Creating Asset Accounts For A Commercial Fishery Out Of Equilibrium: A Case Study Of The Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery

This paper demonstrates a methodology for constructing asset accounts for a commercial fishery in which the stock, harvest, and effort level are out of sustainable equilibrium. The paper adopts the framework used by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis in its preliminary 1993 Integrated Economic and Environmental Accounts and follows methodologies recommended by the National Research Council committee constituted to review those efforts. The accounts were constructed for the period 1985 to 1995 for the Atlantic sea scallop fishery, a significant commercial fishery, using information obtained with the cooperation of the National Marine Fisheries Service from existing databases constructed for management purposes. No significant additional data collection was required for the purpose of this study. Differences between the net rent and user cost values of the stocks over this period indicate the inefficient exploitation of immature scallop populations.     

Choosing Children’s Environmental Risk

A model of endogenous risk provides a foundation to study a parent’s child care decisions when the child could be exposed to an environmental hazard (e.g., toxic substance, foodborne pathogen). The parent invests in childcare quality and quantity to reduce the likelihood of a hazard exposure occurring and to reduce its severity if the exposure is realized. We supply conditions to sign unambiguously the effects on a child’s hazard exposure of an increased probability a parent fails to access or have command over a technique of exposure prevention or that a technique is ineffective in preventing exposure. Also, we consider these effects when the parent is unsure what a technique can do to reduce the child’s probability of exposure. We conclude public policies designed to encourage use of a particular childcare technique, if childcare quality and quantity are stochastic substitutes, can reduce parental use of other techniques. The net impact of the policy could increase the chance the child suffers. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided financial support through Grant #R82871601, this research has not been subjected to the Agency’s required peer and policy review and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency. Thanks to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their funding support as well. Thanks to David Finnoff, Michael Caputo, the reviewers, and participants at the conference on Risk Perception and Valuation at University of Central Florida for their helpful comments. All views remain our own.     

Enforcing Emissions Trading when Emissions Permits are Bankable

We propose enforcement strategies for emissions trading programs with bankable emissions permits that guarantee complete compliance with minimal enforcement costs. Our strategies emphasize imperfect monitoring supported by a high unit penalty for reporting violations, and tying this penalty directly to equilibrium permit prices. This approach is quite different from several existing enforcement strategies that emphasize high unit penalties for emissions in excess of permit holdings. Our analysis suggests that a high penalty for excess emissions cannot be used to conserve monitoring effort, and that it may actually increase the amount of monitoring necessary to maintain compliance.The authors are grateful to Anthony Heyes and three anonymous referees for their valuable comments. Partial support for this research was provided by the Cooperative State Research Extension, Education Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station under Project No. MAS00871.     

A long term model of oil markets,economic growth and balance of payment constraints

This paper describes LTM, a long term model of oil markets, economic growth and balance of payments constraints. In this paper the model is used to investigate the role of the demand elasticity for oil in determining OPEC's profit-maximizing production profile. Our experiments reveal that in a model with intertemporal substitution and endogenous capital formation, gross revenue curves are fairy flat. Hence their economic optimum is virtually indeterminate. This suggests considerable leeway in OPEC's determination of pricing and production policies.This work has been supported by the U.S.-Mexico Project and the Center for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University as well as by the U.S. Department of Energy. Helpful suggestions have been received from Bagicha S. Minhas. The individual authors are solely responsible for the views expressed here.     

A NEW ARCHITECTURE FOR THE U.S. NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

The key elements of a new architecture for the U.S. national accounts have been developed in a prototype system constructed by Dale W. Jorgenson and J. Steven Landefeld, Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce. The focus of the U.S. national accounts is shifting from economic stabilization policy toward enhancing the economy's growth potential. A second motivation for the new architecture is to integrate the different components of the decentralized U.S. statistical system and make them consistent.     

Input-Orientated Data Envelopment Analysis Framework for Measuring and Decomposing Economic,Environmental and Ecological Efficiency: An Application to OECD Agriculture

This paper presents an input-orientated data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework which allows the measurement and decomposition of economic, environmental and ecological efficiency levels in agricultural production across different countries. Economic, environmental and ecological optimisations search for optimal input combinations that minimise total costs, total amount of nutrients, and total amount of cumulative exergy contained in inputs respectively. The application of the framework to an agricultural dataset of 30 OECD countries revealed that (i) there was significant scope to make their agricultural production systems more environmentally and ecologically sustainable; (ii) the improvement in the environmental and ecological sustainability could be achieved by being more technically efficient and, even more significantly, by changing the input combinations; (iii) the rankings of sustainability varied significantly across OECD countries within frontier-based environmental and ecological efficiency measures and between frontier-based measures and indicators.     

三峡库区经济发展与生态环境保护问题研究

经济发展与环境保护之间呈既对立又统一的关系,要实现经济的可持续发展必须在发展经济的同时重视对生态环境的保护。文章以三峡库区为例,通过系统阐述经济发展与环境保护之间的关系,结合三峡库区经济与生态环境的现状分析,认为库区经济发展离不开环境保护,而生态环境的改进也要以经济发展为物质基础,进而提出分别从政府、企业、公民三个方面努力以促进库区经济发展与环境保护协调发展的基本对策。     

Consensus among Economics Teachers from Transition Economies

The authors analyze the economic opinions of teachers and economists from the former Soviet Union who participated in economic education programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education under the auspices of the National Council on Economic Education from 1995–2001. They sought to determine the level of consensus on economic topics among the participants, and then analyzed their concordance with U.S. economists. They conclude that there is a significant level of consensus among the participants from the former Soviet Union, but this consensus is often at odds with the views of American economists.     

Is Environmental Protection Beneficial for the Environment?

We analyze a simple endogenous growth model with environmental interactions. Economic production generates emissions of pollutants whose environmental impact is mitigated by abatement activities financed by government expenditure; environmental quality affects preferences but does not play any productive role. We show that government intervention, by reallocating resources from capital accumulation to environmental preservation activities, allows the economy to achieve a sustainable balanced growth path. Along such a path, softer environmental policy regimes lead to win–win outcomes, fostering economic growth and improving environmental quality. Such a result needs to be interpreted as a long run outcome, but it clearly shows that the compatibility between economic growth and environmental improvement is far from automatic. Indeed, in the long run it could paradoxically be the case that both the economy and the environment benefit from low levels of environmental protection.     

How efficient are national environmental standards? A benefit-cost analysis of the United States experience

This paper summarizes the results of the first systematic, geographically-specific efficiency assessment of the U.S. experience with national environmental standards and with alternative approaches to establishing those standards. This ex-post evaluation assessed the net benefits that resulted from EPA's regulation of conventional air and water pollutants from the pulp and paper industry between 1973 and 1984. The paper compares the benefit-cost efficiencies of the three dominant regulatory approaches: technology, ambient, and benefits. Unlike previous studies, which assessed benefits and costs on a national basis, the study estimates both costs and benefits on a facility-by-facility basis. The analysis shows how the efficiency of national environmental regulations can vary dramatically at local levels. The authors conclude that the technology-based standards for water pollution management failed as an efficient environmental strategy. The costs clearly exceeded the benefits in the aggregate, as well as in the specific in most situations. Benefits exceeded costs at only 11 of the 68 mills investigated. The ambient based standards for air pollution management succeeded as an environmental strategy in the aggregate, but succeeded in the specific for only one-third of the mills (22 of 60 mills). The benefits-based standards for air pollution management also succeeded in the aggregate as well as in the specific for about one-half of the mills. Benefits exceeded costs at 29 of the 60 mills investigated. The results of the study point to two major conclusions. First, a regulatory policy that is based on some measure of environmental results, either ambient-based or benefits-based, will be more efficient than a policy that ignores environmental results. Second, truly efficient policies for reducing environmental risks require pollution mitigation decisions that take into account local conditions. These include not only the changes in local ambient conditions, but also the number of people who will benefit from pollution reduction decisions. This latter conclusion suggests that national environmental standards per se may be inefficient.Dr. Luken is currently Senior Environmental Advisor to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna, Austria. He is on leave from the U.S. EPA where he was Chief of the Economic Analysis and Research Branch of the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation (OPPE). Mr. Clark is President of Environmental Economics Associates of Traverse City, Michigan. He was formerly Chief of EPA's Cost and Economic Impact Analysis Branch in OPPE. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.     

Pollution without subsidy? What is the environmental performance index overlooking?

Agriculture is heavily subsidized in most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and environmental externalities can occur due to pollution caused by protectionist policies. This study examines the structure of agricultural protection in OECD countries from a chronological and comparative perspective. In addition, the policy-environment interaction is scrutinized to better explain the environmental implications of agricultural policies in the era of globalization. This paper critically evaluates the environmental performance index and recommends that this index includes polluting inputs in future calculations.     

PROBLEMS OF A CENSUS OF NATIONAL WEALTH

This paper is essentially a summary of the book Measuring the Nation's Wealth (Volume 29, Studies in Income and Wealth, New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1964), which is the report of study directed by the author. The purpose o f the study was to assess the problems and possibilities of conducting a national census of real wealth as a basis for continuing wealth and balance sheet estimates for the U.S. economy, by major sector.
It is stressed that the balance sheets and wealth estimates should be designed as a consistent part of an integrated system of national income accounts. Thus, valuation (at market prices and/or depreciated replacement costs), sectoring, and type-of-asset detail in the basic data and derived estimates should be compatible with the flow estimates contained in the economic accounts. Consistency of stock and flow estimates facilitates analysis of inter-relationships, and is helpful in the estimation process.
It is recommended that in the U.S. asset data by broad categories be collected as part of the recurring economic censuses and other reporting systems, but that detail on fixed reproducible assets (construction and equipment) at cost, by year or period of acquisition, be obtained from a small sample of respondents in each industry. The detail would be useful in its own right, and also permit revaluation of the assets by use of price indexes and depreciation rates to a current depreciated replacement cost basis. Where feasible, respondent estimates of market values would also be obtained.
The proposal is thus a compromise between the Japanese 1955 sample survey of assets, and the detailed wealth inventory of the U.S.S.R. which was begun in 1959. Preliminary work is now underway in the U.S. federal statistical agencies to expand collection of asset data, and to prepare comprehensive wealth estimates in the framework of the national income accounts.     

Planting flexibility: Implications for agricultural sustainability

There is a general belief that federal commodity programs restrict adoption of more sustainable production systems. In the 1990 farm legislation, Congress introduced limited planting flexibility to address these concerns and to reduce federal farm program costs. This program estimates the impact of planting flexibility on selected agricultural sustainability indicators and its policy implications. Results show that planting flexibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition for implementing more sustainable production systems. Other factors such as the availability of economically viable alternatives, macroeconomic conditions, and local resource and environmental concerns need to be considered. Policy reforms can help in achieving economic and environmental gains only in locations with economically viable alternatives. In other cases, increased research and development of new systems are needed to achieve desired results.     

农业税制废除的政治经济学解读

农业税制是古老中国的最典型的政治经济管理制度,那么这种税制被废除是否意味着某种全新的开端?传统社会中一直是从农村收税支持城市,现在宣布城市反补农业,这是否意味着政治经济学对象的根本变化?这是否意味着传统农业社会的治理方式的改变?这些改变意味着什么,向哪里改变,这是需要仔细探讨的。     

Bio economic modeling for a sustainable management of biodiversity in agricultural lands

For several decades, significant changes in farmland biodiversity have been reported in Europe. Agriculture is a major driver of these modifications. Taking into account these environmental impacts, agriculture nowadays aims at a more sustainable way of producing which would reconcile its economic and ecological functions. The objective of this paper is to give insights into the impact of public policies on both conservation of biodiversity and farming production. We develop a macro-regional model combining community dynamics of 34 bird species impacted by agricultural land-uses and an economic decision model. The ecological dynamic model is calibrated with the STOC (French Breeding Bird Survey) and AGRESTE (French land-uses) databases while the economic model relies on the gross margins of the FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network). We investigate the scenario based on subsidies and taxes. We show that simple economic instruments could be used to establish scenarios promoting economic performances and bird populations. It is pointed out how the sustainability of the policies is sensitive to the ecological and economic indicators used by the planner. The bio-economical analysis shows several solutions for the ecology-economy trade-off. These results suggest that many possibilities are available to develop multi-functional sustainable agriculture.     

企业可持续增长财务问题研究的经济学基础——启示与假设

分析企业可持续增长财务问题的经济学基础,可以为该问题的研究提供一个可行的思路。与企业可持续增长财务问题相对应的经济学基础是宏观的经济增长理论。从凯恩斯以后的经济增长理论及其外延理论中,可以梳理出企业可持续增长思想的渊源,进而可以针对3个主要研究命题及其疑点,提出几个主要的研究假设,是企业可持续增长率以及增长效率实现与否的决定因素。     

美国金融生态的恶化与量化宽松货币政策就业效应的失灵

在量化宽松货币政策下,美国的经济衰退得到了显著遏制,但失业率却持续在高水平运行,表明量化宽松货币政策对降低失业水平无效。研究显示,金融危机造成了美国金融生态的明显恶化,银行体系采取了紧缩信贷的应对措施,因此,美国政府通过量化宽松货币政策释放的流动性被截留在银行体系内部,不能形成满足市场投资需求的流动性供给,国内投资不能扩张,失业率就不可能下降,其结果必然导致量化宽松货币政策就业效应的失灵。     

我国节能减排工作中的战略误区与对策研究

分析了2000～2009年我国的汽车产销量和石油产销量,指出由于我们现在存在认识力度不够、产业结构不合理、法律监管体系不健全等影响因素,造成了我国经济发展与环境污染之间的矛盾日益突出。文章指出,要解决我国目前存在的环境问题,可以从强化人们的认识,优化产业结构,建立可持续能源系统,完善政府节能体系,建立和完善节能保护机制等一系列的节能减排措施来提高我国的环境现状,从而实现可持续性的发展。     

经济全球化下的农产品对外贸易政策及其调整

经济全球化形成当今世界经济发展的主流,中国加入WTO,必将加快其融入经济全球化的步伐,因而农产品对外贸易政策体系的建立及其调整是21世纪我国农业经济和贸易经济发展的战略选择。     

CONCEPTUAL AMD STATISTICAL ISSUES IN DEVELOPING ENVIRONMENTAL MEASURES-RECENT U.S. EXPERIENCE

The purpose of this paper is to describe the conceptual and statistical basis of the estimates of United States public and private spending for pollution abatement and control (PAC) prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce. The concepts and definitions were designed to ensure comparability with the national economic accounts since much of the analysis of the effects of environmental programs on the economy is conducted with the aid of the accounts. The work to date has been limited to pollution associated with harmful "foreign" substances and forms of energy discharged in the course of production, distribution and consumption. The conceptual base includes evaluation of benefits, but estimates completed thus far are limited to the cost of pollution abatement and control.
Definitions are given for pollution, pollution abatement, direct pollution abatement cost, indirect pollution abatement cost and indirect benefits. A framework for the estimation and presentation of PAC expenditures is developed and the estimate of U.S. PAC expenditures for 1972 and 1973 is presented. A brief chronological summary of the BEA project is also provided.