日本推进产业结构低碳化对湖北试点建设“低碳省”的启示

在1973年石油危机的影响下,日本积极开展能源结构、产业结构的优化调整和低碳化转型,成效显著.本文首先分析了日本产业结构低碳化转型的演进过程,然后从财税政策、低碳产业政策和金融政策等三个方面阐述了日本推进产业结构低碳化的政策体系,在此基础上分析了日本推进产业结构低碳化的政策效果,最后从发挥财税政策、财政资金和低碳产业政策的重要支持作用、重视低碳技术研发等方面总结了日本推进产业结构低碳化的经验对湖北试点建设“低碳省”的启示.     

我国低碳交通的发展现状及对策建议

低碳交通是以低能耗、低排放、高能效为基本特征的发展模式,结构低碳化、技术低碳化、制度低碳化是其主要的实现途径,系统性、内在一致性、互补性、路径依赖性、依存性是其基本特征.当前阻碍我国低碳交通发展的主要原因是长期的粗放型交通发展、阶段性的工业化进程、盲目的城镇化发展、技术创新不足、制度和政策规制缺失等.本文提出了基础设施低碳化、技术低碳化、制度低碳化、产业结构调整的低碳化引导等促进低碳交通发展的对策建议.     

从产业关联看产业结构效应——基于四川省2007年投入产出表数据

利用四川省2007年的投入产出数据,并运用投入产出分析工具,从实证的角度分析各部门的影响力系数、感应度系数、各项最终需求的诱发系数、各部门对最终需求的依存度,剖析了四川国民经济中产业结构的关联程度,揭示了对经济影响较大的产业和各项最终需求的诱发系数较大的产业,并对地区产业结构的调整提出相应政策建议。     

产业结构政策若干问题解析——辽宁大学研究生院院长、经济学博士、博士生导师唐晓华教授访谈录

产业结构政策对一个国家的经济发展和实现经济赶超具有重要的意义。不同的产业结构政策选择和产业结构政策实施体制对其效果具有重大的影响。改革开放以来,我国对失衡的产业结构进行较大调整。特别是在市场机制尚在形成中的改革开放初期,调整农业、轻工业、重工业结构的产业结构政策效果比较显著。20世纪90年代,我国明确了经济体制改革的市场化方向,产业结构政策的重点变为产业结构的高度化的技术升级以及支柱产业的扶植等方面。产业结构政策在我国经济发展和产业结构调整中发挥了重大作用。在不久前召开的"中国工业经济学会2010年年会暨‘产业结构调整:中国经济与国际比较’研讨会"上,本刊记者就产业结构政策的若干问题采访了辽宁大学研究生院院长、经济学博士、博士生导师,中国工业经济研究会常务副理事长唐晓华教授。现将访谈记录整理刊发,以飨读者。     

我国产业政策的低碳化转型

我国发展低碳经济的实质是实现新的经济发展方式.这就要求我国实现产业政策的低碳化转型,其中包括降低碳排放的狭义转型和提高资源配置和使用效率的广义转型.其基本思路是,以产业组织政策为核心,以低碳产业、低碳技术等的发展为重要条件,通过加强竞争,提高生产效率,实现产业低碳化发展和经济发展方式的根本转变.为此,必须采取包括实施政府职能转变、实现普遍性减税、重点实施产业组织政策、大力实施新型产业政策,以及配套实施综合性产业结构政策等在内的多项措施.     

运用税收政策促进产业结构调整

新一轮世界经济增长主要是由结构调整推动的。我国目前产业结构存在的问题已经阻碍了经济整体运行的效率。产业结构转换与升级既可以由市场来推进，也可以由政府来推进。税收是政府推进产业结构调整的主要政策手段。分析了税收政策对产业结构调整的局限性，并提出相应的对策，以期更好地发挥税收政策在我国产业结构调整中的作用。     

中国能源供给结构低碳化影响因素及实现策略

化石能源使用排放的二氧化碳气体产生了温室效应,导致了全球气候变暖,对自然生态系统和经济社会系统造成了重要影响。研究能源供给结构低碳化问题,有助于改善自然生态系统和经济社会系统。自然条件、社会条件、经济增长速度、产业结构、政策以及科技发展水平是中国能源供给结构低碳化的主要影响因素。实现能源供给结构低碳化,应提高能源工业的科技发展水平,发挥政策的引导作用和实施能源可持续供给计划。     

基于DEA的我国能源效率分析及路径选择

文章基于1978-2013年的年度数据,运用数据包络分析(DEA)方法,对我国能源效率进行了实证研究,发现改革开放以来我国能源效率在不断提高。通过考察能源经济效率、产业结构变化、技术水平以及能源加工转换效率,进一步证明了我国能源效率在提高。在能源经济效率方面,我国万元生产总值能耗的变动表现出明显的下降趋势;在产业结构方面,随着工业转为相对集约的发展模式,能源利用效率也随之提高;在技术水平方面,我国越来越重视科技投入,注重技术进步对提高能源效率的长期正向作用;在能源加工转换效率方面,我国能源效率也在提高。然而,在能源结构、产业化发展、技术水平以及与国际相比较方面,我国能源效率都比较低。因此,我国需要建立健全能源政策,重视可再生能源发展;需要积极调整产业结构,加强能源研发投入,提升技术水平;通过加强能源国际合作,提升我国能源效率。     

碳交易政策下区域减排潜力研究——产业结构调整与技术创新双重视角

加快产业结构调整和技术创新对于充分激发碳交易政策的区域碳减排潜力具有重要推动作用。基于2005-2017年中国内地30个省域面板数据，采用DID和PSM-DID方法评估碳交易政策对碳排放和碳排放强度的影响，在SFA模型测算技术创新效率的基础上，从产业结构高级化、合理化和技术创新效率两个方面探讨碳交易政策的作用机制，同时运用固定效应模型进行分区域验证。结果表明：碳交易政策能推动试点和非试点地区协同减排；不同经济发展水平地区，从东部、中部到西部，碳交易政策的碳减排效应逐渐减弱；产业结构调整中，产业结构高级化更多受益于碳交易政策，产业结构合理化作用较弱，技术创新效率提升效果也较为明显。基于此，从完善碳市场建设、制定差异化政策、注重产业结构调整和技术创新协同减排等方面提出相应政策建议，旨在促进区域绿色高质量发展。     

产业结构调整如何提高地区能源效率?--基于幅度与质量双维度的实证考察

新常态下中国经济发展将会面临越来越严重的能源环境约束问题,通过进一步优化能源结构来实现节能减排的空间已不大,而推进产业结构调整才是提高能源效率最重要、最现实的途径。文章从调整幅度和调整质量两个维度分析了中国产业结构调整与能源效率变化的演变特征和相互关系,并实证检验了产业结构调整对能源效率影响的空间溢出效应。结果表明：(1)伴随着产业结构调整,中国城市能源效率呈“M ”形变化趋势,而且产业结构调整与能源效率存在显著的空间溢出效应和交互耦合关系。(2)提高产业结构调整质量对能源效率存在显著的促进效应及空间溢出效应,而扩大产业结构调整幅度对能源效率具有明显的阻滞效应。(3)东、西部地区能源效率的改善应以提高产业结构调整质量为主,以避免单纯地“退二进三”或“腾龙换鸟”所带来的生产效率损失,而中部地区在继续通过承接产业转移来扩大产业结构调整幅度的同时,要充分利用产业结构调整质量对能源效率改善的空间溢出效应来改善周边地区的能源效率。     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Forecasting the price of gold

This article seeks to evaluate the appropriateness of a variety of existing forecasting techniques (17 methods) at providing accurate and statistically significant forecasts for gold price. We report the results from the nine most competitive techniques. Special consideration is given to the ability of these techniques to provide forecasts which outperforms the random walk (RW) as we noticed that certain multivariate models (which included prices of silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, besides gold) were also unable to outperform the RW in this case. Interestingly, the results show that none of the forecasting techniques are able to outperform the RW at horizons of 1 and 9 steps ahead, and on average, the exponential smoothing model is seen providing the best forecasts in terms of the lowest root mean squared error over the 24-month forecasting horizons. Moreover, we find that the univariate models used in this article are able to outperform the Bayesian autoregression and Bayesian vector autoregressive models, with exponential smoothing reporting statistically significant results in comparison with the former models, and classical autoregressive and the vector autoregressive models in most cases.     

Planned adaptation in risk regulation: An initial survey of US environmental, health, and safety regulation

In principle, we want regulatory programs to be based on current realities, as reflected for example in the best knowledge of relevant experts. That would imply that old rules now on the books should be consistent with today's knowledge base, not just what was known when a rule or standard was originally set. This paper reports on a survey of US programs, examining how often existing rules are actually updated in light of better knowledge, and identifies five programs that attempt to make policy routinely adaptive. These programs exhibit what we term Planned Adaptation: they both revise rules when relevant new knowledge appears, and take steps to produce such improved knowledge. While Planned Adaptation is rare, it is used in several nationally prominent programs, including air pollution, airplane safety, and drug safety. Planned Adaptation is a policy tool that deserves more attention.     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

The greenhouse effect: Damages,costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — CO₂ in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the most favorable (although not necessarily likely) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded.The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO₂ eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO₂ emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO₂ saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings.We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.During the academic year 1989–90 Dr. Ayres was at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.During the summer of 1989 Mr. Walter was a member of the Young Scientists' Summer Program at IIASA.     

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY: TRACING THE FLOW OF BASIC RESEARCH THROUGH MANUFACTURING AND TRADE

This paper describes flows of basic research through the US economy during the late 20th century. In addition, the paper studies the effect of the flows on scientific papers in industries and fields. This article differs from others in its use of measures of science rather than technology. Together, its results present a picture of the structure of basic research flows in a modern, science-intensive economy. Basic research flows are large within petrochemicals and drugs, and within software and communications. Flows of chemistry, physics, and engineering are common throughout all industries – biology and medicine are almost confined to petrochemicals and drugs; and computer science is nearly as restricted to software and communications. In general, basic research flows are more concentrated within scientific fields than within industries. Our findings concerning the production of scientific papers indicate that the effect of a 1% change in academic R&D spillovers significantly exceeds that of industrial spillovers. In addition, within-field effects exceed effects between-fields, while within- and between-industry effects are roughly equal. It follows that scientific fields limit basic research flows more than industries do, perhaps because large firms implicitly span a range of industries.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.