Measuring differential forest outcomes: A tale of two countries

This paper empirically analyzes the growth/deforestation trajectories of El Salvador and Puerto Rico, two Latin American tropical developing countries which have witnessed widely different economic and forest scenarios since the early 1960s. Although both countries began the period with relatively abundant forest resources and similar levels of development, only Puerto Rico witnessed an increase in forest cover during this period. After briefly discussing each country's respective socioeconomic and land use changes, the paper empirically measures possible factors mediating these different deforestation outcomes. Empirical results presented here suggest that Puerto Rico's forest success has depended significantly on its rapid economic growth and development, in particular, its high levels of industrialization, social welfare provision, and domestic investment. Having successfully avoided the scarcity-induced forms of forest exploitation that have destroyed El Salvador's forests, Puerto Rico must now devote the considerable resources generated by this growth to protecting its forest cover from the negative effects of unrestricted urban and industrial development.     

Economic Effects of Taxes on Exports of Palm Oil Products

In an effort to control increases in the prices of certain tradable commodities in recent years, the Indonesian government has experimented with a variety of policy interventions. Palm oil is important both as an export commodity and for household consumption in the form of cooking oil. We examine a palm oil export tax policy that ran from September 1994 through June 1997. We find that the taxes did reduce the domestic prices of palm oil products, and we estimate their effects on the distribution of income within Indonesia. Notably, we find that they actually reduced revenues of the government, and lowered profits for palm oil refiners. We also examine the efficiency effects and other aspects of the taxes. Finally, we discuss more drastic export restraints imposed more recently by the government during the economic crisis.     

基于博弈论的我国石油企业竞争战略研究

文章指出,如何运用科学高效的战略管理办法促进我国石油企业的健康发展是摆在我们面前的重大问题。科学竞争战略的制定有助于我国石油企业在激烈的国际国内竞争中不断增强自身实力,规避自身劣势,从而不断扩大市场份额,赢得市场先机。博弈论与经济学的关系尤为密切,在企业竞争战略管理中主要处理竞争与合作的问题,它是通过详细分析各方面信息对决策主体的作用和平衡双方关系而进行研究的一种对策理论。将博弈论引入我国石油企业竞争战略的研究,不仅切实结合了我国石油企业的本质特征,更能充分考虑竞争双：手或者多方的对抗作用,让竞争战略具有更强的动态特性,更有利于加强我国石油企业的竞争优势。     

Survey of recent developments

The Indonesian economy is maintaining its momentum at a time of ongoing uncertainty in the global economy and slowing economic growth in China. Strong domestic demand saw output grow by 6.4% over the year to June, despite a steep fall in net exports. Inflation is safely within Bank Indonesia's target range, although food prices have increased relatively quickly. The current account deficit widened to 3.1% of GDP in the June quarter due to continued growth in imports and falling prices for commodity exports. The trade environment has deteriorated in 2012, and new divestment and domestic processing requirements are likely to further reduce investor interest in the mining sector.

President Yudhoyono has recently made several speeches calling for a ‘green growth agenda’. Some progress has been seen in slowing deforestation and in establishing mechanisms for facilitating payments to reduce emissions from deforestation, but loss of natural forests remains rapid. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy are growing quickly, stoked by increasing use of coal. The proposed 2013 budget continues to be heavily burdened by energy subsidies, which encourage over-consumption of fossil fuels. In most respects, therefore, the business-asusual trajectory of the Indonesian economy is unlikely to be particularly green.

A barrier to subsidy reform is its perceived unpopularity, including the threat of public protests such as those witnessed in March. To gauge current opinion we carried out a survey of Jakarta-based university students. The results indicated majority support for the removal of fuel subsidies, but some respondents said they would protest against fuel subsidy reductions, highlighting the politically sensitive nature of the issue.

Indonesia has witnessed booms in the coal and palm oil sectors in recent years, becoming the world's largest exporter of both commodities. We review the benefits from these two booms and the tensions between the development of these sectors and environmental goals. We also review the tourism sector, which remains relatively under-developed outside Bali. Tourism is a potential source of long-run growth that may be aligned with a green economy. The development of the sector would be aided by infrastructure improvements and a renewed focus on the conservation of natural assets.     

警惕潜在的委内瑞拉风险

委内瑞拉是严重依赖石油出口且其潜力巨大的国家。随着查韦斯执政后的政局动荡、"新国有化"政策实施、油价起伏,石油产量、出口量整体呈降势,原拟以石油收入全面发展油气工业,调整不均衡的经济结构、大幅度提高人民生活水平的愿望也难以实现。其关键是国内外,特别是国营石油公司对石油的投资明显不足。中国对委内瑞拉投资巨大,以贷款换石油的模式已产生广泛影响。如果委政局有重大变化,油价下跌将可能使经济—社会出现动荡。中国应充分发挥合资公司各方和本地员工积极性,更全面进入油气工业上中下游各环节,助其发展,对各类政治势力进行全方位的友好交往等力争规避风险。     

Can Indonesia Secure a Development Dividend from Its Resource Export Boom?

Indonesia has enjoyed a long spell of sustained and relatively rapid economic expansion, largely on the back of strong commodity prices. No commodity boom lasts forever, however, and threats to the continuation of this growth are mounting. Indonesia now faces the challenge of locking in gains and setting a course to sustain future development in less favourable times. Post-2000 growth differs from earlier experience in that exports of agricultural products, especially palm oil, have played a leading role. In contrast to the country's earlier oil and gas export boom, the gains from agricultural export growth have accrued mainly to private actors, including corporations, smallholders, and the agricultural labour force, with a much smaller share passing through government budgets. The government can no longer simply mandate the use of funds for development purposes; many other actors and institutions are involved. It is reasonable to suppose that the benefits from such a decentralised export boom would be widely diffused, with relatively large effects on rural and farm households and lower-skilled workers. However, this boom has been accompanied by a sharp rise in inequality and virtually no real wage growth. Moreover, while spending rose robustly during the boom, it is not clear that poor, farm-based households have chosen (or been able) to use gains to smooth consumption or to invest for future generations. The capacity to lock in gains at micro and macro levels is subject to significant policy influence. In line with the maxim that ‘the time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining’, currently healthy global economic conditions present an opportune moment for Indonesian policymakers to take stock and to look ahead, with an eye to optimal development policy settings.     

Low carbon growth in Indonesia

Indonesia has responded to worldwide concern about climate change by committing to significant carbon emissions reductions over the next decade. Achievement of this goal will face significant practical obstacles, and the opportunity cost of avoided deforestation is considerable. In our second Policy Dialogue, two climate change experts present contributions to the debate. This exchange could not be more timely, given Norway's recent offer of substantial development assistance to Indonesia in return for reductions in deforestation and forest degradation.

In this first contribution, Adam Schwarz canvasses abatement options and outlines barriers to abatement and its measurement. These include capacity and data constraints, obstacles posed by decentralisation, and problems in identifying and measuring the costs of abatement measures. The author urges Indonesia to embrace the opportunity a lower carbon growth trajectory presents, and argues that this will require substantial additional funding, including from developed countries, and sustained leadership. (Ed.)     

The Role of Markets,Technology, and Policy in Generating Palm-Oil Demand in Indonesia

Indonesia produces more palm oil and consumes more palm oil per capita than any country in the world. This article examines the processes through which Indonesia has promoted palm-oil consumption and some of the consequences of that promotion. Partial equilibrium modelling shows that Indonesia's remarkable increase in palm-oil consumption since 1985 is not largely attributable to population and income growth. Instead, much of this consumption growth has resulted from substitution away from coconut oil, facilitated by government policies on technology, pricing, distribution, and trade. The switch from coconut oil to palm oil in Indonesia was associated with increased land conversions to agriculture and diminished smallholder competitiveness. Despite lower rates of cooking-oil substitution in the future, simulations suggest that Indonesia's total palm-oil consumption in 2035 will be at least double that of 2010.     

基于价值链的全球石油公司竞争力国际比较研究

为探索全球大型石油公司的竞争力状况,揭示我国石油公司的竞争力强弱,本文从价值链出发,构建石油公司竞争力的评价指标体系,利用灰色关联法与熵权法,对全球两大石油公司阵营(IOCs与NOCs)的竞争力进行实证分析,并分别探讨我国石油公司与这两类石油公司在竞争力方面的差异。研究发现,国家石油公司与国际石油公司的竞争力具有集聚现象,前者竞争力排名相对靠前,主要是其拥有国家赋予的资源优势,而国际石油公司则在炼化、销售和辅助活动等环节上更具优势。另外,我国石油公司普遍在价值链的基本活动能力上优于国际石油公司,弱于国家石油公司,而在辅助活动能力上则弱于国际石油公司,与国家石油公司差距较小。     

Massive transfers and mutual interests

The second ‘oil shock’ and associated changes in prices of manufactures that started to disturb the world economy at the end of 1978 have brought a deficit in the balance of payments of most of the South that appears chronic. However, its effects on patterns of production and consumption are by no means wholly harmful. If there were massive resource transfers to the South, these would perpetuate a pattern of growth which is simultaneously oil-intensive and in general inegalitarian. They would permit the NICs to service their now considerable debts to private companies and threaten the economies of the North, especially in view of the limits to world oil consumption in the next few years.     

Kalimantan in the firing line: a note on the effects of the global financial crisis

This note examines the impact of the global financial crisis on Kalimantan's four provinces. Although growth in the region slowed dramatically with the onset of the crisis, only in the dominant province of East Kalimantan did overall growth turn (slightly) negative. There were strong negative effects on the agricultural, manufacturing and mining sectors, but these differed greatly across individual provinces. This study presents evidence on price trends for three key commodities – palm oil, rubber and gold – and discusses the effect on farmers of the steep falls in palm oil and rubber prices. Surprisingly, the crisis had remarkably little impact on open unemployment, and the ongoing decline in poverty was hardly interrupted (although this may simply have reflected the timing of the surveys used to measure poverty). The end of the crisis saw oil palm making a speedier recovery than rubber, with gold mining remaining the ‘safety net’ for poor farmers.     

Corporate Endowment Insurance Fee Reduction and Employee Wages: Evidence from China

To stimulate economic growth, the Chinese government implemented three consecutive policies between 2016 and 2019 to reduce the corporate endowment insurance contribution ratio (CEICR), the highest payment item for Chinese companies. Using China's CEICR reduction policies as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper evaluates the impact of corporate payment burden reduction on employee wages. Generally, reducing CEICR appears to prompt companies to increase employee wages. Corporate cash flow is a possible channel of influence. Moreover, the positive effect is found to be more pronounced in companies that are more labor intensive, performing better in labor payment compliance, and located in regions with higher pressure for elderly care. This paper offers evidence in favor of implementing CEICR reduction policies from the perspective of improving the well-being of employees.     

Toward a global effort to protect the earth's biological diversity

The preservation of biological diversity is discussed from a global perspective, with a focus on tropical deforestation. Economic issues in tropical deforestation, market failure, and the costs and benefits of preserving biological diversity are surveyed. It is found using a straightforward economic model based on the cost-benefit criterion that industrialized countries can realize “gains-from-trade” by financing preservation of biological diversity in tropical developing countries. This provides a strictly economic rationale for the introduction of an international system to transfer funds for the protection of biological diversity in developing countries.     

China's FDI and non-FDI economies and the sustainability of future high Chinese growth

This paper presents and assesses of the contribution of inward FDI to China's recent rapid economic growth using a two stage growth accounting approach. Recent econometric literature focuses on testing whether Chinese growth depends on inward FDI rather than measuring the contribution. Foreign Invested Enterprises (FIEs), often (but not exclusively) are joint ventures between foreign companies and Chinese enterprises, and can be thought of as forming a distinctive subpart of the Chinese economy. These enterprises account for over 50% of China's exports and 60% of China's imports. Their share in Chinese GDP has been over 20% in the last two years, but they employ only 3% of the workforce, since their average labor productivity exceeds that of Non-FIEs by around 9:1. Their production is more heavily for export rather than the domestic market because FIEs provide access to both distribution systems abroad and product design for export markets. Our decomposition results indicate that China's FIEs may have contributed over 40% of China's economic growth in 2003 and 2004, and without this inward FDI, China's overall GDP growth rate could have been around 3.4 percentage points lower. We suggest that the sustainability of both China' export and overall economic growth may be questionable if inward FDI plateaus in the future.     

Local economic development by community business

The contribution of community business to local economic development is being increasingly recognised. In Scotland's largest Region, Strathclyde, there are already 35 community businesses trading. The companies - community owned, community controlled and non-profit distributing - are almost exclusively based in 'deprived' areas. Glen Buchanan looks at the background of deteriorating employment opportunities against which community businesses have emerged, outlines the characteristics of community business, analyses their role as an agent for local economic development, and appraises the work of Strathclyde Community Business Ltd, the UK's largest community business development agency.     

The Contribution of the Urban Sector to Australian Economic Development Before 1914

This article examines the contribution of the urban sector to Australian economic development before the First World War. This contribution has often been seen in negative terms: contemporary observers generally thought that the major cities were to large and drained resources from the productive sectors of the economy, while some modern historians have portrayed cities as centres of poverty and environmental disamenity. The article evaluates these claims and presents a case for the urban sector having been a powerful stimulus to economic growth. The problems which Australian urbanization created did not stem from cities being too large, with more inhabitants than the number of well-paying jobs; rather, the general preference for low-density suburban living, and the ability of most of the population to be able to afford to live that way, meant that the cities would be expensive to build and difficult to service in a cost-effective way.     

基于因子分析法的我国上市公司成长性评价研究——“CCTV中国经济年度人物”企业2008-2012年数据

企业的持续成长是企业的发展目标,企业的成长对我国经济发展具有重要贡献。本文以“CCTV中国经济年度人物评选”活动中77家上市企业为样本,采用因子分析法对企业成长性进行量化评价。实证结果表明：我国上市企业的成长状况各异,有的企业获得了高速增长,有的企业却呈现出负增长。此外,我国企业的成长能力主要表现在规模成长和利润成长两个方面,企业成长的评价应当是一个综合性和持续性的动态过程。     

中国上市公司海外并购绩效分析

本文利用2005～2009年间进行海外并购的210家中国上市公司的数据,检验了我国上市公司进行海外并购前后绩效的变化情况。利用会计指标法研究公司并购后的长期绩效发现,并购后整体样本绩效出现了不显著的先降后升的情况。另外,对港澳台资企业的并购比对单纯的外国企业的并购更容易取得成功。结合企业面临的现实条件,中国企业对待海外并购应抱审慎的态度,先易后难,以提高成功率。     

金融支持资源型经济转型对策分析——以延安市为例

随着对石油、煤炭等资源开发力度的不断加大,资源型地区经济发展出现产业结构不合理、社会发展缺乏内在动力等不利于经济可持续发展的问题,经济转型迫在眉睫。金融是经济发展的核心推动力,资源型经济转型需要强有力的金融支持。首先,政府要注重金融政策与产业政策的协调与搭配,找准金融支持的着力点,使资金投向符合产业结构调整的行业和领域;其次,金融机构要着力调整信贷结构,突破金融锁定,不断提升服务质量和水平,以满足企业多元化、多层次的金融需求;最后,企业在利用传统方式融资的同时要积极利用上市融资等直接融资方式,还要借助保险公司、信托公司、金融投资公司等非银行机构规避融资风险和降低融资成本。唯如此,才能及时推进资源型经济实现顺利转型。     

中、美矿产资源产业的经济贡献率研究

本文运用采矿业的产值占GDP的比重来考察矿产资源产业的经济贡献率,通过核算表明,当前美国的矿业经济贡献率维持在3.53%的较低水平。中国矿产资源的贡献率在12%左右,预估2015-2020,中美矿产资源产业的经济贡献率分别为10%和3%左右。通过对中美矿产资源产业的贡献率比较发现,中国矿产资源的贡献率中煤炭行业对GDP贡献率占较大的部分。而美国油气产业对GDP的贡献率所占绝大部分的比例,未来中国的矿产资源产业的结构必须优化升级。