Highway Spending and Induced Vehicle Emissions: Evidence from the US states

This paper investigates the impact of state and local government highway spending on vehicle emissions. A theoretical framework is constructed to show the effect of government highway spending on passenger and freight vehicle emissions and decompose the effect into a rebound effect, an induced demand effect and an interaction effect. We then develop an empirical strategy and combine state-level data in the US to test the induced CO2 emissions by government highway spending. We find that there are positive and significant total effects of government highway spending on passenger and freight vehicle emissions. The magnitude of these effects, however, significantly differs from one another as the elasticity of freight vehicle emissions with respect to government highway spending is four times larger than that in the passenger sector. The difference can be plausibly explained by the rebound effect and the interaction effect. We argue that policies regarding government spending on highway projects, especially those relying on cost-benefit analysis, should account for the potential difference in induced environmental impacts between passenger and freight vehicles.     

FDI的技术外溢性与我国的可持续发展

可持续发展对科技创新提出了更高的要求,实证分析表明FDI为了保持技术上的垄断地位提高了新技术进入的成本,使我国的技术被锁定在了低水平的陷阱中。从产业分布可以看出,FDI对外输出的是高耗能、高污染的生产能力,阻碍了技术外溢。我国可持续发展所依存的技术条件必须通过自我有意识投资的提高来实现;同时,只有贯彻科学的发展观,提高利用FDI的质量和水平,优化其产业布局,才能最终实现发展的可持续性。     

The external returns to education: Evidence from Chinese cities

Following Rauch's seminal study, there has been a growing interest among economists in estimating human capital externalities at the individual level [J. Rauch, Productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital: Evidence from the cities, Journal of Urban Economics 34 (1993) 380–400]. In this paper, we provide a first set of estimates of the external returns to education in Chinese cities. We find that the external returns are at least as high as the private returns to education. OLS estimates of the external returns range from a low of 4.9% to a high of 6.7%. Two-stage least squares estimates indicate that a one-year increase in city average education could increase individual earnings by between 11 and 13%. We also examine the impact of economic reforms on the external returns to education and find suggestive evidence that economic reforms have raised the external returns to education in Chinese cities.     

国外车险里程定价理论与实践

基于里程定价的车险产品不但可以通过合理反映被保险人的保险成本以体现保费收取的公平性,而且一定程度上具有有效缓解交通堵塞、降低能源消耗、减少环境污染和温室气体排放等综合社会效益,目前已成为欧美发达国家车险市场上一款流行的产品。在系统梳理和总结国外车险按里程定价的理论与实践的基础上,对其进行了效益分析,并对实施中可能存在的问题进行了深入探讨,将为我国车险市场改革和产品结构升级提供启示,也为我国财险公司开发按里程定价的车险产品提供有益的理论支持和实践参考,以更加有利于我国车险费率市场化和非寿险公司的科学经营。     

The Installed Base Effect: Some Empirical Evidence From The Microcomputer Market

The penetration rate US network technologies is not only determined by the indigenous qualities of these technologies, but also by the adoption behaviour of other actors using the same network technology. This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of network externalities and suggests that the econonmic consequences of network externalities - as they affect the diffusion speed of network technologies at an aggregate level - may be considerable.When the market offers incompatible network technologies, the relative share of previous adopters of the technologies plays a critical role in determining the diffusion speed of network technologies. This paper provides empirical evidence from the European microcomputer market between 1985 and 1994 which supports this hypothesis. Our analysis suggests that the diffusion speed of microcomputers at an aggregate level has varied with the relative order of magnitude of the network size of the two incompatible operating systems: a higher variation between the number of users of different microcomputers sold is positively relaled to a higher diffusion speed of microcomputers in general.     

Hybrid Carbon Incentive Mechanisms and Political Acceptability

This paper analyses how hybrid systems of carbon taxes and tradeable permits optimize some conflicting dimensions of political acceptability related to the design of these instruments. Pure systems like taxes without exemptions or auctioned tradeable permits cause problems for political acceptability in open economies due to high overall costs (abatement cost plus payments on the tax or auctions) for current polluters. Unfortunately, pure systems based on grandfathering of emission rights across the board do not provide a feasible alternative because of monitoring and enforcement problems. In contrast, consciously designed hybrid systems employ grandfathering of emission rights together with either carbon taxes or auctioned carbon permits in order to overcome acceptability problems of pure systems, while leaving incentives to reduce emissions at the margin untouched. Moreover, monitoring and enforcement costs of the hybrid systems are less due to the lower number of participating agents compared with the pure systems, while opportunities for cost- or burden-sharing exist as well.