We build a framework using Markov transition matrices to develop comparative analyses of the dynamics of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals across 20 EU Member States and three sustainability dimensions—economic, social, and environmental—over the period of 2011–2019. The results indicate that the European Union has significantly progressed in achieving sustainable development, and that this progress has been achieved in all dimensions of sustainability and all EU regions. Nevertheless, we have detected different dynamics of sustainability across some countries and dimensions. This can help policymakers identify where greater emphasis should be placed on putting global goals back on track.

This paper surveys the empirical economic literature focused on the determinants of industrial water demand. Both the methodological issues and the outcomes of the previous studies are presented and discussed. Attention is given to key methodological issues, such as the available information, the type of data used, the specification of the variables, the choice of the estimated function, its functional form, and the estimation techniques used, highlighting the issues that require greater attention in future studies. Regarding the results, we focus on the estimated elasticities in order to know how the price of water, the level of activity, and the prices of the other inputs influence the demand for water.

This article analyzes price volatility transmission over time along the fresh wild hake supply chain in Spain using weekly prices at three levels of the fresh hake supply chain (auction, wholesale, and retail). The approach taken involves both an asymmetric multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity model (GARCH) and a Vector Autoregressive Model (VAR) to explore the relationships of price volatility between chain levels. The findings reveal the dynamic structure of price linkages and confirm the presence of overall spillovers, as well as asymmetric volatility spillovers across certain chain levels. Retail prices are found to be the least volatile of the three, implying the volatility at auction and wholesale levels is not passed on to consumers.

This study examines, from an economic perspective, the factors influencing the decision of companies to use groundwater or not, in a context in which they have access to drinking publicly-supplied water and can also opt for self-supplying groundwater, and then estimates its groundwater demand. The Heckman two-stage model is applied, using microdata of a sample of 2579 manufacturing and service companies located in Zaragoza (Spain). The results of the first stage show that companies have economically rational behavior in the choice of their water supply sources: the probability to capture groundwater depends negatively on its cost and positively on the cost of publicly-supplied water. The results of the second stage indicate that the demand for self-supplied groundwater is normal, but inelastic (elasticity of −0.50), and that self-supplied and publicly-supplied water are substitutive inputs, where the cross-elasticity of the demand is much higher than the direct elasticity. These results warn of the undesirable consequences, on overall efficiency and environmental sustainability, of the lack of a volumetric fee that charges companies with the environmental and resource costs caused by the extraction of groundwater and emphasize the need for integrated management of all water resources.

Health benefits of blue spaces have been less studied compared with other urban natural environments. As a type of blue space, beaches are also affected by this lack of evidence, despite their cultural and economic importance in lots of coastal regions all over the world. Based on secondary health data from 3192 participants of the Health Survey of Barcelona 2016, we conducted a logit regression analysis to explore the relationship between people’s general health and beach proximity from their dwelling place, controlling for several health determinants. Our main results suggested that having good general health was less likely for a 1-km increase in the linear distance to the closest beach from people’s dwelling places (OR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.87, 1.00). Moreover, the probability of having good general health was 45% higher for people living in the first 2 km from the beach (OR: 1.45; 95% CI: 1.01, 2.09), relative to those living >5–10 km from it. Also, these health effects were stronger for people with a low family income. These findings contribute to grow the currently small body of research related to health benefits of beach spaces. Likewise, they encourage fostering the use of these spaces for health promotion in cities, as well as protecting them and improving their accessibility and safety. Further research should lean towards the underlying causes of these health benefits linked to people’s exposure to beach spaces.