Voluntary development of environmental management systems: motivations and regulatory implications

Encouraging firms to develop voluntarily more comprehensive environmental management systems (EMSs) is touted as a policy tool to augment mandatory environmental regulations. Using a unique dataset of environmental management practices of Japanese manufacturers and controlling for self-selection bias in survey responses, we find that proxies for regulatory pressures and consumer pressures are the most important factors that motivate firms toward more comprehensive EMSs. Despite the oft-claimed “voluntary” nature of EMS development, our results show that the government may have a role to play in both directly and indirectly affecting EMS development by firms.      

海洋环境污染损失的货币价值估算——以珠江入海口为例

近年海洋经济的高速发展及海洋资源的不合理开发利用，给广东省的海洋资源与环境带来了一系列问题，有必要对海洋环境污染损失的货币价值进行估算，以更好地进行环境的投入与产出比较，将环境保护纳入经济核算体系。通过比较并应用各种货币化计量方法，分别算出珠江入海口海域的海洋渔业价值、水质净化价值等，对珠江入海口海域的生态系统经济价值进行评估，在此基础上，结合计量模型对海洋环境污染损失进行货币化综合计量，得到海洋环境污染造成的经济损失量的保守估计范围为 87.4~106.9 亿元/年。最后，提出广东省应充分使用财政资金的金融手段，建立多渠道、多层次和全方位的海洋环境保护体系，最终达到保护海洋生态环境和资源的目的。     

Environmental liability and the capital structure of firms

This paper analyses the impact of environmental liability regimes on the capital structure of firms. We show that imposing environmental liability only on polluting firms, with limited liability, increases use of bank debt. Extending environmental liability to banks lowers bank borrowing relative to liability only on firms, with an ambiguous effect relative to no liability. Using US industry-level data we estimate a reduced-form model of bank borrowing by firms and show that the introduction of environmental liability only on firms increased bank borrowing by 15–20%, but when liability was extended to banks, borrowing returned to a level slightly higher than with no liability.     

我国农村工业化的环境经济特性分析

本文从经济要素的形成角度分析了我国农村工业化过程中环境污染的导向型特征、循环和多重污染特征以及生态环境问题的“贫穷污染”性质和“环境不公平”的特点。     

Incentives and Information Exchange in International Taxation

The exchange of taxpayer-specific information between national tax authorities has recently emerged as a key and controversial topic in international tax policy discussions, most notably with the OECD's harmful tax practices project and the EU's savings tax initiative. This paper analyzes the effects of information exchange and withholding taxes, recognizing that countries which agree to exchange information do not forfeit the ability to levy withholding taxes, and also focusing in particular on the effects of innovative revenue-sharing arrangements. Amongst the findings are that: (i) the transfer of withholding tax receipts to the residence country, as planned in the European Union, has no effect on equilibrium tax rates, but acts purely as a lump-sum transfer; (ii) in contrast, allocating some of the revenue from information exchange to the source country—counter to usual practice (though no less so than the EU agreement)—would have adverse strategic effects on total revenue; (iii) nevertheless, any withholding tax regime is Pareto dominated by information exchange combined with appropriate revenue sharing; and, in particular, (iv) sharing of the additional revenues raised from information provided, while efficiency-reducing, could be in the interests of large countries as a means of persuading small countries to provide that information voluntarily. JEL Code: H77, H87, F42     

Wetland mitigation banking: Negotiations with stakeholders in a zone of ecological-economic viability

Wetland mitigation banking (WMB) is an organizational form that attempts to balance the ecological goals of wetland conservation and the economic goals of development with the aim of improving the implementation of wetland offsetting. Given the resulting tension, it is important to understand how the way stakeholders employ the WMB regulatory framework affects the goal of No Net Loss of wetlands. In this study, we interviewed WMB stakeholders in Florida in the United States to identify their strategies during negotiations around different aspects of defining wetland mitigation credits (e.g. service areas, types of credit and credit release schedules). Using the approach of New Institutional Economics, we found that within a framework of well-defined rules that nonetheless allow flexibility, WMB enables a field of action for negotiating within a zone of ecological-economic viability – in part due to the stakeholders’ interest in maintaining a good reputation in this field. Outside of this zone of viability a wetland mitigation bank proposal collapses for economic or ecological reasons.     

Future themes in the operational environment of the Finnish cadastral system

The cadastral systems used in each country and region have developed through the centuries to their current form. We cannot assume that the current situation will remain the same from this point to the future. There are signs in recent studies and development projects throughout the world that those cadastral systems which are traditionally seen as well-functioning also need to be renewed as society changes at a rapid pace.This study is set up to analyze the future needs of a cadastral system and registers related to it in Finland. The objective of the study is to reveal future themes affecting the operational environment of the cadastral system by using research methods provided by futurology. The method used in this study is called environmental scanning and it consists of three phases: collecting events, recognizing phenomena and combining the phenomena as themes.The study analyses 352 literature sources and reveals 14 different future themes in the operational environment of the cadastral system, which are economic pressure, demographic changes, development of technology, transparent society, safety, environmental values, globalization, digitalization, know-how, quality, political change, soft values, public-private partnership and crowd sourcing. The future themes, their possible relations between each other and their significance for the cadastral system are analyzed by using the concepts of megatrends, trends, wild cards, driving forces and weak signals and reflecting the results to research made in the field of land management internationally.The results can be used when renewing a cadastral system, in order to consider possible future themes that may affect the system. Detecting and recognizing the future themes provides an opportunity to react and change the course of action in order to adapt to the future. The results are not only usable in the Finnish context, but can also be applied in other countries⿿ development of their cadastre and as part of environmental scanning.     

Contrasting the attitudes of farmers and the general public regarding the ‘multifunctional’ role of the agricultural sector

Using separate nationally representative surveys, this study compared the views and perspectives of farmers towards agricultural related conservation issues with that of the general public. Results suggest that both the general public and farmers expressed similar levels of concern regarding the environment as a whole. This is an encouraging sign when it comes to environmental protection, as it indicates a certain level of agreement between farmers as the group whose activities largely shape the quality of the rural environment, with the views of the general public who are the major consumers of landscape related environmental public goods. The analysis did, however, reveal important differences in attitudes in relation to certain environmental issues such as the relative importance of maintaining wildlife and habitats and having wild flora and fauna in the countryside. These activities could be seen as in conflict with farmers’ productivist attitudes. We found no significant difference in environmental attitudes between farmers who have participated in voluntary agri-environmental schemes and those who did not. Results also suggest that there is significant heterogeneity in public attitudes towards environmental issues. Specifically, age, income, place of residence and presence of children were all significantly associated with environmental preferences. The study concludes that consideration needs to be given to the different views and perspectives of farmers and the general public in formulating policy aimed at providing an optimal mix of agricultural related environmental public goods and services.     

Opportunity cost of water allocation to afforestation rather than conservation of natural vegetation in China

Estimation of ecosystem service values is a hot area of research in ecological conservation and economics. However, the costs of these outputs are largely unknown. In this paper, we estimated the opportunity cost of water allocated to afforestation projects through mathematical modeling based on statistical data for all of China to provide support for restoration planning based on a fuller consideration of the true costs. To guide future ecological conservation and environmental policy development, we illustrate a neglected concept (ecosystem service costs) and use this concept to compare the ecological services provided by ecological restoration based on afforestation with those of restoration based on the conservation of natural vegetation using data obtained since 1949 in China. The results showed that afforestation and natural vegetation create annual costs related to use of the available water resources equal to 4800 and 3700 RMB ha⁻¹, respectively, representing a water opportunity cost of 1100 RMB ha⁻¹ for afforestation. This illustrates the rule that “there is no free lunch” for any service, including ecosystem services. Therefore, to support the development of more effective and sustainable environmental restoration policy, it will be necessary to evaluate the associated opportunity costs.