crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

resolving differences in willingness to pay and willingness to accept reply gwendolyn c morrison 1997 raises a logical point regarding our experimental test of the divergence between willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta measures of economic value shogren et al 1994 she argues that our design does not provide a true test of the existence of a fundamental endowment effect since we did not control for the potential of a pivoting indifference map daniel kahneman et al 1990 she concludes that even though our ev idence shows that the mean wtp and wta bids for market goods with close substitutes e g candy bars and coffee mugs converge after market experience the endowment effect might still be alive and well albeit at statisti cally insignificant levels

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 sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change insights from biomass torrefaction in the netherlands sustainable entrepreneurship often requires a purposeful change to the existing business environment market regulations and societal norms and values institutions to ensure sustainable products and services become legitimate and competitive yet how sustainable entrepreneurs alter or create institutions remains unclear we employ a two year comparative case study with four entrepreneurs commercializing torrefied biomass in the netherlands consistent with insights from institutional entrepreneurship research findings show that sustainable entrepreneurs create new symbols theorize construct new measures build consensus and forge new relations to alter or create new institutions moreover we find that entrepreneurial collaboration in the form of a trade association has three feedback effects it creates accessible modes diversity of scope and an increased scale of institutional change strategies we conclude that future studies should further connect sustainable and institutional entrepreneurship research and take group and individual factors into account when explaining how sustainable entrepreneurs engage in institutional change

the disparity between willingness to accept and willingness to pay measures of value psychologists have long argued that people are much more averse to a loss than attracted to an equivalent gain this behavior termed loss aversion has been formalized by kahneman and tversky 1979 in their reformulation of expected utility theory prospect theory in prospect theory the utility function is replaced by a value function that evaluates changes in income from the current level increases in income are weighted by a relatively small marginal utility decreases in income are weighted by a much larger marginal utility in effect the value function implies that a kink in the relationship between utility and income occurs at the initial income or reference point and that the slope of the utility function for losses in income is steeper than it is for gains in a recent paper knetsch and sinden 1984 report a series of experiments that demonstrate the existence of a large disparity between willingness to accept wta and willingness to pay wtp measures of value they argue that the psychological theory of loss aversion explains this difference economic theory would suggest that individuals who exhibit a large disparity between wta and wtp are perhaps underperceiving the value of gains or overperceiving the value of losses are behaving in an irrational manner and will consequently achieve a lower level of well being than if they behaved in a true utility maximizing manner this would in contrast to loss aversion usually imply near equal values for wta and wtp see willig 1976 further documentation of a larger than expected disparity between wta and wtp has been obtained in surveys asking for the value of a variety of public goods for example cummings brookshire and schulze 1986 document six

degrowth from theory to practice abstract the collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best contributions from the second international conference on degrowth exemplifying recent debates in the field and touching on different aspects of the multi dimensional transition at stake moving beyond theory and the construction of the degrowth proposal the articles in this special issue look at particular applications new methodologies and fresh policy options for example social enterprises are evaluated as primer candidates for a sustainable degrowth economy in the north lessons are also drawn from very different parts of the world such as cuba s experience with an oil and commodity shock to which it adapted through the introduction of ecological labour intensive agriculture in urban regions this special issue approaches from a degrowth perspective important sectoral issues in agriculture resource consumption and water the unsustainable fuel dependence of the spanish agrarian sector where the energy input for the production process is six times higher than the energy contained in finished food products is analysed in the context of the industrialization of food production rather than efficiency sufficiency in consumption is proposed as an organising societal principle and a call is made for stronger ngo action and coalition building in the direction of absolute rather than relative consumption reduction the obstacles to sufficiency policies are illustrated with a case study on water in the city of barcelona where a growth discourse is still dominant and a source of a technological and institutional deadlock against softer decentralized and more participatory forms of water management finally many of the contributions in this issue focus on work the policy option of a job guarantee scheme is examined as a tool to decouple jobs from economic growth and fiscal policy by bringing them to the realm of political rights this is complemented by a discussion of the social benefits of an amateur economy through work sharing and a socially beneficial reduction in labour productivity original data from barcelona analysed for this special issue shows that household activities an essential component of a more amateur economy have a much lower intensity of energy use than the paid sector delivery of equivalent services especially government and privatized caring services interesting research questions are identified concerning work under a degrowth trajectory not least whether reducing paid work will be possible in an energy scarce future put together the diverse contributions of this issue show that there is a vibrant and fertile degrowth research agenda with a range of open questions to which the community of this journal has much to offer

recovering measures of advertising carryover from aggregate data the role of the firm s decision behavior data interval bias the biased estimation of advertising carryover in aggregate data can be viewed as a misinterpretation of the aggregate advertising sales relationship due to missing micro advertising data this paper argues that if the researcher does not explicitly model the firm s advertising decisions he will incorrectly interpolate the missing data and thereby allow the firm s decision behavior to influence inferences about advertising carryover drawing upon a general model of advertising decision behavior the expected aggregate form of the koyck relationship is developed and compared to existing bias correction methodologies although it is difficult to find any parsimonious procedure which is robust with respect to all types of decision behavior allowing lagged advertising to enter the classical koyck equation emerges as a simple method of obtaining a reasonable estimate of advertising carryover in aggregate data

economic crisis and social learning for the provision of public services in two spanish municipalities economic crises pose challenges for the provision of public services but may also open up opportunities for social learning about how to achieve a sustainable society the main research question addressed in this paper is can economic crises catalyse social learning for a sustainable society the hypothesis of the paper is that social learning emerges in association with the reduction of consumption levels that follows degrowth or with the reconfiguration of infrastructure management practices and sustainable innovation that could lead to a transition to sustainability following this we empirically examine whether the crisis has led to social learning about the sustainable provision of public services in two similar municipalities in the north of spain after the economic crisis of 2008 we develop an interpretative analysis of individual experiences of learning from the crisis using a set of qualitative interviews with individuals who were involved in key decisions about public service delivery during or immediately after the crisis the analysis suggests that there has been a broader cultural change which is challenging institutional models of regional development that there has been a drive towards greater resource efficiency and that some opportunities have opened for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable innovations the findings support the view that the crisis may have fostered learning responses that could lead to either degrowth or a sustainable transition

are adults better behaved than children age experience and the endowment effect we find that large increases in age do not reduce the endowment effect supporting the hypothesis that people have reference dependent preferences which are not changed by repeated experience getting and giving up goods

environment versus growth a criticism of degrowth and a plea for a growth in recent debates on environmental problems and policies the strategy of degrowth has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth this new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it one conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept another is that degrowth may not be an effective let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure it is subsequently argued that a growth i e being indifferent about growth is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth given that gdp per capita is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare in addition focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic political support than an ex ante explicit degrowth strategy in line with this a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters

an endowment effect for risk experimental tests of stochastic reference points recent models of reference dependent preferences indicate that expectations may play a prominent role in the presence of behavioral anomalies a subset of such expectations based models predicts an endowment effect for risk that risk attitudes differ when reference points change from certain to stochastic in two purposefully simple risk preference experiments eliminating often discussed confounds i demonstrate both between and within subjects such an endowment effect for risk these results provide needed separation between expectations based reference dependent models allow for evaluation of recent theoretical extensions and may help to close a long standing debate in decision science on inconsistency between utility elicitation methodologies

exchange asymmetry in experimental settings abstract we review past trading experiments and present 11 new experiments designed to show how the trading rate responds to alterations of the experimental procedure in agreement with earlier studies results show that if the trade decision is converted to one resembling a choice between goods the exchange asymmetry disappears but otherwise the asymmetry is remarkably robust results also indicate that when trading is public herding can occur which may have caused some of the more extreme examples of the exchange asymmetry and that some of the lack of trade may result from preference indifference nevertheless some form of status quo bias which may consist of a combination of loss aversion gain attraction regret avoidance and dislike of trading and which may be enhanced by indifference between the goods offered probably remains as an important influence on the trading rate

5 information impact and allocation rules in auctions with affiliated private values a laboratory study in affiliated private value auctions each bidder has perfect information regarding his her own value for the object at auction but higher values of the item for one bidder make higher values for other bidders more likely we report on a series of experiments examining three key implications of these auctions i in a first price auction public information about rivals values increases expected revenue ii an english auction increases expected revenue compared to a first price auction and iii a second price auction is isomorphic to an english auction in examining these issues we compare predictions of some ad hoc bidding models with nash equilibrium predictions in the first price auction experiments nash equilibrium bidding theory organizes the data better than either of two ad hoc bidding models public information about others valuations does increase average revenue but the increase in revenue is smaller and less reliable than predicted under risk neutral nash equilibrium bidding lower average revenue might be attributed to risk aversion while the high variability is attributed to a sizable frequency of individual bidding errors relative to the theory bidding theory precisely organizes english auction outcomes after a brief initial learning period the dominant strategy equilibrium does not organize second price auctions nearly as well as market prices persistently exceed predicted prices the difference between english and second price outcomes is attributed to effects of different information flows inherent in the structure of the two institutions on eliminating bidding errors revenue impacts of these two institutions relative to a first price auction are examined in light of observed bidding patterns

intertemporal aggregation of heterogeneous consumers abstract this paper deals with a relatively unexamined facet of stochastic brand switching models their connection to market share models we derive a composite market share model based on aggregation of heterogeneous markovian type individuals each purchasing a brand from the product class several times during the period of analysis the characteristics of this composite model are examined and interestingly suggest a markov type market share model moreover this examination sheds some light on a phenomenon uncovered in econometric studies of market share response to advertising the slow decay of the lagged market share term as the length of the measurement period is increased

market simulation and the provision of public goods a non paternalistic response to anomalies in environmental evaluation most normative economics assumes that individuals have coherent preferences this paper responds to growing evidence of failures of this assumption particularly in the context of stated preference methods widely used in environmental policy analysis it proposes a non paternalistic concept of consumer sovereignty that does not assume preference coherence is satisfied by competitive markets and can be applied to the provision of public goods a key implication is that decisions should reflect valuations revealed at the point of consumption such valuations which can be inferred from hedonic prices may be less susceptible to willingness to accept wta willingness to pay wtp disparities than those elicited by stated preference methods

willingness to pay compensating variation and the cost of commitment hicksian welfare theory is static in nature but many decisions are made in a dynamic environment we present a dynamic model of an agent s decision to purchase or sell a good under the realistic conditions of uncertainty irreversibility and learning over time her willingness to pay wtp contains both the intrinsic value of the good as in hicksian theory plus a commitment cost associated with delaying to obtain more information the hicksian equivalence between wtp willingness to accept wta and compensating and equivalent variations no longer holds the wtp and wta divergence may arise and observed wtp values are not always appropriate for welfare analysis jel d60 d83

how basic are behavioral biases evidence from capuchin monkey trading behavior behavioral economics has demonstrated systematic decision making biases in both lab and field data do these biases extend across contexts cultures or even species we investigate this question by introducing fiat currency and trade to a colony of capuchin monkeys and recovering their preferences over a range of goods and gambles we show that capuchins react rationally to both price and wealth shocks but display several hallmark biases when faced with gambles including reference dependence and loss aversion given our capuchins inexperience with money and trade these results suggest that loss aversion extends beyond humans and may be innate rather than learned

strong sustainable consumption governance precondition for a degrowth path this paper aims to link two debates and literatures at the cutting edge of sustainable development research and governance sustainable consumption and degrowth interestingly these literatures have only recently started to exchange and integrate insights despite their similar interest in the fundamental systemic challenges to sustainable development the paper argues that this lack of connection is due to a predominance of perspectives in sustainable consumption governance that focus almost exclusively on questions of efficiency gains this weak sustainable consumption governance however is not able to address the challenges to sustainable development arising from overconsumption in general or the rebound effect and distributive issues in particular in contrast a strong sustainable consumption perspective provides a basis for a promising inquiry into the linkages between consumption and sustainable development as well as a fruitful exchange with degrowth specifically it allows the delineation of relevant insights on the role of values in governance obstacles to political reform and promising political strategies for the degrowth debate and literature

exchange asymmetries in productive assets tools fertilizer or cash abstract exchange asymmetries in individual decision making have attracted substantial attention from economists since thaler 1980 referred to the phenomenon that losses are weighted more heavily than gains as an endowment effect and related it to loss aversion and prospect theory we used a field experiment to investigate exchange asymmetries in productive assets among poor rural respondents in ethiopia farmers were randomly allocated two types of productive assets tool or fertilizer or cash with a choice to keep the productive asset cash or exchange it for cash productive asset loss aversion was proxied with a separate experiment and was used to assess the importance of endowment effect theory to explain exchange asymmetries our study finds a significant exchange asymmetry and a greater exchange asymmetry for the more popular tool than for fertilizer loss aversion could explain a small but significant part of the exchange asymmetry in tools but trade experience did not reduce the exchange asymmetry the findings are relevant for whether to use targeted in kind or cash transfers to stimulate technology adoption and enhance food security among poor rural households the results imply that in kind transfers may stimulate input use or investments more than cash transfers

evolutionary origins of the endowment effect evidence from hunter gatherers the endowment effect the tendency to value possessions more than non possessions is a well known departure from rational choice and has been replicated in numerous settings we investigate the universality of the endowment effect its evolutionary signi cance and its dependence on environmental factors we experimentally test for the endowment effect in an isolated and evolutionarily relevant population of hunter gatherers the hadza bushmen of northern tanzania we nd that hadza living in isolated regions do not display the endowment effect while hadza living in a geographic region with increased exposure to modern society and markets do display the endowment effect jel c93 d12 o15 this paper uses a natural experiment in a hunter gatherer population to provide evidence on three questions the universality of a behavioral bias the endowment effect its dependence on cultural factors and its evolutionary signi cance systematic deviations from rational behavior have been extensively documented along with their importance for market outcomes yet evidence on the three questions above is sparse especially for biases in economic decisions first most experiments are conducted in industrialized societies and in particular on college campuses so biases could be the result of shared experiences as opposed to innate features of human behavior second cross cultural experiments typically compare very different groups making it hard to attribute differences in behavior to a speci c cultural factor due to omitted variable bias roth et al 1991 henrich et al 2001 2006 third while many contributions in economics have proposed evolutionary

generalizing what is known about temporal aggregation and advertising carryover this paper provides a theoretical explanation for the inconsistent findings from previous econometric analyses of aggregated data concerning the duration of advertising carryover using this theoretical explanation and the knowledge of a data interval bias the paper reviews and summarizes the empirical work in the area of sales response modeling and then after adjusting for aggregation bias presents support for an empirical generalization that the average advertising duration interval is of brief duration typically between six and nine months

carryover effects and temporal aggregation in a partial adjustment model framework this paper discusses the impact of aggregating time series observations on the specification of an econometric model in the framework of a familiar sales response model temporally aggregated specifications are derived it is illustrated that different aggregation schemes provide different models each of them having appealing characteristics furthermore the derived specifications illustrate that frequently calibrated models are misspecified and as such provide biased estimates which significantly affect the interpretation of the results some suggestions are provided for estimating the exact specifications in such a way that the obtained parameter estimates provide correct insights into the underlying response process

grassroots localisation the scalar potential of and limits of the transition approach to climate change and resource constraint this paper engages with the progressive politics of climate change and resource constraint developed by the transition movement which looks to develop a positive local politics of the transition to a low carbon economy and society at the heart of this politics is a vision of economic localisation rooted in a geographical imaginary of market towns with agricultural hinterlands consequently the question of how the transition model can be applied in urban settings has not been clear leading to the implicit assumption that urban transition initiatives are more complex and difficult in contrast this paper argues that the plasticity of transition politics means that in some cases an urban context might be more productive for the development of transition initiatives because it allows for a greater diversity of political action as well as providing a density of networks and resources that can be critical for the survival of grassroots interventions

markets and the measurement of value consumer s surplus and the hicksian measures of compensating and equivalent variation have a long history in empirical economic analysis however at both the theoretical and the empirical level economists psychologists and public choice theorists have not been able to reach a significant consensus regarding the usefulness of these measures economic theorists have only recently dissected the differences which exist between alternative welfare measures in a systematic and transparent fashion in willig 1976 hausman 1981 and takayama 1984 the role of income in determining the correct theoretical measurements of compensating and equivalent variations was exposed during this same period of time theoretical results obtained by the psychologists kahneman and tversky 1979 indicated that the fundamental structure of preferences upon which the theoretical economic results are based is flawed the so called prospect theory of decision developed by these authors indicated that measured of welfare based upon payment will differ from measures of welfare based upon compensation because of the fact that individuals will value losses at a greater marginal rate than gains this difference was then predicted to dominate any income effect important in the economist s model finally this period recorded the emergence of many demand revealing processes which provide individuals with appropriate incentives to accurately reveal their preferences as summarized in coursey and schulze 1986 one interpretation of the literature on incentive compatibility suggests a set of well defined guidelines for improving both the accuracy and validity of compensating and equivalent variation measures these differences in professional preferences regarding what is important in improving the accuracy of economic welfare measurements led john

estimating micro relationships from macro data a comparative study of two approximations of the brand loyal model under temporal aggregation the data interval bias issue in econometric studies of the relationship between advertising and sales first was discussed in jmr by clarke in 1976 within the last few years several studies report

degrowth initiatives in the urban water sector a social multi criteria evaluation of non conventional water alternatives in metropolitan barcelona abstract debates on degrowth have mainly focused on theoretical issues specially around the unsustainability of the current economic model based on growth along those lines some scholars have dealt with the opportunities and barriers to voluntary social action for degrowth at a general level notwithstanding the key importance of such debates we argue that local strategies to move towards degrowth are still to be explored departing from the specific case of water in this paper we interrogate the compatibility of non conventional centralised and decentralised water supply technologies desalination reclaimed water reuse greywater reuse and rainwater harvesting with degrowth principles taking as a case study the metropolitan area of barcelona spain a social multi criteria evaluation has been performed to explore the feasibility desirability and acceptability of both models the paper aims to explore the pros and cons of the different water alternatives in two different and hypothetic societies one based on growth business as usual and one based on degrowth the technical analysis reveals that rainwater harvesting and reclaimed water reuse are the most preferred alternatives from a degrowth perspective while reclaimed water reuse and desalination are the most preferred alternatives from a growth perspective the social multi criteria analysis also serves to unveil which social actors may favour or block the adoption of each alternative notwithstanding that most social groups see desalination as the least desired option this is the hegemonic non conventional source in spain which evidences the prevalence of growth discourses in water management local decision makers city council managers and environmental groups clearly opt for the promotion of rainwater harvesting and as a result they appear as potential allies to promote degrowth in water consumption the social multi criteria evaluation helps to elucidate the main challenges that need to be addressed in the pursuit of a more sustainable and equitable water management

willingness to pay and willingness to accept how much can they differ comment i agree with the point made by edoh y amiran and daniel a hagen 2003 that there can be a substantial or even infinite divergence between the wta and wtp for a public good even where there is a nonzero elasticity of substitution between market goods and the public good provided that the indifference curves are asymptotically bounded with respect to market goods in the manner they describe this is an important point they are also correct to point out that the elasticity of substitution is a local concept whereas their asymptotic boundedness condition applies also for discrete changes my 1991 paper used a local analysis because it was following the structure of the analysis in robert d willig 1976 and alan randall and john r stoll 1980 i wanted to show that while randall and stoll appeared to extend willig s local result on wta versus wtp from price changes to changes in the quantity of a public good the relevant elasticity was in fact different and involved the substitution elasticity as well as the income elasticity i view these points by amiran and hagen as not two separate results but essentially the same result their asymptotic boundedness condition generalizes my zero elasticity of substitution condition to discrete changes the asymptotic boundedness condition can be expressed as follows assuming a bivariate utility function u x q and given a reference point x q associated with a reference utility level u u x q there exists some q q such that for all q q there exists no x such that u x q u in other words no amount of x can substitute for the reduction in public good from q to q q in the case of a zero elasticity of substitution q q but as amiran and hagen show in their theorem 1 this is unnecessarily restrictive when dealing with a discrete reduction in q furthermore their theorem 2 can be viewed as a special case of their theorem 1 in which q 0 which makes q an essential commodity it is well known in consumer theory that the wta to avoid the loss of an essential market good is infinite their theorem 2 extends this result to the case of an essential nonmarket good but as their theorem 1 shows essentialness is not necessary for an infinite wta the boundedness condition is the key and this implies a fundamental lack of substitutability between money market goods and the public good

modelling the effectiveness of climate policies how important is loss aversion by consumers abstracts reliable decarbonisation policies can only be developed with a thorough understanding of how consumers choose between energy technologies current energy models assume optimal consumer decisions which may result in expectations of the effectiveness of climate policies that are far too optimistic prospect theory on the other hand aims to model real life choices based on empirical observations that losses have a relatively larger influence on decisions than gains relative to a reference point here we show for the first time how loss aversion can be included into a global energy model with high spatial resolution using heating technology uptake as a case study we simulate the future heating technology diffusion for 59 world regions covering the globe with and without the consideration of loss aversion we find that ignoring the implications of loss aversion overestimates the market uptake of renewables in individual countries as well as on the global level as a consequence loss aversion results in higher projected co2 emissions by households and the need for much stronger policy instruments for achieving decarbonisation targets in the case of residential heating a carbon tax of 200 tco2 is projected to reduce overall emission levels to a similar extent than a carbon tax of 100 tco2 without the consideration of loss aversion even for similar degrees of decarbonisation accounting for loss aversion implies substantial changes in the underlying technology composition technology choices become subject to a conservative shift towards low carbon technologies which are relatively less efficient but already more established in local markets

sustainability of catch up growth in the extended european union abstract this paper analyses the compatibility of growth and sustainability in the european union eu including a new eu member states from the former soviet bloc eu 10 the extension of eu borders financial and technological support stimulated rapid convergence and decreased the socio economic differences between the old eu 15 and newly accepted eu member states the transition from a command to a market economy resulted in the remarkable increase in resource efficiency and other positive aspects of sustainability along with 1 5 times increased gdp final energy consumption decreased by 20 greenhouse gases emissions by 25 and the emissions of acidifying compounds were halved during the period from the collapse of former soviet bloc to the recent economic crisis however the per capita production and consumption in eu 10 is still approximately half that of eu 15 and further catch up growth should be expected ensuring that economic and social cohesion is not achieved at the expense of increased environmental impact decelerated economic growth is a feature characteristic of mature economies and the gdp growth rate in eu 15 states decreased almost 2 5 times during the last 50 year similar trends are characteristic of other developed countries and market economies have adapted to this trend even with a decelerated growth rate the ecological footprint in developed countries currently exceeds three and more times the allowable limits and almost two thirds of the ecological footprint relates to traditional energy de fossilisation by a greater increase in energy efficiency use of renewable energy and more intense material recovery is the most promising option for reducing the ecological footprint of these countries deceleration of the economic growth rate supplemented by the aforementioned options is a hard but realistic track leading to the reduction of ecological footprint in developed countries to allowable limits without radical de growth in consumption and production that can result in unpredictable and unacceptable consequences

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

exchange asymmetries incorrectly interpreted as evidence of endowment effect theory and prospect theory systematic asymmetries in exchange behavior have been widely interpreted as support for endowment effect theory an application of prospect theory positing that loss aversion and utility function kinks set by entitlements explain observed asymmetries we experimentally test an alternative explanation namely that asymmetries are explained by classical preference theories finding influence through the experimental procedures typically used contrary to the predictions of endowment effect theory we observe no asymmetries when we modify procedures to remove the influence of classical preference theories when we return to traditional type procedures however the asymmetries reappear the results support explanations based in classical preference theories and reject endowment effect theory

temporal aggregation the data interval bias and empirical estimation of bimonthly relations from annual data in an important study reviewing the literature on econometric studies of the relationship between advertising and sales clarke clarke darral g 1976 econometric measurement of the duration of advertising effects on sales j marketing res 13 november 345 357 concluded that the implied duration interval of the effects of advertising on sales were too long when the studies used annual data a theoretical explanation is provided here for the observation of parameter estimates which vary with the data interval employed in the analysis parameter estimates are developed on the basis of data aggregated at various levels of temporal aggregation and compared with theoretical values it is demonstrated that it is possible to recover bimonthly parameters when only annual data are available

degrowth and public health in cuba lessons from the past after the collapse of the communist bloc in the 1990s cuba experienced a severe economic crisis in its drastic reduction in fuels its negative economic growth data due to declining production and consumption rates and in its adaptations to shrinking resources and to local and labor intensive production modes this so called special period had elements of an experiment in degrowth looking at economic social and agricultural reactions to the crisis this paper identifies a consistent commitment to social services a shift in agricultural methods and a high level of social capital as main reasons for this outcome balancing this result with negative implications of the crisis notably the lack of political freedom and of long term sustainability the paper seeks to draw lessons for future degrowth scenarios

social enterprises and non market capitals a path to degrowth the aim of this paper is to look at alternatives to the classic for profit shareholding enterprise and to suggest how such alternatives might be supported within the current economic system another aim is to link the social enterprise and degrowth discourses we first re define the economy as including non monetised sectors the core economy and the economy of nature and discuss the liminal zone of not for profit and not only for profit organisations we then look at social enterprise definitions from a degrowth perspective and explain why the dimensions of scale place environment and provisioning patterns need more space in the social enterprise discourse after that we define non market capitals as capitals taken out of the market and placed under local member democratic control and explain their importance in a degrowth economy we give examples of non market capitals and suggest a model involving mutual support between primary and secondary social enterprises finally we suggest areas where more research is needed in this emerging field of inquiry

less is more the influence of aspirations and priming on well being abstract if resource consumption is to be reduced through economic de growth individuals in industrialized countries may have to accept a reduction in their consumption levels in democratic societies implementing this process requires the consent of a majority of the population however as long as people have high reference levels of consumption lower consumption will induce feelings of loss and hence evoke resistance this paper summarizes recent experimental evidence on some of the factors that determine the utility costs involved in decreasing consumption the results suggest that the acceptance of economic de growth would be facilitated if people s material aspirations were moderated and the extent to which material achievements are emphasized in our daily environment were reduced an analysis of the financial and economic crisis that developed during 2008 suggests that it will not contribute to either of these points rather by increasing the public s focus on the economic sphere even beyond pre crisis levels it may lead to a further decrease in the acceptance of de growth policies in the population

willingness to pay and compensation demanded experimental evidence of an unexpected disparity in measures of value aside from possible income effects measures of the maximum amounts people will pay to avoid a loss and the minimum compensation necessary for them to accept it are generally assumed to be equivalent unexpectedly wide variations between these sums however have been noted in survey responses to hypothetical options this paper reports the results of a series of experiments that confronted people with actual money payments and cash compensations the results indicate that the compensation measure of value seems to exceed significantly the willingness to pay measure which would appear to call into some question various rules of entitlement damage assessments and interpretations of indifference curves