在高中地理教学中提高学生的环保意识

中国是人口大国,长期以来对环境教育重视不够,人口的环境意识相当薄弱,近年来,随着中国经济建设的发展环境问题也日趋严重,要从根本上改变中国的环境状况,实现可持续发展,应在地理教学中要充分发挥地理学科优势,挖掘教材内容,结合环保事例和乡土地理增长学生的环境科学知识;结合实际,开展丰富多彩的活动,增强学生的环境保护意识,这也是中国新一轮课程改革所希望能够实现的愿望。     

绿色壁垒背景下我国生态农业产业化发展研究

绿色壁垒是当今国际贸易环境中发达国家普遍采用且不断加强的一种贸易保护方式。绿色壁垒导致我国农产品出口量下降、出口收益降低,加大了我国农产品开拓国际市场的难度。生态农业产业化既重视农业生态环境的保护和农产品质量安全,又把绿色农产品的产加销联接为一个整体,发挥整体功能,提高经济效益,是应对绿色壁垒的有效方法。推进生态农业产业化应结合我国实际,积极借鉴国外经验,加快农业质量标准体系建设,加大科研投入,鼓励科技创新,提高产品的技术含量和科技附加值。     

Issue linkage versus ringfencing in international agreements*

Issue linkage is often regarded as a means to enhance international cooperation in the presence of a sovereignty constraint. This constraint means a country can leave an agreement whenever it likes, if the perceived gains from leaving are larger than the gains from staying in the agreement. We set up a model of international agreements in which future gains from cooperation are uncertain, and it is bad realizations that can lead to exit. In this environment, we show that ringfencing dominates issue linkage, even in the absence of complementarities between separate issues, if the degree of uncertainty is sufficiently large.     

Home-country environment and firms’ outward foreign direct investment decision: Evidence from Chinese firms

This paper takes a holistic view and examines the environmental effect of the home country on firms’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) decisions. We construct an economic growth index to assess the overall economic environment of Chinese regions and find that the home country’s business environment is negatively associated with firms’ decisions to invest abroad, and that such a negative relationship can be intensified for firms with state ownership or without an export network. Moreover, unlike previous literature, we look at both the environmental effect on OFDI decisions and the consequential impact of OFDI on firm performance. We employ propensity score matching and difference-in-differences methods, as well as the Heckman two-step model, for our estimations. Our results show that OFDI does indeed improve Chinese firms’ productivity and sales. This paper, therefore, contributes to the literature by identifying a range of home country business environmental factors that have a combined effect on firms’ OFDI decisions, adding to a more comprehensive understanding of OFDI originating from emerging economies.     

The impact of trade on employment,welfare, and income distribution in unionized general oligopolistic equilibrium

This paper sets up a multi-sector general oligopolistic equilibrium trade model in which all firms face wage claims of firm-level unions. By accounting for productivity differences across industries, the model features income inequality along multiple lines, including inequality between firm owners and workers as well as within these two groups of agents, and involuntary unemployment. We use this setting to study the impact of trade liberalization on key macroeconomic performance measures. In particular, we show that a movement from autarky to free trade with a fully symmetric partner country lowers union wage claims and therefore stimulates employment and raises welfare. Whether firms can extract a larger share of rents in the open economy depends on the competitive environment in the product market. Furthermore, the distribution of profit income across firm owners remains unaffected, while the distribution of wage income becomes more equal when a country opens up to trade with a fully symmetric trading partner. We also analyze how country size differences and technological dissimilarity of trading partners affect the results from our analysis.     

农民工如何实现从土地保障向制度保障转变

目前,农村土地的保障功能正在不断弱化,但是中国农民工作为一个特殊的群体对农村土地仍然存在着很强的依赖性,这一矛盾的产生有其根本的制度性原因。以户籍制度为基础的一系列相关制度是阻止农民工融入城市的根本性障碍,要使农民工摆脱对农村土地的依赖,需要变革现有的制度环境,为他们提供制度上的保障。     

Collectivism in the labor market: Evidence from second generation immigrants in the United States

This study investigates the role of collectivism on labor market outcomes in an individualist country. We explore collectivism as an intergenerationally transmitted cultural value and analyze its explanatory power for the economic outcome of 21,000 male homogamous second generation immigrants in the US. Our collectivism proxy is derived from the country of ancestry’s historical disease environment because collectivistic values have been particularly advantageous in countries with a greater prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Employing this new collectivism proxy that identifies collectivism more precisely than previously used cultural proxies, we find that higher scores of collectivism are associated with higher labor force participation and income earned in the US. The results on income are channeled through the number of hours worked and self-selection into jobs that require collectivistic traits. By analyzing the labor market performance of second generation immigrants, we are the first to show an occupational selection along cultural skills implying that second generation immigrants sort into occupations that demand skills on which they have a “cultural comparative advantage”.     

International transmission of environmental policy: A New Keynesian perspective

In this paper we examine the international transmission of environmental policy using a New Keynesian model of the global economy. We first consider the case in which the quality of the environment affects utility, but not productivity. This allows us to look at the trade-off between environmental quality and output. We then consider the case in which the quality of the environment increases productivity but does not affect utility. Our main results show that in both cases a unilateral implementation of a more stringent environmental policy by the domestic country raises foreign welfare under a benchmark parameterization. Our modeling strategy allows an analysis of how nominal rigidities interact with the implementation of environmental reforms, by allowing the domestic country to shift, through exchange rate depreciation, parts of the costs of more stringent environmental policies to the foreign one.     

我国粮食安全的经济与生态合理性研究

1978年开始的农村经济改革改变了我国粮食长期匮乏的局面,并实现了自给有余。但长期追求较高的粮食自给率,又使我国农业资源要素供给从充裕转向短缺,粮食供给从不足转向过剩,生态环境不断恶化。在经济全球化背景下,面对我国的经济和资源环境状况,固守以粮食大量生产和储备来保证粮食安全的传统观念既不具有经济合理性,也不具有生态安全性。保障我国粮食安全应立足于提高国内农业综合生产能力,适当降低粮食自给率,对粮食的生产能力进行储备,利用国际粮食市场调剂余缺,以最低的经济成本、最小的环境代价保证粮食安全。     

论比较优势的成本基础——从生产成本向“全成本”的拓展

贸易理论的历史演进表明,比较优势是一国参与国际分工和贸易的基本动因。古典、新古典和新贸易理论分别从劳动生产率、要素禀赋、生产规模等不同视角论证了基于生产成本的比较优势,进而可表达为"相对生产成本不等式"。随着制度、生态环境、"可持续性"等要素在国际贸易中日趋重要,使用制度要素所形成的交易成本、使用生态环境要素所形成的环境成本、耗费"可持续性"要素所形成的代际成本也逐步成为比较优势的成本基础。于是,可将使用或耗费广义要素的代价理解为"全成本",它构成了一国参与国际分工和贸易的比较优势的基础。     

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.     

How strongly can industrial structural transformation affect GDP?

It is well known that when a country develops, its leading industry shifts from agriculture to non-agriculture. This industrial structural transformation has recently attracted considerable attention from scholars. Then, how strongly can this industrial structural transformation affect a country’s income? In this study, we shed light on this research question. More specifically, we measure magnitudes of the industrial structural transformation’s influence on GDP, by examining the following counterfactual GDP. We calculate a country’s counterfactual GDP when the country specializes in agriculture. If the counterfactual GDP is considerably small without the non-agricultural sector, this suggests that the industrial structural transformation from agriculture to non-agriculture is considerably important, in terms of GDP. We use Japan as our sample economy. Consequently, we find that the counterfactual GDP is surprisingly small, which suggests that the industrial structural transformation’s influence on GDP is surprisingly large. We also find that one of the main factors responsible for the surprisingly small counterfactual GDP is land, which has not been deeply examined.     

Environmental Pollution in an Open Economy*

This paper attempts to analyze an interaction between international trade and domestic environmental pollution. A country engaging in international trade biases its domestic economic structure toward exportable sectors. The bias thus caused has a significant impact on the quality of the environment. It will be shown that a country can and should control international trade activities as a means of dealing with pollution problems. One of the paper's main purposes is to give a warning to a country which expands its international trade activities without taking serious consideration of its domestic environment.     

Foreign aid and weakest-link international public goods: An experimental study

In this paper, we investigate efficiency differences between income and in-kind transfers as distribution mechanisms of foreign aid to weakest-link international public goods in a laboratory environment. We find that if there is relatively small difference in country size, then income transfers seem to provide a higher provision of the international public good, and thus higher overall welfare level than that of in-kind transfers. However, if there is a large disparity in country size, then in-kind transfers appear to provide a higher level of IPG provision and higher accompanying global welfare.     

论朝鲜族农村空壳化的生态隐患——生态人类学视野下的现代社区变迁

朝鲜族进入东北以后建构了湿润寒冷地带的稻作文化。近年来，为了适应族际社会环境的剧变，朝鲜族居民的自然性适应成果搁浅，最终以农村空壳化的形式表现出来，给当地埋下了严重的生态隐患，并直接威胁着朝鲜族社会的稳定发展。本文立足于文化适应视角，分析柳河朝鲜族农村空壳化形成的文化成因及其后果，并提出了建构“都市—农村—体化”模式的建议。     

Innovation performance across Europe

The innovation performance of firms is primarily determined by their own innovative activities and the interaction with their innovation-related environment. This environment typically differs among countries. We assess empirically these differences on firms' innovation performance. To that end we first estimate the relationship between an aggregate innovation input measure and an aggregate innovation output measure, thereby explicitly controlling for structural differences between countries. We then consider the extent to which firms located in a particular country perform better or worse than this estimated benchmark performance. The analysis is based on a panel dataset that we have constructed from Eurostat's first and second Community Innovation Survey. In order to control for possible data contamination we employ an outlier-robust estimator. It appears that among the fourteen countries considered Italy, Germany and Ireland offer an environment that facilitates most the transformation of innovation-related inputs into commercial outputs while the environment in Denmark is the least facilitating.     

Effects of Technology Transfers on the Provision of Public Goods

In this paper, we examine the viability ofcooperative policies oriented to the resolution oftransboundary pollution problems using the theory ofprivate provision of public goods in a two-countrymodel. We analyze the effects on economic welfare ofvoluntary technological transfers oriented to reducingthe emission of pollutants.Our analysis shows that when the atmosphere istaken as a pure public goods, ``a strong paradox' emerges:the advanced country, in spite of the transfer, seesits economic welfare improved while the developingcountry sees it worsen. Moreover, if both a technicaland an income transfer occur, this paradox mightnot be solved. Furthermore, ``a paradoxicalimprovement' occurs when the advanced country does nottake any policy towards the environment but thedeveloping country does: an improvement in the levelof technology in the developing country allows for anexpansion of the level of utility in both countries.On the other hand, in the case where the atmosphere istaken as an impure public goods, when both countriespursue an abatement policy, the transfer of technologyleads to an improvement in welfare in bothcountries.     

Factor Accumulation without Diminishing Returns: the Case of East Asia*

We investigate the similarity of the country endowments of the newly industrialized East Asian countries (NICs) and their major developed trading partners since the 1960s. In particular, we analyze their factor endowments in the years 1965, 1977, and 1990, using the lens condition of Deardorff (1994 ). Because of the similarity of endowments of the NICs and their developed‐country trading partners, we cannot reject the hypothesis that these countries are diversified economies, able to produce the same set of goods since the 1960s. This empirical evidence supports the theoretical analyses of the East Asian growth miracle of Mankiw (1995 ) and Ventura (1997 ) in an environment in which factor accumulation did not imply decreasing returns to capital.     

Composition of International Assets and the Long‐run Current Account

We document the role of capital gains and losses for the current account that a country can sustain along a balanced growth path. While it is well know that growth allows a country to run a current account deficit and still keep its external debt stable as a share of GDP, the sensitivity of the current account to the composition of external assets and liabilities has received little attention. We show that this composition matters because several assets, such as equity or FDI, earn substantial capital gains that are not reflected in the current account. A country that is a net creditor in such assets can then sustain a larger current account deficit. Using a broad sample, we show that this aspect substantially tilts estimates of the long‐run current account towards a deficit among industrialized economies, with the opposite situation for emerging markets. We also show that industrialized economies are likely to benefit from predictable capital gains in the future.     

Cooperatives and happiness. Cross-country evidence on the role of relational capital

Why is the share of happy people higher in some countries than in their equally developed neighbours? We conjecture that the apparent contradiction might depend on a country’s endowment of relational capital, which we proxy empirically with the extent of cooperativeness. In particular, within the black box of social capital, we consider relational capital as the outcome of the civil economy paradigm and use cooperativeness as the macro and objective proxy of long term face-to-face interaction. Compiling an index of the importance of the cooperative sector, we test whether more cooperativeness associates with more happiness controlling for countries’ HDI and other control variables. Checking for endogeneity, using various country samples, and through different regression methods we find support for our hypothesis. This suggests that, indeed, an institutionalized cooperative culture can promote happiness.