WHY FREE MARKETS SHOULD NOT BE BLAMED FOR THE CURRENT RECESSION

Interventionist thinkers are now claiming intellectual victory, blaming the free‐market system and its ideology for the current economic collapse. We find this thesis untenable, drawing on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Instead, we argue that the roots of our present downturn lie in the monetary system, whose institutional structure is far from any free‐market ideal. Moreover, several government policies have contributed to the problems.     

Small businesses and the environment: turning over a new leaf?

Previous studies on the environmental practices of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK and beyond have portrayed owner‐managers as laggards who underplay their firm's environmental impacts and resist environmental management due to its perceived cost. Yet a recent cross‐sector survey of 220 UK SMEs suggests that this intransigent stance may be slowly changing. Responses indicate a high percentage of owner‐managers actively involved in recycling, energy efficiency, responsible buying and selling, and efforts to reduce their carbon emissions. Owner‐managers saw it as their responsibility to help solve environmental problems and were reportedly willing to accept the costs of tougher environmental regulations and taxation. Business owners were motivated not just by the ‘push’ of legislation and environmental concern but by the ‘pull’ of potential cost savings, new customers, higher staff retention and good publicity for their firms. The survey also found that owner‐managers had resonance with the Stern Review's (2006) conclusions that the benefits of strong early action on climate change outweigh the costs, and that a transition to a low‐carbon economy will bring opportunities for business growth. This indicates that SMEs may be coming round to the idea that there is a business case for sustainability, although there is still some scepticism on the overall profitability of environmental action. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

以制度创新解决中小企业融资“麦克米伦缺口”--基于韩国中小企业银行的研究

我国在政策性融资支持中小企业方面由较多部门掌握资源,各自为政,难以形成合力。政策性金融在中小企业融资领域长期缺位,企业过度依赖商业银行间接融资,是当前中小企业“融资难、融资贵”的一个重要原因。韩国政府从中小企业职能机构设置、机制完善、制度保障、金融支持、产业联动等方面大力扶持中小企业发展,尤其是韩国的政策性金融对中小企业的支持对我国具有借鉴作用。结合中小企业发展面临的融资困境,我国应当通过制度创新,建立两大政策性机构解决中小企业融资难、融资贵问题。     

我国汇率的市场化进程模式探析与展望

我国的汇率市场化是政府推进型的汇率市场化。这一特点显示：政府在促进我国汇率市场化进程的同时，也不可避免地产生重汇率水平调节。轻市场培育的问题。这就与政府的目标不一致，它反而阻碍了汇率的市场化。所以,为了促进汇率的进一步市场化，我国政府应该将外汇市场的市场培育作为其一贯目标，以使得汇率的市场化走上一条良性循环的道路。     

Prospects for food security in the 21st Century: with special emphasis on Africa

Food security for the world in 2025 is possible and probable if the right set of things are done, starting now. But the task will not be easy. It is both a technology and a political/economic challenge. The challenge for sub-Saharan Africa is even greater. While other regions improved per capita food availability over the last 30 years, Africa's availability declined. But food security is about more than supply. It is also about access which means income generating employment is critical. Meeting future requirements in Africa and the world will require sustainable intensification of complex production systems, appropriate national and international policies and continued investments in agricultural research. Without these conditions and increased employment intensive growth, prospects for the future are less bright.     

The Rural Environment Protection Scheme of the Republic of Ireland

Agricultural modernisation has had an impact on the Irish environment but official policy to address this developed only slowly. The reform of the EU CAP provided the incentive for the formulation of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS). This is a wide-ranging scheme to promote environmentally friendly farming through application of 11 measures and six supplementary measures. Significant characteristics of the REPS include its: universal availability, voluntary nature, comprehensiveness, payment limitation, tailoring to individual farms and inclusion of training. There has been a high level of adoption, with participation being greatest in the small-farm west with its cattle and sheep enterprises.     

Forest management under fire risk when forest carbon sequestration has value

We develop a multiple forest use model to determine the optimal harvest date for a forest stand producing both timber and carbon benefits under a risk of fire. An empirical application is provided for a forest owner producing maritime pine in Southwest of France. Our results indicate that a higher risk of fire will decrease the optimal rotation period. On the contrary, higher carbon prices increase the optimal harvesting age. To investigate the contradictory effects of fire risk and carbon price on forest rotation, we identify the set of carbon prices and fire risks that lead to a given rotation age. We also show that forest owner's willingness to pay for a risk reduction can be substantial (37.33 euros by ha and by year to reduce the annual fire risk from 1.26% to 0.07%).     

Agricultural development with rainforest conservation: methods for seeking best bet alternatives to slash-and-burn,with applications to Brazil and Indonesia

Forests continue to fall for agricultural purposes throughout the humid tropics, with immediate and potentially large consequences for climate change and biodiversity loss-issues of key interest to the international community. Some of the actors directly responsible for forest conversion fell trees to meet food security needs and alleviate poverty-issues of urgent interest to them and also to national policymakers. This multiplicity of groups with differing (often conflicting) interests in the multifarious goods and services produced by tropical forests complicates the search for alternative agricultural activities for forest margins since these alternatives must satisfy such divergent objectives. This paper sets out a conceptual framework for comparing the impacts of different land use systems and agricultural practices at the margins of tropical rainforests in terms of the concerns and objectives of two key interest groups: small-scale farmers seeking livelihoods at the forest margins and the ‘international’ interests in the global public goods and services supplied by tropical rainforests. This framework should be useful to a third key group, the national and regional policymakers who must consider these and other policy objectives and then decide on courses of action. The paper identifies data needs and analytical methods capable of supplying an empirical base for this conceptual framework, based on quantifiable indicators. It then presents preliminary results of the application of this conceptual framework in Indonesia and Brazil in association with a global, collaborative, multidisciplinary research program. Even using preliminary order-of-magnitude estimates (to be replaced by more precise measurements as they become available), this conceptual framework presents results in ways that allow researchers and policymakers to select clear ‘best bets’ for development, when they exist, and to assess tradeoffs and options for complementary policy action and research efforts, when they do not.     

Induced innovation and land degradation: Results from a bioeconomic model of a village in West Africa

This paper introduces a modeling method which simulates a village's response to population and market pressure. The method combines a recursive and dynamic linear programming model with a biophysical model of soil condition and plant growth that predicts yields and land degradation for different type of land, land use and cropping patterns. The linear programming model simulates farmers' plans aggregated at the village level under constraints of risk aversion, food consumption, land area, soil fertility, soil depth, labor and cash availability. Detailed agroecological factors determine Ihe main processes of land degradation. A large number of technological alternatives, representing different degrees of labor and/or land-saving techniques available in the study areas, are introduced, taking into account their respective constraints, costs and advantages. The method has been calibrated for a village located in the sub-humid region of Burkina Faso. Several simulations are carried out to the Year 2030. The results show that population pressure leads to intensification and investment in land conservation practices out not necessarily to better farm incomes. Increasing market opportunities can play a more positive role in boosting productivity, but for the next decades the best way to increase production per farmer is to let farmers migrate from the high-population-density areas to the low-population-density areas because, under the current economic conditions of most Sahelian countries, intensification per hectare is stil more expensive than the fallow system.     

Impacts of price and exchange rate policies on pesticide use in the Philippines

Pesticide prices can influence producer decisions to apply pesticides as opposed to nonchemical means of pest control. Those prices are are turn influenced by price and exchange rate policies. The effective rate of protection for nine pesticides commonly applied to vegetables in the Philippines was calculated to determine whether government policies are creating incentives or disincentives to adopt more integrated pest management methods. Calculations found that direct price policies, primarily through an import tariff, tax pesticide use while an overvalued exchange rate subsidizes pesticide use. The net effect is a 6 to 8% pesticide subsidy. This subsidy results in economic surplus gains to vegetable producers and consumers when negative externalities associated with pesticide use are not accounted for. However, recent analysis of human health effects of pesticide use on rice in the Philippines demonstrates that these externalities can be substantial.