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

business driven innovations towards more sustainable chemical products the aim of the study presented here was to gain an understanding of business driven innovations towards more sustainable chemical products and processes a case study was undertaken to assess and analyse the experiences of five different companies these companies varied in size from small to a multinational and they also varied in their position in the production chain interviews were held with a number of key players in each firm the objective of business driven innovation is to place more sustainable products in upcoming markets the acceptance of customers and the general public may complicate the innovation process commercial managers played an important role in the innovation processes whereas environmental managers hardly played a role at all most innovations were indirectly triggered by the expectation of new regulations in frontrunner countries which were regarded as indications of future market changes market triggering regulation 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

technological discontinuities and the challenge for incumbent firms destruction disruption or creative accumulation the creative destruction of existing industries as a consequence of discontinuous technological change is a central theme in the literature on industrial innovation and technological development established competence based and market based explanations of this phenomenon argue that incumbents are seriously challenged only by competence destroying or disruptive innovations which make their existing knowledge base or business models obsolete and leave them vulnerable to attacks from new entrants this paper challenges these arguments with detailed empirical analyses of the automotive and gas turbine industries we demonstrate that these explanations overestimate the ability of new entrants to destroy and disrupt established industries and underestimate the capacity of incumbents to perceive the potential of new technologies and integrate them with existing capabilities moreover we show how intense competition in the wake of technological discontinuities driven entirely by incumbents may instead result in late industry shakeouts we develop and extend the notion of creative accumulation as a way of conceptualizing the innovating capacity of the incumbents that appear to master such turbulence specifically we argue that creative accumulation requires firms to handle a triple challenge of simultaneously a fine tuning and evolving existing technologies at a rapid pace b acquiring and developing new technologies and resources and c integrating novel and existing knowledge into superior products and solutions

what happened to the washington consensus the phrase the washington consensus was so the story goes coined by john williamson at a conference in response to the suggestion that during the 1980s countries in latin america were being confronted with conflicting and therefore confusing advice from the international monetary fund and the world bank williamson s response was that there was in fact a strong consensus about policy across the washington based institutions around the need for macroeconomic stability microeconomic liberalisation and openness their advice was therefore not conflicting but reinforcing

when it rains it pours under what circumstances does job loss lead to divorce much of the previous research that has examined the effect of job loss on the probability of divorce either rely on data from the 1970s 80s data from european countries or focus on aggregate divorce rates this study uses u s micro data from 2000 to 2012 thus including effects of the great recession to examine how displacement i e exogenous job loss affects the probability of divorce the author finds displacement significantly increases the probability of divorce but only if the husband is the spouse that is displaced and his earnings represented approximately half or less of the household s earnings prior to displacement similarly results show that the probability of divorce increases if the wife is employed and as her earnings increase while the mechanism behind these asymmetric results remains unclear these results are consistent with recent research that finds a destabilizing effect on marriages when a wife earns more than her husband

house prices and marital stability we investigate the effect of house price changes on divorce using data for 1991 2010 from the current population survey and the federal housing finance agency our findings suggest that changing house prices significantly affect the share of a cohort that is divorced and that these effects are asymmetric with respect to housing gains versus losses in addition we find differential effects for groups that are more likely to be homeowners versus renters some of this evidence is consistent with homeowners being locked into their homes and hence marriages by increased transactions costs in down markets

earnings losses of displaced workers revisited recent literature reviews conclude that job displacement results in sustained earnings losses bruce c fallick 1996 lori g kletzer 1998 and that estimates of the size of those reductions vary with the type of data used in the analysis the industry within which displacement occurs and business cycle conditions the largest estimated losses were obtained using administrative data from pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s louis s jacobson robert j lalonde and daniel g sullivan 1993a the data covered a period of high unemployment in a heavily indus trialized state characterized by disproportionate job losses in manufacturing thus the ability to generalize those results to more favorable economic times and states with a greater reliance on service sector employment has been questioned to address these issues administrative data are used to similarly examine the impact of job displacement on earnings losses of workers in connecticut from 1993 to 2004 the work of jacobson lalonde and sullivan jls also provided important methodologi cal advancement by adapting analytical techniques developed for program evaluation james j heckman and v joseph hotz 1989 to the context of job displacement the same techniques fixed effects and time trend estimators as those used in the original jls publication are initially employed here then the methods are extended to include matching estimators developed since their publication both nearest neighbor estimators of average treatment on the treated att and differenced average treatment on the treated datt are adapted to the context of this study heckman hidehiko ichimura and petra todd 1997 heckman et al 1998 and rajeev h dehejia and sadek wahba 1999 2002 the results presented here for connecticut differ in some ways from those found in the work of jls using data from pennsylvania in the period immediately following job loss regardless of the technique employed earnings reductions for workers displaced through mass layoff range from 32 percent to 33 percent jls reported immediate losses of more than 40 percent six years later using the same estimators as jls earnings reductions in connecticut range from 13 percent to 15 percent they report sustained losses in pennsylvania of 25 percent the smaller long term impacts in connecticut demonstrate that under more ordinary economic times esti mated losses from administrative data lie within the range observed using other data sources this finding resolves a long standing conflict among the results of high quality studies that have used differing data sources to study earnings reductions following job loss 1 using two different matching estimators earnings losses six years after mass layoff are 12 percent the matching estimators compare those who experienced mass layoff to compari sons with the same ex ante probability of the event these smaller losses are consistent with the

the impact of environmental policy instruments on innovation a review of energy and automotive industry studies various types of policy instruments have been implemented to reduce local and global emissions but the impact on innovation of different instruments has received less attention this paper reviews empirical studies of the innovation impact of four main types of policy instruments in two high emitting sectors the conclusions are threefold 1 policy plays a key role for the development and diffusion of environmental innovation in the studied sectors 2 different types of instruments promote different types of innovations general economic instruments has primarily encouraged incremental innovation general regulatory instruments has enforced improvements based on modular innovation and technology specific instruments appears to have been needed to support the development and deployment of radically new technologies 3 all types of policy instruments face challenges in design and implementation understanding the selection impact of the chosen instruments implementing increasing stringency levels committing to an appropriate scale and safeguarding policy stability

imf conditionality coercion or compromise abstract the author compares the utility of three competing models of decision making in the international monetary fund with the purpose of determining how best one can understand how the imf decides on its conditionality vis a vis borrowing nations the three models focus on the following as alternative sets of factors in imf decision making 1 bureaucratic expertise and authority 2 dominance of political interests of major industrialized nations and 3 bargaining and compromise among imf staff and between the fund and borrowing countries based on interviews with imf officials and seven brief case studies the author concludes that bargaining and compromise is the most central dynamic of imf policy making

match quality new information and marital dissolution this article investigates the role of surprises in marital dissolution surprises consists of changes in the predicted earning capacity of either spouse data from the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 is used we find that an unexpected increase in the husband s earning capacity reduces the divorce hazard while an unexpected increase in the wife s earning capacity raises the divorce hazard couples sort into marriage according to characteristics that are likely to enhance the stability of the marriage the divorce hazard is initially increasing with the duration of marriage and the presence of children and high levels of property stabilizes the marriage

the dynamics of technological substitution the case of eco innovation diffusion of surface cleaning products some eco innovations have already reached a mature state but they diffuse slowly there is little known about the importance of various factors on the diffusion process of eco innovations the aim of this research is to propose a conceptual model for eco innovation diffusion where particular case study of eco innovation micro fibre cloth mfc for surface cleaning purposes is given the work will study the relative importance of various motivations on diffusion processes as well as the influence of information campaigns this novel methodology has been developed under the system dynamics framework and is coupled with the logistic regression model structural validation tests were done for the proposed model the methodology is proposed then the integrated empirical study and system dynamics model are completed the results of the logistic regression models show that the overall attitudes and social influence has the most dominant impact on intention to use the studied eco innovation products the most sensitive parameters in the system dynamics model were found to be the adoption faction of information received by word of mouth households adopting micro fibre cloth at the beginning of the simulation and the contact rate per household the proposed methodology and developed mathematical model can also be used as the basis for other studies of other diffusion processes since system dynamics modelling is a white box modelling approach and the structure of the model can be enhanced with the latest results from other studies

sustainable mobility from technological innovation to societal learning abstract this paper addresses a persistent and worsening societal dilemma worldwide the ecological unsustainability of the automobile as the primary means for providing personal mobility the solution to this problem will require input from all segments of society and must include technological innovation changes in the physical infrastructure and land use and social cultural and institutional changes a fundamental rethinking of the entire system of personal mobility is necessary governments can play a significant role in promoting change by stimulating technological innovation through regulations incentives and subsidies by investing in the infrastructure by providing leadership and by organizing and supporting a debate with a focus on the system as a whole its spatial characteristics the motives for transport and the alternatives that are presently not developed from the technological perspective one of the much discussed solutions is a hydrogen powered automobile we argue that the future of this approach is questionable and propose a fundamental re framing of the significance of hydrogen from viewing it as a solution to the personal mobility problem to seeing it as a medium for transporting and storing energy that has been generated elsewhere preferably by renewable resources a new and radically different way of seeing the problem of individual mobility and of the roles of various stakeholders in finding solutions is also necessary this is the essence of higher order learning to facilitate such learning among various societal groups we advocate a combination of multi stakeholder visioning processes scenario building backcasting exercises and small scale socio technical experiments these approaches may be practiced at various levels from local to national with experimentation probably being best suited for a smaller scale an ongoing process of visioning future mobility in the boston metropolitan area illustrates how such approaches may be used

lucky in life unlucky in love the effect of random income shocks on marriage and divorce abstract economists have long been interested in the extent to which economic resources affect decisions to marry and divorce however this issue has been difficult to address empirically due to a lack of exogenous income shocks we overcome this problem by exploiting the randomness of the florida lottery and comparing recipients of large prizes to those of small prizes results indicate that while positive income shocks of 25 000 to 50 000 do not cause statistically significant or economically meaningful changes in divorce rates single women are less likely to marry as a result of the additional income

assortative mating and female labor supply this paper investigates married women s hours worked disaggregated by the husband s wage decile in the united states this pattern has changed from downward sloping to hump shaped we show that this development can be explained within a standard household model of labor supply when taking into account trends in assortative mating a quantitative analysis of our model shows that female wage growth and decreasing fertility are primarily responsible for the overall increase in wives hours since the 1970s the fact that the most pronounced increases are observed for wives married to high wage men is a result of trends in assortative mating

transition pathways revisited established firms as multi level actors in the heavy vehicle industry abstract the multi level perspective on sustainability transitions positions established firms incumbents as defenders of existing technologies at the regime level by contrast it positions new entrants at the niche level as promoters of new technologies this paper challenges the positioning of firms as actors on either regime or niche levels based on a comparative analysis of technology strategies in the heavy vehicle industry the paper shows that established firms are active at both levels developing several technology alternatives simultaneously this means that incumbents technology strategies determine important parts of the required niche regime interactions the paper also shows how incumbents may pursue contrasting technology strategies while some adopt a dualistic approach keeping regime and niche level activities technologically and commercially separate others develop integrated strategies where niche activities are leveraged to impact upon the regime level the cases studied illustrate how the success of such integrated strategies depends on the emergence of bridging policies bridging policies are relevant both for linking early niche markets to broader regime level markets and for supporting further technological advancements of niche markets

the economic consequences of absent parents we examine the effects of family structure on economic resources controlling for unobservable family characteristics in the year following a divorce family income falls by 41 percent and family food consumption falls by 18 percent six or more years later the family income of the average child whose parent remains unmarried is 45 percent lower than it would have been if the divorce had not occurred marriage raises the long run family income of children born to single parents by 45 percent these estimates are substantially smaller than the losses that are implied by cross sectional comparisons across family types

marriage and divorce changes and their driving forces the family is not a static institution in recent decades marriage rates have fallen divorce rates have risen and the defining characteristics of marriage have changed the economic approach to the family seeks to explain these trends by reference to models that can also explain how and why families form gary becker s 1981 treatise on the family proposed a theory based on production complementarities in which husband and wife specialize in the market and domestic spheres respectively production complementarities also arise in the production and rearing of one s own children however production complementarities at least as initially described are decreasingly central to modern family life increased longevity and declining fertility mean that most of one s adult life is spent without one s own children in the household also the rise in marital formation at older ages including remarriage means that many families form with no intention of producing children moreover increases in female labor force participation suggest that household specialization has either declined or at least taken on a different meaning these changes have come about as what is produced in the home has been dramatically altered both by the emergence of labor saving technology in the home and by the development of service industries that allow much of what was once provided by specialized homemakers to be purchased in the market the availabil

time use during the great recession using data from the american time use survey between 2003 and 2010 we document that home production absorbs roughly 30 percent of foregone market work hours at business cycle frequencies leisure absorbs roughly 50 percent of foregone market work hours with sleeping and television watching accounting for most of this increase we document significant increases in time spent on shopping child care education and health job search absorbs between 2 and 6 percent of foregone market work hours we discuss the implications of our results for business cycle models with home production and non separable preferences jel codes d13 e32 j22

the diffusion of clean technologies a review with suggestions for future diffusion analysis abstract this article gives an overview of the literature on clean technology diffusion followed by suggestions for future analysis findings from diffusion analysis are presented in the form of 10 stylised facts helping the reader to see the forest for the trees the overall conclusion is that the diffusion of clean technology same as the diffusion of normal innovations is governed by endogenous mechanism epidemic learning and learning economies and by exogenous mechanisms policy is important for clean technology diffusion but other factors are important too the characteristics of the clean technology absorptive capacities of potential adopters and the age structure of capital it is often overlooked that companies have a choice they can choose between an end of pipe solution a process change adaptation and a change of process substitution this means that the diffusion and evolution of one clean technology will be at the expense of the diffusion of another clean technology something overlooked in studies on clean technology diffusion further research is needed on the influence of public policy on clean technology choice expectations about learning economies and prices adjustment costs network externalities and complementary innovations on clean technology adoption choices

prospects for jatropha biofuels in tanzania an analysis with strategic niche management the paper reports on research in tanzania about the scope for developing biofuels from an oil seed bearing plant called jatropha curcas linnaeus the plant is widely seen to have potential to help combat the greenhouse effect help to stop local soil erosion create additional income for the rural poor and provide a major source of energy both locally and internationally the principal analytic tool is strategic niche management snm an approach rooted in evolutionary innovation theory we analyse how the scope for an energy transition is influenced by factors at three societal levels the overarching landscape the sectoral setting or regime and the niche level where the innovation develops and diffuses valuable niche processes were found in a few areas especially in cultivation but we conclude that there are still many obstacles in tanzania s prevailing energy regime the development of jatropha biofuels is still in an early phase we list policy recommendations and discuss some methodological issues arising from the use of snm

strategic niche management from a business perspective taking cleaner vehicle technologies from prototype to series production strategic niche management has been outlined as a policy approach to assist development and diffusion of cleaner new technologies based on a case study describing the efforts of a leading actor in the heavy vehicle industry to develop and commercially introduce hybrid electric vehicles this paper discusses strategic niche management from the perspective of the manufacturing firm in particular the paper analyses experiences from extensive field tests executed in london tests which involved a number of different manufacturers hybrid systems and vehicles the scale of this technological niche added confidence and credibility to the technology and helped opening up an important niche market which was supported by an extensive subsidy scheme the analysis shows how the field tests and the subsidies jointly functioned as bridging policies that facilitated an important step in the market formation process the analysis further points at a critical tension between niches and the volume oriented business of a major vehicle manufacturer showing how investments in new technology need to be warranted in market trends and projections of future sales and production volumes to become accepted within a vehicle manufacturer s organization

waiting for mr right rising inequality and declining marriage rates abstract this paper demonstrates that women search longer for their first or second husband in cities with higher male wage inequality and examines several alternative explanations a causal link is established by controlling for city fixed effects and city specific time trends and by using inequality in the woman s state of birth as a proxy for local male inequality increasing inequality explains about 25 of the marriage rate decline over the last few decades and this is not due to the endogenous moving or labor force decisions of women nor to the marital decisions of men in reaction to changes in their own wages

business cycles and divorce evidence from microdata we use individual level data to show that divorce is pro cyclical on average a finding robust to the inclusion of a wide range of controls pro cyclical divorce is concentrated among women who married young and or do not have a college degree

can orthodox stabilization and adjustment work lessons from new zealand 1984 90 most debate about the efficacy of orthodox stabilization programs such as those of the international monetary fund has been fruitless first rarely are these programs fully implemented or sustained for long periods second defenders and critics of the programs hold differing premises about the nature of capitalist economies the debate is therefore not about the appropriate balance of supply and demand side measures but rather about what sort of supply and demand side measures will address the supply and demand side problems that each group perceives the results of an orthodox stabilization program which incorporated demand and supply side elements and which was fully implemented and sustained by the new zealand government from 1984 to 1990 reveal the limits to orthodox programs new zealand a primary product exporter suffers from a structural imbalance of payments and from an external debt burden equal in scale to that of the latin american and other highly indebted less developed countries ldcs but it does not have the serious supplyside constraints on growth that critics claim typify underdeveloped economies this makes new zealand an appropriate test of the typical orthodox stabilization program despite the fact that its administrative capacity political will domestic support and access to external resources were far in excess of those of the typical would be ldc stabilizer new zealand achieved only a precarious macroeconomic and international payments stability moreover as the case of new zealand demonstrates inflation control and financial liberalization policy components of orthodox plans have contradictory consequences for payments balance this suggests that long term stabilization in new zealand and elsewhere cannot be achieved solely by internal reforms

divorce and the cognitive achievement of children children of divorced parents exhibit lower test scores and educational attainment have these correlations a causal interpretation parents who divorce may be less likely to invest in their children while together or they may divorce to shield their children from the effects of marital conflict i study the relationship between children s achievement and the marital status of their parents within a dynamic framework in which partners decide on whether to remain married how to interact with or without conflict and child investments i then assess whether a child whose parents divorced would have been better off had divorce not occurred

the changing relationship between the world bank and the international monetary fund the world bank and the international monetary fund have been bedeviled since their common creation over how to define their areas of specialized competence and how to interact in areas of overlapping jurisdiction the multiple shocks that have destabilized the global economy over the last two decades have stimulated the bank and fund to alter fundamentally their programs and approaches often without fully taking into account their relation to the work of the other bretton woods agency the fund s traditional focus on short term stabilization correcting external account imbalances and fighting inflation contrasted with the world bank s provision of long term funds for investment in capital intensive projects but more recently with the establishment of the imf s extended fund facility and the bank s structural adjustment lending both institutions share the objective of adjustment with growth and each claims some responsibility for an extremely wide range of policy instruments the new structural adjustment facility in particular has the potential to link more tightly decision making on fund stand by arrangements and bank structural adjustment lending increasing the probability of new forms of cross conditionality termed here consultative cross conditionality interdependent cross conditionality and indirect financial linkage the bank and fund need to find ways to better delineate and manage their new relationship problems that should be addressed to do so include proper modes of collaboration between bank and fund staff issue specialization the avoidance of piling on excessively detailed performance requirements and decisions on ineligibility enhanced cooperation between the bank and fund can not only produce more coherent adjustment programs but can also help to mobilize other sources of official and private capital

gender identity and relative income within households band s income we argue that this pattern is best explained by gender identity norms which induce an aversion to a situation where the wife earns more than her husband we present evidence that this aversion also impacts marriage formation the wife s labor force participation the wife s income conditional on working marriage satisfaction likelihood of divorce and the division of home production within marriage markets when a randomly chosen woman becomes more likely to earn more than a randomly chosen man marriage rates decline in couples where the wife s potential income is likely to exceed the husband s the wife is less likely to be in the labor force and earns less than her potential if she does work in couples where the wife earns more than the husband the wife spends more time on household chores moreover those couples are less satisfied with their marriage and are more likely to divorce these patterns hold both cross sectionally and within couples over time

job displacement disability and divorce earnings shocks should affect divorce probability by changing a couple s expected gains from marriage we find that the divorce hazard rises after a spouse s job displacement but does not change after a spousal disability this difference casts doubt on a purely pecuniary motivation for divorce following earnings shocks since both types of shocks exhibit similar long run economic consequences furthermore the increase in divorce is found only for layoffs and not for plant closings suggesting that information conveyed about a partner s noneconomic suitability as a mate due to a job loss may be more important than financial losses in precipitating divorce

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

matching finding a partner for life or otherwise how do job worker and husband wife relationships form and why do some matched pairs subsequently separate economists and game theorists are in the process of developing and applying an equilibrium explanation of match formation and separation based on the principle of voluntary pairing under competitive conditions the purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of these developments the general existence of patnership structures with the property that no one has an incentive to separate has been established these equilibrium structures maximize aggregate value over the set of all feasible match structures in the transferable utility case according to this pure theory of matching competition for partners can be expected to yield equilibrium match structures that are both stable and socially efficient at least under conditions of frictionless certainty search theoretic models that take account of meeting costs and initial uncertainty about match values have been developed to explain sepa