Energy efficiency promotion backfires under cap-and-trade

Major climate-cum-energy policies and respective impact projections rest on the widespread belief that increased energy efficiency can be equated with savings in energy use and emissions. This belief is flawed. Due to the rebound effect emissions savings from energy efficiency improvements will be generally less than what is technically feasible, or even be reversed. By means of an analytical general equilibrium model we demonstrate the latter to be true in a case that is both stark and relevant: if electricity generation is subject to a cap-and-trade scheme with partial coverage, increased efficiency of electric devices leads unambiguously to increased carbon emissions. The result implies that a proper distinction between the energy rebound and the carbon rebound is warranted, and that public policy must carefully consider the interactions between energy efficiency promotion and carbon pricing.     

多元化并购、资源基础与制造企业服务化转型——基于fsQCA的多案例分析

为探究制造业企业通过并购实现服务化的转型路径,以2014—2018年制造企业并购服务企业并购事件为研究对象,运用组态思维和fsQCA方法,选取“基于并购的资源获取”和“并购后资源整合”两个维度的5个前因条件,讨论前因变量组合与制造业服务化转型之间的复杂因果机制。结果表明,制造业服务化转型存在3条转型路径,即研发能力驱动型、财务能力驱动型和服务化经验驱动型。通过分析路径和典型案例,发现：并购标的企业的盈利能力与研发能力均能衡量服务型资源质量且二者具有替代效应;并购方财务柔性在并购后整合与服务化转型中具有重要作用;并购方服务化经验有助于并购后整合。     

Incentives and the Sorting of Altruistic Agents into Street‐Level Bureaucracies*

Many street‐level bureaucrats have the dual task of helping some clients, while sanctioning others. We develop a model of a street‐level bureaucracy, and we study the implications of its personnel policy on the self‐selection and allocation decisions of agents who differ in altruism towards clients. When bureaucrats are paid flat wages, they do not sanction, and the most altruistic types sort into bureaucracy. Pay‐for‐performance induces some bureaucrats to sanction, but it necessitates an increase in compensation, which can result in sorting from the top and bottom of the altruism distribution. We also explain why street‐level bureaucrats often experience an overload of clients.     

Total‐Factor Energy and Emission Efficiencies of ASEAN and Other Asian Economies

This research uses the slack‐based measure data envelopment analysis to compute the energy and emission efficiencies of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other Asian economies during the 2001–2017 period, employs the Malmquist productivity index to check for the main source of efficiency score changes due to technical changes, and then applies panel Tobit regressions to determine the factors explaining the efficiencies. Our empirical results show that the energy efficiency scores of ASEAN economies had been catching up to other Asian economies after the Global Financial Crisis, whereas the emission efficiency scores of various ASEAN economies had been falling behind other Asian economies over the same period. The main source of efficiency score changes over time is efficiency changes and not technical changes. Decreases in the fossil fuel ratio of net electricity generation and the secondary industry ratio within total industry improve both lead to improvements in energy and emission efficiencies.     

中国金融结构问题与M2/GDP偏高现象研究

上世纪90年代中期尤其是1997年之后,流动性过剩和资产价格剧烈波动成为中国经济运行中的典型现象,表现为货币供给量的变化和实体经济变量即产出和物价变化的脱节———M2/GDP偏高现象。根据宏观经济学的分析框架,货币总量与名义GDP之比作为衡量流动性过剩的尺度,反映了货币供求状态与实体宏观经济总量之间的关系。当流动性过剩成为持续现象时,说明相对于实体经济形成的总供给,货币市场持续出现超额供给,即货币市场提供的一部分货币资金没有流向实体经济,或投入到实体经济的货币资金没有形成真实的商品供给。由于现代货币制度下,货币供给量与金融体系提供的信贷规模和信贷资金流向紧密联系。因此考察流动性过剩现象应该更多关注金融结构,进而金融资源的配置方式和效率的变化。本文结合金融结构发展情况分析中国M2/GDP偏高现象,揭示金融结构发展中的问题并提出相应对策。     

Price discovery and intermediation in linked emissions trading markets: A laboratory study

Many new and proposed emissions trading systems involve multiple countries and regions. The introduction of interregional trading raises questions about how flexible state- or national-level authorities should be in allowing individual firms to trade with firms or authorities in other states or countries. This paper uses laboratory methods to evaluate the efficiency and pricing performance of linking trading across regions at the firm-to-firm level. In one treatment, individual firms trade directly with firms or authorities in other regions. We compare performance in this treatment to an intergovernmental trading treatment, where emissions trading is restricted to occur only between intermediaries. A baseline treatment of autarky, where firms only trade with other firms in their country or region, provides a benchmark to assess the efficiency benefits of allowing linking. Although efficiency and price discovery are both improved by allowing intermediation in linked permit markets, we find that further gains can be realized through direct firm to firm trading. Buyers in high cost regions and sellers in low cost regions benefit the greatest from linking.     

Issues in environmental justice within the European Union

This paper surveys pressing issues facing current and future social policies in the European Union (EU) at the juncture of social justice demands and environmental concerns. European policy-makers have in fact only recently acknowledged the notions of environmental justice and environmental inequalities, which have been part of the US policy arsenal for almost two decades. Yet, challenges to equality and fairness in the environmental domain are many and growing within the European Union. After having defined environmental justice and environmental inequalities in the European context, the paper addresses two contemporary dimensions of those challenges for EU social policies: vulnerability and exposure to environmental disaster and risk; and fairness in environmental taxation and the related issue of fuel poverty.     

Back to Buchanan? Explorations of welfare and subjectivism in behavioral economics

In light of behavioral findings regarding inconsistent individual decision-making, economists have begun to re-conceptualize the notion of welfare. One prominent account is the preference purification approach (PP), which attempts to reconstruct preferences from choice data based on a normative understanding of neoclassical rationality. Using Buchanan’s notion of creative choice, this paper criticizes PP’s epistemic, ontological, and psychological assumptions. It identifies PP as a static position that assumes the satisfaction of given ‘true preferences’ as the normative standard for welfare. However, following Buchanan, choice should be understood dynamically as a process whereby preferences constantly regenerate. Accordingly, the meaning of welfare emerges from an ongoing quest for individual self-constitution. If this holds true, then rationality axioms cannot serve as a priori normative standards. Instead, creative imagination and learning processes must remain central to any understanding of welfare in economics.     

SHIRKING,STANDARDS AND THE PROBABILITY OF DETECTION

By relaxing the common efficiency wage assumption of exogenous shirking detection probabilities, we demonstrate how standards and efficiency wages are related. In a more general setting where the probability of detection depends upon the equilibrium effort level of non‐shirkers, we show that the uniformly positive (negative) supply‐side relationship between wages (unemployment insurance) and effort is no longer guaranteed. Profit maximization on the part of the firm, however, ensures that effort will depend positively (negatively) on wages (unemployment insurance) in equilibrium.     

THE EFFECT OF GOVERNMENT POLICY ON TOBACCO ADVERTISING STRATEGIES

This paper contributes to the very limited literature examining the factors determining tobacco companies' advertising strategies. The paper explores whether firms in the UK tobacco market significantly changed their advertising expenditure in the face of proposed changes to the UK and European Commission tobacco advertising legislation. The results suggest that changes in legislation have little impact on firms' advertising strategies for existing brands, but that legislative changes impact upon product launch dates. Our results also offer some information on the nature of firm interdependencies in the UK tobacco industry.