Environmental Taxes, International Capital Mobility and Inefficient Tax Systems: Tax Burden vs. Tax Shifting

This paper deals with the so-called double dividend of an environmental tax reform. In a model with only labor and a polluting input as factors of production, we find that society faces a trade-off between internalizing environmental externalities and raising revenues in the least distortionary way. However, if capital enters the production structure, an ecological tax reform may render the tax structure more efficient from a non-environmental point of view, thereby raising not only environmental quality but also private incomes.     

Toward Consumption Reduction: An Environmentally Motivated Perspective

Faced with the threat of climate change, there is a challenge to promote more environmentally friendly consumption patterns. This work seeks to unearth psychographic and socio‐demographic factors that could trigger environmentally motivated reductions in consumption. The context of empirical investigation is the European Union (i.e., a large‐scale sample of European citizens), with a focus on two key types of environmentally motivated consumption reduction: domestic and “out‐of‐home” (purchasing) activities. The findings show the interrelated effects of environmental knowledge and ecological motivations (in both aggregated and disaggregated forms) on positive and negative environmental attitudes, which in turn influence consumption reduction. There is also evidence of significant moderating influences of perceived environmental threat, gender, age, education, and country value orientation—particularly on “environmental knowledge” links. The findings reported here contribute to theory and practice toward environmental sustainability.     

Critical success factors for managing purchasing groups

In this article, we identify critical success factors for managing small and intensive purchasing groups by comparing successful and unsuccessful purchasing groups in a large-scale survey. The analysis of our data set suggests the following success factors: no enforced participation, sufficient total contribution of efforts, all members contribute with knowledge, continuity in member representation, communication, and fair allocation of savings. The findings suggest among other things that it is important that after a voluntary decision has been taken to cooperate, the members need to show that they are committed. Other factors such as interorganisational trust and formal structures are important when establishing interorganisational cooperation, but should otherwise be considered as necessary yet not sufficient in the management phase of a successful purchasing group.