MetaTOC stay on top of your field, easily

This paper proposes the adoption of an opportunity egalitarian perspective to assess and compare growth processes and their distributional implications. To this aim, a set of graphical tools are introduced that allow one to evaluate the role of growth and recessions in the evolution of individuals’ opportunities over time. These tools satisfy the ex post principle of equality of opportunity and represent an extension of the “opportunity growth incidence curve,” a framework proposed by the literature to evaluate growth according to the ex ante principle of equality of opportunity. This measurement framework is applied to evaluate the economic dynamic between 2009 and 2011 in Uganda. The results show that despite a reduction in the real value of household consumption and a surge in outcome inequality, its effects appear to be less dramatic when the ex post equality of opportunity perspective is invoked.

This paper looks at the effect schooling has had on household welfare in Sri Lanka during the 1990–2006 period, on average and across the welfare distribution. We account for the endogeneity of schooling using quantile instrumental variable estimation as developed in Chernozhukov, Fernández‐Val, and Kowalski (). We use pooled data from four cross‐sectional Household Income Expenditure Surveys. The results show that an extra year of schooling on the part of the most educated adult member in the household can increase welfare (proxied by real per capita consumption expenditure) by 3.8 percent on average. However, the effect varies considerably across the welfare distribution: At the lower end, around the 20th and 25th quantiles, an extra year of education increases welfare by 6 and 5 percent, respectively, while at the median it is around 3.5 percent. At the higher, 90th quantile it is much less, at 1 percent. Thus the marginal effect of schooling on welfare is significant and positive at all levels of the welfare distribution, but highest at the lower and middle quartiles. This result is different from findings in the literature that tend to show larger effects at higher quantiles, when endogeneity is uncorrected.

We empirically examine relationships among the conditions that enable learning, learning effects and sustainability outcomes based on experiences in four biosphere reserves in Canada and Sweden. In doing so, we provide a novel approach to measure learning and address an important methodological and empirical challenge in assessments of learning processes in decision‐making contexts. Findings from this study highlight the effectiveness of different measures of learning, and how to differentiate the factors that foster learning with the outcomes of learning. Our approach provides a useful reference point for future empirical studies of learning in different environment, resource and sustainability settings. © 2017 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Environmental governance regularly has to cope with complex problems. However, ‘complexity’ has mostly been used as a heuristic concept and hardly made operable for empirical research. Drawing on psychological research on complex problem solving, we propose a structured operationalization of complexity in the five dimensions of (1) goals, (2) variables, (3) dynamics, (4) interconnectedness and (5) information uncertainty. Based on 65 semi‐standardized expert interviews and 158 assessments of complexity degrees, we analyse and map 37 water‐related problems in Germany with regard to their complexity. We find that these problems tend to exhibit medium degrees of complexity, based on 30 types of argument for complexity. Our analysis also reveals varying degrees of complexity and delineates the various natural, technical and social sources of complexity. Our approach and the results may facilitate more systematic discussion of governance strategies for complex problem solving across environmental policy fields and scales. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

This study investigates whether a firm can enhance its competitive advantages in intangible assets and financial performance by voluntarily obtaining the certification of environmental management system ISO 14001. Previous studies find mixed evidence for the effect of ISO 14001 certification on firm performance partly owing to sample selection bias. To overcome this bias, we utilize propensity score matching to find non‐certified firms that are comparable to certified firms. The evidence from our matching method suggests that ISO 14001 certified firms have higher values of intangible assets than non‐certified firms. Our study thus suggests that stakeholder engagement in firms' environmental management can be beneficial not only to the public, but also to shareholders. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

This paper studies whether environmental management systems can spur eco‐innovation, analyzing EMAS (Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme) adoption and patented innovations (at the European Patent Office) at firm level. It uses an original panel database of 30 439 European firms belonging to all sectors from 2003 to 2012. An original instrumental variable is implemented to control for potential endogeneity. The analysis reveals that EMAS adoption is conducive to more innovation at the firm level. The results vary across countries and sectors. In particular, EMAS is positively related to green patents for medium and low technology manufacturing. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Traditionally, most investors have only taken economic variables (profitability and risk) into account when making investment decisions. In this paper we propose two measures, the Relative Sustainable Performance Measure (RSPM) and the Measure of Commitment‐failure (MC), that permit sustainable decision making, which takes environmental and social variables into consideration in addition to the economic variables, for both investors and companies themselves. This makes a triple bottom line (TBL) approach to investment decision making possible. We apply our measures to the worldwide chemical sector and validate them. Moreover, we propose a 2D graphical sustainability analysis, which is simple and easy for investors to understand when making investment decisions and can be used if they are concerned about environmental and social matters. It also enables companies to analyse their sustainability performance and adapt their business plans accordingly. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Policy mix analysis has been applied in research on energy, climate, urban and transport policy, and more recently biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. However, policy mix analysis has thus far been employed at a high conceptual level, focusing on describing interactions between instrument types. Policy mix analysis rarely describes instrument ‘structure’ or functional characteristics in a way that would answer the question ‘what constitutes an instrument’? We describe how the rules‐in‐use taxonomy of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, developed for research on common pool resource management, can be used to characterize conservation policy instrument interactions. We demonstrate the approach on the well‐known payments for ecosystem services (PES) program in Costa Rica and cross‐compliance policies, arguing that PES is a policy mix rather than a single economic instrument. Our analysis shows how design features of PES described in the economics literature map to ‘rules‐in‐use’ in the IAD framework. The framework provides a terminology for defining what constitutes institutional context, comparing economic, regulatory and information instruments, and studying their interactions. The rules‐in‐use taxonomy of IAD is a ‘structural’ diagnostic approach, which needs to be combined with other tools that analyse the role and ‘agency’ of actors, as part of integrative environmental governance research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

This paper aims to clarify two distinct but complementary questions on economic and legal additionality in the payments for environmental services (PES) debate based on examples from the literature and direct observations made in Madagascar and Mexico. For the economic dimension of additionality, we explain two ‘regimes of justification’, efficiency on the one hand and social equity on the other, and discuss how analysts position themselves with regard to both regimes. For the legal dimension, we review and analyse specific cases in which PES are implemented in addition to existing environmental regulations. We propose a renewed framework of analysis to distinguish ‘compensation’ and ‘reward’ in PES by crossing the opportunity cost dimension and the legal constraint vis‐à‐vis the environment. We show how difficult it is to fully maintain the objective of efficiency when PES are implemented simultaneously across different combinations of opportunity costs and regulation constraints. We propose policy options to address the contradiction between incentive and coercive instruments. These options are land sparing, social targeting and chronological combinations. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Policy instruments for implementing the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) mechanism operate within an orchestra of policy mixes that affect the forest and other land sectors. How will policymakers choose between the myriad of options for distributing REDD+ benefits, and be able to evaluate its potential effectiveness, efficiency and equity (3Es)? This is a pressing issue given the results‐based aspect of REDD+. We present here a three‐element assessment framework for evaluating the outcomes and performance of REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms, using the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and equity: (1) the structures (objective and policies) of a REDD+ benefit sharing mechanism; (2) the broader institutional and policy contexts underlying forest governance; (3) outcomes of REDD+ including emission reductions, ecosystem service provision and poverty alleviation. A strength of the assessment framework is its flexible design to incorporate indicators relevant to different contexts; this helps to generate a shared working understanding of what is to be evaluated in the different REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms (BSMs) across complex socio‐political contexts. In applying the framework to case studies, the assessment highlights trade‐offs among the 3Es, and the need to better manage access to information, monitoring and evaluation, consideration of local perceptions of equity and inclusive decisionmaking processes. The framework does not aim to simplify complexity, but rather serves to identify actionable ways forward towards a more efficient, effective and equitable implementation and re‐evaluation of REDD+ BSMs as part of reflexive policymaking. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Recent research on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has rarely included empirical observation of how land managers perceive and respond to forest governance rules. In this case study, we consider how two decades of pilot projects for integrated conservation and sustainable development (ICDPs) variously influenced forest governance across three agrarian reform settlements in northwestern Mato Grosso state. The analysis combines: i) remote sensing of deforestation from 1997–2015; ii) land use and economic data for individual settler farms and cooperatives; iii) settlers' perceptions regarding legitimacy and relevance of state policies, including land use regulations under the Brazilian Forest Code. Deforestation across settlements varied in association with synergies – or lack thereof – between policy instruments and socially embedded rules organizing economic alternatives to the dominant regional pattern of cattle ranching. In two of the settlements deforestation surpassed or was approaching 80% of their total area. In the third settlement deforestation stabilized at 45%, corresponding with the initiation of ICDP support for a pilot project focused on Brazil nut extractivism to consolidate community management of the settlement's collective forest reserve. The latter process involved a ‘policy mix’ or sequence of overlapping components: technical assistance, cooperative organization, environmental licensing, infrastructure, equitable contracts with surrounding indigenous communities and market development. Comparing with the two counterfactual cases, we suggest a framework for analysis of systemic socio‐ecological change in settlements in the Brazilian Amazon, and reconsider the role of ICDPs in landscape approaches to environmental governance in tropical forests. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

When, why and how do policy mixes change and evolve? Much of the contemporary interest in such mixes is focused on distinguishing simple policies from more complex policy mixes, evaluating the relationships between single and multiple policy tools within a mix, and developing criteria to assess the likely performance of particular mixes. These are important and necessary analytical tasks. However, another required step in understanding policy mixes is to understand how and why mixes evolve and change over time and to determine whether any changes are an improvement. In this paper, we analyse the development of a complex policy mix in the case of reclamation and remediation of the Alberta oil sands from an earlier ‘simple goal, single instrument’ policy regime to a more complex one. This case study reveals the presence of at least two dynamic processes at work in policy mix development, with significant implications for the nature of the changes that result from them. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Protected areas (PA) provide conservation benefits and ecosystem services that spill over the boundaries of jurisdictions to other regions. In this paper we analyse the foundations of and design options for ecological fiscal transfers (EFT) that may internalize such positive external effects. We propose a model for integrating ecological indicators into the intergovernmental fiscal transfer system between federal and state‐level governments in Germany. Our approach is performance oriented and would thus compensate those states that designate an above‐average share of their area for nature conservation purposes. The suggested EFT design builds upon the existing fiscal equalization system and complies with the legal requirements for indicators determining fiscal needs. We employ an econometric analysis to demonstrate that, on average, sparsely populated states in Germany provide more PA per capita and would thus be eligible for increased fiscal transfers. A quantitative model of the fiscal transfer scheme is then used to estimate the marginal financial effects of integrating ecological indicators into federal–state fiscal relations in Germany. Moving beyond the specific case presented, we discuss the implications in terms of the specific role of EFT as a policy instrument within the broader conservation policy mix. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Literature examining WTO+ commitments in services trade agreements (STAs) has not considered the role of services regulation. We bridge this gap using a sample of 15 South/South‐East Asian countries, given the burgeoning trend of Asian economies towards services preferentialism and the largely WTO+ nature of their preferential services commitments. Our empirical findings suggest that Asian trading dyads with regulatory frameworks that are more similar and more trade restrictive tend to undertake higher levels of WTO+ commitments in their STAs. There is also evidence in our results, including by modes of supply, for WTO+ commitments in Asian STAs being driven by goods trade complementarities, alluding to supply chain dynamics in the region. Such results support the hypothesis that the heightened “servicification” of production generates a demand to lower services input costs arising from regulatory incidence and heterogeneity.

With cointegration tests often being oversized under time‐varying error variance, it is possible, if not likely, to confuse error variance non‐stationarity with cointegration. This paper takes an instrumental variable (IV) approach to establish individual‐unit test statistics for no cointegration that are robust to variance non‐stationarity. The sign of a fitted departure from long‐run equilibrium is used as an instrument when estimating an error‐correction model. The resulting IV‐based test is shown to follow a chi‐square limiting null distribution irrespective of the variance pattern of the data‐generating process. In spite of this, the test proposed here has, unlike previous work relying on instrumental variables, competitive local power against sequences of local alternatives in 1/T‐neighbourhoods of the null. The standard limiting null distribution motivates, using the single‐unit tests in a multiple testing approach for cointegration in multi‐country data sets by combining P‐values from individual units. Simulations suggest good performance of the single‐unit and multiple testing procedures under various plausible designs of cross‐sectional correlation and cross‐unit cointegration in the data. An application to the equilibrium relationship between short‐ and long‐term interest rates illustrates the dramatic differences between results of robust and non‐robust tests.

We propose imposing data‐driven identification constraints to alleviate the multimodality problem arising in the estimation of poorly identified dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models under non‐informative prior distributions. We also devise an iterative procedure based on the posterior density of the parameters for finding these constraints. An empirical application to the Smets and Wouters () model demonstrates the properties of the estimation method, and shows how the problem of multimodal posterior distributions caused by parameter redundancy is eliminated by identification constraints. Out‐of‐sample forecast comparisons as well as Bayes factors lend support to the constrained model.

In this paper, we show theoretically and empirically that the US quantitative easing (QE) policy results in lower exchange rate pass‐through into the destination prices of Chinese exporters. In addition, the more the exchange rate in the export destination appreciates than the Chinese yuan, the stronger this effect becomes. Our model combines various marginal effects of QE policy on the destinations of Chinese exporters and variable markups of export firms due to strategic complementarities. The model predicts that the impact of US QE policy on the pass‐through of Chinese exporters depends on its spillover on the exchange rate between China and the export destination of different firms. We provide strong support for the model predictions using Chinese firm‐product‐level data with information on export destinations. The baseline result and the heterogeneity we find in the response of exchange rate pass‐through of Chinese exporters to US QE policy remain robust to alternative measures of samples and controls.

This study investigates whether the European Union's funding of civil society organizations (CSOs) can foster equal access to existing channels of participation. This is analyzed by using data from 7,889 CSOs that are registered in the EU Transparency Register. Two criteria should be met for funding to combat inequalities among CSOs: the funding must support underrepresented interests, and it must increase their participation in the policy process. The results of a logistic regression analysis show that the Commission's funding scheme does support underrepresented interests but makes participation more unequal by also supporting already overrepresented groups. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the probability of a CSO having access to formal channels of participation significantly increases if it has received funding. The conclusion is that funding could be used more efficiently if the Commission were to consistently support underrepresented interests.

Using quarterly data from 1995 until 2014, we investigate whether Euro Area (EA) membership influences the probability of a European Union Member State going through an episode of sudden stop or through an episode of bonanza, after controlling for a number of push and pull factors. Overall, our results do not support the claim that EA membership constituted a weakness during the recent financial crisis. On the contrary, we find that EA membership decreases the probability of a sudden stop, all else equal. We find no evidence that being part of the EA has a direct effect on the probability of bonanza. When allowing for interaction effects, our results suggest that EA membership might have mitigated the risk perception arising from higher government debt in the case of bonanzas.

This study investigates the sourcing patterns of Japanese export‐platform foreign affiliates in Mexico, which mainly export to the United States and Canada. We propose a novel approach to estimate intermediate input elasticities of exports by sourcing country. We find that, on average, Japanese export‐platform foreign affiliates in Mexico source intermediate inputs from third countries, including the United States and Canada, rather than from Japan and Mexico, suggesting that Japanese export‐platform foreign affiliates in Mexico are mainly integrated into the vertical production networks back and forth between Mexico, the United States and Canada. In turn, Japanese foreign affiliates selling domestically in Mexico source intermediate inputs not only within the North American Free Trade Agreement countries but also from Japan. In addition, we find that export‐platform foreign affiliates in Mexico use more labour‐intensive production than do foreign affiliates selling domestically in Mexico. This suggests that saving labour costs is one of the motives for export‐platform foreign direct investment in Mexico.

This paper analyzes the influence of macroeconomic factors on the introduction of antidumping (AD) cases in Brazil and in Argentina. Since this type of research does not have large samples, the relevant variables were selected via Sala‐i‐Martin's () test. The results, estimated using Poisson models, revealed that Brazil and Argentina are influenced by macroeconomic factors. However, the traditional (aggregated) models tend to minimize this influence on Brazil and overestimate it on Argentina. We also found that domestic and foreign income growth, exchange rate devaluation, and a reduction in domestic prices could reduce the number of AD cases in both countries. Therefore, there is evidence that these countries are using the AD law as a political tool, shifting it from its main objective of avoiding unfair trade.

This paper investigates whether there is an S‐curve in Colombia using bilateral and disaggregated quarterly data for the period 1991 to 2014. More precisely, the short‐run effects of a depreciation on the trade balance (TB) are analyzed in 27 industries covered by the Pacific Alliance Group free trade agreement. The S‐curve found in sectors representing 30 percent of total industrial production suggests that in these cases competitive devaluations have a positive effect on the TB in the short run. Our findings have important policy implications: since only large competitive devaluations can restore TB equilibrium, industrial restructuring would appear to be a more sensible strategy, though this cannot be achieved in the short run and is instead a medium‐ to long‐term goal.

This study identifies the determinants of climate change disclosure under the prism of sustainable development in European context. The selected variables involve environmental performance, ownership structure, and verification of climate change initiatives. Cross‐sectional data derived from the Bloomberg terminal of the European 500 index concerning 215 firms in the year 2014 are employed. The novelty of the present study stands on the use of proxies for climate change disclosure by adopting the Climate Performance Leadership Index (CPLI). The results reveal that better environmental performance positively affects the level of climate change disclosure. In addition, governmental ownership and independent verification of environmental data determine climate change disclosure. Thus, climate change disclosure is thought to be an effective managerial tool for shareholders and stakeholders to superintend corporate management limiting information asymmetry level; furthermore, higher environmental performers prefer actual climate change disclosure providing a plausible signal. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Rigidities describe the sluggishness of an organization's response in the face of discontinuous external change, and routine rigidity is the failure to change the organization's processes. This article aims to provide empirical evidence that substantiates the relevance of routine rigidity in the discussion on environmental sustainability. A qualitative approach employs a logic model to analyse two sequences of events and tracks the implementation of innovations that had been overlooked for some time. The evidence shows that the selected organizational innovations were previously inhibited by a failure to change the organization's formal processes and informal cultural norms. This is especially true of innovations that altered the daily routines of the focal firm's employees and of innovations that potentially alienated customers. The characteristics of the innovations (high impact and low barrier to implementation) indicate that firms are now less able to justify inaction through the traditional barriers of environmentally focused innovation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The normative implications of sustainable development mean that different understandings of how sustainability should be achieved will either facilitate or put at risk different values associated with economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability. By a qualitative analysis of Swedish fishery legislation documents, we analyse and outline the consequences of two different and competing sustainability epistemologies: a top‐down system understanding and a bottom‐up experiential understanding. To define these two epistemologies, the case study adopts discourse analysis on one fishery law and one fishery regulation proposal, and the remittance answers to these documents. We demonstrate how a top‐down system approach shapes social reality according to its own logic of efficiency, and that pre‐defined principles of economic optimization prevail over social experience and continuity. We conclude that qualitative analysis holds promise to expand the understanding of the premises and consequences of alternative environmental governance trajectories due to its ability to uncover social constructions of meaning. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Drawing on market orientation theory, innovation theory and the theory of reasoned action, this paper integrates market orientation, environmental attitude and firms' environmental innovation into a model to establish a relationship among these three variables. By taking 247 manufacturing firms in China as the research sample and by analyzing the data using SPSS19.0, we found that customer and competitor orientation have a significant and positive impact on firms' environmental innovation, while the effect of inter‐functional coordination is not significant. Furthermore, environmental attitude plays a positive moderating role between customer orientation and firms' environmental innovation, as well as between competitor orientation and firms' environmental innovation. Finally, the results of the study are discussed, and the theoretical and practical significance of this study is clarified further. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

This article starts with discussing principles for a globally just system of refugee protection to which states contribute either by admitting refugees for resettlement or by supporting refugee integration in other states. Such a system requires relatively strong assurances of compliance by the states involved, which are absent in the international arena. In the European Union, however, the Member States form a predetermined set with prior commitments and supranational institutions that facilitate effective burden sharing. The article traces the failure of the EU's relocation scheme to meet this expectation to misconceptions how to determine fair shares, to incomplete prior harmonization of normative standards, and to contradictions between the Dublin Regulation's principle of assigning responsibility to first countries of entry, on the one hand, and the Schengen principle of open internal borders, on the other hand.

This article analyzes how Member States have used the opportunities and avoided the constraints of the EU's multilevel governance architecture to return unwanted migrants. Drawing on sociological approaches to the EU and a broad understanding of return policies, we investigate the ways in which the northern Member States, notably Germany and Austria, have increasingly relied upon the EU's operational and financial resources to achieve their goal of pursuing a bold return policy. A key ‘usage’ of Europe has been the pooling of political and financial power to externalize and informalize its return policy. At the same time, the northern Member States' deliberate – yet widely under‐researched – ‘non‐use’ of Europe, such as using and maximizing national leeway, has been an equally important strategy to reduce migratory pressure and achieve higher return rates.

The Trans‐Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, if were it to be successfully implemented, would be one of the largest regional agreements ever seen. It is the only exemplar to date of a “mega‐regional” FTA for which negotiations have been successfully concluded, and a landmark in evolving approaches to Asia–Pacific integration. As such, quantitative assessments of its potential effects are of considerable interest. One of the most widely used techniques for evaluating the economic impact of regional trading agreements is numerical simulation with computable general equilibrium, or CGE, models. There have now been a large number of papers written that use CGE methods to analyse the potential economic impact of the TPP agreement under varying theoretical and policy assumptions. In this paper we provide a synthesis of the key results that have emerged from the literature, and introduce some new simulation results of our own to anchor the discussion.

This article examines the role of non‐financial interest groups in EU financial regulatory decision‐making. While regulatory capture theories clearly helped identify the causes for the incrementality in spite of the major shock the 2008 crisis had caused, this article will consider a range of regulatory policy initiatives that do not neatly conform with this theory. I examine the extent to which non‐financial groups are able to have their preferences met in the making of three different consumer policies: the Mortgage Credit Directive (MCD), stricter regulations of retail investment products (PRIPs/KID) and the reform of EU level supervisory structures. By employing a process‐tracing approach based on qualitative interviews to analyze political responses to the 2008 financial crisis, the article demonstrates that newly mobilized groups could translate key advocacy goals into policy by deploying counter‐expertise and co‐operating with policy‐makers in some cases but not in others.

Traditionally, the criteria used to measure conservation success or failure are based on biological factors. Biological factors include changes in the amount of targeted conserved species, biodiversity, and total area conserved. However, conservation efforts are not simply a matter of biological concern; environmental, political, social, and conflict pressures on different scales (ranging from local to global) also have strong influences on the outcome of conservation. These other factors can either pose threats to or enhance conservation, but are not addressed by current criteria. Using a proposed holistic rubric that includes interdisciplinary fields, this paper examines a set of conservation factors on different scales – ranging from local to global – to determine their importance in conservation. The paper analyses positive factor influences with more successful conservation and negative factor influences with less successful, or failed, conservation attempts. Neutral and non‐applicable factor influences are also identified, defined, and ranked as a standardization mechanism. The determination of success changed when the holistic rubric was applied to conservation projects in Costa Rica, Mekong Valley, and Cameroon. In the Costa Rica case study, conservation success for Guanacaste and Talamanca national parks is rated ‘moderately low’. In the case of Mekong Valley, conservation success is rated ‘low’ for Lower Mekong, ‘moderately low’ for Greater Annamites, and ‘low’ for Phong Nha‐Ke Bang national parks. Cameroon's Congo Basin and Sangha Tri‐National conservation efforts are both rated ‘low’, while Dja Faunal is rated ‘very low’. We conclude that if conservation efforts are to attain a high level of success, the strategy for global conservation must move away from the traditional biological approach, which focuses mainly on biological concerns, and embrace a holistic approach, which in addition to biological concerns, addresses environmental, political, social, and conflict pressures, which have strong influences on the outcomes of conservation.

First embodied by the European Supervisory Authorities in 2010, agency governance in the financial sector has gained momentum with the creation of the Single Resolution Board (SRB) – an EU agency with considerable competencies in banking prudential policy. Within a short period, backed by the ‘ESMA‐Short Selling case’ judgment, agencies have progressed from supporting the European Commission with their quasi‐rule making, to a more prominent role in the decision‐making process, potentially influencing policy‐makers' agenda. By engaging in a qualitative analysis of legal documents, official texts and relevant scholarship, this research note examines the formal framework and practical aspects of SRB's governance, in order to substantiate whether its establishment presents a ‘qualitative increase’ in financial sector agencification. At the same time, the research note highlights problematic issues arising because of the limitations set by the Meroni doctrine arguing that the Board's wide powers ‘on paper’ may prove challenging to implement in practice.

Does corruption influence trust in national institutions in the same way as trust in international institutions? Did this influence change over the economic crisis 2008? Using data from the European Social Survey, we examined the association between corruption and trust in national and European parliaments before and after the start of the Great Recession 2008. We found that over the Crisis, the effect of corruption on trust in national parliament became more negative than it was before 2008. We also discovered a positive association between corruption and trust in the EU before the Crisis. That is, states with a higher level of national corruption seem to have more trust in international institutions, such as the EU. However, this relationship disappears after 2008. Our findings contribute to the debates on the impact of corruption on trust in national and international institutions, and on the consequences of the Great Recession.

Whereas most research focuses on non‐compliant implementation, we lack understanding of implementers' incentives and abilities to outperform national legislation. This study investigates a largely under‐researched question: to what extent practical implementation exceeds levels of legislative compliance with EU requirements? To explain this phenomenon, we focus on the responsiveness of implementing actors to external (participation in transnational networks) and domestic pressures (national societal attitudes) for compliance with EU requirements and the availability of additional expertise at the implementation stage (bottom‐up). Moreover, implementing actors are unlikely to respond in the same way to different types of national legislative problems (top‐down). The findings suggest that implementers often outperform the transposition of EU laws. Practical outperformance depends on the level of societal support for external policies and is a response to incomplete or ambiguous domestic formal rules.

Sociologists of science emphasize the crucial role of the day‐to‐day practices of scholars in defining academic disciplines and epistemological schools. Taking the case of EU Studies (EUS), this article examines the key practice of normative writing. I analyze the degree to which 70 highly‐cited journal articles of political science writing in EUS explicitly or implicitly suggest that European integration or its institutions or policies are bad or good, flourishing or declining. I use this discourse analysis, plus biographical data on the authors of texts, to explain a major temporal pattern. Degrees of normativity in EUS articles progressively declined from the 1970s until the millennium, but then subsequently recovered. Factors ‘external’ to scholarship, such as the progressive intensification of European integration and crises faced by the EU help explain this pattern. However they interacted in complex ways with ‘internal’ academic factors, such as generational replacement, ‘mainstreaming’ and rivalries between sub‐disciplinary and theoretical camps.

This paper provides a feasible approach to estimation and forecasting of multiple structural breaks for vector autoregressions and other multivariate models. Owing to conjugate prior assumptions we obtain a very efficient sampler for the regime allocation variable. A new hierarchical prior is introduced to allow for learning over different structural breaks. The model is extended to independent breaks in regression coefficients and the volatility parameters. Two empirical applications show the improvements the model has over benchmarks. In a macro application with seven variables we empirically demonstrate the benefits from moving from a multivariate structural break model to a set of univariate structural break models to account for heterogeneous break patterns across data series.

We use multivariate unobserved components models to estimate trend and cyclical components in gross domestic product (GDP), credit volumes, and house prices for the USA and the five largest European economies. With the exception of Germany, we find large and long cycles in credit and house prices, which are highly correlated with a medium‐term component in GDP cycles. Differences across countries in the length and size of cycles appear to be related to the properties of national housing markets. The precision of pseudo real‐time estimates of credit and house price cycles is roughly comparable to that of GDP cycles.

This paper proposes a class of models that jointly model returns and ex post variance measures under a Markov switching framework. Both univariate and multivariate return versions of the model are introduced. Estimation can be conducted under a fixed dimension state space or an infinite one. The proposed models can be seen as nonlinear common factor models subject to Markov switching and are able to exploit the information content in both returns and ex post volatility measures. Applications to equity returns compare the proposed models to existing alternatives. The empirical results show that the joint models improve density forecasts for returns and point predictions of return variance. Using the information in ex post volatility measures can increase the precision of parameter estimates, sharpen the inference on the latent state variable, and improve portfolio decisions.

The article analyses the implication of private sector representatives in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) (2001–2005). The article shows that, before this international biodiversity assessment, firms were involved in three coalitions: the greenhouse gas pro‐trading coalition, the voluntary private standard coalition and the payment for environmental services coalition. These three coalitions all advocated a particular style of regulation that gave overwhelming emphasis to market‐based policy instruments. Corporate experts from the three coalitions identified were recruited to participate in the MEA. Thanks to the political visibility given to the ecosystem services concept by the MEA, private industry was able to strengthen and legitimize its actions in favour of market‐based environmental governance. At the same time, associating private sector representatives with the MEA process made it easier to disseminate the concept of ecosystem services. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

This paper reviews parts III and IV of the recent Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics. Many of the surveys within the Handbook relate to two phenomena of interest: the recent boom and bust cycle in U.S. housing markets, and the striking growth of home prices in a few global “Superstar Cities.” Real Estate and Urban economists have made progress in modeling these phenomena. There is considerable room for future research, however. There is no coherent story explaining U.S. home price movements in the 2000s that does not run afoul of important stylized facts. We also have not yet identified the relative importance of supply constraints and demand growth in the rise of Superstar City prices.

The paper investigates the spatial interdependence of US MNE investments in the MENA region. Given the variations in resource endowments, governance structures and degree of infrastructure availability in MENA countries, one would expect these variables to affect an MNE's choice of FDI location. We do find that domestic non‐spatial factors such as own country inflation and governance measured by bureaucratic quality as well as infrastructure affect a host country's inward FDI. We also found that only one measure of natural resource endowment; that is, oil and gas exports were instrumental in attracting FDI. This non‐spatial result is generally robust and invariant to the two methodologies employed in this study, that is the spatially autoregressive (SAR) model and the spatial Durbin model (SDM). We found that neighbouring countries’ infrastructure availability measured either by “electricity used” or “energy used” affected FDI inflows in a host country. However, this spatial impact was found only in the SDM model. The spatial effects of neighbouring countries’ economic and political conditions and resource endowments were, however, not observed on a host country's inward FDI. The insignificance of both the surrounding market potential and the spatially weighted FDI suggests a purely horizontal motive of MNE investments in the MENA region.

This paper examines the relationship between China's exports, export tax rebates and exchange rate policy. It offers an explanation for why China's exports continued to rise under RMB real appreciations during the Asian financial crisis. Based on a traditional export demand model, we test our hypothesis that the counteracting effects of China's export tax rebate policy have diminished the effectiveness of real exchange rates in facilitating the resolution of trade imbalances under the current pegged exchange rate regime. We find evidence that RMB real appreciations during the crisis negatively affected China's exports, but the negative effects were mitigated by the positive effects of export tax rebates. We also find evidence of a long‐run relationship between China's exports and the other explanatory variables. The empirical evidence suggests that under the pegged exchange rate regime with limited adjustments, real exchange rate movements alone cannot resolve China's external imbalances. The policy implication of this study is that China needs to redirect its decades‐long export‐oriented development strategy to one that emphasises domestic demand‐oriented development and to replace the current pegged exchange rate regime with a market‐oriented more flexible exchange rate regime.

Migration is of particular concern to Indigenous peoples and communities. It physically separates those who migrate from the land upon which collective processes of labour and ritual practice are often based, it affects congruence between individual and collective rationality (as migrants make the choice to maintain or relinquish community membership), and it robs communities of the adult residents who can be essential for projects of collective action. Using the concept of comunalidad, created by Indigenous intellectuals in Oaxaca, Mexico to analyse the importance of alternative practices surrounding land, labour, governance, and ritual found in the region, we show that while Indigenous villages are profoundly affected by different forms of migration, migration itself is not necessarily a “death knell” for Indigenous peasants. We argue that communities struggle—often successfully—to find ways to evolve and reconfigure themselves economically and politically, incorporating migration into the fabric of their daily lives and organizational structures. To make this argument, we draw on ethnographic research conducted with Indigenous Oaxacan transnational communities, both in the United States and Mexico.

Public health spending is low in emerging and developing economies relative to advanced economies and health outputs and outcomes need to be substantially improved. Simply increasing public expenditure in the health sector, however, may not significantly affect health outcomes if the efficiency of this spending is low. This paper quantifies the inefficiency of public health expenditure and the associated potential gains for emerging and developing economies using a stochastic frontier model that controls for the socioeconomic determinants of health, and provides country‐specific estimates. The results suggest that African economies have the lowest efficiency. At 2009 spending levels, they could boost life expectancy up to about 5 years if they followed best practices.

Asserting the need to acknowledge the role of the current crisis and austerity politics in fostering the re‐emergence of squatting initiatives in Rome, this article brings together the literature on squatting as an urban social movement, notably Martínez López's holistic approach, with a political economy perspective analysing the current stage of ‘late neoliberalism’. In so doing, I use the conceptualization of ‘expulsions’ developed by Sassen to show how emerging squatting initiatives in Rome represent the ‘spaces of the expelled’. Focusing on the case of Communia in San Lorenzo neighbourhood, the article shows how Martínez López's approach is able to account for the rapid success and support enjoyed by Communia, going as it does beyond the ‘single‐issue’ perspective that has dominated much of the squatting literature. Indeed, the main claims addressed by Communia activists concern a plurality of issues grouped around the concept of urban commons, as both a practice and a goal. Methodologically, the article is the result of 18 months of fieldwork based on an activist/participatory action research (PAR) approach, comprising participant observation/observant participation, in‐depth interviews and questionnaires.

Urban plans and projects that aim to initiate the redevelopment and gentrification of urban areas create social and ecological pressures on urban environments and thereby stimulate urban movements. These movements have a lifespan, which evolves in interaction with planning authorities under local or central governments and may be marked by institutionalization and co‐optation, as well as fragmentation among the people involved in them. Fragmentations are usually based on conflicting individual and collective interests, but may also be the result of different political perspectives in groups. This article is based on a case study conducted in two adjacent gecekondu neighbourhoods of Istanbul, Gülsuyu and Gülensu, where urban politics have played an important role in efforts to resist plans for urban transformation. It shows that fragmentations are very likely to occur in urban movements during planning processes in a neoliberal era, owing to the different perspectives in the movement on what the just city is.

This article aims to explore whether – and if so, how – the EU is perceived as a normative power (NPE) in Turkey in the context of deteriorating Turkey–EU relations. By adopting the Habermasian understanding that legitimacy is a prerequisite for NPE and through employing a focus group methodology novel to NPE research, the article finds that a certain segment of the Turkish public views the EU as a normative power, suggesting that claims for the existence of NPE need to be qualified both by the level of analysis and by the local context which comprises socio‐cultural factors as well as government/opposition dynamics. The article also shows that contestation of the EU's actorness takes place over moral and ethical‐political arguments rather than utility‐based debates, demonstrating that polarization is noticeably present as far as the EU's normativity is concerned, and not on the perceived costs and benefits of EU accession.

The Schengen Agreement is an important milestone in the European integration process. The purpose is to facilitate the flow of goods, services, and persons across intra‐European borders. How successful is it in achieving this goal? We apply an econometric gravity analysis to bilateral trade. Unlike earlier analysis, we acknowledge that Schengen treats different country pairs differently, depending on their relative geographical location. Moreover, we find it crucial to carefully control for other elements of European integration such as membership in the customs union, the single market or the currency union, and to factor in countries' trade with themselves. Schengen has boosted trade by about 2.81 per cent on average, on top of the EU's trade effects (equivalent to a drop in tariffs between 0.46 and 1.02 percentage points). Trade creation effects for services are stronger than for goods, but estimates feature larger parameter uncertainty. Peripheral countries benefit more than central ones. Other aspects of EU integration matter much more for trade than Schengen.

We develop a theory of parent‐child relations that rationalizes the choice between alternative parenting styles (as set out in Baumrind, 1967). Parents maximize an objective function that combines Beckerian altruism and paternalism towards children. They can affect their children's choices via two channels: either by influencing children's preferences or by imposing direct restrictions on their choice sets. Different parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive) emerge as equilibrium outcomes and are affected both by parental preferences and by the socioeconomic environment. Parenting style, in turn, feeds back into the children's welfare and economic success. The theory is consistent with the decline of authoritarian parenting observed in industrialized countries and with the greater prevalence of more permissive parenting in countries characterized by low inequality.

A growing number of school districts use centralized assignment mechanisms to allocate school seats in a manner that reflects student preferences and school priorities. Many of these assignment schemes use lotteries to ration seats when schools are oversubscribed. The resulting random assignment opens the door to credible quasi‐experimental research designs for the evaluation of school effectiveness. Yet the question of how best to separate the lottery‐generated randomization integral to such designs from non‐random preferences and priorities remains open. This paper develops easily‐implemented empirical strategies that fully exploit the random assignment embedded in a wide class of mechanisms, while also revealing why seats are randomized at one school but not another. We use these methods to evaluate charter schools in Denver, one of a growing number of districts that combine charter and traditional public schools in a unified assignment system. The resulting estimates show large achievement gains from charter school attendance. Our approach generates efficiency gains over ad hoc methods, such as those that focus on schools ranked first, while also identifying a more representative average causal effect. We also show how to use centralized assignment mechanisms to identify causal effects in models with multiple school sectors.