低碳时代农村环境污染与规制工具创新——基于规制经济学的分析

以能源消耗污染、日常生活污染、农业生产污染、乡镇企业污染和城镇转移污染等为主的污染物与日俱增,严重影响与威胁我国农村发展与农村居民生活。根据规制经济学理论,探索如何创新我国农村的命令控制型、市场激励型与自愿参与型环境规制工具,提升环境污染防治效果,已成为低碳时代一个迫切的现实诉求。     

Regulated prices and real options

This paper shows how the cash flows received by an unregulated firm operating in a workably competitive market can be replicated for a regulated firm. The only change to standard regulatory practice is that each time the regulated firm invests, the amount added to its rate base is the product of its capital expenditure and a multiplier, greater than one, that captures the reduction in value of the unregulated firm's growth options that occurs whenever the firm invests. The regulated firm is allowed to earn a rate of return equal to its weighted-average cost of capital, applied to this rate base. Four possible approaches to estimating the size of the multiplier are presented, each based on an established real-options investment model.     

Food health claims – What consumers understand

Issues pertaining to consumer understanding of food health claims are complex and difficult to disentangle because there is a surprising lack of multidisciplinary research aimed at evaluating how consumers are influenced by factors impacting on the evaluation process. In the EU, current legislation is designed to protect consumers from misleading and false claims but there is much debate about the concept of the ‘average consumer’ referred to in the legislation.     

Development of the conceptual model of energy and utility management in textile processing: A soft systems approach

This paper aims to use soft systems methodology (SSM) to identify management support system opportunities for managing energy and utility usage in textile manufacturing processes. It presents an approach based on SSM to analyze the complex situation of developing an effective energy and utility management support system (EUMSS). This involves the identification of the scope of the system and user requirements, conceptual modeling of complex problem situations, identification of actors and decision processes, and information-needs modeling. The current study pioneers the examination of the application of SSM to the development of a novel EUMSS and contributes to the body of information systems knowledge in the context of EUMSS design. There appears to be limited academic research in the field of energy and utility system development and, in particular, in the area of EUMSS design, and none in the area of the application of SSM to EUMSS design. In addition, the modeling process could be beneficial if EUMSS design ideas could be widely shared and discussed. The identified scope and system requirements can serve as a guideline for designing and developing an effective EUMSS for textile processing.     

Single-stage formulations for synchronised two-stage lot sizing and scheduling in soft drink production

This study deals with industrial processes that produce soft drink bottles in different flavours and sizes, carried out in two synchronised production stages: liquid preparation and bottling. Four single-stage formulations are proposed to solve the synchronised two-stage lot sizing and scheduling problem in soft drink production synchronising the first stage's syrup lots in tanks with the second stage's soft drink lots on bottling lines. The first two formulations are variants of the General Lot Sizing and Scheduling Problem (GLSP) with sequence-dependent setup times and costs, while the other two are based on the Asymmetric Travelling Salesman Problem (ATSP) with different subtour elimination constraints. All models are computationally tested and compared to the original two-stage formulation introduced in Ferreira et al. (2009), using data based on a real-world bottling plant. The results show not only the superiority of the single-stage models if compared to the two-stage formulation, but also the much faster solution times of the ATSP-based models.     

The First Quarter Century of the GASB (1984–2009): A Perspective on Standard Setting (Part Two)

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (hereafter GASB or Board) was established in April 1984 as the authoritative accounting standard‐setting body for state and local governmental entities in the United States. There are over 87,000 state and local entities in the country and for the most part these entities are required to comply with the generally accepted accounting principles established by the GASB; hence, the standards promulgated by the GASB are significant. On 30 June 2009, the GASB completed its twenty‐fifth year of standard setting. Because of the Board's influence and the importance of its mission, an increased understanding of the GASB and its accomplishments during its first 25 years of existence is important. This is the second of two papers which together provide a complete sequential treatment of the GASB's operational history through the end of its first quarter century. The first part provided an historical perspective about municipal accounting issues from colonial times to 2009 and included appendix materials identifying the composition of the Board and biographical material on key personnel. The first paper concluded with a review of the relationship of other governmental standard setting bodies at the Federal and the International level. This paper provides an overview of the future challenges faced by the Board and supplies a digest of the standards including appendix and a synoptic summary of the standards the Board has promulgated by topic and by standard number.     

非生产性努力、政府规制与私营经济发展

本文认为,地方政府的规制水平不同,使得不同地区私营企业家的非生产性努力程度有差异;在企业家能够自由流动的条件下,规制条件好的地区会对企业家产生集聚效应,促使地区私营经济快速发展;私营企业家的集聚使私营经济的力量得到壮大,更能影响政府的政策和规制条件,因此经济朝着优均衡的状态发展;如果地区私营经济向地方政府寻租,造成偏私性资源配置,那么私营经济发展就会走向劣均衡。     

“互联网+”赋能企业创新的异质动态效应研究——政府研发资助的调节作用

在国家推动互联网与实体经济深度融合的关键时期,以政府研发资助为切入点,剖析政府应如何更好地支持企业践行“互联网+”创新战略。在阐释政府研发资助影响“互联网+”企业创新内在机制的基础上,基于2006-2018年中国省级面板数据及门槛回归模型进行实证检验。研究发现：“互联网+”显著推动企业创新效率改善,而政府研发资助有助于强化这种积极影响;企业层面的“互联网+”创新溢出存在明显的政府研发资助三重门槛效应,只有当政府研发资助强度超越一定门槛条件时,才能最大限度地释放“互联网+”的创新溢出;政府研发资助调节下的“互联网+”创新溢出效应具有显著空间异质性特征,在不同空间层面上显现出差异化和动态化调节影响;现阶段政府研发资助对“互联网+”企业创新的正向调节溢出还相对有限,且实际调节效果具有差异化特征,表现为中部地区最为显著、东部地区次之、西部地区最弱的阶梯状分布。研究结论可为新时代下构建时空分异的政府研发资助策略,进一步加快释放“互联网+”企业创新的溢出红利提供一定启示。     

Does banking system transparency enhance bank competition? Cross-country evidence

There seems to be a consensus among regulators and scholars that in order to improve the functioning of a banking system it is necessary to raise the level of bank information disclosure. However, its influence on bank competition – which is an important factor affecting the efficiency and stability of the banking system – is left out of consideration. To test whether greater bank information disclosure is associated with both lower market power and lower concentration in the banking markets, we use country-level data covering the years 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2010. Our findings show that countries with higher levels of bank transparency have lower levels of bank concentration, while the link between transparency and market power is less pronounced. We also show that the reduction of competition due to stricter disclosure requirements depends on bank credit risks and the relationship is U-shaped.     

Is centralization a solution to the soft budget constraint problem?

This paper focuses on the centralization program implemented in Israel in 2004 to analyze whether the administrative subordination of municipalities is an effective policy to deal with problems related to soft-budget constraint of lower level governments. The results consistently show, for different specifications and samples of municipalities, that this program brought a substantial decrease of municipalities’ expenditures (mostly because of decreases in salary payments), and an increase of local property tax collection. Our analysis shows that all of the fiscal impact of the program is due to the appointment of an accountant that reports directly to the central government, a relatively mild form of administrative subordination. In contrast, more intrusive forms of subordination, like the central imposition of a recovery program, do not result in any substantial improvement of municipalities’ fiscal situation. This leads us to conclude that a mild form of administrative subordination is an effective tool to cope with problems related to soft-budget constraints, whereas political subordination is not an effective tool to reach that goal.