THE INTERNALISATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES AFFECTING DWELLINGS: A REVIEW OF COURT CASES IN HONG KONG

In 1960, Ronald Coase suggested that there are many methods to solve the problem of externalities apart from imposing Pigovian taxes. Internalisation is one of those noted in his classic paper, ‘The Problem of Social Cost’. This paper studies the possibility of residents receiving compensation from pollutant generators. Data collected from Hong Kong law reports over the past 20 years show that there is forty‐fold increase in number of water seepage court cases since the first case in 1994. The total amount of compensation has also increased greatly. There are, however, far fewer court cases where residents seek compensation from generators of noise and air pollution. This may reflect a combination of high transaction costs and low expected benefits from such cases.     

Should the Good and the Selfish be Taxed Differently?*

In this paper, we consider an environment where individual actions have externalities and two types of agents exist: agents with social preferences (the good) and selfish agents. Selfish agents have pay‐off functions that do not take into account social welfare. The pay‐off of an agent is a linear combination of social welfare and the pay‐off of a selfish agent. We demonstrate that the corrective tax rates that maximize social welfare do not depend on the degree of social preferences. Hence, the good and the selfish should not be taxed differently.     

Why Any Seatbelt Mandate is an Infinitely Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Health Economics Perspective

Abstract

Among the most controversial of public health measures are those that restrict people’s freedom of choice presumably for the purpose of protecting their own health and safety. Mandatory use of automobile seatbelts can inspire allusions to the “tyranny of health” and the ‘health police.” This study revisits state seatbelt legislation, which is in force in all but one state of the USA. In modeling seatbelt mandates as indefinitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) games, the study qualifies and overcomes the limitations of conventional interest group and expressive voting theories. It indicates why and how utility-maximizing players, particularly carmakers, insurance companies, consumer advocates and regulators, may choose to cooperate, even in instances where mutual defection would bring each of them higher payoffs. The study suggests why state seatbelt mandates endure, despite ongoing concerns that they undermine individual autonomy or that their social costs outweigh the benefits of law-enforcement. The evolution and mediating effects of reputation and reciprocity in otherwise highly contestable healthcare decisions are consequently explored. Finally, the study identifies the implications of indefinitely repeated games on the continuing nature of strategic relationships and for mitigating conflict over traffic safety regulation, regardless of time and place.     

Production Externalities and Urban Configuration

We formally explore Jacobs' idea that uncompensated knowledge spillovers are crucial for agglomeration by modeling location-dependent interfirm production externalities in a general-equilibrium linear-city framework. Good and factor allocation, firms' and households' locational choice, and wages and land rents are all endogenously determined. The unique equilibrium urban configuration may be concentrated (with monocentric firm locations), dispersed (with completely mixed firm/household locations), or a combination, depending on the population of firms, transportation cost, and firm-interaction parameters. Due to distance-dependent production externalities, firms will be clustered together in any equilibrium, thus ruling out the possibility of any multicentric urban configuration. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D51, R12.     

The "Invisible Hand"

The argument of the "Invisible Hand" is that the system of free enterprise benefits society in general even though it is not the aim of any particular economic agent to do that. This article proposes an analysis of why this is so. The key is that the morality of the market forbids only force and fraud; it does not require people to do good to others. Nevertheless, when all transactions are voluntary to both parties, that is exactly what we can expect to happen. This is both because the sum of the benefits of innumerable transactions, which are beneficial to both parties, is very great, but also and especially because of Positive Externalities. People use the particular products and services they get in market exchanges in ways that benefit others in ways not at all foreseen by the agents to those transactions at the time. These externalities range from the benefits of invention and ingenuity to the exercise of charity and philanthropy, all of which flourish in developed capitalist societies.     

Supervisor and Market Analysts: What Should Research be Seeking?

This article is primarily directed towards examining the desirability of incorporating market signals in the process of supervision of commercial banks by regulators and insurers. But the ideas developed here can also be applied to the general problem of using market information to assess the solvency and safety of any financial or non-financial institution.Market prices and yields of securities anticipate actions by regulators, central banks, and other players due to the fact that such actions may materially influence the risk and the expected return associated with investment decisions pertaining to those securities. It is well known that the yield curve of government securities such as T-bills, T-notes and T-bonds reflect the market's consensus regarding the actions that the Federal reserve may take as they pertain to the valuation of such securities. The extent to which the market has already discounted the future actions of the central bank will no doubt play a role in the way in which the central bank may think about its actions, its actual effect and how it relates to its intended effects.The extent to which market prices can provide useful guides depends on the underlying market structure and the practices in the industry.While markets may do lot of the hard work in aggregating and incorporating future actions, the task of supervision and regulation can never be put on automatic pilot. Ideally, supervisory policies should effectively combine the market signals with initiatives that serve to maintain the safety and the soundness of the underlying markets. I will begin by exploring the extent to which equity prices may be used as a signal of bank credit risk. I will then explore the advantages and disadvantages of using subordinated debt securities to derive a market signal.     

Sickness absence and health care in an economic federation

This paper addresses vertical fiscal externalities in a model where the state governments provide health care and the federal government provides a sickness benefit. Both levels of government tax labor income and policy decisions affect labor income as well as participation in the labor market. The results show that the vertical externality affecting the state governments’ policy decisions can be either positive or negative depending on, among other things, the wage elasticity of labor supply and the marginal product of expenditure on health care. Moreover, it is proved that the vertical fiscal externality will not vanish by assigning all powers of taxation to the states.      

外部性与产业增长——来自中国省级面板数据的研究

本文利用我国29个省、市、自治区25个产业的面板数据研究了外部性对于地区产业增长的影响,结果发现:在全国样本范围内,专业化水平与产业增长之间存在着负向关系;竞争程度与地区产业增长之间存在着正向关系;多样化程度与产业增长之间存在着一种非线性关系,当多样化程度较低时,多样化不利于产业增长,而当多样化水平较高时,多样化则会促进产业增长。在分地区分产业的分析中,产业多样化水平对经济增长的作用在很大程度上取决于产业的性质(高度规模经济产业或低度规模经济产业)及产业的地理区位(沿海地区或内陆地区)。     

环境资源配置中的市场失灵

本文分析了在环境经济领域市场失灵的原因是由环境问题的外部性、环境质量的公共物品性和环境资源产权不清而引起的由此提出了纠正市场失灵的对策；主要靠征税、企业合并、科斯交易、产权界定和政府干预等措施。     

代际公共品供给视角下的环境规制研究

从代际维度看,环境规制的成本主要发生在当代,其影响却超出了一代以上人的范围,因此,环境规制不仅是一种一般性公共品的供给,也是一种代际公共品的供给。由于环境规制的成本与收益在代际间的不对称,通常具有正的代际外部性,因而在现实中往往出现供给不足的趋势。