Search results for "macroeconomics"
showing 10 items of 477 documents
Economic feasibility study for intensive and extensive wastewater treatment considering greenhouse gases emissions
2013
Economic feasibility assessments represent a key issue for selecting which wastewater treatment processes should be implemented. The few applications that exist focus on the positive economic value of externalities, overlooking the existence of negative externalities. However, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) consume a significant amount of energy, contributing to climate change. In this context, as a pioneering approach, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have been incorporated as a negative externality of wastewater treatment. Within this framework, this study aims to compare the economic feasibility of five technologies, both intensive and extensive, for small communities. The results sho…
Green Bonds: Between economic incentives and eco-change
2020
Abstract As the investor base committed to financing sustainable companies in an attempt to combat the climate crisis expands, green financial products have become more attractive to issuers, corporate and sovereign alike. As a result, the EU is attempting to create favourable market conditions which mobilise the allocation of private capital for investments that reduce the contribution to climate change. As part of the EU Commission’s Action Plan for Sustainable Finance, it intends to create Green Bond Standards which aim to support the transition to greener securities investments. As a foundation, we provide an overview of the green bond market development. We then consider investment cha…
The effect of environmental uncertainty and diapause investment on the occurrence of specialist and generalist species
2014
The evolution of specialist and generalist strategies is a central topic in ecology with strong implications for the biodiversity and structure of communities. Environmental unpredictability has been suggested as a key factor affecting the relative advantages of generalist species. However, life cycle features, like diapause, can also play a major role in the competitive dynamics between generalists and specialists. Zooplanktonic communities of continental waters are suitable models to study this; they inhabit water bodies that vary temporally with different degrees of uncertainty and rely on the production of diapause stages to survive across the year. We developed a simple theoretical mod…
Explaining Ethiopia’s Growth Acceleration—The Role of Infrastructure and Macroeconomic Policy
2017
Summary Ethiopia has experienced an impressive growth acceleration over the past decade. This was achieved on the back of an economic strategy emphasizing public infrastructure investment supported by heterodox macro-financial policies. This paper identifies the drivers of Ethiopia’s recent growth episode and examines the extent to which they were typical or unique. It combines country-specific information with the results of a cross-country panel regression model. We find that Ethiopia’s growth is explained well by factors correlating with growth in a broad range of countries in recent decades, including public infrastructure investment, restrained government consumption, and a conducive e…
Investment and growth in Europe during the Golden Age
2009
During the ‘Golden Age’, the high investment rates reached by the European countries have been considered crucial in explaining growth. The literature about the Golden Age has emphasized supply-side explanations based on structural change, the reconstruction effort and the catch-up hypothesis, but also demand-side explanations focused on the effects of demand stability for promoting high rates of investment. In this article we have focused our attention on the evolution of the user cost of capital for explaining the high rates of investment. Our hypothesis is that the increase in investment rates was propelled by the decline in the user cost of capital, the consequence largely of the drop i…
The Micro-Macro Interfaces of Higher Education, Innovation, Regional Growth and Regional Development
2018
This chapter highlights the relevance of micro-macro interfaces for the study of investment inflows in higher education, as an impulse concept, in the development of economies on a regional scale, as a response concept. The term ‘micro-macro interfaces’ refers to the systems of interactions that combine and channel the efforts made by individuals, often within collective organizations, to achieve their personal goals and the objectives set at the organizational level, and how the results from those efforts, once aggregated territorially, drive the rhythm of economic growth and the directions of regional development. The analysis brings together theory, research and practice from economics, …
Tackling Market Failure or Building a Cartel? Creation of an Investment Regulation System in Finnish Forest Industries
2015
Government intervention in the economy is often justified by the need to correct market failures. This study analyzes one case, the investments of Finnish forest industries, in which, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, both policy makers and the trade association representing the sector reasoned that intervention was particularly necessary because otherwise, the only substantial natural resource in the small country would be overexploited. In the long run, however, the growth of forest resources turned out to be higher, and the demand for wood lower, than expected. Furthermore, the most influential industrialists managed to “capture” the regulatory system and make it a component of their ne…
Motives for partial acquisitions between firms in the spanish stock market
2003
The paper analyses the motivations for inter-company investment on the Spanish Stock Market through the study of a sample of significant acquisitions reported to the CNMV (the Spanish Securities and Exchange Commission) by quoted firms. By analysing the sign of the cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) and of the correlations among the gains produced by the operation, an attempt is made to find out which motives predominate of the three most important ones suggested by the literature for takeovers: synergy, agency and hubris. Empirical evidence is presented that in the Spanish Stock Market the main motive for acquiring a holding is similar to synergy, especially in partial acquisitions with pos…
Information and Communication Technology as a Differentiation Tool in Restaurants
2014
Hospitality companies implement various communication and information technologies to improve efficiency and customer service, among other aspects. However, the literature has paid little attention to investment in technology by restaurants. Therefore, this article aims at testing the use of technology as a differentiation instrument by restaurants. As a result of this analysis for a sample of 150 restaurant owners or managers, these findings allow the identification of the specific technology solutions that make the difference across restaurants and, thus, to infer the information and communication technologies that should be prioritized by restaurant owners/managers depending on their res…
What makes a good study day? An intraindividual study on university students’ time investment by means of time-series analyses
2019
Abstract University students often claim to have problems managing the time required to carry out their study demands successfully, which leads to discontent. The question is how much time do students really invest in their studies, what changes occur in time investment over a full academic term, and finally, how is study time related with students' daily study satisfaction? Daily time-series data taken from 105 university students over 154 days were analyzed by means of process analysis techniques and multilevel analysis. The learning time trajectories show a quadratic trend in independent study time and a linear decrease in lecture time. Students' daily study satisfaction was positively r…