居民消费环境:指数测度、区域差异与政策启示

本文从"安全、便利、放心、舒心、满意"五个维度构建中国消费环境评价指标体系,并基于四川省五大经济区的消费者满意度调查数据及宏观数据,测度消费环境指数并进行区域差异分析发现,四川消费环境指数存在明显的区域差异.从区域间差异看,消费环境指数存在一定程度的两极分化,领先区明显且大幅度高于其他地区;从区域内差异看,成都平原经济区区域内差异最为明显,占整个区域内差异的88.42％,成都的高首位度也在消费环境中有所体现.同时,消费环境发展一般的区域,也可能在单一指标中突出.进一步研究发现,区域差异会导致消费效应差异:消费环境指数对消费的影响也存在两极分化,只有在消费环境指数领先区,消费环境指数才能对消费产生显著影响;而消费环境的区域内差距拉大会影响到消费效应;仅有单项子系统领先的地区,其消费环境并不显著影响消费.因此,本文的政策启示在于:一要持续改善非领先区消费环境,缩小区域间消费环境的差距;二要重视缩小区域内消费环境的差距,降低区域内差异拉大对消费效应的抑制作用;三要全面发力消费环境各方位改善,只有各方位在较高水平才能有效促进消费;四要明确消费环境改善的侧重点,补齐各类型区消费环境短板.     

Pareto-improving Untied Aid with Environmental Externalities

This paper shows that even untied aid is Pareto-improving if and only if the marginal propensity to consume the polluting good in the donor country is sufficiently larger than in the recipient country.     

Environmental Implications of Agricultural Externality: Policy for Socially Optimal Output

Journal of Quantitative Economics - Agriculture externality is caused not only by the presence of a hydrological contamination (a state variable) but also by the method of application of...     

Dynamic Externalities and Policy Coordination

The paper introduces trade into dynamic models with externalities and capital accumulation, and evaluates the efficiency of the Cournot–Nash equilibrium. It considers mixed economies characterized by a blend of strategic and nonstrategic sectors. Also, there are two sources of interdependence: the existence of production externalities and the endogenous determination of market prices. It is shown that policy coordination is not needed when preferences are the same. In this case, the production externalities are internalized, so that an inefficient solution becomes the efficient integrated world equilibrium due to trade.     

International and Intergenerational Environmental Externalities

We examine a world in which policymakers' actions in a given country at a given time have long-lived effects on a common resource: the global environment. We consider the first best in which long-lived planners behave cooperatively, then examine the allocation of resources when there is non-cooperation across countries, across time, or both. Finally we analyze the dynamic behavior of the economy along balanced growth paths. It is found that while long-lived international institutions are necessary to internalize all externalities, cooperation at a point in time may be harmful to future generations.     

Urban Structure and Environmental Externalities

The objective of this paper is to analyze policy design for air pollution management in the spatial context of urban development. We base our analysis on the paper of Ogawa and Fujita (Reg Sci Urban Econ 12:161–196, 1982), which offers a proper theoretical framework of non-monocentric urban land use using static microeconomic theory where the city structure is endogenous. First, we show that when households internalize industrial pollution in their residential location choice, spatialization within the city is reinforced. This impacts directly the emissions of greenhouse gases from commuting. Then, we analyze policy instruments in order to achieve optimal land use pattern when the policy maker has to manage both industrial and commuting related polluting emissions, that interact through the land market.     

企业环境自我规制的动因及其政策启示

环境自我规制解决了传统规制中的信息不对称和激励问题,是对环境规制体系的有效补充。企业环境自我规制的动因主要来自于四方面:提高生产力、迎合绿色消费者的偏好、缓解外部压力,以及作为应对政府规制和市场竞争的一种策略性行为。此外,企业的规模、研发能力、过去的环境绩效等,也对自我规制产生影响。我国尚不具备全面实施企业环境自我规制的条件,但应加强信息披露和对投资者的引导,转变政府在环境规制体系中的作用,为企业提高环保标准服务。     

Consumer Information and Firm Pricing: Negative Externalities from Improved Information

We analyze the effect of consumer information on firm pricing in a model where consumers search for prices and matches with products. We consider two types of consumers. Uninformed consumers do not know in advance their match values with firms, whereas informed consumers do. Prices are lower the greater the proportion of uninformed consumers. Hence uninformed consumers exert a positive externality on the others, in contrast to standard results. This leads to socially excessive investment in gathering prior information when aggregate demand is price-sensitive.     

Incentives for Technology Adoption Under Environmental Policy Uncertainty: Implications for Green Payment Programs

Water quality protection policy in the UnitedStates has been based on the provision offinancial incentives to farmers for adoptingimproved nutrient management practices.Increasing reliance on subsidy programs couldresult in expectations for such programs in thefuture. Using an option-value model thatindicates uncertainty can lead to a delay ininvestment, this paper analyzes the extent towhich uncertainty about cost-share subsidypolicies would impact adoption decision.Application of the model to adoption ofsite-specific technologies indicates thatuncertainty about subsidy policies has thepotential to impact the investment decision.When there is currently no cost-share subsidy,an increase in the probability of an expectedpolicy delays adoption. If the policy is ineffect, an increase in the probability of awithdrawal of the program encouragesinvestment. Cost-share subsidy policy is mosteffective when it is immediately offered andguaranteed that it will be removed soon.     

Price Competition and Consumer Externalities in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly with Information Disparities

In this paper, we extend the model of vertical product differentiation to consider information disparities about quality differences and their effects on price competition. If uninformed consumers overestimate vertical differentiation, asymmetric information is a source of market power and informed consumers exert positive externalities on high quality product purchasers and negative externalities on low quality product purchasers. Such a result is consistent with the fact that information undermines brand. If uninformed consumers are skeptical, adverse selection issues arise and market demands may be perfectly inelastic to prices. With elastic demands equilibrium prices may be either distorted downwards or reflect real quality if the share of informed consumers is suffciently high. Therefore, with skeptical consumers firms may want either to signal quality or subsidize information provision.     

Optimal Management of Environmental Externalities with Time Lags and Uncertainty

Many environmental externalities occur with time lags that can range from a few days to several centuries in length, and many of these externalities are also subject to uncertainty. In this paper, we examine the key features of an optimal policy to manage environmental externalities that are both lagged and stochastic. We develop a two-period, two-polluter model and obtain closed-form solutions for optimal emissions levels under different combinations of damage functions and stochastic processes. These solutions show that it is not obvious whether greater control should be exerted on polluters that generate externalities with longer lags or on polluters that generate externalities with shorter lags. We find that the optimal ranking of polluters with respect to the length of the time lag associated with their externality will depend on (a) the discount rate, (b) conditional expectations of future states of the polluted resource, (c) persistence of the pollutant, and (d) initial conditions.     

Optimal Regulation of Private Production Contracts with Environmental Externalities

We address the problem of optimal regulation of an industry where the production of a polluting output is contracted with independent agents. The provision of inputs is divided between the principal and the agent such that the production externality results from their joint actions. The main result shows that in the three-tier hierarchy (regulator-firm-agent) involving a double-sided moral hazard, the equivalence across regulatory schemes generally obtains. The only task for the regulator is to determine the optimal total fiscal revenue in each state of nature because any sharing of the regulatory burden between the firm and the agent generates the same solution. The equivalence principle is upset only when the effects of regulation on the endogenous organizational choices are explicitly taken into account.JEL Classification: D82, H23, Q50We thank Bob Chambers, Emma Hutchinson, David Martimort and Katleen Segerson as well as the participants of the 2nd World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, Monterey, 2002; the 2nd Annual Workshop on the Economics of Contracts in Agriculture, Annapolis, 2002; and the 1st CIRANO-IDEI-LEERNA conference on Regulation, Liability and the Management of Major Industrial Environmental Risks in Toulouse, 2003 for their comments on previous versions of the paper. Support from the French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development is gratefully acknowledged.     

Optimal Tax Policy, Market Imperfections, and Environmental Externalities in a Dynamic Optimizing Macro Model

This paper develops a dynamic real business cycle model that highlights pollution externalities (on welfare and production) and market imperfections and uses it to determine the socially optimal tax policy that encompasses labor income, capital income, and emission taxes. We show that the optimal tax on capital and labor income only addresses the production inefficiency (and is time-invariant), while the tax on the environmental externalities affects both the production inefficiency and the environmental spillovers (and is time-varying). More interestingly, the socially optimal emission tax will be characterized by a Keynesian-like stabilizer that is designed to mitigate business cycle fluctuations, i.e., that will stimulate the economy with a lower emission tax during recessions. In a positive analysis, we show that the beneficial effects arising from pollution taxation will become larger the greater is the degree of the firms' monopoly power. In addition, a triple dividend in terms of improving environmental quality and increasing employment and firms' profit can be simultaneously realized if the environmental production externality is more significant and if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is relatively small.     

Demand for Environmental Quality: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Behavior in Sweden

In this paper we estimate the income elasticity of demand for recreational services and other traditional groups of goods in Sweden and test for potential changes in such estimates over the twentieth century. Due to the difficulty of directly observing the demand for recreational services, we employ an indirect methodology by using the demand for some outdoor goods as a proxy for the demand for recreational services. In line with most prior research, our results confirm the expectation that recreational services, as a public good, is a luxury good in Sweden. Our results also show that the income elasticities for traditional goods are stable over time, indicating that consumer preferences for expenditure on these specific commodities do not change over time.      

1998年以来我国财政政策对扩大消费需求的实践效果及启示

自1998年以来,我国政府开始积极主动运用财政政策对经济进行宏观调控.扩大消费需求始终是财政政策的一项重要任务.但在实际中,财政政策对于消费需求的调控效果并不明显,对投资和消费的带动作用存在较大差异.这主要是由于财政政策工具使用上存在偏差,以及长期实施积极财政政策所导致的.因此,在新一轮积极财政政策实施的过程中,必须将调控重点转向扩大消费需求,通过使用"差异化"政策、优化支出结构、完善税制等手段刺激居民消费,真正扩大内需.     

发展消费信贷与货币政策的有效性分析

发展消费信贷对于改善货币供应质量、货币政策工具、货币政策的微观基础有着十分重要的作用，从而有利于增强货币政策的有效性。     

环境保护中的博弈思考与政策建议

本文主要针对工业污染,从博弈论角度对环境保护过程中的企业、政府、个人等关系和行为进行分析,得出了政府应该怎样作为才能使环保更为有效的建议。     

环境风险规制政策选择及其对我国的启示

环境规制是控制全球环境问题的重要手段之一.文章从环境风险规制研究现状出发,通过对环境博弈主体的分析,探讨环境规制政策工具的选择,并在对我国环境规制现状分析的基础上,总结对我国环境风险规制的启示.     

环境税经济效应的扩展分析及其政策启示

本文从环境税的理论基础入手,回顾了环境税经济效应分析的几个有代表性的基本观点,认真分析了环境税经济效应传统分析中存在的局限性,并在此基础上将"经济结构优化效应"和"国际贸易受益效应"引入到环境税经济效应分析当中,大大拓宽了环境税经济效应分析的研究视角,最后在环境税经济效应创新性分析的基础上提出了相应的环境税政策启示。