财政分权下地区间环境管制的相互影响

本文考察我国财政分权下地区间在环境管制上的相互影响。已有研究强调中国分权式改革对地区经济发展的促进作用,但经济发展带来的严重环境污染问题,要求讨论财政分权对环境治理的影响。本文首先通过一个简单的理论模型对地区之间在环境管制上的策略性行为进行了分析,随后利用我国实际的省级数据对地区之间在环境管制上的相互影响进行了考查。我们的研究发现,财政分权下,地区对经济增长的追求导致地区之间在对环境治理上可能存在策略性行为。在实际的环境管制上,地区之间存在"搭便车"现象,其它地区环境管制对本地区环境管制产生的作用为负,我国地区之间在环境管制上存在一定程度的"竞争到次"现象。     

A Note on Strategic Trade Policy and Endogenous Quality Choice*

This paper shows that some of the main policy implications in Park (2001 ) and Zhou, Spencer, and Vertinsky (2002 ) are sensitive to their assumptions on marginal production costs. The unilaterally optimal policy for investment towards quality improvement is analyzed, assuming constant and non‐negative marginal production costs under vertically differentiated international duopoly. If marginal production costs are different across firms, the optimal policy for each exporting country may be opposite in its sign from that shown by the existing papers under Bertrand competition. The policy reversal may also occur for the low‐quality exporting country under Cournot competition.     

Strategic Environmental Policy Under Incomplete Information

This paper introduces incomplete information into recent analyses of strategic environmental policy. It is shown how asymmetric information between planners and producers affects national incentives to impose strategic environmental standards on domestic industries in international oligopolistic competition. Relative to the full-information case, incomplete information is likely to mitigate allocative distortions originating from strategic behaviour. A countervailing effect, tending to raise distortion, is however revealed from the analysis. This effect is absent when governments intervene in free trade through direct production subsidies. The results suggest that incentives to capture foreign rents are less reduced due to private information, when environmental standards, rather than direct production subsidies, are the strategic instrument.     

A Strategic Approach to Offshoring

In the context of a simple model of strategic offshoring, we investigate the reasons why firms may simultaneously source fragments domestically and internationally. We explore the impacts of offshoring on the production pattern of finished goods, tradable fragment prices, and welfare in a partial equilibrium context. The policy implications of attempts to restrict offshoring are also considered. The analysis shows that an offshoring equilibrium may exist in the absence of comparative advantage in fragments, that offshoring is welfare improving if the costs are sufficiently small, and that attempts (by both countries) to prevent offshoring may paradoxically lower both fragment use and price.     

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.     

Trade,Strategic Environmental Policy,and Global Pollution

This paper examines the effects of international trade in a model with global pollution that accumulates over time because of production emissions in each country. If countries cooperatively determine their environmental policies, autarky and free trade in the absence of trade costs generate the same optimal solution. By contrast, if environmental policies are determined noncooperatively, the effects of trade on global pollution and welfare are ambiguous because policy games can result in multiple equilibria. Although trade increases both the lower and upper bounds of the pollution stock, whether trade expands the range of possible steady‐state pollution levels is ambiguous. The analysis then extends to consider trade costs.     

论我国劳动与增长的战略选择和经济政策

我国的增长方式应该是:尽可能地节约使用资源和资金,尽量利用丰富的劳动力资源加快经济增长的速度。目前实际制约我国经济增长最主要的瓶颈是劳动方面的诸多问题。需要规范国营企业和城镇集体企业劳动者的行为,提高劳动力素质,并扩大开放,使国民经济转向知识、技能和技术的更高级和更有力的竞争。实行节约使用国内稀缺资源的政策;宏观上调节就业容量,使失业率保持在适当的水平上,国家积极地对劳动经济运行进行间接调控;有组织地将劳动力过剩劣势转化为经济增长的劳动力剩余优势;对第三产业的发展在政策上进行扶持;在不影响效率的前提下使收入分配公平化;政策上重视劳动力素质因素对推动未来经济增长的必要性;完善劳动者社会保障体系。     

Financing Higher Education: A General Equilibrium Public Choice Approach*

A public choice approach is used to examine the level of a tax-financed grant chosen by a cohort, allowing for a wide range of interdependencies, including the goverment's budget constraint The existence of an externality is necessary, but not sufficient, for support of a grant It is shown that a majority voting equilibrium exists. Comparative static analyses are carried out using a minimum of assumptions about the structure of the model An increase in government expenditure for non-higher education purposes is associated with an increase in the preferred grant while an increase in private returns to education reduces the grant     

宏观调控中的公债政策选择

发展市场经济，需要加强政府的宏观调控。公债政策作为国家宏观经济政策的组成部分，在宏观调控中发挥着特殊的功能与作用。本文从合理运用公债政策，实现国家宏观经济目标出发，在指出两种体制下公债类型政策差异的基础上，着重考察分析了我国经济转轨期公债政策与制度的市场化变革及存在的问题，最后从合理界定财政职能范围、尽快实现公债类型的市场化转型，调整公债管理政策，加强公债政策与财政、货币政策的协调配合等方面，提出转轨期合理运用公债政策的建议。     

Strategic Environmental Policy under Free Entry of Firms

With direct trade barriers banned, governments may be tempted to use indirect policy tools to interfere with trade, such as environmental taxes. The author uses a model of an endogenous market structure, where the number of firms is determined by a zero-profit condition in one country but is exogenously given in the other country, to show that a government harboring a fixed number of firms fails to affect aggregate supply, and therefore has little scope for improving domestic environmental quality (if pollution is transboundary). Moreover, owing to the absence of a terms-of-trade effect, it diverts from the classical strategic tax rule. The author argues that both governments arguably fix their equilibrium emission taxes "too low," meaning that tax competition plausibly leads to "ecological dumping."     

策略性环境政策:环境税和减排补贴的比较分析

文章把战略性贸易政策模型扩展到环境领域,策略性环境政策认为政府有动机通过降低环境标准补贴出口企业,以达到利润转移的目的.文章分析了策略性环境政策中比较受忽视的一部分--环境技术补贴,本国政府结合使用环境税和减排补贴,我们验证了政府使用策略性环境政策的动机,得到了最优的污染排放税率,认为虽然环境政策仍旧不能消除生产带来的环境损害,但是环境技术补贴提高了本国的环境标准,企业会更少地遇到绿色壁垒报复.     

Strategic Environmental Policy, Clean Technologies and the Learning Curve

In the political discussion, it is often emphasized that the environmental service industry (which produces a clean factor of production) benefits from an early and strong environmental policy. This is especially likely if the costs of production are decreasing over time due to learning curve effects. Surprisingly, the environmental service industry has not been integrated into the theory of strategic environmental policy yet. Our main question is whether a national leadership in environmental policy can pay off if profits of the environmental service industry are taken into account. We consider a two-period model with one firm in each country competing on a third market. Emissions can be substituted by the clean factor when deciding upon the production technology. The unit costs of producing the clean factor in the second period are decreasing in the quantity produced in the initial period. We derive the optimal environmental policy for both periods from a national point of view and show that the presence of the environmental service industry can indeed lead to a national leadership in pollution control.     

The Institutional Foundations of Public Policy: A Transactions Approach with Application to Argentina

Public policies are the outcomes of complex intertemporal exchangesamong politicians. The political institutions of a country constitutethe framework within which these transactions are accomplished.We develop a transactions theory to understand the ways in whichpolitical institutions affect the transactions that politicalactors are able to undertake, and hence the quality of the policiesthat emerge. We argue that Argentina is a case in which thefunctioning of political institutions has inhibited the capacityto undertake efficient intertemporal political exchanges. Weuse positive political theory and transaction cost economicsto explain the workings of Argentine political institutionsand to show how their operation gives rise to low-quality policies.     

Political Measures for Strategic Environmental Policy with External Effects

This paper investigates an environmental policy designed to reduce the emission of pollutants under uncertainty, with the agent problem as an optimal stopping problem. We first analyze the two cases in which there are one agent and two competing agents by following Ohyama and Tsujimura (2005). When we consider a model of strategic agents, we need to analyze the external economic effect that is peculiar to an agent’s environmental policy implementation. Then, to improve and resolve these external effects, we examine three alternative political measures, comprising an environmental subsidy, an environmental tax and an emission trading system. The results of the analysis indicate that the environmental subsidy and environmental tax promote environmental policy. However, they do not create an incentive to be the leader. On the other hand, an emissions trading system not only promotes environmental policy but also creates an incentive for leadership.This paper was previously circulated under the title “Political Measures for Strategic Environmental Policy with Induced Effects”. The authors would like to thank Masaaki Kijima for helpful comments. The authors would also like to thank Alistair Munro and two anonymous referees providing detailed comments and suggestions. This research was partially supported by Daiwa Securities Group Inc. The second-named author was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (2), 16310118.     

Strategic Environmental Policy under Free Trade with Transboundary Pollution

We analyze the effects of trade liberalization on environmental policies in a strategic setting when there is transboundary pollution. Trade liberalization can result in a race to the bottom in environmental taxes, which makes both countries worse off. This is not due to the terms of trade motive, but rather the incentive, in a strategic setting, to reduce the incidence of transboundary pollution. With command and control policies (emission quotas), countries are unable to influence foreign emissions by strategic choice of domestic policy; hence, there is no race to the bottom. However, with internationally tradable quotas, unless pollution is a pure global public bad, there is a race to the bottom in environmental policy. Under free trade, internationally nontradable quotas result in the lowest pollution level and strictly welfare‐dominate taxes. The ordering of internationally tradable quotas and pollution taxes depends, among other things, on the degree of international pollution spillovers.     

Strategic Policy and Environmental Quality: Helping the Domestic Industry to Provide Credible Information

This paper shows that a country can improve an industry's competitiveness by requiring domestic firms to produce at the environmental standards at which they claim to produce or otherwise impose a penalty on those firms found cheating. Competitiveness will improve because this regulation will help the domestic industry to provide credible information about the environmental quality of its production. The credible information will differentiate domestic products from other products on the world market, and in this way increase consumers' willingness to pay for domestic products. Even if the government has no preferences for environmental quality, it has incentives to regulate its cheaters in order to help the domestic industry to provide credible information and thereby improve competitiveness.     

贸易自由化、纵向关联市场与战略性环境政策——环境税对发展绿色贸易的意义

本文在一个两国出口至第三国的连续双寡模型中,研究贸易自由化对均衡环境政策及社会福利的影响。分析发现:(1)战略性环境政策的租金攫取效应可通过中间产品出口实现,但不一定会通过最终产品出口实现。(2)当污染的环境损害程度不大时,贸易自由化将降低各国环境税,从而使各国的环境保护出现"向底线赛跑";当环境损害系数较大时,贸易自由化将提高各国环境税。(3)社会福利水平为双边关税壁垒的凹函数(呈"倒U型"),贸易自由化对社会福利的影响不确定。此外,本文还分析了合理征收环境税对发展我国绿色贸易的意义。