农业有机废弃物能源化对化学农业负外部性纠正研究

针对化学农业的负外部性,利用能值理论建立了基于农业生态需求的农业外部性分析模式。理论分析表明,在兼顾粮食产量目标时,农业有机废弃物能源化、生态化可以从源头纠正化学农业的负外部性。以涟水县高沟镇为例的实证分析表明,通过60%的化肥替代,农业有机废弃物能源化可以纠正85.49%的化学农业负外部性。较之“税费”“标准”“行政监管”等手段,通过产业政策手段将农业补贴政策聚焦于农业有机废弃物能源化生态补偿是一种科学性与现实性较强的政策选择。     

The geography of market failure: Edge-effect externalities and the location and production patterns of organic farming

Perceptions of increasing land scarcity and negative impacts of chemical-based agriculture have led to increasing concern regarding the sustainability of food systems. Incompatible production processes among farming systems may lead to spatial conflicts and production losses between neighboring farms, and the magnitude of such losses may depend not only on the scale of each activity, but also on patterns of land use. Such conflicts can be classified as “edge-effect externalities”—spatial externalities whose marginal impacts decrease as distance from the border generating the negative impact increases. This paper tests the hypothesis that edge-effect externalities have influenced the location and production patterns of certified organic farms, using data from California Central Valley certified organic farmers. Using concepts from landscape ecology and spatial statistics, we investigate difference in parcel geometry and surrounding land uses between organic and non-organic parcels. Using a generalized method of moments (GMM) spatially autoregressive econometric model, we demonstrate that both parcel geometry and surrounding land uses influence the probability of a given parcel being certified organic. We conclude with suggestions for policies to encourage development of organic farming regions.     

Valuing environmental and health risk in agriculture: A choice experiment approach to pesticides in Italy

The widespread use of pesticides in agriculture shows a complex ramification of multiple negative externalities, ranging from food safety-related effects to the deterioration of farmland ecosystems. Recent research has demonstrated that the assessment of the economic implications of such negative processes is fraught with many uncertainties. This paper presents the results of an empirical study recently conducted in Northern Italy aimed at estimating the economic value of reducing the wide-ranging impacts of pesticide use, by deploying a Choice Experiment approach. The experimental design provides a meaningful tool to assign monetary values to the negative environmental effects associated with agrochemicals use. In this connection, the paper addresses in particular the reduction of farmland biodiversity, groundwater contamination and harm to human health. The resulting estimates confirm that, on average, respondents demonstrate a substantial willingness-to-pay a premium for agricultural goods (in particular, foodstuffs) produced in environmentally-benign ways.     

Valuing environmental and health risk in agriculture: A choice experiment approach to pesticides in Italy

The widespread use of pesticides in agriculture shows a complex ramification of multiple negative externalities, ranging from food safety-related effects to the deterioration of farmland ecosystems. Recent research has demonstrated that the assessment of the economic implications of such negative processes is fraught with many uncertainties. This paper presents the results of an empirical study recently conducted in Northern Italy aimed at estimating the economic value of reducing the wide-ranging impacts of pesticide use, by deploying a Choice Experiment approach. The experimental design provides a meaningful tool to assign monetary values to the negative environmental effects associated with agrochemicals use. In this connection, the paper addresses in particular the reduction of farmland biodiversity, groundwater contamination and harm to human health. The resulting estimates confirm that, on average, respondents demonstrate a substantial willingness-to-pay a premium for agricultural goods (in particular, foodstuffs) produced in environmentally-benign ways.     

Agri-environmental policies in the EU and United States: A comparison

Agri-environmental policies (AEPs) in the United States and the European Union are examples of payments for environmental services that pay farmers to reduce the negative externalities of agricultural production, while serving as a means to transfer public funds to farmers. We show that despite similar origins, AEPs in the two regions differ both in their specific objectives and in their implementation. For example, AEPs in most member states of the EU-15 have the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development. This objective is achieved by compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods, such as attractive landscapes, produced by agriculture. The rationale is market failure, and there is empirical evidence that Europeans are willing to pay for such positive externalities. No comparable provision exists in U.S. policy. By contrast, U.S. AEPs focus almost entirely on reducing agriculture's negative externalities, such as soil erosion. Second, we find that U.S. programs are more targeted than their EU counterparts, and take opportunity cost into account. The EU programs, on the other hand, address a wider range of externalities, and are focused more on the paying for a particular farming process than reducing specific negative externalities. The EU takes a broader view of AEPs than does the United States, both in terms of type of activity that can be funded, and by using less targeting by land characteristics, and so the European program could be more easily used as a mechanism for transferring income to producers. Despite this, we find evidence that many of the amenities targeted by the programs are demanded by the population.     

Environment and Food Safety in Agriculture: Are Labels Efficient?

In this article, we try to elicit whether an information on food safety is consistent with a more environmental‐friendly agriculture. As the policy makers generally intervene to limit negative externalities in agriculture on the supply side, is a labelling policy an efficient way to reduce pollution levels in this sector? The intuitive reason of a food safety label rests on the fact that consumers seem to be more concerned with information on food safety aspects than on environmental ones. In a vertical differentiation model, we analyse the impacts of labels mentioning food safety and environmental aspects, on firms' profits, consumers' surplus and pollution levels. Given our main assumption that food safety and environmental consequences are directly linked, our principal results show that a labelling policy on food safety can be efficient from an environmental point of view, depending on the initial healthy products proportion in the market. Another result is based on the fact that a label policy can reduce consumer's surplus.     

Stabilization policy and indeterminacy in a small open economy

This paper studies the (de)stabilizing effects of income tax rules in a two-sector small open economy with production externalities. The paper shows that in the model with positive sector-specific externalities in the investment sector and negative sector-specific externalities in the consumption sector (or positive aggregate investment externalities), a regressive income tax rule can stabilize such an economy against indeterminacy, whereas a progressive income tax rule can increase the tendency for indeterminacy to occur. This paper also studies two variants that consider an imperfect world bond market and an endogenous labor supply, respectively, and shows that the qualitative results stated above remain valid. Moreover, increasing the level of sector-specific investment externalities can decrease (increase) the minimal level of tax progressivity required for indeterminacy if the investment externalities are below (above) a certain critical value and if the negative externalities in the consumption sector are taken as given.     

A comparative study of organic agriculture development between China and South Korea

Human activities including modern agriculture have caused environmental pollution, so people begin to pay attentton to safe food. As a result, organic agriculture has emerged. Organic agriculture in South Korea （hereinafter referred as Korea） and China has developed rapidly since the appearance of organic agriculture in 1970s and 1980s respectively. Organic agriculture in China and Korea has developed steadily through agricultural support policies, certification management, institutions construction etc. In the development of organtc agriculture, China and Korea are now facing some technical and extension problems. In general however the development of organic agriculture in China lags behind Korea. China can learn from the experience about the development of organic agriculture in Korea to solve contradiction between development of organic agriculture and food safety, to strengthen the organic food certification, to introduce a system of agricultural direct payment and other positive measures, thus will guarantee steady and healthy development of organic agriculture in China.     

Buchanan on increasing returns and anticommons

This article discusses Buchanan’s work on increasing returns and anticommons. The two topics have externality as a common element. And size matters in both cases. Increasing returns is a case of positive externalities, the anti-commons is a case of negative externalities. Buchanan demonstrated that a work ethic generates economy-wide benefits in a setting of generalized increasing returns. In contrast, unanimity (in anticommons) can make it more difficult to address other externality problems in analyzing work ethic and moral community. This article provides an overview of both these areas of research.     

Positional goods and social welfare: a note on George Pendleton Watkins’ neglected contribution

Watkins's analysis of adventitious utility contains many aspects that are connected to the contemporary debate on positional goods. First, Watkins adventitious utility emerges from a process of social exclusion and can create negative externalities, in the sense that positive consumption of one individual implies negative consumption by another individual. Not only it creates negative externalities on other individuals, but it can initiate a race-to-the-bottom, where individuals waste an increasing amount of money on goods which do not possess any real utility.     

Household Use of Agricultural Chemicals for Soil-Pest Management and Own Labor for Yard Work

In spite of its potential health and environmental risks and contribution to agribusiness, the use of agricultural chemicals for yard care has not been well studied. In our discrete-continuous choice model, estimated with data from a national survey, a household chooses how much money, if any, to initially spend on types of agricultural chemicals and applicators and how much time to subsequently spend on other yard work. Households in big cities or with large gardens are more likely to use organic chemicals. The probability that a household chooses a mix of do-it-yourself and hired applications of synthetic chemicals increases with income, age, and the presence of preschoolers. Among households that apply only synthetic chemicals without hired help, those with young children, with higher incomes, in big cities, and with male heads spend more on the chemicals. The time that such households spend on other yard work increases with expenditures on the chemicals. Cancellation of a pesticide registration might create an extra private cost for households with young children even though the ban might reduce external costs.     

德国和日本有机农产品流通体系的比较及其启示

德国有机农产品主要通过天然食品店、有机食品专卖店、超市等渠道销售给消费者,日本有机生产者主要是通过替代营销系统销售有机农产品。借鉴德国和日本的经验,从我国国情出发,本文提出当前我国可重点建立和完善“销售龙头企业带动式”和“产销直挂式”相结合的流通模式,以解决当前我国有机农产品市场发展中“信任危机”问题。     

A note on dynamic monopoly pricing under consumption externalities

We analyze dynamic monopoly pricing under consumption externalities, focusing on pricing under negative externalities. We also attempt to generalize models in the previous literature, which encompass both negative and positive externalities, by incorporating a consumer’s discount factor for past sales as a parameter. Analyzing our model reveals oscillation as the optimal price path in the presence of negative externalities.     

Impact of Bt cotton on pesticide poisoning in smallholder agriculture: A panel data analysis

While substantial research on the productivity and profit effects of Bt cotton has been carried out recently, the economic evaluation of positive and negative externalities has received much less attention. Here, we focus on farmer health impacts resulting from Bt-related changes in chemical pesticide use. Previous studies have documented that Bt cotton has reduced the problem of pesticide poisoning in developing countries, but they have failed to account for unobserved heterogeneity between technology adopters and non-adopters. We use unique panel survey data from India to estimate unbiased effects and their developments over time. Bt cotton has reduced pesticide applications by 50%, with the largest reductions of 70% occurring in the most toxic types of chemicals. Results of fixed-effects Poisson models confirm that Bt has notably reduced the incidence of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton growers. These effects have become more pronounced with increasing technology adoption rates. Bt cotton now helps to avoid several million cases of pesticide poisoning in India every year, which also entails sizeable health cost savings.     

河南有机创意农业存在问题与发展对策

有机创意农业发展是有机农业和创意农业的新结合,是我国传统文化天人合一完美链接。文章分析了河南省有机创意农业发展中存在的主要问题以及发展有机创意农业具有区位、市场、资金和人才等优势,研究了河南省发展有机创意农业的必要性和可行性。最后,针对河南省有机创意农业存在的问题提出了政策建议。     

Theory of negative consumption externalities with applications to the economics of happiness

This paper investigates the problem of obtaining Pareto efficient allocations in the presence of negative consumption externalities. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, we show that even if consumers’ preferences are monotonically increasing in their own consumption, one may have to dispose of resources to achieve Pareto efficiency when negative consumption externalities exist. We provide characterization results on destruction both for pure exchange economies and for production economies. As an application, our results provide an explanation to Easterlin’s paradox: average happiness levels do not increase as countries grow wealthier. We thank an anonymous referee, Xiaoyong Cao, Li Gan, and Tapan Mitra for helpful comments and suggestions that improved the exposition of the paper. The first author thanks the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Private Enterprise Research Center at Texas A&M University for financial support.     

Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture

Agricultural ecosystems are actively managed by humans to optimize the provision of food, fiber, and fuel. These ecosystem services from agriculture, classified as provisioning services by the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, depend in turn upon a web of supporting and regulating services as inputs to production (e.g., soil fertility and pollination). Agriculture also receives ecosystem dis-services that reduce productivity or increase production costs (e.g., herbivory and competition for water and nutrients by undesired species). The flows of these services and dis-services directly depend on how agricultural ecosystems are managed and upon the diversity, composition, and functioning of remaining natural ecosystems in the landscape. Managing agricultural landscapes to provide sufficient supporting and regulating ecosystem services and fewer dis-services will require research that is policy-relevant, multidisciplinary and collaborative. This paper focuses on how ecosystem services contribute to agricultural productivity and how ecosystem dis-services detract from it. We first describe the major services and dis-services as well as their key mediators. We then explore the importance of scale and economic externalities for the management of ecosystem service provision to agriculture. Finally, we discuss outstanding issues in regard to improving the management of ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture.     

Fiscal Federalism and Electoral Accountability

We evaluate how governance uncertainty—exemplified by turnout uncertainty—affects the trade‐off between internalization of externalities and political accountability in the design of the fiscal state. We show that centralization only weakens political accountability in the presence of negative externalities. Unlike positive externalities, negative externalities allow federal politicians to extract higher rents. This yields two new insights. First, decentralization can only Pareto dominate centralization in economies with negative externalities. Second, centralization may not be Pareto efficient in economies with positive externalities despite the fact that policy can be tailored to regional taste differences and centralization internalizes the positive externality.     

促进我国农村生物质能源发展的财税政策研究

发展农村生物质能源是社会主义新农村建设的重要举措,有助于缓解能源危机、改善环境,有利于扩大农村就业、增加农民收入,但目前我国农村生物质能源的发展受制于信息与认知不足、经济效益不高、技术水平有限等因素。由于农村生物质能源产业的发展具有的外部性、不确定性等因素,财税政策应该发挥主要的作用。文章总结了国外发展能源产业的经验与启示,提出了促进我国农村生物质能源发展的财税政策。这些政策包括发挥政府采购的作用、加大各级政府预算投入的力度、具体的税收优惠政策及财政与政策性金融的配合。     

Endogenous order and information aggregation

Privately informed experts with heterogeneous expertise decide when to give advice and what advice to give. Each expert’s utility depends upon that expert’s own message as well as those of the other experts. Under different forms of payoff externalities, we find varying results for the optimal order in which messages are sent and the existence of herd behavior. Under negative payoff externalities, all experts send a message together without any delay and a herd never arises. This leads to truthful revealing of all private information. Without forcing any order of speech, we obtain a result similar to the ‘anti-seniority rule’. This, however, goes in the opposite direction when positive payoff externalities are induced. An incentive structure with positive payoff externalities gives rise to a herd led by the most precise expert with a delay in the disclosure of information. Next, we test for the nature of payoff externalities in the remuneration of forecasters listed with I/B/E/S. We find that the underlying payoff externalities are negative, i.e. the benefit from making dissimilar forecasts is higher than that from making similar ones.