排污权交易应用于农业面源污染研究

农业面源污染正在成为全球水污染的主要因素，对其进行有效控制直接关系到全球农业和社会的可持续发展。本文首先阐述了农业面源污染的来源、特点及危害，并对控制农业面源污染常用的税费、补贴、押金——退款等经济手段进行了分析。通过深入探讨排污权交易应用于农业面源污染的可行性和操作办法，得出点源与农业面源的排污权交易能够减少工业和农业的治污成本，实现社会收益最大化；农业面源之间的排污权交易能够增强农民技术革新的积极性，减少化肥农药的用量，保证农业可持续发展的结论。     

A Pollution Offset System for Trading Non-Point Source Water Pollution Permits

Water pollution from non-point sources is a global environmental concern. Economists propose tradable permit systems as a solution, but they are difficult to implement due to the nature of non-point sources. We present a pollution offset system for trading non-point source water pollution permits. Conventional pollution offset systems suffer from thin markets and transaction costs. In this paper, we show how to overcome these problems with a centrally managed common-pool market. We define permits as allowable nitrate loading to a groundwater aquifer. This trading system utilizes estimates of potential nitrate leaching from land uses, a set of transport coefficients generated from a simulation of nitrate transport in groundwater, an online trading system, and a linear program to clear the market. We illustrate the concept using a hypothetical case study.     

Spatial Heterogeneity and the Choice of Instruments to Control Nonpoint Pollution

Because it is difficult to monitor emissions and to implement differentialtaxes and standards, uniform taxes and standards on agricultural chemicaluse are often proposed and used to control nonpoint-source pollution. Thisarticle analyzes the relative efficiency of these uniform instruments in thepresence of spatial heterogeneity. We show that the relative slopes of themarginal pollution cost and marginal profit of chemical use are only one ofthe factors that affect the relative efficiency. Other factors includecorrelation between marginal pollution costs and marginal profits and theslope and variability of marginal profits. In addition, a uniform tax mayresult in some farmers not using the chemical, and a uniform standard mayhave no effect on low-input land. We show empirically that the presence ofcorner solutions can reverse a conventional finding of tax or standardsuperiority based on the relative-slop rule.     

Environmental regulation and trade pattern：a case of China

As a growing number of countries, including both developed and developing countries, have in recent yearstaken environmental regulation at different levels, a question of great concern has been raised： can the regulation alterthe existing trade volume and trade pattern, and ultimately drive pollution-intensive industries to countries with low-levelregulations or even those without regulations at all？ Starting from the three different propositions concerning therelationship between environmental regulation and trade pattern, this paper applies cointegration analysis and errorcorrection model to empirically testing the relationship between environmental regulation and trade in China during theperiod of 1985-2005. Our empirical results indicate that in the short run the collection of pollution discharge fees bearsa positive impact on the export share of clean products of total exports. Thus, higher pollution discharge fees raise theratio of clean products exports to total exports. This further indicates that more stringent environmental regulationpromotes the exports of clean products. In the long run pollution discharge fees are positively correlated with the exportshare of clean products but negatively associated with their import share. Such correlations imply that environmentalregulation tends to facilitate the international specialization in line with comparative advantages.     

Research Issues in Nonpoint Pollution Control

Research on nonpoint pollution control instruments has focused primarily on incentives applied either to production inputs that affect nonpoint pollution, or to ambient pollution concentrations. Both approaches may in theory yield an efficient solution. However, input-based incentives will generally have to be second-best to make implementation practical. Design issues include which inputs to monitor and the rates to apply to them. The limited research indicates that second-best, input-based incentives can be effective in adjusting input use in environmentally desirable ways. Alternatively, ambient-based incentives have theoretical appeal because efficient policy design appears to be less complex than for input-based incentives. These incentives have no track record nor close analogues that demonstrate potential effectiveness, however. Research on how households and firms might react in response to ambient-based incentives is needed before these instruments can be seriously considered.     

The difficulties of "polluter pays" policy in agricultural pollution in UK and methods to improve it

Agricultural wastes pollution became serious after great improvement in technology and the encouragement of production for the government since the end of the World War Ⅱ. Economists and environmental scholars suggested that "polluter pays" policy be employed in agricultural pollution control. However, it was hard to implement "'polluter pays " policy alone in agricultural wastes pollution. In practice, there were two social factors which contributed to the improvement of water quality in the southwest of United Kingdom. One method is to communicate with farmers and then give farmers some advice or exhortation on facilities and management. The other method is to get up a telephone hotline for public to report water quality and probable pollution. Therefore, the consideration and combination of social factors in the control of agricultural wastes pollution are necessary and important. Education of basic natural sciences relevant to agricultural pollution, system management of agricultural pollutants and laws relevant to agricultural pollution is suggested to be the third social factor that British government can consider.     

农业面源污染控制的制度选择分析

基于国内外相关文献研究和农村实际考察实践基础上,文章以农业面源污染控制的制度选择为切入点,整合国际国内农业面源污染控制的各类制度安排,并对其进行分析,提出了进一步加强我国农业面源污染控制的制度措施：第一,在加强宏观调控的基础上,进一步完善相关法律法规,优化农业环境管理体制。第二,建立多部门合作的农业面源污染监管体制。第三,建立健全农业面源污染控制的支持保障体系,强化经济税收政策对农户农业生产行为的调节作用。第四,农业面源污染控制管理权下放,建立农业面源污染控制的全民参与机制。     

环境规制对现存企业迁移行为的影响研究

在城市化发展过程企业渐渐由中心区迁往外围区域,鲜有研究从这一视角观察企业迁移行为。本文从环境规制的角度对现存企业的迁移行为进行了探讨。实证分析发现在省级层面,废水污染费征收率提升显著减少企业在城市之间迁移的数量,废气污染费征收率提高增加企业城市之间迁移的数量。在企业层面环境规制增强显著提升企业在县区之间迁移的概率。利用国家贫困县名录,进一步发现废气污染费率增加显著提升企业往县和贫困县迁移的概率。进一步分析发现加入WTO、2003年污染费征收改革后污染费上升时企业显著提高向贫困县迁移的概率。最后本文发现环境规制提高了企业的创新水平以规避环境规制成本从而降低了迁移的概率。     

Watershed externalities, shifting cropping patterns and groundwater depletion in Indian semi-arid villages: The effect of alternative water pricing policies

Frequent droughts and groundwater depletion are critical constraints to improving agricultural productivity in the semi-arid tropics. India has been promoting integrated watershed management in drought-prone areas to address these constraints. Watershed communities are being assisted to invest in groundwater re-charging facilities. While communities and the public bear such costs, individual farmers capture irrigation benefits. Groundwater is a free common property resource and land users hold de-facto use rights. This has accelerated private irrigation investments and depletion of aquifers resulting in iniquitous distribution of irrigation water. Power subsidies and negligible pumping costs aggravate the problem. These policy failures and low irrigation costs to farmers are displacing water-efficient crops in favor of water-intensive crops in water-scare areas. The paper reviews the village-level externalities that aggravate groundwater depletion and evaluates potential policy options to enhance local collective action in water management. Using 3SLS, an econometric crop-water productivity model is used to evaluate alternative water policy instruments. The results indicate that different types of water user charges can be introduced with modest consequences on profitability and farm incomes. If properly implemented and managed by the local communities, pro-poor policies could bring considerable sustainability benefits and also ensure enhanced equity in access to the resource.     

ROLE OF VOLUNTARY PROGRAMS IN AGRICULTURAL NONPOINT POLLUTION POLICY

Voluntary programs' effectiveness in reducing agricultural pollution is under debate in the professional literature, within government regulatory agencies, and among legislators. In general, non-farm business owners bear little or none of the costs of environmental degradation that their business activities cause. However, farmers who reside on the farm may bear some of the costs associated with using chemicals. As a result, voluntary programs encouraging adoption of management practices that simultaneously improve on farm and off-farm environmental quality may not require subsidizing farmers for their full loss in profits. However, farmers likely will not adopt regulatory agencies' recommended management practices that do not positively affect on farm environmental quality unless subsidies exceed full adoption costs .     

An analysis of irrigated agricultural outcomes under the prior appropriation doctrine: hypotheses and applications

This article measures irrigated agricultural outcomes under the prior appropriation doctrine by developing a model of farmers’ land allocations in response to water supply change. The modelling approach considers the institutional factors of water rights and permits the inclusive determination of water and land allocations. We utilize farm-level data of irrigated agriculture in Water District #1 in Idaho to examine the predictions from our theoretical model. The water rights priority date is consolidated at the farm level and used to differentiate farmers’ responses. We test a set of hypotheses that relate to water supply and crop revenue. Our results suggest that the water rights priority has a profound impact on agricultural outcomes, indicating strong institutional effects and weak influence of market-based approaches. Farmers respond to both long-term and seasonal water supply change and variation, and they respond to seasonal water supply forecasts in varied ways depending on their water rights portfolios, thus signalling a disproportionate distribution of potential impacts of water supply change.     

Self-Selecting Agri-environmental Policieswith an Application to the Don Watershed

We consider a model of regulation for nonpoint source water pollution through non-linear taxation/subsidization of agricultural production. Farmers are heterogenous along two dimensions, their ability to transform inputs into final production and the available area they possess. Asymmetric information and participation of farmers to the regulation scheme put constraints on the optimal policy that we characterize. We show that a positive relationship between size of land and ability may exacerbate adverse selection effects. We calibrate the model using data on a French watershed and we simulate the optimal second-best policy and characterize the allocation of the abatement effort among the producers.Authorship is equally assigned among the different authors.     

当前统筹城乡发展中的八个重大问题

文章认为,在统筹城乡发展的过程中,粮食安全是实现统筹城乡发展的基础;城乡居民收入差距是否缩小是衡量推进城乡一体化政策措施正确与否的根本标准;中国现代农业发展的主体应该是以专业合作社形式组织起来的农民;农村金融体制改革的重点应放在发展农民之间的资金互助上;宏观调控必须遵循价值规律公平调控;地方政府绝不能与民争利;不断加大对农业和农民的补贴应作为今后"三农"政策的基本导向;农村社区化的本质是要让农民与市民一样过上现代文明的幸福生活,而不是要化掉村庄。     

Local environmental regulation and plant-level productivity

This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on the productivity of manufacturing plants in the United States. Establishment-level data from three Censuses of Manufactures are used to estimate 3-factor Cobb-Douglas production functions that include a measure of the stringency of environmental regulation faced by manufacturing plants. In contrast to previous studies, this paper examines effects on plants in all manufacturing industries, not just those in “dirty” industries. Further, this paper employs spatial-temporal variation in environmental compliance costs to identify effects, using a time-varying county-level index that is based on multiple years of establishment-level data from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey and the Annual Survey of Manufactures. Results suggest that, for the average manufacturing plant, there is no statistically significant effect on productivity of being in a county with higher environmental compliance costs. For the average plant, the main effect of environmental regulation may not be in the spatial and temporal dimensions.     

Polycentricity, reciprocity, and farmer adoption of conservation practices under community-based governance

Significant steps have occurred under Australia's ‘regional delivery model’ towards devolving responsibilities for natural resource management (NRM) to community-based regional bodies, particularly in respect of motivating farmers to adopt priority conservation practices. Challenges remain in effectively engaging the large populations covered by these bodies, especially with these bodies expected to assume responsibilities that risk them becoming perceived as extensions of government and favoring particular stakeholders. In this article, I examine whether polycentric systems of collaborative community-based governance can help address these challenges. The examination involves double-censored regression analyses of data from postal surveys of farmers in three regions. The findings suggest that community-based approaches are capable under the regional delivery model of motivating greater voluntary cooperation from farmers than otherwise possible. They highlight the importance of farmers coming to adopt reciprocity strategies in their key institutional relationships under this model. It seems subregional bodies have an advantage over regional bodies in motivating such behavior from farmers because the former are better positioned to engage them sufficiently to turn around norms of free-riding or opposition entrenched by earlier paternalistic approaches to agri-environmental conservation. This indicates the value of a polycentric approach to community-based NRM wherein responsibilities are devolved to the lowest possible governance level consistent with the principle of subsidiarity. The economic dividend from increased voluntary adoption of conservation practices under this approach arises from the reduced transaction, political and other opportunity costs of achieving the same result entirely through coercion or financial inducements.     

Effects of instantaneous groundwater availability on irrigated agriculture and implications for aquifer management

Groundwater is an important input for agricultural production in many parts of the world. Aquifer depletion has been shown to affect the rate that groundwater can be extracted from an aquifer. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework that accounts explicitly for the effects of limited instantaneous groundwater extraction rate (well capacity) on a producer's irrigation decisions. We show that limited well capacities can affect the producer’s groundwater use and profit. We draw three important insights from these findings. First, we demonstrate that the price elasticity of demand for groundwater is higher for lower well capacities. Second, farmers’ irrigation decisions are non-monotonic with respect to well capacity and climate conditions. Under a drier climate, producers with greater well capacities increase their groundwater use, and producers with lower well capacities reduce their water use. Third, through numerical analysis, we show that considering spatial heterogeneity in well capacities is important for estimating the cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts of groundwater management policies. Our results shed new light on the importance of extraction capacity for groundwater management policies and the potential impacts of climate change on agricultural production.     

Water allocation,crop choice,and priority services

We analyze the problem of allocating irrigation water among heterogeneous farmers when water supply is stochastic. If farmers are risk-neutral, a spot market for water is efficient; while the oft-used uniform rationing system is inefficient, both ex ante and ex post. Indeed, we show that it leads farmers to overexpose to risk, thus making shortages more severe and more frequent in case of drought. We propose instead a regulation by priority classes extending Wilson, and we derive an efficiency result. We characterize the set of farmers that would win or lose from such a reform. We also argue that a system of priority classes may be preferred to a spot market system, because scarcity is easier to manage ex ante than ex post, and because this system facilitates the supply of insurance to risk-averse agents.     

治理环境污染的经济制度安排

环境问题的外部性和环境资源的公共财产属性,决定了解决环境污染问题不能单纯依靠市场机制,需要政府的必要调控和干预,政府干预包括有关法规的制定和经济制度的安排。经济制度具有不可替代的效率作用,且应针对不同的情况安排与市场机制相沟通的不同制度形式,如“排污收费”,“治污收费”,“开征环境税”和“排污权交易”等,将环境保护由过去的政府行为转变为一种由政府调控与经济利益机制驱动相结合的市场行为和企业行为。     

Effluent fees and market structure

This paper explores the efficiency properties of a system of effluent fees in a mixed economy in which polluting agents take a variety of organizational forms: private monopoly, the managerial firm, regulated firms, and public bureaus. The analysis, including some crude empirical estimates, suggests that the welfare gains from pollution control are likely to dwarf in magnitude the potential losses from the various imperfections in the economy. The tentative conclusion is that the case for a system of fees that is invariant with respect to organizational form is not seriously compromised by likely deviations from competitive behavior.     

后农业税时代河西走廊农户农地流转意愿及其影响因素分析——以张掖市为例

以河西走廊张掖市农户调查为例,采用Logistic模型对取消农业税后农户农地流转的意愿及其影响因素进行定量分析。研究表明：农地流转交易价格是影响农户农地流转的主要因素;家庭非农收入比例也对农户农地流转有较显著的影响作用;农业补贴额作用着农户农地流转;＂农户对农业税费减免政策的效应感知＂在一定程度上也影响农户农地流转。最后,提出了相关的政策建议。