Protectionist Lobbying and Strategic Investment

Why are some uncompetitive industry sectors so effective in lobbying for greater protection and support? This paper attempts to explain the lobbying success of these industries in terms of the strategic role of investment in technology as a credible commitment device. By eschewing potentially profitable investment opportunities firms credibly signal to the government that the cost of a tariff reduction will be substantial. This enables the firms to lobby more effectively for policy concessions. Political considerations may therefore provide a significant incentive for firms to reject investment in newer technologies, even when these lower production costs.     

The Superiority of Environmental Federalism in the Presence of Lobbying and Prior Tax Distortions

It is generally believed that environmental federalism tends to generate greater pollution emissions than centralized policymaking. This paper demonstrates that the opposite can occur in the presence of lobbying. Although the decentralized regime gives rise to a tax‐interaction effect, which induces policymakers to set lax environmental policies, it may also reduce the political pressure on enlarging allowed emissions. If the latter outweighs the former, then the decentralized regime will generate less pollution than the centralized regime. Moreover, we also show that the decentralized regime can be more efficient than the centralized regime, which provides an alternative theoretical support for the superiority of environmental federalism.     

Globalization, Lobbying, and International Environmental Governance

Globalization may require supranational coordination of environmental policies to prevent strategic policy competition weakening environmental standards. This raises concerns about a democratic deficit at the supranational level, and the possibility of capture by special interest groups. The authors develop a model in which environmental policy can be set at the national or supranational level. Governments at each level act in the interests of the group they represent, and interest groups lobby to influence the probability of getting their type of government elected. Using asymmetries in lobbying costs, the authors analyze the effects of a democratic deficit and differential access to influence by different interest groups on the welfare of groups and nations. The paper shows: (i) asymmetries may have unexpected effects; (ii) asymmetries have greater effect when policy is set at the national rather than supranational level; and (iii) despite asymmetries groups and nations are better off when policy is coordinated at the supranational level.     

The Status of Lobbying in Croatia

The positions of lobbying and the lobbyist, well established in developed democratic societies, are far less clear in transitional countries. The aim of this paper is to present the current status of lobbying in Croatia through a discussion of its reputation in the media, citizens’ attitudes and the perceptions of business sector representatives. For that purpose, three groups of research results are presented. (1) In order to characterize the reputation of lobbying in the media, the results of a quantitative content analysis of information published in daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and on Internet portals are given. (2) To understand the attitudes of citizens to lobbying, the views of the young are considered. (3) Finally, to define perceptions of lobbying in the public sector and business, the results of a survey conducted among 50 employees in government institutions and 50 in the enterprise sector are presented and analyzed.     

The Role of Financial Development in Growth and Investment

Thisarticle decomposes the well-documented relationship between financialdevelopment and growth. We examine whether financial developmentaffects growth solely through its contribution to growth in ``primitives' or factor accumulation rates or whether it alsohas a positive impact on total factor productivity growth. Ourresults suggest that indicators of financial development arecorrelated with both total factor productivity growth and investment.However, the indicators that are correlated with total factorproductivity growth differ from those that encourage investment.In addition, many of the results are sensitive to the inclusionof country fixed effects, which may indicate that the financialdevelopment indicators are proxying for broader country characteristics.     

政府在风险投资中的作用

<正> 在风险资本市场的成长与成熟过程中,政府起到了无可替代的推动作用。各国风险投资业发展过程中的政府行为证明,政府导向是至关重要的外部动力,对风险投资业会形成强有力的激励。由于各国市场经济发育状况千差万别,政府干预创业投资的方式也不尽相同,在风险投资领域里,政府不仅是制度的设计者、主体的培育者、市场的管理者,还是直接的投资者。综合各国风险投资发展的历史与经验教训,把风险投资中政府的作用归纳为以下几方面:     

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。     

风险投资中政府的作用

任何一项新生事物的发展,都有其内因的促进和外因的推动。河北省风险投资的发展也是如此。作为外因推动的政府,其强有力的支持是风险投资快速发展的重要因素。政府资本的导向作用、放宽风险资本的来源限制、鼓励投资的税收优惠政策、宽松的法律法规环境、完善的资本市场体系等等无不体现了政府在风险投资发展各个阶段的推动和促进作用。     

Sorting in Heterogeneous Contests

This paper establishes the efficient sorting of contests when the actions of workers are not observable to firms and the workers are heterogeneous by utilizing the assumption that the productivities of each type of worker vary with the firms. The previous result of ‘nonexistence’ of efficient sorting of contests is shown due to the strict use of the risk-neutral and separable utility functions. Efficient sorting is possible because both the probability of winning and the level of prizes determine the expected return in contests, which move in the opposite directions. [610]     

转型时期企业投资的两维度环境分析

企业投资的实现需要两个维度的宏观环境:一个是宏观的投资机会环境;另一个是宏观融资环境.宏观投资机会环境主要通过商业周期变化影响投资,但不确定性加大商业周期的变动性,加大对投资的影响.宏观融资环境通过有效的融资体系提高融资资源的有效配置.转型时期,制度的过渡性和制度缺乏使两维的宏观环境具有特殊性,影响了投资的稳定性和资源的最优配置.两维度环境相互影响,并成为宏观经济运行的行为层次上的内因.     

环保投资运行效率的评价与实证研究

近几年来,我国环保投资增长很快,但是我国环境质量的改善却不明显。通过运用“环保投资优先增长模型”,对我国环保投资的运行效率进行实证研究,结果表明:我国环保投资所取得的治污效果相对于其自身的高速增长是不成比例的,其运行效率非常低效。     

论政府在风险投资中制度创新的角色

随着改革的推进和对风险投资认识的转变,风险投资中制度缺陷正在不同程度地得到或正在得到矫正,最主要的制度缺陷是"中国特色"太浓,我们不能否认政府在风险投资体系建立初期的作用,但我们也不能忽视,由于行政权力和行政机制的介入,资本市场行政化,"有计划"的资本市场现象的出现。弱化制度创新的行政色彩,发挥政府的引导和扶持作用,注重发挥其他创新主体参与制度创新的积极性,政府在风险投资中制度创新的角色转换,是我们面临的现实选择。     

外资企业环境绩效的探讨——以上海市为例

本文采用上海市企业的排污和经营数据,分析了内外资企业的环境绩效。我们的研究表明外资企业有更高的环境绩效;然而,外资企业并没有在排污口末端去除更多的污染物,相反甚至更少。这反映了外资企业低的排放主要是因为更清洁的生产过程,而不是因为更多的污染物去除。因此,我们认为外资企业更高的环境绩效主要原因是他们具有内在先进的、清洁的生产技术。     

Foreign Direct Investment and Environmental Taxes

Abstract. This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental policy stringency in a two-country model with trade costs, where FDI could be unilateral and bilateral and both governments address local pollution through environmental taxes. We show that FDI does not give rise to ecological dumping because the host country has an incentive to shift rents away from the source country toward the host country. Environmental policy strategies and welfare effects are studied under the assumption that parameter values support FDI to be profitable.     

Environmental Regulation Induced Foreign Direct Investment

The last decade has witnessed a renewed interest in the relationship between environmental regulations and international capital flows. However, empirical studies have so far failed to find conclusive evidence for this so-called pollution haven or race to the bottom effect where foreign direct investment (FDI) is assumed to be attracted to low regulation countries, regions or states. In this paper we present a simple theoretical framework to demonstrate that greater stringency in environmental standards can lead to a strategic increase in capital inflows which we refer to as environmental regulation induced FDI. Our result reveals a possible explanation for the mixed results in the empirical literature and provides an illustration of the conditions under which environmental regulations in the host country can affect the location decision of foreign firms.     

Voluntary Environmental Investment and Responsive Regulation

Instances of corporate voluntary environmental investments have been rising in recent years. Motivations for such activities include corporate image building, regulatory preemption, and production cost savings. While some of these investments arise from industry attempts to set environmental standards where none currently exist, many investments seem to be aimed at reducing the costs of complying with existing regulations. Using a simple game-theoretic model, we investigate firm motivations for, and welfare consequences of, these types of voluntary investments by focusing on the role regulatory enforcement might play. We find that such investments unambiguously increase when an enforcement regulator acts as a Stackelberg follower (a regulatory structure we refer to as responsive regulation) in setting its monitoring and enforcement strategy. These additional investments may be socially undesirable, necessitating a restructuring of non-compliance penalties.     

论高科技产业化风险投资的环境建设

风险投资是高科技健康发展的必要条件,而其自身发展又需要一定的环境,从而提出了风险投资的环境建设的内容及途径。     

Marginal Subsidies in Tullock Contests

In a general Tullock contest, we examine a situation where a limited resource can be used to provide marginal subsidies to either player (weak or strong), or to increase the prize directly. We show that to maximize total effort, subsidizing the weak/strong player is preferred when the contest is sufficiently accurate/inaccurate. This result generalizes to n‐player lottery contests. In a lottery contest (Tullock contest with ), we derive the optimal scheme for a full range of resource: when the resource is small, it is optimal to only subsidize the weak player; when it is large, both players should be subsidized simultaneously.     

Portfolio Theory and Foreign Investment ? The Role of Non-Marketed Assets

Far from thinking the extent of foreign investment in Australia is large, economists ought perhaps be surprised that the extent is not greater. Certainly, portfolio diversification theory would seem to predict Australians would own a small share of their marketable wealth in Australian marketed assets. We show that when domestic residents in a small open economy possess non-marketable wealth (so that securities markets are not complete), domestic marketed assets may be disproportionately demanded by residents to hedge their non-marketed risks.     

外商直接投资对国有企业制度创新的促进作用

回顾我国20年的经济转型,可以发现经济体制改革与对外开放是一起进行的,对外开放引进了一个重要的制度创新主体——外商直接投资,外资的进入引入了对传统经济体制产生冲击的新制度因素。本文利用新制度经济学的原理,从制度选择集合、市场环境、制度变迁时滞三个方面分析外商直接投资对国企制度创新的促进作用。