Efficiency versus social optimality: The case of telecommunications pricing

Standard arguments for efficiency-based pricing policies break down once it is admitted that no lump-sum transfers and taxes are available. In this paper, it is argued that the appropriate solution is to equate the marginal welfare cost of redistributing income through pricing policies that deviate from marginal cost with the marginal cost of redistribution through the tax and welfare systems. For telecommunications pricing, this solution may be implemented by charging usage prices for long-distance services in excess of marginal cost and making corresponding reductions in fixed access charges. An illustrative example, based on data for Australia, is presented.     

A survey of the influencing factors and models for resident＇s household waste management behavior

The problem of household solid waste has been concerned and researched on by municipalities and researchers.At present, household solid waste has been changed to management problem from technical one. From the point view ofmanagement, the research on household solid waste is to study the factors which influence resident’s behavior ofmanaging their waste. Based on the literature review, firstly, this paper summarizes those factors which have alreadybeen identified to have impact on resident’s behavior of managing their waste. They are social-demographic variables,knowledge, environmental values, psychological factors, publicity and system design. Secondly, three typical models ofthe relationship between factors and behavior, which are factors determining task performance in waste management,conceptualization of waste management behavior and the theoretical model of repeated behavior on household wastemanagement, are analyzed and the deficiencies of these models are also analyzed. Finally, according to the currentsituation in household waste management and the culture and resident’s habits in China, this paper puts forward aresearch focus and suggestions about resident’s behavior of household solid waste management.     

Economic Incentives and Residential Waste Management in Taiwan: An Empirical Investigation

This paper presents an empirical study of how three waste management policies have affected residential waste generation and recycling behavior in Taiwan over the past decade. The three policies are unit-pricing of garbage in Taipei, a mandatory recycling program in Kaohsiung, and a nationwide policy of charging for plastic bags. We estimate policy effects on total waste, total recycling, and recycling of four specific materials, all measured by weight per capita. Unlike prior work, we find that unit-pricing and mandatory recycling policies lead to significant increases in recycling of most materials, as well as increased levels of total recycling and garbage reduction. The “plastic bag” policy is generally found to lower material-specific and total recycling rates, as well as total garbage volumes.     

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.     

Exploring Benefit Transfer: Disamenities of Waste Transfer Stations

The benefit transfer method was developed as an alternative way to value externalities using values from studies of similar circumstances, carried out at similar sites somewhere else, given the challenges and high costs inherent in assessing the actual cost. Specifically, in order to test the performance of the benefit transfer method, employing hedonic price models, this study focused on estimates of disamenities associated with waste transfer stations at four different cities in Israel. The sites were intentionally selected to represent a variety of circumstances. We transferred the estimated benefit function from a “study site” to a “policy site”. The goodness of fit was examined by comparing the calculated value, with actual data from the policy site. To test the sensitivity of the benefit transfer function to socioeconomic and housing characteristics, it was repeatedly applied to different sets of observations. The findings suggest that a relatively large number of alternative benefit functions are transferable. Statistical inequality outcome regarding the degree of similarity between samples does not unequivocally rule out the appropriateness of transferring environmental values across studies. Transfer errors varied between −21% and +29%, and the absolute average error for all transfers was 15.4%. Errors were lower for transfer between relatively similar cities in terms of size and location and between sub-samples that were similar in socioeconomic characteristics and housing type. However, when a site with very dissimilar data was involved, the average absolute error rose to 19%.     

A study of factors influencing consumers＇ behavior in recycling waste household electronic appliances

The innovation of technologzv and the improvement of people＇s living standard accelerate the replacement of consumer electronic appliances, resulting in a significant increase of waste household electronic appliances （WHEA）. To address the environmental problems of WHEA, many countries have enacted legislation according to WHEA management, including collecting, processing and recycling. The regulations on the management of WHEA were also drafted in China and pilot programs of WHEA recycling management encountered difficulties in collecting WHEA. The success of a recycling scheme is dependent on people＇s willingness of participating in the scheme, This paper applies Ajzen＇s theory of planned behavior to seek the main factors to engourage consumers to participate in WHEA recycling management in China. Data from a survey conducted with a sample of 633 consumers show that service motivation is the first predictor of participation behavior intention, followed by environmental behavior attitude, economic motivation, subjective norm. and perceived behavior barrier. Environmental knowledge is found not to be the predictor of behavior intention in this recycling scheme. Study results also suggest that publicity is the key situational factor in the WHEA recycling management. Recycling network and policy have little influence on changing consumers＇ current behavior intention and participation. Implications of the findings are discussed and future research directions are suggested in the end.     

Design concept for the solid waste landfill site： a case study of Chuzhou City, China

1. Introduction Domestic waste has become a worldwide hazard. It has been listed in Preferential Programmes in China for 21st Century. The combination of the three techniques, the transformation of domestic waste into useful resources, the reduction of do- mestic waste and the innocent treatment of domes- tic waste is the long-term guideline in China. In the spirit of the guideline, several laws and regulations have been enacted, including Technical Standards of Municipal Solid Landfill, …     

National innovation systems and international knowledge flows: an exploratory investigation with the case of the Netherlands

Since the late 1980s, the literature on innovation systems has flourished, often tying these systems to nation-states. Technology, however, often flows across the borders of nations. In this paper, four cases are studied where foreign technology is imported and appropriated from abroad into Dutch companies. By doing so, the questions what a national system of innovation consists of and what such a system means for firms are explored. The cases studied provide a picture of international-sectoral systems, adding up to a loosely interacting innovation system at the national level.     

环境管理会计的成本核算体系在企业中的应用

自二十世纪九十年代以来,环境问题日益得到社会各界的重视.本文从环境管理会计在我国的发展现状入手,构建了环境管理会计的成本核算体系,分析了环境管理会计在企业中的应用问题.     

Estimating and communicating food system impacts: A case study in Montreal, Quebec

Modern food systems are characterized by a range of resource use, environmental, and socioeconomic impacts, resulting from choices made by various actors, including the public, who are “distanced” from these impacts, with important implications for sustainability. In order to make ecologically responsible food choices, the public will need information that is reliable, easily comprehensible, and that allows them to discriminate between these choices in terms of the range of impacts, and their trade-offs with factors such as market price.We illustrate, by means of a case study involving nine variations of two meals of similar nutritional energy content, some challenges and issues associated with estimating and integrating the diverse impacts of food systems, and explore the implications of our results for communicating these impacts in a manner that balances epistemic adequacy with heuristic usefulness in enabling ecologically responsible food choices.     

The income–pollution relationship and the role of income distribution: An analysis of Swedish household data

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between pollution and income at household level. The study is motivated by the recent literature emphasizing the importance of income distribution for the aggregate relation between pollution and income. The main findings from previous studies are that if the individual pollution–income relationship is non-linear, then aggregate pollution for, say, a whole country, will depend not only on average income, but also on how income is distributed. To achieve our objective we formulate a model for determining the choice of consumption of goods in different types of household. Furthermore we link the demand model to emission functions for various goods. The theoretical analysis shows that without imposing very restrictive assumptions on preferences and the emission functions, it is not possible to determine a priori the slope or the curvature of the pollution–income relation. The empirical analysis shows that, given the model used, the pollution–income relation has a positive slope in Sweden and is strictly concave for all three pollutants under study (CO₂, SO₂, NO_x), at least in the neighbourhood of the observed income for an average household. We also show that altering the prevailing income distribution, holding average income constant, will affect aggregate emissions in the sense that an equalization of incomes will give rise to an increase in emissions. One implication is then that the development of aggregate pollution due to growth depends not only on the income level, but also on how growth is distributed.     

Effects on the medical revenue of comprehensive pricing reform in Chinese urban public hospitals after removing drug markups: case of Nanjing

Aims: The State Council of China requires that all urban public hospitals must eliminate drug markups by September 2017, and that hospital drugs must be sold at the purchase price. Nanjing-one of the first provincial capital cities to implement the reform—is studied to evaluate the effects of the comprehensive reform on drug prices in public hospitals, and to explore differential compensation plans.

Methods: Sixteen hospitals were selected, and financial data were collected over the 48-month period before the reform and for 12 months after the reform. An analysis was carried out using a simple linear interrupted time series model.

Results: The average difference ratio of drug surplus fell 13.39% after the reform, and the drug markups were basically eliminated. Revenue from medical services showed a net growth of 28.25%. The overall compensation received from government financial budget and medical service revenue growth was 103.69% for the loss from policy-permitted 15% markup sales, and 116.48% for the net loss. However, there were large differences in compensation levels at different hospitals, ranging from –21.92% to 413.74% by medical services revenue growth, causing the combined rate of both financial and service compensation to vary from 28.87–413.74%, There was a significant positive correlation between the services compensation rate and the proportion of medical service revenue (p?<?.001), and the compensation rate increased by 8% for every 1% increase in the proportion of services revenue.

Discussion: Nanjing’s pricing and compensation reform has basically achieved the policy targets of eliminating the drug markups, promoting the growth of medical services revenue, and adjusting the structure of medical revenue. However, the growth rate of service revenue of hospitals varied significantly from one another.

Conclusions: Nanjing’s reform represents successful pricing and compensation reform in Chinese urban public hospitals. It is recommended that a differentiated and dynamic compensation plan should be established in accordance with the revenue structure of different hospitals.     

How perceived uncertainties influence transitions; the case of micro-CHP in the Netherlands

Transitions, or socio-technological transformations, towards sustainability can be considered as a long-term transformation at the level of society as a whole, which in turn consists of a sequence of short-term innovations. The direction and speed of transitions are largely determined by the collective innovation decisions of various actors. A crucial characteristic of transitions is that they involve many uncertainties. The uncertainties that actors perceive greatly influence their innovation decisions. Namely, perceived uncertainties might stimulate some actors to fulfill certain key activities that are crucial for achieving a transition, while blocking other actors from undertaking these activities. In order to understand and manage transitions, insight into the types of perceived uncertainties that dominate the innovation decisions is essential. Furthermore, we need to understand if perceived uncertainties block or stimulate transitions by analyzing how actors respond to perceived uncertainties.This article focuses on the first transition phase: the pre-development phase. An interesting case to study the role of uncertainties in this phase is the introduction of micro-CHP in the Netherlands. The main questions of this article are: Which types of perceived uncertainties are dominant for the innovation decisions related to micro-CHP in the Netherlands? How do actors react to the perceived uncertainties?The case results demonstrate that different types of uncertainties influence the innovation decisions of the involved actors. The most dominant sources of uncertainty are technological and political uncertainty. Furthermore, the case shows that responses to uncertainty vary largely between various types of actors. Perceived uncertainties seem to block some actors, but induce other actors in fulfilling key activities that are essential for achieving a transition. We discuss how these insights can be used for improving policy for stimulating transitions.     

Compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers: The case of India

This paper studies mechanisms to compensate local government for the public provision of environmental services using the theory of optimal fiscal transfers in India. Especially, we analyzed the role of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in achieving the environmental goal. Simply assigning the functions at appropriate levels does not ensure optimal provision of environmental services. Optimality in resource allocation could be achieved by combining the assignment system with an appropriate compensation mechanism. Intergovernmental fiscal transfers would be a suitable mechanism for compensating the local governments and help in internalizing the spillover effects of providing environmental public goods. Illustrations are also provided for India.     

Demand articulation in intermediary organisations: The case of orphan drugs in the Netherlands

Several aspects of a technology are uncertain when it is in its emerging phase, e.g. the demand for a technology. Demand articulation processes are regarded as important, but till now it is often treated as a black box. We present a conceptual framework for the analysis of demand articulation processes inside intermediary organisations, and in interaction with other stakeholders. The empirical basis of this framework is provided by a case study involving an event history analysis, in which the occurrence and the contents of demands are followed over time. We studied the processes within the ‘Dutch Steering Committee Orphan Drugs’, an intermediary organisation that supports new and emerging technologies in the context of orphan drugs. Our results show that due to the activity of the intermediary organisation demand articulation occurred, that interactions exist between the demands and the organisation's underlying values, and that in interaction with other actors a debate on the reimbursement of new drugs is settled. The major contribution of this paper lies in the design of a framework for studying demand articulation processes in intermediary organisations and the resulting impacts on the development of emerging technologies. In addition, the paper provides insights in the possibilities to reinforce the role of the intermediary organisation studied.     

Exploiting old customers and attracting new ones: The case of bank deposit pricing

Recent theoretical contributions suggest that deposit interest rates should be higher in geographic areas characterized by greater in-migration and lower for depositors at banks with greater shares of existing (or so-called “locked-in”) depositors. These hypotheses are tested using a rich data set obtained for the Spanish banking industry. Results confirm that, all else equal, banks offer higher deposit rates in territories characterized by greater in-migration, and also that they tend to offer lower rates, the larger the number of their locked-in depositors. These findings confirm the existence of the trade-off between exploiting old customers and attracting new ones.     

Complementarity between water pricing, water rights and local water governance: A Bayesian analysis of choice behaviour of farmers in the Krishna river basin, India

To ensure efficient water allocation and use, policy designers have adopted various strategies, including price setting, decentralising irrigation water management or improving water rights. Most of these strategies have been applied individually, without considering the complementary relationships between them. This paper uses a discrete choice model to analyse the scope for combinations of tools for irrigation water demand management and farmers' acceptance of these. In terms of local irrigation water governance, the presence or absence of collective irrigation water management, in the form of a Water Users Association, is considered. Water rights are specified in terms of the duration and quality of the entitlement and its transferability. Finally, four types of water pricing methods (area, crop, block and volumetric pricing) are considered. Using a choice experiment, we elicit the most preferred water pricing method, under different water rights situations, at different price levels and under various contexts for local irrigation water governance. Our results indicated that under conditions of improved water rights, preference for volumetric pricing increases, whilst the presence of a Water Users Association reduces this preference. Furthermore, it was found that using an appropriate combination of water demand management tools considerably increases the willingness to pay for a change in scenario.     

论持续改进环境中的成本管理系统选择

全球范围的竞争压力,服务产业的增长,以及信息和生产技术的进步已经改变了经济的性质,并引起了许多企业经营方式发生了显著的改变。这些变化反过来又促进了有变革性意义的成本管理活动的发展。因而作业和战略基础的成本管理系统发展起来并在许多企业中得到实施。     

Emission taxes and the adoption of cleaner technologies: The case of environmentally conscious consumers

We model a market with environmentally conscious consumers and a duopoly in which firms consider the adoption of a clean technology. We show that as pollution increases, consumers shift more resources to the environmental activities, thereby affecting negatively the demand faced by the duopoly. This effect generates incentives for firms to adopt the clean technology even in the absence of emissions taxes. When such taxes are considered, our results indicate that the benefit of adopting the clean technology is initially increasing and then decreasing in the emission tax. The range of values for which the emission tax increases this benefit becomes narrower when the consumers’ environmental awareness is stronger.     

中国创业企业的战略选择：差异化还是低成本战略

创业企业在解决就业、推动创新等方面对于经济发展有着越来越重要的作用。目前的战略管理理论都是基于成熟企业开展的研究,关于创业企业的战略,关注的较少。本文从创业企业的视角,修正了经典五力模型。同时结合创业企业的产业特征,分析了创业企业的战略选择路径。本文最后结合中国创业企业的实际情况,对于中国创业企业的战略选择提出了相关的建议。