ARE ECONOMISTS ‘MARKET FUNDAMENTALISTS’?

We summarise Bryan Caplan's defence of economists from The Myth of the Rational Voter, in which he argues that economists undersell the benefits of markets. We also elaborate on his conclusions and discuss applications to specific topics, such as the minimum wage, as well as how Caplan's results might affect the way economics courses are taught.     

THE LIFE CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF CONSUMPTION

This paper reviews assessments of environmental impacts arising from consumption, taking into account the production and disposal of goods consumed. Assessments have mostly focused on understanding household consumption, but there is an increasing interest in understanding government consumption, as well as in the treatment of gross capital formation and trade. National economic and environmental accounts are the most frequently used data source for such studies and input–output techniques are usually applied. For many OECD countries and a few developing countries, assessments address only energy or greenhouse gas emissions. Few studies address a broader range of emissions-related environmental impacts. There is a lack of consideration for important pressures on ecosystems such as habitat change and overexploitation of fisheries and forests. In all countries, housing and food are important. In poor countries, public services can contribute substantially, while in rich countries, mobility and the consumption of manufactured goods is important. In rapidly developing economies, investments, especially in infrastructure and buildings, are important causes of environmental pressure as well. Differences in production conditions and pollution intensities across countries are substantial, so explicitly modelling the production of internationally traded goods using multi-regional input–output analysis is necessary to account correctly for the environmental impacts arising from the consumption of imported goods.     

Environmental policy and innovations

The paper defines and uses the concepts environmental policy cycle and innovation cycle and explores the links between the two in search for an environmental policy that creates incentives for innovation in environmental technology. We conclude that key factors are shortening the period the bureaucracy takes for preparing new environmental requirements, transparency and consistency of bureaucratic and political decision‐making and fast and strict implementation with environmental policy instruments that give pollution sources freedom in their choice of suitable technology. Economic instruments provide strong incentives for innovation because they speed up implementation. Large R&D subsidies may be needed to make technology development profitable under the conventional policy of direct regulation by emission standards and regulation by way of covenants. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Gains from international monetary policy coordination: Does it pay to be different?

In a two country world where each country has a traded and a non-traded sector and each sector has sticky prices, optimal independent policy in general cannot replicate the natural-rate allocations. There are potential welfare gains from coordination since the planner under a cooperating regime internalizes a terms-of-trade externality that independent policymakers overlook. If the countries have symmetric trading structures, however, the gains from coordination are quantitatively small. With asymmetric trading structures, the gains can be sizable since, in addition to internalizing the terms-of-trade externality, the planner optimally engineers a terms-of-trade bias that favors the country with a larger traded sector.     

Government Engagement,Environmental Policy,and Environmental Performance: Evidence from the Most Polluting Chinese Listed Firms

This study empirically examines the implementation of environmental policies and how government engagement impacts on a firm's environmental performance based on a sample of Chinese listed firms in the eight most polluting industries over a 10‐year period. The findings of the study demonstrate that government engagement, measured as ownership structure, is positively correlated with environmental performance, measured by environmental capital expenditure, for state‐owned firms, but no significant relation is found for non‐state‐owned firms. In addition, non‐state‐owned firms are more likely to perform better in terms of environmental investment after the 2006 enactment of a new policy explicitly linking environmental issues with political incentives to regional governments. This study also reports that corporate environmental performance impairs firm value for state‐owned firms but has no impact on firm value for non‐state‐owned firms, suggesting that investors negatively respond to environmental investments made by state‐owned firms as a result of government engagement/political pressure. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Do stakeholder groups influence environmental management system development in the Dutch agri‐food sector?

This paper presents the results of a survey that included 492 companies in the Dutch agri‐food sector with respect to the influence of stakeholder groups on the companies' level of environmental management system (EMS) implementation. It is concluded that primary stakeholders (government, clients) are more relevant for EMS development than secondary stakeholders (such as environmental organizations). The results suggest that small and medium‐sized companies are able to accommodate to demands with respect to the implementation of internally oriented care systems (I‐EMSs). I‐EMSs focus at the single firm or location. In general, they are predominantly influenced by governmental and other ‘non‐commercial’ stakeholder groups. For the implementation of externally oriented EMSs (E‐EMSs), which focus on the supply chain and network, qualitative rather than quantitative relationship characteristics between companies and the government are important. Moreover, commercial stakeholder groups (such as suppliers, clients and competitors) influence E‐EMS levels significantly. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ACTIVE LABOR MARKET POLICIES: A META‐ANALYSIS

This paper provides a meta‐analysis of microeconometric evaluation studies on the effectiveness of active labor market policies. The analysis is built upon a systematically assembled data set of causal impact estimates from 57 experimental and quasi‐experimental studies, providing 654 estimates published between January 1990 and December 2017. We distinguish between the short and longer term impacts in our analysis; at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after program start. After correcting for publication bias and country‐specific macroeconomic characteristics, subsidized labor and public employment programs have negative short‐term impacts, which gradually turn positive in the longer run. Schemes with enhanced services including job‐search assistance and training programs do not have these negative short‐term effects, and stay positive from 6 until 36 months after program start.     

粗放型经济增长模式对中国的环境及环境政策的影响

文章简要阐述了中国环境政策的发展及其局限性,探讨了中国以往粗放型经济发展模式对环境的损害,以及这种经济发展模式对环境政策形成的制约机制。文章认为,从长远来看,进行经济结构调整,转变经济发展模式,并以此为基础进行环境政策改革,是改善中国的经济与环境关系的基本途径。     

Do financial penalties for environmental violations facilitate improvements in corporate environmental performance? An empirical investigation

Environmental regulations play an essential role in managing firm behavior and providing a reference point for the minimum standards of corporate environmental performance, yet certain firms fail to ensure their environmental performance meets these standards. This research focuses on public firms that the US government has penalized for violating environmental regulations and investigates whether these firms subsequently improved their environmental performance. Surprisingly, neither the receipt of a penalty for an environmental violation nor the imposition of a greater penalty was associated with improvements in environmental performance. Instead, a penalty for environmental violation predicted further, albeit mild, deterioration in environmental performance. While the existing literature has established that financial penalties deter most firms from committing environmental violations, this research contributes to this literature by revealing that these penalties fail to motivate firms that have violated environmental regulations to improve their environmental performance.     

Distinctive Features of Environmental Innovators: An Econometric Analysis

This paper analyzes the main determinants influencing environmental innovators (i.e. firms developing or adopting environmental innovations) in Spain with respect to non‐environmental innovators. Similarly to other contributions in the literature, our results show that Spanish environmental innovators respond to regulatory stimulus in the form of demand‐pull and technology‐push instruments. They have a high internal technological capability and combine internal and external information sources, mostly in cooperation with knowledge institutions. Environmental innovators are more concentrated in mature, traditionally highly polluting sectors, but new firms are not more environmentally innovative than incumbents. Most importantly, in contrast to other environmental innovation studies, mostly carried out in a German context, we have not found evidence of a market pull from either the domestic or international markets. Furthermore, cost savings are not found to be a distinctive driver for environmental innovators. These differential results are possibly related to the special features of Spain regarding its national innovation system and the degree of stringency of environmental regulation and environmental consciousness of its consumers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

ISO14063《环境管理环境信息交流指南和示例》国际标准释义与理解

环境信息交流是组织环境管理活动的重要组成部分,随着相关方对组织环境价值、环境行动和环境绩效的日益关注,环境信息交流正成为组织承担自身对社会的负责任并满足相关方环境期望的有力工具。为此,ISO/TC 207国际标准化组织环境管理标准化技术委员会发布了《ISO 14063环境信息交流指南和示例》国际标准,旨在从标准化的角度统一和规范全球企业的环境信息交流活动。本文通过对ISO 14063国际标准中所涉及的环境信息交流原则、方针、战略和活动程序等内容进行诠释,帮助广大组织准确理解国际标准的内涵,并为企业实施有效的内部和外部环境信息交流活动提供实用指南。     

The Effects of Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Regulation on Company Management and Competitiveness

In the literature there are several studies about the effects of environmental policies and regulations on the management and competitiveness of businesses. Some of these studies focus on the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive, but only a few investigate the effects of IPPC permits in depth. This paper aims to bridge this gap by illustrating the results of cross‐country empirical research. We analyse 225 IPPC permits of companies located in seven European regions and issued by different competent authorities. Results show differences in terms of requirements, emission limit values and monitoring frequencies, which are not always justifiable by the flexibility afforded by the Directive. These differences have different impacts on the competitive strategies and environmental management of companies within the same sector but located in different countries. We explore how some differences could influence company costs, contributing to the literature debate about the effects of direct regulation on competitiveness. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

THE ECONOMICS OF THE UNCOVERED INTEREST PARITY CONDITION FOR EMERGING MARKETS

Abstract Financial account liberalizations since the second half of the 1980s paved the way for the burgeoning literature that investigates foreign exchange market efficiency in emerging markets (EMs) via testing for the uncovered interest parity (UIP) condition. This paper is the first to provide a broad and critical survey on this recent literature. Specifically, we attempt to answer the following questions. First, are the EMs different from the developed economies in the context of the UIP condition? Second, to what extent can these differences contribute to the debate on the UIP literature? Third, what are the empirical challenges specific to the EMs in testing for the UIP condition?     

ON THE INEFFECTIVENESS OF FISCAL POLICY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY

Spending depends on the quantity of money. If an increase in the budget deficit is financed by sales of government debt to non-banks, the quantity of money is unchanged and public borrowing 'crowds out' private spending. But – if the government finances its deficit (or buybacks of existing debt) from the banks – the quantity of money, and hence spending and national income increase.     

Policies for Enhancing Corporate Environmental Management: a Framework and an Applied Example

This paper develops a four‐phase schematic representation dubbed the CEM lifecycle for conceptualizing how corporate environmental management (CEM) programs typically evolve in a given organization and then explicates the forces that influence corporate commitment as a CEM program progresses from inception to later phases of the CEM lifecycle. Examples are then presented on how the Singaporean government encourages enhancement of CEM programs by designing support programs that target the underlying corporate needs inherent to the first three CEM lifecycle phases. The examples provided in this paper of Singaporean CEM support programs illustrate how policy can be strategically designed to improve corporate uptake of CEM programs by enhancing CEM knowledge in the initial phase of the CEM lifecycle, providing technical support in the second lifecycle phase and providing opportunities for public recognition in the third lifecycle phase. The article concludes that replicating the strategic approach to policymaking exemplified in the Singaporean case study can significantly improve the competitiveness of domestic firms through encouraging more efficient use of resources; however, in order to design truly sustainable economies (provide for the needs of future generations), governments must be prepared to more coercively regulate the exploitation of natural endowments. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FISCAL POLICY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY

This paper demonstrates that fiscal policy is an effective and essential instrument of stabilisation macroeconomic policy. This is particularly so if it is co-ordinated with monetary policy, especially in the current worldwide economic situation.     

How to define an environmental policy to improve corporate sustainability in developing countries

Continual efforts to work with government and society are crucial to persuade businesses to become even better engaged in sustainability practices in developing countries. This study rebuilds the SCP (structure–conduct–performance) paradigm to incorporate environmental variables and to address the environmental strategy choices. Grounded theory was adopted in a systematic collection of data in petrochemical, textile and beverage companies established in different Brazilian states. In‐depth personal interview, site visit and documentary evidence were coded and analysed. The empirical results demonstrate that environmental regulation and enforcement, environmental risk and demands from stakeholders play a central role in increasing the corporate commitment to the natural environment. The study defines four strategic generic types of organization, termed variously as sleeper, reactor, defender and innovator, owing to their solutions to environmental issues. This typology contributes as a roadmap for business decision makers to choose the appropriate environmental strategy in a global economy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

An integral model for the implementation of environmental policy strategy

This article responds to demands for a more in‐depth study on how to implement an environmental policy strategy (EPS). Following the strategic choice framework, this study seeks to address this issue by testing a theoretical model of several managerial and organisational variables associated with a firm's EPS. The managerial variables examined include managers' perceptions of environmental pressures, managers' consciousness of environmental problems, and managers' perceptions of the potential benefits associated with the implementation of an EPS. The organisational variables that are investigated relate to the structure, systems, and processes of the representative organisations. Control variables include the firm's industrial sector, its country of origin, its size, and its international character. A model based on structural equations with the weighted least squares estimation method is used to test the hypotheses in a large sample of firms. The results confirm the need to consider a multidisciplinary view of the implementation of an EPS.     

THE APPLICABILITY OF THE TRADITIONAL THEORY OF ECONOMIC POLICY

Abstract. The traditional theory of economic policy requires targets, instruments, an empirical economic model, and a social welfare or criterion function to be specified in order to derive the optimal economic policy. Empirical studies of reaction functions suggest that economic policy is carried out in some systematic manner, subject to interference from political factors. This survey addresses the problems of specifying, estimating and applying an economic model when economic policy is following a path specified by a reaction function. Attention is paid to rational expectations, the Lucas'critique, and the policy neutrality proposition. Lack of knowledge of the policy maker's objective function poses the most serious difficulty when applying the theory of economic policy. Various methods of determining this function are reviewed, and the possibility that policy makers might be satisficing is discussed. The role played by political factors is considered in the light of the public choice literature.