An Institutional Perspective on Climate Change, Markets, and Consumption across Three Countries

This manuscript enriches knowledge about consumers’ responses to climate change actions. Through the lens of institutional theory, it examines the findings of three studies run in France, Morocco and the United States. In Morocco, consumers are more responsive to climate change actions when they are managed at the level of their country, and company. Moroccan consumers express ambivalent emotions when their supermarket engages in actions to combat climate change. In France, consumers are less responsive when their country engage in climate change actions, but they display positive responses towards their supermarkets’ climate change actions. In the United States, the responses are mitigated. As shown in the three studies, institutional contexts have an impact on consumers’ responses to climate change actions. The manuscript further provides managerial implications to support marketing actions that combat climate change. It further raises climate-related issues, like corporate hypocrisy, and discusses the role of educators and other agents of change to address climate change

Effectiveness of Payment for Environmental Services Programs in Mexico

Payment for Environmental Services (PES) Programs in Latin America and Mexico have dominated the market-based environmental policy realm in the past decade due to their new paradigm for solving the problem for ecosystem degradation. There are at least three reasons why a careful examination of the design and implementation of these types of programs is important for the environmental policy discussion in developing world contexts. First and foremost, PES schemes offer several advantages: they are cost-effective, they are institutionally simpler, and they are potentially good for poverty reduction. Second, PES schemes embrace the user-based principle instead of the polluter-pays principle and, in some cases, they have elements of a conditional cash transfer program. Third, from a geographical perspective, PES programs are flexible and adaptive to local, regional, national and international scales. Despite the advantages from a design perspective, PES programs present a set of issues and barriers at the implementation stage, especially within developing world contexts where a set of preconditions must be in place in order for PES programs to work well. It is particularly important in this regard to evaluate the effectiveness of PES programs in the past decade in Mexico and Latin America. The main preconditions identified for an examination of the Mexican case were well-defined property rights and a bias against the poorest amongst the poor from PES program beneficiaries, which are mainly Ejidos. Based on my findings in the PES literature and from the Mexican Pago por Servicios Hidrológicos (PSAH) program evaluations, I propose an alternative framework to account for government, market, and communitarian failures that might arise at any traditional PES scheme within a context of imperfect institutions. In this investigation, I have posed the following questions: First, have PES schemes as public policy interventions changed the behavior of landowners where the environmental services are provided? Second, have the PES programs been effective in Mexico during the last decade? And third, from a policy perspective, what can we learn from the government-based-to-user-based PES scheme transition that is currently taking place in Mexico? I find that government-financed PES schemes have caused only modest or no reversal of deforestation, and that case studies of user-financed, smaller-scale PES schemes claim more substantial impacts to achieve environmental goals. So far, inconclusive evidence exists regarding side goals of PES in Latin America -mainly, poverty alleviation, land tenure, and local economic development

Integration in energy and transport amongst Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey

A limited process of integration has been occurring amongst the countries of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. From the mid-1990s to 2008, integration amongst the three countries has occurred in the energy and transport sectors, but not in other sectors, such as security, politics or trade beyond energy and transport. In the energy sector, this integration can be explained through neo-liberal institutionalist theory. Integration in the transport sector occurs due to a mixture of elements from the neo-liberal institutionalist, security communities and neo-functionalist theories of integration. In both sectors, transnational extra-regional actors (TERAs) are the explanatory variable in the integration

“I’d like to thank the Academy”: an analysis of the awards discourse at the Atlantic Schools of Business conference

The awarding of prizes has become embedded in all aspects of our society, including academic conferences. This paper views the awards discourse at the Atlantic Schools of Business Conference through a poststructural lens with an eye to understanding how the presentation of awards at the conference can aid in, or possibly detract from, the continued success of this long-lasting, unique, and much-loved academic event

The Merits of Tax Competition in a Globalized Economy

Since the turn of the current century, leading transnational organizations and academic scholarship have identified tax competition among countries as one of the scourges of the international tax regime. Both the EU and the OECD have warned that tax competition erodes the tax bases of Member States and impedes their ability to provide essential services. Commentators have argued that unrestrained competition is driving tax rates on mobile sources of income to (or close to) zero, a process that jeopardizes the very existence of the welfare state, exacerbates problems of global poverty, and deprives developing countries of funds that they desperately need in order to improve their physical infrastructure and human capital. Tax competition is also said to misallocate economic resources by driving investment to where the tax rate is lowest rather than to where the return on investment is highest. Most proposals for reform suggest that, to one extent or another, countries harmonize their tax policies with the aim of mitigating the threat of mutually harmful tax competition. One prevalent theme in reform proposals is that countries be prohibited from offering foreign investors a more lenient tax regime than that which applies to their own residents (“ring fencing”). The argument is that ring fencing is a predatory form of tax competition that allows foreign investors to benefit from government services for which they do not pay, erodes the tax base of other countries, and, by encouraging other countries to follow suit, instigates a “race to the bottom” to the detriment of all. This Article argues that, not only is international tax competition inevitable, but that free and fair tax competition, far from misallocating resources, is necessary in order to allocate resources efficiently and to maximize global welfare. It argues that limiting tax competition, particularly by restricting ring fencing, will likely exacerbate problems of global poverty and will lead to a more unequal distribution of wealth. Its thesis, therefore, is that tax reform should encourage, rather than discourage, international tax competition and that transnational organizations should focus their efforts on improving the competitive atmosphere

The Merits of Tax Competition in a Globalized Economy

Since the turn of the current century, leading transnational organizations and academic scholarship have identified tax competition among countries as one of the scourges of the international tax regime. Both the EU and the OECD have warned that tax competition erodes the tax bases of Member States and impedes their ability to provide essential services. Commentators have argued that unrestrained competition is driving tax rates on mobile sources of income to (or close to) zero, a process that jeopardizes the very existence of the welfare state, exacerbates problems of global poverty, and deprives developing countries of funds that they desperately need in order to improve their physical infrastructure and human capital. Tax competition is also said to misallocate economic resources by driving investment to where the tax rate is lowest rather than to where the return on investment is highest. Most proposals for reform suggest that, to one extent or another, countries harmonize their tax policies with the aim of mitigating the threat of mutually harmful tax competition. One prevalent theme in reform proposals is that countries be prohibited from offering foreign investors a more lenient tax regime than that which applies to their own residents (“ring fencing”). The argument is that ring fencing is a predatory form of tax competition that allows foreign investors to benefit from government services for which they do not pay, erodes the tax base of other countries, and, by encouraging other countries to follow suit, instigates a “race to the bottom” to the detriment of all. This Article argues that, not only is international tax competition inevitable, but that free and fair tax competition, far from misallocating resources, is necessary in order to allocate resources efficiently and to maximize global welfare. It argues that limiting tax competition, particularly by restricting ring fencing, will likely exacerbate problems of global poverty and will lead to a more unequal distribution of wealth. Its thesis, therefore, is that tax reform should encourage, rather than discourage, international tax competition and that transnational organizations should focus their efforts on improving the competitive atmosphere

Investigating the Sustainability of Southeastern United States\u27 Wood Pellet Production for Use in European Biopower Facilities

Although transition to renewable energy resources like bioenergy is being promoted as a way to mitigate global climate change, it is not always clear what potential tradeoffs stakeholders might encounter as these new energy resources reach commercial scale. Holistic consideration of a variety of potential effects on environmental and socioeconomic factors valued by human societies will be an essential component of meeting the world’s energy needs without compromising the quality of life available to future generations. This dissertation is therefore intended to advance understanding of the potential benefits and tradeoffs associated with the production of industrial wood pellets from Southeastern United States’ (SE US) forests for use in European biopower facilities.Although SE US global industrial wood pellet exports have developed in response to European Union goals to mitigate climate change, groups on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have expressed concerns that the trade arrangement will lead to negative impacts on SE US forests. Concerns include potential loss of old growth and bottomland forests and associated ecosystem services and species, as well as heavily debated potential effects on global greenhouse gas emissions. These claims of adverse impacts need to be tested with empirical data associated with key environmental and socioeconomic indicators of sustainability.Four collaborative research manuscripts developed for this dissertation are presented as four chapters following an Introduction. In Chapter 1, a telecoupling framework is used to qualitatively analyze the sustainability of the transatlantic wood pellet trade system. Chapter 2 proposes a set of definitions and reference scenarios to improve cross-cultural understanding of the new pellet industry within the context of the pre-existing SE US timber industry, as well as guidelines for future quantitative modeling efforts. Chapters 3 and 4 describe a quantitative analysis of timberland changes in two case study SE US fuelsheds that have been supplying industrial wood pellets to Europe since 2009. The Conclusion synthesizes the main findings from the four chapters and discusses opportunities to use the research to improve future policy decisions related to this renewable bioenergy system

The Federal Role in Supporting Urban Manufacturing

Examines the role of small and urban manufacturers and implications for coordinating federal policies and programs to support urban economic development, including land use and cluster growth strategies and infrastructure investments for sustainability

Transboundary supply chain risk management: A consolidation of transboundary and supply chain risk management

Supply chains are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disruptions and face greater exposure from the dynamics of global interconnectivity. The growing complexities of modern societies have prompted renewed focus towards supply chain risk management (SCRM) research over the last decade. However, research related to transboundary risk issues has yet to be given substantial attention in recent years. Contributing to the developments in the field of SCRM, this thesis proposes an approach for managing global supply chain risk which modifies current SCRM processes to account for the dynamic nature of transboundary risks. This work extends current literary contributions and aims to compensate for the lack of transboundary risk focus in SCRM. Introducing the taxonomy of transboundary supply chain risk management (TSCRM), the present paper conceptualises a holistic integrative framework that incorporates resilience principles to adaptively manage the transboundary risk environment of global supply chains. In line with this framework, additional templates, tables, and a TSCRM planning process are proposed to facilitate the navigation through the TSCRM process, in particular the risk identification, and risk response selection and implementation phases