Corporate social responsibility committees and the use of corporate social responsibility assurance services

This study examines whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) committees associate with the external assurance of CSR reports. Specifically, we consider the presence and effectiveness of CSR committees. Using a sample of Australian firms over the period 2004–2016, we show the mere presence of a CSR committee is not related to the external assurance of CSR. However, CSR committee effectiveness is positively related. In addition, firms with higher CSR committee effectiveness are more likely to seek external assurance provided by the Big4 accountancy firms and acquire financial audit and CSR assurance services from the same provider. Taken together, CSR committee effectiveness plays an active role in CSR assurance services. Our results are particularly relevant to those with interests in understanding the demand and choice of external CSR assurance services, as well as the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on these services.     

Reconciling sustainability and discounting in Cost–Benefit Analysis: A methodological proposal

The incorporation of the intergenerational equity objective has rendered the traditional Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) approach obsolete for the evaluation of projects presenting an important number of environmental externalities and for those whose impacts extend throughout a long period of time.Based on the assumption that applying a discount rate rewards current consumption and, therefore, that it is only possible to introduce a certain intergenerational equity in a Cost–Benefit Analysis, in this work we propose an approach to discounting based on a different rationale for tangible and intangible effects. We designed two indicators of environmental profitability: a) the Intergenerational Transfer Amount (ITA), which quantifies in monetary units what the current generation is willing to pass on future generations when an environmental restoration project is carried out, and b) the Critical Environmental Rate (CER), measures the implicit environmental profitability.These concepts were tested through an empirical case study pertaining to the assessment of an Erosion Control Project in the southeast of Spain. The results yield traditional profitability indicators that are higher — and probably closer — to the real values set by the contemporary society. The information provided by the environmental profitability indicators proposed renders more transparency to the quantification of the levels of intergenerational equity applied, thereby facilitating the difficult reconciliation of the CBA technique with the objective of sustainability.     

Mongolian nomadic culture and ecological culture: On the ecological reconstruction in the agro-pastoral mosaic zone in Northern China

After analyzing the grassland environmental characteristics and nomads vs. agrarian land use styles and their ecological and environmental influences in the arid and semiarid agro-pastoral mosaic zone in northern China, it was concluded that Mongolian nomadic culture is more close to the basic principles of the ecological culture in the modern sense. Mongolian nomadic culture has advantages over agrarian culture in ecology and environmental care, sustainable utilization of grasslands, and in sustainable human social economic development in the region. Generally speaking nomadic culture prevents desertification; whereas, agrarian culture facilitates desertification. Confliction between nomadic protection and agrarian destruction of grassland ecosystem is essentially focused on the problem of regional and even global ecological safety. Obviously, protection of ecological safety should be given priority because human social and economic existence, as well as development depend on and are decided by the vulnerable ecological safety in the arid and semiarid areas. Therefore expansion of cropping into the fragile ecosystem of arid lands was unfortunate. The long term sustainable management of these grassland ecosystems could benefit from reversal of policies that are exacerbating the problems of land degradation, and from the adoption of land use practices that have been successfully applied for centuries by Mongolian herders. Protection of grasslands and nomadic culture is far more important or even vital to the subsistence and sustainability of human and all other beings, compared to the protection of agrarian lifestyle and land cultivation. Protection of ecologic safety is protecting the premise and fundamental bases of economic and social development in the area. It is important to derive the rational elements of nomadic culture in construction of ecological culture, and in the ecological reconstruction in northern China. Based on analyzing and reasoning in line with the quintessence of nomadic culture summarized, some proposals on ecological reconstruction in the area are presented.     

Risk Aversion, Intergenerational Equity and Climate Change

The paper investigates a climate-economy model with an iso-elastic welfare function in which one parameter measures relative risk-aversion and a distinct parameter measures resistance to intertemporal substitution.We show both theoretically and numerically that climate policy responds differently to variations in the two parameters. In particular, we show that higher but lower leads to increase emissions control. We also argue that climate-economy models based on intertemporal expected utility maximization, i.e. models where = , may misinterpret the sensitivity of the climate policy to risk-aversion.     

Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the economy is convex, nor do weassume that the government optimizes on behalfof its citizens. We show that the same set ofaccounting prices should be used both forpolicy evaluation and for assessing whether ornot intergenerational welfare along a giveneconomic path will be sustained. We also showthat a comprehensive measure of wealth,computed in terms of the accounting prices, canbe used as an index for problems (2) and (3)above. The remainder of the paper is concernedwith rules for estimating the accounting pricesof several specific environmental naturalresources, transacted in a few well knowneconomic institutions.     

Intertemporal Equity and Efficient Allocation of Resources

Competitive paths which are efficient are shown to satisfy a terminal cost minimization condition, thereby providing a continuous-time counterpart to the discrete-time result due to Malinvaud. Using this result, competitive paths which are equitable and efficient are shown to satisfy Hartwick's investment rule, which states that the value of net investment is zero at each date. Our result indicates that Hartwick's rule can help to signal inefficiency of competitive equitable paths. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C61, D90, O41.     

中国上市公司负债比率偏低的影响因素分析

本文在国外资本结构理论的基础上，将西方公司与中国公司的资本结构特点进行比较，从内因和外因两个方面解释了中国上市公司负债比率偏低的现象。     

农村流动人口研究的社会网络视角

对社会网络理论的发展和应用进行了回顾,重点评述国内外关于流动人口的社会网络研究。国外利用社会网络视角系统研究流动人口的成果相对较少,而国内的流动人口研究主要集中于农村流动人口的网络结构分析和求职网络研究。多数研究只是对个体网络的基本特性作描述性分析,将社会网络作为研究对象而不是研究方法。对未来利用社会网络分析方法进行农村流动人口的研究提出了展望。     

整合与超越:新全球化时代经济学范式探微

世界正发生着从"旧全球化时代"向"新全球化时代"的重大转变.伴随这一时代转折,建立在传统工业文明基础上的经济学正面临着研究范式的挑战,因为它已经不能适应以高科技为先导,以科技成果的商品化、产业化、国际化为特征的新时代所遇到的各种复杂问题.其研究范式急需进行整合与超越,交往实践观为其提供了新的视域和新的理论范式.     

关于我国财政政策导向调整的研究

近年来我国实施的积极财政政策确实在很大程度上促进了经济和社会的发展。但是随着经济市场化程度的不断提高和经济环境的变化，这种积极财政政策也表现出诸多的不适应性。因此应适时调整财政政策导向以适应经济和社会发展的新要求。拟从我国近年来实施的积极财政政策的成效分析出发，阐述了当前调整财政政策导向的必然性，并提出了今后我国财政政策的调整方向。