managing without growth abstract there are three main arguments why developed countries should consider managing without growth 1 continued economic growth worldwide is not an option owing to environmental and resource constraints and so developed countries should leave room for growth in developing countries where the benefits of growth are evident 2 in developed countries growth has become uneconomic in the sense that it detracts more from well being than it adds and 3 economic growth in developed countries is neither necessary nor sufficient for meeting specific policy objectives such as full employment no poverty and protection of the environment this paper explores various growth scenarios for canada over the medium range to 2020 using lowgrow a dynamic simulation model after describing lowgrow a scenario is presented that shows conditions under which the rate of unemployment in canada could be reduced to historically low levels poverty eliminated and greenhouse gas emissions reduced to comply with canada s commitment under the kyoto protocol without relying on economic growth this is not to say that zero growth should itself become a policy objective rather that the dependence on and defence of economic growth should not be an obstacle to fulfilling more specific welfare enhancing objectives of full employment eliminating poverty and protecting the environment the paper concludes with some policy implications for managing without growth followed by an annex which provides a technical description of lowgrow

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

sensitivity analyses of anomalies in developed stock markets abstract the literature on anomalies in developed stock markets produces no consensus on specification this study uses extreme bound analysis eba to evaluate the robustness of 15 stock return anomalies given data covering 16 developed markets from may 1984 to march 1999 two factors are sturdy according to the extreme decision rule in the panel design d p and momentum under a less stringent eba criterion long run lagged returns country risk and the january effect are also robust time series eba for individual markets produces one robust result according to relaxed decision rules across a majority of cases long run government bond yields

modeling evaluation and methodology in the new century i what is changing it appears that any overt expression of interest in methodology is considered a clear sign of weak mindedness or premature senility l boland methodology entry in the new palgrave dictionary of economics as time passes one should expect the techniques and consequently the underlying methodology also to evolve this article will discuss some of the major changes in methodology since the middle of the last century to now among the major driving forces for this change is the growth in the amount of data available in most parts of economics together with the tremendous growth in the speed and storage ability of computers as well as the interactive aspects of the internet techniques or methodologies that were unthinkable or certainly unavailable 25 years ago are now standard and common a new mind set is required to limit dissension i will consider economics to be a decision science describing the decisions made by economic agents such as consumers employers investors and policy makers it follows that the purpose of any economic analysis will be to help actual decision makers make better decisions on average in a stochastic environment such an analysis can be thought of as a final good some analysis will be an intermediate good which helps another economist produce a better final good by taking these attitudes a pragmatic viewpoint can be taken in many situations and provide solutions to some questions as will be seen the many books and articles on economic methodology and philosophy in the past century consider many topics that were considered of considerable interest then but have since lost their importance for example a topic earlier viewed as being of some importance was is economics a science although i believe that it is no longer a hot topic around economics departments the answer to the question is that no one really cares however that may not be the correct response because if economics was classified as a science the discipline may be eligible for much larger research grants another major topic with a lasting impact was about whether a model needs an input of economic theory or not or equally can a satisfactory model be achieved just by introspection without any use of data i can recommend a very interesting short article on this topic titled methodenstreit or battle of the models by daniel fusfield in the new palgrave 1987 the battle was between carl menger and gustav schmoller starting in the 1880s with menger in favor of pure theory and schmoller wanting to use just an empirical approach unfortunately their initial debate became confused in a more political one with menger pushing laissez faire policies whereas schmoller supported interventionist government policy approaches essentially right versus left in today s terminology fusfield states that on the basic issue of the place of theory and empirical studies in economics menger and schmoller agreed that both were necessary they disagreed on the emphasis to be placed on each and their role in the development of conclusions menger correctly pointed out that a model based just on data is limited in generality because the data cover only some of the possible space it needs correct theory to go beyond the sample space he also said that data acted as a bridge between the principles of pure economics and the policy problems of applied economics in fact he warned against policy analysis without an empirical study schmoller was less generous to theorists finding the work too abstract irrelevant and based on assumptions that are unrealistic a later similar discussion took place between koopmans 1947 and burns and mitchell 1947 that influenced modeling into the 1960s and 1970s where do we stand 115 years later in this discussion in many ways it seems quite modern certainly compared to some of the remarks made around real business cycle theory a few years back

the probable foundations of sustainabilism information energy and entropy based definition of capital homo sustainabiliticus and the need for a new gold abstract this conceptual interdisciplinary paper will start with an introduction to the new networked knowledge based global economy and the importance of intellectual and specifically human capital next an advanced definition of human and other forms of capital using information energy and entropy will be introduced this will be followed by a discussion of the premises framing the study of economics and will focus on the role of law in the economy afterwards the paper will suggest the addition of a new model of humans that should serve as the base for the concept of law the homo sustainabiliticus ensuing this discussion and consistent with the newly proposed definition of capital a proposal for a new currency new gold will be offered this proposal suggests viewing usable renewable energy knowledge and data as the most important assets for the 21st century and is seen as the building block for the new sustainabilistic economy

general to specific modelling using pcgets this review examines the facilities provided by pcgets version 1 0 an oxmetrics module designed to implement automated general to specific model selection in the context of cross section or dynamic time series models that are linear in the parameters a cross section empirical example is used to illustrate the steps involved the output produced and the options available for modellers copyright blackwell publishing ltd 2003

ecological public functions and fiscal equalisation at the local level in germany abstract the concept of sustainability requires the acknowledgement and appropriate financing of ecological economic and social public functions at all levels of government whereas the significance of socio economic functions has a comparably long tradition in federal systems the respective consideration of ecological functions is still waiting to be fully realised the aim of this article is to analyse the roles fiscal federalism and fiscal instruments can play in addressing ecological public functions assigned to decentralised jurisdictions in federal systems for this purpose an investigation of intergovernmental fiscal relations and their significance for the local level is carried out by way of example for the federal republic of germany based on a status quo analysis of the various german fiscal equalisation laws at the local level the article presents options for systematically integrating neglected ecological functions and indicators into the existing legal framework the empirical analysis shows that end of the pipe and infrastructure related ecological functions are already strongly integrated by way of conditional grants however precautionary functions such as nature and resource conservation issues are still largely absent therefore a comprehensive consideration of ecological public functions in germany calls for the integration of nature conservation issues and respective indicators into the system of intergovernmental fiscal relations

models of military expenditure a brief review of the extensive empirical literature devoted to explaining levels of military expenditure indicates a wide variety of unreconciled results however comparing the alternative models is not straightforward this paper uses british post war military expenditures to illustrate some of the methodological issues involved in model comparison evaluation and selection starting from two published models for the uk a systematic specification search leads to a new model which dominates alternative specifications passes a wide range of misspecification tests and also fits well to french data

environmental policy in a federation with special interest politics and inter governmental grants the paper explores the potential effect of intergovernmental grants igg on sub national local environmental policy in a federal structure in the model a politically inclined local government receives campaign contributions from the polluters lobby in return for lower pollution taxes a benevolent federal government uses igg as an incentive to reduce the resulting distortion in the local pollution tax igg are formulaic transfers that are conditional on pollution levels lower pollution in a sub national jurisdiction relative to others translates into a higher share of the grant and vice versa in equilibrium the grant effect reduces the distortion created in the pollution tax by the lobby effect and may even lead to a higher than pigouvian tax when the local government assigns a large enough weight on social welfare and or when the grant is large enough further igg result in the tax levels of jurisdictions becoming interdependent in an interesting way environmental policies in two jurisdictions may become strategic complements or substitutes depending on their relative pollution levels the possibility of strategic substitution implies that federal welfare may not increase even when environmental policy becomes stricter in one state

community currency ccs in spain an empirical study of their social effects despite its sudden proliferation along the economic crisis period no previous study has investigated the social effects of the community currency ccs experiences in spain previous research on ccs experiences from different countries provided evidences about social capital improvement introducing ccs as sustainability tools this research uses the theoretical frameworks of social capital and complex adaptive systems to approach concepts like sustainability networks trust norms participation and cooperation statistical analysis of the data collected in june 2013 through online survey explores social capital and resilience indicators among the spanish exchange community users concluding that spanish ccs systems improve community social capital through the proposed dimensions although they are in an early stage and several weakness need to be corrected the values motivations attitude and positive perception of their members suggest that ccs could be appropriate tools for sustainability due its potential to improve social capital and resilience detected weakness may affect the interests and commitment of their members therefore experience from senior currency systems may help them to face adversities and fully develop their potential for sustainability

evolutionary strategies in environmental policy abstract many of today s environmental problems can be attributed to a difference in the development of ecological and economic systems both kinds of systems develop over time but so far they have followed different organizational principles with respect to the basic factors energy matter information space and time the types of environmental problems encountered pose particular difficulties because of the different temporal and spatial characteristics of markets and ecosystems in the long run cultural evolution and hence economic development cannot progress without considering fundamental laws and principles of nature equilibrium oriented concepts in environmental economics aiming at the internalization of externalities do not offer adequate solutions to these problems policy approaches favouring environmental standards based on current knowledge and technology equally are of little help either the knowledge of complex interactions in natural systems is missing to exactly determine precise standards or past and continuing processes often time delayed make them obsolete chronic and pervasive environmental problems call for an enhancement of environmental policy that encompasses a process orientation while considering ecological principles of system development evolutionary strategies increasingly have to adapt economic patterns of development to ecological patterns of development environmental policy goals and corresponding instruments can be designed to continuously set signals for long term structural change the basic factor energy will be used to illustrate evolutionary strategies regarding direct and indirect effects an analysis of the scandinavian experience with carbon and energy taxes exemplifies first successful steps at implementation

community currencies and sustainable development a systematic review community or complementary currency systems have spread all around the world most often they have been promoted as tools to foster sustainable development albeit they differ in terms of specific objectives while many case studies have tried to assess the actual impact of these systems there has been no global analysis summarizing their global impact this paper aims to fill the gap by exploring whether complementary currencies contribute to the three pillars of sustainable development we use the systematic review methodology on an original dataset gathering most academic publications on the topic in english french and spanish our main findings suggest that community currencies mostly contribute to social sustainability and that their economic benefits are somewhat limited due to their small scale and the lack of awareness on their scope moreover very few studies explicitly identify environmental outcomes finally this review reveals some limits regarding current methods for impact assessment in this field therefore it encourages more standardization to provide greater accuracy and strengthen the legitimacy of community currencies in order to foster their continued development

a practice approach to the institutionalization of economic degrowth the degrowth literature is rich in critical debate about the unsustainability of the growth economies and in normative envisioning of a transition it lacks analyses on actual materialization and the nature of the change required there have been calls for research that pay attention to institutional constraints and possibilities of implementing a democratic process of sustainable degrowth this paper introduces a practice approach to institutional agency as a fruitful tool for future studies and politics of degrowth the potential of this approach is demonstrated through a struggle between finnish timebanking activists and the tax authorities the cultural and institutional transition promoted by radical bottom up initiatives requires a disruption of existing institutional arrangements some of which may be very persistent and supported by defenders who want to maintain the present institutional order in the case example the authorities and politicians managed to preserve the mechanisms through which certain sanctions are associated with the non compliance of timebanking with the income tax law a practice approach to institutionalization increases our understanding of institutional persistence and makes visible forces that support the present status quo it also enhances understanding of the opposing dynamics and gives tools to engage in more effective efforts to change institutions

smarter than metering coupling smart meters and complementary currencies to reinforce the motivation of households for energy savings a crucial argument in the debate around smart meter deployment in the eu is the potential for households to save energy one strand of research in this field has investigated the effects on household energy consumption of the feed back provided by smart meters however another aspect that deserves attention is the motivation for households to use the feed back to save energy this paper explores how the emerging trend of using complementary currencies for sustainability policies could translate into new interventions adapted to the smart meter deployment and capable of promoting more autonomous forms of motivation compared to interventions using official currencies three systems designs rewarding regulatory and hybrid are presented and discussed within the framework of self determination theory because the rewarding system s1 can contribute positively people s basic needs for autonomy competence and relatedness it could lead to more autonomous forms of motivation the conclusions regarding the regulatory system s2 are less clear although the hybrid variant s3 that integrates mechanisms from the rewarding system into the regulatory system could be perceived as more consonant with people s basic need for autonomy

protected areas local governments and strategic interactions the case of the icms ecologico in the brazilian state of parana various conservation initiatives have been implemented in developing countries with increasing involvement on the part of local governments a concern in entrusting decisions to local governments is that the effectiveness of the conservation instrument can be threatened by interactions among these local governments we examine this concern with respect to an ecological fiscal transfer mechanism the icms ecologico implemented in brazil in the early 1990 s in order to reduce biodiversity loss the mechanism enables states to reward municipalities for the creation and management of protected areas we describe this mechanism present a conceptual framework aimed at understanding the potential sources and consequences of interactions among local governments on the effectiveness of a decentralized mechanism aimed at promoting the creation of protected areas and propose an empirical application using a bayesian spatial tobit model our empirical investigation on the creation of protected areas in the state of parana between 2000 and 2010 reveals strategic substitutability in municipalities conservation decisions this finding also leads us to discuss the issue of identification of a negative spatial lag coefficient when there is a positive spatial error correlation

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

circular futures what will they look like abstract the circular economy is argued to hold great promise for achieving sustainability yet there is a dearth of research about what a circular future may look like to address this gap this paper proposes different plausible scenarios for a circular future using a 2 2 scenario matrix method developed through a thought experiment and a focus group key drivers of change in this matrix are the nature of technologies deployed high tech or low tech innovations and the configuration of the governance regime centralized or decentralized from this our paper builds four scenario narratives for the future of a circular economy planned circularity bottom up sufficiency circular modernism and peer to peer circularity it delineates the core characteristics and the upsides and downsides of each scenario it shows that a circular economy can be organized in very contrasting ways by generating insights about alternative circular futures these scenarios may provide a clearer directionality to policy makers and businesses helping them both anticipate and understand the consequences of a paradigm shift towards a circular economy and shape policies and strategies especially in the context of so called mission oriented innovation policies they may also provide a sound basis for quantitatively modelling the impacts of a circular economy

local currencies for purposive degrowth a quality check of some proposals for changing money as usual this article provides a quality check of the degrowth movement s proposal of local currencies as tools for advancing socially equitable and ecologically sustainable degrowth the article draws comprehensively upon mainly english language academic research about four widespread local currency types lets time banks hour currencies and convertible local currencies clcs to assess their performance with respect to four degrowth related criteria community building advancement of alternative values in economic exchange facilitation of alternative livelihoods and eco localization lets have been found to support alternative livelihoods under quite uncommon conditions and contribute indirectly to eco localization by moderately facilitating informal resale repair and sharing of commercially produced goods although their burdensome management and confinement to small memberships limit their usefulness time banks help expand social networks and are best at reaching the socially excluded however they are confined to unskilled personal services and dependent on grant funding hour currencies do not stand out with regard to any criteria but may have a minor capacity to promote local purchasing clcs are best at attracting local businesses but no significant evidence of their said capacity to localize supply chains has surfaced as yet and their business friendly design works to the detriment of other criteria in sum existing research provides a very weak basis for advocating local currencies as tools for purposive degrowth local currencies are here categorized as two utopian socialist approaches the behind society s back variety of lets and hour currencies and the appeal to elites variety of time banks and clcs marx and engels s critiques of these approaches remain valid successful monetary systems require resources that are not available behind society s back notably the power to levy taxes and designate by which means they can be paid local currencies that appeal for elite support without mass popular backing have shaken off most radical connotations and are vulnerable to changing policy agendas given the present historical conjuncture of popular outrage against the banking sector this paper argues that the degrowth movement would improve its chances of contributing to purposive degrowth by prioritizing government centred ecological reform of the monetary system over local currencies

willing consumers or locked in policies for a sustainable consumption postmodern explanations of consumer behaviour stress social and psychological factors to the neglect of explanations based on structural issues such as the working life conditions which favour a work and spend lifestyle the conditions of urban living or the effects of pervasive marketing this paper argues that consumers may not be so keen and willing but are rather locked in by circumstances some of these circumstances are deliberately created by other interests and a policy to limit consumption must look for adequate means over a large and varied field in the end shorter working hours may be an important key to a more sustainable future 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the search for a stable money demand function a survey of the post 1973 literature phe question of whether the demnand function for money is stable is one of the most important recurring issues in the theory and application of macroeconomic policy what is being sought in a stable demand function is a set of necessary conditions for money to exert a predictable influence on the economy so that the central bank s control of the money supply can be a useful instrument of economic policy as such the notion of a stable demand function appears to involve three key elements e g john t boorman 1976 p 317 and david e w laidler 1977 pp 34 35 first the demand for money relation should be highly predictable in a statistical sense as measured by the usual goodness of fit statistics precision of estimated coefficients and presumably its ability to forecast accurately out of sample second a stable demand function for money has relatively few arguments a relationship that requires knowledge about a large number of variables in order to pin it down is in effect not predictable finally the variables that appear as arguments in the function should represent significant links to spending and economic activity in the real sector in sum a stable demand function for money means that the quantity of money is predictably related to a small set of key variables linking money to the real sector of the economy the importance of a stable money demand function for monetary policy can be illustrated with the standard is lm model in which interest rates and gnp are the endogenous variables in this context a stable demand function for money translates into a well defined relationship between money interest rates and gnp

using model selection algorithms to obtain reliable coefficient estimates this review surveys a number of common model selection algorithms msas discusses how they relate to each other and identifies factors that explain their relative performances at the heart of msa performance is the trade off between type i and type ii errors some relevant variables will be mistakenly excluded and some irrelevant variables will be retained by chance a successful msa will find the optimal trade off between the two types of errors for a given data environment whether a given msa will be successful in a given environment depends on the relative costs of these two types of errors we use monte carlo experimentation to illustrate these issues we confirm that no msa does best in all circumstances even the worst msa in terms of overall performance the strategy of including all candidate variables sometimes performs best viz when all candidate variables are relevant we also show how 1 the ratio of relevant to total candidate variables and 2 data generating process noise affect relative msa performance finally we discuss a number of issues complicating the task of msas in producing reliable coefficient estimates

the role of social processes for sustainable consumption abstract rethinking the role consumption plays in individual well being and societal development is key for addressing pressing environmental problems we perceive the need to envision consumption as a social activity which requires the active engagement of consumers in order to better enhance their quality of life the paper focuses on the framework of product service systems one particular programme for more sustainable consumption after reviewing the potential benefits and limitations of this programme we explore the opportunities to learn from participatory and community based strategies like lets

recent progress in applied bayesian econometrics abstract bayesian methods are widely used by theoretical econometricians and statisticians but have not won widespread acceptance from applied researchers after briefly describing the basic of the bayesian approach we discuss several issues relating to the empirical application of bayesian methods the existing bayesian empirical literature is also partially summarized the remainder of the paper offers a non technical survey of some recent computational advances in bayesian econometrics the overall goal is to persuade economists that bayesian methods are both computationally feasible and easy to implement in empirical research

what will take the con out of econometrics the paper begins with the question of whether leamer s extreme bounds analysis eba really does take the con out of econometrics by analytically demonstrating that the extreme bounds are simply functions of the f statistic for the deletion of variables from a regression we conclude that the information provided by eba represents no advance over that available from traditional methods furthermore there is a degree of arbitrariness in eba which exactly parallels the selective reporting of regressions it was designed to supplant the last part of the paper attempts a positive response to its title by following a well defined series of modelling steps we maintain that cooley and le roy s eba derived conclusions concerning the interest elasticity of money demand owe more to a faulty methodology than to the data this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

sustainable consumption the new economics and community currencies developing new institutions for environmental governance seyfang g 2006 sustainable consumption the new economics and community currencies developing new institutions for environmental governance regional studies 40 781 791 sustainable consumption is gaining currency as a new environmental policy objective but there is a limit to the changes in consumption behaviour that individuals can make within current socio economic frameworks the new economics literature argues that sustainable consumption is characterized by five factors localization reducing ecological footprints community building collective action and building new social institutions these form a set of indicators for the evaluation of initiatives and policies community currencies have been put forward as a new tool to promote sustainable consumption but until now there has been no appraisal of their ability to deliver this goal three different community currency types are described and their effectiveness and potential in enabling more sustainable consumption patterns are assess

allocating scarce financial resources across regions for environmental management in queensland australia abstract regional governance agencies such as catchment or watershed management committees are playing a significant role in the management of natural resources these agencies often depend on central governance agencies for their revenue in australia this has created a policy dilemma for federal and state governments how should limited funds be allocated to regional groups this question is being encountered by central governance agencies worldwide based on a study from queensland australia this paper shows how multiple criteria analysis mca was used to inform fiscal equalisation of environmental funds worth a 146 6 million across 14 regions fiscal equalisation aims to equalise the ability of each region to address its natural resource management problems the mca approach allows decision makers to weight criteria and define a needs index which forms the basis for allocating funds

growing green money mapping community currencies for sustainable development abstract parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non governmental organisations ngos informed by ecological economics perspectives on development value economic scale and growth and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems these parallel systems of exchange or community currencies are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development building social capital and substituting for material consumption valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets and challenging the growth based monetary system however this international movement towards community based ecological economic practices is under researched this paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies it identifies the diversity scale geography and development trajectory of these initiatives discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development and identifies future research needs to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives

decentralization effects in ecological fiscal transfers a bayesian structural time series analysis for portugal portugal has a unitary system in which the central government transfers funds to lower government levels for their public functions in 2007 portugal introduced ecological fiscal transfers eft where municipalities receive transfers for hosting protected areas pa we study whether introducing eft in portugal incentivized municipalities to designate pa and has led to a decentralization of conservation decisions we employ a bayesian structural time series approach to estimate the effect of introducing eft in comparison to a simulated counterfactual time series quantitative results show a significant increase in the ratio of municipal and national pa designations following portugal s eft introduction which we infer to be a causal consequence the analysis furthermore places emphasis on the importance of relevant municipal conservation competencies for the functioning of the instrument results have important implications for conservation policy making in terms of allocating budgets and competencies in multi level governments

the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 1989 the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 applied economics vol 21 no 8 pp 1063 1086

limits to growth and sustainable development grappling with ecological realities abstract the paper has three main sections the first discusses the limits to growth debate of the 1970s identifying concern with three potential kinds of limits ecological limits to the physical scale of economic activity limits to the economic welfare to be derived from growth of economic activity and social limits to economic growth the second section explores the same issues through the sustainable development literature of the late 1980s and the 1990s to date the principal change over the 20 years concerned a period also framed by the stockholm environment conference and unced is far greater acceptance of the existence of threatening environmental damage and the need for active policy to address it no consensus has yet emerged however on the relationship between economic growth and welfare or ecological or social sustainability the third section indicates the scale of the task if global economic growth is to be reconciled with ecological sustainability and advocates a strategy for sustainability that principally involves differentiating between north and south and forging new economic relations between them

sensitivity analyses of the deterrence hypothesis let s keep the econ in econometrics abstract leamer and mcmanus applied extreme bound analysis eba in an empirical study of the deterrent effects of capital punishment and other penalties their analysis has questioned the validity of the deterrence hypothesis the thrust of our paper is twofold first by applying eba to well known econometric models of demand production and human capital investment our analysis exposes and illustrates the inherent flaws of eba as a method of deriving valid inferences about model specification second since the analysis shows leamer and mcmanus s inferences about deterrence to be based on a flawed methodology we offer an alternative theory based sensitivity analysis of estimated deterrent effects using similar data our analysis supports the deterrence hypothesis more generally it emphasizes the indispensable role of theory in guiding sensitivity analyses of model specification

transaction network analysis for studying local exchange trading systems lets research potentials and limitations the numerous studies of local exchange trading systems lets have so far been based mostly on qualitative approaches the aim of this paper is to introduce the method of transaction network analysis as an important complement to these studies enabling one to quantitatively describe functioning of lets in terms of the actual flows of currency materialized transactions and topology of the exchange network the types of information markedly missing in most of the existing lets studies we demonstrate the potentials of the method on the case of the lets initiative rozle se based in brno czech republic looking at the transaction flows using the network analysis approach we identify the key members of the group network characteristics of the exchange system and its development over time this allows us not only to provide a complex description of the system but also to simulate certain scenarios e g removal of a key person from the network within the discussion of potentials and limitations of applying transaction network analysis for studying lets and other community currency initiatives e g time banks on a larger scale we also provide a free accessible software tool for doing so and invite other researchers to cooperate on the task

the ecology of money a critical assessment abstract this paper assesses the proposal to transform the monetary system into an ecology of money that is into a system made of a large diversity of complementary currencies its central aim is to examine whether this proposal could provide a systemic solution to both the ecological and financial crises as several authors most notably lietaer and douthwaite have argued to this end it analyses the two main arguments in favour of this proposal first it focuses on the claim that an ecology of money would be more resilient and less prone to crisis than the present monetary system it shows that this argument suffers from several conceptual flaws and argues that it fails to provide sufficient normative reasons to favour an ecology of money second this paper analyses the claim that an ecology of money could help defeat the monetary growth imperative that supposedly plagues our economies the paper raises serious doubts about the existence of such an imperative and questions the claim that an ecology of money could contribute to weaken it in a significant way

money and the commons an investigation of complementary currencies and their ethical implications the commons is a concept increasingly used with the promise of creating new collective wealth in the aftermath of the economic and financial crises finance and money have been criticized and redesigned to serve the collective interest in this article we analyze three types of complementary currency cc systems community currencies inter enterprise currencies and cryptocurrencies we investigate whether these systems can be considered as commons to address this question we use two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate the new commons in organization studies and the common good in business ethics our findings show that these monetary systems and organizations may be considered as commons under the common good framework since they promote the common interest by creating new communities nevertheless according to the new commons framework only systems relying on collective action and self management can be said to form commons this allows us to suggest two new categories of commons the social commons which fit into both the new commons and the common good frameworks and the commercial commons which fit the common good but not the new commons framework this research advances a new conceptualization of the commons and of the ethical implications of ccs

making sense of a crank case monetary diversity in argentina 1999 2003 based on empirical data this study discusses the introduction acceptance and circulation of two complementary currencies in argentina that do not fit well in the main approaches to the nature of money these two monetary circuits provincial and community currencies were introduced as units of account to denominate the value of debt and circulated as means of payment to overcome monetary stringency during the crisis of 1999 2003 after discussing several theories on the nature of money we reflect on the institutional significance of currency circuits as concurrent and rather stable pairs of trade and money we suggest that several theories of money need to be combined to account for the variety and heterogeneity of daily monetary practices in a broad spectrum of countries

the governance features of social enterprise and social network activities of collective food buying groups abstract collective food buying groups such as community supported agriculture or self organised citizen groups for delivery of food baskets have emerged throughout the world as an important niche innovation for promoting more sustainable agri food systems these initiatives seek to bring about societal change they do so however not through protest or interest based lobbying but by organising a protected space for learning and experimentation with lifestyle changes for sustainable food consumption and production practices in particular they aim to promote social learning on a broad set of sustainability values beyond a focus on fresh and healthy food only which characterizes many of the individual consumer oriented local food chain initiatives this paper analyses the governance features of such local food buying groups by comparing 104 groups in five cities in belgium we find that the social networking activities of these groups as compared to the social enterprise activities have led to establish specific governance mechanisms whereas the main focus of the social enterprise activities is the organisation of the food provisioning logistics the focus of the social network activities is the sharing of resources with other sustainable food initiatives dissemination of information and broader discussion on sustainability issues

crime punishment and the market for offenses crime is a subject of intense emotions conflicting ideologies however economists have generally explained it as a reflection of individual choice and equilibrating market forces two major themes of the literature are outlined the evolution of a market model to explain the diversity of crime across time and space and the debate about the usefulness of positive versus negative incentives systematic analyses generally indicate that crime is affected on the margin by both positive and negative incentives there are serious limitations to the effectiveness of incapacitation and rehabilitation and optimal enforcement strategies involve trade offs between narrow efficiency and equity considerations

a comparison among partial adjustment rational expectations and error correction estimates of the canadian demand for money starting from a dynamic optimization principle the currently most popular approaches to modelling money demand functions are derived the partial adjustment adaptive expectations rational expectations and error correction mechanism formulations are then estimated using a common data set the error correction mechanism equation is found to dominate the others either because their implicit restrictions are rejected rational expectations or by employing the encompassing principle partial adjustment adaptive expectations surprisingly all three forms have similar long run solutions since the short run dynamics differ substantially the results have important implications for the conduct of monetary policy

inflation dynamics and food prices in ethiopia during the global food crisis ethiopia experienced an unprecedented increase in inflation among the highest in africa using monthly data over the past decade we estimate models of inflation to identify the importance of the factors contributing to cpi inflation and three of its major components cereal prices food prices and non food prices our main finding is that movements in international food and goods prices measured in domestic currency determined the long run evolution of domestic prices in the short run agricultural supply shocks affected food inflation causing large deviations from long run price trends monetary policy seems to have accommodated price shocks but money supply growth affected short run non food price inflation our results suggest that when analyzing inflation in developing economies with a large food share in consumer prices world food prices and domestic agricultural production should be considered omitting these factors can lead to biased results and misguided policy decisions

econometric modelling of non ferrous metal prices abstract this article evaluates the significance of the empirical models and the distributional properties of prices in non ferrous metal spots and futures markets published in leading refereed economics and finance journals between 1980 and 2002 the survey focuses on econometric analyses of pricing and return models applied to exchange based spot and futures markets for the main industrially used non ferrous metals namely aluminium copper lead nickel tin and zinc published empirical research is evaluated in the light of the type of contract examined frequency of data used choice of both dependent and explanatory variables use of proxy variables type of model chosen economic hypotheses tested methods of estimation and calculation of ses for inference reported descriptive statistics use of diagnostic tests of auxiliary assumptions use of nested and non nested tests use of information criteria and empirical implications for non ferrous metals

compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers the case of india this paper studies mechanisms to compensate local government for the public provision of environmental services using the theory of optimal fiscal transfers in india especially we analyzed the role of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in achieving the environmental goal simply assigning the functions at appropriate levels does not ensure optimal provision of environmental services optimality in resource allocation could be achieved by combining the assignment system with an appropriate compensation mechanism intergovernmental fiscal transfers would be a suitable mechanism for compensating the local governments and help in internalizing the spillover effects of providing environmental public goods illustrations are also provided for india