瑞典政府应对气候变化的政策措施

本文介绍了瑞典政府当前应对气候变化的一些政策措施。首先是十大举措,包括加大气候能源领域的资金投入,在能源、建筑物设计、发展可持续城市、环境技术、运输、气候领域方面展开研发,通过税收调节和政府公共部门带头促使减排等;其次重视并严格执行欧盟节能减排目标;最后积极开展国际间的气候问题合作与援助。     

Cooperation and Competition in Climate Change Policies: Mitigation and Climate Engineering when Countries are Asymmetric

We study a dynamic game of climate policy design in terms of emissions and solar radiation management (SRM) involving two heterogeneous countries or group of countries. Countries emit greenhouse gasses (GHGs), and can block incoming radiation by unilateral SRM activities, thus reducing global temperature. Heterogeneity is modelled in terms of the social cost of SRM, the environmental damages due to global warming, the productivity of emissions in terms of generating private benefits, the rate of impatience, and the private cost of geoengineering. We determine the impact of asymmetry on mitigation and SRM activities, concentration of GHGs, and global temperature, and we examine whether a tradeoff actually emerges between mitigation and SRM. Our results could provide some insights into a currently emerging debate regarding mitigation and SRM methods to control climate change, especially since asymmetries seem to play an important role in affecting incentives for cooperation or unilateral actions.     

外商直接投资与地方政府激励政策

地方政府在利用外资竞争中,普遍存在使用激励政策进行代价高昂的价格战的经济现象。指标考核体系形成的锦标赛机制,导致各个地方政府不断提高对外商投资者的激励政策优惠程度,竞争所产生的“囚徒困境”下会出现负和博弈的结果。文章以博弈论为框架,建立密封价格拍卖模型对其中的博弈活动进行分析,希望能对这种经济现象的成因作出一定程度的合理解释。并在此基础上提出了政策建议。     

Optimal Policy under Uncertainty and Learning about Climate Change: A Stochastic Dominance Approach

Global climate change presents a classic problem of decision making under uncertainty with learning. We provide stochastic dominance theorems that provide new insights into when abatement and investment into low carbon technology should increase in risk. We show that R&D into low-carbon technologies and near-term abatement are in some sense opposites in terms of risk. Abatement provides insurance against the possibility of major catastrophes; R&D provides insurance against the possibility that climate change is marginally worse than average. We extend our results to the comparative statics of learning.     

Optimal Timing of Climate Change Policy: Interaction Between Carbon Taxes and Innovation Externalities

This paper addresses the impact of endogenous technology through research and development (R&D) on the timing of climate change policy. We develop a model with a stock pollutant (carbon dioxide) and abatement technological change through R&D, and we use the model to study the interaction between carbon taxes and innovation externalities. Our analysis shows that the timing of optimal emission reduction policy strongly depends on the set of policy instruments available. When climate-specific R&D targeting instruments are available, policy has to use these to step up early innovation. When these instruments are not available, policy has to steer innovation through creating demand for emission saving technologies. That is, carbon taxes should be high compared to the Pigouvian levels when the abatement industry is developing. Finally, we calibrate the model in order to explore the magnitude of the theoretical findings within the context of climate change policy.      

Uncertainty and Climate Change

Uncertainty is pervasive in analysis of climatechange. How should economists allow for this? And how have they allowed for it? This paperreviews both of these questions.     

A Distributional Argument for Supply-Side Climate Policies

This paper presents a distributional argument for the use of supply-side climate policies whereby carbon emissions are controlled through (i) depletion quotas or (ii) permanent confiscation of a fraction of the in situ carbon stocks. The modeling considers intertemporal competitive equilibria in the Cobb-Douglas version of the Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model of capital accumulation and costless resource extraction. It is shown how policies (i) and (ii) preserve the functional distribution of income between capital owners and resource owners, compared to the case where no climate policy is needed, while suggested demand-side policies do not. Such observations are of interest as avoiding functional redistribution may facilitate climate change negotiations. The paper discusses policy implications of the analysis outside the simplified setting of the stylized model.     

On Market Games When Agents Cannot Be in Two Places at Once

We consider markets in which agents supply their time or the services of a capital good and the duration of the market is limited. We show that a coalitional game can be generated by such a market if and only if the characteristic function of the game is superadditive. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C71, D51.     

The Design of Optimal Education Policies

This paper studies the education policy chosen by a utilitarian government. In the model, households differ in their income and in their children&'s ability; income is observed by the government, but ability is private information. Households can use private education, but cannot borrow to finance it. The government can finance education with income tax, but at the cost of blunting the individuals' incentive to exert labour market effort. The optimal education policy we derive is elitist: it increases the spread between the educational achievement of the bright and the less bright individuals, compared to private provision. It is also such that the education received by less bright individuals depends positively on their parental income. Finally, the optimal education policy is input regressive, in the sense of Arrow (1971, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 38, 175–208): households with higher income and brighter children contribute less in tuition fees towards the cost of the education system than households with lower income and less bright children.     

Employment Risk and Optimal Trade Policies

This paper considers trade policies and welfare in a Harris–Todaro model with risk-averse workers. Workers are assumed to have identical and homothetic preferences, but their incomes differ, depending on whether and where they are employed. When workers are equally valued, maximizing social utility is equivalent to maximizing the utility of a rural worker. An optimal policy consists of a production subsidy on the exportable and an import tariff. This model explains the widespread use of import tariffs on manufactured goods along with production subsidies on the export sectors in many LDCs.
JEL Classification Numbers: F13, D8.     

Frontiers of Climate Change Economics

The potential of taxes to correct environmental externalities has long been recognized among economists. Yet, this welfare-enhancing policy commonly faces strong opposition by citizens. Conversely, externality-correcting subsidies frequently enjoy high public support. We conduct a lab experiment to explore public support for Pigouvian taxes and subsidies. In an experimental market with a negative externality, participants vote on the introduction of Pigouvian taxes and subsidies under full or reduced information concerning how the tax revenues will be spent and the subsidy paid for. Theoretically the two instruments should produce identical outcomes. However, we find substantially greater support for subsidies than for taxes. This can partially be explained by the participants’ expectation that the subsidy will increase their own payoffs more than a tax, but not because it is expected to be more effective in changing behavior. Furthermore, we find that with greater uncertainty, the preference for subsidies is even stronger, a result which is consistent with loss aversion.     

Asymmetric Decentralization,Intergovernmental Transfers,and Expenditure Policies of Local Governments

Although China’s asymmetric fiscal decentralization system has been criticized for many years, there have been few studies giving direct evidence of its negative incentives on local government spending policies. By introducing the mechanism of asymmetric decentralization and fiscal transfers to the objective function of local government, this paper studies the incentive effects of asymmetric decentralization and fiscal transfers on spending policies of local governments, and uses the provincial panel data to carry out an empirical test. The conclusion shows that the asymmetric decentralization significantly weakens the incentives of local government to increase social expenditure, and as a solution to asymmetric decentralization, fiscal transfers fail to play a good role. Due to the relatively large income effect, the financing mechanism of fiscal transfers not only significantly reduces the incentives of local government to provide social public goods, but also weakens the constraint effect of fiscal competition on expenditure policies of local governments because of the increase in the relative cost. Although the distribution mechanism of fiscal transfers has a significant positive incentive to local government in regions where the net inflow of fiscal resources is more than zero, because of common pooling effects, the comprehensive effects of fiscal transfers in the distribution of incentives of local governments to provide social public goods are negative in all regions.     

异质性气候政策与出口低碳技术含量

本文围绕气候政策是否促进了出口低碳升级这一主题进行实证研究,利用中国省区面板数据,从全要素维度测算出口低碳技术含量,并基于市场和制度因素考察政策有效性。研究发现:首先,不同气候政策对出口低碳技术含量产生差异性的影响效果,节能目标政策能够提升出口低碳技术含量,排污费和碳市场均未产生激励作用,新能源补贴这一鼓励性规制具有积极的升级效果。其次,从气候政策的创新作用渠道来看,节能目标和新能源补贴显著推动了低碳技术创新,另外两种限制性政策未能诱发"创新补偿效应"。再次,由于产业分布的差异,规制措施在中西部地区产生更为显著的作用。随着地区市场国有化程度增加,政策的升级效果将会增强,而随着地区财政分权程度提高,政策的升级效果将会减弱。最后,本文在完善市场机制、依法加强规制强度以及提高政策执行效果等方面给出了相关建议。     

巴西的社会政策创新:地方政府的作用

从1980年代起,巴西的社会政策领域发生了深刻的变革,这些变革为巴西政府提高服务效率与效力做出了贡献.本文主要探讨了公共政策领城的创新,特别是巴西地方政府层面的社会政策创新.