Stimulating ‘green’ technological innovation: An analysis of alternative policy mechanisms

As our understanding of human impacts on the environment has increased, it has become clear that we need to move toward a closed-loop industrial society in order to avoid undesirable health and ecosystem consequences. Achievement of this goal depends on radical technological innovation in both products and processes. This paper explores how to design public policy mechanisms to stimulate rather than impede pollution-preventing technological innovation. It begins with a discussion of the role of government in civilian technology development and diffusion. It then sets out six design criteria for policy to promote green technology innovation. Based on this set of design criteria, the article assesses the potential and limitations of current U.S. policy approaches to stimulate technological innovation that moves us toward a minimal waste society. The main conclusions of this assessment are as follows. Over the past decade, the U.S. environmental policy system has experienced a variety of reforms and new initiatives, many aimed directly at promoting environmentally-friendly technological change. The strengths of these reforms are to increase the information that the private sector has about the magnitude and cost of their environmental impacts and to allow greater flexibility in the technologies that firms choose to meet environmental regulations and goals. Because of these reforms, firms are likely to undertake technological innovation for the environment in situations with clear short-term economic benefits, i.e. to capture the much heralded win-win potential of environmental regulation. However, these reforms have significant weaknesses as well. Unless policy provides stronger political or economic incentives and clearer signals about future environmental performance requirements, we are unlikely to be able to drive technological innovation in industries where the pay-off is more longterm or uncertain, and thus will make only limited progress toward the goal of a minimal waste society.     

Fable pour économistes

Sommaire. Cette fable satirique veut décrire, en puisant fortement dans le vocabulaire ésotérique des économistes, la manie qu'ont ces demiers d'aborder un problième par le biais d'un modèle et la tentation qu'ils possèdent de pérorer a partir de ce modèle sur ce que devrait être la réalité. Donc, il était une fois, une tribu appelée les Economix. Etant les sages de la contrée, ils observaient la nature (économique) afin d'extrapoler des com-portements permanents et universels pour les autres membres de la tribu, les chasseurs. Toutefois, survint une querelle épique sur l'analyse du comportement de l'oiseau, l'objet de leurs observations. Après quelques moments de reflexion, l'on organisa un symposium et les deux écoles présentèrent leurs modèles. La première, après avoir observé, dans des conditions données, Ie comportement de l'oiseau, émit l'opinion que la meilleure représentation de l'oiseau en vol l'était par un avion à hélice tandis que la seconde avança, sur des prémisses totalement différentes, une fusée à un étage, comme étant la représentation de l'essence même de l'oiseau. Cependant, le symposium prit une toumure inattendue lorsque l'on s'engagea à parler de l'aéronef en tant qu'aéronef plutôt que de l'aéronef comme étant une simple approximation (par l'homme) de l'oiseau. Durant ce temps-là, les chasseurs (non-Economix), privés de leurs sages, cuntinuaient leur chasse quotidienne en utilisant beaucoup d'information a priori que les Economix ne pouvaient insérer dans leur moditle. En effet, les non-Economix n'avaient jamais oublié que la réalité est concriète! Abstract. The purpose of this satirical fable is to illustrate, by borrowing freely from the esoteric vocabulary of the economists, the craze they have for approaching problems by way of a model and their temptation to spout, basing themselves on that model, on what reality should be. So, once upon a time, there was a tribe called the Economix. Being the wise men of the country, they watched (economic) nature in order to extrapolate continuing and universal behaviour patterns for the other members of the tribe, the Hunters. However, a spectacular quarrel developed about the behavioural analysis of the bird, subject of their study. After some time to think it over, it was decided to organize a symposium for the two schools to present their models. The fist one, having observed - in controlled conditions - the behaviour of the bird, suggested that the best representation of the bird in flight was a propeller lane, while the second school, basing itself on a completely different set oP premises, contended that a one-stage rocket was the representation of the very nature of the bird. However, the symposium took an unexpected turn when it was decided to discuss the aircraft as an aircraft, rather than as an approximation of the bird (by man). In the meantime, the Hunters (non-Economix), deprived of their wise men, went on with their daily hunt, using a lot of a riori information that the Economk could not incorporate in their models. The non-Economix, you see, had never forgotten the concrete character of reality.     

Malnutrition, a rare form of child abuse: diagnostic criteria

Infantile malnutrition is often difficult to diagnose as it is rarely observed in industrialized countries. It may be associated with physical violence or occur in isolation. The essential clinical sign is height and weight retardation, but malnutrition also causes a variety of internal and bone lesions, which lead to neuropsychological sequelae and death. We report a rare case of death by malnutrition in a female child aged 6 1/2 months. The infant presented height and weight growth retardation and internal lesions related to prolonged protein-energy malnutrition (fat and muscle wasting, thymic atrophy, liver steatosis) resulting in a picture of marasmus or kwashiorkor. We detail the positive and negative criteria that established the diagnosis of abuse, whereas the parents had claimed a simple dietary error.     

Random timing of elections and the political business cycle

In his 1975 paper, Nordhaus formally proves that governments whose aim is to be reelected, will generate ‘political’ business cycles. Empirical results do not confirm this proposition, especially in countries used to early elections. We show that if there is a non-zero probability for elections to be called before the legal term, the political business cycle will be less pronounced, even if no early election actually takes place; moreover, if the normal electoral cycle is interrupted before the legal term, one might observe an inversion of the business cycle, or no cycle at all.     

Frequency of laryngeal and hyoid bone trauma in nonhomicidal cases who died after a fall from a height

A retrospective study was carried out on 93 autopsy cases who died after a fall from a height. For each case, following parameters were reported: age, sex, manner of death, estimated height of fall, ground type, estimated site of primary impact, type of laryngeal and hyoid bone trauma, presence of associated local trauma in the neck and cephalic region. Mean age of the studied population was about 33 years. Sex ratio (men/women) was 1.8. Mean height of fall was about 15 m. Manner of death was, respectively, suicide and accident in 70 and 23 cases. The type of ground was concrete in 94% of the cases. The site of primary impact was, respectively, head, front of the body, back of the body, feet/lower limbs, and lateral body in 31, 26, 19, 12, and 5 cases. Cervical soft tissue bruising without laryngohyoid fractures was found in 5 cases. Laryngohyoid fractures were found in 5 cases. These fractures could be explained by direct impact of the neck structures against the ground. The mechanism of these fractures could also be indirect fractures due to high muscle strains on the hyoid bone or thyroid cartilage due to cervical hyperflexion or hyperextension or secondary to mandible or cervical vertebral column fractures.     

John R. Commons and Max Weber: The Foundations of an Economic Sociology of Law

This article underlines contemporary economic sociology's lack of interest – until recently – in legal phenomena, unlike the close attention paid by two historic figures in ‘economic sociology’, Max Weber and John R. Commons, to the relationships between law and economy. It argues that to grasp fully the importance of the legal dimension in socio‐economic analysis, we must return to their foundational insights. However, they particularly stress differences between Weber and Commons as to the unity or heterogeneity of law and the economy, the role of ethics, the search for an all‐encompassing approach in the construction of ideal‐types, the various forms of constraint that characterize law (whether psychological, economic, or physical), and the distinction between state law and non‐state law. The latter element is why the authors argue that due consideration for legal plurality should be a central thread in any sociological analysis of the interplay between law and the economy.