Permit markets,carbon prices and the creation of innovation clusters

Innovation clusters combining public and private effort to develop breakthrough technologies promise greater technological advances to slow down climate change. We use a multi-country model with an emission trading system to examine whether and how international climate policy can incentivize countries to create such innovation clusters. We find that a minimal carbon price is needed to attract applied research firms, but countries may nevertheless fail to invest in complementary research infrastructure. We construct a mechanism that leads to innovation clusters when emissions targets are set before uncertainty surrounding technological developments is resolved. It is a combination of low permit endowments for the country with the lowest costs to build the needed infrastructure, compensation for this country by profits from permit trade, and maximal possible permit endowments for the remaining countries. We outline how the EU-ETS can be further refined according to this mechanism.     

论物保与人保并存纠纷中债权实现之顺位——以近五年来类案实证研究为基础

当前,物保与人保并存纠纷不断涌现，相关裁判时常冲突，引发社会关注。围绕当前物保与人保并存纠纷债权实现条款模式、关于物保与人保并存债权实现顺位之理解、债权人是否放弃物保之认定等相关问题，对近五年来最为主要的类案进行实证分析与比较研究可见，处理物保与人保并存纠纷，应当根据物保相对优先的精神，对保证人是否就放弃物保优先抗辩权重点作出判断，据此就物保与人保提供者的责任顺位作出正确裁决。     

Is it still economic to build a new coal-fired power plant in the U.S.? A real option analysis

In the U.S., virtually no new coal-fired power plants have been built in recent years. Both industry experts and academics seem to believe that no rational firm will build a new coal-fired plant. Will such a trend continue in the future? To provide insights into this question, we investigate the optimal decision of an electricity company with an irreversible and deferrable opportunity to build either a new coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plant as its new base-load resource. According to our real option analysis, the optimal decision depends on the location. In the case of the eastern U.S., it is optimal to choose a natural gas plant if a firm is given a choice among a new natural gas plant, a new coal plant and deferring the investment. However, contrary to the common sentiment in the industry and academia, building a new coal plant in the western U.S. is still more economical than building a new natural gas plant in the absence of emission pricing. Furthermore, introducing carbon pricing to western U.S. states, as California did, can substantially increase the probability that a firm will optimally choose a natural gas plant over a coal plant.     

Advertisement policy for dual-channel within emissions-controlled flexible production system

Nowadays, industrial firms are very much careful to build a green environment by reducing carbon emissions. The government imposes some rules and regulations to provide a better eco-friendly environment. In this study, the cap-and-trade mechanism has been considered in a production model to control the carbon emissions rate. The manufacturers invest in advanced green technology to reduce per unit emissions. As online and offline selling is crucial to any industry for increasing customer demand, the manufacturers sell their products by dual-channel and advertise their products by online channel to make more popular of their products. Keeping these in mind, a sustainable flexible production model with single-type substitutable product production is considered here by imposing a cap-and-tax policy, investing in green technology, and advertising for products. This model is divided into two cases: with and without investment in green technology. The demand of each manufacturer depends upon an online selling price, an offline selling price, and an online advertisement of the product. A classical optimization technique helps to get the optimum strategies for the online selling price, offline selling price, advertisement investment, green technology, cycle time, and production rate. From the numerical study, it is proved that the industry gets 6.97% more profit in the case of green technology investment and the proposed study gives 5.74% more profit than the traditional production system. Sensitivity analysis and managerial insights are performed.     

Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing

Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across firms, with the largest differences found in low-union-density cigar firms where indirect costs (that is, uncertainty and risk) accrued in particular to women workers. The lack of gender differences in mutual aid membership indicates that women were not hard to organize but avoided organizations associated with greater risk for employer retaliation and uncertain returns according to a cost–benefit analysis.     

三维视角下农民土地财产权的实现

研究目的:从时间性、社会性、空间性三维解读农民土地财产权的基本特征,进而探究其实现路径。研究方法:规范分析法、文献研究法。研究结果:(1)农民土地财产权由国家配置,呈现出开放性结构;(2)农民土地财产权本质上具有关系性,负有社会功能;(3)农民土地财产权受土地属性限制,在个人自治与公共利益互动平衡中动态发展。研究结论:农民土地财产权需要双重实现,公法上可以从基本权利的功能入手限定国家干预范围;私法上确立其独立民事权利地位,并借助集体成员概念明确成员权利和成员义务。     

Economic Competition,Policy Interdependence,and Labour Rights

Extant scholarship treats national policies concerning labour rights as a function of economic factors and yet neglects influences of policies among economically competing states. Relying on the policy interdependence theory, this study argues that labour rights policy in a state is dependent on its economic competitors’ labour policy decisions. It specifically maintains that the intensifying competition for foreign direct investment and exports as well as against imports channels negative externalities of deteriorating labour protection in competing states which drives expansive downward policy mimicking and leads to a global decline in labour rights – a race to the bottom. Utilising spatial econometric technique to analyse a new data on labour rights for the period 1994–2009, it finds that labour rights practices are interdependent among economic competitors and experience global deteriorations; whereas labour rights laws remain largely independent due to high policy and reputational costs of lowering them and show more fluctuations.     

Supply‐ versus Demand‐Side Policies in the Presence of Carbon Leakage and the Green Paradox

We consider a climate coalition that seeks to reduce global emissions in the presence of carbon leakage and resource exhaustibility. We show that a credible announcement of future unilateral supply‐side policies delays foreign emissions, and we derive the optimal combination of consumer taxes and producer taxes when we consider leakages from free riders, both within periods and across periods. The tax shares generally differ over time. A decline in the present value of the social cost of carbon over time supports a time path where the consumers’ tax share of the total carbon tax also declines over time. We illustrate our findings with a numerical model.     

Does forced migration increase regional human rights commitment? The cases of Malaysia and Thailand in ASEAN

ABSTRACT

Why do non-democratic governments commit to human rights on a regional level? We argue that the negative externalities of political repression, operationalized as large amounts of transnational refugee flows, affect states’ willingness to commit to human rights. Neighbouring governments commit to human rights to send a signal to their repressive neighbours that repression will no longer be tolerated. We use official UNCHR data, a number of other secondary sources, as well as congruence analysis and process tracing to demonstrate the relevance of the theory for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Malaysia and Thailand in particular.     

Estimating emissions based on the integration of microscopic traffic simulation and vehicle dynamics model

This study proposes an integrated simulation approach, which consists of a microscopic traffic simulation model, a vehicle dynamics model, and an emission estimation model, in order to estimate emissions based on more reliable vehicle performance measures. The vehicle performance measures such as engine power and engine speed significantly relate to the amount of emissions, and road curvatures and inclinations are the core inputs affecting these vehicle performance measures. Therefore, providing reliable vehicle performance measures reflecting the road geometric attributes is critical for a reliable emission estimation. This study proposes to use the microscopic traffic simulation model for generating vehicle trajectories, which is advantageous in modeling various traffic situations, and the vehicle dynamics model for producing the vehicle performance measures based on the vehicle trajectories. Finally, the outputs from the vehicle dynamics model are fed into the emission estimation model to compute emission measures. This study conducted a case-study using two road sections, one is a hypothesized road section, including various curvatures and inclinations with regular variations, and the other is a Kesselberg road section, which is an actual geometry in Bayern, Germany. The emission measures are estimated in these case-study road sections using both an existing simulation approach and the proposed integrated simulation approach. The difference between these two emission estimation approaches is discussed in terms of the emission measures, including fuel consumption, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matters.