Sustainability: I know it when I see it

Anyone trying to communicate and implement sustainable practices quickly runs into definitional difficulties, which translate into operational difficulties. Simply put, sustainability, and its predecessor term, sustainable development, mean different things to different people. How can we hope to achieve a shared vision when we're not certain what vision we are sharing? This is not simply a rhetorical question — businesses and other organizations require measurable, manageable objectives to achieve progress in this area of endeavor.The challenge of defining sustainability has already been noted by a number of writers. The most common definition, “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” first appeared in the World Commission on Environment and Development's report, Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), but there are many, many more definitions and interpretations.This note takes a different approach. Rather than seeking or proposing yet another definition of sustainability, it uses Wordle, a web-based data visualization tool, to generate a “tag cloud” of the common elements in over one hundred previously-published definitions. The result is a visually-appealing menage of terms providing a composite picture of the essence of sustainability.     

My five pounds are not as good as yours, so I will spend them

An experimental approach is used to examine how money denomination and the choice between or availability of coins and banknotes may influence consumers’ purchasing behaviour. Evidence shows that for small amounts of money, consumers may prefer a smaller monetary value in banknotes rather than a higher value in coins. Findings also suggest that people carrying coins are more likely to make a purchase of small value than people not carrying coins.     

When it Rains,it Pours: Estimating the Spatial Spillover Effect of Rainfall

Environmental and Resource Economics - A large fraction of the world’s poor rely on rain-fed agriculture, which makes them vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns. In this paper, we...     

繁荣的依据--我和我所认同的经济学观点

改革开放以来我国经历了两次宏观经济的繁荣时期，也曾两度遭遇到经济萧条的威胁，经济的繁荣与经济的相对萧条之间是否存在一定的困果关系呢？是什么造就了中国经济近20年的快速增长？这些因素是否能够继续推动中国经济的快速增长？本试图给出这个问题的一种答案。     

It pays to do good,but not to do more good than it pays: A note on the survival of altruism

Recently Becker and Hirshleifer have attempted to explain the survival of altruism. Altruism ‘pays’ in their framework because it permits mutual cooperation or exchange to take place. This paper shows that these arguments are invalid. This case is that in any environment where altruism pays there is always an egoistic strategy called cooperation egoism — which yields an even higher return. In equilibrium, this will be anticipated so that, while altruism may pay off in a disequilibrium situation, in equilibrium egoism and not altruism has survival value.     

The state spends first: Logic,facts, fictions,open questions

Keynesian (or Kaleckian) logic leads post Keynesian economists to presume that a variation of state revenues from taxes and sales of Treasury bonds are the result of a variation in state spending and not the other way around. In the past two decades, the exponents of modern monetary theory (MMT) have been at the forefront in asserting the Keynesian (or Kaleckian) logic of this proposition, filling a theoretical vacuum in post Keynesian thinking. The question is that MMT consolidates the Treasury and Central Bank (CB) so that the latter automatically creates purchasing power in favor of decisions of the former to spend. Critics, however, point out that most institutional arrangements forbid CBs to finance the Treasury directly. After Lavoie (2013 ———. “The Monetary and Fiscal Nexus of Neo-Chartalism: A Friendly Critical Look.” Journal of Economic Issues, 2013, 42, 1–32. Working paper version, 2013 (available at www.boeckler.de/pdf/v_2011_10_27_lavoie.pdf) [Google Scholar]), the debate has moved forward and seen some convergence. The present paper critically reviews for unfamiliar readers an otherwise almost esoteric but fundamental discussion.