国家环境给付义务

与环境权利对应的是国家环境义务,环境权益的公众性、环境保护的复杂性要求国家须有所作为,而传统的给付义务无法对环境保护问题作出全面适当的回应。无疑,从一种更广义的给付义务出发,阐述国家环境给付义务的理论基础和现实必要性,具体论述国家环境给付义务的类型、范围以及国家违反环境给付义务的责任形式问题,构建新时期国家环境给付义务体系,在当前有重要意义。     

《中国加入议定书》研究的两个十年——兼论加入议定书的强制执行性等问题

2001年中国入世后,国内外学者对中国加入议定书及"加入WTO法"进行了比较广泛和深入的研究。在2011年的原材料案裁决之后,国内外的研究进入了新阶段,尤其体现为对加入议定书法律地位等根本性问题的反思。中国的加入议定书包含了大量特殊义务,中国迄今作为当事方的WTO争端有半数以上与议定书条款有关,因此进一步深化加入议定书研究具有重要的实践价值。本文就议定书研究的方法论提出了建议,并就加入议定书的"间接适用论"以及2016年后其他成员是否有权在对华反倾销中继续使用特殊的价格比较方法这两个具体问题发表意见。     

Text Services and Universal Service Obligations

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking -     

Crossing the Boundaries of Obligation: Are Corporate Salaries a Form of Bribery?

Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) pay relatively high salaries to local people in host countries. TNCs assume that such employees will accept an employeeÇôemployer relationship similar to that which exists in North America, but the obligations and personal interests that such a relationship create often directly conflict with systems of obligation already established in the host country. When TNCs do business across the boundaries of systems of obligation, corporate salaries can be seen as a form of unethical bribery. In this paper, the core case of business bribery is described consistent with the usual philosophical analysis of bribery, and the grounds for thinking bribery is unethical are made clear. The amount of a bribe is irrelevant to the ethical analysis. Bribery is distinguished from tips and grease on structural grounds. The concept of a system of obligation is defined, and examples given that show the variability of systems of obligation in host countries. Arguments are given to show that salaries paid by TNCs create obligations and personal interests which sometimes conflict with existing systems of obligation, and that such payments have the same structure as more traditional forms of bribery. The ethical issues of corporations crossing the boundaries of systems of obligations are discussed.     

The increasing financial obligations burden of US households: who is affected?

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors associated with changes in the proportion of households with high financial obligations ratios in the United States. The proportion of households paying more than 40% of income for debt, rent, vehicle leases, property taxes and homeowners’ insurance, which we refer to as having a heavy burden, increased from 18% in 1992 to 27% in 2007. Multivariate analysis of a combination of six Survey of Consumer Finances data sets indicates that the likelihood of having a heavy burden was positively associated with homeownership, self‐employment and retirement status. Those with an optimistic 5‐year expectation of the economy were more likely to be in a household with a heavy burden. Education was positively related to having a heavy burden, suggesting that having a heavy burden is not simply a cognitive error.     

GATT“一般例外”对我国入世议定书的适用性分析

我国在入世议定书中做出的承诺,包含了在WTO项下应当承担的义务,也包含了WTO条约之外的"超WTO义务"。但WTO条约与我国入世议定书中都没有规定GATT例外可否适用于我国入世议定书。在我国应诉的汽车零件案与市场准入案中,DSB创造了相关的规则:当我国入世议定书中的承诺与GATT条文重合时,无需另行讨论"适用问题";当涉诉问题为我国承担的"超WTO义务"时,应当考量该义务与货物贸易之间是否存在清晰、客观的联系,以及拒绝适用GATT例外是否会侵犯我国在GATT项下的权利。在我国正在应诉的稀有资源出口限制争端中,我国又将面临"适用问题"。我国应当将涉案措施合理分类,科学采用诉讼策略。这不仅有利于维护我国的国家利益,也将对其他发展中国家有积极影响。     

Food-leftover sharing intentions of consumers: An extension of the theory of planned behavior

The study is grounded on the premise that the food-leftover sharing practice can simultaneously contribute to resolving the problems of food shortage and food wastage. The primary aim of the study was to identify the factors influencing consumer intentions to share food leftovers. The study was conducted in four stages. First, a comprehensive literature analysis was done to identify the relevant factors and underlying relationships among them. Second, a research instrument was designed, and pretesting was conducted to check the appropriateness of the research instrument with the study context. Third, a pilot study was performed on the 194 respondents to check the dimensionality of the study scales. Four, the final data was collected and analyzed from a sample of 331 (collected through offline and online modes) using structural equation modeling in AMOS 24. The pilot and final study data were collected from New Delhi (An Indian metropolitan city). The study findings suggest that the TPB constructs i.e. subjective norms, attitude, and perceived behavior control influence consumer intentions to share food leftovers. Additionally, religiosity, moral obligation, and environmental concern were observed to be the predictors of attitude toward the practice of food-leftover sharing. This study offers food leftover sharing as a solution to food waste generation and hence, aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDG -12) i.e., responsible consumption and production.     

美国环境负债会计理论的创新、局限与启示

美国的GAAP在环境负债会计规范上,已初步覆盖了从或有事项环境负债到环境修复负债直至资产弃置义务负债等具体环境负债领域,但仍未满足环境负债信息充分披露的要求。本研究基于对美国环境负债会计规范的历史演进之梳理,以FAS 143资产弃置义务会计准则为例,分析环境负债会计理论的创新与局限,提出完善我国环境负债会计规范的建议。     

多边贸易体制下国营贸易企业的多重义务研究——以加拿大的国际司法实践为例

在现今的多边贸易体制之下,国营贸易企业承担了多重义务。除GATT第17条对国营贸易企业明确的义务界定之外,国营贸易企业还需承担作为补贴提供者、补贴接受者与反垄断法上的义务。这些义务体现了现行多边贸易规则对国家参与经济的不信任。国营贸易承担的多重义务,从根本上讲是多哈回合农业谈判关于国营贸易存废之争的投射。对我国而言,在积极参与新规则的谈判与修订、为本国国营贸易企业创造合法的发展空间之余,还应同时采用包括私营贸易企业、行业协会等其他手段,完善对出口竞争的统筹与调控。     

Let’s Talk Rights: Messages for the Just Corporation–Transforming the Economy Through the Language of Rights

Neoliberal globalization has not yielded the results it promised; global inequality has risen, poverty and hunger are still prevailing in large parts of this world. If this devastating situation shall be improved, economists must talk less about economic growth and more about people’s rights. The use of the language of rights will be key for making the economy work more in favor of the least advantaged in this world. Not only will it provide us with the vocabulary necessary to reframe such pressing global problems and to find adequate economic solutions; it will also deliver the basis for deriving according duties and duty-bearers – the language of rights is congruent with the language of justice and as such it is inevitably and at the same time the language of obligations. The language of obligations exposes the multinational corporation as one of the main agents of justice in the global economy. Taking distributive justice as a starting point for reflection, a consistent derivation of the multinational’s moral obligations must focus on capabilities rather than on causality. This will lead to a shift from merely passive to active duties and accordingly to a stronger emphasis on the corporation’s contribution to the realization of positive rights. Biography: Florian Wettstein is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethics and Business Law at University of St.␣Thomas. Before that, he taught in the Business and Society Program at York University (Toronto). Also, he was a research associate at the Institute for Business Ethics at the University St. of Gallen (Switzerland), a visiting scholar at Carroll School of Management at Boston College, and a research fellow in the Program on Human Rights and Justice at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).     

DYNAMIC CDO TERM STRUCTURE MODELING

This paper provides a unifying approach for valuing contingent claims on a portfolio of credits, such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). We introduce the defaultable (T, x) ‐bonds, which pay one if the aggregated loss process in the underlying pool of the CDO has not exceeded x at maturity T, and zero else. Necessary and sufficient conditions on the stochastic term structure movements for the absence of arbitrage are given. Background market risk as well as feedback contagion effects of the loss process are taken into account. Moreover, we show that any exogenous specification of the volatility and contagion parameters actually yields a unique consistent loss process and thus an arbitrage‐free family of (T, x) ‐bond prices. For the sake of analytical and computational efficiency we then develop a tractable class of doubly stochastic affine term structure models.     

Do Shareholders Have Obligations to Stakeholders?

The question of whether, and to what extent, business managers have obligations to stakeholders has been the principal theme in much of recent business ethics literature. The question of whether shareholders have obligations to stakeholders, however, has not been addressed sufficiently. I provide some needed attention to this matter by examining the positions of shareholders in the contemporary world of investing. Their positions are considerably different than that often envisioned by business ethicists and economists where shareholders determine the directions of corporate activities through their voting decisions. Typical contemporary investors rarely control corporate activities. If they own corporate securities directly, generally they own too small an interest to exercise control. And, in most cases, they do not even own corporate securities directly, but, rather, own shares in funds. Because of the positions of shareholders today, it is highly questionable whether most have obligations to stakeholders. This has a significant implication for business managers. Whether or not shareholders have obligations to stakeholders, business managers have a greater obligation to educate shareholders about how corporate activities affect stakeholders. I provide a justification for that obligation and comment on how business managers might begin to fulfill it.     

Guanxi and Conflicts of Interest

Guanxi involves interpersonal obligations, which may conflict with other obligations people have that are based on general or abstract moral considerations. In the West, the latter have been widely accepted as the general source of obligations, which is perhaps tied to social changes associated with the rise of capitalism. Recently, Western ethicists have started to reconsider the extent to which personal relationships may form a distinct basis for obligation. In administration and management, salient bases for decision-making include deontological, consequentialist and personalist ethics. The first may be reflected in a bureaucratic approach, the second in a price system, and the third in arrangements like guanxi. Each has positive and negative aspects, but problems arise when they lead to conflicting obligations, as may occur for an office holder who has some obligations based in deontological considerations and others based in personal relationships. This is a type of conflict of interest. Such conflicts have been considered in the West, and remedies proposed. Problems arise especially in cases where it is not clear how to prioritise different obligations, and this has been noted as a difficulty in the Chinese legal system. Questions that need to be answered include not only questions about how to deal with conflicting obligations, but also questions about what institutions to accept as giving rise to obligations. Institutions themselves may be problematic not only because of their consequences for economic productivity, but because they are internally incoherent, and this may be manifested in frequent conflicts faced by office holders. Chris Provis studied and taught philosophy, then worked for some years in industrial relations and now is Associate Professor in the School of Management at the University of South Australia, and Deputy Director of the Ethics Centre of South Australia. He has published articles in journals including Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, and Business Ethics: A European Review. His book Ethics and Organisational Politics was published by Edward Elgar in 2004.     

Why do companies issue convertible bond loans? An empirical analysis for the Canadian market

To identify issuer motives, we study the determinants of announcement effects of convertible debt issues in the Canadian market. Classified into equity‐ and debt‐like, wealth effects are significantly more negative for equity‐like convertible bond issuers. Equity‐like convertibles are significantly negatively affected by agency costs of equity. However, agency costs of debt have no significant effect on debt‐like convertibles. Consistent with Stein (1992), this suggests convertibles in particular represent a substitute for equity. Moreover, convertible debt offers announced by income trusts experience significantly less negative wealth effects than offers by nontrusts—a finding explained by a more debt‐like convertible design, very low agency costs of equity in case of income trusts, or both. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Brown＇s Blossom in Britain-China

The overall strategic relationship between U.K. and China is ＂better than ever＂, China- Britain relations have maintained good momentum, with increased high-level exchanges and the reinforcement of strategic mutual trust, with more room for growth in the future.     

Challenge and Opportunity Go Hand in Hand——What Global Economic Agitation Brings to the China's Economy?

Domino effects of the global finance agitation As the origin of the subprime crisis,US financial institutions lost USS45 billion last year,accounted for over half of the total US,EU & Japan loss.Since January 15th,Chtigroup released its financial statement of the 4th quarter,showing a net deficit of USS9.83 billion,which marked the hisoric high of its quarterly deficit.     

Sinosteel：Extraordinary Moves in Industry Chess

Among the Fortune 500 firms,more and more images from China emerge out.On the 2008 list,Sinosteel Corporation,a landmark group of China industries quietly squeezes into the candidate line.As the largest steel service ＆ trade enterprise,its sales reached at RMB 111.24 billion,with a year-on-year increase of 83.03 percent,and the profit grew by 180.03 percent.On the Sinosteel 2008 Work Meeting,the president Huang Tianwen uttered,＂In the coming year,we will work for US$20 billion sales,and look forward to getting a position in Fortune 500 firms for ourselves.＂     

Walk Through Unusual Five Years—— An Exhibitor＇s Canton Fair Course

When the 103rd Canton Fair is approaching, an old friend of Canton Fair, Li Ying from Jiangsu prov-ince recollected his past five years＇ experiences to the grand trade meeting. Each year is special, with some unforgettable memories colored by the year.     

Jean-Pierre Duprieu： Willing to Be A Legate of Sino-French Business

Estaing, former French president, Valery Giscard d＇Estaing attended Sino-French Economic Seminar held in Shanghai in early April and said that the world center has shifted from the west to the east with many European and US companies entering into Asia, and China has the ability to play an important role in the world stage. Estaing, naming himself＂French Confucian＂, then said in Chinese that a cook-group includes 10 people in ancient Chinese soldier system and the cook is in charge of cooking for them. And people who belong to the same cook are actually ＂Partners＂.     

China''''s Stock Market Wave

The annual meeting of the World Economy Forum was held in Davos,a little town in Switzerland,on January 23rd to the 27th this year,with the theme"the Power fo Collaborative Innovation",over 2500 celebrates from ture political and cconomic circles of more than 80 countries and challengred logether to talk about the future of the global economy in 2008,A Forum for the problems and challenges that face whole world,some of the keywords which drew attention during the event were:the U.S.subprime mortgage crisis,soaring energy prices,the economic slowdown in the U.S.ermerging economic bodies,authority funds and the general unpredictable nature of the global economy.