Why a well-paid nurse is a better nurse

In an article subtitled "Why is a Badly Paid Nurse a Good Nurse?" economist Anthony Heyes argues that nursing wages should be kept low. Counter arguments are provided based on what the authors consider more adequate economic analysis.     

Regulatory Compliance with Costly and Uncertain Litigation

Harrington (1988) and more recent papers by Heyes and Rickman (1999), Livernois and McKenna (1999), and Heyes (1996) have attempted to explain how a relatively large fraction of firms are thought to be in compliance with environmental regulations despite the fact that expected penalties for these violations are deemed rather low. This paper offers an alternative explanation for the interesting paradox by incorporating costly and uncertain litigation.     

Analysis of environmental efficiency variations: A nutrient balance approach

Recent literature has argued that environmental efficiency (EE), which is built on the materials balance (MB) principle, is more suitable than other EE measures in situations where the law of mass conversation regulates production processes. In addition, the MB-based EE method is particularly useful in analysing possible trade-offs between cost and environmental performance. Identifying determinants of MB-based EE can provide useful information to decision makers but there are very few empirical investigations into this issue. This article proposes the use of data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis techniques to analyse variation in MB-based EE. Specifically, the article develops a stochastic nutrient frontier and nutrient inefficiency model to analyse determinants of MB-based EE. The empirical study applies both techniques to investigate MB-based EE of 96 rice farms in South Korea. The size of land, fertiliser consumption intensity, cost allocative efficiency, and the share of owned land out of total land are found to be correlated with MB-based EE. The results confirm the presence of a trade-off between MB-based EE and cost allocative efficiency and this finding, favouring policy interventions to help farms simultaneously achieve cost efficiency and MP-based EE.     

Green technical innovation, environmental expenditure, and the environmental Kuznets curve： a dynamic s model

The relationship between the emission of pollutant and economic growth has attracted a lot of attention in the environmental debate of the recent decades. Based on some theoretical and empirical research on environmental Kuznets curve （EKC）, this paper introduces the environmental technical innovation and environmental investment into Salow growth model to discuss the relationship between GDP per capital and the emission of pollutant By the dynamic simulation and parameters analysis, the results of the model indicate： （1） when ＂green＂ technical progress and environmental investment are fixed, the relationship between GDP per capital and the emission shows the linear relationship; （2） ＂green＂ technical progress can lead to the positive growth rates with a decreasing level of emission, which is compatible with an EKC; （3） the proportion of the environmental investment can lead the different growth rates and level of emission. These results can explain that developing countries are ＂too poor to be green＂.     

Plea bargaining: on the selection of jury trials

We consider a model of the criminal court process, focusing on plea bargaining. A plea bargain provides unequal incentives to go to trial because innocent defendants are more willing to plead not guilty. We show that the court process implements the preferences of the person or group who is most concerned about wrongful conviction. If a prosecutor is more concerned about wrongful conviction than the jury, the prosecutor can shape the defendant pool at trial so that jurors act according to prosecutor’s preferences against judicial mistakes. Our model also connects insights from strategic jury models that usually omit plea bargaining with the actual criminal court process where most cases are resolved through plea bargaining. As an example, we show that the inferiority of the unanimity rule established in Feddersen and Pesendorfer (Am Polit Sci Rev 92(1):23–35, 1998) persists in spite of the addition of plea bargaining.     

中国城市化与生态环境耦合规律与实证分析

本文在阐明城市化与生态环境交互耦合含义的基础上,利用城市化的S型生长曲线和生态环境演变的倒U型曲线,演绎出城市化与生态环境耦合的规律曲线,并以中国的实际数据为例,进行实证分析。研究表明:(1)生态环境随城市化发展呈现出着先恶化、后改善的不规则倒U型耦合规律,但该规律曲线只是它们实际耦合的一种演变趋势;(2)1985～2005年间,中国工业废水排放量与城市化水平耦合表现出先倒U型和后U型的阶段特征,而这种特征曲线正是技术进步、产业结构高级化、人们环保意识的增强以及经济增长的压力等因素综合作用的结果。     

创新扩散时间形态的S型曲线研究

创新扩散是创新通过某种渠道随着时间在社会系统成员间传播的过程。创新扩散S型规则由两条曲线组成：一条被称为累积采用曲线,即S型曲线;另一条被称为单位时间采用量曲线,即钟形曲线。创新扩散率主要受创新特点、创新者特点和环境因素的影响。从创新扩散S型曲线的由来看,其发端于人口增长模型中的增长曲线,后由Tarde提出S型曲线规则,最后Ryan和Gross促使其成为一种研究范式。从创新扩散S型曲线成因看,“波浪效应”和“阈值模型”是两种典型的解释模型：“波浪效应”是指创新扩散过程就像波浪一样,由创新中心点向四周扩散;“阈值模型”探讨了在个人参与某项活动之前,参与该活动的其他个体必须达到的人数。未来重点围绕3个方面进行深化研究：①进一步验证S型曲线;②验证创新扩散S型曲线中的数理模型;③结合创新扩散影响因素与扩散形态,将模型应用到创新扩散预测方面。     

Environmental Policy, Tax Incidence, and the Cost of Public Funds

This paper studies under what conditions a double dividend may occur in the sense that both environmental quality and employment rise. A simple static general equilibrium model is employed in which tax policy faces the dual task of internalising a negative environmental externality and raising revenue to finance public consumption. The model features a clearing labour market with both labour demand and supply and a fixed factor of production (e.g. capital). Hence, we can study tax incidence and its effect on employment, environmental quality, and the marginal cost of public funds. It is shown for the case of an upward sloping labour supply curve and less than full tax shifting by employers that a shift towards greener preferences cannot yield a double dividend, even if the fixed factor is important. However, if labour supply curve bends backwards, more environmental concern confers a double dividend.     

中美贸易中隐含的碳排放以及贸易环境效应——基于环境投入产出法的实证分析

中美贸易的巨额逆差带来的不仅仅是贸易问题,还包括一系列的环境问题。利用环境投入产出模型测算1997年-2009年中美贸易中所隐含的CO2排放量,得出如下结论:中美贸易中中国大部分行业污染贸易条件均大于1,且呈不断恶化趋势;出口规模越大、贸易竞争力越强的产业单位出口的CO2排放强度越小,中国出口美国的产品与污染品并无必然联系;美国对华FDI转移并未引起美国污染产业向中国转移,而全球FDI向华转移使得"污染天堂"理论在华成立;中国出口CO2排放速度低于其出口速度,单位出口的CO2排放强度呈下降趋势;改变中国污染顺差国的地位,中国需加强对美国污染品的进口,积极改变粗放型的生产方式,加快对价值链高端清洁产品的生产。     

Towards a global multi-regional environmentally extended input-output database

This paper presents the strategy for a large EU-funded Integrated Project: EXIOPOL (“A New Environmental Accounting Framework Using Externality Data and Input-Output Tools for Policy Analysis”), with special attention for its part in environmentally extended (EE) input-output (IO) analysis. The project has three principal objectives:

(a)

to synthesize and further develop estimates of the external costs of key environmental impacts for Europe;

(b)

to develop an EE IO framework for the EU-27 in a global context, including as many of these estimates as possible, to allow for the estimation of environmental impacts (expressed as LCA themes, material requirement indicators, ecological footprints or external costs) of the activities of different economic sectors, final consumption activities and resource consumption;

(c)

to apply the results of the work to external costs and EE I-O for illustrative policy questions.

     

Strategic Environmental Policy, Clean Technologies and the Learning Curve

In the political discussion, it is often emphasized that the environmental service industry (which produces a clean factor of production) benefits from an early and strong environmental policy. This is especially likely if the costs of production are decreasing over time due to learning curve effects. Surprisingly, the environmental service industry has not been integrated into the theory of strategic environmental policy yet. Our main question is whether a national leadership in environmental policy can pay off if profits of the environmental service industry are taken into account. We consider a two-period model with one firm in each country competing on a third market. Emissions can be substituted by the clean factor when deciding upon the production technology. The unit costs of producing the clean factor in the second period are decreasing in the quantity produced in the initial period. We derive the optimal environmental policy for both periods from a national point of view and show that the presence of the environmental service industry can indeed lead to a national leadership in pollution control.     

Environmental Regulation and the Eco-Industry

This paper re-examines environmental regulation, under the assumption that pollution abatement technologies and services are provided by an imperfectly competitive environment industry. It is shown that each regulatory instrument (emission taxes and quotas; design standards; and voluntary agreements) has a specific impact on the price-elasticity of the polluters’ demand for abatement services, hence on the market power of the eco-industry and the resulting cost of abatement. This implies that the optimal pollution tax will be higher than the marginal social cost of pollution, while a voluntary approach to pollution abatement may fail unless the eco-industry itself is willing to participate.We thank Dominique Bureau, Olivier Godard, Émeric Henry, Nicolas Marchetti, Alain-Désiré Nimubona, Anne Perrot, Gilles Rotillon, Katheline Schubert, the editors Michael Crew and Anthony Heyes, and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and suggestions. We also acknowledge valuable comments from seminar audiences at HEC Montréal, the University of Paris I, the University of Toulouse, and the DG-Entreprise of the European Commission in Brussels.     

基于环境库兹涅茨曲线的北京市碳排放与经济增长相关性研究

利用环境库兹涅茨曲线,对北京市1998--2009年人均碳排放与地区生产总值的相关性进行了研究,发现环境库兹涅茨曲线呈倒“N”型,而不是常规的倒“U”型。北京市碳排放之所以在不同时间段内呈现不同的升降趋势,是因为除经济增长外,其他因素,如产业结构、时代背景、相关政策法规的实施等也对碳排放造成影响。为了完成“十二五”规划任务,实现建设世界城市和宜居城市的目标,北京市应合理控制经济发展速度、努力推动节能减排和积极开发利用新能源。     

试论森林环境资源核算

环境资源核算是当前国际社会最关注的热门课题之一,作者指出了现行国民经济核算体系的缺陷,论述了世界环境资源核算的研究现状及发展前景,重点介绍了环境资源核算研究的指导思想、环境资源核算的新概念及其分类、价值和计算方法、环境产业问题等,并对我国开展森林环境资源核算研究提出了几点建议。     

Prosecutorial Resources, Plea Bargaining, and the Decision to Go to Trial

This article examines the strategic interaction between a defendantand a prosecutor during the plea bargaining process. A four-stagegame of incomplete information is developed where the defendant'sguilt or innocence is private information but the amount ofresources available to the prosecutor is common knowledge. Thebasic result of the article is that equilibrium is semiseparating;the plea offer is accepted by a proportion of the guilty defendantsand is rejected by all of the innocent defendants and the remainingguilty defendants. In this model an increase in the resourcesavailable to the prosecutor increases the proportion of guiltydefendants who accept plea offers. Although the prosecutor isunable to generate complete separation of the guilty and innocentdefendants through the plea bargaining process, prosecutorialresources are beneficial from a societal standpoint.     

A dynamic model of advertising by the regulated firm

A profit-maximizing firm subject to price regulation typically seeks alternative variables to control if the regulatory constraint is binding. Advertising may be one such variable. By shifting the demand curve inward or outward between rate hearings, the firm may increase its earnings above the allowed level. Here, a simple discrete-time optimal-control model is proposed to examine the dynamic implications of advertising by the regulated firm. Our results indicate that, in the long run, the combined effect of regulation and advertising leads to a steady-state equilibrium that is closer to the minimum point on the firm's long-run average-cost curve than the original output level. Thus, an invisible-hand property is established that pushes the regulated firm to shift its demand curve toward the minimum point on its long-run average-cost curve in the presence of regulation. As a result, the well-known allocative inefficiency created by rate-of-return regulation (PMC), on which so much has been written over the past 100 years, is reduced (and, under certain conditions, eliminated) if the regulated firm is allowed to advertise.     

城市公园游客参与、解说满意度与 环境教育评估关系研究——以福州市 晋安公园为例

教育功能作为城市公园功能组成的重要部分,随着 人们日益增长的文化需求,城市公园环境教育的地位日益凸 显。为探究城市公园环境教育评估、游客参与以及解说满意度 之间的关系及作用机制,构建了三者之间的路径模型,以福州 市晋安公园为例,在对294位游客问卷调查的基础上,进行结 构方程验证。结果表明：1)修正后的模型中,建立关系指标 与游客参与相关性最强,有形性对解说满意度的影响最大,认 知层面最能反映环境教育评估;2)游客参与对解说满意度具 有显著正向影响,解说满意度对环境教育评估存在显著正向影 响,游客参与对环境教育评估有显著正向影响;未来公园在进 行环境教育功能提升时,应当将游客参与度以及解说系统满意 度纳入考量。     

On a clear day you might see an environmental Kuznets curve

We shed some new light on the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and show how it can be viewed as a particular form of equilibrium relationship, where technology and preference parameters determine the shape of the curve. In contrast to most of the literature on the EKC, we estimate a theoretically consistent model on long-run data (Swedish sulfur emission, covering the period 1900–2002). Furthermore, we test and date structural change. The model suggests four regimes, 1900–1918, 1919–1933, 1934–1967 and 1968–2002, generating four rather different patterns for pollution over time. The policy-conclusions are consonant with Pearce’s general view about the EKC: there is no theoretical presumption that it has an inverted U shape, nor should any country try to “grow out of the environmental problems” without analyzing the benefits and costs of so doing.     

产业结构调整、环境规制与经济增长——基于中国2005—2017年30个省域面板数据的实证研究

利用我国2005—2017年30个省域面板数据,实证检验了现阶段产业结构调整和环境规制对经济增长的影响。研究结果表明:(1)我国现阶段的产业结构调整抑制了经济增长;(2)环境规制与经济增长之间存在倒"U"型的曲线关系,现阶段环境规制促进了经济增长;(3)加入产业结构调整与环境规制强度的交互项后发现,环境规制可以有效减小现阶段产业结构调整对经济增长的负面影响。根据研究分析得出,现阶段的产业结构调整要避免出现快速"去工业化"的现象,经济发展依然要依托制造业的坚实发展等。     

Measuring the trade-off between economic growth and a clean environment

This article surveys various aspects of the measurement of environmental quality from the view point of national accounting and welfare economics. It focuses on the question whether GNP or NNP should be corrected for environmental change (green or eco-GNP) or whether physical accounts provide sufficient information for an assessment of the trade-off mentioned above. We conclude that valuation of (services from) environmental capital cannot be avoided for such assessment, but can only be made using a model based approach. Statistical agencies should continue to collect data on environmental quality and to value changes in environmental capital in the context of national resource accounting. However, official statisticians should refrain from correcting GNP or NNP for environmental change, as this correction implicitly contains a political judgment and cannot be based on mere technical knowledge.