The living commons of West Tyrol,Austria: Lessons for land policy and land administration

A right of commoners to pastures existed since the Early Middle Ages in Anglo-Saxon England and the European mainland, including Tyrol in Austria. Lowland commons institutions were largely dissolved by the 19th century; however, in the European Alps contiguous commons remain alive. Some two thousand alpine commons institutions are registered in the Tyrolean parcel cadaster and land registry. A specific study of West-Tyrolean commons (known as Agrargemeinschaft or AGMs), framed by Ostrom's design principles is presented. General lessons for land policy and land administration are extracted. An interview period was split between the Inn valley and the Ötztal. Roughly half are considered independent: others are regulated by the Tyrolean Agricultural Authority. Some AGMs hold the full bundle of land rights: others only hold pastoral and forestry rights. AGMs consisted either of a single cadastral parcel or several contiguous parcels. In the Inn valley villages the pastoral commons were owned by the municipalities, while in the researched Ötztal, AGMs are frequently the full owners of the commons. AGM membership ranges between 5 and 60 farm households. The number of livestock units pastured was in most cases stipulated in approved regulations. Alpine commons larger than 200 ha are also hunting-zones: revenue is collected from the lease of hunting rights. Most of the alpine commons are designated and used as ski-zones. Upper portions of two alpine commons in the Ötztal are state protected natural areas. The number of farms with pastoral rights is declining at District and State level. Key lessons for land policy and land administration include: Ostrom's design principles being a precondition rather than a panacea; commons institutions requiring one clear ownership party; both public and collective ownership producing success; publically owned commons requiring a local representative; small membership numbers being preferable; small shareholdings not being preferable; decentralized governance being beneficial; internal democratic elections being beneficial; internal boundary records being superfluous; explicit sanctions being superfluous; mixed economies being acceptable; and geography being a significant influence on the longevity of pastoral commons.     

Wetland mitigation banking: Negotiations with stakeholders in a zone of ecological-economic viability

Wetland mitigation banking (WMB) is an organizational form that attempts to balance the ecological goals of wetland conservation and the economic goals of development with the aim of improving the implementation of wetland offsetting. Given the resulting tension, it is important to understand how the way stakeholders employ the WMB regulatory framework affects the goal of No Net Loss of wetlands. In this study, we interviewed WMB stakeholders in Florida in the United States to identify their strategies during negotiations around different aspects of defining wetland mitigation credits (e.g. service areas, types of credit and credit release schedules). Using the approach of New Institutional Economics, we found that within a framework of well-defined rules that nonetheless allow flexibility, WMB enables a field of action for negotiating within a zone of ecological-economic viability – in part due to the stakeholders’ interest in maintaining a good reputation in this field. Outside of this zone of viability a wetland mitigation bank proposal collapses for economic or ecological reasons.     

Solvability of perturbation solutions in DSGE models

We prove that the undetermined Taylor series coefficients of local approximations to the policy function of arbitrary order in a wide class of discrete time dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are solvable by standard DSGE perturbation methods under regularity and saddle point stability assumptions on first order approximations. Extending the approach to nonstationary models, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for solvability, as well as an example in the neoclassical growth model where solvability fails. Finally, we eliminate the assumption of solvability needed for the local existence theorem of perturbation solutions, complete the proof that the policy function is invariant to first order changes in risk, and attribute the loss of numerical accuracy in progressively higher order terms to the compounding of errors from the first order transition matrix.     

美国奥巴马总统“气候行动计划”解读

2013年6月,美国总统奥巴马在华盛顿乔治城大学发表关于应对气候变化的讲话,发布了"总统气候行动计划",重申到2020年美国实现在2005年基础上减排温室气体17%的承诺,并从减少温室气体排放、应对气候变化的不利影响和领导国际合作三个方面系统阐释了美国联邦政府将采取的一系列举措,这是迄今为止美国政府最全面综合的气候政策。通过分析和梳理该"气候行动计划"推出的背景、主要内容以及美国各界的反应等,指出了该计划的实质和存在的一些问题,包括在实施范围、执行力度、持续性和有效性等方面的局限性。     

Philanthropic giving of China’s hotel firms: The roles of state ownership,corporate misconduct and executive remuneration

This study utilizes value enhancement theory, agency cost theory and crisis management theory to scrutinize the philanthropic giving (PG) of China’s listed hotel companies from 2003 to 2018. The results of dynamic panel regression tests reveal that state ownership (company character), corporate misconduct (crisis management determinant) and executive remuneration (agency cost determinant) are influential factors in hotel firms’ PG, but none of the value enhancement determinants can explain PG. Specifically, state ownership is negatively correlated with PG, reflecting low PG in government dominated hotel firms in China. PG is negatively associated with executive remuneration, indicating that hotel managers care more about self-interest than social responsibility. PG is also positively related to corporate misconduct, suggesting that hotel firms use philanthropy to manage a crisis. Finally, the lagged PG has a positive effect on PG, implying that PG is intended to avoid damage to social image and reputation of China’s hotel firms.     

SVHC第23批新增4项物质测试方法研究

本文建立了同时测定欧盟高关注物质(SVHC)第23批新增的4种物质[1-乙烯基咪唑、-甲基咪唑、4-羟基苯甲酸丁酯、双(乙酰丙酮酸)二丁基锡的气相色谱质谱联用仪(GC-MS)]的检测方法。将样品用二氯甲烷超声后,采用选择离子监控模式(SIM)进行分析样品中的待测物。实验结果表明,4种物质在50 mg/L范围内线性关系良好,线性相关系数为0.995以上;样品加标回收率为94%110%,相对标准偏差(RSD)小于7%;方法检出限分别为2 mg/kg、10mg/kg、0.8 mg/kg、0.6 mg/kg,解决了欧盟新增加的4种SVHC测试问题。     

中国A股市场IPO抑价影响因素的实证研究

IPO抑价是全球资本市场的普遍现象,是一级市场定价效率低下和二级市场交易不规范的具体表现。IPO抑价使得资本市场资源配置效率低,同时也会产生众多金融风险。在中国IPO抑价率过高,普遍达到100%以上,超过了国外成熟市场和很多的新兴市场。在对国内外相关研究进行综述之后,再构建模型引入实证分析,对理论在国内的适用性进行研究进而探寻导致IPO抑价的原因。信息不对称是导致IPO抑价的主要原因,同时承销商声誉、"公司信号"、资本市场"羊群效应"也有一定的影响。     

Intercorporate Ownership,Taxes, and Corporate Payout Choices*

This paper examines whether corporate payout choices (dividends or share repurchases) are associated with intercorporate ownership in a firm. Using the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) and the Inter‐Corporate Ownership (ICO) database from Statistics Canada, I find that intercorporate ownership is positively associated with a firm’s propensity to pay dividends and negatively associated with a firm’s propensity to repurchase shares. The findings are robust to the endogeneity of intercorporate ownership and the inclusion of various control variables such as firm size, risk, liquidity, growth, and profitability.     

Towards a ‘new normal’ growth strategy: China in comparative perspective

China’s move towards a new normal has been motivated by domestic factors and accelerated by the decline in export opportunities to developed countries. This decline, combined with the knock-on effects of China’s growth adjustments, is disrupting the favourable external environment that made developing countries’ export-led development strategies viable. This paper concentrates on a rebalancing of developing countries’ growth strategies towards a greater weight of household consumption as a potential alternative and discusses three challenges – market size, domestic purchasing power and balance-of-payments constraints. Concentrating on the latter, it analyses changes in sectoral compositions of consumer demand and patterns of international trade. Results point to the risk that a shift in growth strategy causes an import surge. The paper’s findings indicate the scope and speed of required product innovation that would prevent a rebalancing of growth strategies towards a greater role of consumption from running into balance-of-payments constraints.     

On estimating long-run effects in models with lagged dependent variables

A common procedure in economics is to estimate long-run effects from models with lagged dependent variables. For example, macro panel studies frequently are concerned with estimating the long-run impacts of fiscal policy, international aid, or foreign investment.Our analysis points out the hazards of this practice. We use Monte Carlo experiments to demonstrate that estimating long-run impacts from dynamic models produces unreliable results.Biases can be substantial, sample ranges very wide, and hypothesis tests can be rendered useless in realistic data environments. There are three reasons for this poor performance. First, OLS estimates of the coefficient of a lagged dependent variable are downwardly biased in finite samples. Second, small biases in the estimate of the lagged, dependent variable coefficient are magnified in the calculation of long-run effects. And third, and perhaps most importantly, the statistical distribution associated with estimates of the LRP is complicated, heavy-tailed, and difficult to use for hypothesis testing. While many of the underlying problems have been long-known in the literature, the continued widespread use of the associated empirical procedures suggests that researchers are unaware of the extent and severity of the estimation problems. This study aims to illustrate their practical importance for applied research.