环境规制对碳效率的多重路径及门槛模型研究

从结构升级及效率提升两大维度刻画环境规制对碳排放效率的关系及作用机制,研究环境规制是如何提升城市碳排放效率的。基于2006—2019年中国279个城市层面数据,采用非参数百分位自抽法,逐步回归法、Sobel检验和交互调节模型验证影响路径,并利用门槛模型探讨不同路径下环境规制的调节作用。结果表明：(1)环境规制促进城市碳排放效率提升,但存在区域异质性;(2)环境规制通过促进产业结构高度化、绿色技术创新和能源效率升级提高碳排放效率,产业结构合理化及产业集聚“遮掩”了环境规制的激励作用;(3)环境规制对提升碳排放效率存在多种门槛效应和调节机制。发挥环境规制对碳排放效率结构和效率的双重激励时,需注意不同路径的维度问题,以提高准度,把握力度。     

On the design of incentive mechanisms in environmental policy

The objective of this paper is to present environmental policy as a simple game in two stages within a principal-agent framework. At the outset the authority adopts a transfer payment rule. Then the firms react by carrying out abatement activities, based on their chosen levels of emission and output. Next the authority measures the emissions (and residual profit of the industry) and revises the level of its instrument. Then the game starts again. Our purpose is to narrow the scope of ad hoc incentive schemes by characterizing families of optimal linear schemes.We thank two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions. We have also benefited from comments from I.-M. Andréasson, J. B. Opschoor, H. Verbruggen and the other members of the Task Force II: Environmental Policy instruments of the European Science Foundation Programme: Environment, Science and Society. Wang acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).     

The impact of environmental regulation on Chinese spatial development

We examine the relationship between environmental regulation and spatial development in China. Exploiting changes in national pollution standards for three industries, ammonia, paper and cement, we measure the impact of environmental regulation on industry productivity. Our results suggest that national pollution standards do not affect industry productivity, but they reallocate productivity spatially. We show that regulated industries located in developing cities increase their productivity compared to similar industries in other cities. This means that environmental regulation affects the spatial distribution of technology in China and might influence long‐term spatial development by reducing geographical disparities.     

Choosing the right instrument

This paper analyses the optimal choice of second-best optimal environmental policies. Using a partial equilibrium model, the paper first reconfirms the well-known result that the existence of a double dividend (in its weak definition) favours environmental policy instruments which maximise tax revenues for a given improvement in environmental quality. Additional revenues can be used to reduce the distortion of existing taxes such as taxes on labour and capital income. Without uncertainty, environmental taxes and auctioned permits are equally appropriate. In the presence of uncertainty, however, the optimal choice of taxes or tradable permits depends on the relative magnitudes of the marginal environmental damage and the marginal benefit from consuming a polluting good. In the second part, the paper, therefore, analyses how the revenue capacity affects the optimal choice of environmental policy instruments in the presence of uncertainty. The paper shows that the first-best choice rule between price and quantity regulation (Weitzman, 1974) remains valid in a second-best world with distortionary taxation.     

On the strategic potential of technological aid in international environmental relations

Prior to noncooperative choices of abatement of a transboundary pollutant, a technologically advanced country considers making an unconditional transfer of abatement technology to its less-advanced rival. Even though technological aid is given unconditionally and abatement strategies are chosen noncooperatively, in a number of plausible circumstances, a transfer of a superior control technology will induce Pareto-superior pollution abatement.     

On the efficiency of fair trade

The first part of this paper reviews five major theoretical approaches that describe the fundamental causes of poverty, with particular attention to what these theories imply about government policy towards markets and the need for immediate poverty alleviation. Different causal theories have very different policy implications; it is difficult to recommend specific anti-poverty policies with making assumptions about the nature of economic markets and of individual behavior. The paper ends with comments about how to make these choices, arguing that the greater moral onus one associates with poverty, the more willing one should be to adopt less efficient strategies that do more to raise incomes among the poor. The interconnections between markets and social and political systems—which often disadvantage poor populations—suggests that some market regulations and targeted programs may be necessary to reduce poverty, especially if these can be implemented with minimal corruption and monitored for effectiveness.     

Technical efficiency under alternative environmental regulatory regimes: The case of Dutch horticulture

We consider the performance of small and medium sized enterprises in Dutch horticulture under different environmental policy regimes across time. We address the question whether technical performance differs under these alternative regulatory regimes to test Porter's hypothesis that stricter environmental regulation reduces technical inefficiency. For this purpose, we use a stochastic production frontier framework allowing for inclusion of policy variables to measure the effect of alternative environmental policy regimes on firms' performance. The main result is that stricter environmental policy regimes have indeed reduced technical inefficiencies in Dutch horticulture. The estimation results indicate amongst others that the 1997 agreement on energy, nutrient and pesticides use enhances technical efficiency. Firms under the strict environmental policy regime are found to be more technically efficient than those under a lax regime, thereby supporting the claims by Porter and Van der Linde (Porter, M., Van der Linde, C., 1995. Green and Competitive: Ending the stalemate. Harvard Business Review 73, pp. 120-137) concerning Dutch horticulture.     

完善个人所得税制度研究

个人所得税制改革必须与国情相结合分步实施、循序渐进,而不能一步到位。“十一五”乃至更长的一段时期,个人所得税制应按照主要体现收入再分配的政策目标来完善:实行综合与分类相结合的混合所得税制课税模式;简并税率形式,调整税率的幅度和结构;采取有效措施,减少个人所得税流失。     

Material efficiency and economic-environmental sustainability. Results of simulations for Germany with the model PANTA RHEI

Based on empirical evidence, the paper discusses the impact of a consulting and information program for the improvement of material productivity with regard to economic and environmental targets for Germany. The instrument used in the analysis is the integrated economic-environmental model PANTA RHEI, which is parameterized econometrically. The paper presents the model and shows in a baseline forecast that without policy changes, sustainability will be violated in both the economic and the environmental dimensions. This applies to the latter particularly with regard to land use and material consumption. The alternative simulation that introduces a consulting and information program for the improvement of material productivity yields a win-win result: growth rates of GDP and employment are rising, the public debt is reduced, and material consumption is much lower than in the baseline and remains at the actual level, which means that a decoupling of growth and material consumption is possible.     

Consideration of technological and environmental heterogeneity in cost efficiency analysis

In order to evaluate and compare the efficiency levels across banking industries, we adopt the meta-frontier model that can assess the technological difference among countries. Given the importance of country specific conditions, we include in our analysis the different specificities of each country to incorporate the technological as the environmental differences in the evaluation of banking efficiencies. Using data on the banking industries of several countries in the MENA region, over the period 1991–2011, the results of the efficiency scores corrected by the technological and environmental gap led us to conclude that Egyptian banks are the most efficient in terms of cost compared with banks in other countries. Egyptian banks enjoy a very favourable banking technology. Our results support the hypothesis that traditional techniques of efficiency analysis based on the efficiency scores of a specific and pooled frontier tend to mystify efficiency levels and may incorrectly identify efficient banks. This paper contributes to the efficiency literature by incorporating technological and environmental heterogeneities in the evaluation of efficiency. This helps to characterize the production process of a bank and provides common standards by which the efficiencies of banks in different countries can be compared in a meaningful way with each other.     

环境约束下中国与世界主要国家技术效率和生产率的测度与比较

运用含非期望产出的超效率SBM(slack based measure)模型和GML(global Malmquist-Luenberger)指数,对中国与世界主要国家1991—2016年的分别在考虑和不考虑环境约束下的技术效率和全要素生产率进行测度与比较。研究发现,不考虑环境约束的测度结果忽略了一国发展所造成的污染损失,导致技术效率与生产率被高估;中国的技术效率在考虑环境因素后显著下降,总效率排名从样本中的第16位下降至第40位。时间趋势上,中国的环境效率与技术效率的差距呈现先扩大后缩小,且近年来有逐渐趋同的态势;动态视角上,不考虑环境约束时中国的全要素生产率变化总体呈现增长趋势,但在考虑环境因素后中国的环境全要素生产率转变为下降趋势,这其中,技术进步的下降是影响环境全要素生产率变化的主要因素。     

Growth effects of a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform

This paper analyzes tax-policy measures within a two-sector endogenously-growing economy with elastic labor supply. Pollution is either modeled as a side product of physical capital used as a production factor in the final-good sector or as a side product of production. The framework allows us to analyze the consequences of isolated tax changes or of a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform for economic growth. Although pollution does not directly affect production processes, it can be shown that a higher pollution tax as well as a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform boost economic growth, whereas a tax on capital, consumption, or labor reduces the long-term growth rate of the economy.     

On the efficiency of indirect taxes in differentiated oligopolies with asymmetric costs

This paper shows that unit taxation can be welfare superior to ad valorem taxation in asymmetric and differentiated oligopolies if the goods are sufficiently differentiated, the cost variance is sufficiently large and the ad valorem tax rate is sufficiently high. Moreover, this result holds under either Cournot competition or Bertrand competition.      

Economic and environmental efficiency using a social accounting matrix

This paper aims to show the utility of the so-called Social Accounting Matrix and Environmental Accounts (SAMEA) for economic and environmental efficiency analysis. The article uses the SAMEA for Spain in 2000, applied to water resources and greenhouse gas emissions. This matrix is used as a central core of a multisectorial model of economic and environmental performance, and it calculates the denominated “domestics SAMEA multipliers” and their decomposition into characteristic, direct, indirect and induced effects. These multipliers show some evaluation of economic and environmental efficiency. Also, we present an application of these multipliers that demonstrates that there is no causal interrelation between those sectors with higher economic backward linkages and those with higher environmental deterioration backward linkages.     

Regional innovation environment and innovation efficiency: the Chinese case

The main goal of this paper is to analyse the connotation of ‘regional innovation environment’ and explore the relationships between the regional innovation environmental components and innovation efficiency (IE). Three regional environmental factors were extracted, namely, economic infrastructure (EI), the quality and structure of innovators (QSI) and regional openness (RO). The relationships between the regional innovation environmental components and innovation efficiency present a chain structure as RO–EI–QSI–IE. Only the QSI component affects IE directly, and all of the effects are positive. Based on these results, the characteristics of Chinese regional innovation systems were analysed, and the implications on science & technology policy were discussed.     

An open economy model of the effects of unilateral environmental policy by a large developing country

In this paper, we pose the following question. Why is it that despite the universal recognition of the need for global environmental protection, developing countries have been lax in instituting stringent environmental regulations? Addressing this question from an economic standpoint, we show that there are plausible theoretical circumstances in which a large developing country can be worse off if it chooses to implement environmental policy in an uncoordinated fashion. The empirical dimension of this question is stressed and the key parameters – such as elasticities and marginal propensities to consume – which are germane to any policy discussion regarding this issue are identified. Second, we study – once again from the perspective of a large developing country – the possibility of using the domestic tax structure optimally to attain environmental policy objectives in a second-best environment. This scenario involves taxing pollution indirectly, by using product taxes. Finally, keeping the empirical dimension of the question in mind, we show how to compute optimal externality correcting taxes. These taxes are primarily a function of different kinds of elasticities.     

论生活排污权交易制

当前城市生活污染已呈超过工业污染之势,城市环境保护工作面临着加快环保基础设施建设的紧迫任务。而与此同时,一大批致力于生活污染源头控制的环保技术和设备却得不到转化和应用。针对这一目前城市环境管理工作中的新矛盾,本文在借鉴工业排污权交易制的基础上,首次提出了生活排污权交易制的设想,并就生活排污权交易制的理论基础、运作模式以及急待解决的一些问题等方面展开了论述。     

Integrated water and economic modelling of the impacts of water market instruments on the South African economy

A static computable general equilibrium model of South Africa is adapted to compare new taxes on water demand by two industries, namely forestry, and irrigated field crops. Comparisons are made with respect to both the short and the long run, in terms of three target variables, namely (i) the environment; (ii) the economy; and (iii) equity. Since the taxes on the two industries do not raise the same amount of revenue, the target variables are calculated per unit of real government revenue raised by the new taxes (also referred to as the marginal excess burdens of the taxes). The model results are robust for moderate values of the water elasticity of demand in the two industries, in both the long and the short run. The tax on irrigated field crops performs better in terms of all three the target variables in the short run. In the long run the tax on irrigated filed crops is better in terms of water saving, but reduces real GDP and the consumption by poor households.     

节能减排政策传导机制及效果研究——以重庆市节能减排政策体系为例

"十二五"期间,节能减排作为调结构、扩内需的重要方式以及可持续发展的重要举措,被提上了议事日程。作为老工业基地之一的重庆市,资源消耗量与废物排放量持续增加,形势不容乐观。拟对重庆市现行节能减排政策传导机制及效果进行深入研究,以期推动重庆市经济的可持续发展。研究发现,重庆市促进节能减排以实施命令控制型政策和排污收费政策为主,市场化手段仍不成熟,如排污权交易活跃度低、相关税收政策缺失等。基于这些问题,结合西方国家经验与重庆市资源环境市场特点,提出构建绿色税收体系,加快排污权交易市场建设,完善市场机制等建议。