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The vulnerability of small firms to price shocks may partly explain why fossil fuel subsidy removals in developing countries are so difficult to implement. This paper analyzes the effects of fuel and electricity price increases on profits of micro- and small-sized enterprises in Mexico. Using representative cross-sectional data, simulations of profit losses hint at potentially large short-term effects. First-order profit losses of a 1 per cent price increase are 0.2 per cent for fuels and 0.07 per cent for electricity, but are higher than 1 per cent for fuels in the transport sector. These effects are larger for formal than for informal firms, with energy-using low-profit firms being most vulnerable. Second-order impacts - predicted using estimated input-demand elasticities - indicate that firms react to price shocks by substituting labor for energy, while the self-employed appear to increase their own labor input. Reduced-form regressions show that some firms pass on higher fuel costs to customers.

E-commerce has gained on popularity and is a widely used tool to purchase products and services. This is owed to effective marketing strategies which were implemented by online shops to gain the attention of customers and influence their purchasing behaviour. Commonly used marketing strategies include time pressure and scarcity cues. Those two strategies are effective in their influence of customers and increase their purchase intentions. Therefore, the question arises how the two sales strategies differ in their effects on customers. Due to the wide range of the effects, it is necessary to include the differentiation between message perception, attitude towards the product and behavioural responses., Janine Kuba, Masterarbeit Universität Innsbruck 2022

Die große Mehrheit der Haushalte in den 14 deutschen Großstädten wohnt zur Miete. Der anhaltende Immobilienboom hat in den letzten zehn Jahren nicht nur Kaufpreise, sondern auch (Neu-)Mieten stark ansteigen lassen, während der Bau neuen Wohnraums unterdurchschnittlich blieb. Diese Studie untersucht, wie sich der Boom am Mietmarkt auf die urbane Mieterpopulation ausgewirkt hat. Die Studie belegt das Schwabe'sche Gesetz: Einkommensschwache Haushalte zahlen relativ mehr Miete und wohnen enger. Allerdings hat sich die Mietbelastungsungleichheit gerade nicht im letzten Jahrzehnt verstärkt, sondern ist bereits zum Ende des Wiedervereinigungsbooms auf ihr heutiges Level gestiegen.Der Mietpreisanstieg hat zwar die Gräben zwischen Mieter_innen und Eigentümer_innen vertieft, schlägt sich aber (noch) nicht in steigender Mietbelastung bei Haushalten aller Einkommensgruppen nieder. Vielmehr beobachtet die Studie einen allgemeinen Rückgang des Wohnflächenkonsums und der Durchschnittsgröße auch neuer Wohnungen sowie eine Zunahme von 'Crowdingphänomenen'. Auch ist die Ungleichheit des Wohnflächenkonsums leicht gestiegen. Die Studie sieht im mangelnden Neubau geeigneten Wohnraums eine der Haupterklärungen: Relativ zum Bevölkerungswachstum ist der Neubau zurückgeblieben und Neubauangebote sind systematisch zugunsten teurer Großwohnungen verzerrt., The vast majority of households in the 14 major German cities live in rented housing. Over the past ten years, the ongoing real estate boom has not only boosted purchase prices but also (new) rents, while the construction of new housing has remained below average. This study examines how the boom in the rental market has affected the urban tenant population. The study finds support for "Schwabe's law": low-income households pay relatively more rent and live more closely together. However, rent inequality has not increased in the last decade, but had already risen to its current level during the reunification boom. Although the rent explosion has deepened the gap between renters and owners, it is not (yet) reflected in rising rents expenditure for households of all income groups. Rather, the study observes a general decline in residential space consumption and the average size of new dwellings as well as an increase in crowding phenomena. The inequality of housing consumption has also risen slightly. The study sees the lack of suitable new housing as one of the main explanations: relative to population growth, new construction has lagged behind, and it is biased towards expensive large apartments.

In den neuen Bundesländern bahnt sich gegenwärtig ein massiver und sehr schneller Umschlag in den Knappheitsverhältnissen auf den Arbeitsmärkten, vor allem den Märkten für qualifizierte Fachkräfte, an. Nachdem während 10 bis 15 Jahren weit mehr Jugendliche und Jungerwachsene in Ausbildung und auf den Arbeitsmarkt drängten, als im Beschäftigungssystem aufgenommen werden konnten, entsteht nunmehr mit einem raschen Rückgang der Zahl der Schulentlassenen auf die Hälfte der bisherigen Werte und mit steigender Aufnahmefähigkeit des Arbeitsmarktes eine grundlegend veränderte Situation. Gestützt auf reichhaltiges statistisch-empirisches Material will der Aufsatz diese Veränderungen nachzeichnen, die Reaktionen der ostdeutschen Betriebe auf sie darstellen und der Frage nachgehen, welche Entwicklungen denkbar sind., In the Eastern part of Germany, in the "New Länder", a fast and severe alteration of the shortage rate in the labour market can be observed. The market for skilled employees is in particular concerned by this development. For the last 10 to 15 years a huge number of young people entered the apprenticeship system and the labour market. However, they could not be absorbed by the employment system. By now, the situation is changing fundamentally: On the one hand a rapid decrease of school-leavers takes place and on the other hand the absorbing capacity of the labour market increases. Based on comprehensive statistic-empirical data, this article analyses these change processes, the respective reactions of East German companies and arises the question of future developments.

We argue that economics - as the scientific method of analysing trade-offs - can be helpful (and may even be indispensable) for assessing the trade-offs between intergenerational and intragenerational justice. Economic analysis can delineate the "opportunity set" of politics with respect to the two normative objectives of inter- and intragenerational justice, i.e. it can describe which outcomes are feasible in achieving the two objectives in a given context, and which are not. It can distinguish efficient from inefficient uses of instruments of justice. It can identify the "opportunity cost" of attaining one justice to a higher degree, in terms of less achievement of the other. We find that, under very general conditions, (1) efficiency in the use of instruments of justice implies that there is rivalry between the two justices and the opportunity cost of either justice is positive; (2) negative opportunity costs of achieving one justice exist if there is facilitation between the two justices, which can only happen if instruments of justice are used inefficiently; (3) opportunity costs of achieving one justice are zero if the two justices are independent of each other, which is the case in the interior of the opportunity set where instruments of justice are used inefficiently.

There is increasing social and political awareness of the importance of developing environmental responsibility at a corporate level. When focusing on issues of responsibility, large companies are frequently perceived to be more responsible for driving climate change and resource depletion. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute significantly to the use of resources such as material and energy and produce approximately 64% of the pollution in Europe. Drawing on evidence from “The Eurobarometer 381 Survey on SMEs, Resource Efficiency and Green Markets”, we analyze the environmental responsibility of European SMEs, studying their compliance with environmental legislation and how several factors drive environmental orientation among SMEs. Our sample consists of 3647 SMEs operating in 38 countries. Only around a fifth of the firms go beyond environmental regulations, showing the highest levels of environmental responsibility. We conduct OLS regressions to analyze the factors that affect a positive environmental attitude among European SMEs (internal drivers being more significant than external ones) and then, to observe the positive effect of environmental responsibility and firm’s experience in offering green services/products on performance, although a conjoint effect was not found. Implications for practitioners, academics, and policy-makers are outlined.

The exigencies of intergenerational and of international justice seem to conflict. This paper discusses this problem and develops a solution to it. After criticising several alternative justifications from the literature, a fully universalistic (i.e. universalistic in the temporal as well as spatial dimension) prioritarian welfare-ethic is developed and justified on the basis of our sympathy: first a criterion of moral value is proposed, followed by a conception of moral duties, which relies on socially binding norms and requires to strive for moral efficiency (most moral value for a given effort). Finally, these ideas are applied to determining priorities between several big social agendas. It turns out that, in practice, dimensional conflicts are less prevalent than initially thought.

Gemäß der Statistikbehörde Eurostat gehört Deutschland europaweit zu den Spitzenreitern in puncto Müllverursachung. Zahlreiche verbraucherpolitische Maßnahmen zielen daher auf Verhaltensänderungen der Bürger und Bürgerinnen ab. Solche Maßnahmen basieren - häufig wohl implizit - auf der Theorie des geplanten Verhaltens (Ajzen 1991), die einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Einstellung, der Intention und dem Verhalten einer Person unterstellt. Eine empirische und verbraucherpolitische Schwäche dieser Theorie sind die regelmäßig feststellbaren Diskrepanzen: So werden trotz kritischer Diskussion um die deutsche Wegwerfkultur und des großen öffentlichen Interesses an einer Reduzierung der Ressourcenverschwendung umweltbewusste Einstellungen von den Verbrauchern kaum in tatsächliches Verhalten übertragen. Diese Diskrepanzen zwischen Einstellung, Intention und Verhalten sind in diesem Beitrag Gegenstand einer theoriegeleiteten empirischen Studie, deren Ergebnisse abschließend kritisch gewürdigt und daraus resultierende Handlungsempfehlungen genannt werden.

Photovoltaic cells are a contributor to the global energy mix of growing importance. Among the different photovoltaic technologies, thin-film technologies such as copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide (CIGS) or cadmium-telluride (CdTe) have shown a significant growth in market share caused among other things by their reduced manufacturing costs and increased versatility. These cells require materials like indium, gallium, cadmium and tellurium that have been identified to be critical in terms of their economic importance and supply risks in various studies. Also, significant stocks of these materials will develop in the anthroposphere and secondary flows in a significant scale will arise at some point in the future. In this article material stocks and flows – including secondary flows and material demands- of indium, gallium, cadmium, and tellurium resulting from global deployment of photovoltaic cells up to 2050 have been analyzed considering three different scenarios regarding the future development. Based on this, potential future material shortages are discussed.

"Scholarly understanding of human migration's environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, motivated in large part by public and policy dialogue around 'climate migrants'. The research presented here advances current demographic scholarship both through its substantive interpretations and conclusions, as well as its methodological approach. We examine temporary rural South African outmigration as related to household-level availability of proximate natural resources. Such 'natural capital' is central to livelihoods in the region, both for sustenance and as materials for market-bound products. The results demonstrate that the association between local environmental resource availability and outmigration is, in general, positive: households with higher levels of proximate natural capital are more likely to engage in temporary migration. In this way, the general findings support the 'environmental surplus' hypothesis that resource security provides a foundation from which households can invest in migration as a livelihood strategy. Such insight stands in contrast to popular dialogue, which tends to view migration as a last resort undertaken only by the most vulnerable households. As another important insight, our findings demonstrate important spatial variation, complicating attempts to generalize migration-environment findings across spatial scales. In our rural South African study site, the positive association between migration and proximate resources is actually highly localized, varying from strongly positive in some villages to strongly negative in others. We explore the socio-demographic factors underlying this 'operational scale sensitivity'. The cross-scale methodologies applied here offer nuance unavailable within more commonly used global regression models, although also introducing complexity that complicates story-telling and inhibits generalizability." (author's abstract)

This paper presents an assessment of the Non Governmental Organizations and their contributions to development and conflict transformation in communities around waters. The paper underscores the relevance of the place-centered approach to expound the possible contributions of local NGOs to the development processes. It presents the contributions of NGOs at the community level from three angles i.e. from the position of the water resources management, water consumption, and finally from the cultural perspective. Water is presented as a valuable source of development in the irrigation and hydropower sectors of Central Asia. The paper argues that much as water is a potential resource in development processes, it has also been a source of conflicts in particular localities such as Fergana valley. The paper presents a discussion on the possible role and contribution of NGOs in conflict transformation with particular respect to conflicts related to water issues. It argues that being active agents of change and development in societies, NGOs can use the “local context-oriented approach” in the development process and transformation of the tensions linked to the water resources.

"Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Wahrnehmung verschiedener Umweltgefährdungen in Österreich und im internationalen Vergleich. Die zentrale Fragestellung ist, wie sich die Risikowahrnehmung über die Länder hinweg und innerhalb der Länder unterscheidet. Die Analyse basiert auf repräsentativen Bevölkerungsumfragen, die im Rahmen des International Social Survey Programme ISSP zwischen 2010 und 2013 in 34 Ländern erhoben wurden. Die empirische Analyse zeigt eine Differenzierung entlang Problemen, die mit naturräumlichen Gegebenheiten wie Wasserknappheit in Zusammenhang stehen, sowie sozial induzierten Alltagsproblemen wie Müllentsorgung und sozial bedingten weitreichenden Problemen wie Klimawandel und Atommüll. Naturräumliche Probleme werden vor allem in Ländern wie Mexiko und Südafrika genannt und können daher mit klimatischen Bedingungen erklärt werden, während die beiden sozial induzierten Problemfelder keinen spezifischen Ländergruppen zugeordnet werden können. Österreich selbst liegt im Mittelfeld, weder naturräumliche noch sozial induzierte Probleme werden hier überproportional häufig wahrgenommen." (Autorenreferat), "This article explores the perception of environmental problems in Austria within the context of a comparative international approach. The analysis centers on the question of differences in risk perception across countries and within countries. It utilizes representative national public opinion data, which were collected by the International Social Survey Programme ISSP in 34 countries between 2010 and 2013. The results indicate a differentiation along nature and climate oriented problems such as water shortage, socially induced everyday issues (for example waste disposal), and socially induced severe problems, i.e. climate change and nuclear waste. Whereas the first set of problems can be found in countries such as Mexico and South Africa and thus be explained by climate conditions, socially induced problems are not linked to specific sets of countries or regions. Finally, the Austrian perception of the different risks is moderate, thus neither natural problems nor socially induced problems are named disproportionately often when compared with other countries." (author's abstract)

The rice landscapes of the Marismas, the marshlands at the lower Guadalquivir river in Southern Spain, reflect the dynamic development of the rice sector since the initial colonization of the area by private companies. The excellent natural conditions for rice and the young socioeconomic structure favored farming at a large scale and a progressing introduction of agricultural and organizational innovations. This paper deals with recent structural changes caused by mechanization, rationalization and capitalization that also mark fields and settlements. The dynamic industrialization process of rice growing at the Southern periphery of Europe leads to the development of a joint production system including the integration of rice farmers, suppliers, the service sector and rice factories. The complex economical, social and ecological consequences of this process indicate also problems and risks of industrial rice growing, especially referring to agropolitical changes, high capitalization, the dualism of large rice farms and underemployed peasants, the increasing dependence from a great industrial company, the competition for increasingly scarcer water resources, the environmental risks of agrochemical products and the spatial neighborhood with natural parks.

In 2004 a social movement for environmental democratisation began in Colombia in response to the exponential expansion of extractive activities and socio-environmental conflicts driven by policies designed to transform Colombia into a mining country. The state's reaction to this mobilisation has been ambiguous, as it depends on the rents of extractive frontiers but is also the guarantor of the Constitution and of the rights of its citizens. Colombia is entering a new era in 2016 by signing a peace agreement with the FARC rebel movement. After 50 years of violence and millions of people killed or displaced, this is an opportunity to end today's "longest civil war" worldwide. However, the need to generate revenue to fund the post-war reparation, restitution, and reintegration programmes and, more generally, to fulfil the demands of global markets for minerals, energy, food, and materials puts great pressure on the rural areas where the v iolent conflict has concentrated. The presence of extractive industries in rural areas of peasant economies and ethnic territories has exacerbated previously existing territorial conflicts largely driven by land use. Colombia reports the second-largest number of socio-environmental conflicts in the global Environmental Justice Atlas, and it ranks second in Latin America and third worldwide in the number of assassinations of environmental and land activists. The activation of several democratic-participation mechanisms incorporated into the Colombian Constitution of 1991 for environmental issues demonstrates the aspiration of marginalised groups to participate in the decision-making process regarding territorial planning, the use of resources, and the economic model, which all greatly influence socio-environmental conditions. Policy Implications: Encouraging environmental democratisation is indispensable for achieving environmental justice and a transition to peace in Colombia. The international community could support this process by

There has been an epochal shift: the possibility of a global climate crisis is now upon us. Pollution, the poison of pesticides, the exhaustion of natural resources, falling water tables, growing social inequalities – these are all problems that can no longer be treated separately. The effects of global warming have a cumulative impact, and it is not a matter of a crisis that will "pass" before everything goes back to "normal." Our governments are totally incapable of dealing with the situation. Economic warfare obliges them to stick to the goal of irresponsible, even criminal, economic growth, whatever the cost. It is no surprise that people were so struck by the catastrophe in New Orleans. The response of the authorities - to abandon the poor whilst the rich were able to take shelter - is a symbol of the coming barbarism.