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Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Intersectoral efficiency between agriculture and industry in six C.M.E.A. countries: Introducing a simple equilibrium model

The purposes of this paper is to show how the long-run preferences for industry and agriculture of the planning bodies in six C.M.E.A. countries can be analyzed by using data on factor allocations in these sectors. Indicative results describing these preferences are obtained and existing inefficiencies in labor allocation and the relative domestic prices of industrial and agricultural goods are discussed. The conclusions suggest that the preferences of the planning bodies have stayed completely constant over 1950–1980 only in the case of the GDR, and that allocations of labor and domestic price ratios have mostly been far from optimal over that period in the countries that were analyzed.     

Why economics needs to be distinguished from physics,and why economists need to talk to physicists: a response to Foster and Holleman

Foster and Holleman argue that the systems ecologist H.T. Odum offered a valid theoretical framework for conceptualizing ecologically unequal exchange, and demonstrate its affinity with the Marxian theory of unequal exchange of embodied labour. However, both approaches suffer from the same fundamental confusion of the biophysical and the economic. The affinity between labour and energy theories of the unequal exchange of value was demonstrated by S.C. Lonergan already in 1988, but to thus define asymmetric transfers of biophysical resources in terms of underpaid ‘use values’ is misleading. Foster's recent endorsement of Odum is inconsistent with his earlier rejection of Odum's intellectual ancestor S. Podolinsky. While the ambition to ecologize Marx is laudable, it is in the interests of correct historiography and contemporary environmental justice activism to untangle some of the analytical problems in Foster and Holleman's article. A major problem is their failure to acknowledge the implications of N. Georgescu-Roegen's conceptualization of the relation between economics and thermodynamics.     

A Greener Future

In the past year, extreme weather events have erupted across the globe, and 2010 looks to be one of the hottest years in recorded history. That has placed an onus on the Cancun conference to prompt