Towards a unified scheme for environmental and social protection: Learning from PES and CCT experiences in developing countries

Environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives. However, these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments. While so−called payments for environmental services (PES) are increasingly being promoted for environmental protection, poverty alleviation is increasingly addressed by conditional cash transfers (CCT) program. These instruments although aimed to achieve distinct objectives have a number of similarities and challenges in their design and implementation phases. This paper elaborates on these similarities and develops a unifying generic framework that is used to discuss the extent to which both approaches could be unified.     

税制、制度变迁与企业并购的关系研究

随着我国企业并购交易活动的日益活跃和不断发展壮大,我国现行并购税制的完善建设问题也日渐凸出,从理论上对企业并购与并购税制之间的关系进行解析,是探究完善我国企业并购税制的逻辑起点。通常而言,企业并购交易是效率的选择,课于该交易的税收应保持中性,并购税制的变迁及优化完善依赖于税制结构、税种、税率、税基、税收优惠政策及税收征管办法等要素的设计选择。企业并购税制安排应着重从所得税设计、免税并购及免税并购适用条件的设定和完善并购制的时机选择等三个方面考虑。     

论企业并购中的人力资源整合

并购现已成为企业在日趋激烈的竞争环境下谋求生存和发展的重要手段。但是,许多企业在并购过程中,没有进行有效的人力资源整合,导致企业在完成了资本整合之后,出现了大规模的人才流失,对刚刚合并后的新企业造成致命的打击。正确认识企业并购中人力资源整合的重要性并有效的实施人力资源整合,是并购企业急需解决的问题。     

Trade Liberalization and Environmental Taxation in Federal Systems

The literature on trade liberalization and environment has not yet considered federal structures. In this paper, we show how the design of environmental policy in a federal system has implications for the effects of trade reform. Trade liberalization leads to a decline in pollution taxes, regardless of whether pollution taxes are set at the federal (centralized) or local (decentralized) level, and it increases social welfare. The effect under a decentralized system is smaller than if these taxes are set by the federal government, and pollution emissions therefore decline in this case. Moreover, majority bias interacts with trade liberalization if federal taxes are used.     

同行业企业并购决策的同伴效应及内在机制

并购是当前国内外企业常用的发展战略之一,是提升企业竞争力、增加经济效益的重要手段。本文从非理性行为视角出发,采集2010—2018年间A股市场中重大资产并购重组数据作为研究样本进行实证分析。研究发现,上市企业并购决策存在同伴效应;信息传输、软件和信息技术服务等新兴行业的企业同行并购频率对企业并购概率产生的影响小于制造业等传统行业;民营企业之间的并购同伴效应强于国有企业,但同伴效应在不同权属企业之间不具有传递性;高管联结程度高的企业并购同伴效应大于低联结程度企业。因此,建议加强对民营企业、传统行业、高管高联结企业并购非理性行为的监管,避免由于企业盲目跟风给企业绩效带来损失。     

FEDERAL LAND EXCHANGES: 1960–1999

This research estimates the influence of various economic, legal, and political factors on the occurrence of federal land exchanges over time. Economic growth is found to significantly increase the number of land exchanges. The passage of laws related to exchanges and the political affiliation of the president also influence the number of exchanges. Finally, appropriations for land acquisition are inversely related to the number of federal land exchanges.     

The Militarisation and Marketisation of Nature: An Alternative Lens to ‘Climate-Conflict’

Policies addressing climate change are driving major transformations in access to global land, forests and water as they create new ‘green’ markets that reinforce, and attracts the financial grid and its speculators. This leads us to examine the rise of state violence and subsequent environmental policies in forests, transferring into both ‘fortress’ and ‘participatory’ conservation, enhancing this relationship with new environmental commodity markets. We go on to document how the new and intensifying commodification of the environment associated with climate change is manifest in conflicts linked to the UN-REDD+ programme, industrial tree plantations (ITPs), and land-use practices associated with conservation and biofuels. We trace conflicts to business practices associated with land acquisitions and mining practices which claim to address climate change and mitigate ecological crises. This paper thus grapples with systemic issues of the modern industrial economy and the mechanisms legitimising and advancing the militarisation and marketisation of nature.     

自愿参与型环境规制与企业技术创新——公众关注度和市场进程的调节作用

“波特假说”有效性一直是学术界颇具争议的话题，然而现有文献对于自愿参与型环境规制与企业技术创新的关系讨论较少，也缺乏对其作用情景因素的关注。基于2011—2019年730家沪深A股上市企业面板数据，采用负二项回归模型和倾向得分匹配法，分析我国上市企业在市场化进程影响下，自愿参与型环境规制、公众关注度对企业技术创新的影响。结果发现，自愿参与型环境规制对企业技术创新具有正向影响；公众关注度在自愿参与型环境规制对企业技术创新的影响过程中起正向调节作用；自愿参与型环境规制、公众关注度和市场化进程交互项结果表明，企业位于市场化程度较高地区时，公众关注度对自愿参与型环境规制与企业技术创新的调节作用更显著。结论不仅丰富了“波特假说”相关研究，还为我国企业提高信息共享意识以及政府优化市场环境提供了微观证据。     

土地购置行为影响企业创新吗?——来自中国工业企业的证据

近来年,中国工业企业呈现出购置土地和金融资产的“脱实向虚”趋势,在一定程度上影响企业的研发创新行为。本文利用2006—2013年中国工业企业数据、创新专利研究数据及土地出让交易数据,利用PSM-DID模型,从土地购置行为和购置额度两方面探究工业企业土地购置对企业创新的影响。研究发现,工业企业土地购置行为显著促进企业创新,且这一促进作用呈倒“U”型趋势;工业企业购置工业用地行为对企业创新有促进作用,购置商住用地行为则显著抑制企业创新。本文研究还发现,工业企业适度的土地购置会通过缓解企业融资约束和财务风险,扩大企业研发投入而促进企业创新,高额的土地购置则会加剧企业融资约束和财务风险,从而挤占企业创新资金而抑制企业创新。本研究为政府合理监管工业企业购置土地行为提供依据,有助于引导工业企业合理协调“土地购置”和“研发创新”的关系。     

Maintaining the Common Pool: Voluntary Water Conservation in Response to Varying Scarcity

Studies of voluntary conservation response to changing information about an environmental problem have traditionally been synonymous with studies of information campaign effectiveness. As such, they have not been able to capture the response to actual changes in the environment. This paper takes a novel approach to identifying voluntary conservation by studying the impact of changing storage levels on urban water usage in the context of a prolonged drought and a highly ’water aware’ community. Our results suggest that voluntary conservation increases substantially when water is scarce and the public value of the savings is greatest. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of environmental information campaigns in general, and urban water demand management in particular.     

美国政府对联邦土地及其附属资源的管理模式

美国宪法确立了联邦政府对其拥有的土地及附属自然资源的专属管理权,但这种专属管理权的行使不可能排斥州和地方政府的参与。联邦政府与州政府以及地方政府在对联邦土地及附属自然资源的管理上,实际实行的是联邦政府主导的合作型联邦制。在保证联邦政府对联邦土地管理最终决定权的前提下,联邦政府通过制定法律和签订协议的形式与州和地方政府分享权力,以便对联邦土地及附属自然资源进行富有成效的管理。     

Coercive Harmony in Land Acquisition: The Gendered Impact of Corporate “Responsibility” in the Brazilian Amazon

In rural development, women's access to land is recognized as a condition for reaching gender equality. This contribution discusses the tension between this formal recognition and concrete realities in rural development for traditional Amazonian communities by examining large-scale land acquisitions in Brazil, a land-abundant developing country, in the wake of the 2007–08 global food price crises. This study applies anthropological and legal perspectives to analyze problems related to gender inequality caused by large-scale land acquisitions. It argues that inequalities cannot be resolved by simply changing regulations related to traditional communities’ and women's rights and that gender relations and land tenure issues reflect interconnected social arrangements based on historical specificities of traditional communities. Case studies show that land acquisitions by outsiders disrupt these arrangements, despite stated commitments to social and environmental responsibility. Such “coercive harmony” is only unmasked when communities are conscious of their rights, enabling effective use of the legal apparatus.     

Land,Gender, and Food Security

Since 2008, a surge in large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, has been taking place in low- and middle-income countries around the globe. This contribution examines the gendered effects of and responses to these deals, drawing on nine studies, which include conceptual framing essays that bring in debates about human rights, studies that draw on previous waves of land acquisitions globally, and case studies that examine the gendered dimensions of land dispossession and loss of common property. Three key insights emerge: the evolving gender and land tenure literature provides valuable information for understanding the likely effects of land deals; some of the land deal issues transcend gender-equity concerns and relate to broader problems of dispossession and loss of livelihoods; and huge gaps remain in our knowledge of gender and land rights that require urgent attention and systematic integration of gender analysis into mainstream research.     

FARM PROFITABILITY AND BUREC WATER SUBSIDIES: AN LP LOOK AT A REGION

Most studies of irrigation water subsidies focus on farmers' "ability-to-pay" for irrigation-related construction costs without questioning the methods used to subsidize these costs. This article shows how BUREC water subsidies could be eliminated by increasing federal water and power rates on long-term irrigation contracts. The welfare effects of this "desubsidization" are examined for California's San Joaquin Valley, which uses federal power for groundwater pumping and the conveyance of surface water. A linear programming model provides estimates of the change in farm profitability from imposing full-cost federal water and power rates. The desubsidization has a disproportionate impact on growers of water intensive crops while benefiting non-agricultural power users and the U.S. Treasury. This points to the conclusion that charging full-cost rates would redistribute $4.58 million of profit-income per year without significant regional impacts on growers.     

Designing a payments for ecosystem services (PES) program to reduce deforestation in Tanzania: An assessment of payment approaches

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs aim to improve environmental outcomes by providing direct incentives to land managers for the provision of ecosystem services. Participation in PES programs is voluntary, so effective program design requires careful consideration of farmers' preferences. This study quantifies such preferences using a choice experiment. The study site is the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania, an internationally recognized ‘biodiversity hotspot.’ We assess preferences for four payment approaches: constant and variable annual cash payments to individual farmers, a constant annual cash payment to a village fund on behalf of farmers, and an upfront manure fertilizer payment. We find that the manure fertilizer payment was statistically significant in motivating farmer participation while the group payment was non-significant. In addition, the relationship between the likelihood of participation and the stringency of conditionality is surprisingly non-linear. In a test of external validity, average willingness to accept (WTA) values are found to be similar to the average opportunity cost of maintaining land uses consistent with conservation objectives.     

Credit supply,post-acquisition performance and financial constraints

We study the effect of credit supply on the acquisition behaviour of financially constrained (FC) and financially unconstrained (UC) firms. FC firms are likely to conduct acquisitions when credit supply is greater while UC firms can conduct acquisitions whenever a good opportunity arises. We argue that the flexibility unconstrained firms have is valuable. Our empirical results indicate that UC firms outperform FC firms up to 36 months after the acquisition. We also find that increased credit supply increases the probability of conducting mergers and acquisitions (M&As) for FC firms while it has less impact on M&A behaviour of UC firms.     

我国自愿环境协议的第三方主体选择及其职能安排刍议

自愿环境协议在环境管制的实务中得以流畅运用,政府与企业以外的第三方主体对企业环境绩效所进行的评估功不可没。在我国,可由政府对从事环境服务业的法人实体开展资质认证,依此判断这些组织机构是否具备为协助政府与企业实施自愿环境协议所必要的环境审计能力,并根据所获得的结论建立第三方协议参与者官方认证资源库。通过认证的第三方在自愿环境协议中负责对企业进行环境审计、环境目标执行计划书评审和履约绩效监督,企业购买此类环境服务的费用享受公共财政的支持。