Enforcement of Intellectual Property,Pollution Abatement,and Directed Technical Change

We theoretically investigate the interaction between endogenous enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and tax-financed pollution abatement measures. IPRs affect dirty and clean intermediates alike such that higher IPR enforcement may promote the transition to the clean technology, if this technology is productive enough. If the green technology is relatively unproductive, higher IPRs promote the dirty technology while pollution is increasing. As households are due to subsistence consumption subject to a hierarchy of needs, the level of IPR enforcement as well as the level of abatement measures depends on the state of technology and is increasing during economic development. Thus, if the incentive to enforce IPRs is low the level of abatement measures is also low. This argument provides a theoretical foundation for the observed clash of interests in international negotiation rounds regarding the harmonization of IPR protection and actions to combat climate change.     

Pollution Abatement Subsidies and the Eco-Industry

This paper considers the combination of pollution taxes and abatement subsidies when some polluting firms procure their abatement goods and services from an oligopolistic eco-industry. The regulator must here cope with two simultaneous price distortions: one that comes from pollution and the other which is caused by the eco-industry’s market power. In this context, we show that taxing emissions while subsidizing polluters’ abatement efforts cannot lead to first-best, but the opposite occurs provided it is the eco-industry’s output which is subsidized. When public transfers also create distortions, welfare can be higher if the regulator uses only an emission tax, but subsidizing abatement suppliers while taxing emissions remains optimal when the eco-industry is concentrated.     

财政分权、政府激励与环境治理

本文运用中国省级面板数据构建计量模型,分析了在财政分权的体制下,地方政府激励模式对环境污染和治理的影响.实证结果表明,在以GDP为考核指标的激励下,财政分权显著地提高了各种工业污染的排放量,降低了工业污染治理投资额;同时,工业化和城镇化进程加剧了环境污染程度和治理难度.环境问题的改善需要相关部门对地方政府考核机制做出适当调整,地方政府应在其中发挥更为积极的作用.     

Abatement and Permits when Pollution is Uncertain and Violations are Fined

This paper considers a firm’s choice of abatement and of the number of permits if actual pollution is stochastic such that full compliance cannot be ensured. This straightforward extension induces non-trivial and unexpected comparative static properties, such as: permits and abatement can be either substitutes or complements, higher fines can lower the number of acquired permits (or abatement), and higher permit prices can reduce abatement. Yet integrating these reactions into a (competitive) permit market eliminates puzzling features. This is an additional justification of tradable permits over standards, where regulators must cope with potentially counterproductive firm reactions. A first version of the paper was written at the School of Finance and Economics, University of Technology, Sydney and I am grateful for the enjoyed hospitality. I am also grateful for the valuable comments from an anonymous referee.     

Air Pollution and Sick-leaves

During the last decade an increasing amount of studies have investigatedthe relationship between air pollution and human health effects. In thisstudy we investigate how these effects in turn induce reduced labourproductivity in terms of sick-leaves, which is an important factor inassessment of air pollution costs in urban areas. For this purpose weemploy a logit model along with data on sick-leaves from a large office inOslo and different air pollutants. Our results indicate that sick-leaves aresignificantly associated with particulate matter (PM₁₀), while theassociations with SO₂ and NO₂, are more ambiguous. We also tryto estimate the induced social costs in terms of lost labour productivity andincreased governmental expenditures, although these estimates are moreuncertain.     

Lethal Effects of Pollution and Economic Growth: Efficiency of Abatement Technology

The accumulation of pollution negatively impacts human health. Extreme increases in pollution, in particular, may have lethal implications for human beings, and, indeed, all living organisms. This paper thus devises a new model of economic growth that takes into account these lethal effects of accumulated pollution via a pollution threshold to show two key results. First, if an abatement technology is relatively inefficient, there exists a stationary steady state in which consumption and pollution stop growing. Second, if the abatement technology is sufficiently efficient, there exists a path along which pollution decreases at an accelerating rate until it finally reaches zero. In this case, consumption grows at a constant rate.     

Valuing The Beneficts of Air Pollution Abatement Using a Health Production Function A Case Study of Panipat Thermal Power Station, India

The Indian economy today is highly prone to industrial pollution and ismaking compliance decisions in order to meet environmental standards.Environmental regulations impose significant costs upon industry that arefairly high and, therefore, require economic justification. This justificationcan be given by estimating the benefits associated with these costs. Whilethe scientific rationale behind air quality preservation is well understood,its economic rationale for a developing country like India, has to beverified. The objective of the present paper is to estimate the economicvalue that people in an urban area in India (Panipat Thermal Power Station(PTPS) Colony in Panipat, Haryana) place upon improving the air quality.The dose-response method, based on the Gerking and Stanley (1986) model,is used to estimate the economic benefits of air quality improvement. Theseestimates range from one to two percent of monthly income. Income andhealth status variables were significant determinants of peoples'willingness to pay (WTP) for air quality improvements. This lends supportto the neo-conventional wisdom `act now to protect the environment beforeit is too late'. These people are ready to pay for environmentalimprovements. We do believe, however, that the relatively successfulapplication of the dose response method at PTPS colony suggests that thetechnique can be more widely applied in developing countries like India.     

国际石墨烯技术与产业发展态势研究

自Andre Geim和Konstantin Novoselov发现从石墨中有效分离石墨烯的方法以来,石墨烯受到了各国政府及产业界的广泛重视。美国、欧盟各国和日本及韩国等国家,相继开展了大量石墨烯研发计划和项目,各国均以应用和产业化为研发重点及导向,十分注重研发成果的商业化应用。当前,石墨烯技术开始进入快速成长期,正在迅速向技术成熟期跨越,其研发主要集中在4个领域:传感器、储能和新型显示、生物医学及半导体材料。有相当数量的石墨烯研发项目已顺利完成并进入商业化准备期,各国政府纷纷制定了石墨烯"商业化时间表",主流企业成为石墨烯技术研发的主体力量。我国在石墨烯技术研发与产业化方面具备一定基础,但仍待进一步布局,期望所做研究能为我国石墨烯技术研发与产业发展提供借鉴。     

The New Geopolitics of Disease: Between Global Health and Global Security

This article describes the emergence of a new geopolitics of disease following the end of the Cold War and offers a framework for thinking about it. Three main questions are asked. First, why is disease now a geopolitical issue? Second, how has this new geopolitics emerged? And third, what are the implications of the emergence of disease as a geopolitical issue for the meaning and practice of global health? It is argued that disease is now seen as a geopolitical issue in terms of four main dimensions: destabilisation, sovereignty, the instrumentalisation of health, and geopolitical economy. Second, this new geopolitics has emerged in the context of larger debates about globalisation, development and security, and has emanated primarily from Northern institutions. Third, drawing on critical approaches to security, it is suggested that while the securitisation of health offers certain benefits, it also carries risks. The article identifies a number of critical tensions in the new geopolitics of disease as a way of negotiating these risks and anchoring the concept of global health security in a larger vision of health in an era of globalisation.     

Health and Economic Impact of Air Pollution in Jakarta

Jakarta is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Air pollution in Jakarta is above the safe limits specified by the World Health Organization. It is estimated that the health cost of Jakarta's air pollution in 1999 reached $US220 million. In 2001 the government planned to launch a program to control vehicle emissions. This paper aims to estimate economic impact of this program. To achieve this goal, the paper estimates the economic costs of air pollution in Jakarta for the year 2015 with and without the program.     

Flows of Air Pollution,Ill Health and Welfare

We provide a theoretical framework for measuring welfare when pollution influences economic growth by impairing health and driving up defensive medical expenditures. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in practice by applying it to data from Swedish valuation studies designed according to the accounting principles suggested here. We estimate that the negative health effects of nitrogen dioxide emissions amount to 0.6% of GDP in Sweden. We also show that a corrective Pigouvian tax should internalize the direct disutility, reduced labor productivity, and increased healthcare expenditures caused by pollution. According to our calculations, harmful health impacts alone (excluding ecosystem effects) justify 65% of the current Swedish tax on nitrogen dioxide.      

全球制造网络与本土汽车制造业国际竞争力提升

本文对本土汽车业国际竞争力的测度结果表明,在国内市场本土企业经营效率明显低下,在国外市场本土企业产品尤其是轿车和零部件产品的国际竞争力较弱。本土汽车业国际竞争力不强的重要原因是封闭的生产组织体制和跨国公司的分割式产业组织布局,导致本土汽车制造业陷入升级的低端锁定诅咒。为此,中国本土汽车制造业应通过生产组织体制的创新,实现在全球制造网络当中的将本土制造优势和国际技术创新资源的有机协同,逐步获得汽车产业的知识创新能力和掌控汽车产品的价值势力。     

Local versus Global Assessment of Mobility*

Mobility indices are popular tools designed to quantify the extent of income changes by aggregating “local” distributional change into a “global” scalar according to some rule. For some mobility measures, this aggregation rule is only implicit in their standard definition. We derive an insightful approximation to the (statistical) aggregation rule for the important class of mobility indices introduced by Shorrocks (Journal of Economic Theory 19 (1978), 376–93) and further generalized by Maasoumi and Zandvakili (Economic Letters 22 (1986), 97–102), which enables us to characterize their normative properties. We also develop methods for estimation and inference. A substantive empirical contribution emerges from the comparison of mobility between the United States and Germany. Our methods reveal why income mobility is higher in Germany than in the United States: Higher German mobility in the bottom of the distribution is combined with an implicitly higher weighting by the mobility index at the bottom.     

雾霾污染、政府治理与经济高质量发展

本文使用2004—2013年中国286个地级及以上城市PM2.5浓度这一独特的雾霾数据,采用劳动生产率来度量经济发展质量,系统考察了雾霾污染对中国经济发展质量的影响及其传导机制,并创新性地选取能够控制雾霾污染空间溢出效应的空气流动系数以及能够全面度量地方政府环境政策和治理力度的政府环境治理指标作为减缓雾霾污染变量内生性的两个工具变量,在两阶段最小二乘的统一框架内估计了政府环境治理的减霾效果和对中国经济发展质量的影响。研究发现:雾霾污染显著降低了中国经济发展质量;城市化与人力资本是雾霾污染影响中国经济发展质量的两个重要传导渠道;政府环境治理能够有效降低雾霾污染从而促进经济发展质量的提升;雾霾污染对大中城市经济发展质量的负面影响显著高于小城市,且随时间推移雾霾污染的负面效应越来越显著。本文的政策启示是,经济发展质量的提高是经济发展方式转变的前提,政府治霾有助于提升大气环境和经济发展质量,助推中国经济的高质量发展。     

本土化和全球化并存下的企业责任和公司治理(英文)

近几年,公司治理日渐成为新的研究热点,吸引了各界广泛的兴趣。从传统意义上说,公司治理研究的是不同国家背景下的企业内部决策权分配的问题。本文却旨在超越传统观念,试图将公司治理概念与日益凸显的全球化统一起来。 为更好地探讨新的公司治理形式,我们粗泛地把它定义为：多重参与者影响下的、聚焦于企业合法利用国内外资源的企业战略决策。此定义带有与“战略方向”意义相一致的内涵。两者均承认治理决策对企业战略方向有影响,后者决定了企业和股东能否获得好的投资回报。 在战略管理领域,“公司治理专注于解决公司内部决策权分配的问题”（Gollis 和 Montgomery,1997）是一个被广泛接受的观点。传统观点认为,企业决策权的制定应局限于对企业资源有明确主张的内部利益相关者,而今,越来越多的人认识到企业外部的利益相关者也应获得企业决策权的合法权（Hill 和 Jones,2007）。尽管拓宽后的公司治理概念（也就是说,超越企业边界的社会群体与从中选举产生的董事会影响企业资源配置的决策权）常被归入企业社会责任范畴;可一量考虑到企业社会责任涵盖经济,生态和社会等内容,公司治理概念的外延也随之变得广阔起来——它要解决的问题不仅包括如何为公司股东聚焦财富,同时也包括如何对自然与社会环境施加直接的影响。 让我们把基本假设阐述得更清晰些。首先,政府的三个层面,即联邦、州（或省）及地方,对公司治理的影响是有效且关联的;其次,国际关系的描述性效用（可识别为各国基于企业资源决策的竞争性互动）对公司治理的影响越发显著。考虑到影响战略方向与绩效的国际层面互动,我们假设,除了三个传统的政府层面外,还存有重要性不弱于前者的第四层面（称其为超国家层面或许更恰当）。在此层面上,有众多影响企业治理的参与另两种组织（跨国公司、非政府组织）进行了详细讨论。 很明显,跨国公司、非政府组织是影响公司治理的新要素,它的出现已得到文献详细论述（Dah 和Jeegen,2003）。随着非政府组织影响的延展,要掌握当代公司治理的演化,我们需对“全球”和“本土”等几组概念进行扩展。举例而文言主,从“本土”视角看,拉丁美洲仅意味着地球的某一特定方位,如果拉丁美洲真的与世隔绝,用“本土”描述这一时空统一体当然是正确的。然而,由于快速沟通的实现,尤其是互联网的出现,只要点击鼠标,“本土”即刻成为了“全球”。因此,“本土”和“全球”合而为一是全球化的结果。 非政府组织领导者非常清楚全球性的根本改变,他们利用这种改变来增强自己的优势,并依据即定目标最大地发挥该组织的影响力。利用互联网的信息传播或是CNN的新闻报道,基于很低的成本,“绿色和平”组织可在几秒内把一件地区性小事（村落传闻）变成全球性大事（国际流言）。有鉴于此,“本上”不仅仅是方位,它还是发生在这个方位上的所有事件,而这些事件能迅速转化为国际性焦点。无疑,本土和全球已融为一体,我们也必须将他们视为一体。 为进一步阐明公司治理近几年已发生根本变化的观点,本文运用三个安全例来支持这种改变是如何在利益相关者试图影响公司战略方向的情况下发生的。案例一讲述执行墨西哥组装工厂计划的跨国公司回应关于外界呼吁其自主披露战略导向的故事。案例二描写的是沃尔玛在美国某社区建立分店的意图遭非政府组织与当地市民反对而最终落败的历程。案例三介绍多元化的利益相关者（政府、非政府组织、跨国公司、联合国等）如何通过国际制裁、国内立法和行业自治等手段以保护钻石产业免受战略性威胁。     

Pollution Abatement and Productivity Growth: Evidence from Germany,Japan, the Netherlands,and the United States

The passage of environmental legislation was accompanied by concerns about its potential detrimental effect on productivity. We assume inputs can be assigned to either abatement activities or good output production. This allows us to specify regulated and unregulated production frontiers to determine the association between pollution abatement and productivity growth. We then employ our “assigned input” model to determine the association between productivity and abatement activities for manufacturing industries in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.     

日本治理大气污染的主要做法及其启示

通过分析、阐述日本治理人为大气污染源的具体做法和措施,以及介绍日本大气质量监测管理体系和信息发布睛况,可以了解到：日本政府坚持污染治理原则,严格执法,加强技术开发,推动全社会共同参与,实现了污染治理和经济增长的同步发展。日本治理大气污染的成功经验,值得借鉴和吸收。