SEZ proliferation in India: are the objectives being realized?

This paper analyzes if the industrial policy framework of the Indian Government with regard to the proliferation of SEZs has satisfied its aims and objectives. The analysis however, shows otherwise. The empirical results show that the policy of the Indian Government has been lopsided, wherein the concentration of SEZs has increased in States which face lower levels of unemployment and a comparably high level of FDI inflow. Further, the concentration of the SEZs has been restricted majorly to the IT industry resulting in rigidity in the export mix. Policy implications hint towards a diversification of the SEZ industry portfolio and in increasing the size and therefore, the economic impact of these zones.Indian Industrial Policy, FDI, Unemployment, Export, Economic Development

Is public procurement going green? experiences and open issues

Public purchasing authorities are in a leading position for the introduction, promotion and development of green procurement. Indeed, the public sector can influence green procurement both by designing suitable policies and by driving “green” markets through the significant share of public purchases on GDP. The European Commission (EC) has emphasized the importance of cost-efficient GPP and, in compliance with the EU’s Integrated Product Policy (IPC), Member States have been encouraged to devise national action plans. As a result, many countries have already adopted steps in the direction of greening public purchases. The aim of our paper is twofold: first, we focus on the state of the art in terms of the EU and Italian Legislation; then, we highlight open questions related to crucial issues in GPP implementation, with a particular attention to the design of green tenders and awarding criteria to account for environmental quality in public purchasing procedures.Green Public Procurement/Purchasing (GPP), Italy, EU, Legislation and Implementation

Evolution of behavioral research on E‐waste management: Conceptual frameworks and future research directions

The rapid growth of e-waste or waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has garnered significant attention from scholars, particularly in the behavioral domain. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis and content analysis to provide a systematic review of WEEE-behavioral research. Firstly, a bibliometric analysis was performed using Biblioshiny (R packages) on a sample of 293 articles from Scopus and WOS databases. This part addresses the research question: A) How has the WEEE-behavioral domain evolved over time in terms of key journals, institutions, countries, trending topics, and research streams? Secondly, a content analysis was conducted on 41 relevant articles that were able to address the following research questions: B) What are the main theories utilized and their implications in WEEE-behavioral research? and C) what are the potential directions for future research? The findings reveal two distinct research categories, namely circular economic behavior and behavioral spillovers, with seven underlying and emerging clusters followed by corresponding research streams. Additionally, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) emerged as the core theory that was extensively utilized and expanded upon. Consequently, this study contributes to 1) understanding the evolution of the WEEE-behavioral domain, 2) proposing an integrated theoretical framework, 3) identifying the primary research streams and their interconnections, and 4) suggesting avenues for future research, supported by a robust conceptual model for hypothesis generation

Green procurement in the private sector: a state of the art review between 1996 and 2013

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Cleaner Production. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 85, 15 December 2014, Pages 122–133. DOI 10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.08.106The purpose of this paper is to identify the main themes of Green Procurement (GP) in the private sector through a literature review of papers published between 1996 and 2013 and to develop some future research directions. GP research has garnered interest from academics and industry alike. This is demonstrated by the increasing number of academic papers published in recent years. This literature review builds on the three themes in the adoption of GP identified from the literature: 1) the motivation and drivers for the implementation of GP; 2) barriers to the implementation of GP; 3) the performance impacts of the adoption of GP. Given that there are distinctive features of the private sector, compared to the public sector, this analysis focuses on GP in the private sector. The approach to GP holds important implications for managers, by directing limited resources towards projects which intersect both environmental performance and economic performance. The article discusses interesting findings, develops a conceptual framework of GP and suggests a number of directions for future research

ESA ESRIN'S VALUE FOR ITALY

The report presents an overview of the evolution of ESA's ESRIN stablishment. The programs and activities carried out by ESRIN are then analyzed, with particular attention to the Earth Observation and VEGA programs. We then moved on to assessing the economic and strategic impact of ESRIN for Italy. In particular, an estimate was made of the direct and indirect economic impact and of the scientific value developed by ESRIN on the Italian territory

The influence of excessive consumption on residents’ family thriving: the roles of intergenerational poverty transmission and educational cognition

Whether excessive consumption triggers the intergenerational transmission of poverty, as well as the role of residents’ cognition in family thriving, is still unclear in the literature. By adopting the structural equation model and the hierarchical regression method, we empirically tested the impact of excessive consumption and intergenerational transmission of poverty on the family thriving. We found that: first, the stronger the excessive consumption of Chinese residents are, the less helpful for them to achieve family thriving; the stronger the intra- and inter-generational transmission of poverty of Chinese residents are, the less likely for them to achieve family thriving. Second, excessive consumption reduces residents’ demands on family thriving by promoting the degree of intra-generational or inter-generational transmission of poverty. Third, the effect of achieving family thriving by reducing the intra- or inter-intergenerational transmission of poverty is evident in highly education-cognitive people. Our research provides insight into how excessive consumption affects the intergenerational transmission of poverty and the family thriving. It also provides valuable decision support for poverty reduction in public sector

Is public procurement going green? experiences and open issues

Public purchasing authorities are in a leading position for the introduction, promotion and development of green procurement. Indeed, the public sector can influence green procurement both by designing suitable policies and by driving “green” markets through the significant share of public purchases on GDP. The European Commission (EC) has emphasized the importance of cost-efficient GPP and, in compliance with the EU’s Integrated Product Policy (IPC), Member States have been encouraged to devise national action plans. As a result, many countries have already adopted steps in the direction of greening public purchases. The aim of our paper is twofold: first, we focus on the state of the art in terms of the EU and Italian Legislation; then, we highlight open questions related to crucial issues in GPP implementation, with a particular attention to the design of green tenders and awarding criteria to account for environmental quality in public purchasing procedures

A parametric method to estimate environmental energy efficiency with non-radial adjustment: an application to China

To estimate the performance of China in terms of energy use efficiency during the first two decades of the twenty-first century while also taking into consideration pollutant emission, this study uses a panel data set covering 30 provincial administrative regions in mainland China for the period 2000–2016. To overcome problems with the DEA-based method, this study proposes an SFA-based model that can estimate environmental energy efficiency while maintaining the regularity constraints imposed on undesirable output, by using Bayesian technique. Our empirical results show that the average value of environmental energy efficiency during the whole sample period changed from 0.7858 in 2000 to 0.7726 in 2016, with an average value of 0.7812 over the whole period. This result is in sharp contrast with findings based on the often-used GDP/energy and GDP/undesirable output indexes, both of which show an improving trend over same sample period. This study suggests that more sophisticated indexes should be used to evaluate meaningful energy efficiency and environmental protection-related performance