Chinese Scholars Attended ISEE 2008 NAIROBI

The 10^th Biennial International Society for Ecological Economics Conference was held on Aug.7-11, 2008 in Nairobi, the Capital of Kenya. The conference, “ISEE2008 NAIROBI： Applying Ecological Economics for Social and Environmental Sustainability” was a joint undertaking by the International Society for Ecological Economics （ISEE）, African Society for Ecological Economics （ASEE） and the United Nations Environment Programme （UNEP）.     

Reassessing the Social Foundations of Welfare (State) Regimes

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was formed in 1964 to ‘create a forum in which the more prosperous member countries [of the United Nations] would come under pressure to agree to measures benefiting the less-developed countries’. More specifically, its formation was ‘a deliberate effort to use international bureaucracy and conference diplomacy to alter current norms affecting trade and development’. UNCTAD's founding reflected the growth in membership of the United Nations of newly independent states. A large number of the e´lites of these new entities keenly felt the iniquity of the world order which had ushered in their formal statehood. UNCTAD and the later call for a ‘New International Economic Order’ (NIEO) therefore were rejoinders to problems encountered by developing countries as a result of the creation and operation of the Bretton Woods system.     

Climate Insecurity in (Post)Conflict Areas: The Biopolitics of United Nations Vulnerability Assessments

Within the United Nations, the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have all highlighted climate risks as relevant to their work in areas affected by conflict, endorsing human security approaches as valid for mapping the relationships between climate stresses and conflict-related harm. While this policy interest has limited operational presence, I discuss salient assessments of climate vulnerability in (post)conflict areas, arguing that these agencies have applied a natural disaster rather than conflict regulation inflection of humanitarian reason. The former entails a biopolitical paradigm of disaster risk reduction, prescribing technical-managerial measures to build the resilience of vulnerable populations. This framing supports a depoliticised stance reflecting UN norms of neutrality and impartiality. I claim that this position nevertheless disregards its own geopolitical conditions and effects, which dilute the scope for international humanitarian law to assign responsibility for conflict-related harm.     

中国汽车业节能减排中存在的主要问题及对策研究

节能减排已成为联合国和全世界高度关注的关系到人类生存和发展的焦点问题,而作为交通工具的汽车,是重要的大气污染发生源,因此,汽车节能减排问题已引起越来越多人的关注。本文探讨了我国节能减排对汽车业的重要性,分析了汽车节能减排过程中遇到的主要问题,提出了相应的对策建议。     

Humour at the Model United Nations: The Role of Laughter in Constituting Geopolitical Assemblages

Model United Nations (MUN) is a simulation in which students take on the roles of ambassadors to the United Nations, engaging in debate on ‘real’ issues from the perspective of their assumed national identities. This paper, based on a year of ethnography and interviews of a college-level MUN team, examines the role of humour in producing particular geopolitical imaginations among those participating and also in producing the MUN assemblage itself. Key here is the circulation of affects among participants' bodies, producing an orientation among them that facilitates debate and consensus-building. This finding is seen as a corrective to past work on geopolitics and humour, which has tended to emphasise irony and satire, as well as mass-mediated humor.     

国际社会发展和全球环境基金

本文系统阐明了当今世界环境问题是人类面临的严峻挑战;世界银行、联合国开发计划署和环境规划署全球环境基金的主要业务范围和实际运行。     

Weak and strong sustainability in the SEEA: Concepts and measurement

In this paper, we explain how the latest international handbook on environmental accounting, the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting or SEEA (United Nations, European Commission, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and World Bank (2003). Handbook of National Accounting, Studies in Methods. New York, United Nations.), can be used to measure weak and strong sustainability. We emphasise the importance of understanding the conceptual differences between weak and strong sustainability. We then outline what we consider to be current best practice in measurement, all the time flagging the relationship between our discussion and that of the SEEA-2003. This is an important task in our view, because, despite covering a very wide range of relevant conceptual and empirical issues, the handbook is by design not meant to provide clear guidelines for the purpose of measuring sustainability in either its weak or strong version.     

First Peoples lost: Determining the state of status First Nations mortality in Canada using administrative data

We present the most comprehensive set of estimates to date for status First Nations mortality in Canada. We use administrative data from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada to establish a set of stylized facts regarding status First Nations mortality rates. Between 2010 to 2013, the mortality rates of status First Nations men and boys are highest in nearly all age groups of status First Nations considered, with the exception of status girls between the ages of 10 to 14. On reserve, status boys between the ages of 15 to 19 have mortality rates nearly four times that in the general population, while status girls between the ages of 15 to 19 have mortality rates five times that in the general population. We demonstrate substantial regional variation in mortality rates. Finally, we document that there has been no improvement in mortality among status women and girls living on reserve in the last 30 years and relative mortality rates for all status people on reserve has not changed in 40 years.     

Endogenous categorization of the human development

The human development index (HDI) is one of the most well-known measures of welfare. We apply clustering techniques to endogenously determine how similar countries are with respect to the HDI, and into how many categories they can be classified. We find that, in contrast to the usual assumption in the United Nations’ Human Development Reports, the number of categories is not fixed and has varied over time, from three in 1990 to four in 2014. We also find that the countries within each category differ from the United Nation’s proposal.     

REPLY

Since Dr. Bartsch has gone only partially into the history of the United Nations definition of employment and unemployment, let me pursue it a bit further. To begin, the ILO is a Member Agency of the UN and thus automatically subsumed under the latter. I am fully aware that the ILO segment of the UN was given the area of labor statistics as its domain, and hence draws up official definitions, etc. (Except for the industrial composition classification of the economically active, which area was assigned to the UN Statistical Office.)     

A new look at the benefits of diversification: lessons from Central America

Recent trends of export diversification in Central America may lower foreign exchange earnings instability there. Four countries–Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala–are analysed across a twenty-year period. The paper uses United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics to explain why Costa Rica and Honduras have enjoyed greater earnings stability in recent years, despite the fact that Honduras has not greatly diversified its export products and markets. Despite the growth of new agricultural and manufacturing goods, traditional primary products still dominate the countries' export portfolios. Specific products within each of the four broad product category groups contribute to the varied country outcomes. Summary statistics from the United Nations (panel) data suggest newer agricultural exports have not stabilized Guatemalan and Salvadoran export earnings, while Honduras has enjoyed relatively stable banana export revenues and Costa Rica has benefited from the smooth flow of microelectronic products. Further panel data regression analysis shows country size and intangible country effects also explain parts of the detrended earnings deviation in addition to product base and level of diversification.     

Counting the uncounted: The consequences of children's domestic chores for health and education in Ethiopia

Much of the existing literature on the economics of child labor assumes that child labor is synonymous with employment in income‐generating activities. However, children also perform domestic chores, and excessive involvement in chores may be detrimental to their wellbeing. This paper investigates the effect on child health and education outcomes of participation in domestic chores as well as participation in income‐generating activities. Our data come from the 2014 Young Lives survey of Ethiopia. We use the guidelines of the 18th International Conference of Labor Statisticians and the United Nations Children's Fund to make a distinction between light work and harmful work, and apply this distinction to both domestic chores and income‐generating work. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that involvement in harmful domestic chores is strongly associated with poor health and education outcomes. Our findings suggest that excessive involvement in domestic chores constitutes a form of child labor. Ignoring domestic chores will lead to an underestimate of the prevalence of child labor, especially among girls, whose exposure to chores is much higher, on average, than that of boys.     

From Territory to Rights: New Foundations for Conceptualising Indigenous Sovereignty

Recognising how the concept of sovereignty has been affected by an indigenous and human rights agenda, this article explores the potential outcomes of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in terms of its challenge to Westphalian notions of sovereignty in Canada’s North. It argues that the UNDRIP, adopted by the United Nations in 2007, is now playing a significant role in giving Canada’s Indigenous Peoples a voice in international affairs and for reframing the relationship between state and non-state actors in ways which privilege collective rights rather than territorial imperatives.     

MAJOR CHANGES PROPOSED FOR THE NEXT SNA: AN OVERVIEW

The first draft of the new manual for the System of National Accounts will be circulated during 1990. The major changes to be incorporated in it are highlighted in this article. A full list of all changes is available from the United Nations Statistical Office and will be included as an annex to the final manual.     

Global horse trading: IMF loans for votes in the United Nations Security Council

We investigate whether temporary members of the United Nations Security Council receive favorable treatment from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) using panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1951 to 2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary Security Council membership and participation in IMF programs, even after accounting for economic, political, and country-specific factors. There is also evidence that Security Council membership reduces the number of conditions included in IMF programs. IMF loans seem to be a mechanism by which the major shareholders of the Fund can win favor with voting members of the Security Council.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Understanding the Current China-U.S. ‘Trade War’

ABSTRACT

One of the most important international economic events in 2018 was the China-U.S. “trade war.” With China’s growing role in the worldwide economy and geopolitical impacts, the United States has labeled China as a strategy competitor. This notes briefly introduce the six articles covered in the volume. We highlight the causes and possible economic consequences from the perspectives of the United States, China, Japan, the Europe, and even East Asian countries like Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.     

适应可持续发展战略要求,建立综合环境─经济核算体系

可持续发展是环境与经济发展的有机统一体，它要求一个与之相适应的核算体系。现行的国民经济核算体系，由于其固有的缺陷，不能完成这一任务。1993年联合国出版的《综合环境与经济核算手册》（即SEEA）提供了环境与经济核算相结合的核算体系，可供借鉴。     

中国贸易条件变化和波动情况的经验分析

本文在联合国统计司Comtrade数据库的基础上对中国贸易条件的变化和波动情况进行了经验分析,结果发现：（1）从1987—2006年,中国的初级产品贸易条件有一定程度的改善,而整体贸易条件和制成品贸易条件则出现了明显的恶化。（2）对贸易条件波动性分阶段考察的结果表明,在中国加入WTO前后,不管是整体贸易条件还是分类商品贸易条件,其波动性都是显著下降的。（3）中国贸易条件的波动主要是由于低技术产品大的出口份额、中技术产品大的进口份额以及中技术产品进出口贸易发展的不均衡所造成的。     

Water accounting in Australia

This paper introduces water accounting as produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It provides information about the ABS Water Accounts and highlights the many other organisations involved in the provision and use of water related data in Australia. The ABS Water Accounts have built upon previous reports on Australian water resources and the System of Environment and Economic Accounting [UN (United Nations) 2003. Draft Handbook Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting. Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 61, Rev. 1. United Nations, European Commission, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, World Bank. New York.]. Information from the ABS Water Accounts is presented along with examples of their use in economic analyses designed to inform public debate and government decision-makers.A key feature of the Australian environment is that water is relatively scarce when compared with other inhabited continents. Rainfall displays a high level of spatial and temporal variability and droughts are common. In 2004 an Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative (NWI) was reached by Australia's national and eight state and territory governments. The NWI aims to address environmental, economic and social concerns about the current and future state of Australia's water resources. The NWI specifically calls for the preparation of annual water accounts, which clearly indicates the expected usefulness of national and regional water accounts.     

出口企业发展国际保理业务探析

国际保理作为一项能够提供风险担保与资金融通的综合性国际结算业务，近年来在全球范围内发展很快。联合国为应收账款立法，以便推动保理业务的正规发展。随着对外贸易总量的迅猛增长，我国的国际保理业务发展前景广阔。从市场发展趋势、中小企业融资困难等角度分析我国广泛运用国际保理的业务现状，并就如何发展这一业务进行研究，具有重要现实意义。