The European Union and its Member States have been engaged in product market reforms over a long period with notable reforms including the Single Market Program and the Lisbon Agenda launched in March 2000. Product market reforms are seen as exerting both a direct and an indirect impact on...

This paper presents a procedure for clustering analysis that combines Kohone’s Self organizing Feature Map (SOFM) and statistical schemes. The idea is to cluster the data in two stages: run SOFM and then minimize the segmentation dispersion. The advantages of proposed procedure will be...

The importance of the notion of sustainable development has been advocated, among others, by Amartya Sen. In Sen’s view it is necessary to depart from the general strategy of defining sustainable development only in terms of fulfilment of needs and to use the broader perspective of enhancing...

East Asia is one of the most important areas of tropical forests worldwide. Considerable concern has arisen that the East Asian economic crisis would result in a further worsening of the already high pressures experienced by the region’s forests. This report examines the available evidence on...

Collective concerns about sustainable development and proposals about how to achieve sustainability have produced a confusing body of terminology that is more like a jungle of issues than a framework to enable focused action. Businesses, in particular, with their global reach, influence,...

Die Studie „Wertschaffendes Umweltmanagement“ betrachtet den Zusammenhang zwischen Umweltaspekten und Unternehmenswert. Hierbei bezieht sie erstmals zwei unterschiedliche, sich ergänzende Bewertungsverfahren ein: Sie nimmt erstens das Konzept des Environmental Shareholder Value auf und...

The North American Free Trade Agreement appeared to promise economic growth for Mexico and improved living conditions for its people. While the Mexican economy has recovered significantly from its post-NAFTA collapse, there is mounting evidence that many of the pre-NAFTA warnings of worsening...

This paper explores what a critical commentary on micro principles texts might look like, examining what is to be critiqued and how to do it.

This essay will consider the relevance of the social sciences - especially economics - to the foundations of sustainable development. Looming environmental crises have served as a prime motivating force for reevaluating fundamental principles. In particular, the concept of sustainability,...

The need for monitoring countries’ overall performance in Sustainable Development (SD) is widely recognized, but the methods for aggregating vast amounts of empirical data remain rather crude. This paper examines the so-called ‘benefit-of-the-doubt’ weighting method as a tool for...