Innovation in a Circular Economy: Conceptual, empirical and policy underpinnings for transition through an eco-innovation pathway

As the world seeks answers to the defining challenges of climate change and environmental sustainability, several hypotheses are being canvased in the search for a solution to decouple economic growth and social development from resource exploitation. Among those, the circular economy (CE) emerged as an operational response defined by its opposition to a harvesting-wasting economic model, proposing instead restorative and regenerative activities. But reconfiguring existing paradigms is not trivial. Aligning innovation activities with more sustainable paths is a central requirement for the desired socio-techno-economic paradigm shift. This work proposes that a new pathway is needed for gearing the sustainable innovation agenda towards a CE, and foster structural change. CE-inducing eco-innovation (EI) must, however, be monitored and measured, and implications to socio-cultural agents, organisational strategies and policy priorities have to be bore in mind, if we are to ascertain if progress is being made. As CE and the EI – CE nexus research is still in its early days, this work adds to the discussion by contributing (1) to the theoretical development of these concepts and their interrelations; (2) to the empirical definition of pro CE EI proxies; and (3) to the prospective anticipation of CE developments. Within the sustainability debate, and using an innovation studies perspective, this research adopted a mixed methods approach, using both quantitative and qualitative methods such as literature reviews, bibliometrics, patent and trademark analysis (using the specific case of Portugal), and foresight techniques (Delphi study). The overall findings suggest that CE’s main ideas are arguably timely. CE’s establishment within the sustainability debate seems, nevertheless, dependent on overcoming short term barriers constraining its further development, of technological and economic nature, but also of a socio-cultural kind. CE is argued as a multidimensional, multi-actor approach reliant on “systemic transformative” innovation, thus dependent on a combination of “harder”, (technological, R&D-driven), and “softer” (non-technological change in social and business culture) knowledge. The empirical diagnosis of an innovation system’s pro circularity tendencies proved to be informative as to assess convergence to circularity. In the Portuguese case, it successfully shed light on ongoing dynamics related with signs of effective transformation towards CE activities, even if highlighting structural limitations associated with systemic failures regarding actors and networks. Redirecting innovation systems towards a more “circular” paradigm is, therefore, deeply dependent on an institutional “coordination role” enabling “framework conditions” directly linked to a systemic action. That is, associating bottom-up measures to top-down policies in a coherent strategic roadmap, in order to avoid mismatches and contradictory incentives. This pointed to the usefulness of rethinking innovation policy design. In one hand, to address market and system failures, leading to underinvestment and lack of connectivity in innovation. In the other hand, to promote the diffusion of CE related information for enterprises and civil society, in order to encourage market awareness and change mind-sets towards “circular” behaviours. As the conceptual and practical implementation challenge remains pressing, this work added important underpinnings for fine-tuning a CE inducing “policy mix”.Num mundo crescentemente interdependente, as alterações climáticas e a sustentabilidade ambiental são questões globais complexas. A importância de dissociar desenvolvimento da exploração de recursos tem propiciado um alargamento de horizontes a novos conceitos. Nesse contexto, a economia circular emergiu como uma resposta operacional, definida pela sua oposição ao modelo económico atual de exploração/desperdício. Contrapõe, ao invés, processos restaurativos e regenerativos. A reconfiguração dos paradigmas existentes, a este nível, não é, contudo, algo trivial. Uma vez que o alinhamento das atividades de inovação com objetivos mais sustentáveis é um requisito central na alteração de paradigma sócio-tecno-económico, este trabalho foca a necessidade de orientar a agenda de inovação para a “circularidade”. A eco-inovação pro-circularidade deve, no entanto, ser monitorizada e medida, e as implicações para os agentes socioculturais, estratégias organizacionais e prioridades políticas levadas em conta, se quisermos verificar o seu progresso. Nesse âmbito, pretendeu-se contribuir para o debate em curso contribuindo para: 1) uma melhor compreensão teórica do papel da eco-inovação na implementação de uma economia circular; 2) a definição e teste de proxies empíricas de inovação pro-circularidade; 3) o desenvolvimento de uma visão prospetiva de futuros desenvolvimentos nesta área. No contexto do debate da sustentabilidade, e usando uma perspetiva baseada nos estudos da inovação, foram adotados métodos quantitativos e qualitativos, incluindo revisões de literatura, métodos bibliométricos, análise de patentes e de marcas comerciais (usando o caso específico de Portugal), assim como o uso do método prospetivo Delphi. As conclusões gerais sugerem que as principais ideias da economia circular são indiscutivelmente oportunas. Dentro do debate da sustentabilidade o estabelecimento de uma economia circular parece, no entanto, dependente de se vencerem barreiras de curto prazo, de natureza tecnológica, económica e sociocultural. A abordagem preconizada pela economia circular é assim tida como multidimensional, multi-ator, dependente de uma inovação sistémica "transformadora”, compreendendo não só inovação tecnológica, mas também mudanças institucionais abrangentes quanto a políticas públicas, mercados e práticas sociais. O diagnóstico empírico das tendências pró-circularidade de um sistema de inovação provou ser informativo nessa avaliação. No caso português, permitiu conhecer as atuais dinâmicas, sublinhando sinais de transformação efetivas em direção a atividades circulares, ao mesmo tempo que assinalou as limitações estruturais associadas a falhas sistémicas quanto aos atores e redes (interconexões). Redirecionar os sistemas de inovação para um paradigma mais “circular” é, portanto, profundamente dependente de um “papel de coordenação” institucional que permita “condições de enquadramento” diretamente ligadas a uma ação sistémica. Isto é, associando medidas bottom-up e top-down num roteiro estratégico coerente, a fim de evitar desequilíbrios e incentivos contraditórios. Importa, por isso, repensar igualmente os instrumentos das políticas de inovação. Por um lado, resolvendo falhas de mercado e sistema, que levam a sub-investimento e falta de conectividade. Por outro, promovendo a difusão de informação para empresas e sociedade civil, a fim de estimular a conscientização e mudar mentalidades em relação a comportamentos “circulares”. O desafio de implementação continua a ser premente, este trabalho pretendeu contudo acrescentar ao debate tendo em vista contribuir para o ajuste do “mix de políticas” indutoras de circularidade

Assessment of Socio-Economic Sustainability and Resilience after COVID-19

The pandemic period has caused severe socio-economic damage, but it is accompanied by environmental deterioration that can also affect economic opportunities and social equity. In the face of this double risk, future generations are ready to be resilient and make their contribution not only on the consumption side, but also through their inclusion in all companies by bringing green and circular principles with them. Policy makers can also favor this choice

5TH applied research conference in Africa

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Essays on Public Economics and Public Policy Evaluation – Methods and Applications

[eng] Economic policies and institutional design and decision-making vary greatly accross countries. Germany, the US and Canada, are federal states, where decision-making and economic policies are highly decentralized, while France and Greece are highly unitary countries. Belgium has had the two largest government formation deadlocks in Europe in the last 20 years, while other countries such as Portugal or Ireland have experienced none. During the COVID-19 crisis, some countries, like New Zealand, applied lockdowns with an incidence rate of 20 cases per milion inhabitants, while others like Spain, delayer their response until the incidence rate was higher than 130 cases per million Do differences in institutional design lead to differences in economic policies? Can these differences be explained? Is the agility of government decision-making influenced by common patterns across countries? The aim of my thesis is to contribute to the existing literature on public policy evaluation, with a particular focus on the role of institutions, providing new methodological, theoretical, and empirical results, to provide answers to questions such as the ones stated before. Five studies are presented in the thesis. In the first study, I analyze one of the most seminals questions that could be asked about governments and economic outcomes: Do government formation deadlocks affect the economy in the short term? From the methodological point of view, I develop a proposal to improve current methodologies to evaluate causal effects on quasi-experimental designs; concretely, the Synthetic Control Method. I illustrate the main advantages of the proposal evaluating the causal economic effects of the ten-month-long government formation impasse in Spain, after the December 2015 elections, as well as reproducing two previous studies: the impact of German reunification (analyzed in Abadie et al. 2015) and the effect of tobacco control programs in California (Abadie et al. 2010). In line with the results obtained by Albalate and Bel (2020) for the 18-month government formation deadlock in Belgium, my estimates indicate that the growth rate in Spain was not affected by the government deadlock, ruling out any damage to the economy attributable to the institutional impasse. The second and third studies focus on how governments decide in a context of high uncertainty and different degrees of information. Concretely, I build a theoretical model to assess the agility of government response to the COVID pandemic and evaluate the model empirically using data from OCDE and European countries. I find solid evidence that during the first outbreak, in a context of incomplete information, the agility of policy response was highly conditioned by a cost-benefit analysis where the perceived healthcare capacity to deal with the outbreak, and the associated economic costs of lockdown measures, significantly delayed the response. Institution design also played a role: federal states reacted faster than unitary ones. Higher competition in multilevel systems with collaborative governance between different levels of government and non-state institutions - (Scavo, Kearne, and Kilroy, 2008; Schwartz and Yen, 2017; Downey and Myers, 2020; Huang, 2020) provided incentives for more agile and effective responses. However, federal states could be dysfunctional in terms of internal coordination and suffer from high inequality in terms of agility within themselves. For the concrete case of the US, I find that Republican-controlled states reacted later and implemented softer contingency measures, which were associated with higher growth in the number of COVID-19 cases (Hallas et al., 2020; Shvetsova et al., 2022). The highly polarized context of the US provided incentives for Republican governors to align with President Trump’s preferred policy, which was to avoid lockdowns. These incentives vanished during the vaccination process, when information about the severity of COVID-19 was complete, and governors, no matter whether Republicans or Democrats, implemented the roll-out of the vaccination program with a similar level of agility. In the fourth paper, I suggest a new approach to assess the effect of institutional and policy developments (i.e. capital city) on economic growth that distort the natural equilibrium of the geographical distribution of the labor market. I propose a theoretical model of the way in which features of geography and nature can account for population density and distribution within a country. The model is empirically examined using data from comparable European regions. This allows us to detect deviations produced by the forces of human action, led mainly by institutions, and to evaluate the consequences in terms of relative economic performance. The results suggest that deviating from nature’s outcomes has a significant negative effect on economic growth and regional convergence. Hence, societies that choose to exploit the opportunities of the best locations, according to the natural endowment, rather than promoting a different distribution of the population across regions by means of institutional intervention, achieve better economic performance. In the last study, we focus on the most relevant government expenditure until the twentieth century: military expenditure. We examine the effects of military and trade alliances in military expenditure. We develop a theoretical model to understand why these alliances could influence military expenditure. In short, when countries build military and trade alliances with military leaders such as the US, they make themselves more valuable to the leader, and hence increase the likelihood of the leader providing military aid in case of an agression. This increases the military costs of a potential agresor, reduces the probability of war and let the non-leader country reduce its military expenditure. To empirically test the hypothesis derived from the model we employ data of 138 countries for the period 1996-2020. Our results show that trade relation with a military leader is a highly significant driver of military expenditure. For each percentage point in US GDP in trade between a certain country and the US, the military expenditure of the country reduces 0.5 percentage points. Moreover, when the trade balance is particularly beneficial for the US, the effect is even larger

The influence of incentives and survey design on mail survey response rates for mature consumers

The mail survey is still the preferred research tool for the mature consumer population and questions remain about ways of boosting survey response rates. The influence of two incentives were explored, a foil-wrapped tea bag and a $1 donation for each returned questionnaire in the study design. A significant higher response rate was only achieved for the first incentive. The effectiveness of a range of incentives and survey design features were investigated. Respondents indicated that their preferred incentive was a$500 donation to a charity. With the ongoing use of mail surveys almost mandatory for populations like this one, this study shows that incentives and design features such as CEO endorsement are important elements in improving response rates

Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings

A Framework for Improvement of Contractor Selection Procedures on Major Construction Project in Libya.

The construction sector constitutes one of the most important sectors in the economy of any country. Contractor selection is a critical decision that is undertaken by client organisations and is central to the success of any construction project. For major construction projects, final contractor selection often follows the contractor selection stage. Contractor selection is a process which involves investigating, screening and determining whether candidate contractors have the technical and financial capability to be accepted to formally tender for construction work. The process should be conducted prior to the award of contract, characterized by many factors such as: contactor’s skills, experience on similar projects, track- record in the industry, and financial stability. Several models and approaches have been developed to assist client organisations in the contractor selection decision making process. This thesis evaluates the current state of knowledge in relation to contractor selection models.The key features, strengths and limitations of each of these methods are critically evaluated. The key factors of particular interest to client organisations are assessed. This thesis reports on-going research which aims to develop improved contractor selection criteria and methods with specific application to make construction projects in the Libyan context. The aim of this thesis is to build a framework for contractor selection process in the Libyan Construction Industry (LCI) and to find out the major obstacles constraining its operations which so far have not yet been taken into account by the Libyan researchers. However, to address that, a huge investigation has taken place about the current statues for contractor selection in Libya, as well as, in developed and well developed countries. To achieve that, both, theoretical and empirical research was carried out between 2010 and 2013 in Libya. The theoretical study concentrated on the sector of construction industry (Cl) and its key issues, whereas the empirical study focused and explored on the Libyan Construction Industry (LCI) as the context for the study.Two case studies were utilized in this research. The case studies were used to provide more information about the current situation of the LCI and to identify the contractor selection procedures of construction projects in. Also, it assist the researcher to identify key research questions that can later be used in a questionnaire survey.This research was implemented through the administration of a questionnaire survey based on research questions that are required for the building of a framework for contractor selection procedure and the identification of the challenges and obstacles that are facing the clients in the selection process. The development of the framework includes, but is not limited to, contractor selection criteria, decision makers, consultant, clients and sub-contractor. Therefore, the data collection is based on responses from the public and private sector (clients, consultants, contractors and others that are involved in and are knowledgeable about the contractor selection process in the Libyan construction projects). Mean and analysis of variance (independent T-test) were used to manipulate the data from the questionnaire within the SPSS v.20 software environment. The resulting framework was subjected to a validation procedure which involved a structured Delphi technique process based on a focus group consisting of experts who were selected to help with validation of the framework and establishing the extent to which the framework is practical, clear, applicable and comprehensive. This research uses an integrated approach that combines AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method and TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method to evaluate and investigate the current existing practice of contractor selection in Libya. Also, the Delphi technique was used to establish a road map for contractor selection process. Twelve participants were selected to help with validation of the framework. Overall, this research found that the LCI was suffering from a total absence of contractor selection frameworks. This directly impacts on client satisfaction as well as government planning in the reconstruction of the country after the civil war in particular. To close this gap, this research was embarked upon to identify and explore the various contractor selection methods and frameworks that are utilized to support the guidance of contractor selection process toward success. As a consequence of this study, the Contractor Selection Process (CSP) is now very comprehensive and can now be a reference for any problem. Furthermore, this research will help decision makers and others involved to be more aware of and have a better understanding of the selection procedure in the LCI. This new understanding will help decision makers to make more efficacious decisions and to adopt good short and long term policies for contractor selection planning which can then be put into procedure. Even though this framework is built for the LCI, the research can be utilised in other countries that have a similar construction industry environment

Sustainable Assessment in Supply Chain and Infrastructure Management

In the competitive business environment or public domain, the sustainability assessment in supply chain and infrastructure management are important for any organization. Organizations are currently striving to improve their sustainable strategies through preparedness, response, and recovery because of increasing competitiveness, community, and regulatory pressure. Thus, it is necessary to develop a meaningful and more focused understanding of sustainability in supply chain management and infrastructure management practices. In the context of a supply chain, sustainability implies that companies identify, assess, and manage impacts and risks in all the echelons of the supply chain, considering downstream and upstream activities. Similarly, the sustainable infrastructure management indicates the ability of infrastructure to meet the requirements of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to address their needs. The complexities regarding sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management have driven managers and professionals to seek different solutions. This Special Issue aims to provide readers with the most recent research results on the aforementioned subjects. In addition, it offers some solutions and also raises some questions for further research and development toward sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management