Sustainable development and circular economy: The role of institutional promotion on circular consumption and market competitiveness from a multistakeholder engagement approach

The transition from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) is a real challenge to achieve long‐term sustainability. To push CE in the market, institutional promotion could become a key driver to positively impact both circular consumption and the competitiveness of the market. This paper analyzes the influence that soft and hard initiatives have on circular consumption and market competitiveness. Based on a survey of 1,281 respondents from different types of stakeholders, structural equations modeling statistical analysis was run. Results show that soft initiatives support the achievement of both objectives, whereas hard ones only influence greater circular consumption. However, the perception of the different stakeholders considered is very heterogeneous. It is indicative that not all institutional promotion initiatives are effective. Thus, institutions should guide, in an adequate and differentiated manner, their efforts to promote CE and sustainable development depending on the stakeholder they are targeting.     

Industrial loans and market structure

Based on the observation that financing is one of the main obstacles to create new firms, this paper deals with the interactions between the market structure of both the banking sector and the borrowing industries. We consider that firms’ installation costs are financed by means of industrial loans from specialized banks. With endogenous entry in banking activity as well as in the borrowing industry, we find that a natural oligopoly emerges in both sectors if the entry cost in the industrial sector is small enough, relative to the banks’ entry cost.     

Inflationary Rigidities and Orthodox Stabilization Policies: Lessons from Latin America

Orthodox stabilization programs in Latin American countrieshave been notoriously unsuccessful in combating inflation, despitethe imposition of stringent cuts in government deficits. Inmost cases inflation came down only slowly and temporarily,with concomitant declines in growth and employment. The Bolivianprogam, one of the only Latin American successes, is contrastedwith those of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. The problemsof dealing with chronic inflation are compared with those ofhyperinflationary countries, and the influence of price andwage rigidities, expectations, and credibility is explored.The study shows that fiscal restraint is a necessary but notsufficient condition for success, and that sound managementof nominal variables (the exchange rate and money supply) arealso necessary. The critical role of credibility is linked withprice and wage rigidities in the chronic inflation countries,whereas the unsustainability of hyperinflation is seen to increasethe credibility of and thus the potential for successful stabilizationprograms.     

Convergence among EU regions, 1990–2001

This article focuses on convergence in terms of output per working age person across regions in the European Union for the period 1990–2001. Controlling for the quality of national institutions, the authors investigate whether the status of “objective 1” region improves the speed of convergence as compared to what would be expected given the regions' initial conditions. They find evidence of conditional convergence among EU regions, with the quality of national institutions having a positive impact, but no evidence of a correlation between eligibility for objective 1 and faster convergence.     

WHEN DO HETERODOX STABILIZATION PROGRAMS WORK?: Lessons from Experience

What advantages and disadvantages does the heterodox strategyoffer to stabilization programs in countries with chronic highinflation? Heterodox stabilization programs, in our definition,are those that support orthodox policies— that is, tightfiscal policy and a fixed exchange rate—with the initial,temporary use of incomes policies— that is, price andwage controls. This evaluation, based on several heterodox programs,successful and unsuccessful, from the 1960s and 1980s in LatinAmerican countries and Israel, affords four principal lessons: * The rapid reduction in inflation at the beginning of heterodoxprograms (which usually comes about at small cost) is the easypart; the problem is to maintain price stability over time. * Incomes policies in heterodox stabilization programs are justifiedonly in countries with high chronic inflation, where persistentinflation is more pervasive and problematic. * There is a case for a bigger fiscal adjustment in heterodoxthan in orthodox programs because of the risk that a programwith price controls may be misperceived as a populist devicefor achieving price stability without adjusting. * The failure of a heterodox program is more likely to destabilizeinflation than is the failure of an orthodox program.      

Convergence in the Spanish and Portuguese NUTS 3 regions: An exploratory spatial approach

Since their accession to the European Union in 1986, both Portugal and Spain have benefited from strong financial support. Both countries have experienced considerable growth in income per capita, converging towards average European levels. However, several studies suggest a high degree of persistence of regional asymmetries within the countries. This paper empirically analyses convergence among NUTS 3 regions of the Iberian Peninsula between 1995 and 2008. The results reveal divergent national trends and indicate no evidence of catching-up effects among the poorest regions, confirming the existence of economic clusters.     

Current account sustainability in the US: What did we really know about it?

We analyze the sustainability of the US current account (CA) deficit by means of unit-root tests. First, we argue that there are several reasons to believe that the CA may follow a non-linear mean-reversion behavior under the null of stationarity. Using a non-linear ESTAR model we can reject the null of non-stationarity favoring the sustainability hypothesis. Second, we ask whether unit-root tests are a useful indicator of sustainability by comparing in-sample results for the 1960–2004 period to the developments observed up to the end of 2008. We find that the non-linear model outperforms the linear and random walk models in terms of forecast performance. The large shocks to the CA observed in the last five years induced a faster speed of mean reversion, ensuring the necessary adjustment to meet the inter-temporal budget constraint.     

Applying a third party access model for China’s gas pipeline network: an independent pipeline operator and congestion rent transfer

This paper investigates third party access regulatory issues in China’s natural gas industry. We study the development of China’s gas market-oriented reform and how third party access becomes a pressing issue in that context. This paper aims to report stakeholders’ benefit and distributional effects during a hypothetical third party access process. To that end, we apply an oligopolistic equilibrium model, based on the mixed complementarity problem, to China’s gas pipeline network. We compare two scenarios: a scenario without third party access and the other scenario where an independent pipeline operator optimizes flows. This latter scenario aims to guarantee that the maximum social benefit is achieved. In addition, the latter scenario transfers the congestion rent to former integrated gas companies to compensate their actual loss control of the pipeline operation, in order to minimize the adverse distributional effects for pipeline companies. The solution of the model indicates that operational separation is feasible with Pareto improvement in China’s context. Moreover, it merits particular attention from policy makers in China that pipeline capacity scarcity should be properly evaluated and managed.     

Improvisation as “real time foresight”

The concept of improvisation, while now recognized in organization studies, has been neglected in strategy studies. We suggest that one of the reasons for this is the dominance of a structural view of strategy and competition. Alternative views, such as the Austrian school or those that stress the Red Queen effect, emphasize the process-based nature of competition. In fast-changing environments, speed and reaction are central attributes, which render the traditional separation between planning and execution untenable. In these contexts, improvisation, the convergence of planning and execution, becomes a paradoxical form of “real time foresight”: organizations screen trends, spot opportunities, actively wait and/or act with speed to seize the moment.