Beyond antitrust populism: Towards robust antitrust

The populist use of competition policies is on the rise again, associated with the growth of big-tech companies in the era of digital platforms. This article sees antitrust populism as a re-emerging force in the United States and Europe via greater politicisation of competition law enforcement. It addresses the basic tenets of antitrust populism in order to expose the fundamental problems that populist use of competition law entails. I argue for a rethink of antitrust policy on the intellectual foundations laid down by what Mark Pennington describes as ‘robust political economy’. We need greater regulatory humility and antitrust enforcement which takes both innovation and welfare seriously.     

Bogotá's Left Turn: Counter-Neoliberalization in Colombia

For the political left, decentralization has increased both the appeal and the importance of governing the city, and yet sharp constraints limit the left's transformative potential when it controls that level of government alone. Bogotá is an important case in point under the recent mayoral administration of Gustavo Petro (2012–15), a demobilized guerrilla leader who sought to implement a series of urban policy reforms that together represent one of the most substantively radical and intellectually coherent attempts to challenge neoliberalism in all of Latin America. Focusing on the four policy arenas through which Petro hoped to transform the city (environment, housing, transport, and trash collection), the article documents the veto power of the firms whose privileges he threatened, as well as the tools through which they derailed reform. In contrast to the failure of his political economy agenda, Petro was indeed able to enact a number of progressive social policy reforms precisely because they did not threaten the profitability of the city's entrenched growth machine.     

Paradigm Shifts in Social Housing after Welfare-State Transformation: Learning from the German Experience

Welfare-state transformation and entrepreneurial urban politics in Western welfare states since the late 1970s have yielded converging trends in the transformation of the dominant Fordist paradigm of social housing in terms of its societal function and institutional and spatial form. In this article I draw from a comparative case study on two cities in Germany to show that the resulting new paradigm is simultaneously shaped by the idiosyncrasies of the country's national housing regime and local housing policies. While German governments have successively limited the societal function of social housing as a legitimate instrument only for addressing exceptional housing crises, local policies on providing and organizing social housing within this framework display significant variation. However, planning and design principles dominating the spatial forms of social housing have been congruent. They may be interpreted as both an expression of the marginalization of social housing within the restructured welfare housing regime and a tool of its implementation according to the logics of entrepreneurial urban politics.     

Corporates' strategic responses to economic policy uncertainty in China

Using a novel news‐based index of economic policy uncertainty, this paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate strategic positioning and corporate risk in China from 2009 to 2015. The study also investigates the impact of corporate strategic positioning on corporate risk. The results show that corporate strategic positioning and economic policy uncertainty have a significant positive impact on corporate risk. The results also explain that economic policy uncertainty increases the market risk of the firms irrespective of their corporate strategy. However, it increases the business risk of prospector firms and decreases the business risk of defensive firms. The study may help the firms to formulate and improve their strategic positioning while considering economic policy uncertainty. Our results are robust to alternate proxies of economic policy uncertainty and corporate risk.     

Disentangling the drivers of renewable energy investments: The role of behavioral factors

The scope of this study is to investigate the main determinants of renewable energy investments in Greece. For this reason, we build an appropriate framework to infer the decision‐making process in the renewable energy sources (RES). The main drivers are then categorized under two groups as economic, and behavioral ones. In the next stage, we rely on binomial (logit and probit) and quantile regression analysis to estimate the impact of these factors on investment decisions towards RES. Our findings indicate that investors who gain better access to knowledge and exhibit a more positive attitude towards the contribution of artificial intelligence (AI) on the RES industry have a higher share of renewables in their portfolio. We argue that these investors are willing to invest a higher amount in the RES industry today. At the same time, quantile regression models illustrate that this relationship is nonmonotonic (i.e., inverted U shaped curve), arguing that positive attitudes towards the contribution of behavioral factors on RES are not adequate to encourage investments after crossing a certain point (threshold). Based on the empirical findings, we argue that the message to policymakers and government officials is to promote a faster penetration of low carbon technologies to achieve sustainable economic and social growth.     

Environmental policies,national culture,and stock price crash risk: Evidence from renewable energy firms

This study investigates the impact of country‐level environmental performance and national culture on the stock price crash risk of renewable energy firms. Employing a large sample of 626 renewable energy firms across 31 countries, we find a significant nonlinear relationship between country‐level environmental performance and crash risk. National culture dimensions are found to strongly predict the crash risk of renewable energy firms, particularly after the global financial crisis. On the contrary, national culture dimensions and environmental policies are observed to not exert any significance in explaining the crash risk of fossil fuel firms. Our results are robust with respect to alternative measures of stock price crash risk and the endogeneity of national culture dimensions. Overall, the findings of this paper contribute to the environmental economics literature by providing new evidence regarding the role of societal and environmental factors in explaining the stock price crash risk of energy firms.     

产业政策对企业研发创新的影响研究——基于促进创新型产业政策"信心效应"的视角

信心是影响产业政策实施效果背后的重要无形因素。本文从“信心效应”的新视角出发，基于2012—2017年中国A股上市公司面板数据，以《中国制造2025》为一项准自然实验，使用双重差分法研究促进创新型产业政策对企业研发创新的影响。研究结果表明：促进创新型产业政策的颁布能够通过“外部信心效应”和“内部信心效应”促进受支持企业研发投入增加；通过与受支持企业自身的营运性信心和社会性信心叠加，信心效应的影响分别出现U型与倒U型的差异；信心效应在促进创新型产业政策对受支持企业研发产出数量和实质性的影响中都发挥了作用。研究结论不仅丰富了相关文献，也为新时期产业政策的制定与实践以及企业行为调整提供了有益的启示。     

新能源汽车价格补贴政策的绩效分析和改善建议--以J新能源汽车公司为例

新能源汽车是我国汽车行业重要的发展方向,笔者通过研究我国新能源汽车的发展历程、价格补贴政策存在的问题,提出完善新能源汽车价格补贴政策的对策,以期为我国新能源产业的科学发展和我国汽车产业的转型升级提供参考。     

大国产业竞争视阙下美欧推动的国际产业补贴新规则——中国的立场与对策

在经济全球化和先进技术占主导地位的时代,大国竞争的本质在于争夺产业链的控制权,提高在产业链中的地位。为阻止中国在产业链的升级,欧美通过对外签订经贸协定,推动国有企业规则和更新补贴规则,同时在WTO框架下谋求针对中国补贴模式修改WTO补贴规则,将补贴范围从财政补贴延伸至扭曲市场的贷款,以反补贴、竞争政策、国有企业规则等多项规则管制产业补贴。我国必须通过分类改革确定国有企业在产业竞争中的作用和地位,对充分竞争行业的商业类国有企业重新塑造"商业性"或"中性"身份,避免对我国国有企业特殊反补贴规则的适用;确立我国接受产业补贴规则的底线思维,通过博弈明确产业补贴负面清单,积极回应欧美国家关于补贴透明度要求,为相关谈判奠定良好基础。     

韩国与中国台湾地区自由贸易港区发展比较研究及经验借鉴

目前,中国亟需借鉴国际经验探索建设中国特色自由贸易港。韩国政府对自由贸易港区实行税收减免、金融支持、生活配套等多方面优惠政策。中国台湾地区的自由贸易港区除了传统自由贸易港的转运功能之外,还包括深度加工制造功能,并通过功能布局、政策优化与修整提升自由贸易港区的竞争力。通过比较发现,韩国和中国台湾自由贸易港区均具有立法保障、功能多元和高效运营等3个相似特征,同时它们在管理机构、功能形态、税收减免和服务供给方面存在差异。中国特色自由贸易港应先通过立法对其管理与运行进行规范,结合区位优势选择合适的功能定位,通过税收减免优惠及增加良好生活配套供给来吸引高质量外资。