Circular economy in corporate sustainability reporting: A review of organisational approaches

A growing commitment from companies to implement circular economy (CE) strategies demands the development of guidelines for consistent related external communication. The fields of non-financial reporting and sustainability are well established with numerous available international reporting frameworks and approaches; however, there is still an absence of standardised reporting principles and procedures for publishing progress on circularity. In this context, this article aims to explore how companies could include CE within their corporate sustainability reports, through an academic literature review and content analysis of existent reporting approaches. Results showed a clear disconnection between CE and sustainability reporting literature. Overall, only a few of the revised reporting approaches explicitly mention CE, and the guidance given to companies is very general, inconsistent and places the responsibility of selecting performance assessment approaches on the companies. The analysis contributes to identifying opportunities for transparent external communication of CE issues, as well as exploring the challenges and limitations.     

A Minskyan account of emerging currencies dynamics

Abstract

The currencies of a few emerging market economies (EMEs) have been following a specific dynamic since the early 2000s: They are strongly subordinated to international financial conditions, appreciating in moments of tranquility and presenting sharp depreciations in peaks of uncertainty. What is the mechanism behind it? To answer this question, this article applies the Minskyan framework to the context of money managers and their portfolio allocation decisions. The approach provides a detailed account of the mechanisms of the appreciation phase, thus complementing the emerging currencies’ literature that is focused on crisis episodes. The result is a dynamic characterized by deviation-amplifying systems—the opposite of the mainstream view where fundamentals lead to an equilibrium-seeking mechanism. Apart from these contributions to the exchange rate literature, it enriches the Minskyan literature for providing a broader reading of the original framework that allows it to be transposed to a larger set of contexts and for identifying the main elements to be translated in an analysis of a different context.     

Exports and governance: Is the Middle East and North Africa region different?

This paper aims to analyse whether better governance rewards economic performance and facilitates the integration of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region into the world economy. In comparison with other regions in the world economy, MENA countries suffer from important institutional deficiencies, which generate insecurity and difficult international transactions. Despite this fact, the relationship between trade and institutional quality in MENA countries remains unexplored. A gravity model of trade augmented with governance indicators is estimated for the exports of 19 MENA countries, their 189 trading partners and for all exporters in the period from 1996 to 2013. The main results indicate that improvements in five of the six governance indicators increase exports from MENA countries, whereas better governance in destination countries does not affect MENA exports. Instead, each of the six governance indicators used has a positive effect on bilateral trade for the entire sample of exporters (189). Moreover, the effect of country‐pair similarity in governance indicators suggests that a similar level of regulatory quality and rule of law in exporting and importing countries increases exports from MENA countries. Similarities in voice and accountability also foster exports for the average exporter, but not for MENA exporters.     

Beyond Patrimonial Plunder: The Use and Abuse of Coconut Levies in the Philippines

This article re-examines a case of corruption that was perpetuated during a period of authoritarian rule in the Philippines: the subversion of ‘coconut levies’, a tax on coconut production imposed by strongman President Ferdinand Marcos from 1971 to 1982. Literature on the case has formed the basis for locating the political origins of the country’s struggles with long-run economic transformation in terms of the extent of ‘rent-seeking’ and articulations of ‘neo-patrimonialism’ in this middle-income developing economy. The article interrogates how extant analyses of the case have explained associated malign developmental outcomes with reference to institutional design and governance conditions. It forwards a re-interpretation that focuses on the distributional contest underpinning levy mobilisation, including the types of state-engineered privileges contested, and how access to these were politically determined and regulated during and after the Marcos period. This approach, in which developmental possibilities of rent-creating state interventions are not universally denied but considered with reference to configurations of power and structures of political bargaining, will be shown to address limitations of preponderant analyses and bear relevance to developing countries where, because of structural reasons, neo-patrimonialism may be endemic but rent-creating state interventions cannot be discounted as instruments for promoting economic development.     

The impact of Universal Service Obligations and International Cross-subsidies on the dispersion of telephone services in developing countries

This paper re-evaluates the telecommunication policies often applied to create regional dispersion of services in developing countries. We observe that failure to consider the complexities of the regional telecommunication systems in creating policies and investment strategies has increased the telecom gap between urban and rural regions worldwide. In particular, the teledensities of rural telecommunications in developing countries have remained very low in spite of support through universal service obligation fees and cross-subsidization from international services. As traditional methods for economic analysis and modeling have failed to identify mechanisms that improve telephone dispersion in these countries, we use a system dynamics modeling approach to deal with complexities of the situation in order to evaluate how Universal Service Obligations (USOs) and International Cross-Subsidy (ICS) policies affect telephone densities. We demonstrate that these policies may be counterproductive due to the structure of the telecom system itself. We also show that, when market-clearing pricing is combined with USOs once the urban telephone density reaches a minimum threshold, the dispersion of rural telecommunications can be considerably improved.     

Occupational health nurses and case management

Employers, providers, consumers, regulators, and society are demanding a systematic method to determine quality and cost efficiency in the provision of health care services in a multidisciplinary continuum of care within a reasonable time limit. Societal and legislative pressure on employers to incorporate and accommodate workers with disabilities or limitations and rising health insurance costs have urged organizations to set up effective strategies. An overview of the historical evolution of case management, trends in engaging workers in a successful return to work process, and a case study are presented.     

Equality of Opportunity in Four Measures of Well‐Being

A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policymakers have doubled down on efforts to go beyond income when designing policies to enhance well‐being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to achieve a high level of well‐being. We use the German Socio‐Economic Panel to measure well‐being in four different ways, including incomes. This makes it possible to determine if the way in which well‐being is measured matters for identifying who the opportunity‐deprived are and for tracking inequality of opportunity over time. We find that, regardless of how well‐being is measured, the same people are opportunity‐deprived and equality of opportunity has improved over the past 10 years. This suggests that going beyond income has little relevance if the objective is to provide equal opportunities.     

Brazil’s economic reform roads

Business Economics - In 2015–2016, Brazil endured the deepest recession in its history. GDP fell by 7.3% in 2 years. Unlike recent crises in other emerging markets, characterized by a balance...     

Can trade liberalisation in South Africa reduce poverty and inequality while boosting economic growth? Macro–micro reflections

South Africa is trapped in a cycle of modest growth, unacceptable poverty levels and record unemployment. This has led to renewed interest on the relationship between macro (growth) and micro (poverty and distribution) issues. This paper uses a macro–micro tool that couples a computable general equilibrium model with microsimulation models to examine the impact of further unilateral trade policy reforms on growth, poverty and welfare. Trade liberalisation alone has very minimal short-run macroeconomic consequences while its long-term impacts are positive and magnified by technical factor productivity (TFP) effects. Trade liberalisation has no appreciable impact on poverty in the short run even if we allow for trade-induced TFP increases. In the long run, however, poverty reduces even in the case when we do not allow for TFP increases. Trade liberalisation policy has been found to be progressive despite the low level of tariff protection remaining in South Africa.