政策脱轨效应:评估环境政策的新框架

目前我国尚未形成统一的环境政策评估规范体系,而对具体环境政策进行评估时,可能会因不同领域、不同视角、不同评估方法而带来不同的评估结果。针对现有环境政策评估体系存在的局限性,提出可以客观评估环境政策实施效果的框架:政策脱轨效应。从政策脱轨效应的定义、产生原因、分类及评估思路四个方面构建理论体系,同时根据脱轨效应理论框架分析我国不同时期的环境政策。该框架体系的基本特点是:将不同环境政策的评估统一到同一体系之下,以特定的模型和方法,评估环境政策实施是否存在"脱轨效应"。研究表明,环境政策实施后存在发生政策脱轨效应的可能性;消费品之间的替代(或互补)关系、单位环境效益和单位产量排污因子均会影响政策脱轨效应的产生;从脱轨效应角度分析,环境政策制定时的决策目标会影响政策实施效果,只有当环境政策以社会净福利为决策目标时,政策实施才可能避免出现政策脱轨效应,实现环境保护和经济增长的双重红利。     

信息系统项目风险的系统评估方法

文章给出了一个对实施信息系统项目的风险进行评估的方法框架。该框架根据评估需要把信息系统依据功能或结构按层次进行分解并在各层次中定义评估区域 ,在每个评估区域中确定该区域的风险、评估方法。提供了一个把所选择的评估方法及由该评估方法得到的评估结果综合成对整个系统的评估结论的系统的评估结构和方法     

中国土地整治政策演进的制度逻辑——分析框架与历史观察

文章以城市化进程中一项具有土地财政收益再分配特征的土地整治制度作为研究对象,将土地整治置于我国央地关系结构下,考察政策演进的制度逻辑。文章通过收集土地整治相关的历史政策文本以及对浙江省实践的案例考察,对于不同阶段的制度特征采用内容分析与访谈结合的质性研究方法。文章认为从中央政策制定层面到地方执行层面,土地整治制度演进过程受到制度环境与技术环境的影响,并遵循合法性机制。一方面,制度环境决定制度的初始框架,制度环境的变化会引起合法性的变化,从而引起制度变迁;另一方面,技术环境决定制度的执行效率,由此带来对合法性的挑战,从而推动制度变迁。文章为实现国家“高质量发展”的理念,推动乡村振兴和生态文明建设提供了理论和实践启示。     

深圳市主要污染物排污权交易政策制度评估

介绍了深圳市排污权交易进展情况,概括了深圳市排污权交易制度框架和制度体系,构建政策评估体系,从目的、政策框架、政策制度、综合效应对深圳市排污权交易制度进行评估分析。结果表明,深圳市制度设计较为完整,初始分配、政府储备、协议转让、总量监管等方面仍存在不足,行政强制手段过多,导致市场对资源配置效率降低,应进一步研究提高市场活跃度的因素,为正式实施排污权交易打下基础。     

公共管理改革对制度变迁理论的挑战与启示

当前,西方各国的公共部门管理尤其是政府管理改革风起云涌,我国的政府改革任务也异常紧迫。制度变迁理论是上个世纪经济学的重大理论突破,然而面对政府变革的事实,制度变迁理论的框架能否真正适用,如何将以研究经济效率为核心的理论向非经济效率领域拓展成为理论界的重要课题。文章阐述了制度变迁理论在分析公共管理改革的局限性,并结合我国现实提出了几点启示。     

制度塑造政策的经验分析——以进城务工人员随迁子女义务教育政策为例

制度如何塑造政策是公共政策研究领域的基础性问题。以进城务工人员随迁子女教育政策为例,运用历史制度主义的分析框架,概括了影响进城务工人员随迁子女义务教育政策的中观制度,探讨了制度塑造该政策的路径。结果表明:路径依赖的制度及关键节点造就了进城务工人员随迁子女义务教育政策间断—平衡的演变过程;制度通过建构决策者的思维模式、赋予政策目标群体的不同权利和界定行为主体的利益范围塑造了政策模式。     

中国环境经济政策研究的变迁及进展

以内化环境行为外部性为原则的环境经济政策是经济发展和环境保护相协调的关键所在.文章旨在梳理当今国内环境经济政策研究的变迁历程及最新进展,围绕我国环境经济政策体系构建的分析主线,明确划分了相关研究的发展阶段并回顾了各阶段不同主题和政策手段的研究概况.基于已有研究侧重点不同的考量,从内容研究、实践研究、评估研究和优化研究四个维度重塑了本领域跃迁研究的有效理论分析框架,并评述了环境经济政策研究常用的定性定量分析方法.     

演化经济地理学视角下区域新路径发展的研究评述与展望

区域新路径发展规律和机制的研究是演化经济地理学的重要议题,对该主题的认识先后经历区域机会窗口理论、路径依赖与路径分支理论,随后发展出对不同类型区域的新路径发展的不同机制的区分。但到目前为止较少对该议题进行全面的评估。文章对演化经济地理学中有关新路径发展研究成果的发展脉络进行梳理与总结,认为当前建立在内源性和企业驱动的路径发展过程的研究框架过于狭隘,难以涵盖完整的演化过程并较好地解释实践问题。随着对区域新路径发展认识的逐渐加深,出现演化经济地理学借鉴关系经济地理学、制度经济地理学、转型研究、社会期望学等领域相关理论的优势并融合的趋势。根据最新的研究进展以及当前研究框架的局限性,文章提出未来应从多尺度环境中注重多主体与区域环境相互作用、将未来期望纳入研究框架以及关注路径间关系等方面展开广泛研究,以加深对区域内新路径如何出现的更广泛理解。     

经济改革对于中国劳动力流动和分割的影响

自从改革开放以来,中国经济一直在以非常迅猛的速度发展着。伴随着不断升级的经济结构,也基于中国在越来越多的方面实施开放政策,中国劳动力分配以及社会分工也在发生着改变。文章着重研究中国经济改革后的劳动力流动问题。在这一时期发生的两项重大改革包括:计划经济的放松,以及户口制度的放松。文章分析了两项政策的放松所带来的社会经济学效果,以及地域性效果。此外,文章对作为劳动力流动和经济改革的副作用——劳动力市场职业分割的问题进行多角度的分析。     

公共选择理论和交易成本政治经济学的分析框架--从政治经济学视角分析战略性贸易政策的制定

本文从政治经济学视角分析战略性贸易政策理论,根据国际政治经济学和公共选择理论等新兴学科的发展,贸易政策由外生的约束条件变为内生的公共物品、公共政策和制度安排.在这一思路的引领下,本文构建了战略性贸易政策理论的公共选择理论框架和交易成本政治经济学的理论框架,并将政治经济学和经济学领域研究的新方法运用到对这一理论的研究之中.     

ACCRUAL BUDGETING AND FISCAL CONSOLIDATION IN THE EMU

Drawing on modern macroeconomic literature focusing on the study of politico-institutional determinants of public policies, this article analyzes the institutional design of the European fiscal policy laid down by the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Stability and Growth Pact. Both documents provide countries in the EU, and in particular those that have adopted the euro, with a common code of fiscal conduct that is expected to uphold discipline in the management of government finances. Nevertheless, a simple review of this code of conduct shows the existence of serious drawbacks mainly derived from the asymmetry between the treatment given to outcomes of fiscal policy in comparison with that given to the procedures followed in generating them. It seems that the current design of the European fiscal coordination system does not really take into account the findings of modern macroeconomics and does not pay due attention to the relation between budgetary processes/institutions and outcomes in fiscal policy. Moreover, this article argues that in the implementation of the broad reforms needed to achieve a sustainable fiscal consolidation, there are political complementarities (in the sense that the ability to gain political consent for one reform depends on the acceptance of other reforms) between the setting up of new fiscal policies of expenditure containment and new fiscal procedures.
All in all, this analysis points to a sorely needed procedural reform in public sector budgeting as the best contribution to pursuing the stabilization of European public finances: the fuller use of accrual concepts in budget reporting. Much more than an isolated technical exercise, the shift to accrual budgeting could be quite a useful tool to facilitate wider reforms aimed at improving public sector financial management and performance while enhancing transparency and accountability.     

Steepest ascent tariff reform

The policy reform literature is primarily concerned with the construction of reforms that yield welfare gains. By contrast, this paper’s contribution is to develop a theoretical concept for which the focus is upon the sizes of welfare gains accruing from policy reforms rather than upon their signs. In undertaking this task, and by focusing on tariff reforms, we introduce the concept of a steepest ascent policy reform, which is a locally optimal reform in the sense that it achieves the highest marginal gain in utility of any feasible local reform. We argue that this reform presents itself as a natural benchmark for the evaluation of the welfare effectiveness of other popular tariff reforms such as the proportional tariff reduction and the concertina rules, since it provides the maximal welfare gain of all possible local reforms. We derive properties of the steepest ascent tariff reform, construct an index to measure the relative welfare effectiveness of any given tariff reform, determine conditions under which proportional and concertina reforms are locally optimal and provide illustrative examples.     

Producing Airpower: The Rise and Fall of Neo-Liberalism’s Defence Agenda

ABSTRACT

Few policy issues are more challenging than complex weaponry’s procurement and employment. Technology drives weapon costs upwards faster than economies are growing and militaries struggle to maintain increasingly sophisticated arms. Certain governments have adopted a reform agenda rooted in neo-liberal economic theory to address these challenges. Two broad policies – enhancing inter-firm competition for contracts and outsourcing activities to the private sector – emerged as central to this reform agenda. Although rarely presented as such, these reforms present a significant intellectual challenge to the hitherto predominant statist model for military power’s provision. Surprisingly, in light of neo-liberal policies’ adoption by militarily active states, no study has systematically examined these reforms’ content and impact. My article fills this lacuna by examining the state – the United Kingdom – that most consistently enacted neo-liberal defence reforms. To preview the conclusion, neo-liberal reforms initially generated small initial efficiencies, but then produced significant adverse consequences when pursued beyond a certain minimal level. Britain’s competition policy, for example, ultimately incentivized firms to consolidate into monopolies, which narrowed the scope for future competition and prevented the state from upholding fixed price contracts. Outsourcing, likewise, proved detrimental once policymakers sought to extend its scope beyond a limited range of simple services.     

Reforming the public administration: The role of crisis and the power of bureaucracy

The need to balance austerity with growth policies has put government efficiency high on the economic policy agenda in Europe. Administrative reforms that boost the internal efficiency of bureaucracy can alleviate the trade-off between consolidation and public service provision. Against such a backdrop, this paper constructs (and makes available) a novel reform indicator to explore the determinants of public administration reforms for a panel of EU countries. The findings support political-economic reasoning: An economic and fiscal crisis is a potent catalyst for reforms, but a powerful bureaucracy constrains the opportunities of a crisis to promote reform. Furthermore, there is some suggestive evidence for horizontal learning from other EU countries, and for vertical learning associated with a particular type of EU cohesion spending.     

Integration,Diversity, Plurality: Territorial Governance and the Reconstruction of Legitimacy in a European ‘Postnational’ State

This article deals with the European ‘legitimacy crisis’ from a neglected perspective, looking at ‘Europe’ not primarily as a set of formal (or formalisable) institutions, but rather as an emergent, policy-driven institutional construct. In this perspective, European integration may be very much seen as the outcome of the policies that are enacted in the European supra-national arena as well as of the way such policies are continuously reinterpreted, renegotiated and re-enacted in the different arenas of its multi-level polity. What is at stake in adopting a policy approach to the European legitimacy issue is, hence, a critical appraisal of development of processes of ‘institutionalisation of Europe’ that range far beyond issues of constitutional design. A crucial consequence is the need to ‘spatialise’ discourse on European reforms. The conclusion is a plea for an integration model for Europe not only constitutionally respectful of diversity, but constitutively enhancing diversity, and for an approach to policy reforms acting upon a ‘political geography of differences’.     

The Trojan-Horse Principle in Development Assistance: A Reading of Uganda's Experience with Aid

The World Bank recommends “ideas, not money” as a guiding principle to donors for dealing with badly governed countries. This paper challenges that principle on the basis of a study of the evolution in Uganda of pro‐growth policies in the early to mid 1990s and pro‐poor policies in the late 1990s. The analysis of Uganda’s experience with aid is accommodated within the theoretical framework of a principal–agent conditionality game, in which policy objectives of the recipient (the agent) evolve over time. The key finding of the paper is that the apparent conditionality failure of the period 1987–91 has paved the way for later reform. Financial aid given during this period suspended the necessity of reforms and bought donor proximity to recipient policy deliberations, as a result of both of which the policy learning could take place that led to later successful reform measures.     

Economic Reform and Corruption: Evidence from Panel Data

The notion that economic reform can reduce corruption remains prevalent in the policy agenda of international financial institutions, especially of the World Bank. Economic reforms have, therefore, been carried out throughout various parts of the world to improve the performance of the economies. Using data from 94 low‐ and middle‐income nations for the period 1996–2015, this study employs static and dynamic panel analysis to examine whether economic reform undertaken in accordance with the World Bank's reform programs negatively affects corruption. Our findings suggest that enhancing government effectiveness (i.e. independence of civil service from political pressure, provision of quality public services, effective policy formulation and the government's commitment to such policies) and improving public rights and civil liberties could be some of the most promising policies in terms of fighting corruption. The role of economic development and growth in real per capita income is also found to be significant in some of the specifications. However, the assertion that economic reform can reduce corruption is rejected in all the specifications. We rather find evidence that economic reforms negatively affect the ability of democracy to fight corruption, although on a slim margin. The central theme of the implications of our findings is that in combating corruption, social, institutional and legal means are far more important than economic means. The finding thus is compatible with the World Bank's effort in the later years to introduce governance and democracy as effective tool against corruption.     

Non-cooperative and cooperative policy reforms under uncertainty and spillovers

When countries need to implement costly economic policy reforms, these often imply uncertainties about their effectiveness for the home country and their spillovers to other countries. We develop a model to show that under these circumstances countries implement too few or too many policy reforms. From a social perspective, too many reforms follow if the spillover effects of reforms become sufficiently uncertain. Since centralization of policies to correct inefficient policies is often not possible, we look for alternative instruments that can restore the efficient level of reforms. We compare subsidizing reform efforts with insuring against bad outcomes, and argue that subsidies are advantageous in terms of requiring less information for implementation.     

NATIONAL SECURITY AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY: THE NEED FOR A PUBLIC CHOICE PERSPECTIVE

This paper argues that the issues raised by the industrial policy debate are as much political as they are economic. There is every reason to believe that, without substantial reform of political institutions, efforts to administer a rational new industrial policy would soon degenerate into the type of inconsistent morass of special-interest-generated policies which industrial policy advocates rightfully criticize as our de facto set of industrial policies.
This important political dimension has been overlooked by many industrial policy advocates. An important exception is Robert Reich, who has proposed a new centralized industrial policy agency in hopes that the battle of conflicting interests would promote greater aggregate efficiency. We argue that on theoretical grounds, however, such centralization might either increase or decrease efficiency. The competition of the military services under the Defense Department gives us a close analogue for study. Unfortunately, however, our review of efficiency in defense policy suggests that this would be a very poor model on which to base a broader industrial policy. To promote substantial increases in defense and industrial policy efficiency appears to require that much more fundamental institutional reforms be considered.     

Strategic compromise,policy bundling and interest group power: Theory and evidence on education policy

Policy reforms are often multifaceted. In the rent-seeking literature policies are usually taken as one-dimensional. This paper models policy formation using a political contest with endogenous policy proposals containing two dimensions, e.g. access and quality of education. The two dimensions provide an opportunity to trade off one policy over another to make the lobbying opposition less aggressive. In a first stage, the government proposes a reform over the two policies, and in a second stage engages in a contest with an interest group over the enactment of the proposed reform. As a result, the government makes a compromise, under-proposing in the policy the interest group opposes and over-proposing in the policy the interest group desires. Effectively, there will be strategic bundling of desired policies with undesired ones in an attempt to increase enactment probability and overall utility. We study this prediction empirically using a newly complied dataset on education legislation in the states of California, Illinois and Texas. Results suggest that stronger opposition is associated with less quality reforms. Moreover, as predicted by the model, when bundling access reforms together with quality, the negative effect is counteracted.