Producing Localized Commodity Frontiers at the End of Cheap Nature: An Analysis of Eco‐scalar Carbon Fixes and their Consequences

There is no single ‘great’ commodity frontier whose exploitation under current socio‐technical conditions could fuel capital accumulation at the global scale. According to Jason Moore, this represents the ‘end of Cheap Nature’ and signals a terminal crisis for capitalism as we know it. In this article we complicate this assertion by showing how, in the context of global environmental governance frameworks of carbon control, a diverse range of actors situated at multiple scales are intensifying the use of cities and their hinterlands for the production/transgression of localized commodity frontiers. We draw on scholarship on uneven geographical development, state‐led restructuring and eco‐scalar fixes to present two case studies from different segments of the carbon cycle in the global South. The first case demonstrates how the introduction of waste‐to‐energy technology in Delhi facilitated the generation of ‘carbon credits’ while waste matter itself became a commodity. The second discusses attempts by the Brazilian state of Amazonas (Amazônia) aspiring to shift from rainforest exploitation to financialized conservation supported by the ‘green global city’ functions of metropolitan Manaus. These cases demonstrate that although the global carbon‐control regime may enable accumulation, implementation remains speculative, and localized commodity frontiers provoke social resistances that jeopardize their durability.     

Markets for information: Of inefficient firewalls and efficient monopolies

In this paper we study market environments where information is costly to acquire and is also useful to potential competitors. Agents may sell, or buy, reports over the information acquired and choose their trades in the market on the basis of what they learnt. Reports are unverifiable – cheap talk messages – hence the quality of the information transmitted depends on the conflicts of interest faced by the senders. We find that, when information has a prevalent horizontal differentiation component, in equilibrium information is acquired when its costs are not too high and in that case it is also sold, though reports are typically noisy. The market for information is in most cases a monopoly, and there is underinvestment in information acquisition. We also show that regulatory interventions, in the form of firewalls, only make the inefficiency worse. Efficiency can be attained with a monopolist selling differentiated information, provided entry is blocked.     

Reputational cheap talk with misunderstanding

We consider a cheap talk game with a sender who has a reputational concern for an ability to predict a state of the world correctly, and where receivers may misunderstand the message sent. When communication between the sender and each receiver is private, we identify an equilibrium in which the sender only discloses the least noisy information. Hence, what determines the amount of information revealed is not the absolute noise level of communication, but the extent to which the noise level may vary. The resulting threshold in transmission noise for which information is revealed may differ across receivers, but is unrelated to the quality of the information channel. When information transmission has to be public, a race to the bottom results: the cut-off level for noise of transmitted information now drops to the lowest cut-off level for any receiver in the audience.     

广播谈话节目中细节的运用与处理

广播谈话节目是广播节目主持人与嘉宾、听众之间的以思想观念、感情心理的深层交流为目的的双向交流节目。怎样使节目能够不断出新、出彩从而吸引听众呢?细节的运用与处理大有文章可做。细节分为两种，即必然的细节和偶然的细节。必然的细节更多地运用在节目的开场和结尾，它可以很好地烘托节目主题；偶然的细节，它可以使节目”形散而神不散”、自然流畅、浑然天成。有人说细节成就精品就是这个道理。在谈话节目中，必然细节和偶然细节是可以根据实际情况灵活运用于开场白、主体部分及结束语中的，决不能视为固定不变的公式。     

对新形势下辅导员开展谈心工作的探析的

与学生谈心是辅导员开展学生工作的重要方法,新形势下辅导员开展谈心工作被赋予了新的内涵和要求,辅导员要不断提高自身素质,善于运用各种谈心方式做好与学生的交流与沟通,将学生的思想引导、心理疏导与教育管理服务工作结合起来,增强工作的针对性和实效性。     

Decentralized advice

We compare the amount of information credibly transmitted by cheap talk when information is centralized to one sender and when it is decentralized, with each of several senders holding a distinct but interdependent piece. Under centralization, full information transmission is typically impossible. Under decentralization, however, the number of receivers is decisive: decentralized communication with one receiver is completely uninformative, but decentralized communication with multiple receivers can be fully informative. We analyze the extent of such fully-informative communication, and apply our results to the issue of transparency in advisory committees.     

浅淡物流业纳税面临问题之探讨

物流业是一个新兴业态。在现行税收征管制度下,物流企业总揽分包运输和仓储等业务,存在着事实上的营业税重复纳税问题。物流公司纳税问题成了国家一大问题,为了使一个纳税物流公司了解和掌握物流公司纳税的形式以及政策、正确履行纳税义务,本文对物流公司纳税问题进行了归纳和深入探讨。     

策略性信息传递与技术贸易的无效率

技术进步是经济增长的引擎,然而,发展中国家未能有效地利用国际技术贸易从发达国家获得自己想要的技术。原因在于,在贸易谈判开始前的了解信息阶段,由于要素禀赋的不一致,发达国家企业具有策略性传递技术质量信息以获取卖者剩余的倾向。预期到这种倾向,发展中国家的企业对发达国家企业传递的信息持不信任态度。通过寻找更多的技术供给方、减少信息质量的可能状态和参照价格标尺,策略性信息传递引起的技术交易无效率可以得到改善。     

Communication strategy in partnership selection

This paper explores the communication and choice strategies of economic agents deciding on a partnership, where agents are uncertain about their payoffs, and payoffs of each agent depend on and are partly known to the potential partner. Business examples of such decisions include mergers, acquisitions, distribution channel partners, as well as manufacturing and brand alliances. Dating and marriage partner selection are also natural examples of this game. The paper shows that (a) when communication is informative, the communication strategy as a function of the expected payoff of the partnership involves pretending fit when expected payoff is high, pretending misfit when expected payoff is low, and telling the truth in the intermediate range, and (b) the condition for informativeness of communication is that the distribution of payoffs has thin tails. Furthermore, the paper shows that the possibility of communication, even when this communication is not restricted to be truthful, can decrease the expected payoff for both the sender and the receiver; in particular, it can decrease the expected social welfare.