Life cycle assessment of stone buildings in the Taihang mountains of Hebei province: Evolution towards cleaner production and operation

The building sector has gained significant attention due to its remarkably high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In China's rural areas, stone is a popular building material, but there are unprecedented demands to improve the life-cycle performance of stone buildings. It is essential to preserve the original architectural...

Myth and Reality in the Great Inflation Debate: Supply Shocks and Wealth Effects in a Multipolar World Economy

This article critically evaluates debates over the causes of U.S. inflation. We first show that claims that the Biden stimulus was the major cause of inflation are mistaken: the key data series—stimulus spending and inflation—move dramatically out of phase. While the first ebbs quickly, the second persistently surges. We then look at alternative...

Environmental, nutritional and social assessment of nuts

Nuts are considered an important protein source in sustainable dietary patterns but are seldom studied in detail. Here a multi-criteria decision analysis was used to rank 10 nuts and seeds against 11 environmental, nutritional, and social criteria and provide greater insight into the sustainability impacts of this food group. Weights were...

The Tangible Presence of Human Labor in Architecture

This essay aims to show that in many of the theories that fundament material culture and architectural experience, labor is implied in the constitution of material and, although seldom directly addressed, it is a determining dimension of materiality. From the Vitruvian and Renaissance treatises and Gottfried Semper to John Ruskin and the Art and...

Securing food under adverse climate and socioeconomic scenarios in Jiangsu Province, China: Critical role of human adaptation under change

Food security is important for human well-being worldwide. However, changing climate, population growth and shrinking land resources are threatening food security in many regions of the world. Jiangsu Province, China, is one such region. It is a major food-producing region of the country but is witnessing rapid population growth and...

The potential impact of Autonomous vehicles on the labor market in The Netherlands

The automobile industry has been continuously working on bringing automation in motor vehicles for the betterment of human life. Advancement in technology has helped companies manufacture cars that can drive and navigate on their own called Autonomous vehicles (AVs). There are numerous effects of AVs on society. The AVs are forecast to bring...

Urban informality shaped by labor: Addressing the spatial logics of favelas

This doctoral thesis mainly consists of a series of journal publications written by the author between 2015 and 2019. The doctoral thesis presents the results of ten years of research on informal settlements, with particular reference to Brazilian favelas. The research aimed to understand the social dynamics of the production of space in these...

Restarting Greece: Secular Stagnation of Total Factor Productivity Growth and the Greek Innovation System

In 2008, the crash of the housing market bubble lead not only to the collapse of the U.S financial system, but also to a Global Financial Crisis. The Eurozone was hurt, and the impact was not uniform. The “sick periphery”, and in particular Greece, still suffer from the consequences of this crisis. After three adjustment programmes and €293...

Robots and re-shoring: Should developing countries start to worry?

The world is experiencing a new technological revolution that can have profound implications for the nature of work. Currently, attention is particularly focused on the implication of the increased adoption of industrial robots. Multiple studies predict that especially developing countries are at risk to be negatively affected by robotization in...

The Bogus Paper that Gutted Workers’ Rights

Labor Laws and Manufacturing Performance in India: How Priors Trump Evidence and Progress Gets Stalled

Strong labor protections for ordinary workers are often portrayed as a `luxury developing countries cannot afford`. No study has been more influential in propagating this perversity trope in the context of the Indian economy than the QJE article of Besley and Burgess (2004). Their article provides econometric evidence that pro-worker regulation...

Offshoring, employment, and aggregate demand

The article uses a demand-constrained small-open-economy model in the tradition of Keynes and Kalecki to study the effects of offshoring on aggregate demand and domestic employment. Offshoring is represented as labor-saving import-using technical change. The results depend on the behavior of the markup on unit costs. If higher markups absorb...

Secular Stagnation of Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from the Italian Economy

Italy’s economic crisis – arguably – poses the greatest challenge to the future of European economic and monetary integration, not just because of the relative size of the Italian economy or because Italy has been a founding member of the European Union and its forerunner. A more important reason is the country’s pre-crisis economic stagnation...

The rise of the zzp'er (self-employed professional) in the Dutch construction industry

55% of all carpenters are self-employed (zzp’er), 37% of plasterers and wall-/floor finishers is zzp’er, and 28% of the bricklayers and interpolators is zzp’er. Of all the work in the construction sector, zzp’ers now do 15%. Is there something special about these people or the construction industry and where do these characteristics originate in...

Mobility in a labour market with non-standard jobs: A panel data analysis for the Netherlands

In the last 25 years the number of flexible jobs has been expanding in most European countries. For example, in the Netherlands in 1995, about 11 per cent of workers was working in a fixed-term temporary job and about 37 per cent of workers was working in a part-time job. Seven years later, in 2002 these percentages had increased to 14 per cent...

Females’ Willingness to Work and the Discouragement Effect of a Poor Local Childcare Provision (discussion paper)

We analyze the effects of regional structures on females’ willingness to work as well as on the probability that non-employed women who are willing to work actually will engage in job search. Special permission was granted to link regional data to individual respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Results of a bivariate probit...

Unwilling or Unable? Spatial, Institutional and Socio-Economic Restrictions on Females' Labor Market Access (discussion paper)

We analyze the effects of regional structures on both females’ willingness to work and the probability of being employed for those willing to work. Special permission was granted to link regional data to individual respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Results of a bivariate probit model correcting for sample selection show...