard earned fuels inefficiently in traditional chullas these adversely affect the health and standard of living for women and act as a barrier to gender development here gender means women unless otherwise specified although the links between gender inequity poverty and energy deprivation have been studied by many not many practical solutions to the above problems have emerged the present paper explores the nexus among gender energy poverty highlights areas of gender concern and suggests actions we analyze how women from rural areas and low income households are at the receiving ends of energy poverty we then analyze the roles women as an important stakeholders in universalizing modern energy services we show how women self help groups can be a vital link in large scale diffusion of energy efficient and renewable technologies the paper concludes with policy pointers for sustainable development and gender empowerment through energy solutions

profit rates and intangible capital a central question in industrial organization is why profit rates differ so dramatically across firms and industries one of the many explanations offered for this phenomenon is the failure of conventional accounting methods to adjust for intangible capital stocks i e it is argued that profit rates do not differ dramatically when capital stocks are correctly calculated to include intangible r d and advertising capital to test this hypothesis individual advertising capital stocks are calculated for firms in the toys distilled beverages cosmetics and pharmaceuticals industries and r d stocks are calculated for the pharmaceuticals firms the adjustments do not eliminate the wide dispersion in profit rates copyright 1991 by mit press

measuring advertising intensity and intangible capital in the greek food industry the objective of the present paper is to examine market conduct and its determinants in the greek food industry and to measure how and to what degree the industry and the firm s structural characteristics affect advertising intensity an advertising intensity model giving emphasis to intangible capital is formulated data from icap have been used on a four digit classification for the food industry during the 1990 1997 period the empirical results indicate that intangible capital positively affects the advertising intensity of the firm and plays an important role in strategies that affect total cost demand and structure of the market

on the specification of structure performance relationships this paper argues that most estimated structure profitability equations in industrial economics have not been derived from a single coherent view of the behaviour of firms the independent variables in such equations have often been derived on the basis of a literature search and by appeal to conflicting approaches e g constrained and unconstrained profit maximisation the use of a coherent approach indicates that structure performance equations are likely to be highly non linear and that simultaneous equation estimation is neither required nor appropriate in some cases single equation estimation is adequate and in other cases reduced form equations are needed

deceleration of economic growth the main course seeking sustainability in developed countries abstract deceleration of economic growth is a characteristic feature of developed countries percentage gross domestic product gdp growth rate in the old organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries has decreased approximately 2 3 times over the last 50 years and countries have managed successfully to adopt this trend the largest reduction of gdp growth rate was observed in countries such as japan where the biocapacity exceedance was the largest in addition the analysis of long term changes of gdp and self reported life satisfaction in developed countries supports easterlin s paradox indicating that richer people do not feel more satisfied with their lives however people from countries with higher per capita gdp feel more satisfied at the same time a statistically insignificant correlation was detected between gdp growth rate and life satisfaction supporting a conclusion that in the developed countries further economic growth does not increase people s well being this suggests that decelerating the rate of economic growth gradually approaching the zero growth steady state phase is the natural way towards sustainability and it does not contradict the well being objective in developed countries especially ones with high biocapacity exceedance

the schooling of southern blacks the roles of legal activism and private philanthropy 1910 1960 improvements in education and educational quality are widely acknowledged to be major contributors to black economic progress in the twentieth century this paper investigates the sources of improvement in black education in the south in the first half of the century and demonstrates the important roles of social activism especially naacp litigation and private philanthropy in improving the quality and availability of public schooling many scholars view education as a rival to social activism in explaining black economic progress but such a view misses the important role of philanthropic and legal interventions in promoting education

male white black wage gaps 1979 1994 a distributional analysis 1 introductionnumerous studies show that during the 1980s the mean white black wage gap among new entrant 0 10 years of potential experience males expanded 1 juhn murphy and pierce 1991 jmp attribute the mean gap s expansion to a widening of the overall u s wage distribution caused by a host of economy wide race neutral changes that led to labor demand shifts toward better educated and better skilled workers regardless of race because african americans tend to be at lower levels of the overall skill distribution the shifts adversely impacted african american men more than white men leading to an expansion in the mean wage gap to arrive at this conclusion jmp decompose the expansion in the mean new entrant wage gap into four components the first two components measure the wage gap s increase because of a widening in observable racial differences in measured characteristics and their prices for example educational attainment and the returns to education the third component captures the contribution of growing racial discrimination and widening differences in unmeasured skills to the wage gap s expansion this term s contribution is measured by the drop in the mean percentile rank of blacks in the white residual wage distribution the fourth component identifies the role of increases in the prices of unmeasured skills and is measured by the increase in the variance of the white residual wage distribution when applied to the march annual demographic files of the current population survey jmp find that from 1979 to 1987 increases in the price of unmeasured skills explain all of the new entrant mean wage gap s expansion indicating that factors that adversely impacted less skilled workers regardless of race are the primary cause of the wage gap s expansion in related work reardon 1997 uses a national sample of white and african american men from the 1980 and 1990 decennial censuses and shows that the mean racial wage gap s expansion is caused by increased variance in the distribution of residual wages generated by labor demand shifts toward high skilled whites and away from medium skilled whites and high skilled african american men the wage gap expands because high skilled african american men earn wages that are similar to those of whites in the middle and upper third of their wage distribution the labor demand shifts led to a stretching or increased variance in the wage distribution that favored high skilled whites relative to high skilled african americans and medium skilled whites this paper makes several contributions to the literature on racial wage gaps and the technical literature on wage decompositions first i examine whether jmp s 1991 results hold up when the analysis is disaggregated by experience and educational attainment this is an important extension for two reasons bound and freeman 1992 rodgers 1997a and others have found that the racial wage gap among high school graduates and particularly among college graduates expanded significantly after the late 1970s over the same time period the variance of wages within these educational categories increased second it is important to determine the extent to which racial inequality that was generated while a cohort was a new entrant persists as it ages the paper s technical innovation is the development of a distribution or skill specific decomposition that identifies whether the stretching of the white wage distribution uniformly contributes to an expansion in racial inequality at all skill levels or quantiles of the wage distribution or whether the contribution of the wage distribution s stretching is specific to a skill level for example does the increase in the price of unmeasured skills explain a greater portion of the increase in the racial wage gap between high skilled african americans and whites than it does between medium skilled african americans and whites

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

the energy metabolism of china and india between 1971 and 2010 studying the bifurcation abstract this paper presents a comparison of the changes in the energetic metabolic pattern of china and india the two most populated countries in the world with two economies undergoing an important economic transition the comparison of the changes in the energetic metabolic pattern has the scope to characterize and explain a bifurcation in their evolutionary path in the recent years using the multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem approach the analysis shows an impressive transformation of china s energy metabolism determined by the joining of the wto in 2001 since then china became the largest factory of the world with a generalized capitalization of all sectors especially the industrial sector boosting economic labor productivity as well as total energy consumption india on the contrary lags behind when considering these factors looking at changes in the household sector energy metabolism associated with final consumption in the case of china the energetic metabolic rate emr soared in the last decade also thanks to a reduced growth of population whereas in india it remained stagnant for the last 40 years this analysis indicates a big challenge for india for the next decade in the light of the data analyzed both countries will continue to require strong injections of technical capital requiring a continuous increase in their total energy consumption when considering the size of these economies it is easy to guess that this may induce a dramatic increase in the price of energy an event that at the moment will penalize much more the chance of a quick economic development of india

trucking deregulation and the black white wage gap the only previous study of the effect of product market deregulation on the black white wage gap found that this gap in the trucking industry declined after trucking deregulation in 1978 that study did not however estimate the separate effects of deregulation on union and nonunion members or on black and white drivers this study does so through an analysis of individual worker information from the march and may cps files for the years 1973 through 1988 the authors find that deregulation is associated with significantly declining black white wage gaps among both union and nonunion drivers this wage pattern is attributable to significant reductions in the real wages of white drivers the real wages of black drivers did not change with deregulation

intangible capital aspects of advertising and r d expenditures twenty years have passed since economists first emphasized the intangible capital aspects of advertising according to this view consumers tend to forget brands and continuous advertising is needed to maintain a given rate of sales thus advertising expenditures can be viewed as a capital good that depreciates over time and needs maintenance and repair 22 p 197 more recently weiss 25 among others has suggested that research and development r d costs might also be capitalized as such expenditures yield benefits mainly in the future 25 p 421 unfortunately most analyses of the intangible capital issue have been limited to advertising largely because no comprehensive data on r d were available until quite recently however important recent theoretical contributions on the topic and improvements in data availability now make it possible more completely to consider the intangible capital aspects of both advertising and r d expenditures here the intangible capital issue is investigated through use of a market valuation model in this approach significant future intangible capital effects of advertising and r d are suggested to the extent that current expenditures have significant effects on the market value of the firm given positive market value influences individual coefficient estimates can be used to estimate both the total stock of intangible capital as well as average annual depreciation rates for advertising and r d while these depreciation rate estimates are interfirm averages and undoubtedly err in individual instances they can be quite useful in indicating the general magnitude of corporate profit and tax misstatement due to current reporting and tax policies in section i below various articles closely related to this study are reviewed section ii develops a valuation model embodying intangible capital considerations the data are discussed in section iii and estimation results are presented in section iv and finally conclusions and implications for public policy are discussed in section v

the measurement of profitability and the diagnosis of market power this paper develops a model which yields the specification of an empirical test for the difference between price and marginal revenue which will be significantly positive if a firm exercises market power the test can be carried out with any of a number of commonly used measures of accounting profitability and embodies a specific functional form for the consideration of nonconstant returns to scale the model is estimated for four firms in the medical surgical supply industry and four firms in the motor vehicle industry the results are consistent with the hypothesis that product differentiation is an important basis for firm specific market power import quotas are shown to increase market power in the motor vehicle industry claims that accounting data cannot be used to analyze market power are rejected

impact caps why population affluence and technology strategies should be abandoned abstract this paper classifies strategies to reduce environmental impact according to the terms of the i pat formula policies limiting resource depletion and pollution impact by heavily taxing resources or rationing them on a country basis are thus called direct or left side strategies other policies to achieve the environmental goal of lowering impact strive to limit population and affluence or to use technology to lower the ratio of resource inputs to goods and services outputs next it is shown that lowering any of these right side factors causes or at least enables the other two to rise or rebound this has two consequences 1 since i pat does not express these interdependencies on the right side it is more accurately written i f p a t and 2 success in lowering any of the right side factors does not necessarily lower impact rationing or pigouvian taxation of resources or pollution on the other hand necessarily lower impact and are therefore preferable to population consumption and technological environmental strategies finally lifestyle and technology changes towards more sufficiency and efficiency would follow the caps as consumers and producers work to retain the greatest amount of welfare within the limits given

racial and ethnic differences in wealth in the health and retirement study this paper examines wealth data in the health and retirement study hrs in comparison with asset data in other major surveys the quality of hrs asset data is high missing asset data does remain a problem however to which future hrs analysts must remain sensitive evidence is presented showing that it is no accident that asset data are missing and solutions for imputing missing data are developed finally racial and ethnic wealth disparities are large these minority wealth disparities are due in part to differential inheritances and desired bequests as inequities perpetuate themselves across generations the disparities are also due to lower minority incomes poorer health and an excessively narrow definition of wealth that excludes social security and employer pensions authors

separate and unequal in the labor market human capital and the jim crow wage gap competing explanations for the long standing gap between black and white earnings attribute different weight to wage discrimination and human capital differences using new data on local school quality we find that human capital played a predominant role in determining 1940 wage and occupational status gaps in the south despite entrenched racial discrimination in civic life and the lack of federal employment protections the resulting wage gap coincides with the higher end of the range of estimates from the post civil rights era we estimate that truly separate but equal schools would have reduced wage inequality by 29 48

an investigation into sexual orientation discrimination as an explanation for wage differences this study explores the effects of sexual orientation on earnings it is found that ceteris paribus men living with male partners tend to earn less than other men and women living with female partners tend to earn more than other women these earnings differentials tend to vary by region they also vary by education and occupation for men and with the presence of minor children for women in addition the age earnings profiles of women living with female partners tend to be higher flatter and less concave than those of other women

determining the impact of federal antidiscrimination policy on the economic status of blacks a study of south carolina this paper evaluates alternative explanations for the dramatic increase in black employment in south carolina manufacturing that occurred in the mid 1960s black progress in traditionally segregated sectors of manufacturing in operation at the time jim crow laws were passed cannot be attributed to tight labor markets the decline of agriculture or the growth of education of the black workforce the only plausible explanation is federal government civil rights and affirmative action policy for newer industries that entered the state on a large scale after world war ii the growth of skills among blacks accounts for black economic progress copyright 1989 by american economic association

the effect on black white wage differences of differences in the quantity and quality of education using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth for the years 1979 88 the author examines the extent to which black white differences in educational attainment educational quality and unmeasured individual ability can explain black white wage differences an analysis that corrects for both selectivity and ability biases inherent in estimating the education wage relationship shows that the main source of the black white wage differential is the racial difference in the quality rather than quantity of schooling in fact the author concludes closing the racial gap in the basic skills learned in school could reduce the wage differential by two thirds

energy metabolism of the balearic islands 1986 2012 researchers from multiple disciplines point to the link between fossil fuel consumption and socio ecological deterioration studying the energy metabolism of the balearic islands 1986 2012 gives insights on the ecological economic and social consequences of regional specialization in mass tourism the methodology applied multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem has been developed in the last decades to analyze societal metabolism from the perspective of complex systems this study has allowed us to see that since the entry of spain in the european economic community in 1986 the real state tourism business model has been reinforced giving place to a higher level of consumption of fossil fuels an increase in work instability and a diminishing of labor productivity

evidence on discrimination in employment codes of color codes of gender there is substantial racial and gender disparity in the american economy as we will demonstrate discriminatory treatment within the labor market is a major cause of this inequality the evidence is ubiquitous careful research studies that estimate wage and employment regressions help wanted advertisements audit and correspondence studies and discrimination suits that are often reported by the news media yet there appear to have been periods of substantial reductions in economic disparity and discrimination for example donohue and heckman provide evidence that racial discrimination declined during 1965 1975 1 gottschalk has produced statistical estimates that indicate that discrimination against black males dropped most sharply between 1965 and 1975 and that discrimination against women declined during the interval 1973 1994 2 but some unanswered questions remain why did the movement toward racial equality stagnate and eventually decline after the mid 1970s what factors are most responsible for the remaining gender inequality what is the role of the competitive process in the elimination or reproduction of discrimination in employment

beyond chayanov a sustainable agroecological farm reproductive analysis of peasant domestic units and rural communities sentmenat catalonia 1860 abstract we present a sustainable agroecological farm reproduction analysis that links two methodologies kept separated so far optimization modelling and social metabolism accounting of the biophysical turnover from a fund flow approach this socio agro ecological model combines two scales at farm gate and municipal levels and formalizes all relevant flows interlinking three living funds that have to be reproduced over time the domestic unit livestock and soil fertility from the requirements and capacities of each fund constraints we run the model under different scenarios objective functions to see the different configurations that the landscape structure and the flow patterns can take variables ensuring the reproducibility of funds by changing the objectives we obtain an intensive optimum that minimizes the land required an extensive optimum that minimizes labour and a monetary optimum that maximizes a prevailing cash crop the model is applied to a past advanced organic farming of a catalan village c 1860 to generate a set of counterfactual scenarios that confronted with historical data help to reveal how institutional settings and landownership inequality played a role in maintaining the real socio agro ecological structure away from these optima and the existing potential of possible eco functional intensification practices aimed at reducing the land cost of agrarian sustainability

total embodied energy requirements and its decomposition in china s agricultural sector abstract humanity faces the important challenge of understanding and integrating human and natural processes including agriculture in china the scarcity of arable land 0 09 ha per capita increasing population and migration of the workforce to cities pose a significant challenge for food security agricultural energy productivity has therefore become a key concern in this study we used input output analysis to measure energy productivity at a national agro ecosystem scale for china using the total embodied energy requirement teer to reveal hidden energy flows we introduced a structural decomposition technique that reveals how changes in teer for the agricultural sector were driven by changes in energy use technology and the inter relationships among two agricultural sectors farming and animal husbandry the results will help both policymakers and farmers to improve the efficiency and environmental compatibility of agricultural production declining teer for both sectors means that china s overall agro ecosystem has increased its energy productivity since 1978 due to improved relationships between the agricultural sectors and increased use of biological energy however the net positive energy income decreased in the farming sector and an increasing proportion of fossil energy use accompanied by increased energy income in the animal sector provide incentives to increase yield and decrease labor by using more fossil energy thus raising more animals in the animal husbandry sector overuse of fossil energy since 1990 has resulted in decreasing fossil energy efficiency requiring immediate measures to improve the use of fossil fuel intensive materials such as fertilizers

the history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice from early notions to markets and payment schemes article i nfo this paper reviews the historic development of the conceptualization of ecosystem services and examines critical landmarks in economic theory and practice with regard to the incorporation of ecosystem services into markets and payment schemes the review presented here suggests that the trend towards monetization and commodification of ecosystem services is partly the result of a slow move from the original economic conception of nature s benefits as use values in classical economics to their conceptualization in terms of exchange values in neoclassical economics the theory and practice of current ecosystem services science are examined inthelight ofthis historicaldevelopment from thisreview we conclude thatthefocus onmonetary valuation and payment schemes has contributed to attract political support for conservation but also to commodify a growing number of ecosystem services and to reproduce the neoclassical economics paradigm and the market logic to tackle environmental problems

the energy gdp nexus addressing an old question with new methods abstract this paper reassesses the causal relationship between per capita energy use and gross domestic product while controlling for capital and labour productivity inputs in a panel of 30 oecd countries over the past 40 years the paper uses panel unit root and cointegration testing and specifies an appropriate vector error correction model to analyse the nexus between income and energy use in doing so we contribute to an old debate using modern tools that shed a new light there is some evidence that over the very short run bidirectional causality exists our results also show a strong unidirectional causality running from capital formation and gdp to energy usage in the long run the reverse causality found in recent work is lost we then show that we can reproduce these earlier results in our data if we reproduce a slightly misspecified model for the engle granger two step procedure used in these earlier papers our findings thus imply that results are very sensitive to model misspecification and careful testing of specifications is required our results have some strong policy implications they suggest that policies aimed at reducing energy usage or promoting energy efficiency are not likely to have a detrimental effect on economic growth except over the very short run

decoupling strategies co2 emissions energy resources and economic growth in the group of twenty abstract this study uses the group of twenty g20 as a representative sample of global economic development within a panel emissions energy output eeo framework over the period 1991 2016 to estimate the carbon kuznets curve ckc the clean fossil fuels energy consumption ce ff elasticity of demand for carbon emissions the causalities between emissions energy and economy and thus to propose strategy for decoupling environmental pressure from economic growth eg the results of the descriptive statistical analysis suggest an absolute decoupling effect seems to have occurred with the drop in related environmental pressure and the continuation of economic growth the panel cointegration test results show that there is a long run equilibrium relationship between carbon emissions ff real gdp and different types of ce i e new renewable ren hydropower hydro nuclear nuc the estimation results show that the ckc exists and emissions are positively elastic to ff and negatively inelastic to ren hydro nuc although ren s average per capita compound annual growth rate reached 14 the results of panel vector error correction models reveal that 1 the use of nuclear energy is a key means for dealing with carbon emissions 2 the substitutability symbiosis exists between ren hydro and ff 3 the feedback hypothesis between eg and ff ren and the hydro nuc led growth hypothesis are confirmed therefore energy saving policies may hurt eg a broad strategy for emissions energy consumption and economy decoupling are to support diversified sustainable energy consumption mix including shp ren and nuc and maintain stable economic growth thereby improving energy efficiency and safety reducing carbon dioxide intensity and thus leading the world to absolute decoupling absolute decoupling is the only way to achieve a truly sustainable future

an empirical analysis of dynamic nonprice competition in an oligopolistic industry this article develops a dynamic model of nonprice competition in an oligopolistic industry and uses it to analyze advertising competition in the u s cigarette industry the model generalizes existing studies by allowing advertising to affect both firm market shares and the total size of the market the model also allows dynamic conjectural variations to arise from the intertemporal links created by the durability of advertising we use these dynamic conjectural variations to distinguish alternative models of competitive interaction we estimate the complete model of firm production demand and advertising choice by using data for u s cigarette producers the results indicate that firm advertising primarily affects the level of market demand with a firm s effect on rival firms market shares arising through variations in the number of brands sold empirical results on firm behavior suggest that firms act as if their advertising choices will alter the future advertising choices of rival firms in both the high tar and low tar cigarette markets

estimation of semiparametric censored regression models an application to changes in black white earnings inequality during the 1960s building on the work of chay 1995 this study examines the impact of civil rights policies on black economic progress using individual level panel data many earnings records are censored and the degree of censoring changed during the period of interest consequently valid estimates of the program effects must account for this censoring maximum likelihood estimation can be used if the error terms of the model are identically normally distributed we investigate the value of using weaker assumptions on the error process to estimate the laws impact the analysis shows that there was significant black white earnings convergence in the south during the 1960s we also find that semiparametric estimation methods are informative in pinpointing which parts of the model are mis specified

the impact of the great migration on mortality of african americans evidence from the deep south the great migration the massive migration of african americans out of the rural south to largely urban locations in the north midwest and west was a landmark event in u s our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of african americans born in the early twentieth century south this inference comes from an analysis that uses proximity of birthplace to railroad lines as an instrument for migration

economic inequality new methods for new trends two positions dominate the debate over the recent increases in economic inequality in the united states the job skill mismatch thesis attributes rising inequality to growth in the number of high skill high wage jobs that leaves less skilled workers behind the polarization thesis in contrast argues that the service shift generates growth in the number of both high wage and low wage jobs and declines in the middle standard summary measures of distributional inequality cannot discriminate between these depictions of where job growth is occurring we propose new methods for measurement that provide both summary and detailed information about the distributional shifts in earnings and aframework for statistical inference using data from the curent population survey cps on yearly earnings from 1967 to 1987 we show that the trends in distributional inequality vary considerably by race gender and time while the evidence provides more support for the polarization argument this thesis needs refinement if it is to account for the variations in changing inequality observed here

returns to r d on new drug introductions in the 1980s abstract this study finds that the mean irr for 1980 1984 u s new drug introductions is 11 1 and the mean npv is 22 million 1990 dollars the distribution of returns is highly skewed the results are robust to plausible changes in the baseline assumptions our work is also compared with a 1993 study by the ota despite some important differences in assumptions both studies imply that returns for the average nce are within one percentage point of the industry s cost of capital this is much less than what is typically observed in analyses based on accounting data

changing concepts of land in economic theory from single to multi disciplinary approaches abstract the role of land in economic theory is surveyed both from a conceptual and historical perspective land has been incorporated in economic theories in various ways originally land used by agriculture was the main motivation for an economic treatment of land this was gradually extended with various other land use categories neoclassical economic theory gave less attention to land use generally regarding land as a production factor of relatively little importance nevertheless specialized sub fields within economics such as regional and urban economics met the demand for explicit spatial analysis including land use considerations attention for environmental and resource problems has stimulated new perspectives on and conceptualizations of land in economic analysis this involves the interaction with other disciplines as well as the use of spatially disaggregated methods of analysis awareness of the richness of ideas on land in economic theory can contribute to enhanced environmental research

the strength of a weak agency enforcement of title vii of the 1964 civil rights act and the expansion of state capacity 1965 1971 this article analyzes the anomalous case of early title vii enforcement to challenge the standard political institutional pi account of state capacity title vii prohibited employment discrimination but the equal employment opportunity commission was granted scant enforcement resources yet the early eeoc aggressively enforced and developed title vii to solve the anomaly the authors integrate insights from the literatures on social movements and the sociology of law in the absence of conventional administrative resources apparently weak state agencies can expand their capacity through the legal strategy of broad statutory construction this strategy is more likely with the presence of social movement pressure from below the authors argue that state capacity is a moving target with state and societal actors building on legal as well as administrative resources to construct and transform capacity by reconceptualizing state capacity the authors contribute to nuanced explanations of state policy

the energy metabolism of countries energy efficiency and use in the period that followed the global financial crisis this paper discusses how the deceleration of economic growth that followed the financial crisis of 2008 influenced the energy efficiency allocation and use of 18 european countries by using a multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem the relationships between energy requirements economic trends and population are investigated for the years 2008 and 2015 the analyses are performed for the entire society level n for the household and the paid sectors level n 1 and for the agricultural the industrial and the service activities level n 2 results show that two main groups of countries performed the largest energy reductions namely the country most affected by the global financial crisis such as greece romania and spain where the total energy throughput decreased by 19 6 15 8 and 12 1 respectively and the countries such as ireland and united kingdom that experienced the largest energy intensity reductions 38 7 and 19 2 together with the highest gdp increases 44 8 and 10 2 by providing an overview of the relationships existing between socio economic and energy variables this paper contributes to the debate around growth and efficiency and can support the design of policies oriented to promote the achievement of a more sustainable and competitive economy

in search of substantive economics comparing today s two major socio metabolic approaches to the economy mefa and musiasem ecological economics is largely about the substantive in kind study of the economy as opposed to a purely formal economic analysis in money following kapp polanyi and others this article argues that substantive economics is interested in the biophysical and politico institutional structure of the economy rather than in correct prices within a particular axiomatic conformity as in formal economics after outlining the history of the substantive vs formal dichotomy we point out that socio metabolic analyses are ecological economics most significant contribution towards substantive economics the core of this article then compares what could be today s two best candidates for offering a distinctive foundation to ecological economics as substantive economics material and energy flows analyses mefa and multi scale integrated analyses of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem while mefa is more easily comparative and historical musiasem is more integrative and comprehensive yet we also argue that socio metabolic analyses represent one of the three pillars of substantive economics and that both mefa and musiasem are still weak in integrating the politico institutional structure second pillar and a theory of needs third pillar if such an integration was done ecological economics would be in a position to offer a full fledge alternative substantive economic theory

a new view of the market structure performance debate ion typically considered in market structure performance studies data on cross sections of firms or industries are unlikely to be sufficiently 2 the question of data selection has been discussed fairly thoroughly by weiss 44 and demsetz i 5 among others although there appears to be little agreement on the direction of bias in the most commonly used samples the question of exogeneity has been less thoroughly discussed although in specific instances e g schmalensee 37 martin 27 it has been dealt with explicitly this content downloaded from 157 55 39 35 on sat 03 sep 2016 05 57 53 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 400 james l bothwell thomas f cooley and thomas e hall informative to make such empirical analysis useful it may therefore be more productive to return to industry specific analysis there will undoubtedly be some who are unconvinced by this argument and for them we offer the observation that further empirical studies based on weak deductive foundations are likely to be convincing only to the extent that they account explicitly for the role of prior beliefs and specification uncertainty ii determinants of profitability the conventional market structure conduct performance paradigm has guided vast amounts of empirical research in the field of industrial organization for the past three decades like empirical research in other areas of economics the maintained hypotheses that are considered reflect to a large extent the prior beliefs of the researchers the result is that there is always a suspicion that what is being engaged in is more advocacy than objective empirical analysis in the market structure performance literature the most important alternative prior beliefs maintained hypotheses appear to fall into six categories which we characterize as follows i seller concentration explains profits high rates of return are thought to be caused by monopoly power conferred by high degrees of seller concentration this is the basic collusion specification of bain i 2 seller concentration and entry barriers explain profits high rates of return are thought to reflect monopoly power resulting from both high seller concentration and high barriers to entry this prior comes from the traditional market structure performance paradigm of industrial organization and accounts for the peristence of collusive gains it is prevalent in the work of mann 26 weiss 45 46 comanor and wilson i i qualls 34 1j35 and many other researchers 3 absolute or relative firm size explain profits this prior reflects the demsetz i4 i5 and peltzman 133 notion that high rates of return result from superior firm efficiency or innovativeness and not from oligopolistic collusion and joint profit maximization this prior has also been adopted by others e g shepherd 39 gale i7 who assume that high market shares indicate high barriers to entry 4 risk differentials explain profitability differences this reflects the notion that high rates of return reflect neither monopoly power nor superior efficiency but the payment of positive risk premiums to risk averse investors it underlies much of the work of stigler 4i fisher and hall i6 cootner and holland i3 and many others there are however considerable differences in beliefs about which measure of risk variability of return over time financial leverage or nondiversifiable risk is relevant this content downloaded from 157 55 39 35 on sat 03 sep 2016 05 57 53 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms the market structure performance debate 40i 5 advertising intensity explains profits this reflects the notion of bloch 4 and others that differences in reported accounting profit rates result from differences in the amounts of omitted intangible capital resulting from advertising expenditures because advertising is assumed by some to be a source of product differentiation this prior also may reflect the belief that the extent of product differentiation is a major determinant of profitability comanor i o schmalensee 13 7 6 growth explains profits this reflects brozen s 6 7 disequilibrium hypothesis that profitability differences result not from monopoly power but from adjustments in capacity lagging behind changes in demand given a particular maintained hypothesis about the most important determinant of profitability there remains uncertainty about the rest of the specification of the model if the results are not robust with respect to uncertainty about the conditioning set of variables then it cannot be concluded that the data are very informative about the hypothesis in question the next section discusses the methodology used to determine whether the results are robust to such specification uncertainty iii specification uncertainty the hypotheses discussed in the previous section all specify the primary determinants of profitability in each case however the investigator must have in mind a set of possible conditioning variables that may or may not belong in the regression although uncertainty about the inclusion or exclusion of such variables is not often explicitly acknowledged it is an inevitable and important aspect of virtually all empirical investigations the primary concern for the problem at hand is the extent to which this specification uncertainty leads to uncertainty in the estimated parameters of primary interest consider the regression model

product innovation product market competition and persistent profitability in the u s pharmaceutical industry increasingly strategy scholars are exploring the relationships between innovation competition and the persistence of superior profits sustained high profitability may result when a firm repeatedly introduces valuable innovations that service previously unmet consumer demands while the returns to the firm from each innovation may erode over time innovation ensures that overall the firm maintains a high performance position at the same time sustained high profitability may also accrue to firms that innovate less often but effectively avoid the competition that otherwise erodes high returns this paper elaborates these relationships before presenting an empirical analysis of the effects of differential innovative propensities and differential rates of competition on pharmaceutical firms abilities to sustain profit outcomes that are above those earned by competing firms the analysis which is situated within the u s pharmaceutical industry finds support for the expected relationship between high innovative propensity and sustained superior profitability but no support for a link between persistence and the ability to avoid competition copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

patterns of ethnic self employment in time and space evidence from british census microdata the over representation of certain ethnic minority and immigrant groups in self employment is in common with other developed countries a notable feature of the uk labour market compared to the substantial growth in self employment in the 1980s the 1990s saw overall self employment rates plateau despite this some minority groups experienced continued growth whilst others particularly chinese and indian males and pakistani bangladeshi and chinese females saw their self employment rates decline in this paper we use microdata samples from the 1991 and 2001 censuses to investigate the dynamic and spatial patterns of ethnic entrepreneurship using decomposition methods we find that for males from the asian groups changes in observable characteristics associated with an increasing proportion of second generation individuals explain much of the decline in self employment this which is also true of chinese females reflects in part the age structure and educational experiences of the second generation the dynamics of black male and pakistani bangladeshi male and female entrepreneurship are less easy to explain we also find that while there is no evidence of self employment being an enclave phenomenon local economic conditions do affect rates of entrepreneurship for some groups notably pakistanis and bangladeshis

the decomposition of co2 emissions from energy use in greece before and during the economic crisis and their decoupling from economic growth abstract greece recorded a significant decline in co 2 emissions from energy use from 2003 to 2013 accompanied by a reduction in energy consumption particularly during the economic recession this study attempts to identify the driving forces of co 2 emissions related to energy consumption through the use of the complete decomposition technique developed by jw sun the decomposition analysis focuses on the four factors responsible for co 2 emissions the carbon intensity effect the energy intensity effect the structural effect and the economic activity effect the analysis covers all the major productive sectors of the greek economy the study covers the period 2003 2013 and is divided into two subperiods 2003 2008 and 2008 2013 in order to assess changes in the contribution of the examined factors during the economic crisis 2008 2013 the analysis is extended to examine the decoupling relationship between co 2 emissions and economic growth in greece with the use of the decoupling index

school quality and black white relative earnings a direct assessment the wage differential between black and white men fell from 40 percent in 1960 to 25 percent in 1980 it has been argued that this convergence reflects improvements in the relative quality of black schools to test this hypothesis we assembled data on pupil teacher ratios annual teacher pay and term length for black and white schools in the eighteen segregated states from 1915 to 1966 these data are linked to estimated returns to education for southern born men from different cohorts and states in 1960 1970 and 1980 improvements in the relative quality of black schools explain 20 percent of the narrowing of the black white earnings gap between 1960 and 1980

economic growth and the transition from traditional to modern energy in sweden we examine the role of substitution from traditional to modern energy carriers and of differential rates of innovation in the use of each of these in economic growth in sweden from 1850 to 1950 we use a simple growth model with a nested ces production function and exogenous factor augmenting technological change and carry out a counterfactual simulation based on the econometric results even though the rate of technical change was higher for modern energy innovation in the use of traditional energy carriers contributed more to growth between 1850 and 1890 since the cost share of traditional energy was so much larger than that of modern energy in that period however after 1890 we find that modern energy contributed much more to economic growth than traditional energy but increasingly labor augmenting technological change became the most important single driver of growth

the economic and financial dimensions of degrowth abstract we respond to the call for future research on degrowth and specifically analyze the implications of economic degrowth on the monetary and financial system we argue that any early indications of degrowth would cause the stock market to crash which would trigger further deleveraging contagion and a deflation as a result the economy would implode which would eventually allow for a new rapid growth cycle given the likely extraordinary fiscal and monetary policy response during the implosion thus in our view degrowth as an explicit strategy option is economically unsustainable and unfeasible as a limitation our analysis centers on the examples of unplanned crisis leading to an economic implosion which imperfectly represent the idea of planned voluntary degrowth

the growth discourse growth policy and sustainable development two thought experiments abstract this paper addresses three aspects of growth the discourse the policy and the impacts the growth discourse claims that the central factor for social economic political and environmental progress is economic growth it is assumed to create wealth and provide the necessary means for social and environmental purposes on the basis of the growth discourse different growth policies can be derived based on different economic and political ideologies in order to reveal the implications of de facto degrowth two thought experiments are conducted for physical and economic end to growth strategies the latter is capable of meeting environmental objectives but implies significant social tensions and hardships and calls for transition strategies consisting of carefully designed steps

rates of return on corporate investment in the last two decades productivity has lagged in the united states markets have been lost to foreign competition real income per capita has grown slowly this experience has led to considerable discussion of possible causes 7 one possible cause often mentioned is the quality of managerial investment decisions managers have been accused of overinvesting in obsolete technologies of underinvesting in risky projects with long run payoffs of undertaking unprofitable mergers and of overall poor judgment in their investment policies 39 this paper presents evidence on the returns on investment over the 1970 88 period for a sample of 699 large corporations that is consistent with this view

the labor market impact of state level anti discrimination laws 1940 1960 by the time congress passed the 1964 civil rights act 98 of non southern blacks 40 of all blacks already resided in states with fair employment laws prohibiting labor market discrimination using census data from the integrated public use microdata series the author assesses the impact of fair employment legislation on black workers relative income unemployment labor force participation migration and occupational and industrial distributions in general the fair employment laws adopted in the 1940s appear to have had larger effects than those adopted in the 1950s and the laws had considerably smaller effects on the labor market outcomes of black men than on those of black women

poverty in eastern europe in the years of crisis 1978 to 1987 poland hungary and yugoslavia eastern europe experienced an economic crisis between 1978 and 1987 declining income led to substantial increases in poverty rates in poland and yugoslavia while poverty in hungary remained at about the same level as before the crisis in all three countries urban poverty increased as the economic condition of state sector workers deteriorated to a much greater extent than that of agricultural and mixed households the increased poverty was entirely explained by declining income because the overall income distribution did not change or in some cases improved

black white wage convergence the role of public sector wages and employment this paper assesses the relative contribution of the public and private sectors through their employment and wages to the black white wage convergence that occurred in the u s economy over the 1

multi scale integrated assessment of second generation bioethanol for transport sector in the campania region abstract current narrative on biofuels is backed up by a large number of studies published in the scientific literature that address second generation bioethanol only through a single topic approach nonetheless in the vast majority of cases transition to this energy carrier is evaluated as a generally promising technology this paper presents a first attempt in proposing an integrated evaluation of the actual benefits expected from bioethanol in the transport sector by applying the multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem to the prospective realization of a local system of bio refinery in campania region southern italy musiasem is a multi criteria analysis enabling to deal with the complexity of a territorial energy system since the unavoidable intrinsic uncertainty the study does not focus on predictions but adopts a strategy of quantitative story telling about some relevant results underlying the limits and critical issues about the energy converter fabric the economic profitability environmental constraints and the questionable concept of marginal land the findings suggest concluding toward falsification of key points in the current narrative i the system is not an efficient solar energy converter ii it fails to realize many of the expectations for a renewable energy carrier producer iii the contribution to decarbonization strategies is not as high as desired and other environmental impacts could not be neglected iv the very large land requirement is hardly compatible with conversion of truly marginal land in campania region v compared to alternate land uses it does not seem an actually promising strategy to regain value from rural economy