Sustainability standards and certification: looking through the lens of Foucault's dispositif

Over the past few decades, sustainability standards and certification have come to play an important role in the global governance of production and trade. Their purpose is to address the environmental and social problems generated by the globalization of the economy. Yet, as scholars and actors alike have pointed out, framing these problems in terms of technical criteria and procedures might result in rendering some issues invisible and closing potential debate and contestation. Through the empirical analysis of a multi‐stakeholder initiative called the ‘Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil', our aim is to explore how civil society organizations and advocacy networks nevertheless draw new lines of power by using, putting to the test, correcting and constructing formalized knowledge. To shed light on these processes of resistance, we advance an analytic that restores the concept of dispositif coined by Michel Foucault in emphasizing both the disruptive and stabilizing lines that compose a dispositif.     

THE EFFECTS OF AUTOMOBILE RECALLS ON THE SEVERITY OF ACCIDENTS

The number of automobile recalls in the United States has substantially increased over the last two decades, and after a record of over 30 million cars recalled in 2004, in the last few years it has consistently reached between 15 and 17 million, and in 2010 alone 20 million cars were recalled. Toyota's recall crisis in 2010 illustrates how recalls can affect a large number of American drivers and the defects connected to them can result in loss of life and serious accidents. However, in spite of the increase in public concern over recalls and the loss of property and life attached to them, there is no empirical evidence of the effect of vehicle recalls on safety. This paper investigates whether vehicle recalls reduce accidental harm measured by the severity of injuries in vehicle accidents. The results of our analysis show that if a recall for a new‐year model is issued, then the severity of injuries of accidents continuously diminishes during the first year after the recall, something we do not find among cars not subject to recalls. This is because defects are repaired over time but also because drivers react by driving more carefully until the defects are fixed. To minimize the losses attached to having dangerously defective cars on our roads, both quick and timely recall issuance are needed and more detailed information on defects should be delivered to owners of defective vehicles. The latter can be made possible through simple but important policy changes by the U.S. government regarding recall information sharing with drivers and insurance companies. (JEL L51, L62)     

THE UNEMPLOYMENT VOLATILITY PUZZLE: THE ROLE OF MATCHING COSTS REVISITED

Pissarides has argued that the standard search model with sunk fixed matching costs increases unemployment volatility without introducing an unrealistic response of wages of new matches to productivity shocks. We revise the role of matching costs and show that when these costs are not sunk and, therefore, can be partially passed on to new hired workers in the form of lower wages, the amplification mechanism of fixed matching costs is considerably reduced. Finally, we observe that an empirical reasonable share of sunk costs is not able to match the volatility of unemployment without introducing unrealistic sensitivity to unemployment benefits. (JEL E32, J32, J64)     

RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES AND REGIONAL HIGH‐TECH FIRM START‐UP AND EXIT

If localized knowledge spillovers are present in the university setting, higher rates of both start‐up and/or survival would be observed in areas that are geographically proximate to the university. Using a detailed industry data set for Texas for 1999:3–2005:2, we analyze start‐up and exit rates for high‐tech firms. Based on a Poisson quasi‐maximum likelihood estimation, we find evidence that the level of R&D and proximity of a research institution positively affects the likelihood of technology start‐ups. However, using both the Cox proportional hazards model and Kaplan–Meier approach, our results suggest that geographic proximity to knowledge centers does not reduce hazard rates. (JEL R12, R53, O18)     

EVALUATING THE ECONOMIC COST OF ENVIRONMENTAL MEASURES IN PLANTATION HARVESTING THROUGH THE USE OF MATHEMATICAL MODELS

An important issue being discussed for Chilean pine plantation policies is the application of environmental protection measures when managing its timber areas. Typical measures, already in place in more developed countries, include imposing riparian strips and protecting fragile soils from the use of heavy machinery. While environmental protection measures have been considered vital for decades, so far there has been almost no attempt to quantify both the benefits and costs of these measures. This paper attempts to measure the costs associated with the main measures which can help both the forestry firms and the government evaluate the cost impact of the new environmental protection regulations being studied. The analysis for different environmental scenarios is carried out by modifying a mixed integer LP, currently used for tactical planning by one forestry firm.