Greening the Danes? Experience with consumption and environment policies

Consumer-oriented environmental policies came high on the political agenda during the 1990s. Internationally, consumers were assigned a key role in environmental policies; also in Denmark, political initiatives were taken to promote sustainable consumer behaviour. In this article, the results of Danish policies related to consumption and environment are assessed by considering first, the environmental impacts of the political measures, and second, whether the policies have succeeded in addressing the dynamics behind increasing consumption. The study combines a theoretical understanding of consumption as an inseparable part of daily practices with empirical analyses of three fields of consumption: housing, transportation, and information and communication technology. It is pointed out that policies to promote sustainable consumption are successful only when technological development, economic structures, and information are all in accordance with each other, and this is the case only when sustainable consumption does not conflict with economic growth. A more fundamental critique thus concerns the failure of Danish consumer-oriented environmental policies to address consumption growth and the rising standards for “normal consumption.”     

Bilanzierung des selbst geschaffenen immateriellen Anlageverm?gens nach dem BilMoG – kritische Würdigung und rechnungslegungsanalytische Perspektiven im Lichte der Bilanztheorien

Durch das Bilanzrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz (BilMoG) wurde das pauschale Aktivierungsverbot für selbst erstellte immaterielle Verm?genswerte des Anlageverm?gens gestrichen. Nach §248 Abs. 2 Satz 1 HGB dürfen diese Verm?gensgegenst?nde bei Erfüllung der Verm?gensgegenstandseigenschaften zukünftig aktiviert werden. Auf diese Weise soll die Informationsfunktion des Jahresabschlusses gest?rkt und dessen Aussagekraft verbessert werden. Da Unternehmen das Aktivierungswahlrecht unterschiedlich nutzen werden, stellt sich die Frage nach der Behandlung im Rahmen der Rechnungslegungsanalyse. Vor diesem Hintergrund verdeutlicht der vorliegende Beitrag die Neuregelungen für selbst erstellte immaterielle Verm?gensgegenst?nde des Anlageverm?gens und zeigt unter Berücksichtigung der Bilanztheorie L?sungsm?glichkeiten für rechnungslegungsanalytische Vorgehensweisen auf.     

Cost management and cross-functional communication through product architectures

Product architecture decisions regarding, for example, product modularity, component commonality, and design re-use, are important for balancing costs, responsiveness, quality, and other important business objectives. Firms are challenged with complex tradeoffs between competing design priorities, face the need to facilitate communication between functional silos, and want to learn from past experiences. In this paper, we present a qualitative approach for systematically evaluating the product architecture of a product family, comparing the original architecture objectives and actual experiences.
The intended contribution of our research is threefold: (1) to present a framework that brings together a diverse set of product architecture-related decisions and business performance; (2) to provide a set of metrics that operationalise the variables in the framework, and (3) to provide a workshop protocol that is based on the framework and the metrics. This workshop aims to improve cross-functional communication about the product architecture of an existing product family, and it results in practical improvement actions for future architecture design projects. Experiences with this approach are reported in pilots with Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care, and Philips Consumer Electronics.     

Fiscal Policy and $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$ Emissions of New Passenger Cars in the EU

To what extent have national fiscal policies contributed to the decarbonisation of newly sold passenger cars? We construct a simple model that generates predictions regarding the effect of fiscal policies on average \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions of new cars, and then test the model empirically. Our empirical strategy combines a diverse series of data. First, we use a large database of vehicle-specific taxes in 15 EU countries over 2001–2010 to construct a measure for the vehicle registration and annual road tax levels, and separately, for the \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) sensitivity of these taxes. We find that for many countries the fiscal policies have become more sensitive to \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions of new cars. We then use these constructed measures to estimate the effect of fiscal policies on the \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions of the new car fleet. The increased \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\)-sensitivity of registration taxes have reduced the \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emission intensity of the average new car by 1.3 %, partly through an induced increase of the share of diesel-fuelled cars by 6.5 percentage points. Higher fuel taxes lead to the purchase of more fuel efficient cars, but higher diesel fuel taxes also decrease the share of (more fuel efficient) diesel cars; higher annual road taxes have no or an adverse effect.