Job design with sequential tasks and outcome externalities revisited

We revisit job design with sequential tasks and outcome externalities from a different perspective, extending Schmitz (2013a). When two sequential tasks need to be performed by wealth-constrained agents, the principal can hire only one agent or two different agents. When there exists an outcome externality in terms of the fixed cost and such an externality is not too large, if the two tasks are conflicting (resp. synergistic), then it is optimal for the principal to hire two different agents (resp. only one agent). When there exists an outcome externality regarding the marginal cost, the opposite result holds.     

基于外部性理论的企业社会责任研究

沉迷于经济建设取得伟大成就的同时,我们应该清醒地认识到企业的负外部性行为产生了严重的社会和环境问题。基于外部性与博弈理论,深入分析企业消耗公共资源（负外部性）的问题,指出如果政府缺少合理的制度来规范企业行为,那么追求利益最大化的企业将选择公共资源消耗的纳什均衡,而不会主动履行社会责任以寻求区域整体最优的帕累托均衡。研究发现,政府应通过建立企业社会责任制度,开展企业社会责任宣传和使企业社会责任收益私有化等途径来规范和指导企业履行社会责任。     

Background risk and self-protection

The presence of background risk increases self-protection effort or caution as long as an agent is prudent. In addition, the result extends to monetary self-protection investment if wealth and consumption are complements.     

Green Attitude and Economic Growth

We analyze the interdependence between green attitude and equilibrium development of environmental quality in an endogenous growth model. Individuals take only part of their impact on pollution into account, hence there is a negative externality of capital accumulation on environmental quality. Increasing wealth or increasing pollution enhance green attitude and reduce the externality, because individuals care more about the environment if their income is higher or if pollution is more obvious. The time path of pollution as well as the evolution of equilibrium growth are shown to depend crucially on the determinants of green attitude. Ongoing growth may lead to complete internalization of the environmental externality if green attitude improves with increasing wealth, e.g. as a consequence of an increase in environmental education. In contrast, if green attitude is determined exclusively by the level of environmental quality, pollution remains at a suboptimally high level. The interdependence of wealth and pollution in the determination of environmental awareness implies more complex dynamics. Capital growth enhances green attitude and thereby decreases pollution. Improved environmental quality in turn may increase capital growth due to less green attitude and therefore slow down convergence to the sustainable balanced growth path.     

生态环境的外部性与环境经济政策

生态环境是人类生存和发展的基本条件,是经济、社会发展的基础,生态环境问题已威胁到人类的生存和发展。将外部性概念引入环境保护领域,是为了寻找促使外部性问题内在化的有效方式,以解决日益严重的环境问题。与环境问题有关的外部性,主要是生产和消费的负外部性。环境经济政策是国家环境当局从影响成本—收益入手,引导经济当事人进行选择,以便最终有利于环境的一种政策手段,其主要目标之一是最大限度地减弱以至消除其外部性的影响,将外部性问题内在化。     

论环境保护机制内化与企业自组织环境管理

以＂管制＂和以＂市场激励＂为导向的环境政策,其目的都在于促使环境外部性问题内在化。从目前实际情况来看,尽管取得了一定的效果,但远没有真正实现环保机制的内生化。环境问题的复杂性和模糊性等特征,决定了要实现环保机制内生于企业,必须要依靠企业自组织环境管理的发展。一些高绩效企业所实行的自组织环境管理实践佐证了这一观点。企业自组织环境管理的发展正是把环保机制培植于企业本体内的过程。     

Optimal Tax Policy under Environmental Quality Competition

This paper studies the socially optimal emission and commodity tax policy when consumers are willing to pay a price-premium for environmentally friendlier variants of a commodity vertically differentiated in environmental quality. The first-best levels of quality can be obtained by a combination of a uniform ad valorem tax and an emission tax (or a subsidy for buying green products). The first-best emission tax is higher than the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. Regardless of environmentally conscious consumers, if only one instrument is available, the second-best emission tax is equal to the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. A uniform ad valorem tax increases welfare only if the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality is low enough.     

The environment as a challenge for governmental responsibility — The case of the European Water Framework Directive

The European Water Framework Directive is shaping a new conception of integrative water protection. In this article, the consequences of the Water Framework Directive in respect to national environmental policy will be discussed in referring to the notion of responsibility which is a central concept of political philosophy and theory. It will be shown that the new conception of integrative water protection entails a fundamental change in European water protection policy and also environmental policy at all. It implies that environmental policy has not only to prevent environmental damage but in particular has to warrant a good status of the environment, such that it must maintain a good status of water or even achieve it if this status does not exist. Achieving and maintaining a good status of the environment is, however, an encompassing task. Thereby, state power will eventually be overexerted. The threat of such overexertion has to be kept in mind in discussing the perspective of the so called New Environmental Governance. It will be pointed out that the New Environmental Governance is not primarily a form of some sort of democratic participation but rather designed to improve state power in environmental politics.     

网络外部性、软件保护与软件产业市场结构的关联分析——基于软件商业模式的角度

本文结合软件需求和供给的网络外部性、法律保护和厂商自我保护对软件的供给和需求的影响等,着重分析了软件产业中两种主要的商业模式——Windows模式和Linux模式,并研究了影响软件产业市场结构的因素及市场形成机理。研究结果表明:软件厂商主要通过选择不同的商业模式展开市场竞争,不同商业模式下软件的网络外部性和自我保护程度存在明显差异,这种差异内生了创新成本、获利能力、产品特性等差别化竞争优势,进而对软件产业市场结构的形成产生重要影响。     

An open economy model of the effects of unilateral environmental policy by a large developing country

In this paper, we pose the following question. Why is it that despite the universal recognition of the need for global environmental protection, developing countries have been lax in instituting stringent environmental regulations? Addressing this question from an economic standpoint, we show that there are plausible theoretical circumstances in which a large developing country can be worse off if it chooses to implement environmental policy in an uncoordinated fashion. The empirical dimension of this question is stressed and the key parameters – such as elasticities and marginal propensities to consume – which are germane to any policy discussion regarding this issue are identified. Second, we study – once again from the perspective of a large developing country – the possibility of using the domestic tax structure optimally to attain environmental policy objectives in a second-best environment. This scenario involves taxing pollution indirectly, by using product taxes. Finally, keeping the empirical dimension of the question in mind, we show how to compute optimal externality correcting taxes. These taxes are primarily a function of different kinds of elasticities.     

Insurance,self-protection,and the economics of terrorism

This paper investigates the rationale for public intervention in the terrorism insurance market. It argues that government subsidies for terror insurance have the effect of discouraging self-protection and limiting the negative externalities associated with self-protection. Cautious self-protective behavior by a target can hurt public goods like national prestige if it is seen as “giving in” to the terrorists, and may increase the loss probabilities faced by others by encouraging terrorists to substitute toward more vulnerable targets. We argue that these externalities in protection are essential for normative analysis of government intervention in insurance markets and may also explain why availability problems in this market have engendered much stronger government responses than similar problems in other catastrophe insurance markets.     

污染产业转移视角下FDI环境外部性的跨界效应

通过FDI方式的污染产业转移会产生环境负外部性,在空间上存在跨界效应.这体现在承接污染产业会直接带来环境污染,从而引起居民福利的大量损失,而且还会因为自然因素导致跨界污染.目前,FDI的环境影响主要集中在东部地区,但有向中西部地区转移的趋势.许多地方政府为吸引FDI而进行的环境竞争,对这种跨界效应会起到相当的放大作用.因而需要采取调整政府人员业绩考核机制、鼓励地方政府增加环境投资、中西部地区按照全国主体功能区划要求制定分类的FDI环境管理政策、实行跨区域联合治理等措施,尽可能减少甚至消除FDI环境外部性的跨界效应.     

Efficiency properties of strategies market games: An axiomatic approach

The paper investigates the conditions under which an abstractly given market game will have the property that if there is a continuum of traders then every noncooperative equilibrium is Walrasian. In orther words, we look for a general axiomatization of Cournot's well-known result. Besides some convexity, continuity, and nondegeneracy hypotheses, the crucial axioms are: anonymity (i.e., the names of traders are irrelevant to the market) and aggregation (i.e., the net trade received by a trader depends only on his own action and the mean action of all traders). It is also shown that the same axioms do not guarantee efficiency if there is only a finite number of traders. Some examples are discussed and a notion of strict noncooperative equilibrium for anonymous games is introduced.     

The Timing and Strategic Role of Self-Protection

Self-protection has private goods characteristics as it reduces own exposure to pollution given a certain level of pollution. We study the effect of timing self-protection before, after or simultaneously with abatement. We find that self-protection when timed before abatements has strategic effects. In this case self-protection, shifts the second stage subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of abatements such that own contributions of abatement are decreased and those of the other country are increased. Thereby shifting future abatement costs to the other country. When countries cooperate only on abatement, the incentives to shift future abatement costs are greater. Contrary to, intention, cooperation on abatement may in fact worsen environmental quality if it does not include self-protection.     

Optimal Management of Environmental Externalities with Time Lags and Uncertainty

Many environmental externalities occur with time lags that can range from a few days to several centuries in length, and many of these externalities are also subject to uncertainty. In this paper, we examine the key features of an optimal policy to manage environmental externalities that are both lagged and stochastic. We develop a two-period, two-polluter model and obtain closed-form solutions for optimal emissions levels under different combinations of damage functions and stochastic processes. These solutions show that it is not obvious whether greater control should be exerted on polluters that generate externalities with longer lags or on polluters that generate externalities with shorter lags. We find that the optimal ranking of polluters with respect to the length of the time lag associated with their externality will depend on (a) the discount rate, (b) conditional expectations of future states of the polluted resource, (c) persistence of the pollutant, and (d) initial conditions.     

Job design with conflicting tasks reconsidered

A principal wants two sequential tasks to be performed by wealth-constrained agents. Suppose that there is an outcome externality; i.e., a first-stage success can make second-stage effort more or less effective. If the tasks are conflicting, the principal's profit-maximizing way to induce high efforts is to hire one agent to perform both tasks (so that the prospect to get a larger second-stage rent after a first-stage success motivates the agent to work hard in the first stage). In contrast, when there is an effort externality (i.e., first-stage effort reduces or increases the probability of a second-stage success), then the principal prefers to hire two agents whenever the tasks are conflicting.     

Regulation and Coordination of International Environmental Externalities with Incomplete Information and Costly Public Funds

In this article, we study cross-border externalities in a game played by two principal-agent pairs with adverse selection. Each firm/agent is located in one country and generates pollution by producing complementary or substitute goods, sold on a common market. A fraction of pollution is transferred from one country to another. Each regulator/principal is imperfectly informed about the marginal cost of his domestic firm and accordingly uses secret incentive contracts with costly public funds. We show the necessity of cooperation between competing regulators to effectively internalize all the damages caused to the environment, while reaching the first best. If the level of uncertainty is sufficiently low, we obtain an infinity of noncooperative Bayesian differentiable equilibria, which may necessitate competing regulators to coordinate on an equilibrium. Such coordination constitutes an incentive for competing regulators to cooperate. Our major result states that under some circumstances asymmetric information relaxes the transborder externality problem. Indeed, we show that, when there is a major transfer of pollution and firms' marginal costs are sufficiently high, competing regulators are better off under uncertainty. Therefore, asymmetry of information can have the very consequence of generating regulation that is too strict from the domestic viewpoint but that improves social efficiency when the benefits to both countries are taken into account.     

Market and public provision in the presence of human capital externalities

For many goods and services, such as health, education, legal services, police protection, the cost incurred by an individual supplier for providing quality is affected by the human capital of her colleagues. The paper shows that this human capital externality is crucial to determine whether such goods and services should be privately or publicly provided. Public and private provisions give individuals different incentives to acquire human capital, and the paper shows that either may be socially preferable, depending on the nature of the human capital externality: private provision of the final goods and services gives stronger incentives to human capital acquisition (and may therefore be socially preferable) if own human capital and one's colleagues' human capital are substitutes, and if suppliers with high human capital benefit more than suppliers with low human capital from their colleagues' human capital, but not excessively so.     

Growth, welfare and transitional dynamics in an endogenously growing economy with abatement labor

This paper sets up a simple endogenous growth model that highlights the importance of the endogenous labor-leisure choice and the allocation between production labor and abatement labor. We show that, in contrast to the common notion (e.g. [Bovenberg, A.L., Smulders, S., 1996. Transitional impacts of environmental policy in an endogenous growth model. International Economic Review 37, 861–893] and [Bovenberg, A.L., de Mooij, R.A., 1997. Environmental tax reform and endogenous growth. Journal of Public Economics 63, 207–237]), the existence of an environmental production externality is a sufficient (but not necessary) condition for environmental policies to stimulate economic growth if the labor-leisure choice is endogenously determined. In particular, since there are complementarities between public abatement and private abatement, the public abatement expenditure will have a more powerful enhancing effect on economic growth when it is accompanied by more efficient private abatement. This result also leads to a corollary to the effect that it is easier to achieve double dividends in terms of enhancing both growth and welfare if the endogenous labor-leisure choice is taken into account.In our dynamic analysis, we show that if public abatement is substantially large, dynamic indeterminacy may occur despite the absence of a positive labor externality and interestingly, this is more likely to be the case when abatement labor plays a more significant role. Besides, the transitional effects of an increase in public abatement are also investigated.     

The impact of prudence on optimal prevention revisited

We re-examine the link between absolute prudence and self-protection activities. We show that the level of effort chosen by an agent with decreasing absolute prudence is larger than the optimal effort chosen by a risk-neutral agent if the degree of absolute prudence is less than a threshold that is utility-independent and empirically verifiable.