Nonseparability and the voluntary approach to externality problems

Ronald Coase asserted that voluntary two-party bargaining with zero transaction costs results in an optimal resource allocation, which is invariant with respect to the liability rule. It has been argued that nonseparabilities destroy the validity of Coase's theorem. In this paper it is shown that this criticism is based on implausible assumptions about the externality-receivers adjustment to the externality level.     

The voluntary approach to externality problems: A survey of the critics

The literature critical of the Coase Theorem is synthesized. One conclusion is that bilateral bargaining in a voluntary, frictionless setting results in optimality only by accident, if at all. This is because of the problem of threats and the problem of small numbers bargaining behavior (it is not marginal). The second conclusion is that the placement of liability in general affects the allocation of resources. The exception is when there are no income effects, no transactions costs, and no nonseparabilities. But the existence of externalities implies transaction costs are high, which in turn implies that liability matters.     

Pigovian taxes which work in the small-number case

An appropriately conceived pollution tax can achieve a Pareto optimal equilibrium which is (1) stable in the presence of myopia, (2) not subject to strategic manipulation even in the small-number case, and (3) resistant to inefficient cost shifting by the participants when transaction costs are low. A considerable amount of confusion in the literature exists because different authors use different tax formulas (often implicitly) and different assumptions regarding conjectural behavior. Some of this confusion is cleared up by formally presenting various Pigovian tax formulas, explicitly considering whether there is Cournot or Stackleberg behavior, and comparing the properties of the various configurations.     

Convexity and corner solutions in the theory of externality

The purpose of this note is to reconsider the possibility of corner solutions in the theory of externality. Previous theories will be compared and analyzed in an attempt to develop a common perspective when viewing all-or-nothing possibilities.     

The regulation of a spatially heterogeneous externality: Tradable groundwater permits to protect streams

Groundwater pumping can reduce the flow of surface water in nearby streams. In the United States, recent awareness of this externality has led to intra- and inter-state conflict and rapidly-changing water management policies and institutions. Although the marginal damage of groundwater use on stream flows depends crucially on the location of pumping relative to streams, current regulations are generally uniform over space. We use a population data set of irrigation wells in the Nebraska portion of the Republican River Basin to analyze whether adopting spatially differentiated groundwater pumping regulations leads to significant reductions in farmer abatement costs and costs from damage to streams. We find that regulators can generate most of the potential savings in total social costs without accounting for spatial heterogeneity. However, if regulators need to increase the protection of streams significantly from current levels, spatially differentiated policies will yield sizable cost savings.     

吉林省畜禽养殖业的环境问题及防治技术

畜禽养殖业规模化生产带来了畜禽废弃物对环境的污染问题。2001～2002年作者的调查表明，吉林省8个主要城区畜禽存栏数已达到20184．87万头(只)，由畜禽产生的粪便尿液总量达6533．24万t，它相当于全省当年工业废弃物产生量的4．1倍，这些排泄物向环境排放BODs质量为2．7116万t，排放的CODcr质量为3．6414万t，排放的NH3-N质量为0．575万t。文章针对吉林省畜禽养殖业目前的生产规模和由此给环境带来的危害等问题，提出了相应的管理与治理措施，认为先进的饲料配方技术、清洁生产、开展国际合作以及使用生态厕所是解决问题的关键所在。     

对我国生态补偿的立法构想

分析了以往生态补偿的定义,并从法律的角度给出了生态补偿应有的涵义,即是指为了恢复、维持和增强生态系统的生态功能,国家对导致生态功能减损的自然资源开发或利用者收费(税)以及国家或生态受益者对为改善、维持或增强生态服务功能为目的而作出特别牺牲者给予经济和非经济形式的补偿。回顾了我国有关生态补偿的政策与法律的规定,并探讨了其缺陷:我国有关生态补偿的政策与法律虽然较多,规定得较早,但这些规定很不规范和系统,而且过于原则、缺乏可操作性,对负外部性行为的生态补偿存在政策与法律的缺位,即使是对正外部性行为也并非真正意义上的补偿,而只是一种补助或补贴。对我国生态补偿的立法构建提出了初步设想:一要补偿政策应当法律化,使生态补偿成为一项名副其实的法律制度;二要要构建合理的生态补偿法律体系。     

Values of net compensation irradiation and their dependence on photosynthetic efficiency and respiration in marine unicellular algae

Daily compensation irradiation for net photosynthetic rates (ΣI _comp) of Skeletonema costatum (Greville) Cleve, Chaetoceros ceratosporum Ostenfeld, Nitzschia sp., Thalassiosira nordenskiöldii Cleve, and Chroomonas salina (Wislouch) Butcher were measured during 1979 to obtain values for use in ecological models describing compensation and critical depths of marine phytoplankton. Batch cultures of these unicellular algae were exposed to temperatures and photoperiods varying from 6° to 15°C and 8.4 to 16.0 h, conditions typical of surface water in Saanich Inlet, a fjord in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Results obtained with S. costatum and T. nordenskiöldii provided estimates of ΣI _comp varying between 1.8 and 13 J cm^-2 d^-1, from which a mean value of 7.0 J cm^-2 d^-1 was calculated for use in ecological models with neritic phytoplankton. No seasonal variation in compensation irradiation was noted because photosynthetic efficiencies, which increased as division rates increased, were balanced by respiration rates, which increased as temperature increased. Results obtained with Chaetoceros ceratosporum, Nitzschia sp., and Chroomonas salina were difficult to interpret, because respiration rates were stimulated and depressed by light, respectively, for the first two species and the last one. This light effect was greatest when cells grew under conditions of low temperature and short photoperiod. Also, under winter and spring conditions, cells of Nitzschia sp. appeared to fix CO₂ in the dark and with low irradiances by mechanisms other than photosynthesis.     

North American vegetation model for land-use planning in a changing climate: a solution to large classification problems

Data points intensively sampling 46 North American biomes were used to predict the geographic distribution of biomes from climate variables using the Random Forests classification tree. Techniques were incorporated to accommodate a large number of classes and to predict the future occurrence of climates beyond the contemporary climatic range of the biomes. Errors of prediction from the statistical model averaged 3.7%, but for individual biomes, ranged from 0% to 21.5%. In validating the ability of the model to identify climates without analogs, 78% of 1528 locations outside North America and 81% of land area of the Caribbean Islands were predicted to have no analogs among the 46 biomes. Biome climates were projected into the future according to low and high greenhouse gas emission scenarios of three General Circulation Models for three periods, the decades surrounding 2030, 2060, and 2090. Prominent in the projections were (1) expansion of climates suitable for the tropical dry deciduous forests of Mexico, (2) expansion of climates typifying desertscrub biomes of western USA and northern Mexico, (3) stability of climates typifying the evergreen-deciduous forests of eastern USA, and (4) northward expansion of climates suited to temperate forests, Great Plains grasslands, and montane forests to the detriment of taiga and tundra climates. Maps indicating either poor agreement among projections or climates without contemporary analogs identify geographic areas where land management programs would be most equivocal. Concentrating efforts and resources where projections are more certain can assure land managers a greater likelihood of success.     

The theory of power and efficiency in ecology

Some previous work on the theory of power and optimal efficiency in ecology is shown to be either incorrect or of limited applicability. The standard analysis based on Atwood's machine is not valid, and the optimal efficiency for maximum power production depends on the characteristics of the individual system. For optimally foraging aquatic organisms the theoretical efficiency is less than 50% when the hydrodynamic flow is laminar, but under turbulent conditions the optimal efficiency can rise as high as 67%. Despite these restrictions it still appears plausible that ecological efficiency should be the same for broad classes of living organisms.     

The efficiency value of effluent tax revenues

The concept of the efficiency value of effluent tax revenues is developed. It is defined as the reduction in excess burden resulting from the substitution of these revenues for current or future resource distorting tax revenues, such as those raised from federal corporate and personal income taxes. The annual efficiency value of revenues raised by national effluent taxes on two major air pollutants is estimated to range from $0.63 to $3.05 billion, if substituted for federal personal income tax revenue, and from $1 to $4.87 billion, if substituted for corporate income tax revenue, expressed in 1982 dollars. Thus previous estimates of the efficiency gain from substitution of an effluent tax scheme for current pollution regulation policy have been too low, because the efficiency value of the tax revenues has been excluded.     

建立我国生态补偿制度的思考

当前,我国现行的生态补偿制度中还存在部门管理不当、政策不连续、缺乏群众参与、补偿金过低、资金使用未完全体现生态补偿等诸多问题,需要依据生态补偿的外部性理论,从市场调节、财政转移支付、保证金制度、协商机制等途径人手,因地制宜地选择适当的途径并综合利用其它途径的便利之处,推动生态补偿制度建设的顺利进行.此外,急需政府从政策层面上给予大力支持和观念上的引导.包括:①建立"环境财政"制度;设立环境转移支付专项资金列入财政预算,加大生态补偿和生态环保的支持力度;②完善相关的税收政策,确立普遍征收为主的征收机制,扩大征收范围,调整税率;③改变由政府单一买单的财政转移支付制度模式,建立起地方、民间、企业和个人等多种渠道的融资体制;④倡导建立绿色GDP的核算体系和绿色审计制度;⑤逐步建立健全<生态补偿法>,建立生态环境评估体系,完善环境执法监督管理体系;⑥尽快完成从"生态补偿"到"生态赔偿"的观念转变.     

我国自然保护区生态旅游发展的存在问题及对策

我国自然保护区目前正处于高速发展过程中,同时由于人口众多、环境压力巨大等因素,我国保护区也面临了资金投入不足等问题,而合理地开展自然保护区生态旅游则是解决保护区发展存在问题的重要手段之一。文章通过详细分析我国自然保护区生态旅游概念、功能、特点及开展方式,总结了目前存在的不足和问题,提出了具体的建议对策。     

流域生态补偿理论探讨

流域生态补偿是协调流域生态环境保护和经济发展之间矛盾,调整流域内区域间损益关系的有效手段。文章从流域内人类活动产生的损益人手,论述了流域生态补偿的概念、理论基础和运行机铷,并利用经济学原理,对生态补偿的必要性和补偿标准进行了理论解析,给出了流域生态补偿必要性的理论依据和需要补偿量的理论值。在此基础上,根据流域人类活动的正负外部性等原则,对流域生态补偿进行了分类。依据流域生态补偿分类,梳理出了我国流域生态补偿重点区域。通过对流域生态补偿理论探讨,以期作为进一步研究和应用实践的参考和启示。     

Environmental problems of coal production in the federal republic of of germany with particular reference to to the Ruhr

In 1979 it was noted that the production of deep-mined coal in the Federal Republic of Germany, including the Ruhr area, has risen once again. Since the beginning of the sixties the convenient source of both energy and raw material, oil, has been responsible for the falling levels of coal production in the Ruhr, to almost one half of peak production in 1956. Not much would have been needed to give up the entire troublesome and expensive process of deep coal mining in the Federal Republic in favour of the then cheap and bountiful oil. Only lignite managed to maintain a more or less steady annual production rate due to the direct conversion into electricity of a major part of its production at the site of extraction. Since the limitations and uncertainties governing the supply of crude oil have now been clearly exposed, the illusions about oil have begun to fade, and as a result confidence in our indigenous supplies of energy and raw material resources has been restored. What, however, are the implications of this revival of home-produced energy and raw material, which are not without problems both when produced and when consumed for the region in which they are extracted and brought to the surface, and where, to a large extent, the processing takes place? The region benefits from employment and investment, and in turn offers its resources (labour, land, water, air) inasmuch as past development has left them available for future development. But is the region to be covered with even more ‘honourable’ scars? In 1980, 87 million tonnes of deep mined coal were produced in the Federal Republic of Germany which resulted in roughly the same amount of minestone (spoil). Approximately 600 km² of densely populated area in the Ruhr district was already acquiring artificial drainage due to subsidence. Coking plants and old coal-based stations fired with deep mined coal pollute air and water. Lignite production in 1980 in the Federal Republic of Germany — which was almost entirely obtained by opencast mining — amounted to 130 million tonnes. To achieve this an additional 445×10⁶m³ of overburden had to be shifted. Already in 1977 in the Rhineland between Cologne, Dusseldorf and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), 522 km² of mainly good agricultural land was acquired under compulsory purchase order for lignite mining. Villages, roads, rail and waterways were and continue to be re-routed and re-sited. The direct conversion of lignite into electricity produces emission and spreads pollution. Now, it is not only the people of the Ruhr area, the largest industrial conurbation in Europe, that have become sensitive to the impact of mining upon their environment. In all industrial countries it has been learned that those things which cannot be replaced, i.e. environment, are not always being valued by the free market at a price which represents the value they may have for the individual and possibly should have for all of us. Today the need for mining is hardly being questioned any more but people are voicing their opinion as to what is a just price to be paid. The citizen of the Ruhr, for instance, no longer accepts that the specific environmental impacts caused by deep coal mining, which produces a commodity wanted by the entire nation, should be borne solely at the place where it is produced and by the people who happen to live there. He demands that such burdens are borne by everybody who enjoys the benefits. Clear political ideas must be developed and made know as to how much we value home-produced energy sources, what proportion of the resulting burdens the country is willing to bear and how they are to be distributed fairly. There are many methods and technical means by which the burdens of the mining and industrial regions can be minimised, by which damage can be repaired and derelict areas reclaimed. The application of such means must be safeguarded by early planning and sufficient finanacing so that the exploitation of one resource will not result in other resources being lost.     

Using a fire propagation model to assess the efficiency of prescribed burning in reducing the fire hazard

We examined how fire hazard was affected by prescribed burning and fuel recovery over the first six years following treatment. Eight common Mediterranean fuel complexes managed by means of prescribed burning in limestone Provence (South-Eastern France) were studied, illustrating forest and woodland, garrigue and grassland situations. The coupled atmosphere-wildfire behaviour model FIRETEC was used to simulate fire behaviour (ROS, intensity) in these complex vegetations. The temporal threshold related to the effectiveness of prescribed burning in reducing the fire hazard was assessed from derivated fuel dynamics after treatment. The study showed that prescribed burning treatment was effective for the first two years in most of the Mediterranean plant communities analysed. Thereafter, all forests and shrublands were highly combustible with a fire line intensity of more than 5000 kW/m except for pine stands with or without oak (medium intensity of 2000 kW m⁻¹ 3 years after treatment). Low fire line intensity (900 kW m⁻¹) was obtained for grassland which was entirely treatment-independent since the resprouter hemicryptophyte, Brachypodium retusum, is highly resilient to fire. Fire behaviour was greatly affected by fuel load accumulation of Quercus ilex in woodland, and by standing necromass of Rosmarinus officinalis in treated garrigue. Pure pine stands with shrub strata similar to garrigue showed a lower fire intensity due to wind speed decrease at ground level under tree canopy, underlining the advantage of maintaining a proportion of canopy cover in strategic fuel-break zones.     

Low efficiency of sewage treatment plants due to unskilled operations in India

Centralized sewage treatment plants may not be a sustainable solution for a developing country such as India. Therefore, we conducted for the first time an integrated assessment of the different technologies currently used for sewage treatment in the state of West Bengal, India. Five decentralized sewage treatment plants and one centralized sewage treatment plant located in different parts of Kolkata were evaluated. We compared influent and effluent water quality, energy consumed, capital and operating costs, and treated wastewater reuse potential. F test was used to validate results on the effect of working days and holidays and seasons on treated water quality. Wastewater management strategy was assessed by performance indicators. Our results show that treatment efficiency was lowest in anaerobic plants not because of faulty technology but due to unskilled operation. Therefore, performance improvement of plants is expected if factors such as monitoring, training of staff, regular and scrupulous desludging, reuse aspects, and rational water tariff are implemented earnestly.     

完善我国流域生态补偿制度的思考——以东江流域为例

上下游对流域生态资源保护做出的贡献与生态利益享有的不平等导致区域间社会经济差距的扩大,需要通过生态补偿制度的建立和完善来实现区域统筹和谐发展,但我国现行生态补偿制度由于行政区界限制、相关法规建设不完善、补偿方式较单一、补偿标准测算困难等原因面临不少问题和困境。以东江流域现行生态补偿措施为视点,分析了当前生态补偿研究实践中存在的问题;进而以此为基点根据流域生态系统的连贯性与人类政治结构分割性之间的矛盾进行反思,提出打破流域行政区界限制,统筹构建流域“生态共同体”的理念;并在此理念指导下,提出采取“政府主导、市场运作”策略。即在明确界定流域范围后,首先由“政府主导”开展全流域综合规划、建立和完善省内流域统管机制、跨省流域生态共享共建统筹协商机制;其次以水质水量、出售许可交易权方式测算“生态共同体”之间核算补偿资金,并结合“市场运作”实施多样化并进补偿方式;同时建立流域生态补偿奖惩制度并将其纳入“生态共同体”干部绩效考核体系,构建流域补偿的长效机制,完善我国流域生态补偿制度。     

Measuring and decomposing changes in agricultural productivity, nitrogen use efficiency and cumulative exergy efficiency: Application to OECD agriculture

This paper uses an aggregate quantity space to decompose the temporal changes in nitrogen use efficiency and cumulative exergy use efficiency into changes of Moorsteen-Bjurek (MB) Total Factor Productivity (TFP) changes and changes in the aggregate nitrogen and cumulative exergy contents. Changes in productivity can be broken into technical change and changes in various efficiency measures such as technical efficiency, scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency. Changes in the aggregate nitrogen and cumulative exergy contents can be driven by changes in the quality of inputs and outputs and changes in the mixes of inputs and outputs. Also with cumulative exergy content analysis, changes in the efficiency in input production can increase or decrease the cumulative exergy transformity of agricultural production. The empirical study in 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development from 1990 to 2003 yielded some important findings. The production technology progressed but there were reductions in technical efficiency, scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency levels. This result suggests that the production frontier had shifted up but there existed lags in the responses of member countries to the technological change. Given TFP growth, improvements in nutrient use efficiency and cumulative exergy use efficiency were counteracted by reductions in the changes of the aggregate nitrogen contents ratio and aggregate cumulative exergy contents ratio. The empirical results also confirmed that different combinations of inputs and outputs as well as the quality of inputs and outputs could have more influence on the growth of nutrient and cumulative exergy use efficiency than factors that had driven productivity change.     

基于CVM方法分析牧民对禁牧政策的受偿意愿——以锡林郭勒草原为例

确定居民对生态措施实施的受偿意愿,对目前迫切需要的生态补偿政策制定以及生态恢复和保护的有效性具有重要的现实意义。选用锡林郭勒草原为案例区域,通过入户调查及在那达慕大会集中调查相结合的方式,调查锡林郭勒草原地区牧民对禁牧措施的态度和受偿意愿。分析结果显示:53%的牧民愿意参加禁牧,而不愿意参加禁牧主要是由于补偿标准不合理引起的。计量经济学模型分析表明,牧民对禁牧的支持态度与牧民的收入和草地面积呈正相关,与养羊数量呈负相关。牧民的受偿意愿由牧民养羊数量、受教育年限、草地现状以及对禁牧政策的支持程度决定。根据意愿调查法初步估算锡林郭勒草原地区禁牧措施实施后牧民的补偿意愿,牧民家庭对禁牧政策的平均受偿意愿为每年每户2.7717万元,人均受偿意愿为8399元,平均每1hm2草地受偿意愿为85.95元。