The sustainability revolution : A societal paradigm shift - ethos, innovation, government transformation

The Sustainability revolution: A societal paradigm shift – ethos, innovation, governance transformation This paper identifies several key mechanisms that underlie major paradigm shifts. After identifying four such mechanisms, the article focuses on one type of transformation which has a prominent place in the sustainability revolution that the article argues is now taking place. The transformation is piecemeal, incremental, diffuse – in earlier writings referred to as ”organic”. This is a more encompassing notion than grassroots, since the innovation and transformation processes may be launched and developed at multiple levels through diverse mechanisms of discovery and development. Major features of the sustainability revolution are identified and comparisons made to the industrial revolution.

Essays on growth and environment

This thesis consists of a summary and four self-contained papers. Paper [I] Following the 1987 report by The World Commission on Environment and Development, the genuine saving has come to play a key role in the context of sustainable development, and the World Bank regularly publishes numbers for genuine saving on a national basis. However, these numbers are typically calculated as if the tax system is non-distortionary. This paper presents an analogue to genuine saving in a second best economy, where the government raises revenue by means of distortionary taxation. We show how the social cost of public debt, which depends on the marginal excess burden, ought to be reflected in the genuine saving. We also illustrate by presenting calculations for Greece, Japan, Portugal, U.K., U.S. and OECD average, showing that the numbers published by the World Bank are likely to be biased and may even give incorrect information as to whether the economy is locally sustainable. Paper [II] This paper examines the relationships among per capita CO2 emissions, per capita GDP and international trade based on panel data spanning the period 1960-2008 for 150 countries. A distinction is also made between OECD and Non-OECD countries to capture the differences of this relationship between developed and developing economies. We apply panel unit root and cointegration tests, and estimate a panel error correction model. The results from the error correction model suggest that there are long-term relationships between the variables for the whole sample and for Non-OECD countries. Finally, Granger causality tests show that there is bi-directional short-term causality between per capita GDP and international trade for the whole sample and between per capita GDP and CO2 emissions for OECD countries. Paper [III] Fundamental questions in economics are why some regions are richer than others, why their growth rates differ, whether their growth rates tend to converge, and what key factors contribute to explain economic growth. This paper deals with the average income growth, net migration, and changes in unemployment rates at the municipal level in Sweden. The aim is to explore in depth the effects of possible underlying determinants with a particular focus on local policy variables. The analysis is based on a three-equation model. Our results show, among other things, that increases in the local public expenditure and income taxe rate have negative effects on subsequent income income growth. In addition, the results show conditional convergence, i.e. that the average income among the municipal residents tends to grow more rapidly in relatively poor local jurisdictions than in initially “richer” jurisdictions, conditional on the other explanatory variables. Paper [IV] This paper explores the relationship between income growth and income inequality using data at the municipal level in Sweden for the period 1992-2007. We estimate a fixed effects panel data growth model, where the within-municipality income inequality is one of the explanatory variables. Different inequality measures (Gini coefficient, top income shares, and measures of inequality in the lower and upper part of the income distribution) are examined. We find a positive and significant relationship between income growth and income inequality measured as the Gini coefficient and top income shares, respectively. In addition, while inequality in the upper part of the income distribution is positively associated with the income growth rate, inequality in the lower part of the income distribution seems to be negatively related to the income growth. Our findings also suggest that increased income inequality enhances growth more in municipalities with a high level of average income than in municipalities with a low level of average income.

Usability of government websites in Uganda

Government websites offer great benefits to citizens and governments. Such benefits, however,cannot be realized if websites are unusable. This study investigates usability of government websites in Uganda.Using the feature investigation method, the study evaluated four Ugandan government websites according tothree perspectives. Results show that websites are partially usable in the design layout and navigationperspectives but are rather weak in stating legal policies. Evaluation results provide the Ugandan governmentwith a clear picture of what needs to be improved according to international website design standards. Moreover,the parsimonious evaluation framework proposed in the research is useful for any country that wants to do aquick and easy evaluation of their government websites.

Local Distributional Effects of Government Cash Transfers in Chile

Despite rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, inequality in Chile has remained high and remarkably constant over the last 20 years, prompting academic and public interest in the subject. Due to data limitations, however, research on inequality in Chile has concentrated on the national and regional levels. The impact of cash subsidies to poor households on local inequality is thus not well understood. Using poverty-mapping methods to asses this impact, we find heterogeneity in the effectiveness of regional and municipal governments in reducing inequality via poverty-reduction transfers, suggesting that alternative targeting regimes may complement current practice in aiding the poor.

December 1996: Hours Increased; Government Depository Centenary

Inside this Issue: AnniversaryReorganizationArchivesFriends OrganizeActive PeopleComings and GoingsAdopt-A-Book

April 2003: Collection Provides Free Public Access to Government Documents

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December 2007: Cooking with the Federal Government

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November 2009: Government Documents and the Arts

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The asymmetric behavior of the U.S public debt

Our main goal in this paper was to measure how e¢ cient is risk sharing between countries. In order to do so, we have used a international risk sharIn this paper we re-analyze the question of the U.S. public debt sustainability by using a quantile autoregression model. This modeling allows for testing whether the behavior of U.S. public debt is asymmetric or not. Our results provide evidence of a band of sustainability. Outside this band, the U.S. public debt is unsustainable. We also nd scal policy to be adequate in the sense that occasional episodes in which the public debt moves out of the band do not pose a threat to long run sustainability.

Investment in human capital in a macrodynamic framework: redistributive taxation, public debt and welfare

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Dinâmica não-linear e sustentabilidade da dívida pública brasileira

This paper contributes to the debate on whether the Brazilian public debt is sustainable or not in the long run by considering threshold effects on the Brazilian Budget Deficit. Using data from 1947 to 1999 and a threshold autoregressive model, we find evidence of delays in fiscal stabilization. As suggested in Alesina (1991), delayed stabilizations reflect the existence of political constraints blocking deficit cuts, which are relaxed only when the budget deficit reaches a sufficiently high level, deemed to be unsustainable. In particular, our results suggest that, in the absence of seignorage, only when the increase in the budget deficit reaches 1.74% of the GDP will fiscal authorities intervene to reduce the deficit. If seignorage is allowed, the threshold increases to 2.2%, suggesting that seignorage makes government more tolerant to fiscal imbalances.

Sustained growth, government expenditure and inflation

We construct and simulate a theoretical model in order to explain particular historical experiences in which inflation acceleration apparently helped to spur a period of economic growth. Government financed expenditures affect positively the produtivity growth in this model so that the distortionary effect of inflation tax is compensated by the productive effect of public expenditures. We show that for some interval of money creation rates there is an equilibrium where money is valued and where steady state physica1 capital grows with inflation. It is a1so shown that zero inflation and growth maximization are never the optimal policies.

The risk-properties of human capital and the design of government policies

Whether human capital increases or decreases wage uncertainty is an open question from an empirical standpoint. Yet, most policy prescriptions regarding human capital formation are based on models that impose riskiness on this type of investment. In a two period and finite type optimal income taxation problem we derive prescriptions that are robust to the risk characteristics of human capital: savings should be discouraged, human capital investments encouraged and both types of investment driven to an efficient level from an aggregate perspective. These prescriptions are also robust to the assumptions regarding what choices are observed, despite policy instruments being not.