Policy Instrument

The purpose of this article is to stimulate and inform discussion about the community role in sustainable development and to broaden our understanding of the opportunities for sustainable community development activity. It begins with an overview of sustainable development, question-ing its focus on poverty as a major source of environmental degradation, and suggesting instead that both poverty and environmental degradation result largely from wealth. It next examines the concepts of natural capital and social capital, whether (and if so, how) they are linked, and explores their implications for sustainable development at the community level. Chapter 3 examines planning theory and sustainable development, finds that while planning theory is, or should be, relevant to sustainable development, planners concerned with key aspects of sustainable development will have to look to “greener ” pastures for relevant theoretical guidance. Chapter 4 considers the implications for achieving sust...

This paper presents and evaluates two interpretations of the eastern German labour market. These interpretations are called `wage gap’ and `innovation gap’. The former follows standard neoclassical thinking and regards high eastern German unemployment as the consequence of too high a wage level. The latter follows endogenous growth theory and regards a lack of product innovations as the main constraint on output and employment growth in the eastern German economy. The paper argues that the `innovation gap’ explains the facts much better than the `wage gap’. From this, the paper draws conclusions for economic policy: given the high interregional mobility of the workforce and the erosion of collective bargaining in eastern Germany, the wage level is not an appropriate policy instrument anymore. Instead, policy should aim at strengthening the innovative power of the eastern German economy by supporting research and development in the region.

Ghana’s tax reforms constitute the major policy instrument needed to accelerate growth and poverty reduction. Over the past two decades, the government has consistently spent more revenue than it is able to generate and the gap is often financed with foreign aid which has perpetuated the country’s aid dependency. Two options can be explored to reduce the gap between government revenue and expenditure; generate more revenue or reduce government expenditure. Although the latter sounds reasonable, the government needs to spend more on key sectors like education, health and infrastructure if the country is to significantly reduce poverty. The critical issue has been how to generate the needed resources domestically, using tax instruments that are least harmful to the poor. This will obviously involve reforming the tax system to ensure efficiency by widening the tax net without necessarily increasing the tax rate. This paper provides an assessment of the changing structure of the tax sys...

On the basis of abundant facility and firm-level data for German manufacturing, originating from a recent OECD-survey, this paper empirically investigates the relevance of a variety of incentives for environmentally innovative behavior of facilities, the respective influence of pressure groups, and the impact of both regulatory and market-based policy instruments, such as eco-taxes. Since the early 1990s, Environmental Management Systems (EMS), specifically, have become a vital voluntary complement to mandatory environmental policies based on regulation and legislation. EMS may be perceived as an organizational environmental innovation that may lead to improved environmental performance. While the paper provides a descriptive analysis of the determinants for EMS-adoption and incentives that may trigger environmental innovation activities within German facilities, the major questions that will be addressed in this paper are: (1) How can public authorities support the introduction of ...

This study is undertaken to determine the relative impacts of the uncertainty of macroeconomic variables on investment and make policy recommendations that may help dampen their fluctuations. In the study, generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model was applied in the estimation of uncertainty of the macroeconomic variables. In the analysis of the data, econometric results were obtained from cointegration test

Over the past twenty years, the federal funds rate has evolved from being an intermediate target or indicator variable in discussions of monetary policy to the Federal Reserve’s (exogenous) policy instrument. How the funds rate is characterized has important implications for modeling, particularly in settings such as the popular Taylor Rule. Crucially, however, little investigation has been done to examine whether the funds rate meets the conditions one would require for an instrument of policy. This paper offers empirical evidence on the relationships among the federal funds rate, variables that might influence its behavior and variables of interest to monetary policy.

Crowdsourcing is rapidly evolving and applied in situations where ideas, labour, opinion or expertise of large groups of people are used. Crowdsourcing is now used in various policy-making initiatives; however, this use has usually focused on open collaboration platforms and specific stages of the policy process, such as agenda-setting and policy evaluations. Other forms of crowdsourcing have been neglected in policy-making, with a few exceptions. This article examines crowdsourcing as a tool for policy-making, and explores the nuances of the technology and its use and implications for different stages of the policy process. The article addresses questions surrounding the role of crowdsourcing and whether it can be considered as a policy tool or as a technological enabler and investigates the current trends and future directions of crowdsourcing.

The 2.4 billion working people in the developing countries often have to endure employment conditions, which do not meet even basic occupational safety and health (OSH) standards. The lack of work safety, excessive work loads, and occupational physical, chemical and biological exposures result in occupational diseases, injuries and as many as 1.2 million fatalities each year. Furthermore, as little as 15% of workers in the developing countries have access to occupational health and safety services. Some collaboration between the industrialized and developing countries in the field of OSH has been practiced for 30 years but its volume has been modest compared to other sectors of development assistance. The lessons learned from 30 years of experience are that the most important OSH improving factors in developing countries include legal and policy instruments, national OSH programs, infrastructure for OSH implementation, and OSH services. The establishment of OSH expert human resource...

Literature shows a significant development of organic farming in Europe but with considerable differences between countries. These depend on general agricultural policy (the set of regulations and laws), specific policy incentives, and also on differences in consumer behaviour. This paper reviews scientific literature on the evaluation of the technical, economic and environmental aspects of conversion from conventional towards organic production.

Universities and public research institutions (PROs) are increasingly required to address strategic needs defined by industrial sectors both from the education and research standpoint and contribute more intensively to the absorption of advanced technologies. Many ...

This article reviews Dutch experience in carrying out environmental impact assessments (EIA) of certain types of plans and programmes, as required under current EIA legislation in the Netherlands. It examines some of the main differences between project- and strategic-level EIA for broader-based plans and programmes and, in the light of this presents suggestions on the content of a strategic EIS. It reviews proposals to introduce a compulsory environmental test' for policies requiring a cabinet decision, and a Governmental measure which provides for the assessment of existing policy instruments in terms of their contribution to sustainable development.

ABSTRACT E-democracy relates electronic delivery of the processes of democratic representation to practices of communication, consultation, and participation in public decision-making. The evalua-tion of e-democracy initiatives has not developed as quickly as public debate ...

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce global ICT programmes, defined as new and universal modes of organising mediated by technology and enacted through a novel mix of policy instruments, international institutions, business interests, and techno/managerial concepts. Largely unexplored in various fields, including information systems as well as many other social sciences studying innovation and digital technologies, such programmes