Environmental depletion,defensive consumption and negative externalities

This paper analyses economic dynamics in a context in which the production and consumption choices of economic agents generate environmental degradation. Agents can defend themselves from environmental degradation by increasing the production and consumption of output, which is assumed to be a (perfect) substitute for environmental quality. We consider the cases in which agents can coordinate their actions or not, and we show that if the dynamics is conditioned by negative externalities (so that there is no coordination), then a self-reinforcing mechanism may occur leading to production and consumption levels higher than the socially optimal ones. A complete analysis of the dynamics and of the welfare properties of the stationary states is provided.     

Improving footprint calculations of small open economies: combining local with multi-regional input–output tables

In a small, open and resource-poor economy, import and export dependency have an ever-growing impact on local policy decisions, which makes local (environmental) policy-makers increasingly depend on global data. This increases the interest in models that link local production and consumption data to global production, trade and environmental data. The recent increase in availability of global environmentally extended multi-regional input-output tables (EE-MRIO tables) provides an opportunity to link them with existing local environmentally extended input-output tables (EE-RIO tables). These combined tables make it possible (1) to analyse the links between local and global production and consumption and (2) to study global value chains, material use and environmental impacts simultaneously. However, estimations using input-output (I–O) analyses contain errors due to imperfect databases. In this article the magnitude of specification, aggregation and time errors are estimated and compared. The results show the need to combine local datasets with multi-regional ones and show that highest detailed (country and sector levels) as well as time series of I–O tables are the way forward for using I–O analyses in local policy-making. The paper provides guidance on trading off investments in model adoption and/or extension and the reliability of estimation results.     

Internalizing intergenerational externalities by regionalization

The emission of long-lived pollutants and public debt policies are related by the joint problem of intergenerational externalities. This paper examines both phenomena from the local perspective, in a model with interregional household mobility. We conclude that local environmental agencies have incentives to internalize all intergenerational pollution externalities, provided all rents of immobile production factors, including waste emissions, are appropriated by the regions. Contrary to widespread belief, however, neutrality of local public debt is not guaranteed in general. Shifts in the intertemporal pattern of local taxes change the net wealth of local property owners if distortionary residence-based taxes are imposed to service the local debt.     

Knowledge Content and Worker Participation in Environmental Management at NUMMI

ABSTRACT This paper looks at, within the context of lean production, how and in what ways employees participate in environmental improvements. The paper uses data from an automobile plant well known for its participative work structures, New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI), to look more closely at the dynamics of worker participation in environmental management (i.e. management of pollution and waste). Findings show that while workers possess important contextual knowledge, the importance of process, intra‐organizational and external knowledge make the role of specialist staff (both internal and external to the environmental function) critically important for environmental improvements. Additionally, environmental improvements often required a combination of more than one knowledge type. The paper discusses how the culture and management structure at NUMMI and other lean plants encourage this combination. Implications for environmental management, lean production, and future research on worker participation are discussed.     

Contesting Eco-Urbanism from Below: The Construction of ‘Zero-Waste Neighborhoods’ in Chinese Cities

How should we understand the recent rapid spread of eco-urbanism around the world and its move into the mainstream? This understanding has become increasingly dominated by narratives of the urban sustainability fix, which stresses the logic of capital accumulation. Within the broader structural processes of ecological modernization, such as transitioning to low-carbon growth, consideration of—let alone interest in—the diversity of local politics that shapes the practice and forms of contestation of eco-urbanism has often been relegated to a position of secondary importance. Meanwhile, investigations of the relationship between the growth of climate governance and grassroots environmental activism often ignore space production as an underlying process of political-economic transformation. Drawing on a detailed case study of the prevalence of zero-waste neighborhood experiments in many Chinese cities, which have recently become obsessed with low-carbon growth, this article underscores the potential of grassroots activism to change the nature, dynamics and landscape of eco-urbanism significantly. On the basis of the intriguing evidence presented here, it calls for a new understanding of eco-urbanism: one which is more attentive to the diversity, heterogeneity and contextual sensitivity of urban change at the grassroots level.     

西部工业企业环境意识调查研究——基于石嘴山市调查数据的分析

本文通过对当地工业企业及其有关人员的环境意识有关方面调查后认为,企业应提高各部门人员参与企业环境管理工作的积极性;地方政府推行环保生产中小企业是重点,应制定政策进行规范和引导当地企业的环境信息披露;各级地方政府在引进外资时还应注意避免发达国家对我国进行的环境侵害。     

Decentralized environmental regulations and plant‐level productivity

Using the framework provided by the Porter hypothesis, we study the impact of environmental regulations and enforcement policies on plant‐level green total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components related to efficiency change and technical change. The detailed microdata we use are from Sweden and for the pulp and paper industry. This industry is the source of significant amounts of water and air pollution and is one of the most heavily environmentally regulated manufacturing industries. Sweden has a unique decentralized regulatory structure where the manufacturing plants have to comply with plant‐specific regulatory standards stipulated at the national level, as well as decentralized local supervision and enforcement. Our empirical results point to beneficial impacts of the environmental policies on plants' green TFP growth and sustainable production practices. We also find that political economy considerations are important, as the presence of the Green Party and aspects like plant size (with corresponding local and regional economic effects) matter in enforcement of the standards.     

Sustainable supply chains: An introduction

Consideration is given to the convergence of supply chains and sustainability. In doing so, the focus on environmental management and operations is moved from local optimization of environmental factors to consideration of the entire supply chain during the production, consumption, customer service and post-disposal disposition of products. This is a critical and timely topic that captures increasing concerns over sustainability, whether driven by current legislation, public interest, or competitive opportunity. As such, sustainable development is a rich area for academic research that is still in its infancy and has the potential to affect future government policy, current production operations, and identify new business models. This paper provides a background to better understand current trends in this multidisciplinary field that intersect with operations management, and the research opportunities and challenges it presents.     

Transboundary pollution externalities: Think globally,act locally?

We analyze the implications of transboundary pollution externalities on environmental policymaking in a spatial setting, in which pollution diffuses across the global spatial economy independently of the specific location in which it is originally generated. This framework gives rise to a simple regional optimal pollution control problem allowing us to compare the global and local solutions in which, respectively, the transboundary externality is and is not taken into account in the determination of the optimal policy by individual local policymakers. We show that it is not obvious that transboundary externalities are a source of inefficiency per se since this is strictly related to the spatial features of the initial distribution of pollution. If the initial pollution distribution is spatially homogeneous then the local and global solutions will coincide and thus no efficiency loss will arise from transboundary externalities, but if it is spatially heterogeneous the local solution will be suboptimal and thus a global approach to environmental problems will be needed to achieve efficiency. From a normative perspective, in this latter (and most realistic) case we also quantify the amount of policy intervention needed at local level in order to achieve the globally desirable goal of pollution eradication in the long run. Our conclusions hold true in a number of different settings, including situations in which the spatial domain is either bounded or unbounded, and situations in which macroeconomic–environmental feedback effects are taken into account.     

Regional integration,international liberalisation and the dynamics of industrial agglomeration

This paper presents a 3-region footloose-entrepreneur new economic geography model. Two symmetric regions are part of an economically integrated area (the Union), while the third region represents an outside trade partner. We explore how the spatial allocation of industrial production and employment within the Union is affected by changes in two aspects of trade liberalisation, regional integration and globalisation, conditional to the skill endowment and the market size of the outside region. Our main contribution pertains to the analysis of the local and global dynamics of the specified factor mobility process. We show that significant parameter ranges exist for which an asymmetric distribution of economic activities is one of the possible long-run outcomes which may allow a smooth transition to agglomeration (in contrast to the NEG typical catastrophic scenario). In addition, we show that multistability is pervasive and that some attractors are Milnor attractors. Both results reinforce the NEG narrative on the importance of initial conditions for the long-run location of industrial activity.     

Impatience, pollution, and indeterminacy

This paper examines an equilibrium growth model in which production activities generate environmental pollution that has a negative welfare effect and in which individual households' subjective discount rate is a function of individual consumption, which is internal to each household, and of total pollution, which is an external factor to the individual agents. It is shown that there may exist multiple steady states and that the dynamic equilibrium may display indeterminacy, depending on the properties of the discount-rate function, the pollution-capital relationship in production technology, and the pollution-consumption relationship in instantaneous utility. The long-run effects of tighter environmental policy are subsequently examined, and the results are also found to be dependent on the above factors.     

Neighborhood effects,college education,and social mobility

This study models the impact of environmental factors on upward social mobility, where the educational environment is measured by the proportion of college-educated individuals, and social mobility is measured by a change in proportion of people in different income classes. The dynamics of the educational environment is modeled using a modified version of the invasion/extinction ecological model of Richard Levins. The educational environment influences the educational choices of poor people, becoming effective only after a threshold point is reached. The rate of growth in influence is modeled using a monotonically increasing saturation function, which includes a delay parameter referred to as handling time, that measures the speed of influence. Our simulations indicate that poor people choose to become educated at a rate that primarily depends on the density of the local environment.     

Spinoff dynamics beyond clusters: pre-entry experience and firm survival in peripheral regions

This paper investigates local spinoff dynamics in manufacturing industries in peripheral areas. It focuses on the question whether local inheritance of competences and routines from parent firm to spinoff is also relevant for firm survival in peripheral areas. The analysis is based on a unique data-set, tracking all manufacturing firms at five observation points during the time span of 1980–2004 in two case study regions in Switzerland. The results show that the local inheritance of capabilities gives spinoffs a competitive advantage in peripheral regions as well. Further, the findings suggest that spinoff dynamics differ between different types of peripheral regions, depending on their varying local economic conditions. Finally, spinoff dynamics in the periphery might be characterized by a stronger hostility of larger parent firms towards spinoffs. This research adds a distinct peripheral perspective to the entrepreneurial heritage literature and advocates for a more nuanced discussion on spinoff dynamics in varying geographical settings.     

The impact of environmental corruption on green consumption: A quantitative analysis based on China's Judicial Document Network and Baidu Index

In developing countries, green consumption is still in its infancy, and the institutional environment is very important for it. In the implementation of environmental policies to stimulate green consumption, environmental corruption may affect production cost or residents' environmental responsibility. This paper aims to reveal the impact of environmental corruption on green consumption, quantify environmental corruption by collecting the cases of China's Judicial Document Network, and quantify green consumption by constructing an evaluation index system based on Baidu Index. First, baseline results show that environmental corruption is negatively correlated with green consumption. Second, impact path test is carried out from production side, sales side and consumption side. In the production side, environmental corruption inhibits green consumption by weakening green products quality and environmental investment. In the sales side, environmental corruption suppresses green consumption by weakening sales expenses and market share of green products. In the consumption side, environmental corruption inhibits green consumption by reducing government information disclosure and environmental responsibility. Third, threshold effect test is carried out from the perspective of economic basis and human capital basis. The impact of environmental corruption on green consumption is not significant as per capita GDP is lower than 9600 yuan. As the per capita GDP is higher than 13000 yuan, the inhibition of environmental corruption on green consumption is weakened. As the average education is more than 8.14 years, the inhibition effect is significantly weakened. Fourth, this paper compares the spatial impact of different types of environmental corruption on surrounding green consumption by building a spatial Durbin model. Environmental bribery has a higher inhibition on local green consumption, and environmental malfeasance has a higher negative impact on surrounding green consumption.     

Environmental regulation and the industrial sector in China: the role of informal relationships in policy implementation

This paper focuses on the relationship between environmental regulators and industrial enterprises in China. There are widely recognized ‘implementation gaps’ in the Chinese environmental protection system. Previous studies have attributed such gaps to a combination of factors including legislative shortcomings, poorly designed policy instruments, an unsupportive work environment for environmental regulators, and a pro-growth political and social environment. The present paper seeks to extend the analysis by examining the role of informal relationships between individuals and organizations, and their mediating influence on the implementation of environmental policy measures. We argue that such relationships, which reflect a cultural predisposition to harmony and consensus-building among key actors, play an important role in determining how environmental policies are implemented, and how stringently regulations are enforced at the local level. Given the importance of decentralized implementation responsibilities in China, weaknesses in the system at the local level can constrain the achievement of national environmental policy objectives. A model of the implementation process is presented, and case studies from the industrial city of Foshan in Guangdong Province are used to illustrate the role played by personal and organizational relationships (guanxi) among environmental regulators and industrial polluters. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Identifying the moderating influences of external environments on new product development process

Few studies have attempted to investigate the following: (1) whether the firm's core capabilities or resources and routines (e.g., integration among functions) for product development, in the presence of environmental dynamics, become incumbent inertia or core rigidities? and (2) how environmental dynamics affect the influence of a project team's implementation capabilities in the new product development (NPD) process on new product launch performance? This study approaches these questions by addressing the three most indispensable NPD process components (i.e., marketing, technology, and organization) and incorporating new moderators, namely pace of technological change and competitive intensity, within a single study. It specifically examines the extent to which the latter two external environmental variables moderate the impact of NPD practices on new product launch outcome. Data obtained from a survey of NPD projects developed and launched by Korean manufacturers suggest that environmental dynamics would reduce the contribution of functional-specific sources of advantage (resources) and project-specific sources of advantage (e.g., integration among functions) to organizational implementation capabilities (i.e., a project team's proficiency in executing NPD activities). Moreover, the research also shows that market dynamics may increase the contribution of organizational implementation capabilities to NPD project performance.     

Assessing multi-dimensional performance: environmental and economic outcomes

This study examines economic performance, environmental performance, and regulatory activity for plants in three industries: pulp and paper, oil, and steel. Stochastic frontier production function models show significant deviations from production efficiency. Older plants are less efficient in production, but perform no worse on emissions. Plants spending more on pollution abatement tend to do worse on both production efficiency and emissions. Stricter local regulatory pressure is associated with somewhat lower emissions, but has mixed effects on production efficiency. Positive correlations between SUR residuals for emissions and production efficiency suggest unmeasured plant-level characteristics that drive both economic and environmental performance.

解析城市园林绿化养护管理的几个问题

园林绿化是保护环境的有效手段之一,就此论述了城市园林绿化养护中存在的问题,主要是设计无新意;种植不合理;管理不科学;环保意识弱。分别从科学规划、因地制宜;改良土壤、科学种植;加强保护和提高市民环保意识等方面阐述了解决对策。     

Interindustry analysis for regional growth and development: The dynamics of manpower issues

Simulations of two scenarios to illustrate processes of regional interindustrial growth and development suggest the dynamics of manpower issues. Using the core of the Sequential Interindustry Model, SIM, the dynamics by which interindustry production supplies continuing final markets is presented and the resulting industry production chronologies illustrated. The latter are transformed into employment chronologies from which labor requirements are computed as distributions of potential jobs by job duration and job starts.Adjustments in potential jobs to represent the dynamic linkages between manpower demand and supply in fluctuating labor markets are discussed as an extension of adaptive behavior in SIM. An encompassing impact dynamics framework for manpower assessment is suggested, including examination of management options of both demand and supply for timely impact mitigation.     

生态环境现状及治理模式研究——以辽宁凤城市翁泉沟硼铁矿为例

矿产资源开发已成为我国国民经济增长的重要手段。但矿山开采又引发了一系列生态环境问题,导致矿区生态退化与环境污染,严重制约了矿区社会经济的可持续发展。文章以凤城市翁泉沟硼铁矿为例,系统分析了硼铁矿山生态环境现状及存在主要问题,并结合当地实际情况对矿山治理恢复的模式进行探讨。