The employment effect of reforming a public employment agency

By how much does an increase in operating effectiveness of a public employment agency (PEA) and a reduction of unemployment benefits reduce unemployment? Using a recent labour market reform in Germany as background, we find that an enhanced effectiveness of the PEA explains about 20% of the observed post-reform unemployment decline. The role of unemployment benefit reduction explains just about 5% of the observed decline. Due to disincentive effects resulting from the reform, the reform of the PEA could have had an even higher impact on unemployment reduction if there had been less focus on long-term unemployed workers.     

Economic diversity, development capacity and sustainable development of China

China's economic growth over the past several decades has been among the highest in the world. It has been fueled by cheap fossil fuel energy so energy consumption has risen rapidly, but there are signs that negative feedbacks in the form of waste and inefficiency may affect future development. If energy throughput exceeds the capacity of the environment to process the inevitable waste from production then the development may not be sustainable. We calculate economic diversity using an energy flow network analysis method to explore the relationships of development policy, energy use, efficiency and sustainable development. China and its provinces are presented as a case study and the development status of each province in China is presented. China's development policy does not appear to be sustainable over the period 1985–1998 because of unsustainable energy consumption trends and declining economic diversity. An energy consumption tax is proposed for increasing diversity and dealing with increasing energy consumption in China.     

Measuring sustainable development — Nation by nation

Sustainable development represents a commitment to advancing human well-being, with the added constraint that this development needs to take place within the ecological limits of the biosphere. Progress in both these dimensions of sustainable development can be assessed: we use the UN Human Development Index (HDI) as an indicator of development and the Ecological Footprint as an indicator of human demand on the biosphere. We argue that an HDI of no less than 0.8 and a per capita Ecological Footprint less than the globally available biocapacity per person represent minimum requirements for sustainable development that is globally replicable. Despite growing global adoption of sustainable development as an explicit policy goal, we find that in the year 2003 only one of the 93 countries surveyed met both of these minimum requirements. We also find an overall trend in high-income countries over the past twenty five years that improvements to HDI come with disproportionately larger increases in Ecological Footprint, showing a movement away from sustainability. Some lower-income countries, however, have achieved higher levels of development without a corresponding increase in per capita demand on ecosystem resources.     

Ecological economic benefit in sustainable development

From the concept of ecological economic benefit, I put forward the general formula for the benefit of ecological economy and the appraisal methods of the ecological economy. Theory on ecological benefit and economic benefit is the base of the benefits of ecological economy To some extent the development of ecological economy, theory and practice on eco-agriculture are both the production made from opposition and unify of ecological benefit and economic benefit. This paper discusses the ＂T＂ type saucture, which will give the theoretical bases for enhancing the ecological and economical benefits.     

基于循环经济理论的云南铜矿产业可持续发展探讨

发展循环经济是我国21世纪实现经济发展与环境保护的新思路，是走新型工业化道路的具体体现以循环经济理论为指导，以云南铜矿产业的可持续发展赢取竞争优势，促进区域经济协调发展，成为政府和企业关注的焦点。加快循环经济研究是云南铜矿产业突破资源制约，实现可持续发展的必然选择；也是解决云南铜矿企业主要问题的有效途径之一.     

湘西自治州生态经济持续发展简论

湘西州由于多方面的原因,脆弱的生态环境及其状况恶化,危及到社会经济的发展。本文通过调查分析,提出湘西州生态经济可持续发展的途径与对策。     

结构性减税促进经济发展研究

通过阐释“结构性减税”内涵、出台背景及实践情况,分析其促进企业发展、增加居民收入、稳定物价、扩大出口等作用。分析结构性减税政策存在的影响地方财政收益、体制本身存在不足、对所得税制调节不大等问题,提出合理确定中央与地方财税分享比例、完善结构性减税政策体制、调整现行所得税制等政策建议。     

Quantitative evaluation of sustainable development based on ecological footprint method: a case study of Tianjin

Since the concept of sustainable development emerged in the late 1980s, more and more countries and regions have been utilizing sustainable development as their developing strategy. But decades have passed without any effective methods available to quantitatively assess sustainable development, Since the ecological footprint evaluation method initiated in 1992, it has become popular in quantitative assessment of sustainable development because of its convenience, easy-understanding, and reliability. As one of the biggest coastal cities in north China and the economic center of the Bohai Coastal Region, Tianjin's gross domestic product (GDP) was 369.762 billion yuan in 2005, accounting for 2.0% of the whole nation's GDP The paper analyzes Tianjin's development with the ecological footprint method, and the results show that Tianjin's ecological footprint and biocapacity in 2005 were 2. 507gha/cap and 0.276gha/cap respectively. The ecological deficit was 2.230gha/cap. And from 1980 to 2005, Tianjin's ecological deficit per 104 yuan GDP decreased; while per capita ecological deficit has been tending to increase rapidly in recent years. All these results demonstrate that Tianjin is in a state of unsustainable development.     

An environmental-economic measure of sustainable development

A central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy. This paper investigates the relationship among current consumption, sacrifice and sustainability improvement in a general context and in two canonical, stylized economies. We argue that the maximin value of utility measures what is sustainable and provides the limit to growth. Maximin value is interpreted as a dynamic environmental-economic carrying capacity and current utility as an environmental-economic footprint. The time derivative of maximin value is interpreted as net investment in sustainability improvement. It is called durable savings to distinguish it from genuine savings, usually computed with discounted-utilitarian prices.     

Study on the reform of resource tax and sustainable development of the underdeveloped resource-rich regions in China

The underdeveloped resource-rich region in China refers to the underdeveloped region with abundantnatural resources. The problem for these regions sustainable development cannot be negligible for its particularity innatural resources and environment. This paper mainly examines the issue about resource tax reform and the sustainabledevelopment of underdeveloped resource-rich regions. It first expatiates on regional characteristics of underdevelopedresource-rich regions, then analyzes the effect that resource tax has on the sustainable development of this type of regions,takes Yulin City as example to illuminate the negative influence on the sustainable development of those regions due to thedesign limitation of the existing resource tax, and put forward some suggestions, including to delegate tax legislativepower to lower levels, to increase resource tax rate, to expand its levied scope to give play to the potential main tax to localrevenue, to improve the design of resource tax, to enhance the its function of resource saving and environmentalprotection, to attach importance to regional interest of underdeveloped resource-rich regions and to improve of theinterest distribution system concerning the tax system and resource exploitation.     

Foresight: A major tool in tackling sustainable development

For many decades, the concept of sustainability has been highly successful in public policies and even in the business world.¹ Nowadays, all initiatives must be sustainable and are primarily assessed on that criterion. However, the efforts made to construct specific methods dedicated to building sustainable strategies seem rather weak. Futurists themselves underestimate the relationship between sustainable development and foresight, even if they are talking about sustainable planning.² They remain generally unaware that foresight could be a major tool in tackling sustainability as well as one of the best methods of preparing sustainable strategies and policies.Indeed, one of the biggest problems in sustainability approaches is the simplistic way used to define the concept, for instance, by using only the very first part of the 1987 the Bruntland report Our Common Future and by limiting the fields of activity on sustainability to the three pillars of the OECD model: economy, social questions, environment.At the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference (December 2009), it seemed forgotten that sustainability is already an old issue in which futurists were heavily involved at the time of the United Nations Stockholm Environment Conference (1972), in the Limits to Growth Report, published by the Club of Rome (1972)³ and in the OECD Interfutures Foresight, spurred on by Jacques Lesourne (1978).⁴Since that time (forty years ago!) researchers and consultants have learned how to deal with the concept of sustainability, how to analyze it as an ultimate aim for society as a whole as well as a complex object that needs to be approached with adequate methods such as systemic analysis.As Christian Stoffaës said, the aim of foresight is sustainable development in a changing world. As a result, the ultimate aim of strategic foresight appears to be clear: it is sustainability. This article highlights that fundamental relationship as we see it today.⁵     

Frontiers and sustainable economic development

Exploiting new resource “frontiers,” such as agricultural land and mineral reserves, is a fundamental feature of economic development in poor economies. Yet frontier-based development is symptomatic of a pattern of economy-wide resource exploitation in developing economies that: (a) generates little additional economic rents, and (b) what rents are generated are not being reinvested in other sectors. Such development is inherently unsustainable. The following paper explains this phenomenon, and provides evidence that long-run expansion of agricultural land and oil and natural gas proved reserves across poor economies is associated with lower levels of real income per capita. The paper proposes a frontier expansion hypothesis to explain why the structural economic dependence of these economies on frontier land expansion and resource exploitation is not conducive to sustained long-run growth. The key to sustainable economic development in poor economies will be improving the economic integration between frontier and other sectors of the economy, targeting policies to improved resource management in frontier areas and overcoming problems of corruption and rent-seeking in resource sectors.      

我国纺织品贸易可持续发展的路径分析

本文通过对我国纺织品贸易的优、劣势的系统分析，提出我国纺织品贸易要走可持续发展道路就必须将比较优势上升为竞争优势，并就国际市场竞争激烈和我国纺织品贸易可持续发展提出了相关的对策和建议。     

Strategic prospective for the implementation of employment policies in the Azores

This article explains how a far-off autonomous region of Portugal lying 2700 km from Brussels decided to approach its future, notably labor. The government in the Azores applied strategic prospective, and two of its methods, MICMAC and MACTOR,¹ at three key moments in the implementation of employment policies. While providing background on Azorean public policy and the broader European context, the author describes three cases, which deal primarily with education, qualifications and mobility. Interestingly, the results of decisions made on the basis of the prospective exercises can already be measured. This underscores the real efficiency of the policies adopted and the importance of the European policies of mobility, notably within the scope of Eurodyssey, a program of professional mobility of the Assembly of European Regions, that is now led by the Azores.     

The Feasibility of the Double‐Dividend Hypothesis in a Democratic Economy

The two dividends in the double‐dividend hypothesis are assumed to be independent. This assumption can be misleading when it comes to formulating policy. I construct a model where the pollution tax rate is voted for by heterogeneous people. In addition to the revenue‐recycling effect, the equilibrium pollution tax rate depends on two opposite forces: the tax‐cutting effect and the profit effect. The two forces show that an instrument that exploits a greater revenue‐recycling effect can cause a more severe environmental deterioration, thereby resulting in the infeasibility of the hypothesis. The introduction of the interdependence between the two dividends can also mean that non‐revenue‐raising instruments are more efficient than revenue‐raising instruments.     

Employment effects of stabilization policies

This paper studies the effects of a stabilization program based on a reduction in the devaluation rate in an optimizing model with capital controls, minimum wages for unskilled labor, an informal sector, and public production of intermediate inputs. Perfect mobility across sectors of the unskilled labor force prevents the emergence of unemployment for that category of labor, but skilled unemployment prevails in equilibrium. The analysis highlights the role of endogenous labor market segmentation in assessing the wage and employment effects of stabilization policies.     

生态经济持续发展的人文途径

从人类经济形态发展过程，分析了人类对自然环境的依赖和人类经济行为对自然环境的影响以及由此导致的气候变化、人口膨胀、资源短缺、环境污染、生态破坏等主要生态环境问题，在此基础上提出了实现生态经济持续发展的社会和经济人文手段。     

Assessment of urban sustainable development using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation

1. Introduction In 1987, World Commission on Environment and Development explained the concept of sustainable development for the first time in the report Our Com- mon Future, which has reached a wide agreement. “Sustainable development seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromis- ing the ability to meet those of the future”. In other words, it refers to the harmonious development of economy, society, resources and environment, which are an inseparable system.…     

Effects of pro-growth policies on employment: evidence of regional disparities

The main objective of our research is to study the direct impact of pro-growth economic policies on employment creation globally and regionally, as evidence has countered policy-makers’ expectation that output growth leads automatically to job creation. We innovate by using the ratio of employment to the population above 25 years as dependent variable instead of the customary employment elasticity. We apply generalized methods of moments’ econometrics on dynamic panel data models and find that growth stimulates employment creation on average across 76 countries. The policies promoting private sector credit, investments, openness, services, education spending, tertiary enrollment, and a fixed exchange rate are the ones that create employment. Larger government size undermines job creation, while policies promoting FDI and industrial development fail to stimulate employment. However, we establish that the effect of pro-growth policies on employment varies significantly across regions, with evidence of weaker links between economic policies and employment in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.