Lobbying and Welfare in a Representative Democracy

This paper studies the impact of lobbying on political competition and policy outcomes in a framework which integrates the citizen–candidate model of representative democracy with the menu-auction model of lobbying. Positive and normative issues are analysed. On the positive side, lobbying need have little or no effect on policy outcomes because voters can restrict the influence of lobbyists by supporting candidates with offsetting policy preferences. On the normative side, coordination failure among lobbyists can result in Pareto inefficient policy choices. In addition, by creating rents to holding office, lobbying can lead to excessive entry into electoral competition.     

A Remark on Voters' Rationality in a Model of Representative Democracy

Voting games are characterized by the emergence of dominated strategies, that would be iteratively deleted by rational players. In this note we show, via an example, how applying iterated dominance restricts the set of equilibrium outcomes in Besley and Coate's (1997) citizen-candidate model of representative democracy.     

国际投资协定中的环境条款述评

近年来,越来越多的国际投资协定开始纳入环境条款。这些条款包含概括性地提及环境保护的条款、确认缔约国采取环境规制措施的权利以及不降低环境标准的义务的条款、例外条款、环境保护的程序性条款、处理投资协定与环境协定的关系的条款、有关投资者及其投资的环境义务的条款等类型;这些环境条款的内容也更加具体,约束力有所增强,发展中国家也更多参与,并出现了从约束国家到约束跨国公司的萌芽。然而,这些环境条款的弱点也非常明显,不仅从总体上环境条款的数量不足,而且现存条款也具有效力不高、用语软弱等等弱点,使得大多数环境条款只能处于"软法"地位。     

Cleaner Technologies and the Stability of International Environmental Agreements

This paper shows that if countries are farsighted when deciding whether to defect from a coalition, then the implementation of cleaner technologies, as embodied by a reduction in the emission per output ratio, may either improve or jeopardize the chances of reaching an international environmental agreement. A small change in the emission per output ratio can result in a discrete jump in the stable size of a coalition and global welfare evaluated under the stable coalition size. In the case of three countries, the grand coalition may be destabilized by the implementation of cleaner technologies, ultimately resulting in higher global emissions and lower global welfare. In the case of more than three countries, implementing cleaner technologies may result in a discrete jump, either upward or downward, of the largest stable coalition size and welfare. We examine both, the case of a flow and that of a stock pollutant. In the latter case, we show that the higher the stock of pollution at the instant when the cleaner technology is implemented, the more likely that a grand coalition of three countries is destabilized. Measures that enhance the natural rate of decay of stock pollutants are shown to have similar effects on the size of stable coalitions to reductions in the emission per output ratio.     

Protecting Strategic Knowledge: Insights from Collaborative Agreements in the Aerospace Sector

This paper explores the dilemma that firms face with respect to knowledge sharing in strategic alliances. On the one hand, alliance success is associated with high levels of interaction and co-operation between partners. On the other hand, full and open co-operation exposes a firm's distinctive knowledge and skills and makes it vulnerable to opportunistic moves by alliance partners. Hence firms experience a fundamental paradox: to gain the greatest benefits they must exchange information and knowledge with external parties yet, at the same time, they must protect themselves against knowledge appropriation. This dilemma is particularly acute in the aerospace sector where political imperatives strongly influence partner choice and collaborators are often strong rivals in other contexts. In this paper we use data drawn from four collaborative agreements in the aerospace sector to explore the ways in which a focal firm has sought to protect its strategic knowledge and manage knowledge flows in alliance relationships. We find that existing theoretical lenses provide valuable but partial insights into the question of knowledge appropriation in alliances and offer limited guidance to managers charged with making alliances work. We suggest that some rich insights can be gained by focusing on the overlaps and interstices between existing theories and that greater exploration of the everyday working practices in alliances may offer a useful starting point for improved theorising.     

Voluntary Environmental Agreements vs. Emission Taxes in Strategic Trade Models

The purpose of the paper is to narrow the gap between the widespread use of voluntary agreements and research on the rationale of such approaches. A topical example are voluntary agreements of many industries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of global warming. If the industry anticipates that taxes and fees will be introduced in the coming years, it seems rational to act in advance in order to mitigate the tax levels.The conventional approach in strategic trade and tax models was to look at a two-stage game where governments set taxes first and then firms react. In such a policy regime the government is concerned about the international competitiveness of its firms and sets taxes below marginal damages. In this paper, we consider a policy regime with a reversed timing. Firms commit themselves in the face of emission taxes to abatement efforts and to lower levels of the environmentally intensive output. Then the government introduces the tax. Under this timing of strategies the tax is equal to marginal damage. Firms waive profit and reduce output in order to use less of the polluting input. The reward for this behavior will be a less strict use of policy instruments and hence lower abatement costs in the near future.     

Financial Mechanism and Enforceability of International Environmental Agreements

We examine how international coordination among countries generates a trend towards establishing an international institution for the provision of global public goods. In the present model, the forces creating international agreement are a politician??s motive for re-election and a financial mechanism for compliance. If a politician expects another politician in a neighboring country to signal his good performance to his citizen by participating in the agreement, and is aware that his ex post deviation will be deterred by the financial mechanism, he too decides to participate in the agreement, which then corrects externality problems.     

Uncertainty,Learning and Heterogeneity in International Environmental Agreements

This paper concerns the formation of International Environmental Agreements under uncertainty about environmental damage with different models of learning (complete learning, partial learning or no learning). The results of the existing literature are generally pessimistic: the possibility of either complete or partial learning generally reduces the level of global welfare that can be achieved from forming an IEA relative to no learning. That literature regards uncertainty as a parameter common to all countries, so that countries are identical ex ante as well as ex post. In this paper we extend the literature to the case where there is no correlation between damage costs across countries; each country is uncertain about a particular parameter (in our case the benefit-cost ratio) drawn from a common distribution but, ex post, each country’s realized parameter value is independently drawn. Consequently, while countries remain identical ex ante, they may be heterogeneous ex post. We show that this change reinforces the negative conclusions about the effects of partial learning on international environmental agreements, but, under certain conditions, moderates the negative conclusions about the effects of complete learning.     

(Un)fair Delegation: Exploring the Strategic Use of Equity Rules in International Climate Negotiations

We provide a new approach for identifying a strategic use of equity arguments in international (climate) negotiations. We first develop a theoretical model of strategic delegation which accounts for both environmental as well as equity preferences. We show that the strategic use of equity arguments qualitatively depends on the extent to which environmental preferences can be misrepresented: representatives from different countries may be expected to have similar equity views rather than widely differing perceptions of a fair share. Based on survey data on climate negotiations, we then provide empirical evidence for differences between equity preferences of citizens from Germany, China, and the U.S. and the perceived view on the position of their respective countries.     

异质性国际环境协议的博弈论分析

国际环境协议是近年来环境经济学和应用博弈论中最引人注目的热点研究领域。前人的研究只建立在同质性国家基础上。从经济学角度建立异质国家模型,考虑国家在国际环境协议中成本和收益为异质的情况下,利用博弈论理论推导排放博弈和联盟博弈中的纳什均衡,得出几点重要结论。     

新形势下我国外资政策战略调整的思考——基于全球生产网络的视角

改革开放30年,外资的引进在一定程度上促进了我国产业结构的升级和经济的快速发展。从国际上外资政策的演变过程来看,我国当前外资政策总体上仍处在以规制为主要特征的第二代外资政策阶段。21世纪初国际生产体系的重大变革在于全球生产网络的形成与发展,我国的外资政策应该相应地进行战略调整,通过制定合理的配套政策,实施有效的干预政策来促进跨国公司全球生产网络的技术扩散,最终使我国企业通过协作和不断地学习融入全球生产网络,提高产业的国际竞争力。     

Incentives to Diffuse Advanced Abatement Technology Under the Formation of International Environmental Agreements

We analyse the incentives for polluting firms to diffuse and adopt advanced abatement technology in a framework in which governments negotiate an international environmental agreement. These incentives crucially depend on whether the underlying environmental policy instrument is an emission tax or an emission quota. The results for the international setting fundamentally differ from those for the national setting that have been elaborated upon in the earlier literature. In particular, equilibrium diffusion and adoption of advanced abatement technology are not necessarily optimal under the tax regime and may be even lower than those under the quota regime.     

论经济全球化对世界民主化进程的推动作用

20世纪90年代以来,经济全球化进程不断加快,世界各国各地区之间的经济联系更加密切,世界各国日益强调平等互利原则,相互竞争的同时注重协调与合作,多元化、宽容、妥协与合作,成为各国经济国际化进程中的基本共识。经济全球化发展,还使更多国家选择了市场经济体制。各国市场经济体制的建立与发展,使得推动民主化进程的民主力量不断发展壮大。作为世界民主化进程的基本内容,民主的制度化与权力运作的法制化,相应地也得到各国普遍认同,在实践当中进一步丰富和发展。     

Strategic Use of Environmental Information

Strategic use of environmental information may have as consequence that a benevolent environmental agency will choose not to disclose information leading to reduced moral motivation. Thus, decision makers will not have access to such information, implying that they will not be able to adjust their decisions to available information on the state of the environment. In contrast, if the benevolent environmental agency instead bases its regulation on standard economic instruments, these instruments will incorporate all available information.     

论战略性贸易政策在中国的适用性

基于规模经济和不完全竞争假说前提的战略性贸易政策作为贸易政策的新思路 ,受到极大的关注。本文分析了战略贸易政策的适用条件及其在中国的可能应用 ,文章最后提出了中国在使用这一政策的具体建议