environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

environmental regulation industrial innovation and green development of chinese manufacturing based on an extended cdm model abstract as for the academics and policymakers more attention has been given to the issue on how to drive green development of the manufacturing through regulations and innovations we construct the extended crepon duguet mairesse cdm model and employ the panel data of chinese manufacturing industries during 2003 2014 to examine the effects of environmental regulation on industrial innovation and green development the findings reveal that 1 in the long term environmental regulation has crowded out r d investment 2 environmental regulation has inhibited patent outputs so that the weak version of porter hypothesis is not underpinned 3 in the short term environmental regulation has promoted the improvements of labor productivity energy efficiency and environmental efficiency in the manufacturing industry excluding green total factor productivity gtfp whereas in the long term environmental regulation only has increased energy efficiency while it has obstructed labor productivity which provides no support for the strong version of porter hypothesis 4 different innovation outputs have distinct influences on labor productivity energy efficiency environmental efficiency and gtfp finally this paper provides pertinent policy implications

do renewable energy technology innovations promote china s green productivity growth fresh evidence from partially linear functional coefficient models abstract renewable energy technology innovation can benefit the environment by promoting green productivity as proposed by existing theoretical studies however recent uneven developments of both environmental performance and renewable energy technology among regions in china remind us to revisit the above theoretical link in this paper we relax the hypothesized homogeneity and linearity in traditional empirical models to investigate the effects of renewable energy technology innovation on china s green productivity the results of the partially linear functional coefficient models show that the effect of renewable energy technological innovation on green productivity is significant only when the relative income level of a province passes a critical turning point beyond the turning point such an effect increases with the growth of relative income levels finally we provide provincial specific policy implications based on the estimated nonparametric relationship between renewable energy technology innovation and green productivity

energy efficiency and productivity change of china s iron and steel industry accounting for undesirable outputs abstract this paper used data from 50 enterprises in china s iron and steel industry to evaluate their energy efficiency and productivity change the study first used a conventional data envelopment analysis model and the malmquist productivity index mpi to measure the energy efficiency and productivity change over the period 2001 2008 the results indicated inefficiency in many of the plants the average energy efficiency was only 61 1 the annual growth rate of productivity was 7 96 over this period and technical change was the main contributor to this growth the research then took undesirable outputs into consideration by using the malmquist luenberger productivity index mlpi to explore the productivity change from 2006 to 2008 omitting undesirable outputs would result in biased efficiency change and technical change this paper also claimed that environmental regulation has a potentially positive impact on technical change

plant vintage technology and environmental regulation abstract we use data on productivity and pollution abatement costs at individual pulp and paper mills to test whether the impact of environmental regulation on productivity differs by plant vintage and technology plants with higher pollution abatement costs have significantly lower productivity levels this relationship differs greatly based on a plant s technology with productivity at integrated mills being greatly affected by abatement costs while the impact at non integrated mills is negligible plant vintage does not seem to matter with older and newer plants showing similar impacts reported abatement costs appear to substantially understate the true costs of abatement accounting for the impact of technology differences makes some difference in the estimated overall impact of environmental regulation

effects of local and civil environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in china a spatial durbin econometric analysis this paper employs metafrontier malmquist luenberger index and a spatial durbin model to investigate the influence of both local and civil environmental regulation and its spatial spillover effect on green total factor productivity in 273 cities of china in 2003 2013 according to city political attribute and regional differences this article divides the sample city into six categories the results show that effect of local environmental regulation on green total factor productivity is significantly positive in high political attribute cities a1 and a2 zone but negative effects in lower political attribute cities b2 and b3 zone moreover the race to the top results in significantly positive spatial spillover effects from local environmental regulation on green total factor productivity in high political attribute cities a1 and a2 zone while the race to the bottom causes significantly negative spatial spillover effects in lower political attribute cities b2 and b3 zone as for civil environmental regulation it has positive direct and indirect effects in promoting green total factor productivity we further find that environmental regulation inhibits the original technological innovation of enterprises which suggests that government should reduce market intervention improve enterprise flexibility of market change and promote enterprises to carry out the original technological innovation thus the government and citizen should make targeted pollution reduction policies for the green total factor productivity increase

finite lifetimes and the effects of budget deficits on national saving abstract even though realistic deficit policies shift sizable tax burdens to future generations the assumption of an infinite horizon is a good approximation for analyzing a deficit s short run saving effect on individuals who are neither liquidity constrained nor myopic recent u s experience casts significant doubt on these assumptions however and appears difficult to reconcile with the ricardian equivalence proposition that the timing of taxes does not affect national saving recent deficits have coincided with reduced national saving and a substantial increase in the share of gnp devoted to consumption

environmental regulation and competitiveness empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from european manufacturing sectors abstract this paper investigates the weak and strong versions of porter hypothesis ph focusing on the manufacturing sectors of 17 european countries between 1997 and 2009 the hypothesis that well crafted and well enforced regulation would benefit both the environment and the firm was originally proposed by porter 1991 and porter and van der linde 1995 to date the literature has analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on innovation and on productivity mostly in separate analyses and focusing on the usa the few existing contributions on europe study the effect of environmental regulation either on green innovation or on performance indicators such as exports we instead look at overall innovation and productivity impacts first focusing on overall innovative activity allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations second productivity impacts are arguably the most relevant indicators for the strong ph as a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures pace one of the few sectoral level indicators available we remedy upon its main drawback namely potential endogeneity by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach we find evidence of a positive impact of environmental regulation on the output of innovation activity as proxied by patents thus providing support in favor of the weak ph this result is in line with most of the literature on the other front we find no evidence in favor of the strong ph as productivity appears to be unaffected by the degree of pollution control and abatement efforts

international differences in saving the adequacy of national saving has taken on increasing importance in an era of large external imbalances among the major industrial countries at least among economists current account imbalances are seen as largely the outcome of domestic patterns of saving and investment rather than trade practices thus the low level of saving in the united states rather than a failure of japan to open its economy is the primary cause of the u s current account deficit most of the discussion of the decline of u s saving has focused upon the emergence of a large government budget deficit in the 1980s and has largely ignored an equally large decline in an already low level of private saving at the same time much of what we think we know about private saving behavior and the potential effectiveness of various policies to influence it are dominated by experience only within our own country but many of the factors in which we are most interested have exhibited very limited historical variation within the united states and of necessity the conclusions are ambiguous the purpose of this note is to make use of an underutilized data source that provides information on the saving and investment of the industrial countries within a common accounting framework to examine the pattern of change over time and the similarity of response to various economic disturbances in the 1970s and 1980s the basic annual data are drawn from the system of national accounts sna submitted by the individual member countries to the oecd for the period 1960 87 while the original analysis was undertaken for the seven largest nations plus a representative set of six smaller countries but the summary reported here is limited to the united states japan and an aggregate of nine european countries the data are presented within a simple accounting framework that relates the current account surplus ca to the difference between domestic saving s and domestic investment i domestic saving and investment can be further subdivided into their public and private components

speculative growth hints from the u s economy we propose a framework for understanding episodes of vigorous economic expansion and extreme asset valuations we interpret this phenomenon as a high valuation equilibrium with a low cost of capital based on optimism about future funding the key ingredient for such equilibrium is feedback from increased growth to a decline in the long run cost of capital this feedback arises when an expansion comes with technological progress in the capital sector when fiscal rules generate procyclical fiscal surpluses when the rest of the world has lower expansion potential or high saving needs and when financial constraints are relaxed by the expansion itself

the terms of trade and the international coordination of fiscal policy this paper develops an example of a noncooperative game between fiscal authorities in two countries the key strategic link between countries is the terms of trade an equilibrium without cooperation is characterized by excessive tax rates and public spending levels in each country the outcome is analogous to the nash equilibrium of the static optimal tarif game in trade theory but in this model there is also a dynamic distortion caused by noncooperative behaviour this dynamic distortion depresses capital accumulation and reduces the equilibrium capital stock in each country numerical examples suggest a significant welfare benefit of cooperation

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

structural innovation and efficiency effects of environmental regulation evidence from china s carbon emissions trading pilot conventional wisdom argues that environmental regulation can trigger both structural adjustments and enhanced innovation we test this conjecture by using a difference in differences approach to analyze the impacts of china s carbon emission trading cet pilot policy on energy consumption we find that compliance with the cet regulation has triggered statistically significant adjustments in energy structure industrial structure and technological innovation adjustments in industrial structure also contribute to enhanced total factor energy efficiency whereas increased technological innovation has mixed effects on energy efficiency we show that in the short run government led innovation does not immediately contribute to improvement in energy efficiency whereas enterprise led innovation has a negative impact it indicates that cet regulation can affect energy efficiency through industrial structure and technological innovation overall our results provide new evidence for the strong version of the porter hypothesis our results also provide strong scientific support for china s recent transition towards market based carbon mitigation strategies

environmental innovation and environmental performance abstract by estimating a simultaneous panel data model of environmental innovation and toxic air pollution this paper identifies bi directional causal links between the two we study a panel of 127 manufacturing industries over the period 1989 2004 pollutant emissions are an implicit measure of policy stringency and environmental patent counts are used to measure environmental innovation after accounting for the joint endogeneity we find that environmental innovation is an important driver of reductions in us toxic emissions conversely we find that tightened pollution targets induce environmental innovation however our estimates indicate that the environmental policy multiplier the proportionate contribution of induced innovation to long run emission reduction is small

international policy coordination in interdependent monetary economies abstract an optimising equilibrium model of two interdependent monetary economies with no other assets except cash perfect foresight flexible exchange rates and imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods is analysed both non cooperative and cooperative market oriented outcomes are time inconsistent since each government has an incentive to renege and levy a surprise inflation tax international policy coordination without pre commitment can be counterproductive even though there are no tax distortions and the provision of public goods is optimal since it exacerbates the credibility problems perceived by the private sectors and therefore leads to a too low level of real money balances and excessive inflation

the ricardian approach to budget deficits persistent budget deficits have increased economists interest in theories and evidence about fiscal policy this paper develops the ricardian approach and contrasts it with standard models the discussion considers from major theoretical objections to ricardian equivalence finite lifetimes imperfect capital markets uncertainty about future taxes and incomes and the distorting effects of taxation the paper then considers empirical evidence on interest rates consumption and saving and current account deficits the conclusion is that the ricardian approach is a useful first order approximation and that this approach will probably become the benchmark model for assessing fiscal policy this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

bubbles and capital flow volatility causes and risk management emerging market economies are fertile ground for the development of real estate and other financial bubbles despite these economies significant growth potential their corporate and government sectors do not generate the financial instruments to provide residents with adequate stores of value capital often flows out of these economies seeking these stores of value in the developed world bubbles are beneficial because they provide domestic stores of value and thereby reduce capital outflows while increasing investment but they come at a cost as they expose the country to bubble crashes and capital flow reversals we show that domestic financial underdevelopment not only facilitates the emergence of bubbles but also leads agents to undervalue the aggregate risk embodied in financial bubbles in this context even rational bubbles can be welfare reducing we study a set of aggregate risk management policies to alleviate the bubble risk we show that prudential banking regulation sterilization of capital inflows and structural policies aimed at developing public debt markets and property rights all have a high payoff in this environment

sustainable total factor productivity growth the case of china abstract a scientific and rational evaluation of the sustainable development process is of vital and practical significance for not only china but also the entire world this study incorporates the ecological footprint index and the human development index into the translog production function to define and construct a sustainable total factor productivity growth index the sustainable total factor productivity growth of 30 provinces in china from 2006 to 2016 was calculated by employing the stochastic frontier analysis method based on the translog production function the results are as follows firstly from 2006 to 2016 the overall sustainable total factor productivity growth of china was slow indicating sluggish sustainable development secondly factors such as labor productivity and environmental regulations were found to improve sustainable technological efficiency positively while capital deepening economic openness and industrial structure played a negative role in promoting sustainable technological efficiency thirdly sustainable total factor productivity growth for china s regions presented different upward trends in the order of the western central and eastern regions from high to low four the divergence of sustainable total factor productivity growth among the provinces revealed a high incidence of economic imbalance accompanied by the matthew effect thus revealing the problems of unresolved imbalances in china s sustainable development progress hence to improve china s sustainable total factor productivity growth it is imperative to focus on measures such as ensuring environmental governance upgrading the industrial structure and narrowing the gap in regional development

public debt under limited private credit there is a conventional wisdom in economics that public debt can serve as a substitute for private credit if private borrowing is limited the purpose of this paper is to show that while a government could in principle use such a policy to fully relax borrowing limits this is not generally optimal in our economy agents invest in a short term asset a long term asset and government bonds agents are subject to idiosyncratic liquidity shocks prior to the maturity of the long term asset we show that a high public debt policy fully relaxes private borrowing limits and is suboptimal this is because agents expecting such a policy respond by investing less than is socially optimal in the short asset which can protect them in the event of a liquidity shock the optimal policy is more constrained and it induces a wedge between the technological rate of return on the long asset and the rate of return on bonds in such a regime agents subject to liquidity shocks are also borrowing constrained and this expectation of being borrowing constrained induces them to invest the optimal level in the short asset jel h63 e62 g20

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

environmentally sensitive productivity growth a global analysis using malmquist luenberger index abstract we examine conventional and environmentally sensitive total factor productivity tfp in 41 developed and developing countries over the period of 1971 to 1992 due to the non availability of reliable input and co 2 emissions price data the study uses directional distance function to derive malmquist luenberger ml productivity index the index allows us to decompose the tfp into measures of technical and efficiency changes dea is used to compute the directional distance functions we find that tfp index value is not different when we account for the co 2 emissions relative to the situation when they are freely disposable but for the components of tfp change technical and efficiency changes the null hypothesis of whether the indexes are the same under two different scenarios cannot be accepted issues of catch up and convergence or in some cases possible divergence in productivity are examined within a global framework the paper also studies the impact of openness on conventional and environmentally sensitive measures of productivity

is the implementation of energy saving and emission reduction policy really effective in chinese cities a policy evaluation perspective abstract reducing pollutant emissions while ensuring a stable economic growth is an important embodiment of sustainable development based on the national comprehensive demonstration of energy saving and emission reduction fiscal policy eser policy proposed by the chinese government in 2011 this paper analyzes the impact of such policy on emissions reduction and economic growth under the framework of differences in differences did method this paper first identifies the implementation conditions of eser policy then we adopt three specifications to control the endogenous problem for the selection of demonstration cities the robustness test verifies the reliability of our findings and the spillover effect analysis reveals the deficiency of this policy we reach the following conclusions 1 different from the previous studies we find that the eser policy can effectively reduce the pollutant emissions while ensuring a stable economic growth 2 however the event study reveals that the reduction effect is only existing in the demonstration period which means that this policy is not sustainable 3 furthermore we find no spillover effect of eser policy on the non policy targeted pollutant suggesting that the local government only cares about the reduction of policy targeted pollutants based on these findings we propose that the future energy saving and emissions reduction policy formulation should focus on the policy sustainability and overall environmental performance

green efficiency and environmental subsidy evidence from thermal power firms in china abstract to achieve green development ample environmental subsidies have been invested into many energy intensive firms such as thermal power firms in china investigations of the effects of this kind of subsidy can help to provide specific and important implications for ongoing regulations unlike previous studies on the national regional or sectoral level this paper measures green efficiency and its compositions of thermal power firms and studies the impact of environmental subsidies on green efficiency by using the classical slacks based measure and tobit model the results show that the average green efficiency ranges from 0 509 to 0 663 during 2010 2015 which is much lower than the general efficiency the green scale efficiency is the main reason for the low green efficiency thus indicating large room for improvement environmental subsidies negatively affect green efficiency and its decompositions from 2010 to 2013 the negative effect becomes weak and insignificant in 2014 and the environmental subsidies start to significantly promote green efficiency and its decompositions in 2015 according to our findings some implications relating to improving green scale efficiency increasing the intensity of environmental subsidies to firms and strengthening their supervision are proposed

power industry restructuring and eco efficiency changes a new slacks based model in malmquist luenberger index measurement measuring variations in efficiency and its extension eco efficiency during a restructuring period in different industries has always been a point of interest for regulators and policy makers this paper assesses the impacts of restructuring of procurement in the iranian power industry on the performance of power plants we introduce a new slacks based model for malmquist luenberger ml index measurement and apply it to the power plants to calculate the efficiency eco efficiency and technological changes over the 8 year period 2003 2010 of restructuring in the power industry the results reveal that although the restructuring had different effects on the individual power plants the overall growth in the eco efficiency of the sector was mainly due to advances in pure technology we also assess the correlation between efficiency and eco efficiency of the power plants which indicates a close relationship between these two steps thus lending support to the incorporation of environmental factors in efficiency analysis

uniqueness and stability of equilibrium in economies with two goods abstract we offer new sufficient conditions ensuring demand is downward sloping local to equilibrium it follows that equilibrium is unique and stable in the sense that rising supply implies falling prices in our setting there are two goods which we interpret as consumption in different time periods and many impatience types agents have the same bernoulli utility function but the types differ arbitrarily in time preference our main result is that if endowments are identical and utility displays nonincreasing absolute risk aversion then market demand is strictly downward sloping local to equilibrium we discuss implications for the literature surrounding diamond and dybvig 1983

economic growth with bubbles this paper presents a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles this model views asset price bubbles as a market generated device to moderate the effects of frictions in financial markets improving the allocation of investments and raising the capital stock and welfare the model illustrates various channels through which asset price bubbles affect the incentives for innovation and economic reforms and therefore the rate of economic growth the model also offers a new perspective on the effects of financial development on asset price bubbles and economic growth

environmental regulation and green productivity growth empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from oecd industrial sectors abstract green growth has become an important development strategy for oecd countries and governments have correspondingly implemented various environmental regulation policies whereas few studies have discussed the impacts of environmental regulation on green productivity growth in oecd countries based on a panel data of oecd countries industrial sectors this study analyzes the stringency of environmental regulation policies and measures green productivity growth using an extended sbm ddf approach the dynamic panel regression investigates the impacts and mechanism of environmental policy stringency on green productivity growth in oecd countries industrial sectors the main results are i porter hypothesis is validated that the environmental policy has a positive impact on green productivity growth within a certain level of stringency lower than 3 08 ii the impact turns to be adverse when the environmental regulation policy is stringent over a certain level as the compliance cost effect is higher than innovation offset effect the findings provide new empirical evidence for the strong version of the porter hypothesis and some implications for oecd countries to further promote green growth

productivity growth and environmental regulation in mexican and u s food manufacturing many argued during the nafta debate that trade liberalization would favor mexican over u s food processors especially because of lax environmental laws south of the border we find through an examination of profit functions that productivity growth in mexico has outstripped that in the united states suggesting free trade indeed will benefit mexican suppliers u s pollution regulations have had no impact on the profitability or productivity of u s food manufacturing in contrast mexico s swiftly rising environmental standards have enhanced food processors productivity growth corroborating the porter hypothesis pollution law therefore has favored mexican over u s food processing but for reasons few had anticipated

financial globalization inequality and the rising public debt abstract during the last three decades government debt has increased in most developed countries during the same period we have also observed a significant liberalization of international financial markets we propose a multicountry model with incomplete markets and show that governments may choose higher levels of debt when financial markets become internationally integrated we also show that public debt increases with the volatility of uninsurable income idiosyncratic risk to the extent that the increase in income inequality observed in some industrialized countries has been associated with higher idiosyncratic risk the paper suggests another potential mechanism for the rise in public debt jel d31 e62 f65 h63

the optimal public and private provision of safe assets abstract we develop a theory of optimal government debt in which publicly issued and privately issued safe assets are substitutes while government bonds are backed by future tax revenues privately issued safe assets are backed by the future repayment of pools of defaultable private loans we find that a higher supply of public debt crowds out privately issued safe assets less than one for one and reduces the interest spread between borrowing and deposit rates our main result is that the optimal level of public debt does not fully crowd out private lending and maintains a positive interest spread moreover the optimal level of public debt is higher the more severe are financial frictions

budget deficits rhetoric and reality w v t hatever the real or imagined ills of the economy the news media most politicians and a fair proportion of the economics profession are quick to point to the culprit the budget deficit no matter that few appear to know or care precisely what deficit they are talking about or how it is measured no matter that few bother to explain in terms of a relevant model just how government deficits may be expected to impact the economy no matter that few offer any empirical data to sustain their judgments so budget deficits cause inflation budget deficits raise interest rates budget deficits bring on the trade deficits budget deficits crowd out investment budget deficits are an irresponsible mortgage on the future and budget deficits caused the october 1987 stock market crash and now threaten further financial cataclysms is there truth in any of these assertions or does it all depend budget deficits do matter and their effects contrary to barro s ricardian equivalence theorem can be substantial as most economists have recognized for at least half a century budget deficits can however be too small as well as too large to know which you have to measure them right and you have to analyze their role in the world in which we live pure walrasian and rational expectation market clearing models may prove more useful for academic advancement than for promotion of economic health i need not repeat many of the objections to the equivalence theorem raised by bernheim and gramlich and addressed by barro in this symposium however there is

international coordination of fiscal policy in limiting economies we examine the limiting behavior of cooperative and noncooperative fiscal policies as countries market power goes to zero we show that these policies converge if countries raise revenues through lump sum taxation however if there are unremovable domestic distortions such as distorting taxes there can be gains to coordination even when a single country s policy cannot affect world prices these results differ from the received wisdom in the optimal tariff literature the key distinction is that contrary to the tariff literature the spending decisions of governments are explicitly modeled

coordination of optimal taxation in a two country equilibrium model abstract the optimal determination of distortionary taxes on labour income in order to finance the provision of publicly provided private goods is considered within the context of a static two country equilibrium model it is shown that with cobb douglas utility functions the lack of international coordination of optimal taxation leads to excessive supplies of publicly provided private goods

non parametric efficiency progress and regress measures for panel data methodological aspects this purely methodological paper deals with the role of time in non parametric efficiency analysis using both fdh and dea technologies it first shows how each observation in a panel can be characterized in efficiency terms vis a vis three different kinds of frontiers i contemporaneous ii sequential and iii intertemporal these are then compared with window analysis next frontier shifts outward and inward interpreted as progress or regress are considered for the two kinds of technologies and computational methods are described in detail for evaluating such shifts in either case these are also contrasted with what is measured by the malmquist productivity index finally an alternative way of identifying progress and regress independent of the frontier notion and referring instead to some benchmark notion is extended here to panel data

externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets this paper presents a simple general framework for analyzing externalities in economies with incomplete markets and imperfect infonnation by identifying the pecuniary effects of these externalities that net out the paper simplifies the problem of determining when tax interventions are pareto improving the approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained pareto optima it can also lead to simple tests based on readily observable indicators of the efficacy of particular tax policies in situations involving adverse selection signaling moral hazard incomplete contingent claims markets and queue rationing equilibria traditional discussions of externalities have emphasized the distinction between technological externalities in which the action of one individual or firm directly affects the utility or profit ofanother and pecuniary externalities in which one individual s or firm s actions affect another only through effects on prices while the presence of technological externalities imply in general that a competitive equilibrium may not be pareto efficient pecuniary externalities hy themselves are not a source of inefficiency the fact that prices change has of course important consequences there are both distributional and allocational effects but the distribution effects net out gains for example hy firms whose prices increase are precisely offset by losses e g to individuals who must pay higher prices and there are no welfare losses from the allocation effects as long as the price changes involved are small if firms are maximizing profits and individuals are maximizing utility both facing prices that correctly refiect opportunity costs then standard envelope theorem arguments imply that changes in profits or utility induced by changes in allocations resulting from any small change in prices are negligible

a note on optimal fiscal policy in an economy with private borrowing limits abstract we consider the implications for optimal fiscal policy when taxes are non distortionary and households are heterogeneous and borrowing constrained the main result is that optimal policy keeps some households borrowing constrained in order to reduce interest rates on government debt

consumption smoothing in island economies can public insurance reduce welfare abstract in this paper we study the effects of certain types of public compulsory insurance arrangements for aggregate shocks on private allocations in environments with limited commitment we show that this type of insurance can improve the wellbeing of private situations but it can also deteriorate it we also describe how different characteristics of the environment affect the role of public insurance using data on the mexican progresa program we document the impact that some government programs have in crowding out private transfers

dynamic optimal taxation with private information we study dynamic optimal taxation in a class of economies with private information optimal allocations in these environments are complicated and history dependent yet we show that they can be implemented as competitive equilibria in market economies supplemented with simple tax systems the market structure in these economies is similar to that in bewley 1986 agents supply labour and trade risk free claims to future consumption subject to a budget constraint and a debt limit optimal taxes are conditioned only on two observable characteristics an agent s accumulated stock of claims or wealth and her current labour income we show that optimal taxes are generally non linear and non separable in these variables and relate the structure of marginal wealth and income taxation to the properties of agent preferences this paper studies optimal taxation in a class of dynamic economies with private information we consider an environment in which agents preferences are defined over consumption and labour and each agent receives a privately observed sequence of i i d preference shocks incentivecompatibility constraints stemming from private information imply that socially optimal or constrained efficient allocations in this environment are complicated and history dependent yet we show that they can be implemented as competitive equilibria in market economies supplemented with simple tax systems the market structure in these economies is identical to that in bewley 1986 huggett 1993 or aiyagari 1994 agents can trade current consumption for claims to future consumption subject to a budget constraint and a borrowing limit these claims have a non contingent pre tax return crucially taxes are conditioned upon only two observable characteristics of an agent current wealth given by the agent s accumulated stock of claims and current labour income they do not depend on any other aspect of an agent s past history most models of dynamic optimal taxation follow the ramsey approach in which the set of fiscal instruments available to the government is exogenously specified 1 linear labour and capital income taxes are typically included in this set while lump sum taxes are ruled out the exclusion of the latter is justified by appealing to incentive or administrative constraints but these are not explicitly modelled these exogenous restrictions on fiscal instruments represent frictions that the government seeks to ameliorate through its optimal choice of tax rates the approach we adopt in this paper builds on the optimal taxation literature initiated by mirrlees 1971 mirrlees assumes that agents receive privately observed shocks to their

public debt in economies with heterogeneous agents abstract we study public debt in competitive equilibria in which a government chooses transfers and taxes optimally and in addition decides how thoroughly to enforce debt contracts if the government enforces perfectly asset inequality is determined in an optimum competitive equilibrium but the level of government debt is not welfare increases if private debt contracts are not enforced borrowing frictions let the government gather monopoly rents that come from issuing public debt without facing competing private borrowers regardless of whether the government chooses to enforce private debt contracts the level of initial government debt does not affect an optimal allocation

public versus private provision of liquidity is there a trade off abstract to what extent is public debt private liquidity much policy advice given in the aftermath of the financial crisis rests on the assumption that increasing public debt relaxes borrowing constraints of private households this is the case for ad hoc debt limits which are exogenous to public policy instead if debt limits are fully endogenous as e g in the case of the natural borrowing limit public debt has no impact we assume that borrowing limits arise because of limited contract enforceability and are therefore determined as equilibrium outcomes using an incomplete markets economy in which households are subject to uninsurable earnings shocks we show that public debt provides some liquidity but less so than it would if constraints were imposed ad hoc we show that generating borrowing constraints as an equilibrium outcome substantially alters the answers to other important questions such as for the welfare effects of government debt or its impact on real economic activity

optimal fiscal policy in open economies with labour market distortions abstract we set up a general equilibrium model with unemployment owing to distortions in the labour market it is shown that a public expansion financed by a distortionary income tax may give rise to a decrease in unemployment even if public goods are pure waste such an expansion may give rise to an increase in welfare if it is associated with a decrease in unemployment since part of the gain from a fiscal expansion is achieved at the expense of welfare in other countries non cooperative policies tend to be too expansionary

evaluating the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation in china a three stage data envelopment analysis approach abstract environmental regulation is of great concern to international academics and policy makers previous studies often regarded environmental regulation as an influencing factor when calculating eco efficiency or energy efficiency more attention should be given to the efficiency of environmental regulation especially in industrial field according to exiting studies industrial environmental regulation efficiency iere may be influenced by external environmental factors to explore the influence and obtain an actual efficiency this paper calculated iere in china by using the panel data of 30 regions from 2011 to 2015 the 12th five year plan period through the three stage data envelopment analysis approach firstly the undesirable slacks based model method was used to calculate the original iere secondly the economic base industrial structure urbanization level and education level were taken as external environmental variables and the effect of external environmental factors and stochastic disturbance were excluded thirdly the actual iere can be calculated after adjusting input values the results showed that china s iere was underestimated due to the impact from external environmental factors moreover the iere was more influenced by pure technical efficiency than scale efficiency the iere of each region varied thus targeted policies should be formulated according to local conditions this research provided a new analytical method for calculating environmental regulation efficiency the method can be applied either in other countries or in other sectors

fiscal policy with heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets i undertake a quantitative investigation into the short run effects of changes in the timing of proportional income taxes for model economies in which heterogeneous households face a borrowing constraint temporary tax changes are found to have large real effects in the benchmark model a temporary tax cut increases aggregate consumption on impact by around 29 cents for every dollar of tax revenue lost comparing the benchmark incomplete markets model to a complete markets economy income tax cuts provide a larger boost to consumption and a smaller investment stimulus when asset markets are incomplete copyright 2005 wiley blackwell

the public sector and international integration abstract how does international integration affect public sector activities optimal public sector activities are shown to depend positively on a gains from trade effect and ambiguously on the standard distortion effect the bias in non cooperative policies may be strengthened by integration

the gains from fiscal cooperation in the two commodity real trade model abstract this paper analyzes the gains from fiscal cooperation within the context of the standard two commodity real trade model it shows how the adjustment in the terms of trade is the critical factor in determining the effects of moving from a noncooperative equilibrium in general a noncooperative equilibrium leads to an overexpansion of government expenditure on the import good relative to a cooperative equilibrium the specific example of a logarithmic economy is also considered the paper discusses further the welfare effects resulting from the formation of a coalition of two countries among three

environmental regulation and environmental productivity the case of china abstract constrained by the dual mission of supporting industrial growth and reducing emissions china s traditional emission reduction oriented environmental policies unavoidably face a dilemma this study adopts the gml index to calculate china s industrial productivity by considering environmental factors in addition based on the assumption of industry heterogeneity the author examines the non linear relationship between china s environmental regulation and environmental productivity and calculated the optimal regulation environment for industries according to this study when impact of undesirable outputs pollutant emissions is considered environmental regulation and environmental productivity are positively correlated which to some degree validates the porter hypothesis at present environmental regulation has significant positive effects on clean production industries but shows a lag effect on pollution intensive industries the degree of environmental regulation and environmental productivity show an inverted u shaped relation and display three thresholds it should be noted however that the relationship between regulation and productivity may vary across industries these findings have clear policy implications rather than continually increasing the level of environmental regulation the government should establish standards for individual industries that emphasize flexibility

linking induced technological change and environmental regulation evidence from patenting in the u s auto industry a b s t r a c t this article uses a carefully screened patent database in automobile emission control technologies and a detailed regulatory action analysis to examine firms innovation in response to u s technology forcing auto emissions standards enacted between 1970 and 1998 the study finds that under the performance based technology forcing pbtf auto emissions regulations both automakers and compo nent suppliers innovated and introduced more advanced emission control technologies for automobile applications the study also shows that stringent pbtf regulation temporarily induced domestic u s firms to become more innovative than foreign firms that operated in the local u s market during the early phase of the regulatory regime findings of this research strongly imply that government intervention in the form of technology forcing regulation can drive firms to invest in technological innovation

productivity growth and environmental regulations accounting for undesirable outputs analysis of china s thirty provincial regions using the malmquist luenberger index this paper employs the malmquist luenberger ml productivity index to evaluate china s growth in total factor productivity tfp incorporating undesirable outputs during the period from 1989 to 2008 the ml productivity index and its components technical and efficiency changes are derived from the directional distance function which gives credit for an increase in good outputs and for reductions in undesirable outputs the average annual ml productivity growth accounting for undesirable outputs is 2 46 whereas the value of the traditional malmquist productivity index is 4 84 showing that the true tfp growth in china is overestimated if undesirable outputs are ignored we explore the strictness in enforcing environmental regulations and its impact on improvements in ml productivity the results show that the enforcement of environmental regulations in china is in general far below the levels achieved in the best performing regions and that the more stringent enforcement of environmental regulations would help to improve ml productivity growth in china

green productivity growth in china s industrial economy abstract this paper uses a directional distance function ddf and the malmquist luenberger productivity index to estimate the changing patterns of green total factor productivity gtfp growth of 38 chinese industrial sectors during the period 1980 2010 unlike the measures of traditional total factor productivity tfp growth the ddf incorporates carbon dioxide emissions as an undesirable output directly into the production technology which credit sectors for simultaneously reducing their emissions and increasing their output our estimates of aggregate and sector level gtfp growth reveal that chinese industry is not yet on the path towards sustainable low carbon growth a dynamic panel data analysis of the determinants of gtfp across sectors is used to identify factors that might rectify this situation including state owned enterprise soe reform the growth of small private enterprises continued openness to foreign investment and higher spending on r d particularly in emission intensive sectors

determinants of environmental innovation in us manufacturing industries abstract this paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental innovation we employ panel data models to study how environmental innovation by us manufacturing industries responded to changes in pollution abatement expenditures and regulatory enforcement during the period 1983 through 1992 we find that 1 environmental innovation as measured by the number of successful environmental patent applications granted to the industry responded to increases in pollution abatement expenditures however 2 increased monitoring and enforcement activities related to existing regulations did not provide any additional incentive to innovate we also find some empirical evidence that environmental innovation is more likely to occur in industries that are internationally competitive

innovation and the international diffusion of environmentally responsive technology abstract new evidence is presented on environmental innovation and diffusion over the 1970s and 1980s at a global level a substantial amount of innovations occurred in the united states japan and germany the share of environmental patents in all patents varied between 0 6 and 3 and as such was higher than the corresponding share of pollution abatement expenditure in gdp japanese environmental innovation rates were consistently high certain plausible connections between environmental regulation and innovation also emerge across these three countries and over time innovation responded to pollution abatement expenditure an indicator of the severity of environmental regulations environmental patenting rates in developing countries were also high reaching 2 in many years in brazil developing country innovators obtained a non trivial number of patents most of which appear geared towards adapting imported technologies to local conditions however domestic innovation was only one path to new technologies imports of disembodied environmental technologies foreign patents registered in developing countries were substantial foreign patents were typically important or generic patents evidence also suggests that such patents protected intellectual property in equipment exported developing countries especially in east asia often chose to obtain technologies embodied in pollution abatement equipment

environmental innovations and firm profitability unmasking the porter hypothesis we examine impacts of different types of environmental innovations on firm profits following porter s sci am 264 4 168 1991 hypothesis that environmental regulation can improve firms competitiveness we distinguish between regulation induced and voluntary environmental innovations we find that innovations which do not improve firms resource efficiency do not provide positive returns to profitability however innovations that increase a firm s resource efficiency in terms of material or energy consumption per unit of output have a positive impact on profitability this positive result holds for both regulation induced and voluntary innovations although the effect is greater for regulation driven innovation we conclude that the porter hypothesis does not hold in general for its strong version but depends on the type of environmental innovation our findings rest on firm level data from the german part of the community innovation survey 2008 cis 2008

optimal control for transboundary pollution under ecological compensation a stochastic differential game approach abstract to account for previously ignored yet widely observed uncertainty in nature s capability to replenish the natural environment in ways that should inform ideal design of ecological compensation ec regimes this study constructs a stochastic differential game sdg model to analyze transboundary pollution control options between a compensating and compensated region equilibrium strategies in the stochastic two player game inform optimal control theory and reveal a welfare distribution mechanism to form the basis of an improved cooperative game contract a case based numerical example serves to verify the theoretical results and supports three key insights first accounting for various random disturbance factors the probabilistic pollutant stock in stackelberg non cooperative game exceeds that of a cooperative game situation second the ec mechanism provides long term effective incentives only when the marginal losses of environmental damage in the compensating region are more than twice that of the compensated region achieving a pareto optimal equilibrium relies upon the attainment of a dynamic allocation ratio derived from the analysis of a robust welfare allocation mechanism third cross region cooperation reliably outperforms stackelberg non cooperation due to either overwhelming incumbent economic interests or high abatement costs this study illuminates the importance of balancing both parties interests within an ec agreement while reducing uncertainty around unobserved environmental factors during ex ante negotiations

a neoclassical perspective on budget deficits i n the 1988 presidential campaign virtually every serious candidate spoke of the urgent need to trim government budget deficits public opinion polls have identified federal deficits as a key economic issue second only to unemployment while many economists are relieved by what they perceive to be a long overdue political response to a critical economic problem others regard the fuss as much ado about nothing it is indeed remarkable that economists can disagree so severely over an issue which commands such a uniform reaction from laymen of widely different ideologies and political affiliations generally speaking there are three schools of thought concerning the economic effects of budget deficits neoclassical keynesian and ricardian before proceeding further it is useful to review the basic structure and implications of each paradigm the neoclassical paradigm envisions farsighted individuals planning consumption over their own life cycles budget deficits raise total lifetime consumption by shifting taxes to subsequent generations if economic resources are fully employed increased consumption necessarily implies decreased saving interest rates must then rise to bring capital markets into balance thus persistent deficits crowd out private capital accumulation in the current economic environment most economists would agree that these consequences would be highly detrimental

environmental regulations environmental governance efficiency and the green transformation of china s iron and steel enterprises abstract based on micro level enterprise panel data from 2005 to 2014 a slack based global data envelopment analysis dea model and a global malmquist luenberger index model are used to calculate the environmental governance efficiency ege of china s iron and steel enterprises ises then the different effects of two types of environmental regulation on ege of china s ises are analysed the results show that the overall level of ege for china s ises has remained low over the past 10 years the total factor environmental governance efficiency tfege presents a decreasing trend from 2005 to 2014 and the decline in tfege is mainly attributed to the technical progress change index gtpch moreover the bootstrap dea method is used for bias correction and the correction efficiency values are all within the confidence interval improving the accuracy of ege evaluation the regression analysis results show that different types of environmental regulations exert heterogeneous effects on tfege the relationship between market incentive environmental regulation and tfege has an inverted u shaped implying that although market incentive environmental regulation may improve the tfege in the short term continuously increasing this intensity would inhibit it however command control environmental regulation and tfege have a positive but not significant relationship