Is it too late to stabilise the global climate?

Assessment of the feasibility of stabilising the global climate requires consideration of trajectories for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This study presents a simple and robust analysis of feasible emissions trajectories. Consideration of feasible trajectories suggests that if the current pace of mitigation efforts is sustained, the likely outcome will be stabilisation at concentrations close to 500 parts per million. Such an outcome will imply a higher than 50 per cent probability of substantial damage from climate change and an enhanced risk of a catastrophic outcome.     

An African success: the case of conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe

This paper highlights the limiting factors of agricultural production in Zimbabwe and presents conservation agriculture (CA) as a potential solution to address many of these challenges. CA, based on the three principles of minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention and crop rotations, targets low soil fertility, moisture deficits and low management standards through the use of soil-fertility-enhancing technologies (precision fertilizer application, crop rotations, sequencing and interactions), improved moisture use efficiency and higher standards of agronomic management practices. The paper also explains the role of CA in natural resource conservation as increasing productivity will reduce the land under crop production and increase the area under natural vegetation. Trends in the development of CA in the past five years and its current status in the country are explained, with the roles of different stakeholders outlined. Evidence on the impact of CA on both food security and the environment is presented. In conclusion, the paper looks at the various factors that may affect the spread of CA to different agro-ecological zones in the country.     

基于生态文明视角下的油气资源战略研究

推进生态文明建设,是人类社会发展进步的必然趋势,是我国经济社会健康发展的现实选择。加强油气资源战略研究,谋求油气资源勘探开发可持续发展,应以党的十八大精神为指导,站在生态文明建设的高度,积极推进思维方式转变,积极推进科技创新能力提高,积极推进开发利用方式转变、消费方式转变。     

Economists, value judgments, and climate change: A view from feminist economics

A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would lead to more reliable and useful knowledge.     

An analysis of crop choice: Adapting to climate change in South American farms

This paper explores how South American farmers adapt to climate by changing crops. We develop a multinomial logit model of farmer's choice of crops. Estimating the model across 949 farmers in seven countries, we find that both temperature and precipitation affect the crops that South American farmers choose. Farmers choose fruits and vegetables in warmer locations and wheat and potatoes in cooler locations. Farms in wetter locations are more likely to grow rice, fruits, potatoes, and squash and in dryer locations maize and wheat. Global warming will cause South American farmers to switch away from maize, wheat, and potatoes towards squash, fruits and vegetables. Predictions of the impact of climate change on net revenue must reflect not only changes in yields per crop but also crop switching.     

Dynamic environmental performance analysis: A Malmquist index approach

This article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by Kuosmanen and Kortelainen [Kuosmanen, T., Kortelainen, M., 2005. Measuring Eco-Efficiency of Production with Data Envelopment Analysis. Journal of Industrial Ecology 9(4), 59-72.] from a static to a dynamic setting. For this purpose we construct an environmental performance index (EPI) by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a Malmquist index approach. Compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods, our approach builds on the standard definition of eco-efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature. Recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes, we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco-efficiency and shifts in environmental technology, respectively. We apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the European Union in 1990-2003. According to the results, environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance, while relative eco-efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period.     

华为战略变更测度：基于战略变更综合矩阵

本文研究了一种基于战略变更的动因结构理论对企业战略变更进行测度的方法,运用以该理论为基础的战略变更综合矩阵,对华为技术有限公司战略变更的主导逻辑范式和主要变更方式进行了综合分析。结果表明,华为战略变更分为两个特征明显的阶段。测度结果较好地反映出华为战略变更的实际情况,符合其变更的进程,为企业寻找战略变更最优模式并将之转化为高绩效奠定了基础。     

中国股市市盈率的变化趋势及国际比较

在市场充分有效的前提条件下,市盈率应该较正确地反映一家公司的基本面和市场因素,包括财务指标、成长性、管理能力、公司治理、股票流动性等多方面。基于对2007年沪深股市的观察,对中国证券市场历史数据进行实证分析和国际比较,可以客观地解答当前中国股民关于市盈率的困惑。     

农村居民消费结构变动的影响因素分析——基于新兴古典经济学与偏最小二乘回归的经验证据

分工演进表现为分工网络的细化、生产专业化与消费多样化的进程。笔者根据新古典经济学理论,选择一组涵盖专业化水平、交易效率和经济绩效的指标,运用偏最小二乘回归对农村居民消费结构变动的影响因素进行实证分析,结果显示了影响因素的阶段性差异。     

A functional approach for studying technological progress: Extension to energy technology

This paper extends a broad functional category approach for the study of technological capability progress recently developed and applied to information technology to a second key case—that of energy based technologies. The approach is applied to the same three functional operations—storage, transportation and transformation—that were used for information technology by first building a 100 plus year database for each of the three energy-based functional categories. In agreement with the results for information technology in the first paper, the energy technology results indicate that the functional approach offers a stable methodology for assessing longer time technological progress trends. Moreover, similar to what was found with information technology in the first study, the functional capability for energy technology shows continual—if not continuous—improvement that is best quantitatively described as exponential with respect to time. The absence of capability discontinuities—even with large technology displacement—and the lack of clear saturation effects are found with energy as it was with information. However, some key differences between energy and information technology are seen and these include:

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Lower rates of progress for energy technology over the entire period: 19-37% annually for Information Technology and 3-13% for Energy Technology.

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Substantial variability of progress rates is found within given functional categories for energy compared to relatively small variation within any one category for information technology. The strongest variation is found among capability progress among different energy types.

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More challenging data recovery and metric definition for energy as compared to information technology.

These findings are interpreted in terms of fundamental differences between energy and information including the losses and efficiency constraints on energy. We apply Whitney's insight that these fundamental differences lead to naturally modular information technology artifacts. The higher progress rates of information-based as opposed to energy-based technologies follows since decomposable systems can progress more rapidly due to the greater ease of independent as opposed to simultaneous development. In addition, the broad implications of our findings to studies of the relationships between technical and social change are briefly discussed.