基于演化博弈的监测—约束—激励系统生态补偿机制研究——以旅游胜地漓江流域为例

"两山"理论要求重构"经济—环境"生态,因地制宜设计生态补偿机制。以漓江流域作为研究对象,利用演化博弈理论分析不同情境下漓江流域各主体策略的演化趋势,再使用SD进一步模拟仿真,结论如下:(1)上下游地方政府实施策略概率的初始值会影响最终的稳定状态;(2)仅依靠上下游政府的相互自发监督,不能有效实施利于生态补偿的合作机制;(3)上下游都不履行义务时的惩罚应比只有一方不履行义务时的惩罚更大,上下游履行义务时的奖励应比不实现合作时的惩罚更大;(4)当中立机构监管流域水质状态时,上游提供给下游的补贴应该比下游给上游的生态补偿更少。据此提出漓江流域生态补偿机制政策建议。     

Higher-order risk preferences in social settings

We study prudence and temperance (next to risk aversion) in social settings. Previous experimental studies have shown that these higher-order risk preferences affect the choices of individuals deciding privately on lotteries that only affect their own payoff. Yet, many risky and financially relevant decisions are made in the social settings of households or organizations. We elicit higher-order risk preferences of individuals and systematically vary how an individual’s decision is made (alone or while communicating with a partner) and who is affected by the decision (only the individual or the partner as well). In doing so, we can isolate the effects of other-regarding concerns and communication on choices. Our results reveal that the majority of choices are risk averse, prudent, and temperate across social settings. We also observe that individuals are influenced significantly by the preferences of a partner when they are able to communicate and choices are payoff-relevant for both of them.     

Nature,roads or hospitals? An empirical evaluation of ‘sustainable development preferences’

While a key proposition is that a sustainable path is one where wealth does not decline, whether losses in natural capital can be compensated in wellbeing terms by more produced, social or natural capital remains an area of controversy. In this paper, we seek to better understand preferences for different combinations of assets that comprise (part of) the asset portfolio of a nation. In a study of coastal and marine natural assets, we test for the existence of weak or strong sustainability preferences using different compensation options (respectively produced capital and natural capital) offered to a sample of the public in Spain in the case of possible future oil spills. As a further element of this test, we provide an empirical reflection on Aldred (2002, 2006) and Turner (2007) who speculate that individuals may not view money as compensating for certain environmental losses whereas investments in social assets may offer a more acceptable compensation option. Our results do appear to circumscribe in some way the acceptability of investing in produced capital and reveal a tendency towards a preference for social capital compensation. Nevertheless, the size of the oil spill and the environmental beliefs of respondents also influence choices over the natural capital compensation option.     

ENERGY UTILITIES, CONSERVATION, AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY

Academic and policy debate has centered around an apparent "underinvestment in conservation." This paper outlines traditional explanations for underinvestment and presents a prospect theory analysis of individual conservation behavior. On the basis of investment criteria, individuals seem to discriminate against conservation investments. While these decisions might appear rational as life style decisions, individual choice across different household appliances shows little consistency. For policymaking purposes, understanding and modeling actual behavior is crucial to maximizing social welfare. The insight of certain positive models of human behavior supports economic efficiency arguments for marketplace intervention. This paper argues that because individuals making conservation investment decisions apparently do not act according to the dictates of utilitarian economics, utility sponsored conservation programs are justified on economic efficiency grounds. Finally, in light of prospect theory considerations, the paper suggests marketing guidelines for conservation investments sponsored by electric utilities.     

贸易自由化、纵向关联市场与战略性环境政策——环境税对发展绿色贸易的意义

本文在一个两国出口至第三国的连续双寡模型中,研究贸易自由化对均衡环境政策及社会福利的影响。分析发现:(1)战略性环境政策的租金攫取效应可通过中间产品出口实现,但不一定会通过最终产品出口实现。(2)当污染的环境损害程度不大时,贸易自由化将降低各国环境税,从而使各国的环境保护出现"向底线赛跑";当环境损害系数较大时,贸易自由化将提高各国环境税。(3)社会福利水平为双边关税壁垒的凹函数(呈"倒U型"),贸易自由化对社会福利的影响不确定。此外,本文还分析了合理征收环境税对发展我国绿色贸易的意义。     

城市饮用水水源地生态补偿标准测算与资金分配研究——以广东省东江流域为例

生态补偿作为解决城市饮用水源地生态环境保护问题,协调保护方和受益方利益冲突的重要手段,已成为国内外学者研究的热点,其中补偿标准是决定生态补偿能否顺利实施的关键环节。选取珠江三角洲城市群重要饮用水水源地——广东省东江流域作为研究对象,在总结分析现有补偿标准的基础上,运用生态保护成本法和条件价值评估法,分别从流域水源地保护方和下游受益方的角度对东江流域生态补偿标准进行测算,并依据下游用水量对补偿金进行分摊。通过测算,广东省东江流域上游六县生态保护总成本为105.38亿元,其中直接成本5.40亿元,间接成本99.98亿元,引入水质修正系数和水量分摊系数后,下游四市应补偿上游六县的生态补偿额度为24.69亿元。下游四市生态补偿支付意愿总额为5.91亿元,应支付总补偿额度超出支付意愿总额18.79亿元。因此,在充分考虑流域上游生态保护成本和下游支付意愿、支付能力的前提下,利益相关双方通过谈判、协商在生态补偿标准问题上达成一致,对东江流域生态环境保护和生态补偿机制的建立有着重要的现实意义。     

The Role of Environmental Management in Consumers Preferences for Corporate Social Responsibility

Consumers in modern societies are increasingly sensitive to environmental performance by large and small corporations, making it a crucial issue in the overall policy of corporate social responsibility. The objective of this paper is to study the role of environmental performance in the profile of corporate social responsibility as perceived by consumers. We utilize a stated preference approach to the study of consumer’s preferences. This approach allows for the evaluation in monetary terms of the trade-offs that individuals can make between various aspects of corporate policy decisions, including the extent of environmental performance. The data is modelled by means of a mixture heuristics approach that allows us to study the utilization of various decision rules in the choice of products with various degrees of environmental performance. The results show that the linear compensatory heuristic is the most extended across individuals and these subjects value most the policies concerned with environmental management. Those subjects opting for the non-compensatory decision rule tend to focus on the attribute of good labour relations as the most salient factor defining corporate social responsibility. In addition, policy measures are relatively more valued for some products rather than for others, suggesting that consumers discriminate between products when valuing companies’ environmental profiles.     

基于模糊多准则群决策的可持续项目选择模型

将模糊多准则群决策方法应用于可持续项目的选择决策中。首先构建可持续项目选择框架,包括投资的经济、社会和环境影响以及战略联盟、组织准备和投资风险六个评价准则。由于该框架的准则权重很难通过一组决策者不一致的偏好而确定,所以,运用乘法偏好关系和模糊偏好关系收集决策者对准则权重的偏好,利用目标规划方法进行建模并确定各个准则的相对权重;然后用模糊TOPSIS方法评估投资机会的适合程度。TOPSIS方法是基于偏好比率的一种决策方法,其中偏好比率运用于模糊数排序和模糊距离测量,可以有效地计算出每个备选方案与理想方案的模糊距离,从而根据距离判断其亲密系数,并最终应用于最佳方案的抉择。最后,以某投资集团的可持续投资项目选择问题为例进行分析,验证了方法的有效性和可行性。     

Voting with the wallet

The vote with the wallet is a new, emerging feature of economic participation and democracy in the globally integrated market economy. This expression identifies the pivotal role that responsible consumption and investment can play in addressing social and environmental emergencies which have been aggravated by the asymmetry of power between domestic institutions and global corporations. In this paper, we examine (both in general and by using examples drawn from the financial and non-financial sectors) how ??voting?? for producers which are at the forefront of a three-sided efficiency which reconciles the creation of economic value with social and environmental responsibility may generate contagion effects by triggering ethical imitation of traditional profit-maximizing actors, thereby enhancing the production of positive social and environmental externalities. Within this new framework, policies that reduce the search and information costs of voting with the wallet may help socioeconomic systems to exploit the bottom-up market forces of other-regarding preferences, thereby enhancing opportunities to achieve well-being with reduced top-down government intervention.     

Trade Policy and Antitrust: Do Consumers Matter to Legislators?

We provide one of the first efforts to measure the importance of consumer preferences in legislators' trade policy decisions by estimating the degree to which the level of antitrust enforcement in the legislator's state impacts his or her vote on free trade agreements. To the extent that antitrust and trade liberalization are both viewed as pro‐consumer in nature, we would expect to see a positive relationship between antitrust enforcement in their legislative district and Congressional votes in support of trade liberalization. We find evidence suggesting that consumer preferences do play a role in legislative decisions on trade policy.     

Can Defaults Save the Climate? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Carbon Offsetting Programs

Individual preferences for environmental policies can be influenced by the frame in which choices and decisions are presented. In this paper we present results of a field experiment on the contributions to carbon offsetting programs under two alternative treatments for the default option. The opt-in treatment asked subjects to pay for the policy proposal while the opt-out treatment asked subjects if they wanted to be excluded from payment for the policy proposal. The results show that the frame of the default option had a significant effect on the amount of money paid for the policy proposal. Subjects were more likely to accept the policy proposal if the default option was the opt-out treatment. The results have implications for the design of environmental policies.     

Bargaining, Bonding, and Partial Ownership

This article provides a theory of interfirm partial ownership. We consider a setting in which an upstream firm can make two alternative types of investment: either specific investment that only a particular downstream firm can use or general investment that any downstream firm is capable of using. When the benefits from specific and general investments are both stochastic, equity participation by the downstream firm in the upstream firm can lead to more efficient outcomes than take-or-pay contracts. The optimal ownership stake of the downstream firm is less than 50 percent under a natural assumption about relative bargaining power.     

Consumers’ perceived risk and hold and use of payment instruments

Consumer decisions regarding retail payment instruments entail private and social costs. Due to these social costs, policymakers are increasingly trying to understand the determinants of consumer payment choices as documented by the European Central Bank’s regular publications. This article contributes to this understanding by investigating the role of perceived risk. Based on an original survey of French consumers, we measure the effects of perceived risk on the decisions to hold and use the main retail payment instruments: cash, card and cheque. We point to the sequential dependence of the decisions to hold and use a payment instrument, and study jointly both decisions. The bivariate analysis based on risk factors shows that unavailability risk and time risk have the greatest transverse influence on holding and using payment instruments. Our results, robust to controlling for consumer characteristics, confirm their propensity for a quick-to-use and constantly available payment instrument. We discuss the relevance of our results for policy making purposes.     

Informal work networks

Abstract We present a model of time allocation between formal and informal labour supply, where workers learn of informal job opportunities from their peers. In addition to formal income taxation and enforcement, individuals’ labour supply decisions depend on the number of their peers with informal jobs and the strength of social ties. Workers allocate more time to informal activities when tax enforcement is lax and job information transmission is good. More connected social networks (e.g., wheel, complete) feature lower average income but higher average utility than poorly connected social networks (e.g., star, empty). Average income may be non‐monotonic in tax enforcement.     

Heterogeneous preferences and investments in energy saving measures

We investigate whether risk, time, environmental, and social preferences affect single-family homeowners’ investments in the energy efficiency of their house using established experimental measures and questionnaires. We find that homeowners who report to be more risk taking are more likely to have renovated their house. Pro-environmental and future-oriented renovators, i.e. renovators with lower discount factors, live in homes with higher energy efficiency. Pro-social preferences as measured in a dictator game relates positively to the energy quality of renovated houses. Controlling for the energy efficiency of houses, we further find that energy consumption as measured by heating and electricity costs is lower for future-oriented and pro-environmental individuals.     

The Market Instinct: The Demise of Social Preferences for Self-Interest

Environmental policy design has much to gain from a better understanding of existing voluntary behaviour and motivations. In laboratory experiments, participants often exhibit social preferences such as altruism, spite, reciprocity and notions of fairness. In contrast, traditional neoclassical theory assumes that people act rationally in a way that maximises their self-interest. In environmental markets, social preferences and self-interest interact. We apply experimental economics to test the hypothesis that social preferences are not maintained in the presence of a competitive market institution. In the initial public goods game, many participants were prepared to make costly voluntary contributions. However the introduction of the market institution triggered a ‘market instinct’ in experimental participants. They abandoned the social preferences they were previously expressing and became self-interested profit maximisers. This self-interested behaviour persisted even after the market institution was discontinued. These findings are important to understanding the role and impact of markets for environmental policy.     

Environmental Protection for Sale: Strategic Green Industrial Policy and Climate Finance

Industrial policy has long been criticized as subject to protectionist interests; accordingly, subsidies to domestic producers face disciplines under World Trade Organization agreements, without exceptions for environmental purposes. Now green industrial policy is gaining popularity as governments search for low-carbon solutions that also provide jobs at home. The strategic trade literature has largely ignored the issue of market failures related to green goods. I consider the market for a new environmental good (like low-carbon technology) whose downstream consumption provides external benefits (like reduced emissions). Governments may have some preference for supporting domestic production, such as by interest-group lobbying, introducing a political distortion in their objective function. I examine the national incentives and global rationales for offering production (upstream) and deployment (downstream) subsidies in producer countries, allowing that some of the downstream market may lie in nonregulating third-party countries. Restraints on upstream subsidies erode global welfare when environmental externalities are large enough relative to political distortions. Climate finance is an effective alternative if political distortions are large and governments do not undervalue carbon costs. Numerical simulations of the case of renewable energy indicate that a modest social cost of carbon can imply benefits from allowing upstream subsidies.     

On the optimality of privacy in sequential contracting

This paper studies the exchange of information between two principals who contract sequentially with the same agent, as in the case of a buyer who purchases from multiple sellers. We show that when (a) the upstream principal is not personally interested in the downstream level of trade, (b) the agent's valuations are positively correlated, and (c) preferences in the downstream relationship are separable, then it is optimal for the upstream principal to offer the agent full privacy. On the contrary, when any of these conditions is violated, there exist preferences for which disclosure is strictly optimal, even if the downstream principal does not pay for the information. We also examine the effects of disclosure on welfare and show that it does not necessarily reduce the agent's surplus in the two relationships and in some cases may even yield a Pareto improvement.     

Corporate Investment and Information Technologies: The Case of the Greek Refining Industry

The need to improve competitiveness and the enforcement of stringent environmental regulations created the need for the technological modernization of the Greek oil refining industry. The emphasis in this paper is on the pattern of investment decisions, the linkages between the acquisition of production processes and supporting IT applications and on the influence exercised by new technological investment projects on the availability of endogenous resources required to facilitate the adoption of technical change at the firm level. The Greek experience suggests that the role of IT application is becoming increasingly important in large-scale investment projects. The successful implementation of these projects depends, to a large extent, on the learning processes and the accumulation of knowledge at the firm level. These learning processes are directly linked to the specific requirements of the production process and our evidence support that there is a lack of positive feedback between administrative applications and the successful introduction of new manufacturing technologies.     

Corporate Investment and Information Technologies: The Case of the Greek Refining Industry

The need to improve competitiveness and the enforcement of stringent environmental regulations created the need for the technological modernization of the Greek oil refining industry. The emphasis in this paper is on the pattern of investment decisions, the linkages between the acquisition of production processes and supporting IT applications and on the influence exercised by new technological investment projects on the availability of endogenous resources required to facilitate the adoption of technical change at the firm level. The Greek experience suggests that the role of IT application is becoming increasingly important in large-scale investment projects. The successful implementation of these projects depends, to a large extent, on the learning processes and the accumulation of knowledge at the firm level. These learning processes are directly linked to the specific requirements of the production process and our evidence support that there is a lack of positive feedback between administrative applications and the successful introduction of new manufacturing technologies.