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Circular economy (CE) describes a concept that aims at saving resources by minimizing the use of material and energy over the entire life‐cycle of products, including production and repair, as well as reuse and recycling. CE innovations help to realize the goals of sustainable development by targeting environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability. This paper looks at the economic and social dimensions by investigating whether firms with CE innovations perform better or worse in terms of sales growth and employment. Our econometric analysis uses data from two waves of the German part of the Community Innovation Survey. Quantile regressions show that CE innovations are positively linked to turnover and employment growth. While there is no statistically significant impact on labor productivity, at the same time, firms with CE innovations show a significantly better financial standing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the formation of new verbs, Persian very productively employs complex predicates, while the derivation of simple verbs has been held to be marginal or even inexistent. We use data from internet fora, blogs, and messaging services to argue that the derivation of simple verbs from nominals is a productive process at least among speakers of colloquial Persian who actively use online media. Two acceptability tests of seven verbs and two 'placebo verbs' conducted among 58 participants produced more than 7,000 gradings. They show that such verbs are surprisingly well accepted, with statistically significant differences depending on age, gender, region, TAM form, and the individual verbs. Some of these results seem quite straightforward (e.g., acceptance declining with age), others rather not (for instance, the present and past progressive is very well accepted). The results run counter to the assumption that a gradual substitution of synthetic structures (simple verbs) by analytical ones (complex predicates) is a unidirectional process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The convergence in production costs between biofuels and fossil fuels may be driven by an increase of the market price for crude oil on the one hand and by a decrease of the production costs for alternative fuels on the other. Whereas the price for fossil fuels mainly depends on the price of crude oil, the conversion costs often have a decisive impact on fuels produced from biomass. This study shows that the total conversion costs can be primarily reduced by scaling effects. Therefore, for all discussed types of biofuels, the total conversion costs can be reduced by a factor of ten, solely through scale economies associated with upscaling of the production plant size from 10 kt to 500 kt. In contrast, between 2005 and 2020, the expected reduction of the conversion costs attributable to learning effects is approximately one half, resulting from the learning curve factors during this time period. Although 2nd generation biofuels have been closely linked to higher conversion costs in comparison to 1st generation biofuels, this gap is expected to almost vanish over the next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]