Accepting market failure: Cultural worldviews and the opposition to corrective environmental policies

To explore whether and why people sometimes reject environmental policies that improve individual and collective outcomes, we create an experimental market in which transactions generate a negative externality. Market participants endogenously determine whether to implement corrective policies. We consider three policy instruments (Pigouvian taxes and subsidies, and quantity regulation) and two levels of policy efficiency (full and half). We then explore how individual cultural worldviews might contribute to the rejection of policies that correct the market failure. Our results indicate that people often oppose policies that improve their material outcomes, and we find that such opposition is significantly explained by cultural worldviews. Interesting connections emerge between individual worldviews and specific policy instruments.     

企业环境信息公开的激励经济学研究

企业环境信息公开的意愿以及真实性成为了环境信息公开工作中面临的一个重要问题。本文从激励经济学的角度出发,分析了企业在环境信息公开过程中面临着的外部性内化、公众的逆向选择以及道德风险等问题,提出了政府主导,企业完善,多元参与的对策建议,以期实现环境保护与经济发展的"双赢"。     

Positive framing does not solve the tragedy of the commons

We investigate whether positive framing increases cooperation in three social dilemmas with slightly different properties: a linear public goods (PG) game, a non-linear PG game, and a common pool resource (CPR) game. Results from our laboratory experiments show that contributions to a linear PG are higher if the externality is framed positively, rather than negatively, corroborating earlier findings by Andreoni (1995). By contrast, we find no such framing effects in the non-linear PG game or the CPR game. In these games, the best response in the material payoffs is to contribute less if others contribute more, counteracting effects of pro-social preferences. Positive framing therefore does not help to solve the tragedy of the commons.     

我国环境服务业发展路径的思考

环境服务业是为环境污染治理等提供服务的行业,是环保产业的重要组成部分,但传统环境服务与环境治理效果存在脱节的现象.本文借鉴经济学外部性理论分析传统环境服务中环保企业污染治理与实现环境系统性改善之间存在的差距,及造成这种差距的原因,有针对性的从成本分担、目标统一、结果双赢、服务量化四个方面分析当前阻碍环境服务行业发展的关键问题,探讨环境服务业发展模式的创新,并为推进我国环境服务业发展提出了一些思路.     

Watershed development in India. 2. New approaches for managing externalities and meeting sustainability requirements

This paper recognises the need for a revision of watershed development policy in India in relation to the planning of development interventions involving agricultural intensification and rainwater harvesting and the need for new approaches to assist the planning process. Building on, and using as an example, the results of biophysical and societal impact studies carried out on two watershed development projects in Karnataka three new management/dissemination tools, are suggested. These are (1) the web-based geographical information systems exploratory, climate land assessment and impact management tool dissemination tool for disseminating to policymakers and non-specialist stakeholders the downstream impacts of watershed interventions, (2) the ‘quadrant’ approach for ensuring that sustainability criteria are met and (3) Bayesian networks to investigate the biophysical and societal impacts of interventions. Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue     

基于改进达标检测法的跨区域排污权交易体系研究

由于污染排放存在时空与行业"热点"(hot spots)问题,针对非均匀污染物建立跨区域排污权交易体系具有一定困难。基于一种新的污染外部性度量系数,本文对传统的达标检测方法进行了改进,在此改进达标检测法上构建的跨区域排污权交易体系,能够在简化交易机制和管理工作的同时较好地解决"热点"问题,在社会总产出和总排污量不变的情况下实现社会福利的帕累托改进。     

环境污染外部性的内部化方式探讨

本文从外部性理论的角度出发,介绍了环境污染外部性进行内部化的几种方式,并在此分析基础上提出了环境污染外部性内化的一种较好的方式,即排污权交易制度。     

道路环境成本的货币化模型研究

公平、合理地分担外部性环境成本是实现道路交通资源最优配置的前提条件之一,而环境成本货币化评估是实现道路交通政策体现环境公平性的重要内容。介绍了在国内外对道路外部成本的研究成果,在已有研究的基础上,将我国道路交通发展的环境成本主要分解为生态影响、环境污染和温室气体排放三类,并以借助环境经济学理论基础,对给出的道路交通生态影响、环境污染和温室气体排放的货币化方法估算模型分别进行了探讨。随后,以安徽省某高速公路为例,计算出道路建设及运营的环境成本占工程总投资的7.31%,结果表明环境成本货币化有利于明确道路建设的环境影响,并纳入成本核算中。     

Assessing Health Benefits of Controlling Air Pollution from Power Generation: The Case of a Lignite-Fired Power Plant in Thailand

The impact pathway approach (IPA) is used to estimate quantitatively the level of health effects caused by particulate matter (PM₁₀) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emission from a lignite-fired power plant located in the Mae Moh area in northern region of Thailand. Health benefits are then assessed by comparing the levels of estimated health impacts without and with the installation of the flue gas desulfurization (FGD) equipment. The US EPA industrial source complex model is used to model air pollution dispersion at the local scale, and the sector average limited mixing meso-scale model is used to model air pollution transport at the regional scale. The quantification of the health end points in physical terms is carried out using the dose–response functions established recently for the population in Bangkok, Thailand. Monetarization of these effects is based on the benefit transfer method with appropriate adjustment. Finally, it has been found that the installation of the FGD to control SO₂ emission at Mae Moh significantly reduces adverse health effects not only on the population living near the power plant but also all over the country. A FGD unit installed at the 300-MW power unit can result, on average, in 16 fewer cases of acute mortality, 12 fewer cases of respiratory and cardiac hospital admissions, and almost 354,000 fewer days with acute respiratory symptoms annually. In monetary terms this benefit is equivalent to US $18.2 million (1995 prices) per annum. This benefit is much higher than the annualized investment and operation costs of FGD (US $7.4 million/yr).     

Strategic implications of counter-geoengineering: Clash or cooperation?

Solar geoengineering has received increasing attention as an option to temporarily stabilize global temperatures. A key concern is that heterogeneous preferences over the optimal amount of cooling combined with low deployment costs may allow the country with the strongest incentive for cooling, the so-called free-driver, to impose a substantial externality on the rest of the world. We analyze whether the threat of counter-geoengineering technologies capable of negating the climatic effects of solar geoengineering can overcome the free-driver problem and tilt the game in favour of international cooperation. Our game-theoretical model of countries with asymmetric preferences allows for a rigorous analysis of the strategic interaction surrounding solar geoengineering and counter-geoengineering. We find that counter-geoengineering prevents the free-driver outcome, but not always with benign effects. The presence of counter-geoengineering leads to either a climate clash where countries engage in a non-cooperative escalation of opposing climate interventions (negative welfare effect), a moratorium treaty where countries commit to abstain from either type of climate intervention (indeterminate welfare effect), or cooperative deployment of solar geoengineering (positive welfare effect). We show that the outcome depends crucially on the degree of asymmetry in temperature preferences between countries.