Environmental tax policy in a model of growth cycles

Summary. The purpose of this paper is to consider environmental taxation which would control emissions of firms in a model of growth cycles. In the model presented below, the economy may experience two phases of growth and environmental quality: “the no-innovation growth regime” and “the innovation-led growth regime”. Aggregate capital and environmental quality remain constant in the no-innovation growth regime, while they perpetually increase in the innovation-led growth regime. The paper shows that the tax plays a key role in determining whether the economy stably converges to one of the two regimes or fluctuates permanently between them. It also shows that there is a critical level of the tax and that the economy obtains higher growth rates of capital and environmental quality by raising (or reducing) the tax if the initial tax is below (or above) the critical level. Received: April 2, 2001; revised version: March 21, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" This research reported here was conducted within the research project “Project on Intergenerational Equity” at Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. I am deeply grateful to an anonymous referee for his or her insightful comments, which greatly improved the paper. I also thank Hiroshi Honda, Yasuo Maeda, Yuji Nakayama, and participants in workshops at Hitotsubashi University, Kyoto University, Nagoya University, Osaka University, University of Tsukuba, Yokohama National University, and University of Tokyo for their valuable comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors are mine.     

新农村金融:理论、成因及中国相关制度安排——基于建设社会主义新农村视角

发展农村经济、建设社会主义新农村离不开农村金融的支持,我国现存农村金融体制的种种缺陷已经成为阻碍农村进步的绊脚石。本文对我国农村金融体制进行考察,对其农村金融组织体系及配套的扶持政策进行评介,找出我国农村金融的不足,提出与社会主义新农村建设相适应的农村金融体制改革路径选择。主要结论有:我国农村金融体制改革,要发挥市场机制的导向作用,建立农村资金良性循环机制;政府应该承担主导作用,建立多层次、全方位的农村金融体制等。     

公共投资项目特许权经营面临的问题与对策分析

目前，我国大多数公共投资项目由政府投资建设厦经营管理，其结果是经营管理效率低下、建设资金短缺、融资难等问题日益突出，发展特许权经营已被公认为解决上述问题的有效模式。本文从法律、风险分担、政府监管等角度分析了在公共投资项目领域实施特许经营所面临的问题，并提出了有效实施特许经营模式的对策与建议。     

我国金融物流模式探析

“十一五”规划纲要明确提出：要“大力发展现代物流业.”本文根据国外金融物流比较成功的经验,以及我国目前第三方物流的现状,创新地提出了我国第三方物流发展金融物流模式,从而有效地降低物流成本、加速资金周转、促进我国物流企业的发展.     

How to invest over the life cycle: Insights from theory

We analyse the state of the art in the field of life cycle portfolio choice, a recent strand of the literature on intertemporal portfolio selection. Life cycle models are designed to identify optimal savings and portfolio policies over the lifetime of investors. They can help to improve pension schemes by showing how these could be specifically tailored to the individual employee’s circumstances to overcome the ‘one-size-fits-all’ philosophy still prevailing in parts of the mandatory retirement savings system. To facilitate comparison, we first describe set-up, solution method and characteristic results for a basic model and then derive a general framework to classify existing contributions. We highlight the models’ strengths and weaknesses and assess their ability to resolve existing portfolio puzzles. Lessons from the literature are summarized and promising areas for further research identified. JEL classifications G11, D14, D91, H55     

Nonpoint Source Pollution Taxes and Excessive Tax Burden

If a regulator is unable to measure firms’ individual emissions, an ambient tax can be used to achieve the socially desired level of pollution. With this tax, each firm pays a unit tax on aggregate emissions. In order for the tax to be effective, firms must recognize that their decisions affect aggregate emissions. When firms behave strategically with respect to the tax-setting regulator, under plausible circumstances their tax burden is lower under an ambient tax, relative to the tax which charges firms on the basis of individual emissions. Firms may prefer the case where the regulator is unable to observe individual firm emissions, even if this asymmetric information causes the regulator to tax each firm on the basis of aggregate emissions.     

金融制度缺陷:我国农村金融效率低下的根源

本文通过统计数据对我国农村金融资源配置效率的分析表明,我国农村金融资源配置效率相对低下.造成农村金融资源配置效率低下的原因,是现阶段农村金融制度的有效供给不足,导致了金融资源配置无法满足帕累托条件.因此,提高农村金融资源配置效率的关键,在于农村金融制度的创新和有效供给.     

Rethinking the costs related to global warming: A survey of the issues

One approach to the economic analysis of global warming seeks to balance the costs of damage from or adaptation to it with the costs of mitigating it. The costs of adaptation and damage have been estimated using techniques of environmental evaluation, but are subject to a wide margin of uncertainty. The costs of mitigation, principally by reducing the emissions of CO₂, have been estimated using different kinds of economic models, some of the results of which have suggested that very little abatement of carbon emissions is justified before the costs of abatement exceed the benefits of it in terms of foregone damage and adaptation costs. The paper analyses the extent to which this conclusion is a function of the modelling assumptions and techniques used, rather than likely practical outcomes, with regard to the models' treatment of unemployed resources, revenue recycling, prior distortions in the economy due to the tax system and possible dynamic effects from the introduction of a carbon-energy tax. It concludes that, with different and arguably more appropriate treatment of the above issues, especially when the secondary benefits of reducing CO₂ emissions are also taken into account, it is not clear that even substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels will incur net costs, especially if there is the prospect of even moderate costs from global warming.     

河北省金融业发展之对策分析

目前河北省金融业发展水平较低，要建设沿海经济社会发展强省，河北省必须首先成为一个金融强省。河北省金融业定位于围绕京津两个金融中心的区域性产业金融，即立足河北省区域，服务于“三农”、京津冀梯度转移产业、港口产业和海洋产业。应制定金融产业发展规划，采取优化金融生态环境，调整金融产业结构，整合金融资源，开放金融市场等措施来推动金融产业的发展。     

Severance Pay and Corporate Finance: Empirical Evidence from a Panel of Austrian and Italian Firms

This paper examines the empirical link between severance pay and corporate finance. Severance pay is an economic debt of the employer and hence should be taken into account by the market in its assessments of risk. Using a hand-collected dataset of accounting data from Italy and Austria we find there is only a limited relationship between severance pay and market risk indicators. This suggests that arguments that severance pay systems destroy corporate value may need to be reassessed.