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This article presents a model of development, civil war and climate change. There are multiple interactions. Economic growth reduces the probability of civil war and the vulnerability to climate change. Climate change increases the probability of civil war. The impacts of climate change, civil war and civil war in the neighbouring countries reduce economic growth. The model has two potential poverty traps – one is climate-change-induced and one is civil-war-induced – and the two poverty traps may reinforce one another. The model is calibrated to sub-Saharan Africa and a double Monte Carlo analysis is conducted in order to account for both parameter uncertainty and stochasticity. Although the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) is used as the baseline, thus assuming rapid economic growth in Africa and convergence of African living standards to the rest of the world, the impacts of civil war and climate change (ignored in SRES) are sufficiently strong to keep a number of countries in Africa in deep poverty with a high probability.

Aim of this research is to answer if organizational commitment changes according to demografic factors. Inputs gained from 200 person sample group from banking sector. According to the analysis it is found that affective and continuance commitment increases with age and job experience, and all componenets of commitment increase according to time in the last job. With the results derived from analysis, research’s support to organizational theory is discussed and some advices put forward.

Our paper analyzes the sources of labor productivity variation in U.S. bituminous coal surface mining from 1960 to 1976. The coal mining industry was among the first to experience a prolonged decline in labor productivity in the post-World War II period. In surface mining nationally, labor productivity in 1977 was 26.6 tons per worker-day, or 28 percent less than the peak of 36.7 tons per worker-day achieved in 1973. Moreover, in several major coal-producing states, the decline began much earlier and was more dramatic. For example, in West Virginia (the first state to experience declining productivity) the loss in productivity between 1965, the year in which productivity in the state peaked, and 1976 was nearly 52 percent. Eastern Kentucky experienced an even larger drop of 56 percent between 1967 and 1976. It was only the expansion of surface mining to western states in the 1970s that delayed the appearance of a national decline in productivity until the early 1970s. The industry has thus foreshadowed the labor productivity declines that subsequently occurred in other industries.

This paper constitutes a first analysis on stock returns and stock return volatility of energy corporations from the Eurozone. According to our results, the gas market does not play a role for the pricing of Eurozone energy stocks. However, changes in the Euro to U.S. Dollar exchange rate as well as developments at the money and especially at the oil market strongly affect returns of the energy stock portfolios analyzed. While oil price hikes negatively impact on stock returns of European utilities, they lead to an appreciation of oil and gas stocks. Most importantly, we show that oil market volatility negatively affects European oil and gas stocks. In contrast, energy stock volatility is not driven by volatility of the resource market, but only by its own dynamics.

To help policymakers form a judgment on inflation risks and the required monetary policy stance the OECD has developed an analytical framework based on a set of 'eclectic' Phillips curves estimated for the two largest OECD economies, the United States and the euro area, which is presented in this paper. This framework is used in the preparation of the Economic Outlook to explain recent developments in core inflation, excluding food and energy, based on developments in measures of economic slack (the output gap), spill-over effects from energy prices onto core inflation and lagged responses to past inflation via expectations formation. The fact that the knock-on effects from energy shocks onto core inflation appear small in comparison with the 1970s can be explained by the secular fall in energy intensity, a low and stable rate of 'mean inflation' -- to which observed inflation reverts after a shock has worked its way through -- and persistent slack in the aftermath of the bursting of the dotcom bubble.

Does temperature affect economic performance? Has temperature always affected social welfare through its impact on physical and cognitive function? While many studies have explored the indirect links between climate and welfare (e.g. agricultural yield, violent conflict, or sea-level rise), few address the possibility of direct impacts operating through human physiology. This paper presents a model of labor supply under thermal stress, building on a longstanding physiological literature linking thermal stress to health and task performance. A key prediction is that effective labor supply – defined as a composite of labor hours, task performance, and effort – is decreasing in temperature deviations from the biological optimum. We use country-level panel data on population-weighted average temperature and income (1950-2005), to illustrate the potential magnitude of the effect. Using a fixed effects estimation strategy, we find that hotter-than-average years are associated with lower output per capita for already hot countries and higher output per capita for cold countries: approximately 3%-4% in both directions. We then use household data on air conditioning and heating expenditures from the US to provide further evidence in support of a physiologically based causal mechanism. This more direct causal link between climate and social welfare has important implications for both the economics of climate change and comparative development.

Economic growth in developing countries accelerated waste generation, and Thailand also is experiencing issues related to increased waste generation and improper waste management. The country’s domestic waste utilization is only 20%–26%. Efficient waste management and increased quantity of waste utilization is possible only by overcoming problems and constraints in reverse logistics (RL) systems in Thailand. To address these issues and constraints, this study aims to focus the investigation on the current practices in the RL systems. The study was conducted in Bangkok and its vicinity. An integrated approach of qualitative and quantitative methods was employed to investigate the systems’ and stakeholders’ characteristics and to explore the factors influencing and constraining RL practices. Data were gathered through: (1) existing literature and in-depth interviews of key stakeholders involved in RL; and (2) a questionnaire survey of 98 managers of separation centers (SCs) probing their practices and studying the factors influencing those practices. The findings showed that RL systems can be separated into three levels, i.e., downstream, middle stream and upstream. SCs are key stakeholders in RL of waste management, and they collect waste from downstream, manage waste in a systematic way and send it upstream. The factors influencing and the barriers in the flow of recyclable waste are related to environmental, economic and social aspects. The analysis shows that waste managed by a cooperative-like franchise of SCs perceived that their practices were more efficient than those of a non-franchise practices. Additionally, these SCs have more bargaining power with waste buyers and sellers to set prices in the RL system. The constraints in RL practice are related to finance, market, labor, management/technology and legal issues.