Land use dynamics and the environment

This paper builds a benchmark framework to study optimal land use, encompassing land use activities and environmental degradation. We focus on the spatial externalities of land use as drivers of spatial patterns: land is immobile by nature, but local actions affect the whole space since pollution flows across locations resulting in both local and global damages. We prove that the decision maker problem has a solution, and characterize the corresponding social optimum trajectories by means of the Pontryagin conditions. We also show that the existence and uniqueness of time-invariant solutions are not in general guaranteed. Finally, a global dynamic algorithm is proposed in order to illustrate the spatial-dynamic richness of the model. We find that our simple set-up already reproduces a great variety of spatial patterns related to the interaction between land use activities and the environment. In particular, abatement technology turns out to play a central role as pollution stabilizer, allowing the economy to reach a time-invariant equilibrium that can be spatially heterogeneous.     

The “greening” of trade unions and the demand for eco-taxes

By embedding labour market bargaining considerations in an influence-seeking framework, we show how a union's stance on environmental policy depends on the exposure of their members to the risk of job loss. With a risk of unemployment, unions lobby with employers to resist stricter environmental policies. When employment is secure, unions may support policies that reduce employment opportunities for nonunion workers. “Environmentalism” can therefore arise without explicit environmental concerns among workers. Consequently, pollution taxes may yield a negative welfare dividend in the form of inefficiently high unemployment.     

地区工业废气排放负担的差异及对策研究

工业废气的排放是造成大气污染和环境污染的重要原因,对各地区的气体污染物排放负担、工业生产贡献进行比较和模型分析,可以更加清晰地看出各地区气体污染物的负担差异,这种差异主要是由于各地区工业发展水平、产业结构及环境政策的差异造成的,据此,从提升清洁技术、调整产业结构、污染治理和污染源管理等方面,提出更为有效的环境保护政策与措施,更好地促进经济与环境和谐发展。     

Health Effects of Air Pollution: A Statistical Review

We critically review and compare epidemiological designs and statistical approaches to estimate associations between air pollution and health. More specifically, we aim to address the following questions:

• 1 Which epidemiological designs and statistical methods are available to estimate associations between air pollution and health?
• 2 What are the recent methodological advances in the estimation of the health effects of air pollution in time series studies?
• 3 What are the the main methodological challenges and future research opportunities relevant to regulatory policy?

In question 1, we identify strengths and limitations of time series, cohort, case‐crossover and panel sampling designs. In question 2, we focus on time series studies and we review statistical methods for: 1) combining information across multiple locations to estimate overall air pollution effects; 2) estimating the health effects of air pollution taking into account of model uncertainties; 3) investigating the consequences of exposure measurement error in the estimation of the health effects of air pollution; and 4) estimating air pollution‐health exposure‐response curves. Here, we also discuss the extent to which these statistical contributions have addressed key substantive questions. In question 3, within a set of policy‐relevant‐questions, we identify research opportunities and point out current data limitations.     

Transboundary air pollution and soil acidification: A dynamic analysis of an acid rain game between Finland and the USSR

Transboundary air pollution is analysed as a dynamic game between Finland and the nearby areas of the Soviet Union. Sulphur emissions are used as the environmental control variables and the acidities of the soils as the state variables. Acidification is consequently considered to be a stock pollutant having long-lasting harmful effects on the environment. The state dynamics consist of two relationships: first, of a sulphur transportation model between the regions and, second, of a model describing how the quality of the soil is affected by sulphur deposition. The countries are assumed to be interested in maximizing the net benefits from pollution control as measured by the impacts on the values of forest growth net of the abatement costs. Cooperative and noncooperative solutions of the game are compared to assess the benefits of bilateral cooperation. Using empirical estimates of abatement costs, acidification dynamics and impacts on forest growth it is shown that cooperation is beneficial to Finland but not to the Soviet Union. Consequently, Finland has to offer monetary compensation to induce her neighbor to invest in environmental protection.     

环境污染、内生增长与经济可持续发展

本文通过将环境质量作为内生要素同时引入生产函数与效用函数，构建三个带有环境污染约束的经济增长模型，系统地分析了环境污染外部性、物质资本积累、人力资本开发以及内生技术进步影响长期经济增长的内在机制。模型的基本结论表明，在环境污染的约束下，人力资本投资和研发创新是经济长期持续增长的主要动力源泉和决定性因素。为了实现经济可持续的最优发展战略，政府可以通过扶持人力资本积累与技术创新活动，促进清洁生产技术进步和制定严厉的环境标准，以及增强全民环保意识与可持续发展意识来达到这一目标。     

Self-Reporting and Private Enforcement in Environmental Regulation

Self-reporting of compliance status has become a common feature in the enforcement of environmental regulation. In this paper, I generalize existing models of enforcement with self-reporting to include the possibility of private enforcement of regulation through citizen suits. This allows me to identify an additional argument for the efficiency of self-reporting: it can increase the likelihood of a successful suit and thus facilitate private enforcement of regulation. Specifically, if self-reporting sufficiently increases the expected penalty for losing a citizen suit, if the costs of private enforcement are low, and if inspection costs are high enough relative to enforcement costs, self-reporting lowers expected regulatory and social costs by allowing the regulator to rely on private enforcement and decrease his enforcement efforts.

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Environmental innovation and the cost of pollution abatement revisited

It is widely assumed in the literature that environmental innovation reduces the marginal cost of pollution abatement. In this paper we show that this is not necessarily the case and we provide some unexpected outcomes.     

论我国环境污染责任强制保险制度

环境污染责任强制保险,又称"绿色保险",依国家法律、行政法规规定,强制企业投保的以企业发生的环境污染事故对第三者造成的损害依法应承担的赔偿和治理责任为标的的责任保险。本文对实行环境污染责任强制保险的可行性及实施条件进行了分析,在借鉴国际及发达国家实施环境污染责任强制保险经验的基础上,对我国环境污染责任强制保险制度构建提出了自己的建议。     

中国城市外卖包装垃圾空间异质性及影响因素

蓬勃发展的外卖新业态经济带来新环境问题,如何治理外卖包装垃圾成为亟待解决的城市环境问题。本文基于空间自相关分析和地理加权回归模型,探究2018年中国278个地级市外卖包装垃圾产量空间分布特征,以及社会经济与自然环境因素对城市外卖包装垃圾产生的影响。结果表明,城市外卖包装垃圾产量空间差异较大,呈现空间自相关性,空间集聚特征显著。夜间经济、外卖恩格尔系数和第三产业就业人员占比对外卖包装垃圾产量呈正向效应,对我国三大城市群外卖包装垃圾产量影响最大,对东北、西部地区影响较小。本文提出“源头减量、因地施策、靶向治理”外卖包装垃圾治理对策,为外卖行业绿色转型和塑料污染治理提供科学依据。