identifying roles of international institutions in clean energy technology innovation and diffusion in the developing countries matching barriers with roles of the institutions abstract the development of clean energy technologies is a central issue in climate change negotiation the signatory countries to the united nations convention on climate change agreed to organize the technology executive committee and the climate technology centre and network the objectives of this paper are twofold the first objective is to show a broad landscape of barriers in technology development the paper summarizes the results of key case studies that were conducted to uncover technology specific barriers in technology development these case studies include both technologies for industrial use such as wind bio energy and building energy efficiency and technologies for individual use such as light emitting diodes and photovoltaic panels the case studies also contain technologies at the innovation stage such as integrated gasification combined cycle and carbon capture and storage the second objective of this paper is to highlight and define roles of international institutions in overcoming identified barriers in clean energy technology development in this paper four areas of focus for international institutions are discussed including 1 increasing r d cooperation at the innovation stage 2 facilitation of intellectual property rights 3 supporting finance and 4 enhancing the enabling environment at the diffusion stage

nonrenewable resource scarcity nonrenewable resource theory often is summarized by hotelling s rule this paper reviews theoretical extensions and empirical investigations of resource extraction models observed data are often inconsistent with the hotelling rule suggesting that other characteristics of nonrenewable resource supply including exploration heterogeneous ore quality technological progress and capital investment are important determinants of the dynamic behavior of resource prices given the persistent recurrence of concern about nonrenewable resource scarcity measures of nonrenewable resource scarcity and the empirical evidence for the time trends of those measures are reviewed finally the implications of nonrenewable resource scarcity for economic growth are examined

an investigation into the relationship of retail gas prices on oil company profitability in this article we present several empirical procedures using publicly available data from the us department of energy doe and the securities and exchange commission sec to examine the relationship of oil company gross profit margins to retail gas prices this descriptive analysis indicates that the profit margins of the major integrated oil companies are lower on average during periods of extremely high gas and oil prices and in fact are even lower than in times of extremely low gas and oil prices large oil companies are most profitable during periods of moderate gasoline prices smaller vertically integrated oil companies and firms primarily in the business of refining purchased crude oil exhibit a consistently inverse relationship between profit margins and retail gas prices as gas prices increase these firms become less profitable we find no evidence for the increase in the gross profit margins of oil companies during episodes of very high retail gasoline prices

collusion vs superiority a monte carlo analysis abstract this paper develops a monte carlo procedure which simulates regression equations characteristic of the profit concentration literature given knowledge lacking in empirical work of the underlying parameters true values it is shown that concentration s coefficient in an industry profit concentration regression may overestimate underestimate or accurately reflect the impact of monopoly power on price depending on the assumed underlying model current empirical evidence however tends to be more consistent with the model that predicts concentration overestimates the monopoly power effect

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

how market design shapes the spatial distribution of power plant curtailment costs abstract when multiple power plants are curtailed at the same time and in the same region electricity system costs rise if transmission lines are congested these costs might be amplified and spatially more concentrated because there are less spatial spill overs we study how such costs and their distribution depend on the market design nodal pricing or uniform pricing we extend the literature on curtailment by considering space and market design and the literature on market design by considering curtailment we expose a dc load flow model for germany to severe correlated curtailment scenarios we find that additional costs are moderate for the simulated week curtailment of 9 3 non renewable capacity reduces welfare by 2 7 uniform pricing with nodal pricing welfare loss can be reduced by 1 5 distributional differences are multiple times larger for nodal pricing producer surplus rises more and costs are spatially more concentrated at the curtailed power plants consumer surplus becomes lower the difference is unlikely to justify changes of the current market design if also wind or photovoltaic feed in is unavailable economic impacts can decrease or increase but remain in the same order of magnitude the spatial electricity system structure matters more than the volume of curtailment

regulatory attitudes and environmental innovation in a model combining internal and external r d the extent to which environmental regulatory institutions are either green or brown impacts not just the intensity of regulation at any moment but also the incentives for the development of new pollution control technologies we set up a strategic model of r d in which a polluter can deploy technologies developed in house or license technologies developed by specialist outsiders an eco industry polluters exert r d effort and may even develop redundant technologies to improve the terms on which they procure technology from outside we find that while regulatory bias has an ambiguous impact on the best available technology strategic delegation to systematically biased regulators can improve social welfare

a qualitative dynamical modelling approach to capital accumulation in unregulated fisheries capital accumulation has been a major issue in fisheries economics over the last two decades whereby the interaction of the fish and capital stocks were of particular interest because bio economic systems are intrinsically complex previous efforts in this field have relied on a variety of simplifying assumptions the model presented here relaxes some of these simplifications problems of tractability are surmounted by using the methodology of qualitative differential equations qde the theory of qdes takes into account that scientific knowledge about particular fisheries is usually limited and facilitates an analysis of the global dynamics of systems with more than two ordinary differential equations the model is able to trace the evolution of capital and fish stock in good agreement with observed patterns and shows that over capitalization is unavoidable in unregulated fisheries r 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the price of morality an analysis of personality moral behaviour and social rules in economic terms the focus of the present study was the rationality of moral behaviour and moral conviction assumptions like morality pays or good ethics is good business are not a priori right whether morality as personal conviction is also economically rational or not depends in large part on the institutional setting of a society and the likelihood that immoral behaviour will be sanctioned the systematic approach to morality thus appears to be political economy and the institutional setting rules and laws however the conditions for morality depend not only on the formal structures but also on the informal structures of rules and sanctions hence the systematic approach to morality is most closely linked with the culture of a society the efficiency of individual morality depends on social conditions it is costly for individuals and societies to establish and entertain conditions that set clear incentives for moral behaviour in this context moral competencies learning and education play a crucial role

ending waste by law institutions and collective learning in the development of industrial recycling in finland abstract the european union s waste framework directive 2008 contains criteria for the legal definition of industrial by products the purpose of the criteria is to encourage the reuse of residual materials and to decrease the generation of waste by industry this article studies how such by product criteria affect the legal treatment of three different types of residual materials in heavy industrial companies in finland particular interest is in the significance of the role of these by product criteria in the commercialization of the materials the results of the article point out that by product criteria function as a feedback mechanism between the regulative and the operational environments of industries and to some extent it also encourages increased interplay between these two realities by product criteria evidently promote the utilization of such residues whose product potential is clear at the same time these criteria fail in facilitating collective learning related to the development of new kinds of residual based products the argument is made that appropriately functioning institutional feedback mechanisms may facilitate the development of industrial processes in environmentally sound directions at the same time collective learning is urgently needed in the development of industrial systems because processes are often already optimized given existing knowledge based on the findings the article discusses what is required from institutional feedback mechanisms to facilitate collective learning in different operational environments

creating integrated business and environmental value within the context of china s circular economy and ecological modernization abstract this paper investigates the challenges and opportunities of how firms and organizations can and will be able to strike a better balance between economic growth and environmental stewardship in the context of china s emerging circular economy policy paradigm and based on ecological modernization theoretic approaches based on three company case studies in the information technology and electronic industries in china we identify and demonstrate how a blended business and environmental value can be created from adopting a sustainable supply chain management approach the adoption of a sustainable supply chain management approach is rapidly becoming a key business challenge and opportunity in china and other large emerging economies around the world where our greatest environmental management challenges currently reside and will continue to exist for many years to come the value creation framework proposed in research focuses on evaluating three case study companies who appear in various stages of an electronic industry supply chain value creation within a supply chain can provide the impetus for organizations to adopt circular economy sustainable supply chain practices for competitive reasons in addition we describe how a value proposition can be evaluated at two levels of analysis a more specific micro level and a more general meso level of analysis the four major business value dimensions include cost reduction revenue generation resiliency and legitimacy and image the initial findings are that a variety of opportunities exist for electronic firms in emerging and developing countries while results from this study provide an important scholarly foundation to develop and refine sustainable supply chain management practices in emerging and developing economies

does firm size comfound the relationship between corporate social performance and firm financial performance there has been some theoretical and empirical debate that the positive relationship between corporate social performance csp and firm financial performance ffp is spurious and in fact caused by a third factor namely large firm size this study examines this question by integrating three meta analyses of more than two decades of research on 1 csp and ffp 2 firm size and csp and 3 firm size and ffp into one path analytic model the present study does not confirm size as a third factor which would confound the relationship between csp and ffp that is even if firm size is controlled for across studies comprising on average over 15 000 observations csp and ffp remain positively correlated showing a true score corrected path coefficient p of 0 37

eco innovation in the transition to a circular economy an analytical literature review abstract in the ongoing sustainability debate the circular economy ce has been steadily gaining ground as a new paradigm at the same time eco innovation ei has been recognised as a key element in carrying out the transition from a linear to a circular system of production and consumption however little information can be found concerning whether and how ei can actually facilitate the change to a ce while extensive literature on ei and a growing body of research exploring the ce already exist there is as yet no comprehensive understanding concerning the connections between these two concepts drawing on academic contributions from the fields of ei and ce this analysis seeks to clarify and synthesise findings at the intersection of these two fields the aim is threefold derive literature based working definitions of ce and ei review the role of ei at ce s macro meso and micro levels and characterise ce inducing ei in terms of targets mechanisms and impacts our literature review shows that an ei driven techno economic transition to a ce requires specific solutions i e different forms of ei driven clean congruence at distinct levels of operation generally speaking movement toward a ce is found to be contingent on systemic ei that is not only intense in technology but also involving dynamic and holistic combinations of service innovations and novel organisational set ups

economic behavior in institutional environments the corporate merger wave of the 1980s over the last 100 years the united states has experienced four waves of corporate merger activity the first occurred at the turn of the century then again in the 1920s the 1960s and the 1980s most research on merger waves has focused on individual mergers within a wave our research focuses on the wave itself we develop a theoretical model that centers on the actors who promote the mergers and on those changes in the political and economic environments that provide the resources these actors need to act specifically we argue that a permissive state combined with increased access to capital market funds encourages fringe players to initiate the innovations that enable them to execute mergers merger waves occur when these actors become increasingly successful and their innovations are imitated throughout the business community we provide empirical support for the model using data from the 1980 s merger wave

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

successful in the long run a meta regression analysis of persistent firm profits we study the profit persistence literature by applying meta regression analysis mra to a set of 36 empirical papers which analyze the persistence of abnormal firm profits over time the analyzed literature provides evidence for a mediocre degree of persistence in abnormal profits an initial analysis of the distribution of reported profit persistence estimates reveals some degree of excess variation this points toward publication bias that favors significant results independent of their algebraic sign the mra however reveals that publication bias is particularly favoring results that indicate profit persistence and thus contradict the neoclassical model of perfect competition moreover the mra enables to control for heterogeneity driven by the study design we find that the analyzed country developing vs developed the applied econometric approach as well as the analyzed period of time are significant drivers of heterogeneity in reported persistence estimates

a review on circular economy the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems el articulo muestra un estudio en donde se proporciona una revision extensa de la literatura de las dos ultimas decadas con el proposito de captar las principales caracteristicas y perspectivas de la ce economia circular origenes principios basicos ventajas y desventajas modelado e implementacion de ce en los diferentes niveles micro meso y macro en todo el mundo los resultados demuestran que los origenes de la ce se basan principalmente en la economia ecologica y ecologia industrial

towards a national circular economy indicator system in china an evaluation and critical analysis abstract it is widely acknowledged that china s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment in order to deal with this problem the circular economy ce has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development national laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of ce and national ce demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed china is the first country to release nationally focused ce indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of ce implementation can be recognized these ce indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision makers and can help achieve ce goals and outcomes this unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities this paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national ce indicator system china s ce efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system a critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented we show that certain benefits can be gained but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social business indicators urban industrial symbiosis absolute material energy reduction and prevention oriented indicators concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper the knowledge gained from chinese efforts on ce indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies

on the misuse of the profits sales ratio to infer monopoly power the common use of the profits sales ratio as a measure of the lerner index of monopoly power is flawed even with the assumption of constant returns because of problems connected with the valuation of capital the size of the error is related to the cost of capital the growth rate of the firm the depreciation method used and most important the shape of the stream of benefits resulting from an investment examples show that the error can be quite large further the error is likely to be systematically related to the variables used in regression studies

net national product as an indicator of sustainability net national product nnp can potentially serve several objectives among others to measure value added and to be an indicator of welfare in the aftermath of the world commission on environment and development however it also seems important to investigate whether the concept of nnp can serve as an indicator of sustainability my point of departure following hicks 1946 ch 14 is therefore to require that nnp should measure what can be consumed in the present period without reducing future consumption possibilities and in line with this to argue that the nnp should equal the maximum per capita consumption level that can be sustained if sufficiently many facilitating assumptions are made then a concept of nnp that serves as an exact indicator of sustainability can easily be constructed for instance for a closed economy with a constant population a stationary technology and with only one capital good it follows that the present does not reduce future consumption possibilities if and only if it does not decrease the stock of the single capital good hence under the assumption that the one capital good k is identical to the one consumption good x nnp defined as y x k measures the maximal sustainable consumption at time t because then x y is equivalent to k the purpose of this note is to establish that with multiple capital goods it is not in general possible to construct an exact indicator of sustainability on the

in defence of the linear model an essay this essay discusses the strength and weaknesses of the so called linear model lm of innovation it is a reaction to the habit of criticising it as over simplistic mechanistic or simply blatantly wrong we argue that while some criticisms are of course well grounded many others are instead based on loose interpretations and unwarranted assumptions in order to separate the wheat from the chaff this essay first presents a comprehensive description of the linear model and differentiates it from the caricature many refer to second we discuss the main criticisms put forward and argue that many of them are not at all destructive but can be easily accepted within a refined version of the lm third we discuss the policy implications often derived or said to derive from the lm to argue that the lm itself is distinctively policy neutral other assumptions have to be added to justify alternative policy implications

efficiency of conservationist measures an optimist viewpoint abstract we consider an economy with a consumer good capital a natural resource that provides amenity values and heterogeneous overlapping generations we compare a benchmark grandfathering policy that ensures efficiency through privatization with a policy of enforced resource conservation it is shown that i conservationist measures do not cause any pareto inefficiency irrespective of whether they pass a cost benefit test moreover it is shown that ii there exist pareto optimal allocations that can only be reached through resource conservation and not through competitive markets irrespective of compensating income transfers finally iii equivalence is demonstrated between strict resource conservation and non dictatorship of the present generations over future generations as formalized in chichilnisky s sustainable welfare function the results are shown to hold in both a first best and a second best setting

institutional change in large law firms a resource dependency and institutional perspective we integrate resource dependency and institutional theory to argue that resource scarcity drives and legitimacy enables institutional change building on a historical account we examine the sources and timing of innovation departing from standard human resource practices using event history analysis of over 200 principal offices of large law firms offices with human resource scarcity innovated to acquire alternative resources highly prestigious offices had the legitimacy to be first or early adopters our findings highlight the value of looking to the resource side and to the notion of legitimacy in building an institutional theory of change

ownership versus competition efficiency in public enterprise certainly the introduction of product market competition into potentially competitive or at least contestable markets can improve performance to take just one example morrison and whinston 1986 1986 estimate that even in the imperfectly contestable u s airline industry the annual u s welfare gains from deregulation have been around 6 billion

institutional ecological economics abstract new institutional economics and its forerunners have we argue made important contributions to the evolving agenda of ecological economics the conceptualisation of environmental problems as instances of interdependence and the acknowledgement of positive transaction costs are key insights into the nature of environmental problems we also discuss how plurality of behavioural motivations and limited cognitive capacity have important implications for environmental decision making and its analysis we show how evolutionary and collective action theories offer complementary takes on the choice and change of environmental governance institutions and how the concept of social capital can enrich analyses of environmental governance we conclude that an emerging institutional ecological economics has the greatest relative advantage in analysing the design implementation and effectiveness of environmental governance solutions

inter industry differences in profitability the legacy of the structure efficiency debate revisited this study presents a simple model on the sources of inter industry variation in profitability and tests its empirical implications in order to shed new light on the long lasting debate over industry profitability the model identifies four key factors that jointly influence an industry s price cost margin i the intensity of strategic investment e g r d and advertising ii the skewness of the distribution of market share or market concentration iii the appropriability of strategic investment and iv the extent to which firms market shares are determined by the intensity of their strategic investment these factors are expected to be positively related to industry profitability and our empirical analysis provides supportive evidence the model also suggests that the conventional single dimensional hypotheses on profitability the market power or market structure hypothesis and the efficiency hypothesis are overly simplified more importantly existing empirical results allegedly supporting each of these hypotheses are spurious to the extent that the distribution of firm specific strategic competence reflects firm heterogeneity in efficiency and at the same time underlies the distribution of market share or market concentration copyright 2009 oxford university press

structure and performance with profit measures based on stock market prices the theory that there is a causal relationship between industry structure conduct and performance is the fundamental premise in the field of industrial organization the most carefully researched component of that general theory is the hypothesis that increasing industrial concentration will give rise to increasing profits this traditional view is important not only because of its prominence in the academic analysis of industrial markets but also because of its implications for government policy especially antitrust policy the traditional view typically has been tested by treating an accounting based measure of industry profit as the dependent variable with concentration and other structural variables as independent variables within a cross section of manufacturing industries at a given point in time numerous papers have found that concentration has a positive impact on profits the methodology adopted in this paper is different the profit measures are based on stock market prices and are adjusted for risk this is an improvement because accounting methods are so poorly adapted to the measurement of economic profit and because risk may vary with concentration 2 39 another methodological innovation is the choice of time series over cross section analysis the question asked is whether the change over time in each industry s level of concentration had an impact on profits this minimizes the problem of omitted or inaccurately measured independent variables since there should be less change in basic structural characteristics over short time periods within an industry than between industries at a single point in time 2 a second important advantage is freedom from a basic assumption of crosssection studies the assumption that the relationship between concentration and profit is homogeneous across industries if the assumption is invalid empirical results are subject to bias two tests 7 26 have firmly rejected the homogeneity assumption 3

institutional adaptation to cooling water scarcity for thermoelectric power generation under global warming this article studies adaptation of institutional arrangements for water regulation to climate change power plants occasionally need to curtail production during heat waves causing economic losses and putting power quality at risk to avoid exacerbation of this problem due to climate change the regulation of heat emissions from power plants may require adaptation the analysis abstracts a mathematical model from a case study of the german rhine catchment the model compares three options for regulation with an analysis of transaction costs and balances them with costs from environmental externalities first long term and site specific temperature caps lead to the comparatively lowest sum of social transaction and production costs if heat waves only increase in intensity second a dynamic heat load plan performs better if heat waves only increase in frequency third if both intensity and frequency of heat waves increase substantially a specific contract between the environmental regulator and electricity producers the minimum power plant concept performs comparatively best the article highlights economies of scale in transaction costs and shows how institutional adaptation can depend on the speed of climate change

national innovation systems and the intermediary role of industry associations in building institutional capacities for innovation in developing countries a critical review of the literature abstract developed over the past three decades the national innovation system concept nis has been widely used by both scholars and policy makers to explain how interactions between a set of distinct nationally bounded institutions supports and facilitates technological change and the emergence and diffusion of new innovations this concept provides a framework by which developing countries can adopt for purposes of catching up initially conceived on structures and interactions identified in economically advanced countries the application of the nis concept to developing countries has been gradual and has coincided in the nis literature with a move away from overly macro interpretations to an emphasis on micro level interactions and processes with much of this work questioning the nation state as the most appropriate level of analysis as well as the emergence of certain intermediary actors thought to facilitate knowledge exchange between actors and institutions this paper reviews the nis literature chronologically showing how this shift in emphasis has diminished somewhat the importance of both institutions particularly governments and the political processes of institutional capacity building in doing so the paper suggests that more recent literature on intermediaries such as industry associations may offer valuable insights to how institutional capacity building occurs and how it might be directed particularly in the context of developing countries where governance capacities are often lacking contributing to less effective innovation systems stagnant economies and unequal development

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

theorizing change revisited an amended process model of institutional innovations and changes in institutional fields abstract the recent abandonment of old taxis and the introduction and diffusion of new taxis and car ride sharing services of uber and the sharing economy in general shows that institutional environments change this paper provides a review on institutional change based on 29 previously published case studies based on this review and the uber case an overview of antecedents for institutional change is developed furthermore an existing model describing the process of institutional change greenwood et al 2002 is validated and extended this extended process model describes the development and different phases of institutional change this paper aims to enrich our theoretical understanding of institutional change and to provide insights for change agents

the impact of heat waves on electricity spot markets abstract thermoelectric power plants depend on cooling water drawn from water bodies low river run off and or high water temperatures limit a plant s production capacity this problem may intensify with climate change our study quantifies the impact of forced capacity reductions on market prices production costs consumer and producer surplus as well as emissions by means of a bottom up power generation system model first we simulate the german electricity spot market during the heat wave of 2006 then we conduct a sensitivity study that accounts for future climatic and technological conditions we find an average price increase of 11 during the heat wave 2006 which is even more pronounced during times of peak demand production costs accumulate to an additional but moderate 16 m due to the price increase producers gain from the heat wave whereas consumers disproportionately bear the costs carbon emissions in the german electricity sector increase during the heat wave the price and cost effects are more pronounced and increase significantly if assumptions on heat sensitive demand hydropower capacity net exports and capacity reductions are tightened these are potential additional effects of climate change hence if mitigation fails or is postponed globally the impacts on the current energy system are very likely to rise increases in feed in from renewable resources and demand side management can counter the effects to a considerable degree countries with a shift toward a renewable energy supply can be expected to be much less susceptible to cooling water scarcity than those with a high share of nuclear and coal fired power plants

industrial symbiosis the case for market coordination abstract despite the fact that all successful documented cases of industrial symbiosis to this day have been self organizing some authors and development officials have suggested that increased public planning might deliver better results in this respect than spontaneously evolved market coordination this paper takes an historical approach to suggest that comprehensive planning is unlikely to live up to the expectations of its proponents the essay is structured as follows the first section provides short case studies of industrial symbiosis in highly different economic and institutional settings the essentially free market regime of victorian england and communist hungary 1948 1989 the available evidence suggests that market coordination proved much more favorable to the emergence of industrial symbiosis despite the elaboration of a comprehensive policy to that effect in hungary insights derived from the so called austrian critique of central planning are then used to explain this paradox the analysis presented suggests that the hungarian planners failure was not so much the result of the bad implementation of sound policies but the logical outcome of a top down approach s shortcomings policy implications for the public planning of industrial symbiosis in a mixed economy are then derived and the case for self organization is found more compelling the creation of more innovative institutions that will force firms to internalize their externalities while leaving them the necessary freedom to innovate is viewed as an urgently needed and promising path towards increased sustainable reuse of industrial by products

capital gains and net national product in open economies it is shown within a given framework that with the world economy following an egalitarian path the aggregate capital gains being positive is equivalent to the interest rate tending to decrease this result is of importance for the concept of net national product in open economies in particular with positive aggregate capital gains an open economy cannot sustain consuming the return on its capital stocks since some part of the return must be used to augment the country s national wealth it is established that a country s share of world wide sustainable consumption equals its share of worldwide wealth

green chemistry and green engineering in china drivers policies and barriers to innovation with the world s largest population and consistently rapid rates of economic growth china faces a choice of whether it will move towards a more sustainable development trajectory this paper identifies the different factors driving innovation in the fields of green chemistry and green engineering in china which we find to be largely driven by energy efficiency policy increasingly strict enforcement of pollution regulations and national attention to cleaner production concepts such as circular economy we also identify seven key barriers to the development and implementation of green chemistry and engineering in china they are 1 competition between economic growth and environmental agendas 2 regulatory and bureaucratic barriers 3 availability of research funding 4 technical barriers 5 workforce training 6 industrial engineering capacity and 7 economic and financial barriers our analysis reveals that the most crucial barriers to green chemistry and engineering innovations in china appear to be those that arise from competing priorities of economic growth and environmental protection as well as the technical challenges that arise from possessing a smaller base of experienced human capital we find that there is a great deal of potential for both the development of the underlying science as well as its implementation throughout the chemical enterprise especially if investment occurs before problems of technological lock in and sunk costs emerge c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the validity of roi as a measure of business performance business performance at the corporate level is widely assessed by the return through changes in the price of the stock and dividends to shareholders however corporate level performance analysis whether for strategic or public policy purposes is inappropriate in many instances because of the heterogeneity of the corporation s operations the strategic business units sbus comprising a corporation are often very diverse profitability analysis grouping these entities together yields few of the insights needed for strategic or public policy decision making because of this heterogeneity profitability analysis is often advocated and undertaken at the sbu level the absence of an equity market at the sbu level means that a measuring instrument other than that based on stock price must be used to assess profitability due to the lack of alternatives the performance of an sbu is almost always based on accounting data in particular the accounting measure return on investment roi is widely regarded as the most useful measure and ultimate bottom line test of business performance james reese and william cool 1978 it is used both as an objective of management and as a dependent criterion variable to evaluate the effect of various factors on performance despite its widespread use roi has been extensively criticized as being a totally inadequate indicator of economic rate of return g c harcourt 1965 ezra solomon 1971 franklin fisher and john mcgowan 1983 roi most typically defined as net income total assets 1 does not properly relate the stream of profits to the investment that produced it the earnings numerator is a consequence of investment decisions made in the past but the assets denominator can be expected to have had influence on not only past and current earnings but also to have influence on future earnings because of this failure to produce an accurate mapping roi has been criticized as being so seriously flawed that it bears little if any resemblance to the crucial concept of internal or economic rate of return the shortcomings of roi are said to be so severe that its cross sectional variations can be completely explained by the inappropriateness of the measure due to a lack of proven validity empirical investigations using roi have been labeled by fisher and mcgowan as totally misleading enterprises and by george benston 1985 as of doubtful value those making use of accounting roi argue that the noise created by the accounting distortions need not be expected to drown out the underlying signal of economic return contained in roi and therefore roi is still appropriate for use in analysis f m scherer 1979 and william long and david ravenscraft 1984 this paper examines the validity of roi as a measure of economic rate of return by ascertaining the existence and extent of the association of corporate level accounting roi with stock return a widely accepted indicator of business performance the null hypothesis for the analysis is that roi has no validity as a measure of business performance and as such will not exhibit an association with stock return while the tests provide direct evidence on the validity of corporate level roi the same underlying theorized inadequacies of accounting roi are also present at the sbu level 1 conclu

effects of accounting techniques on the study of market power abstract this study uses a time series analysis to test for the effects of alternative depreciation and inventory accounting techniques on the estimation of firm level market power the key finding is that while alternative inventory measurement techniques have a significant effect on the estimated coefficients of a firm level profit structure model depreciation techniques have an insignificant effect on these coefficients this result is notable because previous researchers have focused exclusively on the biases due to accounting depreciation techniques and failed to see that alternative inventory techniques have the potential for causing the more significant biases

evaluating q as an alternative to the rate of return in measuring profitability the ratio of a firm s market value to its replace ment cost q is often used to measure firms profitability the use of q is increasin g in large part because of the growing realization that errors in evaluating firms capital assets may cause errors in estimates of the accounting rate of return r the same objection however applies t o q this paper reports the results of monte carlo experiments designed to determine whether q is superior to r errors in both q and r are large and potentially serious but do not render either measure useless copyright 1988 by mit press

the impact of climate change on the electricity market a review climate change will impact electricity markets through both electricity demand and supply this paper reviews the research on this topic whereas there is much that remains unknown or uncertain research over the last few years has significantly advanced our knowledge in general higher temperatures are expected to raise electricity demand for cooling decrease demand for heating and to reduce electricity production from thermal power plants the effect of climate change on the supply of electricity from non thermal sources shows great geographical variability due to differences in expected changes to temperature and precipitation whereas the research frontier has advanced significantly in the last few years there still remains a significant need for more research in order to better understand the effects of climate change on the electricity market four significant gaps in the current research are regional studies of demand side impacts for africa asia the caribbean and latin america the effects of extreme weather events on electricity generation transmission and demand changes to the adoption rate of air conditioning and finally our understanding of the sensitivity of thermal power supply to changes in air and water temperatures

the role of customer integration in extended producer responsibility a study of chinese export manufacturers abstract extended producer responsibility epr is increasingly emphasized by manufacturing enterprises to improve eco efficiency and to satisfy the growing environmental requirements expected in the market this trend is salient for export oriented manufacturers mandated to comply with environmental regulatory requirements before entry is granted for their products in the requisite overseas countries drawing on the contingency theory we examine the epr practices undertaken by export oriented manufacturers and the market and financial performance outcomes when such practices are characterized with low and high levels of customer integration in their implementation survey data collected from 134 manufacturing exporters in china show positive association of epr practices with the performance outcomes using split group analysis we found performance differences between the high and low manufacturer groups in customer integration for their epr practices implementation particularly the high customer integration group achieves better market performance whereas the low group weak in customer integration reap greater financial benefits managers need to understand the role of customer integration and the financial and market performance implications of implementing epr practices to align with their performance goals and to build their supply chain system capabilities in the age of global complexity

pursuing extended producer responsibility in the context of eips by a hotelling model abstract this paper offers a prescriptive suggestion to preserve the extended producer responsibility goal in an eco industrial park a novel hotelling model in reverse trading direction is developed to examine the technology position decisions between specialized recycling processors we find that the notion of eco industrial parks may not always be compatible with extended producer responsibility which motivates producers to improve their eco design in clean production within the context of competition based on our analysis competition helps certain types of parks become self organized such that constituent firms spontaneously improve their eco design if eco design is not improved in a park due to the existing competition and production conditions an ordinary tax subsidy should be sufficient to make the parks self organized therefore eco industrial parks can be re aligned to their environmental goals

environmental and economic gains of industrial symbiosis for chinese iron steel industry kawasaki s experience and practice in liuzhou and jinan with material and energy flow features iron steel industry has unique advantage in the industrial symbiosis is formation to realize environmental and economic benefit simultaneously the quantification of the scale and significance of is benefits is valuable for is promotion while there is much few attention to it especially in china under this circumstance this paper evaluates and compares the number scale and the related environmental economic gains of is activities in iron steel centered industrial areas in liuzhou and jinan in china and kawasaki in japan results show that in liuzhou there are three symbiosis activities between industries the annual by product waste exchange is more than 2 million ton y gaining economic revenue more than 36 55 million usd for the iron steel company in jinan seven symbiotic links are between industries and two are between urban community and iron steel plant the total by product waste exchange is over 8 million ton y and the economic gains account to 158 million usd in kawasaki iron steel industry relates to four symbiotic links the total by product waste exchange amount is about 500 kton y with the economic gains over 54 million usd the form and the complexity of the is network are different in the three cases is in liuzhou and jinan are with the features of large number and scale but single types while in kawasaki is includes not only traditional exchanges between iron steel plant and the other industries but also the innovative utilization of urban refuse by industrial area finally from the perspective of technology legislative framework and support policy circular technology inventory integrated waste management system information platform and national subsidies are needed to support the ever improvement of is promotion in china s iron steel industry c 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

command and control revisited environmental compliance and technological change in swedish industry 1970 1990 this paper addresses the issue of environmental policy instrument choice for achieving deep emission reductions in the industrial sector specifically it provides a a theoretical and empirical

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

an insight into the italian chemical sector how to make it green and efficient abstract the present research moves from the consideration that the implementation and the dissemination of circular economy processes is a hotspot in european ecosystem management and that eu countries must converge towards the same targets considering the relevance of chemical sector economic and environmental impact we aim at unveiling the economic and institutional determinants of sectoral performances in terms of circular economy and resource efficiency by means an oecd procedure we built a circular economy index for the chemical sector following a panel data model has been applied on 20 italian regions in order to test two economic hypotheses and a politico institutional one this allowed us to capture the features most likely to affect circular performances within the regions the findings reveal that regional socio economic background plays a fundamental role in improving firm performance level while institutions and sectoral economic dynamic are not strong flywheel of circular economy

towards circular economy implementation a comprehensive review in context of manufacturing industry the concept of circular economy ce is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to series of challenges such as waste generation resource scarcity and sustaining economic benefits however the concept of circularity is not of novel as such specific circumstances and motivations have stimulated ideas relevant to circularity in the past through activities such as reuse remanufacturing or recycling main objectives of this work are to provide a comprehensive review of research efforts encompassing aspects of resources scarcity waste generation and economic advantages to explore the ce landscape in the context of these three aspects especially when they are considered simultaneously based on an idea of a comprehensive ce framework propose an implementation strategy using top down and bottom up approach in a concurrent manner to fulfill this objective a comprehensive review of state of the art research is carried out to understand different ideas relevant to ce motivation for the research and context of their recurrence main contributions of this paper are a comprehensive ce framework and a practical implementation strategy for a regenerative economy and natural environment the framework emphasizes on a combined view of three main aspects i e environment resources and economic benefits it also underlines that joint support of all stakeholders is necessary in order to successfully implement the ce concept at large scale the proposed framework and implementation strategy also identify new avenues for future research and practice in the field of ce

institutional path dependence in climate adaptation coman s some unsettled problems of irrigation districts that emerged in the american west in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in response to aridity to facilitate agricultural water delivery use and trade raise the transaction costs today of water markets these markets are vital for smooth reallocation of water to higher valued uses elsewhere in the economy and for flexible response to greater hydrological uncertainty this institutional path dependence illustrates how past arrangements to meet conditions of the time constrain contemporary economic opportunities they cannot be easily significantly modified or replaced ex post