Distinctive Features of Environmental Innovators: An Econometric Analysis

This paper analyzes the main determinants influencing environmental innovators (i.e. firms developing or adopting environmental innovations) in Spain with respect to non‐environmental innovators. Similarly to other contributions in the literature, our results show that Spanish environmental innovators respond to regulatory stimulus in the form of demand‐pull and technology‐push instruments. They have a high internal technological capability and combine internal and external information sources, mostly in cooperation with knowledge institutions. Environmental innovators are more concentrated in mature, traditionally highly polluting sectors, but new firms are not more environmentally innovative than incumbents. Most importantly, in contrast to other environmental innovation studies, mostly carried out in a German context, we have not found evidence of a market pull from either the domestic or international markets. Furthermore, cost savings are not found to be a distinctive driver for environmental innovators. These differential results are possibly related to the special features of Spain regarding its national innovation system and the degree of stringency of environmental regulation and environmental consciousness of its consumers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A new monthly chronology of the US industrial cycles in the prewar economy

This article extends earlier efforts at redating the US industrial cycles for the prewar period (1890–1938) using the methodologies proposed by Bry and Boschan (1971) and Hamilton (1989) and based on the monthly industrial production index constructed by Miron and Romer (1990) and modified by Romer (1994). The alternative chronology detects 90% of the peaks and troughs identified by the NBER and Romer (1994), but the new dates are consistently dated earlier for more than 50% of them, especially as regards the NBER troughs. The new dates affect the comparison of the average duration of recessions and expansions in both pre-WWI and interwar eras. Whereas the NBER reference dates show an increase in average duration of the expansions between the pre-WWI and interwar periods, the new dates show evidence of shortened length of expansions. However, the new dates confirm the traditional finding that contractions lasted longer in the post-war period than during the pre-war period.     

农村集体建设用地空间研究进展与展望

我国农村集体建设用地空间布局混乱,而现有关于农村集体建设用地空间研究方面存在理论与方法缺陷。文章对农村集体建设用地空间格局及机制、农村集体建设用地的空间优化、城乡建设用地统一空间研究领域相关研究进展进行综述,结论为现有研究存在理论体系尚未建立、研究内容不健全、研究方法以定性描述和空间描述为主等问题。建议未来该领域研究应跳出传统土地管理相关理论,多学科交叉,探索地理学、经济学在农村集体建设用地空间研究方面的理论框架;基于空间格局—演变机制—优化配置的思路,构建农村集体建设用地空间格局演变动力模型、农村集体建设用地空间与人口/产业的相互影响模型、城乡建设用地统一空间模型,从农村集体建设用地空间格局及其演变机制、农村集体建设用地空间与人口/产业的协调机制、城乡联系机制下的农村集体建设用地空间优化3方面来开展农村集体建设用地空间研究。     

Food values and heterogeneous consumer responses to nanotechnology

Agricultural applications of nanotechnology are at a relatively early stage and little is known about consumer responses to the technology. Canadian consumer responses to food nanotechnology are examined through the lens of the Food Value Scale. Data from a survey of Canadian consumers are used to evaluate the relative importance of eleven food values to food purchase decisions. We find that taste, safety, nutrition, and price are among the most important food values to Canadians, however, consumers exhibit considerable heterogeneity with respect to the priority placed on these values. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) explores the effect of food values on choice behavior. The DCE is positioned as a sliced apple product with non-browning and antioxidant-enhanced features introduced through the use of nanocoating or a conventional coating method. Random parameters logit (RPL) and latent class models (LCM) confirm the existence of significant preference heterogeneity. The LCM identifies three classes of consumers: “supporters,” “doubters,” and “opponents” who differ in their reaction to nanotechnology and in the relative importance placed on food values such as naturalness, novelty, and convenience. The analysis shows that food values provide additional insights into consumers’ food choices and their attitudes toward novel food technologies.     

Forest governance and economic values of forest ecosystem services in Vietnam

Forest ecosystems deliver valuable services to humanity. However, many forests are being degraded and their services have been undervalued. The main problem lies in the inadequate institutional arrangements for forest governance. This paper aims to assess the effects of alternative forest governance arrangements on the provision and economic values of forest ecosystem services (FES) in Vietnam. The study presents a framework for mapping land use and land cover (LULC) change stemming from actual and hypothetical changes in forest governance regimes, quantifies the resulting changes in the provision of FES, and estimates the associated economic values. In the context of the study site in the North Western uplands of Vietnam, we test three alternative forest governance scenarios: business as usual, with a dominant government role; a community-based governance regime; and a private, individual-based forestry governance regime. Scenarios are based quite closely on the way these regimes are (or might be expected to be) implemented in Vietnam. For each forest governance scenario, we map LULC changes based on land suitability analysis and transition likelihood for the period 2010 − 2020. The resulting maps are used as inputs into the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs) model, which is used to estimate the quantity of three specific FES: carbon storage/sequestration, sediment yield, and water yield. We apply economic valuation methods to value these services: the social cost of carbon is used to estimate the economic values of carbon storage/sequestration; the cost of removing sediment deposited in reservoirs is applied for valuing the reduction of sediment yield, and the residual value of water supply for hydropower generation is used for valuing water yield. The results show that forest governance regimes have a significant effect not only on forest LULC, but also on the quantity and values of FES derived from forests. The FES are differentially affected by alternative forest governance regimes: some FES increase in quantity and value under some governance regimes and decrease under others. Of the three forest governance regimes examined, there is no one regime that will always be ‘better’ than the others in terms of provisioning all considered FES. For the specific context of Vietnam, we find that the private forest governance scenario is inferior to the community-based governance scenario, as an alternative to the current state-based governance. Because our results pertain to the scenarios as constructed, rather than generally to broad categories of governance regimes, there remains the possibility that regimes can be constructed that outperform all of those examined here.     

寡头博弈模型中的时间记忆性质与预期对模型稳定性的影响

公平竞争是市场经济的灵魂,是发挥市场力量的关键.研究寡头垄断企业的竞争行为和竞争环境对中国强化反垄断,构建更加安全公平、有效竞争的经济市场意义重大.梳理寡头垄断企业中的价格竞争和产量竞争中的模型稳定性研究情况,通过模型的边界均衡点和局部均衡点来分析模型的稳定性,对寡头博弈模型中时间的记忆性与预期对模型稳定性的影响进行分析.     

How forestland size affects household profits from timber harvests: A case-study in China’s Southern collective forest area

To improve the economies of scale in forest management and reduce the fragmentation of forestland, the Chinese central government has implemented a collective forest tenure supplementary reform since 2008. This has included a series of policies for motivating transfer of forestlands use rights among households in the country’s Southern Collective Forest Area (SCFA). However, to date there is little evidence that large-scale forest owners can earn more profits from timber harvests than small-scale forest owners in the SCFA. Using data collected from household surveys in the three of the SCFA’s provinces in 2016, this paper examines the return to scale of forestland ownership for timber harvests in this region, and how the scale of forestland ownership affects households’ profits from timber harvests. The results show a constant return to scale in timber harvests in the case provinces in China’s SCFA, that forestland area makes the most important contribution to the output of timber harvests, and that fragmentation of forestland results in lower profits from timber harvests. It appears that a moderate scale of forestland ownership should be identified for increasing the profits from timber harvests. With the rapid urbanization throughout China, an increase in off-farm employment among rural household members has a negative impact on timber harvests in the region. We argue that policymakers should realize the importance of encouraging the forestland transfers and improve the concentration of forestlands in the next stage of forest tenure rights reform in China’s SCFA.     

Non-stationary additive utility and time consistency

Within a continuous time life cycle model of consumption and savings, I study the properties of the most general class of additive intertemporal utility functionals. They are not necessarily stationary, and do not necessarily multiplicatively separate a discount factor from “per-period utility”. I prove rigorously that time consistency holds if and only if the per-period felicity function is multiplicatively separable in $t$, the date of decision and in $s$, the date of consumption, or equivalently, if the Fisherian instantaneous subjective discount rate does not depend on $t$. The model allows to explain “anomalies in intertemporal choice” even when the agents are time consistent and various empirical regularities. On the other hand, the model allows to characterize mathematically the “effective consumption profile” of naive, time-inconsistent agents.     

The State as Both Regulator and Player: The Politics of Transfer of Development Rights in China

The conventional argument that the introduction of transfer of development rights (TDR) shifts the power of land use regulation from the state to the market is increasingly under challenge. In China, the state's grip on land is reinforced through TDR, in which the state is both regulator and player. This state-dominated form of TDR affects China in three ways. First, competing aspirations of different scales of government complicate how TDR is implemented. Although the central state promotes TDR to maintain a national balance of arable land, some local states instrumentalize it to expand their landed basis of accumulation. Secondly, TDR tends to benefit the state but not its people. It may increase the fiscal income of the sending government and lessen the land shortage of the receiving government, but sometimes at the expense of the interests of land users without land ownership. Thirdly, given the state's deep involvement in TDR programs, the key for China's TDR to protect arable land lies not so much in clear property rights or a fully fledged market as in effective checks and balances regarding the state's powers over TDR. These three observations attest to the embeddedness of TDR in the local political economy.     

Towards an integrated model for the transference of environmental responsibility

This research explores how environmental responsibility transfers to others. Although environmental responsibility is one of the most debated topics in environmental management literature, a framework describing how a teacher's environmental responsibility shapes the student's environmental responsibility is still lacking. Adopting emotional contagion theory as a lens, the paper addresses this issue via the mediation of emotional contagion and the moderation of a teacher's environmental concern. Based on a survey of teachers and students (N = 283) conducted in Pakistan, our findings provide evidence that a teacher's environmental responsibility can better transfer to students via emotional contagion. Additionally, our data establish that the transference of environmental responsibility from teachers to students via emotional contagion is more effective when the teacher has a high level of environmental concern than when he or she has a low level of environmental concern. Finally, the authors discuss the implications for policy in detail.