Macroeconomic Policy and Ownership Structure in a Mixed Transition Economy

Both state and non-state sectors have important roles in the Chinese economy. A dynamic model to analyze capital accumulation in state and non-state sectors is constructed and the fiscal and monetary policy requirements for the coexistence of a state sector and a non-state sector are derived. Our findings suggest that the effects of fiscal and monetary policies on ownership structure depend on which government subsidization policy is implemented. The results indicate that lowering tax rates and tightening the money supply can speed up the transition pace, but these policies do not necessarily contribute to developing an economy with a greater share for the non-state sector.J. Comp. Econom., December 2000, 28(4), pp. 762–785. College of Economics, Osaka Prefecture University, 1-1, Gakuen-Cho, Sakai, Osaka 599-8531, Japan.     

Planning through the Socialization of Property Rights: The Community Reinvestment Act

This paper reassesses themes developed in the authors' Economic Abundance: An Introduction (Dugger and Peach 2009) in the context of the so-called "Great Recession." In this paper, we make several arguments. First, there is always a substantial gap between actual production and the capacity of the economy to produce. Second, the great recession widened the production gap, but did not change the basic relationship. Third, the anti-recessionary policies, adopted during the recession, were anti-abundance policies, for the most part. Fourth, almost by definition, short-term (cyclical) fiscal and monetary policy regimes do not address longer-term structural issues or the creation of widely shared abundance. Last, but not least, despite the great recession, and the myopic policy responses it generated, the abundant economy — based on a largely undamaged joint stock of knowledge — remains a genuine possibility.     

政策脱轨效应:评估环境政策的新框架

目前我国尚未形成统一的环境政策评估规范体系,而对具体环境政策进行评估时,可能会因不同领域、不同视角、不同评估方法而带来不同的评估结果。针对现有环境政策评估体系存在的局限性,提出可以客观评估环境政策实施效果的框架:政策脱轨效应。从政策脱轨效应的定义、产生原因、分类及评估思路四个方面构建理论体系,同时根据脱轨效应理论框架分析我国不同时期的环境政策。该框架体系的基本特点是:将不同环境政策的评估统一到同一体系之下,以特定的模型和方法,评估环境政策实施是否存在"脱轨效应"。研究表明,环境政策实施后存在发生政策脱轨效应的可能性;消费品之间的替代(或互补)关系、单位环境效益和单位产量排污因子均会影响政策脱轨效应的产生;从脱轨效应角度分析,环境政策制定时的决策目标会影响政策实施效果,只有当环境政策以社会净福利为决策目标时,政策实施才可能避免出现政策脱轨效应,实现环境保护和经济增长的双重红利。     

Climate change—environmental and technology policies in a strategic context

There are a number of features of climate change which make it one of the most challenging problems confronting policy makers and policy analysts. In this paper we consider three such features: (i) climate change is a global pollutant so there are strategic interactions between governments over climate policy; (ii) cutting greenhouse gas emissions can have significant cost effects across a number of sectors of the economy, raising concerns about the implications of climate change policy on competitive advantage; (iii) the long-time scales on which climate change operates means that an important dimension of climate change policy is policy towards R&D to cut the costs of dealing with climate change. In Ulph and Ulph (1996) [Ulph A, Ulph D (1996) In: Carraro C, Katsoulacos Y, Xepapadeas A (eds) Environmental policy and market structure. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 181–208] we presented a model to analyse these issues, but considered only environmental policies. In this paper we extend that analysis to allow for both a richer set of policy instruments (environmental and technology policies) and a richer strategic context.     

Fossil fuel subsidies and environmental constraints

Fossil fuel subsidies are applied in many countries for different policy reasons such as maintaining jobs in fossil fuel sectors, securing national energy supply or lowering the energy costs of selected industries to strengthen competitiveness. The current economic costs of fossil fuel subsidy policies can be substantially increased by future environmental constraints. We illustrate this point in the framework of a general equilibrium analysis for Germany where we quantify the economic costs of alternative hard coal subsidy policies at different CO₂ reduction levels. Our calculations show that German hard coal subsidies as a means of retaining jobs can get very expensive with additional specific costs of up to annual 70 000 DM per job for a given CO₂ reduction target of 35%. Though the empirical analysis is focused on Germany the general conclusion that current subsidy policies of fossil fuels must be fundamentally reconsidered in view of forthcoming environmental constraints is also relevant for other countries.     

Precautionary Principle and the Optimal Timing of Environmental Policy Under Ambiguity

I consider a problem in environmental policy design in which I focus on stock pollutants. In particular, I consider stock pollutants that cause severe damage on the environment and do not depreciate at all once they are released into the atmosphere and the ocean. The purposes of this paper are: (1) to provide an economic foundation for environmental policies based on the precautionary principle and the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and (2) to show that this optimal timing rule has a reservation property. Furthermore, I analyze the effect of an increase in ambiguity on the optimal timing of adopting some environmental policy, and show that an increase in ambiguity decreases the optimal timing of adopting the environmental policy.     

Assessing the macroeconomic impact of alternative macroprudential policies

This article assesses effects on the wider economy and overall costs and benefits of two alternative macroprudential policies - loan-to-value ratios on mortgage lending and variable bank capital adequacy targets. It also traces the potential effects of such policies if introduced prior to the subprime crisis. The work is performed within the National Institute Global Econometric Model, with a focus on Germany, Italy and the UK. Detailed banking sectors and addition of a macroprudential block to our model enable effects of policies to be captured. A systemic risk index tracks the likelihood of the occurrence of a banking crisis and establishes thresholds at which macroprudential policies should be activated by the authorities. Capital adequacy impacts the economy by acting on the spread between borrowing and lending of corporates and households, while loan-to-value transmits through its impact on the housing market. We find generally loan-to-value policy has a lesser effect than capital adequacy on crisis probabilities and net benefits, but there is considerable cross country variation. We show that the introduction of macroprudential policy prior to the crisis would have led to improvement in a number of key macroeconomic measures and might thus have reduced the incidence of the crisis.     

Environmental policy instruments and imperfectly competitive international trade

Policy makers, industrialists and environmentalists express concern that the imposition of tough environmental policies in some countries displaces production, and hence pollution, to countries which impose less tough environmental policies. Yet empirical studies of such impacts suggest they are small. However, these findings are derived from models in which international trade is modelled as being perfectly competitive. In this paper I model trade as imperfectly competitive with scope for strategic behavior by producers, in this case investment in capital. I show that the choice of environmental policy instrument can have a marked impact on the incentives for producers to act strategically, with environmental standards significantly reducing the incentives for strategic overinvestment relative to environmental taxes or no environmental policy at all. Whether welfare is higher using standards or taxes depends on whether producing countries are also significant consumers of the polluting product, and on whether all producing governments act to reduce emissions or only some subset of governments. To assess the quantitative significance of these theoretical results I conduct policy simulations on a calibrated model of the world fertilizer industry. These simulations show that the impact of environmental policy on strategic behaviour can be large.     

FROM DIRECT SUPPORT OF BUSINESS SECTOR R&D/INNOVATION TO TARGETING VENTURE CAPITAL/PRIVATE EQUITY: A CATCHING-UP INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY LIFE CYCLE PERSPECTIVE

The paper presents a generic, three-phase innovation and technology policy (ITP) model which, in a number of contexts, could lead to the successful rise of venture capital (VC) or related equity-based support and finance systems for innovative SMEs both in high- and non-high-tech sectors. There has been increasing recognition that such systems could facilitate country attempts at latching into the ICT revolution, catching-up and deepening of R&D/Innovation; and for facilitating the transition to a knowledge/learning economy. Whereas the model is inspired by the successful Israeli experience during the 1969–2000 period, the other examples referred to in the paper suggest that it is adaptable to other contexts as well. A critical analytical point is whether, in the wake of direct government support of business sector (BS) R&D/Innovation (Phase 1), conditions will emerge for the successful emergence of VC or related industries in Phase 3 (and, whenever necessary, for the successful policy targeting of such industries). These are termed Phase 2 conditions; and the paper refers to three Phase 2 profiles: the Israeli profile; the Chilean profile; and a third ‘strategic’ profile, which seems to have been adopted by Korea. The analysis strongly suggests that a multiphase ITP model could be an important analytical tool both for policy analysis and for policy making. Over and beyond its emphasis on the dynamic links between direct Government support of BS R&D/innovation and subsequent policies directed to VC, the paper also shows that policy could be subject to increasing rather than to decreasing returns.     

Plant location and strategic environmental policy with inter-sectoral linkages

In recent debates on trade liberalisation the concern has often been expressed that with more competitive international trade governments will be worried that by setting tougher environmental policies than their trading rivals they will put domestic producers at a competitive disadvantage, and in the extreme case this could lead to firms relocating production in other countries. The response by governments to such concerns will be to weaken environmental policies (‘eco-dumping’). In competitive markets such concerns are ill founded, but there is a small amount of literature which has analysed whether governments will indeed have incentives for eco-dumping in the more relevant case of markets where there are significant scale economies; even here there is no presumption that the outcome will involve eco-dumping.In this paper we extend the analysis of strategic environmental policy and plant location decisions by analysing the location decision of firms in different sectors which are linked through an input-output structure of intermediate production. The reason why we introduce inter-sectoral linkages between firms is that they introduce an additional factor, relative to those already analysed in the literature, in the plant location decision, which is the incentive for firms in different sectors to agglomerate in a single location. This has a number of important effects. First, there is now the possibility of multiple equilibria in location decisions of firms. Following from this there is the possibility of catastrophic effects where a small increase in an environmental tax can trigger the collapse of an industrial base in a country; however there is also the possibility that a country which raises its environmental tax could attract more firms to locate in that country, because of the way the tax affects incentives for agglomeration. Finally, and again related to the previous effects, there is the possibility of a hysteresis effect where raising an environmental tax in one country can cause firms to relocate to another country, but subsequently lowering that tax will not induce firms to relocate back into the original country.We consider a simple model with two countries, two industries, an upstream and a downstream sector, and two firms per industry. The analysis proceeds through a three-stage game: in the first stage the governments of the two countries set their environmental policies; in the second stage the firms in both industries choose how many plants to locate and where; in the third stage firms choose their output levels, with the demand for the upstream firms being determined endogenously by the production decisions of the downstream firms. We assume that there are no limits to production capacity, so that firms do not build more than one plant in any country. However, firms may build plants in different countries because of positive transport costs. Although the model appears very simple, it cannot be solved analytically, so all the conclusions must be drawn from numerical simulations.     

Industrial Policy and Islamic Finance

Debates on industrial policy have typically focused on interventions in the ‘real’ sector to facilitate the transformation of a resources-based economy to one that is based on manufacturing. Although the financial sector has always figured strongly in these discussions, its development, or rather repression, is almost always considered in the context of serving the ‘real’ sector. In contrast, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on government policies to develop financial sectors into independent and internationally competitive sources of economic growth on their own right through an analysis of the development of Islamic finance in Malaysia. The paper argues that the emergence of Islamic finance in Malaysia, and the country's evolution into a key player of the sector in the global market, can be attributed to developmental efforts or industrial policies adopted by the government. The case of Islamic finance in Malaysia suggests the continuing relevance of industrial policy for developmental purposes. More importantly, it demonstrates that developing countries can chart a path towards services-led growth, the next frontier in economic development.     

农业低碳发展投入政策:有效性和创新路径

基于农业低碳发展研究现状和农业低碳投入的迫切性,构建了农业投入低碳效能决定模型,进而立足中国现实国情,比较分析了中国农业环境政策的低碳化效能及其条件;从经济效率、成本有效、可操作性、灵活性和可接受性五个方面,探讨了农业投入低碳化政策选择标准;最后围绕构建一体化政策、整合政策工具、健全低碳技术研发与推广政策和建立碳交易市场机制,提出了农业低碳发展的投入政策创新路径。     

Economic Impacts of Multiple Agro-Environmental Policies on New Zealand Land Use

This paper investigates the implications of policy on farm income, land use, and the environment when New Zealand landowners face multiple environmental constraints. It also looks at the interaction between climate and nutrient reduction policy and the extent to which one policy can be used to meet the other’s objectives. We use a non-linear, partial equilibrium mathematical programming model of New Zealand land use to assess the economic impacts of climate and water policies at the New Zealand territorial authority level. The spatially explicit agro-environmental economic model estimates changes in land use, agricultural output, land management, and environmental impacts. The policies investigated include a range of carbon prices on land-based emissions ($0–30/tCO\(_{2\mathrm{e}}\)) as well a range of prices on nitrogen leaching from diffuse sources ($0–30/kgN). We estimate that implementing stand-alone greenhouse gas and nutrient emissions reduction policies for the agricultural and forestry sectors will create environmental benefits outside the scope of the policy. However, not all environmental outputs improve, and net farm revenue declines by between 0 and 11%. Simultaneously implementing the two policies results in the desired goals of reductions in nitrogen and greenhouse gas emissions with a marginal economic burden on landowners (i.e. 1–2% additional loss in farm profit relative to a stand-alone policy).     

Clusters and comparative advantage: Implications for industrial policy

Cases of industrial agglomeration or “clusters” arise in the presence of industry-specific and local externalities, also called Marshallian externalities. The standard argument is that such externalities may justify a policy of infant-industry protection to allow and encourage clusters to emerge. In this paper I explore this carefully, and show that different policy implications emerge under a more realistic modeling of clusters. In particular, rather than distorting prices to promote clusters in “advanced sectors” that may exhibit strong clustering possibilities, countries should focus instead on promoting clustering in current sectors, which have revealed to have the strongest comparative advantage. Import substitution is not a proper way to achieve this.     

An empirical analysis of air pollution emissions policy for the U.K. residential sector

In this paper an analysis of the U.K. government's air pollution emissions policy for the residential sector is undertaken. The analysis covers emissions arising from water and space heating, electric appliances and cooking appliances. Using an integrated economic-engineering model, the effects of the Energy Savings Trust and the imposition of Value Added Tax on residential fuel will be evaluated in terms of energy consumption and pollution emissions. It is found that the initial proposed policy was not sufficiently stringent to meet the government's environmental objectives, and that subsequent events have undermined the government's programme even further. Unless alternative policies are introduced, emissions from the residential sector will play an important role in jeopardizing the ability of the U.K. government to meet its international obligations.     

Timing and Commitment of Environmental Policy,Adoption of New Technology,and Repercussions on R&;D

We investigate the interplay between environmental policy, incentives to adoptnew technology, and repercussions on R&D. We study a model where a monopolistic upstream firm engages in R&D and sells advanced abatement technology to polluting downstream firms. We consider four different timing and commitment regimes of environmental tax and permit policies: ex post taxation (or issuing permits), interim commitment to a tax rate (a quota of permits) after observing R&D success but before adoption, and finally two types of ex antecommitment before R&D activity, one with a unique tax rate (quota of permits), the other one with a menu of tax rates (permit quotas). We study the second best tax and permit policies and rank these with respect to welfare. In particular, we find that commitment to a menu of tax rate dominates all other policy regimes.     

中国环境政策演变及其对企业环境创新绩效影响的实证研究

本文收集了1978—2007年国家及各部委颁布的2682项环境政策(不包括各省市颁布的地方法规),从中选出与企业环境创新相关性较强的428项政策进行量化分析,定量描述了中国环境政策的演变轨迹。同时,本文将量化的环境政策变量引入柯布-道格拉斯生产函数,探讨了其对企业环境创新绩效的影响。研究发现:政策强度对经济产出绩效和知识产出绩效具有显著的促进作用,对环境绩效中的能源消耗率与工业废水排放率具有明显的抑制作用;不同的行政措施和政策导向度对企业的经济产出绩效和环境产出绩效有不同程度的促进作用。     

策略性环境政策:环境税和减排补贴的比较分析

文章把战略性贸易政策模型扩展到环境领域,策略性环境政策认为政府有动机通过降低环境标准补贴出口企业,以达到利润转移的目的.文章分析了策略性环境政策中比较受忽视的一部分--环境技术补贴,本国政府结合使用环境税和减排补贴,我们验证了政府使用策略性环境政策的动机,得到了最优的污染排放税率,认为虽然环境政策仍旧不能消除生产带来的环境损害,但是环境技术补贴提高了本国的环境标准,企业会更少地遇到绿色壁垒报复.     

Europe '92. Decentralizing environmental policy in the single market

The creation of the EC's internal market by the end of 1992 appears to necessitate a harmonization of environmental policies in the European Community. Against this background, the paper analyzes the options for decentralizing environmental policy in Europe and indicates some limitations of this approach.It is shown that, in the case of stationary sources, a harmonization is not required whereas, in the case of international spillovers and global environmental systems, a decentralization of policies is possible if countries can agree on international diffusion norms or national emission quantities, respectively. A harmonization seems to be unavoidable if product norms have to be applied, e.g. in the case of pollutants in consumption goods. Generally, however, price instruments should be used wherever possible, since they allow for a regional differentiation of environmental qualities without segmenting European markets.     

Environment,imperfect competition,and trade: Insights for optimal policy in general equilibrium

I build a two-country general oligopolistic equilibrium model, in which sectors differ in emissions and technologies, and pollution can be transboundary. I derive the optimal bilateral environmental policy for the economy as a whole, for the cases in which the environmental damage either linearly or quadratically increases in total pollution. The analysis highlights that the optimal emission tax can even be negative, and bilateral trade liberalization should be matched with either a rise or a fall in the optimal emission tax. The moments of the emission distribution and technology distribution across sectors are fundamental to implement optimal environmental policies.