气候变化全球治理的处境、困境与路径

应对气候变化的全球治理无疑是当今世界最受关注的治理实践。与人们的期望相背,气候治理的实践一直都是并将在可见的将来都会是举步维艰的。之所以如此,是由气候治理的内在困境所决定的;因此,有效的治理路径只能是立足于现实困境之上的谨慎探索。     

低碳经济发展模式与全球机制:文献综述

气候变化已成为当今国际社会的热点和焦点问题,应对气候变化的全球实践催生了低碳经济的理念和发展模式,低碳经济将推动人类生产和消费方式的重大转变,促进相关领域国际协调机制的改革和创新。目前,低碳经济受到了国内外学术界的普遍关注,这一领域的研究取得了重要进展。本文从低碳经济的内涵、特征和发展动因入手,对相关研究成果进行综述,以现有文献为基础,着重分析低碳经济发展模式、全球机制以及低碳发展模式对中国经济增长的影响,探讨未来低碳经济研究的方向和重点。     

The Adaptive Nature of the Neoliberal State and the State-led Neoliberalisation of Nature: Unpacking the Political Economy of Water in Lima,Peru

The neoliberalisation of water constitutes an emblematic illustration of the enduring encroachment of neoliberalism upon nature. Previous studies in Latin America have examined the transition from Keynesian water utilities to the neoliberal provisions of water services, but paid less attention to the adaptability of the state apparatus and the systematic adjustments required to sustain neoliberalising strategies. Addressing this gap in the literature, this paper examines two decades of change in the public water services of Lima, Peru, as one of the Latin American countries where neoliberal reforms have been more comprehensive and resilient. The analysis focuses on the water policies advanced by the national state and with the reconfiguration of the state apparatus as a result of extra-economic factors. The neoliberalisation of water may have improved the situation at the aggregate level, but inequalities, scarcities and vulnerabilities have been maintained and even reinforced. The achievements and failures of the neoliberalisation of water have ultimately depended on a range of politico-economic and socioecological interactions creatively mediated by the state apparatus. In the end, however, the neoliberal adjustments in the structure and operation of the state have replicated the double exploitation of nature and society that has long shaped Peruvian economic history.     

Remittances and incumbency: Theory and evidence

By raising household income, remittances lower the marginal utility of targeted electoral transfers, thus weakening the efficacy of vote buying. Yet, remittances make individuals wealthier and believe the national economy is performing well, which is positively attributed to the incumbent. Building on these insights, I show that the confluence of these divergent channels generate a surprising result that at increasingly higher levels of dissatisfaction with the incumbent, a remittance recipient is more likely to vote for the incumbent than a non‐remittance recipient. These predictions and their underlying mechanisms are substantiated across 18 Latin American countries.     

Performative global finance: bridging micro and macro approaches with a stratified perspective

Theories of performativity can enhance the study of global finance. Taking everyday financial practices seriously, they emphasise the potentially structuring effects and disciplinary nature of finance, and foreground the performative role of economics, financial models, and formulas. It has remained largely overlooked to date that the literature on the performativity of finance can be divided into two distinct approaches. ‘Microperformativity’ is the more actor-oriented approach, beginning its analysis with the exploration of agencements and their practices, or the examination of the social history of mathematical formulas in finance. ‘Macroperformativity’, in contrast, takes its point of departure from the social structure of finance itself, often in relation to national, international, or global power structures. Neither approach provides for an intermediary concept that more explicitly links the micro and macro level. Nor does either approach give adequate analytical consideration to social conflicts and power struggles. To fill these gaps, the paper applies poststructural hegemony theory to reconceptualise performativity as an articulatory logic which accounts for the transition of a particularity towards a universality within a framework of stratified hegemony. Framed accordingly, the concept of performativity accounts more strongly for the social and political processes, ruptures, contestations and contradictions in global finance.     

Climate change, health and migration in urban China

In this paper, I empirically investigate the effect of climate change on health and migration in China. Using urban survey data sets from different Chinese cities, I find that an increase in female morbidity is associated with current high temperature change, especially for the symptom of frailty; past hot weather is related to the exacerbation of health problems in women, and the effect on females is larger than that on males who migrate from rural areas to cities; past temperature change is also correlated with a higher probability of chronic symptoms for females. I also find that migration preference from a rural area to a city is correlated with avoiding exposure to hot weather shocks, which shows a regressive tendency. Finally, the migration preferences of male residents who migrate from one city to another city are not associated with the effects of past low temperature changes on health.     

Ecological Political Economy: Towards a Strategic-Relational Approach

This article identifies three distinct traditions in what might be described as ‘ecological political economy’. First, a ‘Promethean’ approach posits that capitalism has a relentless drive towards growth and bears responsibility for the wholesale transformation of nature. Second, critics of sustainable capitalism acknowledge the possibility of capitalist futures with a better management of natural resources and carbon emissions. The Strategic Relational Approach, developed by Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum, points to a unique third type of ecological political economy. Each approach is shown to have distinct views concerning the commodification of nature, the role of the state and ways to understand ecological and social transitions. The Strategic Relational Approach points to the possibility of counter-hegemonic strategies and collective mobilization to transform the state and so redirect, control and contain capitalist relations with nature.     

States and the Political Economy of Unfree Labour

A growing body of academic and policy research seeks to understand and address the problem of contemporary unfree labour. In this article, we argue that this literature could be strengthened by a stronger conceptualization of, and more systematic attention towards, the role of national states. In particular, we argue that there is a need to move beyond simplistic conceptualisations of states as simple agents of regulation and criminal justice enforcement who respond to the problem of unfree labour, and to recognize the causal and multifaceted role that national states play in creating the conditions in which unfree labour can flourish. We propose a framework to understand and compare the ways in which national states shape the political economy of unfree labour. Focusing on the United States, we outline three arenas of governance in which national states have been particularly central to enabling the conditions for unfree labour: the regulation of labour mobility, labour market regulation, and business regulation. We conclude by reflecting on the comparative political economy research that will be required to understand the role of different states in shaping the conditions in which unfree labour thrives or is eliminated.     

Simulation of the impact of economic policies on poverty and inequality: GEM in micro-simulation for the Algerian economy

This paper presents an illustration of the importance of computable general equilibrium modelling micro-simulation for simulating the impact of economic policies on living levels of households. The CGEM, as built, was used to simulate the effects of some economic policies on the economy and living levels of all households including the classes of modest, middle and wealthy households. In this context, pro-active economic policies are simulated in order to understand their effects on the macroeconomic plan and on the living level of some household categories defined according to statistical criteria. The first on the analysis of two arbitrarily selected tax policy cases, and the other on three investment policy simulations. Different illustrated simulations show improvements in economic growth and upward social mobility, particularly in the case of increasing the overall investment and improving productive capacity. In all simulations, that inequality would have remained rigid downward and would sometimes even accentuate. Overall, it appears that the increase in investment would boost economic growth through demand effect. However, this increase in demand would be met by more imports, which would damage our trade balance. The national productive system, however, could reverse this trend by making profitable investments by strengthening its productive capacity.     

How Political Institutions Determine Corporate Governance Reforms: The Polity,Law and Corporate Practices in the Case of Switzerland

The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of the role that political institutions play in the reform processes of national corporate governance regimes. I argue that existing theories are limited in that they conceive of political institutions' impact on corporate governance largely in terms of a deterministic influence on the political coalitions that emerge and on the policy outcomes. Based on the analysis of the paradigmatic case of a consensual democracy – Switzerland – I show that the consensual polity does not directly determine the outcome of a reform process, but rather the direction of causality between legal changes and changes in practices as well as the nature of the changes. Consensual polities require large parliamentary majorities for legal change to happen. Therefore, corporate practices are likely to change before legal rules and less demanding forms of institutional change, such as ‘layering’, are favoured.     

A political economy perspective on persistent inequality,inflation, and redistribution

In this paper we examine the dynamics of the link between inequality and inflation from a political economy perspective. We consider a simple dynamic general equilibrium model in which agents vote over the desired inflation rate in each period, and inequality is persistent. Inflation in our model is a mechanism of redistribution, and we find that the link between inequality and inflation within any period or over time depends on institutional and preference related parameters. Furthermore, we find that differences in the initial distributions of wealth can yield a diverse set of patterns for the evolution of the inflation and inequality link. Relative to existing literature, our model leads to more precise predictions about the inflation–inequality correlation. To that end, results in the extant empirical literature on the inflation and inequality link need to be interpreted with caution.     

我国低碳经济推进与产业结构升级之间的融合发展

低碳经济的研究受到各个国家的高度重视,特别是英国、美国和日本这些发达国家的低碳经济实践已经走在了世界各国的前列。中国在借鉴发达国家发展低碳经济经验的基础上,自觉将正在进行的产业结构升级纳入到低碳经济战略之中,从农业碳汇化、能源工业低碳化、传统制造业低排化以及低碳指向的产业规制等方面实现低碳经济推进与产业结构升级之间的融合发展。     

Vision,Value, and Pluralism: A Comment on Analytical Political Economy

The choice of value theory reflects one’s vision of how markets function within a capitalist market economy. This choice is crucial for understanding how pluralism will play a part in prompting a paradigm shift within the discipline of economics. What is lacking in recent discussions of pluralism is how the various theories of value and distribution relate to each other. Uniting heterodox economists in this way will support the development of criteria for teaching and research, both of which facilitate a paradigm shift. A consensus would avoid the methodological issues associated with analytical political economy which advocates mathematical modeling and applications for unifying the schools of thought.

This article suggests a way to relate the theories of value and distribution, as reflective of the differences in vision of how markets function within a capitalist market economy and discusses a few of the challenges for creating a consensus.     

Income inequality,unemployment, and poverty in Nigeria: a vector autoregressive approach

The main features of poverty are low levels of consumption and income, a fact‐of‐life in most African countries. This paper analyzes the fundamental trends of per capita income, government capital expenditure, the human development index, and the rate of unemployment in the Nigeria. A vector autoregressive model finds that: A reduced unemployment rate improves human development and consequently reduces poverty. As growth in public capital expenditure rises, unemployment falls and the human development index improves. Therefore, infrastructure‐based policies, which initially reduce unemployment, will also improve the living conditions of Nigerians in the end.     

Trade liberalisation,poverty, and inequality in Vietnam: a quantile regression approach

This study examines the effects of trade liberalisation on rural household welfare, poverty, and inequality in Vietnam, with the use of multiple estimation strategies, including the panel quantile regression approach based on Canay's two-step estimator. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of trade liberalisation, we consider a set of household-level trade-related variables, including employment in export, import-competing, and manufacturing sectors. A unique panel data set is constructed from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys conducted in 2002, 2004 and 2006. We find that employment in trade-related sectors contributes significantly to rural household welfare. Moreover, the effects of trade-related employment on welfare are heterogeneous across the welfare/income distribution, in that trade-related employment sectors have different influences on different groups/quantiles of households.     

The Political Economy of Addressing the Climate Crisis in the Earth System: Undermining Perverse Resilience

The Earth system is a complex adaptive system, characterised by non-linear change and with significant capacity for surprise. In times of systemic crisis, such as dangerous anthropogenic climate change, perverse resilience (for example the structural power of fossil fuel interests in the global economy) can threaten overall Earth system stability. Critical political economic analysis recognises climate change as a threat with significant political economic characteristics and implications. However, key dimensions of climate change as a globally coherent phenomenon, including the important implications of Earth system dynamism and non-linear change, can remain unrecognised, mischaracterised or underestimated. In contrast, resilience approaches describe social-ecological systems but neglect the significance of norms and power relations in human societies. This article builds theory by linking key concepts – hegemony and resilience – from neo-Gramscian political economic analysis and resilience approaches to social-ecological systems. Our objective is to generate a new conceptual framework to improve understanding of the role of politics in social-ecological systems. We use climate change and its mitigation to demonstrate the new framework's potential.     

Corporate Islam,Global Capitalism and the Performance of Economic Moralities

Recent years have witnessed the rapid expansion of the Islamic economy, which by some estimates has reached a size of US$4 trillion. The growth of the Islamic economy presents an intriguing test case for the compatibility of global capitalism and moral – in this case specifically Islamic – principles. This article adopts a performative lens to draw attention to the role of the World Islamic Economic Forum and the Global Islamic Economy Summit as legitimation mechanisms celebrating economic diversity and the success of Muslim- entrepreneurs with the aim of increasing the visibility of the Islamic economy. Here, a polyphony of Muslim voices is sought to be consolidated into the voice of ‘business Islam’, with important implications for how the Islamic economy is conceived, defined and delineated.     

Tipping the (Im)balance: Capital inflows,financial market structure,and banking crises

An emerging consensus among scholars and policy‐makers identifies foreign capital inflows as one of the primary determinants of banking crises in developed countries. We challenge this view by arguing that external imbalances are destabilizing only when banks face substantial competition from securities markets in the process of financial intermediation. We assemble a dataset of banking crises covering the advanced industrialized countries from 1976 to 2011 and find evidence of a conditional relationship between capital inflows, a well‐developed securities market, and the incidence of banking crises. We further explore the impact of capital inflows on banks’ actual risk taking as indicated by their capital adequacy levels and measures of insolvency risk. Our results demonstrate that prudential capital cushions tend to decline with the combination of capital inflows and prominent securities markets. We highlight the political decisions—often made during the early days of a country's financial development—that determine the relative prominence of banks vs. non‐bank financial institutions and conclude with policy recommendations.     

Protecting Property: The Politics of Redistribution,Expropriation, and Market Openness

This paper develops a formal model to disentangle the competing political incentives for redistribution, expropriation, and market openness. Although redistribution and expropriation are both types of government extraction, redistribution re‐allocates wealth within the citizenry, while expropriation re‐allocates wealth from citizens to the government. Representative political institutions increase redistribution and reduce expropriation. Market openness changes these incentives, as foreign investors prefer reductions in both redistribution and expropriation. When political institutions are representative, the government will rely more on reducing expropriation, rather than limiting redistribution, to attract foreign investment. Under representative institutions then, openness partially reinforces the preferences of voters rather than undermining them. In addition, market liberalization occurs only when the policy changes needed to attract foreign investment are relatively small. If existing policies are satisfactory to foreign investors, moves toward openness may be accompanied by greater redistribution and expropriation, as governments are tempted by a larger base for extraction. Thus, openness has ambiguous effects on economic policy, at times encouraging and at times constraining extraction.