中国工业环境效率的库兹涅茨曲线检验

本文测算了我国284个城市工业部门的环境效率,并分析了环境效率与经济增长的关系,从一个新视角检验了环境库兹涅茨曲线。结果表明,2003—2008年环境效率平均值的范围为0.934—0.951,年均的潜在产出损失为6.1%;环境效率与经济增长之间存在倒U型曲线关系,即随着经济增长,环境效率先提高,但在人均GDP超过转折点后开始下降,这与传统的环境库兹涅茨曲线的含义正好相反;虽然当前大部分城市位于倒U型曲线的上升阶段,但已临近转折点。要避免掉入倒U型曲线的下降通道,必须走新型工业化道路,鼓励企业采用更加环保的生产技术,除严格执行环境监管政策外,还应该采取污染税、排污权市场交易机制等经济措施。     

It is not easy being a Green party: Green politics as a normal good

An extensive body of literature shows that voters often credit or blame ruling political parties for economic successes and failures, respectively. This paper presents a related, but new possibility: whether local economic conditions impact Green party electoral outcomes. According to the environmental Kuznets curve, high-income countries will see decreased environmental degradation as they become wealthier, but it is yet to be seen whether this relationship is carried over to environmentally friendly political parties. Using a panel data set that includes over 250 elections from 26 European countries, we find that elections held during times of economic growth increase the vote share that Green parties win. This effect is especially robust for national elections, as opposed to elections for the European Parliament. The magnitudes are large enough to potentially alter the number of seats Green parties have in national legislatures. This provides evidence that Green parties are most likely to gain seats when the economy is growing, and support for the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve.     

Reforms and education inequality in Ghana

We analyze the evolvement of education inequality and the gender gap in Ghana before and after two major education reforms. Using different measures of inequality, our findings suggest that the gender gap at the basic school level has closed following the introduction of the education expansion policies, but inequalities persist at the postbasic school levels and across regions. We further demonstrate that the educational expansion–schooling inequality nexus is best illustrated by an inverted U-shaped Kuznets curve. We find that after an average of 6 years of schooling has been reached, inequality starts to decline, and gender equality can be achieved when the average years of schooling reach 9.     

基于环境库兹涅茨理论的经济发展与用水效率关系形态研究——来自我国2002—2013期间31个省份面板数据的证据

以2002—2013年我国31个省份的人均GDP、用水强度为变量，环境库兹涅茨曲线为基础构建面板模型，分别研究全国和三大地带的经济发展与用水效率的关系。结果表明：全国、东北及东部地带、中西部地带、远西部地带依次形成倒N型、倒N型、U型和U型的变化趋势。之后，从规模效应、技术效应、结构效应以及规制与投资四个角度入手，解释三大地带及其具体省份用水效率和经济发展的关系形态。     

Poverty decompositions with counterfactual income and inequality dynamics

Traditional poverty accounting decomposes changes in a country's poverty headcount ratio into changes in income and inequality. We argue that this approach is unsatisfactory from the perspective of policy analysis because it compares a country in two points of time without taking the country's initial situation, and hence its potential for poverty reduction, into account. We thus suggest comparing traditional poverty decompositions with a counterfactual situation. This counterfactual indicates what a country starting from its initial situation could be expected to achieve in terms of income, inequality, and, hence, poverty developments. We construct those counterfactuals by modeling income and inequality trends characterized by convergence and a “Kuznets” relationship between inequality and development. Parameters in those relationships are estimated using PovcalNet survey data from 144 countries and we construct our counterfactual poverty predictions for 71 developing countries. While there is overall a tight relationship between actual developments and counterfactuals, we identify several cases, where both deviate from each other and discuss the policy implications. We also check for commonalities in differently performing countries and find that those who fell particularly short of expectations often underwent political transition and state fragility.