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*We analyse the effect of active labour-market programmes on the hazard rate into regular employment for newly arrived immigrants using the timing-of-events duration model. We take account of language course participation and progression in destination country language skills. We use rich administrative data from Denmark. We find substantial lock-in effects of participation in active labour-market programmes. Post programme effects on the hazard rate to regular employment are significantly positive for wage subsidy programmes, but not for other types of programmes. For language course participants, improvement in language proficiency has significant and substantial positive effects on the hazard rate to employment. JEL Classification:J64, J24, J68, J61, C41

Is it the case that more competitive SMEs have greater capacity to adopt environmental initiatives? The answer is no, according to this study which tried to link small firm environmental performance to factors such as profitability, growth, skills and research and development. This study focuses on three interrelated propositions that are concerned with the impact of environmental initiatives on firm competitiveness; the relevance of management's awareness to environment: the availability of external information and expertise to aid management, and the competitiveness of the firm. The firm's competitive strengths measured variously as above average profitability, firm growth and R&D, skills and modernity of plant and equipment, there was only scattered evidence to suggest any of these was importantly associated with the firm's environmental performance. The study showed that firms with an average economic performance were just as likely to adopt environmental initiatives as their high-performing competitors. Moreover, regardless of managers voicing personal concerns about the environment, most small firms do relatively little about the environment in practice and are reluctant to seek advice about it. Copyright (c) 2005 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

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There is a growing consensus about the urgent necessity to green the economy and to decouple economic growth from environmental pressure. Against this background, the article explores three questions: (1) What are key factors influencing diffusion dynamics of sustainable product and service innovations? (2) To what extent do diffusion processes of sustainable product and service innovations differ from each other, and can different groups of diffusion processes be identified? (3) Which factors, actors, and institutional settings are characteristic of different groups of diffusion processes? While diffusion research on sustainable innovation so far has been limited to case studies with just one or a small number of cases or has been focused on individual sectors, the empirical data presented here cover a large number of cases from a broad variety of product fields. This allows for generalizations as well as relevant insights and conclusions for sustainability, environmental and innovation policies. The empirical investigation of 100 sustainable product and service innovations revealed that diffusion processes of sustainable innovations differ substantially: The cluster analysis showed that five groups of sustainable innovations can be differentiated which differ significantly in terms of the factors influencing the diffusion process. The empirical results thus both support the assumption that different types of diffusion paths do in fact exist and also permit characterization of the various types of diffusion paths. The evolutionary concept of diffusion paths develops significant explanatory power on the basis of which faster or slower cases of diffusion and the success or failure of sustainable innovations can be better understood.

This paper discusses the sustainability impact (contribution to sustainability, reduction of adverse environmental impacts) of online second-hand trading. A survey of eBay users shows that a relationship between the trading of used goods and the protection of natural resources is hardly realized. Secondly, the environmental motivation and the willingness to act in a sustainable manner differ widely between groups of consumers. Given these results from a user perspective, the paper tries to find some objective hints of online second-hand trading’s environmental impact. The greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the energy used for the trading transactions seem to be considerably lower than the emissions due to the (avoided) production of new goods. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for second-hand trade and consumer policy. Information about the sustainability benefits of purchasing second-hand goods should be included in general consumer information, and arguments for changes in behavior should be targeted to different groups of consumers

Abstract-Cloud computing is an efficient way to provide IT capacity. From an ecological perspective, the use of cloud computing is usually assumed to entail lower consumption of energy and materials. However, it is difficult to assess whether this assumption is true. Cloud computing means shifting processing power from workplace computer solutions or the company server to the Internet. Yet it is comparatively difficult to determine resource consumption in the cloud. Previous studies have arrived at different results concerning the ecological benefits of cloud computing depending on the type of application. New cloud applications also cause additional resource consumption. Even today, cloud applications account for more than half of data centers' workloads. This share is expected to increase to more than four-fifths by the end of the decade. It is therefore doubtful whether IT energy and resource consumption can be reduced in the future. The present contribution considers this question and presents current research findings on the energy consumption of data centers, networks and end-user devices in Germany today and through 2025. It projects the findings from Germany to the global development and discusses the ecological effects of shifting processing power to networks and data centers through cloud computing.