碳减排约束条件下的内生经济增长机制研究

本文将碳减排的约束条件及碳减排成本弹性系数引入生产函数,将人们对气候变化的警惕意识引入效用函数,在内生经济增长模型的研究框架内系统分析了碳减排影响经济增长的内在机制以及实现经济增长和控制碳排放双重目标的条件。研究表明:在低碳基础设施不完善及低碳技术应用不广泛的阶段,加快碳减排将给经济带来较大的负效应;控制碳排放除了与碳减排速率、非化石类能源的增长等客观因素有关外,还与人们应对气候变化的主观意识有关;为实现社会福利最大化条件下的长期经济增长与控制大气中温室气体存量的双重目标,碳减排最终将依靠科技进步以及非化石类能源的增长。     

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.     

Channels of transmission of environmental policy to economic growth: A survey of the theory

Economists generally hold that environmental regulations impose constraints on the production possibilities set and are therefore potentially harmful to economic growth. In recent years, however, it has been recognized that environmental regulation can enhance the prospects for growth if improved environmental quality increases the productivity of inputs or the efficiency of the education system. It is also held that environmental regulation promotes pollution abatement activity and can lead to the exploitation of increasing returns to scale in abatement. Furthermore, expectations of a better environment may encourage households to save. Finally, it has been conjectured that environmental regulations can stimulate innovation because R&D is a relatively clean activity and because the market share of clean innovations increases. Future empirical research should shed light on the relative importance of these different channels of transmission of environmental policy to the growth rate of the economy.     

Income inequality and economic growth—the Kuznets curve revisited

In a neoclassical growth framework with a typical political-economy mechanism, this paper reexamines the relationship between the income inequality and economic growth by introducing government spending into the production function and the utility function. It demonstrates that Kuznets’ famous inverted-U shape relationship between inequality and economic growth will hold—the growth rate will be first increasing with the income inequality before the growth rate decreases with inequality. __________ Translated from The Journal of World Economy (世界经济), 2005,(5) (in Chinese)     

Dynamic modelling of pollution abatement in a CGE framework

This paper deals with the specification of pollution abatement in dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) models and analyses the dynamic feedback mechanisms between economy and abatement in the context of environmental policy. A Ramsey-type economic model is presented, in which bottom-up technical and economic information on abatement techniques is integrated in a top-down dynamic CGE context. The practical suitability of the specification is illustrated by an empirical application for climate change and acidification in the Netherlands. The results show that a mixture of some slowdown of economic growth, a substantial restructuring of the economy and implementation of most technical abatement measures is optimal.     

Human Development at Risk: Economic Growth with Pollution-Induced Health Shocks

Risks to human health stemming from polluted air, water, and soil are substantial, especially in the rapidly growing economies. The present paper develops a theoretical framework to study an endogenously growing economy which is subject to pollution-induced health shocks with the health status being an argument of the welfare function. Pollution, arising as a negative externality from production, adversely and randomly affects the regeneration ability of a human body leading to a decline in the overall health status of the population. We include two types of uncertainty surrounding the health status: continuous small-scale fluctuations, driven by the Wiener process, and large-scale shocks or epidemics, driven by the Poisson process. We derive closed-form analytical solutions for the optimal abatement policy and the growth rate of consumption. Devoting a constant fraction of output to emissions abatement delivers the first-best allocation. This fraction is an increasing function of total factor productivity, polluting intensity of production, and damage intensity of both continuous and jump-type shocks. A higher frequency of jumps also calls for more vigorous abatement policies. By contrast, the optimal growth rate of the economy is decreasing in the frequency and intensity of shocks and in the polluting intensity of output. The efficiency of abatement technology has, in general, an ambiguous bearing on both the growth rate and on the abatement share due to the opposing forces of the direct and indirect effects.     

Effluent taxes,market structure,and the rate and direction of endogenous technological change

This paper studies the effects of effluent taxes on firms’ allocation of resources to cost-reducing and emission-reducing R&D, and on entrepreneurs’ decisions to develop new goods and enter the market. A tax set at an exogenous rate that does not depend on the state of technology reduces growth, the level of consumption of each good, and raises the number of firms. The induced increase in the variety of goods is a benefit not considered in previous analyses. In terms of environmental benefits, the tax induces a positive rate of pollution abatement that offsets the “dirty” side of economic growth. A tax set at an endogenous rate that holds constant the tax burden per unit of output, in contrast, has ambiguous effects on growth, the scale of activity of each firm and the number of firms. Besides being novel, the potential positive growth effect of this type of effluent tax is precisely what makes this instrument effective for welfare-maximizing purposes. The socially optimal policy, in fact, requires the tax burden per unit of output to equal the marginal rate of substitution between the growth rate of consumption and abatement. Moreover, a tax/subsidy on entry is needed, depending on whether the contribution of product variety to pollution dominates consumers’ love of variety.      

Fiscal policies, environmental pollution and economic growth

This paper develops a model of endogenous economic growth with special consideration to the role of productive public expenditure and environmental pollution; and analyses the properties of optimal fiscal policy in the steady state growth equilibrium. We consider the level of consumption as the source of pollution. Government allocates its tax revenue between pollution abatement expenditure and productive public expenditure. Optimum ratio of productive public expenditure to national income is equal to the competitive output share of the public input, when productive public expenditure is depicted as tax revenue minus abatement expenditure. However, the proportional income tax rate exceeds the competitive output share of the public input. There is no conflict between the social welfare maximizing solution and the growth rate maximizing solution in the steady state growth equilibrium. The unique steady state growth equilibrium appears to be a saddle-point when the growth rate is above a critical level and the steady state equilibrium growth rate in the market economy is not necessarily lower than the socially efficient growth rate.     

Lethal Effects of Pollution and Economic Growth: Efficiency of Abatement Technology

The accumulation of pollution negatively impacts human health. Extreme increases in pollution, in particular, may have lethal implications for human beings, and, indeed, all living organisms. This paper thus devises a new model of economic growth that takes into account these lethal effects of accumulated pollution via a pollution threshold to show two key results. First, if an abatement technology is relatively inefficient, there exists a stationary steady state in which consumption and pollution stop growing. Second, if the abatement technology is sufficiently efficient, there exists a path along which pollution decreases at an accelerating rate until it finally reaches zero. In this case, consumption grows at a constant rate.     

Does Technological Innovation Really Reduce Marginal Abatement Costs? Some Theory,Algebraic Evidence,and Policy Implications

The existing literature models innovation in pollution control as a reduction in marginal abatement costs. We show that this assumption is inappropriate for production process innovations such as fuel switching. Algebraically, we examine the effects of different innovation types on marginal abatement cost curves, showing that some desirable innovations increase marginal abatement costs. Empirically, we estimate marginal abatement costs for sulfur dioxide by measuring the output distance function for electric power in Korea. Regression results confirm that production process innovations did raise marginal abatement costs in this case. One policy implication: economic instruments do not always provide stronger innovation incentives than command-and-control policies.      

TIME PREFERENCE, ABATEMENT COSTS, AND INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE POLICY: AN APPRAISAL OF IPCC 1995

This paper appraises current economic methodologies used in analyzing the social rate of time preference and discounting, abatement costs, and value of life estimates as they relate to climate change. It makes a case for choosing an appropriate rate of time preference when assessing climate policies, including both positive and normative considerations. Furthermore, the paper argues that the currently estimated disparity in the cost of greenhouse gas abatement between developed countries and developing countries may be inaccurate. Integrating discount rates, abatement costs, and value of life estimates highlights important and contrasting implications of international climate policy for developing and high-income countries. The context of the paper is the forthcoming Second Assessment Report of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.     

财政支出、税收与经济增长

This paper assesses the effect of fiscal policy on economic growth in an AK model with endogenous labor supply. It is found that the structure of taxation and government expenditure could affect the long-run growth rate through their effect on households’ labor-leisure choice, saving-consuming choice and the proportion of government expenditure to GDP. Barro’s (1990) plausible result that the growth rate and the income tax rate have an inverted-U relationship does not always hold. In addition, based on the panel data of 31 provinces from 1997 to 2007, we investigate the link between components of government productive expenditure and economic growth. It is found that the productive expenditure does not always have a positive effect on the growth rate, and its effect exhibits regional differences. The reason is that there is an excess amount of the government productive expenditure in China or the efficiency of the government productive expenditure may be too low.     

Habit formation in an endogenous growth model with pollution abatement activities

This paper studies how habit formation in consumption affects pollution abatement activities and the steady-state growth rate, in the context of an endogenous growth model in which agents derive disutility from the habit stock and pollution. The paper also examines how the effect of technological change in abatement on the optimal growth rate is enhanced or weakened by habit formation. We show that if agents persist in and care about their habits, sustained growth is only possible with rapid technological progress.      

Are short‐term effects of pollution important for growth and optimal fiscal policy?

We study optimal fiscal policy in a stock‐flow model of the environment within an endogenous growth framework, where some pollutants have a lasting impact on environmental quality which is restored through abatement expenditure, while others dissipate and hence, have a short‐term effect on the environment. All pollutants, however, affect the productivity of a public good negatively. Given that short‐term pollution, although it dissipates, is irreversible in this sense, a government cannot ignore its negative effects since this type of pollution lowers the productivity of all inputs. We find that a larger negative effect of short‐term pollutants as well as a higher congestion effect of private capital leads to corrective fiscal policies with higher optimal income tax and abatement expenditure rates, which have favorable growth consequences. Interestingly, we find that the rate of short‐term pollution does not affect optimal fiscal policy while that of the long‐term pollution does.     

节能减排约束下广东地区工业经济的可持续发展：2011—2020

本文基于方向性距离函数（DDF）模型,采用序列DEA方法测度和比较了广东省21市的工业在2011—2020年间不同节能减排情景的潜在产出变化,探索出广东工业未来可持续发展的最优节能减排情景。结果显示：对大部分地区工业而言,节能减排初始阶段会造成较大的潜在产出净损失,但最终会逐步实现潜在产出净增长;特别地,节能减排行为对经济发展水平较高的珠三角地区比经济发展水平较低的其它地区造成的损失更小。节能减排的技术进步是各地区工业环境全要素生产率增长的核心动力,当然技术效率在后期也发挥出作用,这些结果反映出各地区须进一步提高节能减排技术,最终实现工业经济的可持续发展。     

Disutility of pollution and endogenous growth

Endogenous growth is generally built on a positive externality hypothesis which is the opposite of a negative externality caused by pollution. We study a linear technology with simple assumption: an aggregate capital stock which represents a learning by doing effect and a pollution flow proportional to production. In this framework, we analyse the precise effects on growth of the disutility of pollution and its interaction with the utility of consumption in an economy without abatement technology. The decentralized equilibrium always leads to unlimited growth, but optimal growth is often limited (the negative effect of pollution dominating the positive effect of learning by doing). In this case, the optimal policy which leads the decentralized economy to follow the optimal growth path is to tax capital; in contrast with the optimal subsidy policy in an economy without pollution. When an abatement technology is introduced, the optimal solution can lead the economy to unlimited growth, whatever the form of the utility function.     

FUELING JOB ENGINES: IMPACTS OF SMALL BUSINESS LOANS ON ESTABLISHMENT BIRTHS IN METROPOLITAN AND NONMETRO COUNTIES

This study examines the effect of small business loans on subsequent establishment births in U.S. counties. Using an economic growth framework and cross‐sectional empirical model, we test the hypothesis that the establishment birth rate is higher in counties where the level and annual increase in lending is greater, controlling for community‐level characteristics affecting business and economic dynamics. We also consider the long‐term effect of small business lending and focus on establishing the appropriate lag structure. The results indicate that small business lending does generally have a positive effect on the employer establishment birth rate that is strongest in nonmetropolitan (rural) counties. (JEL L26, R11, M13)     

Optimal Pollution Abatement Under ‘Sustainable’ and Other Social Time Preferences

This paper analyses optimal pollution abatement expenditure and the pricing of pollution under alternative social time preferences, including ‘sustainable’ preferences, defined as those that are consistent with two axioms of sustainable development introduced by Chichilnisky (Land Econ 73:467–491, 1997). These axioms state essentially that neither the welfare of present nor future generations ought to be favoured over the other in determining the socially optimal path of economic development. The method is to calibrate a modified Ramsey model of optimal global growth and saving, where pollution is generated by the global output of goods and services. Pollution in turn reduces output. The simulation results illustrate how sensitive the optimal pollution price and abatement expenditure can be over time to assumptions about the social time preference rate. They also show that ‘sustainable’ preferences impose a lower burden on future generations in terms of the pollution price and abatement expenditure. Hence there is a case for governments to make explicit their value judgments about intergenerational welfare, in the context of their notion of sustainable development, when setting target pollution abatement levels and pollution prices over time.     

A Dynamic Model of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Turning Point and Public Policy

We set up a simple dynamic macroeconomic model with (i) polluting consumption and a preference for a clean environment, (ii) increasing returns in abatement giving rise to an EKC and (iii) sustained growth resulting from a linear final-output technology. There are two sorts of market failures caused by external effects associated with consumption and environmental effort. The model is employed to investigate the determinants of the turning point and the cost effectiveness of different public policies aimed at a reduction of the environmental burden. Moreover, the model offers a potential explanation of an N-shaped pollution–income relation. It is shown that the model is compatible with most empirical regularities on economic growth and the environment.      

Endogenous structural change and crisis in a multiple time-scales growth model

The slow and endogenous twist of economic macro-structure makes up an important evolutionary feature of capitalist economies, and may be at the root of structural crisis. In this line, a Goodwinian growth model with increasing returns and profit-sharing that tries to picture a simple scenario of the seventies crisis is considered. It is shown that the exhaustion of the Kaldor-Verdoorn “productivity law” can entail, in a nonlinear framework, a “catastrophic” bifurcation from a “high” to a “low” growth path. Slow/fast dynamical systems then allow one to formalize a multiple time-scales dynamics where the growth path is shaped by the structural framework in which it takes place, but has also a long -un feedback. Structural change and crisis appear as long term and endogenous outcomes.