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Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation for a Sustainable Economy
One of the main novelties of this book is its establishment of a clear relationship between social and public choice on one hand and multiple criteria decision analysis on the other. This relationship leads to the new concept of Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE). SMCE is proposed as a policy framework to integrate different scientific languages, for example, when concerns about civil society and future generations have to be considered along with policy imperatives and market conditions.
Multicriteria Evaluation in a Fuzzy Environment
This book is the result of some years of research carried out at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The awareness of actual and potential conflicts between economic progress in production, consumption, and technology and the environment has led to the concept of "sustainable development", implying that economic and ecological values are well balanced in evaluation and decision making. The linkages between ecosystems and economic systems are the focus of ecological economics. In ecological economics, a multidimensional approach to economic and policy-making is emphasised. In this book, the introduction of multicriteria decision aid...
Making Strategies in Spatial Planning
This provocative collection of essays challenges traditional ideas of strategic s- tial planning and opens up new avenues of analysis and research. The diversity of contributions here suggests that we need to rethink spatial planning in several f- reaching ways. Let me suggest several avenues of such rethinking that can have both theoretical and practical consequences. First, we need to overcome simplistic bifurcations or dichotomies of assessing outcomes and processes separately from one another. To lapse into the nostalgia of imagining that outcome analysis can exhaust strategic planners’ work might appeal to academics content to study ‘what should be’, but it will doom itself to fur...
The Biofuel Delusion
Faced with the twin threats of peak oil and climate change, many governments have turned for an answer to the apparent panacea of biofuels. Yet, increasingly, the progressive implementation of this solution demonstrates that the promise of biofuels as a replacement to fossil fuels is in fact a mirage that, if followed, risks leaving us short of power, short of food and doing as much damage to the climate as ever -- let alone the consequent impact on biodiversity due to additional loss of habitat for agricultural production and on rural development due to the additional stress on traditional farming systems. Worse still, these risks are being ignored. In this definitive expos Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi present a theoretical framework and exhaustive evidence for the case against large scale biofuel production from agricultural crops. This book will be vital, sobering reading for anyone concerned with energy or agricultural policy, or bioenergy as a complex system.
The Development of Equity Capital Markets in Transition Economies
This book addresses two different but related topics that can arise during the development of equity capital markets and which could possibly hinder their development: partial privatisation and shareholder rights. Both issues are developed in the context of transition economies in general and Russia in particular. Chapter 2 puts forward a theory of partial privatisation, i. e. a model that aims to explain why the state keeps some residual shares. Several recent surveys for Russia have shown that the state does often not actively use the voting rights of its residual shares. If this was true, partial privati sation could entrench management and hinder restructuring. It would also limit the su...
Mathematical Economics of Multi-Level Optimisation
Since there exists a multi-level policy making system in the market economies, choices of decision makers at different levels should be considered explicitly in the formulation of sectoral plans and policies. To support the hypothesis, a theoretical energy planning approach is developed within the framework of the theory of economic policy planning, policy systems analysis and multi-level programming. The Parametric Programming Search Algorithm has been developed. On the basis of this theoretical model, an Australian Energy Policy System Optimisation Model (AEPSOM) has been developed and is used to formulate an Australian multi-level energy plan.
Fieldwork in Difficult Environments
This book contains personal accounts of PhD researchers on doing field research in politically and otherwise difficult environments. The methodological flexibility required in development research is discussed around four themes: cultural difference; methodological style and the scale level; communication and interaction; and political and ethical legitimacy. The volume argues that the choice and deployment of methodology is an ongoing, reflexive process of "boundary work".
Sustainable Urban Development Volume 2
In this book, the second of a three-volume series, leading authorities on the methodology of environmental assessment provide a unique insight into questions of critical importance to sustainable urban development. Using the framework and protocols set out in Volume 1, Volume 2 examines how well the environmental assessment methods evaluate the ecological integrity of urban development and equity of the resulting resource distribution. The examination focuses on: the instruments of environmental assessment approaches to environmental assessment based in systems-thinking methods for environmental, economic and social assessments their use in evaluating the sustainability of urban development. The Sustainable Urban Development Series contains the research and debate of the BEQUEST (Building, Environmental Quality Evaluation for Sustainability) network funded by the European Commission. Together the books provide a framework, set of protocols, environmental assessment methods and toolkit for policy makers, academics, professionals and advanced level students in urban planning and studies, as well as other areas of the built environment.
Business Cycles
Subject is the description of unvariate and multivariate business cycle stylized facts. A spectral analysis method (Maximum Entropy spectral estimation) novel in the analysis of economic time series is described and utilized. The method turns out to be superior to widely used time domain methods and the "classical" spectral estimate, the periodogram. The results for eleven OECD countries confirm and extend the basic set of stylized facts of traditional business cycle theory. The changing characteristics of the business cycle are analyzed by comparing the cyclical structure for the postwar and the prewar period. The results show that business cycle is mainly due to investment fluctuations.
The Metabolic Pattern of Societies
It is increasingly evident that the conventional scientific approach to economic processes and related sustainability issues is seriously flawed. No economist predicted the current planetary crisis even though the world has now undergone five severe recessions primed by dramatic increases in the price of oil. This book presents the results of more than twenty years of work aimed at developing an alternative method of analysis of the economic process and related sustainability issues: it is possible to perform an integrated and comprehensive analysis of the sustainability of socio-economic systems using indicators and variables that have been so far ignored by conventional economists. The boo...
