Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

Consumer Preferences for ‘Localness’ and Organic Food Production

While organic food is based on well-defined production criteria, the criteria for ‘local’ food are less clear. This study investigates the preferences and trade-offs of distinct consumer segments relative to organic production and several dimensions of local food (sales channel, size of company, and geographical location of animals used in the production). The analysis is based on a quantitative survey of 505 Danish consumers and a choice experiment involving beef salami. Data were analyzed in a principal component and a latent class analysis. We identify five consumer segments whose preferences for organic and local product attributes differed substantially. Most respondents considered geographical proximity in the raising of cattle to be the most important attribute and a third of the consumers were willing to pay a premium for organic salami. The segmentation provides more detailed information about stated consumer behavior than what is typically elicited when considering only average consumer behavior.     

Local television,citizen knowledge and U.S. senators' roll-call voting

I study the effect of access to local television on citizens' political knowledge. I do so by utilizing the mismatch between U.S. television markets and state borders, causing some citizens to receive local television which primarily covers neighboring state politics. I find that access to relevant local television causes citizens to be more informed about their senators' roll-call votes, and more likely to hold opinions about these senators. I also find that citizens with access to relevant local television are more likely to assess their senators based on how well the senators' roll-call votes align with the citizens' policy preferences. These results suggest that passively acquired information through television can help individuals evaluate their elected representatives.     

Fiscal rules to tame the political budget cycle: Evidence from Italian municipalities

The paper provides evidence that fiscal rules can limit the political budget cycle. It uses data on Italian municipalities during the 2000s and shows that: 1) municipalities are subject to political budget cycles in capital spending; 2) the Italian sub-national fiscal rule (Domestic Stability Pact, DSP) introduced in 1999 has been enforced by the central government; 3) municipalities subject to the fiscal rule show more limited political budget cycles than municipalities not subject to the rule. In order to identify the effect, we rely on the fact that the domestic fiscal rule does not apply to municipalities below 5000 inhabitants. We find that the political budget cycle increases real capital spending by about 10–20 percent on average in the years prior to municipal elections and that municipalities subject to the DSP show a pre-electoral increase in capital spending which is only a quarter of the one of municipalities not subject to the rule.     

Manufacturing growth and local employment multipliers in China

We study the impact of employment growth in manufacturing on job creation in the non-tradable sector for prefecture-level cities in China. Using the 2000 and 2010 Censuses of Population, we apply the shift-share approach to isolate the exogenous change of employment growth in manufacturing. For every hundred new manufacturing jobs, we find that 34 additional jobs are created in the non-tradable sector. We also show that the effect is heterogeneous along a number of dimensions. More specifically, one new job in high-technology manufacturing creates more jobs in the non-tradable sector while low-technology manufacturing employment growth has no significant multiplier effect. Among the non-tradable industries, the multiplier is the largest for wholesale, retail, and catering. Finally, the effect is also geographically heterogeneous, with the multiplier being greater for inland regions.     

意义、困境与向路:我国地方人大立法协商研究

立法协商是地方人大实现科学立法、民主立法和依法立法的有效途径和重要举措。随着我国立法实践的发展,虽地方立法协商工作取得了卓著成效,但也存在着诸多待解难题,如立法协商主体角色定位不清、实现过程有待明确、意见收集渠道缺失等。鉴于此,地方人大立法应充分体现地方人大主导地位、实现立法协商制度化规范化、紧紧依靠人民群众开展立法协商,进而以协商民主的方式为地方立法工作凝聚共识、汇集民智。     

Transboundary pollution externalities: Think globally,act locally?

We analyze the implications of transboundary pollution externalities on environmental policymaking in a spatial setting, in which pollution diffuses across the global spatial economy independently of the specific location in which it is originally generated. This framework gives rise to a simple regional optimal pollution control problem allowing us to compare the global and local solutions in which, respectively, the transboundary externality is and is not taken into account in the determination of the optimal policy by individual local policymakers. We show that it is not obvious that transboundary externalities are a source of inefficiency per se since this is strictly related to the spatial features of the initial distribution of pollution. If the initial pollution distribution is spatially homogeneous then the local and global solutions will coincide and thus no efficiency loss will arise from transboundary externalities, but if it is spatially heterogeneous the local solution will be suboptimal and thus a global approach to environmental problems will be needed to achieve efficiency. From a normative perspective, in this latter (and most realistic) case we also quantify the amount of policy intervention needed at local level in order to achieve the globally desirable goal of pollution eradication in the long run. Our conclusions hold true in a number of different settings, including situations in which the spatial domain is either bounded or unbounded, and situations in which macroeconomic–environmental feedback effects are taken into account.     

Using methods of Multi-Criteria Decision Making to provide decision support concerning local bioenergy projects

The public sector plays an important role in the German “Energiewende”. Besides energy management in municipal properties the local government can also support the switch to renewable energy sources through a change in energy supply structures within in their region. Methods of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) from Operations Research are helpful regarding that challenge, as they are able to assess the sustainability of local energy concepts, since they not only offer stakeholders the opportunity to participate, but also consider multiple conflicting criteria. In that way, the acceptance of local energy projects and the participation of stakeholders in the decision process are supported. The case study presented in this paper illustrates the results of a MCDM process employed to identify a sustainable bioenergy concept in a rural village in Lower Saxony, Germany. Our analysis revealed not only the opportunities and challenges associated with executing an MCDM process to support the realization of local bioenergy projects, but also discusses potential limitations of the methods.     

政策不确定性、财政扩张与区域商业银行风险——基于中国地方官员变更和银行业的证据

文章利用2007-2017年我国93家区域商业银行的面板数据，并结合省级宏观经济数据和地方官员变更数据，实证考察了中国地方官员变更引起的经济政策不确定性对区域商业银行风险的重要影响。研究结果表明：（1）地方官员变更引起的政策不确定性增大了区域商业银行风险；（2）地方官员变更引起的政策不确定性，通过提高银行的资产收益率降低了商业银行风险；而不确定性时期的财政扩张，通过降低银行资产收益率增大了商业银行风险；并且财政扩张的负面影响大于政策不确定性的正面影响；（3）各省的市委书记发生职位更替引起的政策不确定性对区域商业银行风险的影响更大。文章研究为新时代背景下的金融供给侧结构性改革、政府宏观经济政策的制定以及财政体制与金融体制之间的联系提供参考。     

Unemployment durations and local labour market conditions

ABSTRACT

Unemployment durations vary across local authority districts in the UK. We explore the extent to which this variation is explained by differences in local labour demand as opposed to composition, business cycle and regional effects. We use seventeen waves of the British Household Panel Survey to identify the determinants of the duration of unemployment spells. Once we adjust for individual-level, business cycle and regional controls, we do not find evidence that living in a local authority district with relatively high unemployment is associated with longer spells of unemployment. This indicates that differences in labour demand operate at larger geographic scales, such as between large regions. Our findings have implications for the design of policies to help high unemployment districts.