The dynamics of environmental innovations: three stylised trajectories of clean technology

In this article, we explore the dynamics of environmental innovations developed by firms to comply with environmental regulations. Our analysis is based on a micro-simulation model of industrial dynamics. The question arises: how do firms competing in the same industry deal with environmental issues without altering their productive efficiency or the performance of the product? We focus on clean technology which seeks to combine environmental and productive dimensions by way of innovation offsets. Our simulations show that an innovative strategy based on a good balance between environmental and productive dimensions takes more time to develop and needs to address a ‘competence destroying effect’. Finally, we study favourable conditions for the development of this type of clean technology and draw some policy implications.     

河北省主导产业竞争力比较研究

河北省作为环渤海区域带和经济带的重要成员,其产业竞争力的持续做强既能为京津发达地区提供保障,又能体现出在经济梯度结构上的价值.基于主导产业的宏微观发展政策分析,河北省应通过政策支持、加大科技投入、推动产业集群发展等举措来强化优势产业竞争力.     

Foreign Investment and Endogenous Protection with Protectionist Quid Pro Quo

The literature on quid pro quo foreign direct investment describes how unwarranted investment may be undertaken because of the endogeneity of trade policy. The quid pro quo is that foreign producers, who are exporters to the host economy, invest in return for a liberal trade policy. We describe converse circumstances. The nexus between foreign investment and endogeneity of trade policy is implicit (not explicit as in quid pro quo investment), and a government with socially correct objectives (perhaps imposed by international-agency conditionality) wishes (i) to privatize a domestic firm by sale to a foreign investor who can provide technology improvement for domestic production and (ii) to pursue a liberal trade policy. The government is electorally constrained by needs of political popularity. The outcome is that efficient private investments may not be undertaken—in contrast with the quid pro quo case where in efficient investments are undertaken. While our model is general, the conditions we describe appear to be in particular present in post-socialist economies. Our model offers a contributing explanation for the slow pace of progress in many such economies, which rely on foreign technological transfer to improve the technology and product quality of post-socialist industry, but fail to receive the requisite foreign investment despite governments' good intentions.     

A Note on Optimal Industrial Policy Towards Bertrand Homogeneous Duopoly

Recent studies in strategic trade and industrial policy analysis suggest that an investment subsidy, in the form of an R&D subsidy, a capacity subsidy or an advertising subsidy, would be a robust industrial policy recommendation towards an international differentiated oligopoly. However, in this paper, we show that this result does not carry over to the case of a Bertrand homogeneous duopoly. This result together with the fact that the optimal industrial policy is to set an investment subsidy when in product market competition firms play a Cournot output game, imply immediately that there hardly exists a robust industrial policy recommendation towards homogeneous goods industries.     

Competition Policy towards Vertical Restraints in Europe and the United States

Following a brief review of the economic analysis of vertical restraints, we discuss current policy standards in both Europe and the United States. Since 1981, U.S. policy towards these restraints has been lax, and no restraints were challenged during the 12-year period between January 1981 and January 1993. More recently, the pendulum has shifted back somewhat and there is renewed interest by enforcement officials in this area. In contrast, European policy standards have been more stringent, and have paid particular attention to vertically imposed restraints that can limit trade among member countries. To a large part, their different treatment may primarily reflect the lack of consensus as to their long-run economic consequences. Consistent policy standards across jurisdictions are not likely to arise until there is general consensus as to the economic implications of these restraints.     

Time substitution for environmental performance: The case of Swedish manufacturing

We extend recent advances in time substitution modeling to a directional distance function framework, in order to examine the environmental performance of firms in Sweden’s pulp and paper industry for the years 2002–2008. Our data allow us to estimate the optimal reallocation of environmental investments, expenditures and energy use to simultaneously maximize production output and minimize emissions in the years immediately before and after the implementation of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. We find some evidence of overall productivity decline when considering both emissions and output objectives, due primarily to technological decline, and that cumulative dynamic inefficiency outweighs static inefficiency. A comparison of optimal investment with observed investment indicates that firms could have improved their performance by reallocating environmental investments to early periods and production-oriented investment to later periods.     

International Trade and the Environment: Theoretical and Policy Linkages

I review and extend three approaches to trade and environmental policies: competitive general equilibrium, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. The first two have surprisingly similar implications: deviations from first-best rules are justified only by constraints on policy choice (which motivates what I call a “single dividend” approach to environmental policy), and taxes and emissions standards differ in ways which reflect the Le Chatelier principle. I also show how environmental taxes may lead to a catastrophic relocation of industry in the presence of agglomeration effects, although not necessarily if there is a continuum of industries which differ in pollution intensity. *An earlier version was presented as an invited plenary lecture to the European Association for Environmental and Resource Economics Conference, Oslo, 1999.     

Investment creation and diversion effects of the ASEAN–China free trade agreement

The ASEAN–China free trade agreement went into effect January 1, 2010 and became the world's third largest FTA by trade volume after the European Economic Area and the North American Free Trade Agreement. This paper focuses on highlighting the impacts of the reduction of barriers to trade on investment in a dynamic general computable equilibrium framework. We present and compare two alternative views/models of investment which yield different investment creation and diversion effects. As a first step, we adapt the dynamic GTAP model to take account of bilateral ownership of investment. Two versions of the model are considered. The first version is an example of applied models of investment demand, while the second is a model of investment supply. The two versions are based on different assumptions in their determination of cross-border investment. We simulate the implementation of ACFTA and we focus on the welfare impacts of investment creation and diversion.     

Cyclical industrial dynamics: The case of the global semiconductor industry

In this paper, we focus on firms' cyclical behavior in the global semiconductor industry. We demonstrate that these cyclical dynamics at the industry level differ from both the business cycles at the macro-economic level and the lengthy industrial technology life cycle. We discuss a range of possible causes of those cyclical industrial dynamics, including the general business cycles as well as industry-specific factors. Our study reports three stylized facts in relation to the cyclical industrial dynamics in the global semiconductor industry: first, the industry is more concentrated during the industry cycle downturns; second, the capital investment of the industry as a whole follows a ‘pro-cyclical’ pattern; and third, firms that pursued a ‘counter-cyclical’ capital investment strategy during the industry cycle downturn have reaped rewards during the subsequent cycle period. These facts suggest that cyclical industrial dynamics, especially the industry cycle downturns, play an important role in firm rivalry, strategic positioning and industrial growth.     

Environment investment： transition from end-investment to multi-investment

Environmental investment must change its direction from end-investment to multi-investment, such as ecological construction, recycling economy and environmental protection. Only it can meet the needs of breaking the bottleneck of resources and environment for Chinese sustainable development. And the transition can hero us realize low-ost and highspeedy increasing of economy, as well as the construction of ecological health, beautiful environment economic development and harmonious new society. Material recycling in ecosystem can run well by self-organization and self-regulation by nature with low-cost and even non-cost. So, the environmental investment in ecological construction should be the profits maximum investment. But it needs country＇s support in financial policy on ecological or environmental compensation. Recycling economy is a brand-new pattern of economic growth, which formed gradually in the course of mankind exploring and practicing sustainable development. Fountainhead prevention, reducing and whole processing control are its significant characteristics, which are digerent from any former economic and environmental protection system. Investing in technology development and relevant industry of recycling economy should be the other major field of environment investment in China in the future.     

城市服务业发展、企业出口与加工贸易转型

文章基于中国经济向"服务型经济"转型及面临产业"空心化"挑战的背景,研究了城市服务业发展对企业出口行为的影响,并识别出其对加工贸易转型的作用.实证研究表明,城市服务业发展提升了企业出口概率,也促进了企业出口量的扩张,并且通过"分工效应"促进了企业的出口,通过"工资溢价效应"抑制了企业的出口.进一步研究发现:(1)持续出口企业、存在时间较长企业以及规模较大企业的出口受惠于城市服务业发展,但外资企业、资本密集型企业以及生产率水平较高企业的出口却会因城市服务业发展而受损;(2)加工贸易企业的出口受到城市服务业发展水平的抑制作用;(3)在剔除加工贸易企业后,资本密集型企业和生产率水平较高企业的出口同样会受惠于城市服务业的发展.上述结论意味着,随着"服务型经济"的临近,寻求服务业发展与加工贸易转型的联动机制及助推新兴产业发展,是应对产业"空心化"挑战的关键.     

VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL ECONOMIES IN THE ELECTRIC UTILITY INDUSTRY: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

ABSTRACT ** :  The empirical literature on the cost structure of the electric utility industry traditionally focused on the measurement of specific technological properties: 1) scale economies in generation or distribution; 2) multi-product (or horizontal) scope economies at one particular stage; 3) multi-stage (or vertical) scope economies. By adopting an integrated approach, which simultaneously considers both horizontal and vertical aspects of the technology, we find the presence, on a sample of Italian electric utilities, of both vertical integration gains and horizontal scope economies at the downstream stage. In the light of recent regulatory reforms aiming at restructuring European electricity markets, our findings have important policy implications as for the proper configuration of the industry. Moreover, this methodology can be usefully applied to the study of the production structure of other public network utilities involved in similar vertical and horizontal reorganization processes.     

Four Simple Tests of Campaign Contributions and Trade Policy Preferences

This paper uses campaign contribution data to examine trade policy preferences among political action committees. With perfect factor mobility, as the Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model assumes, interest group trade positions should depend on their factor of production but not on their industry. We show, consistent with the 2 × 2 HO model, that capital groups consistently back representatives supporting trade liberalization while labor groups favor protectionists. Unlike previous work, we also measure the variation in trade policy preferences within capital and labor groups. We find evidence that the industry net export position significantly affects labor unions' trade policy preferences. Industry characteristics have no impact on capital group lobbying. The former result suggests that empirical analyses of labor PAC contributions that exclude industry characteristics may be misspecified.     

Industrial targeting in free trade areas with policy independence

Abstract.  We investigate the limits of a mechanism for free trade area (FTA) formation that simultaneously satisfies internal industrialization targets. For arbitrary targets, we find necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee that the mechanism is efficient for member countries individually, even if other members do not implement the efficient policy. When the objective is conservative – designed to protect the level of industrialization previously achieved by the target industry – member countries are guaranteed gains from the efficient policy and their FTA participation. The analysis covers cases with transportation costs and explains why minimally restrictive rules of origin support efficiency and policy independence.     

Supranational integration and national reorganization: On the Maastricht treaty’s impact on fiscal decentralization in EU countries

We explore the implications of European integration for fiscal decentralization in EU member states with a dataset on 21 OECD countries over the 1975–2000 period. The difference-in-difference methodology is used to establish causality. EU member states are classified as the treatment and non-EU OECD countries as the control group. The Maastricht treaty is interpreted as a quasi-experimental policy intervention that substantially advanced European integration. Our results suggest that tax decentralization has increased in EU countries after the signing of the Maastricht treaty. The treaty’s effect on expenditure decentralization also seems to be positive, but is less clear-cut.     

"送猪崽"与"折现金":我国产业精准扶贫的路径分析与政策模拟研究

产业扶贫旨在将贫困户的生产活动纳入社会产业大循环,因此其一直是全世界扶贫工作的重要方式和主要目标之一.我国产业精准扶贫出现了两条新路径:一是GTP路径,即向贫困户送猪崽、鸡苗和良种等资本,直接将贫困户的生产纳入当地的产业体系;二是GSP路径,即将扶贫资金折合现金并由贫困户自己决定投资项目和选择产业.文章构建了包括贫困户和非贫困户的微观主体行为模型以及基于农村公平和效率的农村福利模型,分别研究了这两条新路径上贫困户福利和农村福利的动态演变过程,然后使用系统动力学模型进行了政策模拟,拟探索出我国产业精准扶贫的最优路径及其政策支持空间.结果显示:在第3~4年的时间内,GSP路径要优于GTP,但是超过4年,GTP路径上的贫困户福利和农村福利就会累进性超过GSP.而且,在GTP路径上的时间越长,扶贫效果就越好.在中长期,提高贫困户的技术水平,增加贫困户的初始资本额是进一步提高GTP路径上贫困户福利和农村福利水平的重要环节.文章的结论对于提高我国精准扶贫的理论自信,进一步完善我国产业精准扶贫政策体系具有一定的启示.     

The Impact of EMU Enlargement on Structural Reforms: A Political Economy Approach

This paper analyzes the setting of labor market reforms in the European Monetary Union (EMU), as a political compromise pressured by the lobbying of business interests and trade unions. Using a common agency model of lobbying, we model the impact of distorted and non-distorted Central Bank monetary policy on EMU member state incentives to reform its labor market. Paradoxically, a majority of citizens who do not support the reform can lead to an optimal level of reform. We also show that, in a context of EMU enlargement, inflationary policy generates a status quo if there is a majority of non-supporters. Surprisingly, inflationary policy enhances the reform if the share of non-supporters over supporters increases, and weakens it if this share decreases.     

制造业转型升级政策协调性分析

以制造业转型升级相关政策为研究对象，搜集粤苏鄂辽4地省级层面的政策文献，综合运用政策文献计量和政策内容分析方法，开展基于政策发文单位的政策外部属性分析，以及政策工具和产业价值链的政策内容挖掘，刻画地方政府政策在3个维度上的协调性及地区之间的差异，进而为政策改进提供建议。结果发现，目前制造业转型升级相关政策中，基础政策数量偏少；过于依赖供给型和环境型政策工具，对需求型政策工具有所忽视；政策作用集中在研发、投资、生产环节，缺乏针对消费环节的政策。构建的三维研究框架可为分析公共政策的协调性提供参考，研究结论对政府部门补齐政策短板、优化资源配置具有重要政策启示作用。     

International production chains and the pollution offshoring hypothesis: An empirical investigation

Most analyses of the impact of heterogeneous environmental policy stringency on the location of industrial firms have considered the relocation of entire activities – the well-known pollution haven hypothesis. Yet international enterprises may decide to only offshore a subset of their production chain – the so-called pollution offshoring hypothesis (POH). We introduce a simple empirical approach to test the POH combining a comprehensive industrial mergers and acquisitions dataset, a measure of sectoral linkages based on input-output tables and an index score of environmental policy stringency. Our results confirm the impact of relative environmental policy stringency on firms’ decisions to engage in cross-country M&As. Our findings also indicate that environmental taxation have a stronger impact on international investment decisions than standards-based policies. Further, we find that transactions involving a target firm operating in a sector upstream of the acquirer are more sensitive to environmental policy stringency, especially when that sector is highly pollution-intensive. This empirical evidence is consistent with the pollution offshoring hypothesis.     

论资源环境优化产业升级——以战后日本产业结构调整为例

本文以日本战后重化工产业结构调整为例,分析日本通过节能环保成功促进产业升级的要素与经验。二战后日本的产业结构和资源环境保护,以1973年为分界点,呈现出"重工业、轻环保"、"重环保、促发展"前后两个阶段的不同特点。在70年代,面对产业结构偏重,环境污染问题凸显的背景下,日本以节能环保为目标,通过实施环境一体化产业政策、调整投资结构、提高公害治理投资比重;调整能源结构、提高清洁能源比重;调整出口贸易结构,出口产品向知识密集型产品过渡;强化环境立法、促进企业减排;鼓励节能环保科技研发等综合手段,促使产业结构向知识密集型、环境依存度较低的产业结构调整,并促进传统产业升级。日本经验对现阶段我国制定产业结构调整政策、转变经济增长方式具有极其重要的借鉴意义。