中国农业现代化发展水平的空间非均衡及动态演进

研究中国农业现代化发展水平的地区差距以及内部动态分布特征对于制定农业现代化发展的相关政策具有重要意义。本文利用1997-2013年中国31个省、市(自治区)的面板数据,构建了农业现代化发展水平的指标体系,进而采用熵权综合指数法测算出中国农业现代化发展水平的综合指数,同时借助Dagum基尼系数和Markov链估计方法对中国农业现代化发展水平的地区差距及其分布动态进行了实证研究,得到如下结论:1Dagum基尼系数及分解结果表明,中国农业现代化发展水平的总体差距在样本考察期内呈现出先上升、后下降的演变趋势。从三大地区来看,东部地区内差距呈现出上升趋势,而中部和西部地区内差距则呈现出下降趋势。地区间差距是造成中国农业现代化发展水平空间非均衡的首要原因,并且其对总体差距的贡献率呈波动上升趋势;地区内差距对总体差距的贡献率变化较小,而超变密度对总体差距的贡献率呈现出先上升、再下降的演变趋势。2Markov链分析表明,中国农业现代化发展水平状态流动性较低。从整体来看,中国农业现代化发展水平存在较为明显的上升趋势,并且农业现代化发展的低水平省份将逐步减少,总体向中等以上水平发展。针对本文实证结果,由此得到如下政策建议:首先,加大国家对西部地区农业基础设施建设的投入,引导农业科技人才回归;其次,加强区域间农业现代化发展全方位的交流与合作,发挥省区之间的协同效应;最后,因地制宜,充分利用资源禀赋,推动农业现代化发展。     

不同经济发展阶段区域经济发展差异比较

在介绍区域经济发展阶段各种理论及划分方法的基础上,通过计算1985-2004年间,广西崇左市、安徽滁州市、江苏南通市经济发展的变化轨迹,确定不同区域经济发展阶段.利用偏离-份额分析法对区域经济发展水平进行研究,表明崇左市经济结构较差,结构对于经济增长的贡献小且竞争能力较弱;滁州市经济中增长快的产业部门比重较大,总体经济结构较好,结构对于经济增长具有一定贡献,竞争能力较强;南通市经济中朝阳的、增长快的产业部门比重大,总体经济结构好,结构对于经济增长的贡献大,且各产业部门总的增长势头大,具有很强的竞争能力.建议:①崇左市参与中国-东盟自由贸易区、中越"两廊一圈"经济带以及泛珠三角经济区域,吸收泛珠三角经济区的产业转移,加快发展国际贸易.②滁州市应融入南京都市圈,吸引和承接东部地区的产业转移,注意生态城市建设,发展循环经济,实现经济和生态环境的综合协调发展.③南通市应把资源节约型的增长模式和消费方式作为经济增长方式转变的核心,提升产业的综合竞争力,最终实现经济社会协调发展.     

中国省际间农村居民收入结构和收入差距分析

在计算基尼系数的基础上,文章得出了改革开放以来中国省际间农村居民收入差距不断扩大的趋势,收入基尼系数从1981年的0.095一直上升到了2003年的0.181,直到近年来,收入差距才开始略有缩小。文章从收入结构的视角研究了省际间农村居民收入差距产生的原因。首先利用1983-2008年较长时期的数据分析了农村居民收入结构的变化,发现从总体上而言,中国各地区农村居民的收入结构均表现出了农业收入比重减少,非农收入比重增加的明显趋势;然后运用基尼系数的分解方法实证分析了不同收入来源对于收入差距的影响,研究发现,工资性收入是差距促增的,是目前中国省际间农村居民收入差距扩大最重要的原因,而家庭经营性收入者起着差距促减的作用,转移性收入和财产性收入的不平等程度较高,但是由于其在总收入中的比例不高,对总的收入差距影响较小。最后,文章提出了缩小省际间农村居民收入差距的政策建议。     

Waste management in a more unequal world: centring inequality in our waste and climate change discourse

ABSTRACT

Climate change is expected to contribute to global inequality, and exacerbate ecological risk for the world's poor. Despite recent trends within waste management academic discourse, which has begun to engage with inequality, and its underlying socio-economic and socio-political causes, discussions of inequality have so far remained absent from our investigations on climate change's impacts on waste management systems and practices. The purpose of the discussion is to call for a centring of inequality within our waste and climate discourse. I identify two main pathways for scholarly investigation, specifically, developing alternative waste management solutions for contexts in which waste management systems fail, which do not just perpetuate existing inequalities, and addressing the growing inequality in waste management technology and practice between the Global North and the Global South.     

Impact of Growing Income Inequality on Sustainable Development in China： A Provincial-level Analysis

A growing body of literature has documented the rapidly increasing income disparities that accompanied China＇s economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, and the driving factors behind this. Growing income inequality in its turn may have important implications for the accumulation of physical capital, human capital, and natural capital and as a consequence for sustainable economic development. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential impact of income inequality on savings, human resources and the environment in China. It starts with an overview of the different causal mechanisms through which income inequality may affect the accumulation of physical capital, human capital, and natural capital, and discusses to what extent these causal relationships may be relevant in the case of China. Next, provincial data for the year 2002 are used to explore the relationship between income inequality and different elements of sustainable development in China. It is found that income inequality does not affect aggregate savings levels. Rising inequality, however, contributes to lower health and possibly also to higher fertility levels. It also lowers the use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture and therefore is likely to reduce water pollution. Other types of environmental degradation are not affected.     

收入差距是否影响环境质量?——国内外研究综述

近年来,收入差距扩大与环境质量恶化成为许多国家同时面临的问题,也让一些经济学家开始思考,这两者之间是否存在关联。继20世纪90年代环境库兹涅茨曲线提出以来,一些研究发现不仅收入的绝对水平会对环境质量产生影响,收入差距对环境质量也有影响。本文对这一课题的理论研究进行了梳理,发现现有理论中收入差距对环境质量的影响途径主要有三条。第一条途径是消费者途径,即收入差距影响着以消费为主的个人经济行为,进一步影响着社会消费总量和消费结构,及其过程中产生的污染总量。第二条途径是企业途径,即认为收入差距的扩大会削弱环保型产品的正外部性,不利于环保技术的创新活动,对未来环境质量的改善产生动态影响。第三条途径是政府途径,即认为收入差距会影响相关的环境政策方式与强度选择;而且在不同的社会政策决策机制下,收入差距对环境政策的影响也是不同的,现有的社会决策机制分析框架主要有两种——权利权重型社会决策规则和简单多数规则。此外,本文还对现存的主要实证研究进行了总结,发现大多数研究结论都支持收入差距对环境质量存在着影响,但这种影响并不是线性的。一方面,收入差距对环境的影响与研究的污染物种类有关,大多数研究都显示,收入不平等对CO 2排放和土壤污染存在着负向影响,但有关收入差距对空气污染和水污染影响的研究结论并不统一或并不显著。另一方面,这种影响还与经济发展水平相关,在高收入国家与低收入国家是不同的,存在着阈值效应。最后本文总结了针对中国的研究现状,讨论了其在我国的适用性。     

Governing climate change for a just city: challenges and lessons from Maputo,Mozambique

As new forms of governance for climate change emerge in African cities, will they enable emancipatory and socially progressive transformations or will they exacerbate existing inequality, poverty and vulnerability patterns? This paper presents one of the case studies developed by UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative in Maputo, Mozambique. The case analyses first, the production of urban vulnerabilities under climate change, and second, the existing governance arrangements for climate change in the city. Building on the lessons of the case study, the paper argues that to ensure that new forms of climate change governance lead to socially and environmentally just outcomes climate change interventions should, at least, meet two conditions: first, they should consider the close interactions between social and ecological elements and, specially, how patterns of urban inequality interact with environmental factors; second, they should recognise the opportunities in African cities through a broad notion of governance that looks beyond the government as the sole agent of urban change.     

Parks,streets and “just empty space”: the local environmental experiences of children and young people in a Scottish study

This article is concerned with the nature and significance of inequality in the environmental experience of children and young people. We argue that research in this area needs to widen in perspective and address a complex set of environmental attributes that matter to children and young people, and to their development. Discussing a study conducted in three differing locations in Scotland, the paper examines the local places that were important to children and young people, and the factors that affected the benefits they derived from them. The results illustrate that unequal experiences arise partly through different material provision of environmental goods, but also issues of quality and maintenance, and that relational dynamics have a crucial role. An important concern is not just the quality of experiences in the present, but the effects that environmental experiences in early life have on skills and capacities taken forward into adulthood.     

NEATS: A Network Economics Approach to Trophic Systems

The main principle of the economic approach to a trophic system we propose here lies in assuming that there is a transfer of food along a path between a prey and a predator if, for the predator, the benefits are greater than costs of predation on this path. Conversely, if the costs exceed the benefits, there are no flows. This trade-off, considered all along the food chains of an ecosystem, together with ecological processes (assimilation, somatic maintenance) results in a model coupling mass balance equations (biological constraints) and complementarity principles (Walras’ law). Here is the core of the Network Economics Approach to Trophic Systems (NEATS).     

Global justice and the opportunity costs of conservation

Opportunity costs can represent a significant portion of the costs associated with conservation projects and frequently outstrip other kinds of cost. They are typically understood to refer to the benefits someone would have obtained if conservation projects had not required them to give up current activities, such as farming or hunting or if the land had been available for uses other than conservation. This familiar way of identifying opportunity costs is flawed, however, because it threatens to condone, or take advantage of, the injustices that many people face that affect their opportunities. I integrated ideas from the political theory of global justice to examine how the analysis of opportunity costs illustrates the importance of considering conservation and issues of global justice together, rather than thinking about them in isolation. I distinguish four baselines for defining opportunity costs. A status quo baseline defines opportunity costs by asking what people would have earned had a conservation project not happened. A willingness to accept baseline defines them by asking people what it would take to make them indifferent to whether a conservation project takes place or not. An antipoverty baseline suggests that opportunity costs have been met when people affected by a project are not left in poverty. An egalitarian baseline suggests opportunity costs have been met when people are not left in relative disadvantage, with worse than average opportunities. I argue that the egalitarian baseline is the most acceptable from the point of view of justice. Such a baseline would suggest that, in practice, many of the world's poor are being unjustly treated, or even exploited, as a result of conservation activities.