Recycling under a material balance constraint

In this paper we analyze the dynamic implications of recycling for resource use, the level of economic activity and the long-run development of the economy. In contrast to former approaches, we take explicit account of the circulation of matter in the economy. We consider virgin resources and recycled wastes as essential inputs to production. These material inputs either end up as waste after consumption or are bound in the capital stock—depending on the utilization of the produced output. As accumulating wastes can be recycled and again be employed in production, the waste stock serves as a source of valuable inputs in our model. We focus on the implications of recycling-related market failures and the integration of material balances on the dynamics of the economy. It is shown that a market for waste and subsidies to resource extractors and recycling firms can restore optimality in the decentralized economy.     

创业支持政策对科技型小微企业孵化的影响

结合资源依赖理论和组织学习理论，探索创业支持政策、资源整合与科技型小微企业孵化之间的关系。研究结果表明，金融支持对技术资源整合具有显著影响，而对市场资源整合的影响不显著；政府政策支持对技术资源整合无显著影响，而对市场资源整合具有显著影响；营造创业氛围对技术资源整合和市场资源整合均具有显著影响；技术资源整合和市场资源整合对科技型小微企业孵化具有显著影响。研究结论对现有创业支持政策作出了科学论证，也为创业支持政策为何能够推动科技型小微企业成功孵化提供了一个较为合理的解释框架，进一步丰富了创业支持政策影响小微企业孵化的相关理论。     

Sustainability of an economy with an exhaustible resource: A viable control approach

We examine the conditions for the sustainability of a production–consumption system based on the use of an exhaustible natural resource. Instead of studying the environmental and economic interactions in terms of optimal control, we focus on the viability of the system, defined by a set of constraints combining guaranteed consumption and a stock of resources to be preserved at all times, which refers to a Rawlsian intergenerational equity perspective. Using the mathematical concept of viability kernel, which makes it possible to deal with the consistency between constraints and controlled dynamics, we exhibit the sustainable technological configurations and, whenever possible, the policy options and environmental-economic states required to obtain a perennial system. We point out the flexibility of the sustainable “extraction–consumption” choices and we show how they are neither reduced to constant consumption paths nor to Hartwick’s rule. Numerical simulations illustrate the general results.     

Evolution of harvesting strategies: replicator and resource dynamics

Abstract. Economic theories of managing renewable resources, such as fisheries and forestry, traditionally assume that individual harvesters are perfectly rational and thus able to compute the harvesting strategy that maximizes their discounted profits. The current paper presents an alternative approach based on bounded rationality and evolutionary mechanisms. It is assumed that individual harvesters face a choice between two harvesting strategies. The evolution of the distribution of strategies in the population is modeled through a replicator dynamics equation. The latter captures the idea that strategies yielding above average profits are demanded more than strategies yielding below average profits, so that the first type ends up accounting for a larger part in the population. From a mathematical perspective, the combination of resource and evolutionary processes leads to complex dynamics. The paper presents the existence and stability conditions for each steady-state of the system and analyzes dynamic paths to the equilibrium. In addition, effects of changes in prices are analyzed. A main result of the paper is that under certain conditions both strategies can survive in the long-run. Correspondence to: J. Noailly     

Adjusting Green NNP to Measure Sustainability

Weitzman provides a foundation for NNP as the stationary equivalent of a wealth-maximizing path when there is a constant interest rate and no exogenous technological progress. Here, the implications of Weitzman's foundation are explored in a case encountered in resource models, i.e., the case of non-constant interest rates. In a setting that allows for exogenous technological progress, an expression for NNP is obtained that adjusts Green NNP for anticipated capital gains and interest rate effects to produce a measure that indicates sustainability. This result is important when measuring the relative sustainability of resource rich and resource poor countries.     

The appropriation of endogenously provided common-pool resources

Because game theory suggests that the origin of a common-pool resource should not affect appropriation behavior, experimental studies of appropriation from common-pool resources generally presume resources are exogenously provided. However, behavioral economic research indicates that the origin of a resource may affect the use of that resource. We investigate the potential role of resource origin by considering the appropriation of a common-pool resource after users have determined its productive capacity through contributions. Results indicate that resource origin does not significantly influence aggregate appropriation levels but that endogenous resource provision leads to individual strategic behavior.     

产品相似是技术并购的“福音”吗——基于资源编排视角

技术并购是企业从外部获取技术、提升创新水平的重要手段。然而，如何有效推动中国企业开展技术并购，这是迫切需要学者探究与回答的问题。为此，基于资源编排理论，按照技术并购中资源结构化—资源重组—资源撬动的动态演进过程，探究产品相似对各个资源编排阶段的影响。使用文本分析法，利用Python软件对上市公司年度报告进行数据抓取，测算并购双方的产品相似性数值，并利用条件Logit模型、负二项回归法进行实证检验。结果发现，在资源结构化阶段，产品相似有利于推动技术并购交易的达成；在资源重组阶段，产品相似有助于促进知识吸收，并加强对目标方资源的整合力度；在资源撬动阶段，产品相似有助于企业撬动融资环境和竞争环境以获利，并最终提升企业创新水平。总体而言，主并方在开展技术并购时，可以把产品相似作为挑选目标方的依据，从而降低技术并购失败的可能性。从政策看，政府应该加强对上市公司产品信息披露质量的监管及审查，构建有利于企业创新的竞争环境，鼓励企业积极参与技术并购，真正发挥技术并购对于促进企业创新的资源配置作用。     

Static and dynamic efficiency of pollution control strategies

A great deal of the economic literature on pollution control strategies concentrates on the efficiency of environmental policy instruments. Most analytical studies in this field show that market instruments are more efficient with respect to the cost of pollution abatement of a given number of polluters than non-market instruments. According to several analytical studies, market instruments should also be more efficient with respect to innovation in pollution abatement equipment than non-market instruments. In the empirical literature a great number of case studies exist with estimations of the savings of abatement costs of market instruments in a situation without technological progress. Empirical studies about the impact of environmental policy market instruments on the abatement costs in situations with technological progress are lacking.The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. The paper deals with an empirical estimation of abatement costs for the emission of SO₂ of coal-fired electricity units in the Netherlands from 1985 to 2000. First, the working of market instruments and non-market instruments (the existing environmental policy of the Dutch government) is simulated in a static situation. Second, we analyse the learning effects of flue gas desulphurization. The efficiency advantage of market instruments turns out to be larger in a situation of technological progress than in a static situation.     

Easter Island: historical anecdote or warning for the future?

Two standard solutions for the ‘Malthusian Trap’ involve institutional reforms and technological progress. Using Easter Island as an example, we investigate the hypothetical role that technological progress and population management reform might have played in preventing the collapse of the island's civilization. The model includes a composite manufactured good and a composite harvested renewable resource. Fertility is assumed to rise with per capita income. The resource's carrying capacity and intrinsic growth rate as well as labor's harvesting productivity are subject to technological progress. Fertility is subject to population management reform. The model yields a system of two simultaneous, nonlinear, non-autonomous differential equations. We first study the system's steady states. The system is then parameterized for Easter Island and its comparative dynamics are investigated in simulations. We find that technological progress can generate large fluctuations in population, renewable resources, and per capita utility, sometimes resulting in system collapse. With high fertility rates, the population and the resource vanish. None of the simulations investigated here exhibit a constantly growing per capita utility over time. Finally, we evaluate the applicability of these results to contemporary societies.     

Firm exit,technological progress and trade

The dynamics of export market exit and firm closure have found limited attention in the new heterogeneous-firms trade literature. In fact, several of the predictions on firm survival and exit stemming from this new class of models are at odds with the stylized facts. Empirically, higher productivity firms survive longer, most firm closures are young firms, higher productivity exporters are more likely to continue to export compared to less productive exporters and market exits as well as firm closures are typically preceded by periods of contracting market shares. The present paper shows that the simple inclusion of exogenous economy wide technological progress into the standard Melitz (2003) model generates a tractable dynamic framework that generates endogenous exit decisions of firms in line with the stylized facts. Furthermore, we derive the effects of faster technological progress and trade liberalization on export market exit and firm closure.     

Environmental Protection in the Presence of Unemployment and Common Resources

This paper examines the effects of an export tax (on a processed resource good), the number of harvesters and an afforestation policy in a small, open economy with urban unemployment. The export tax increases the urban unemployment rate, but improves the quality of the environment. Here, the optimal export tax is lower than the adjusted marginal environmental damage. Reducing the number of harvesters has a similar resource allocation effect to that of an export tax. However, the afforestation policy can resolve the trade‐off between urban unemployment and the quality of the environment and may also improve the welfare of a country.     

Towards an operational sustainability criterion

This paper examines the concept of sustainability and its implications for environmental policy analysis. It builds on the premise that present society holds a moral obligation to pass on a world of undiminished life opportunities to members of future generations. Maintaining life opportunities, in turn, can be achieved by maintaining or improving a diverse set of resources and capabilities that support a person's freedom to define and pursue her own conception of the good life. On an operational level, this framework points to the following guideline for environmental policy: Protecting the rights of future generations requires either the conservation of environmental resources or compensatory measures (including the provision of substitute technologies) that ensure the fair and proportionate sharing of net benefits over intergenerational time scales. In this framework, resource depletion is permissible only if (with reasonable certainty) it would generate a Pareto improvement relative to a baseline scenario involving strict resource conservation.     

The systems dynamics of endogenous population growth in a renewable resource-based growth model

This paper evaluates the dynamic effects of adding an endogenous process for human population growth into a renewable resource-based economic growth model. Endogenizing human population growth in a static, constant technology form of the model gives rise to a dynamically complex system, with the possibility of multiple steady states of several types, and unusual comparative static responses to changes in the system's parameters. Adding technological progress to the model gives rise to the possibility of multiple sustainable paths for the variables in the system. These results reinforce concerns raised by ecological economists about systems stability and sustainability, since exogenous shocks to the system could move the economy from higher welfare to lower welfare equilibria or, in the model with technological progress, from higher welfare to lower welfare sustainable growth paths. Moreover, this kind of dynamic complexity adds to the management challenge faced by policy makers, who could confront the necessity of maneuvering the economy among different equilibria or sustainable growth paths.     

Technology Shocks and Job Flows

We consider a version of the Solow growth model where technological progress can be investment specific or investment neutral. The labour market is subject to search frictions, and the existing productive units may fail to adopt the most recent technological advances. Technological progress can lead to the destruction of technologically obsolete jobs and cause unemployment. We calibrate the model to replicate the high persistence that characterizes the dynamics of firms' neutral technology and the frequency of firms' capital adjustment. We find that neutral technological advances increase job destruction and job reallocation and reduce aggregate employment. Investment-specific technological advances reduce job destruction, have mild effects on job creation, and are expansionary. Hence, neutral technological progress prompts Schumpeterian creative destruction, while investment-specific technological progress operates essentially as in the standard neoclassical growth model. Using structural VAR models, we provide support to the key dynamic implications of the model.     

Towards an operational sustainability criterion

This paper examines the concept of sustainability and its implications for environmental policy analysis. It builds on the premise that present society holds a moral obligation to pass on a world of undiminished life opportunities to members of future generations. Maintaining life opportunities, in turn, can be achieved by maintaining or improving a diverse set of resources and capabilities that support a person's freedom to define and pursue her own conception of the good life. On an operational level, this framework points to the following guideline for environmental policy: Protecting the rights of future generations requires either the conservation of environmental resources or compensatory measures (including the provision of substitute technologies) that ensure the fair and proportionate sharing of net benefits over intergenerational time scales. In this framework, resource depletion is permissible only if (with reasonable certainty) it would generate a Pareto improvement relative to a baseline scenario involving strict resource conservation.     

沉睡知识对企业技术创新持续性的影响——一个有调节的中介作用模型

沉睡知识是知识经济时代企业技术持续创新的重要途径。为打开不同类型沉睡知识与技术创新持续性关系的“黑箱”,基于知识属性理论,将沉睡知识划分为显性沉睡知识和隐性沉睡知识两个维度,并引入资源拼凑作为中介变量、知识治理机制作为调节变量,构建一个有调节的中介作用模型,提出沉睡知识与技术创新持续性间关系假设,基于调查问卷数据进行实证研究。结果表明：显性沉睡知识和隐性沉睡知识均负向影响技术创新持续性;资源拼凑在两类沉睡知识与技术创新持续性间起部分中介作用;知识治理机制负向调节隐性沉睡知识与技术创新持续性间的关系,同时倒U型调节资源拼凑在两类沉睡知识与技术创新持续性间的中介效应强度。     

Environmental policy and growth when inputs are differentiated in pollution intensity

Environmental policy affects the distribution of market shares if intermediate goods are differentiated in their pollution intensity. When innovations are environment-friendly, a tax on emissions skews demand towards new goods which are the most productive. In this case, the tax has to increase along a balanced growth path to keep the market shares of goods of different vintages constant. Comparing balanced growth paths, we find that tightening the policy stance spurs innovation, because it increases the market share of recent vintages, and promotes environment-friendly technological progress. As a result the cost of environmental policy in terms of slower growth is weaker.     

Dynamics of the North-South welfare gap and global sustainability

The vast heterogeneity among nations in terms of economic and demographic characteristics is evident, despite being overlooked in some global studies. In this heterogeneity, it is possible to identify some distinct aggregate classes differing at some very fundamental level: developing (South) nations and developed (North) nations may have very different, asymmetric problems, goals and structures. This study investigates these two distinct groups of socio-economic systems, as they interact in a context of global sustainability. We identify population, economic growth, welfare gap, energy supply and pollution as key issues and analyze them using a systems perspective. A dynamic feedback model, which discriminates the two groups of nations, is constructed to study the dynamics of variables related to the above key issues. The model is tested using extensive data between the years 1980-2005. According to the reference behavior covering the period 1980-2050, it is not viable to close the welfare gap between North and South, given the current prevailing non-renewable-resource-based growth system. A non-renewable-resource-based system adopted by the economic system of growing South would take the global system even closer to its limits. It is observed that indicators like reserve-to-demand ratio fail to provide reliable signals for a timely transition to alternative resources, and a very serious economic recession due to resource scarcity is likely to develop in the next couple of decades. By coupling the demographic and economic dynamics, it is shown that an economic slowdown due to a resource scarcity may have a dramatic widening effect on the already existing welfare gap. Scenario and policy experiments verify the widely accepted importance of stabilizing the population growth in South, transition to alternative energy resources, and investment support to the South in this transition simultaneously in order to reduce the welfare gap between the two blocks. It is observed that enthusiastic targets for an energy transition may have a serious negative impact on the welfare level experienced in South, whereas an energy transition in South supported by North seems to have the most desirable outcome regarding the welfare gap.     

Sustainability in Closed and Open Economies

This paper discusses unilateral sustainability policies for tradable resources in closed and open economies. The effects of sustainability policies are modeled in an intertemporal, competitive framework by applying different sustainability rules which are introduced unilaterally in the domestic country. The paper shows that no sustainability rule will lead to a slower rate of extraction of the resource. Unilateral policies will lead to an "import of sustainability." It is also shown that the foreign country may well gain in terms of consumption and real income from such unilateral sustainability policies but not in terms of sustainability.     

我国黄金产业技术进步现状及对策研究

分析我国黄金产业技术进步的现状,包括黄金资源、黄金产业发展现状、技术进步状况等。针对我国黄金产业粗放式增长的现状,提出了加大技术进步和产业结构调整力度,提高产业集中度;制定黄金资源开发安全战略政策;增加国家黄金储备量;对技术进步、技术创新给予特殊优惠政策等促进我国黄金产业技术进步的对策和建议。