Sustainable development goals in the European Union and its regions: Are we moving forward in economic, social, and environmental dimensions?

We build a framework using Markov transition matrices to develop comparative analyses of the dynamics of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals across 20 EU Member States and three sustainability dimensions—economic, social, and environmental—over the period of 2011–2019. The results indicate that the European Union has significantly progressed in achieving sustainable development, and that this progress has been achieved in all dimensions of sustainability and all EU regions. Nevertheless, we have detected different dynamics of sustainability across some countries and dimensions. This can help policymakers identify where greater emphasis should be placed on putting global goals back on track

Live and let live: understanding the temporal drivers and spillovers of life expectancy in Europe for public planning

The European continent has one of the longest life expectancies in the world, but still faces a significant challenge to meet the health targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations for 2030. To improve the understanding of the rationale that guides health outcomes in Europe, this study assesses the direction and magnitude effects of the drivers that contribute to explain life expectancy at birth across 30 European countries for the period 2008–2018 at macro-level. For this purpose, an aggregated health production function is used allowing for spatial effects. The results indicate that an increase in the income level, health expenditure, trade openness, education attainment, or urbanisation might lead to an increase in life expectancy at birth, whereas calories intake or quantity of air pollutants have a negative impact on this health indicator. This implies that health policies should look beyond economic factors and focus also on social and environmental drivers. The results also indicate the existence of significant spillover effects, highlighting the need for coordinated European policies that account for the synergies between countries. Finally, a foresight analysis is conducted to obtain projections for 2030 under different socioeconomic pathways. Results reveal significant differences on longevity projections depending on the adoption, or not, of a more sustainable model of human development and provides valuable insight on the need for anticipatory planning measures to make longer life-spans compatible with the maintenance of the welfare state.Publishe

Capturing the drivers of social SDGs: An econometric analysis of the dimensions of health and education.

With the changing policy landscape, the monitoring of human development in terms of the three pillars of sustainability (i.e., economic, social, environmental) has gained considerable traction in recent years. As a tool for conducting economic impact assessments, CGE simulation modelling is a workhorse member of the standard toolbox of modelling applications available to policy-makers, think tanks and academics alike. Notwithstanding, whilst simulation modelling is adept (in differing degrees) at handling issues relating to two of the three dimensions of sustainability, the social dimension remains neglected. Indeed, with their reliance on strictly market driven concepts, the task of including social indicators in economic models relating to, for example, health or education, necessitates a linkage with historical observation and statistical rigour. This paper sets out to provide an initial step toward filling this gap. More specifically, employing panel datasets and econometric model specifications based on searches of the relevant literature, this paper provides parametric linkages between identifiable indices in economic simulation models and a selection of six indicators covering health and education. One of the conclusions drawn from this paper is the significant effect of per capita GDP on health and education indicators. Nevertheless, the impact of other drivers, such as the food intake or the share of the agricultural sector on GDP, have a similar or even a greater magnitude than the income level. We also found a close relationship between health and education, since all health indicators tend to improve as the years of schooling increase. In contrast, the impact of pollution, trade openness and inequality on the selected indicators is much more reduced and, in most cases, not statistically significant

Empirical insights on the dynamics of SPS trade costs: The role of regulatory convergence and experience in EU dairy trade

With its influence on the world stage, the EU’s Farm to Fork initiative seeks to extend sustainable and fair food production practises globally, in part, by encouraging convergence with EU food standards (i.e., sanitary and phytosanitary measures-SPS). Harmonisation clauses have been found empirically to encourage trade, but no quantifiable estimates exist on the trade effects of SPS regulatory convergence. This paper examines this issue for the dairy industry, a highly regulated sector with significant sustainability concerns attached. Furthermore, the cost-saving effects arising from closer regulations and ‘experience’ (i.e., accumulated years of foreign trade track-record), are compared. Employing a 3-year interval panel starting in 2010, a structural gravity equation that includes domestic trade is estimated with a flexible empirical approach that evinces asymmetric trade impacts for specific bilateral trade routes. Results indicate a trade depressing effect for SPS measures, estimated as a global average 10.4% Ad-valorem Equivalent (AVE). Moreover, at the global level, converging regulatory frameworks generate larger trade gains than experience, where a 1% rise in regulatory convergence is equivalent to 5 years of positive trade and a 14% reduction of the AVE. The reduction of trade frictions prompted by harmonisation and experience does not, however, outweigh SPS trade costs. Exporters to the EU face a higher SPS AVE than that faced by the EU (10.1% vs 9.3%). On average, exporters to the EU also benefit from a 9% saving due to experience, although cost savings from regulatory convergence are only reported for larger exporters to the EU, whose consolidated position in EU markets also grants them even greater than average benefits from years of accumulated experience.Los autores agradecen el apoyo financiero del Instituto Nacional de Investigacion ' y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) (RTA2015-00031-00-00), cofinanciado por FEDER 'Operational Programa Smart-Growth' 2014-2020; y el programa de investigación e innovación Horizonte 2020 de la Unión Europea bajo el acuerdo de subvención No. 861932 (BatModel). Las opiniones aquí expresadas son exclusivamente las de los de los autores y en ningún caso deben considerarse como una posición posición oficial de la Comisión Europea.Sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS)ExperienceRegulatory convergenceGravityEUDairyPublishe

Effect of Non-Tariff Measures on the Extensive and Intensive Margins of Agrifood Trade from Least Developed Countries to the High- Income Countries

Esta investigación ha recibido financiación del Programa de investigación e innovación Horizonte 2020 de la unión europea bajo el acuerdo de subvención n. 861932 [Batmodel

Economic Determinants of Industrial Water Demand: A Review of the Applied Research Literature

This paper surveys the empirical economic literature focused on the determinants of industrial water demand. Both the methodological issues and the outcomes of the previous studies are presented and discussed. Attention is given to key methodological issues, such as the available information, the type of data used, the specification of the variables, the choice of the estimated function, its functional form, and the estimation techniques used, highlighting the issues that require greater attention in future studies. Regarding the results, we focus on the estimated elasticities in order to know how the price of water, the level of activity, and the prices of the other inputs influence the demand for water.Publishe

The Groundwater Demand for Industrial Uses in Areas with Access to Drinking Publicly-Supplied Water: A Microdata Analysis

This study examines, from an economic perspective, the factors influencing the decision of companies to use groundwater or not, in a context in which they have access to drinking publicly-supplied water and can also opt for self-supplying groundwater, and then estimates its groundwater demand. The Heckman two-stage model is applied, using microdata of a sample of 2579 manufacturing and service companies located in Zaragoza (Spain). The results of the first stage show that companies have economically rational behavior in the choice of their water supply sources: the probability to capture groundwater depends negatively on its cost and positively on the cost of publicly-supplied water. The results of the second stage indicate that the demand for self-supplied groundwater is normal, but inelastic (elasticity of −0.50), and that self-supplied and publicly-supplied water are substitutive inputs, where the cross-elasticity of the demand is much higher than the direct elasticity. These results warn of the undesirable consequences, on overall efficiency and environmental sustainability, of the lack of a volumetric fee that charges companies with the environmental and resource costs caused by the extraction of groundwater and emphasize the need for integrated management of all water resources.Publishe

Capturing the Drivers of Crop Water Footprints in Africa and its Regional Petterns

The water footprint (WF) is an established metric of resource intensity, although the drivers that guide this indicator over time remain under-researched. To advance this line, this paper assesses the impact of macroeconomic, climatic, and agronomic drivers on the agricultural crop WF in Africa using econometric panel data techniques and considering the existence of potential spatial patterns. The results reveal a highly significant spatial dependence in the WF across neighbouring countries. Per capita GDP is the factor with the highest influence on the WF, indicating that economic development facilitates a falling water requirement per unit of production. A negative impact of the temperature variation on the WF is also found, while the share of total land dedicated to agriculture tend to increase the crop WF in the continent. These results could help guide the design of adequate agricultural and water resource management policies to achieve sustainable and resilient food systems

Urban water demand for manufacturing, construction and service industries: a microdata analysis

This study analyses the industrial demand for urban water using a panel dataset of firms operating in the city of Zaragoza (Spain) and looking at three sectors (manufacturing, construction and services) disaggregated on 24 subsectors. Evidence in favour of using the marginal price rather than the average price is obtained, and the selection of the price is found to influence the value of the elasticities. Based on a translog cost function, the direct price elasticity of water (−0.86), the output elasticity (0.73) and the cross-price elasticities between water and capital, labour and supplies (being all of them substitutes) were estimated. By subsectors, the influence of price is only significant in those with a higher share of water in the total production cost. These results indicate that pricing can be used as a tool for managing water demand by promoting conservation of the resource. However, these results also indicate that the simultaneous use of other instruments is advisable to reinforce the impact of pricing policy on water consumption.Publishe