Mongolian nomadic culture and ecological culture: On the ecological reconstruction in the agro-pastoral mosaic zone in Northern China

After analyzing the grassland environmental characteristics and nomads vs. agrarian land use styles and their ecological and environmental influences in the arid and semiarid agro-pastoral mosaic zone in northern China, it was concluded that Mongolian nomadic culture is more close to the basic principles of the ecological culture in the modern sense. Mongolian nomadic culture has advantages over agrarian culture in ecology and environmental care, sustainable utilization of grasslands, and in sustainable human social economic development in the region. Generally speaking nomadic culture prevents desertification; whereas, agrarian culture facilitates desertification. Confliction between nomadic protection and agrarian destruction of grassland ecosystem is essentially focused on the problem of regional and even global ecological safety. Obviously, protection of ecological safety should be given priority because human social and economic existence, as well as development depend on and are decided by the vulnerable ecological safety in the arid and semiarid areas. Therefore expansion of cropping into the fragile ecosystem of arid lands was unfortunate. The long term sustainable management of these grassland ecosystems could benefit from reversal of policies that are exacerbating the problems of land degradation, and from the adoption of land use practices that have been successfully applied for centuries by Mongolian herders. Protection of grasslands and nomadic culture is far more important or even vital to the subsistence and sustainability of human and all other beings, compared to the protection of agrarian lifestyle and land cultivation. Protection of ecologic safety is protecting the premise and fundamental bases of economic and social development in the area. It is important to derive the rational elements of nomadic culture in construction of ecological culture, and in the ecological reconstruction in northern China. Based on analyzing and reasoning in line with the quintessence of nomadic culture summarized, some proposals on ecological reconstruction in the area are presented.     

Piercing the Veil of Uncertainty in Transboundary Pollution Agreements

This paper addresses the question of how uncertainty in costs and benefits affects the difficulty of reaching a voluntary agreement among sovereign states. A measure of difficulty is constructed related to side-payments necessary to make an agreement a Pareto-improving move. Using a simple model, it is shown that uncertainty actually makes agreement easier.JEL classifications: Q5, H4, D7, D8An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental and Resource Economics, Wageningen, The Netherlands, June 2002.     

Liability for Past Environmental Contamination and Privatization

This paper examines the role ofliability for past environmental contaminationin the privatization processes of Central andEastern Europe. In particular, it establishes alink between a risk-averse investor's amount ofinformation regarding the extent of pastenvironmental contamination (and its cleanupcosts) and the investor's willingness to payfor a particular enterprise, i.e., bid. As theinvestor obtains a more precise estimate of theuncertain cleanup costs, the investor facesless risk; therefore, the investor's riskpremium falls and the investor's bid rises.This link generates four hypotheses regarding aprivatization agency's responses to theinvestor's knowledge of clean-up costs.     

Carbon Taxes and Joint Implementation. An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis for Germany and India

Germany has committed itself toreducing its carbon emissions by 25 percent in2005 as compared to 1990 emission levels. Toachieve this goal, the government has recentlylaunched an environmental tax reform whichentails a continuous increase in energy taxesin conjunction with a revenue-neutral cut innon-wage labor costs. This policy is supposedto yield a double dividend, reducing both, theproblem of global warming and high unemploymentrates. In addition to domestic actions,international treaties on climate protectionallow for the supplementary use of flexibleinstruments to exploit cheaper emissionreduction possibilities elsewhere. One concreteoption for Germany would be to enter jointimplementation (JI) with developing countriessuch as India where Germany pays emissionreduction abroad rather than meeting itsreduction target solely by domestic action. Inthis paper, we investigate whether anenvironmental tax reform cum JI providesemployment and overall efficiency gains ascompared to an environmental tax reformstand-alone. We address this question in theframework of a large-scale general equilibriummodel for Germany and India where Germany mayundertake JI with the Indian electricitysector. Our main finding is that JI offsetslargely the adverse effects of carbon emissionconstraints on the German economy. JIsignificantly lowers the level of carbon taxesand thus reduces the total costs of abatementas well as negative effects on labor demand. Inaddition, JI triggers direct investment demandfor energy efficient power plants produced inGermany. This provides positive employmenteffects and additional income for Germany. ForIndia, joint implementation equips itselectricity industry with scarce capital goodsleading to a more efficient power productionwith lower electricity prices for the economyand substantial welfare gains.     

Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the economy is convex, nor do weassume that the government optimizes on behalfof its citizens. We show that the same set ofaccounting prices should be used both forpolicy evaluation and for assessing whether ornot intergenerational welfare along a giveneconomic path will be sustained. We also showthat a comprehensive measure of wealth,computed in terms of the accounting prices, canbe used as an index for problems (2) and (3)above. The remainder of the paper is concernedwith rules for estimating the accounting pricesof several specific environmental naturalresources, transacted in a few well knowneconomic institutions.     

Regulating an Externality-Generating Utility Environmental Taxes Under Limited Information

Global warming is currently an important item on most nationalenvironmental agendas. In many countries, coal-fired electricity generatingstations represent an important source of greenhouse gases. We examinehow regulations to curb emissions affect public utility pricing regulationwhen regulators act non-cooperatively. We show that, when there is limitedinformation on fixed abatement costs, an environmental regulator prefersan emission tax over an output tax or a lump sum environmental tax. Thepublic utility regulator prefers the lump sum tax regime.     

Corporate Lobbying, Regulatory Conduct and the Porter Hypothesis

Michael Porter, the influential Harvard management guru, has promoted the idea that compliance with stricter environmental regulations can afford secondary benefits to firms through improved product design, innovation, corporate morale and in other ways. Once these secondary benefits are factored, the net cost of compliance is argued to be lower than conventionally thought and may even be negative. Whilst environmental economists have rejected the Porter Hypothesis as being based on excessively optimistic expectations of the likely size of such secondary benefits the underlying ideas do enjoy significant credence in the business community. In the context of a lobbying model of regulatory policy-making we argue that the EPA should change the way it conducts regulatory policy to take account of Porter's views – even if it knows those views to be misguided. The model serves to illustrate the more general point that fashions in management thinking can be expected to impact the optimal conduct of regulatory policy.     

Environmental Product Differentiation and Environmental Awareness

In this paper, we have considered a duopolistic model of environmental product differentiation with two types of consumers (green and brown) to analyze how environmental awareness affects the environment. “Green” consumers value the physical and environmental attributes of the good they purchase while “brown” consumers only value the physical attributes. We find that more environmental awareness may not be good news for the environment as the firm that produces the good without environmental attributes may increase its sales. The result depends on the degree of product differentiation and the cost to achieve it. Social welfare can also be inversely related to environmental awareness if the negative environmental effect dominates the positive market effect.      

开放条件下我国外贸政策的定位及体系构建

具有渐进性、法制化和市场化特征的我国外贸体制改革以及贸易自由化与贸易保护并存的对外开放 ,要求我国对外贸易政策应该是在贸易自由化过程中的合理保护———开放型有管理的自由贸易政策。这一政策应遵循开放、适度有效的保护和竞争的原则 ,其政策基点是贸易保护的适度性 ,表现为保护的动态性、主动性、目的性和差别性。我国开放型有管理的自由贸易政策的实施应有体制上的保障 ,以扩大出口为主要政策目标 ,并与产业政策相结合 ,真正促进社会资源的有效配置 ,保证社会经济效益的提高并促进市场秩序的完善。     

Assessing Voluntary Programs to Improve Environmental Quality

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the use of voluntaryapproaches (VAs) to environmental protection, which has spurned agrowing literature on the relative merits of voluntary vs. mandatoryapproaches. This paper draws on that literature to discuss both thetheoretical and empirical issues that arise in the evaluation orassessment of a particular VA. We consider both the environmentaleffectiveness and the efficiency of this policy approach. Our aim is toaid policymakers in evaluating a specific program or in thinking aboutthe use and design of a VA. We identify some key features that arelikely to increase both the effectiveness and the efficiency of VAs.