any non welfarist method of policy assessment violates the pareto principle reply the public at large many policymakers and a number of economists hold views of social welfare that are non welfarist that is they attach some importance to factors other than the effects of policies on individuals utilities we show however that any non welfarist method of policy assessment violates the pareto principle

cap and trade a sufficient or necessary condition for emission reduction influenced by the success of emission trading in the us for sulphur dioxide so 2 some economists have argued for an upstream economy wide cap and trade scheme as the primary tool for achieving the required reduction in greenhouse gas ghg emissions this paper addresses that argument and concludes that cap and trade will need to be accompanied by complementary regulatory measures while it is a necessary component in a climate mitigation programme it is unlikely to be sufficient by itself to accomplish the desired emission reductions the paper reviews the evidence on how so 2 emissions were reduced and the extent to which actual emission trading was responsible for the reduction as opposed to other innovations it also identifies differences between the past regulation of so 2 and other air pollutants and the challenges presented by the regulation of ghg emissions what actually happened in the us with so 2 emission trading deviated in several significant respects from what would be predicted based on the conventional theoretical analysis while there was a dramatic reduction in so 2 emissions it occurred because of several factors some of which are unlikely to apply for ghg emissions and others of which argue for an activist regulatory policy by the government as a complement to the functioning of an emissions market for ghgs copyright 2010 oxford university press

modelling electric vehicle usage intentions an empirical study in malaysia in the new global economy carbon emission has become an important worldwide issue one key reason for this is the magnification of the transport sector as millions of gasoline based vehicles are plying on roads producing carbon emission throughout day and night in order to impede these vulnerabilities and promote a more sustainable economy one solution is to switch from gasoline based vehicles to using green technology vehicles there is growing agreement that electrification and the ability to decarbonize this sector seems to be significant as it helps to mitigate the high reliance on fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions the introduction of electric vehicles has led the automotive industry to a whole new echelon one with zero fuel dependency and increased fuel efficiency while the usage of greener and cleaner vehicles such as electric vehicles is well supported with government policies and programmes it is surprising that little information is divulged about the public acceptance of electric vehicles from the social perspective public acceptance and diffusion of this new green technology is relatively fresh and unknown in malaysia in fact public acceptance can appear as a prevailing obstacle for market diffusion and encumber the development of technology adoption the rationale of this paper is to conduct an exploration to determine the key predictors affecting the usage of electric vehicles acceptance in malaysia malaysia has been referred to here as electric vehicles are just being introduced as one of the initiatives to encourage a low fossil carbon technology within the transportation sector more specifically an empirical study using a survey questionnaire was distributed to 1000 private vehicle drivers in malaysia an electric vehicle usage model was proposed based on a literature review and a multiple regression model the results demonstrated that electric vehicles acceptance in malaysia can be explained as being significantly related to social influences performance attributes financial benefits environmental concerns demographics infrastructure readiness and government interventions in addition the study offers a valuable wealth of information on the public acceptance of automotive players planning to market electric vehicles in malaysia it also offers sensible guidelines for the formulation of marketing strategies that will address the real wants and needs of future electric vehicles users in the meanwhile policy makers should concentrate on the appropriate intervention and policy to encourage the development of electric vehicles as part of the strategy towards a transition to a low carbon society in malaysia

quality competition and environmental damage is there a role for network preferences abstract we consider from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint how network preferences of consumers which differ in their willingness to pay wtp for green goods affect the equilibrium configuration of a vertically differentiated duopoly when a cleaner firm competes against a dirtier rival we find that a trade off can emerge between emissions abatement and the catching up process of the dirtier firm can emerge in particular emissions decrease only when consumers with low wtp have network preferences still in this case only the cleaner firm has an incentive to improve its environmental quality along the quality ladder while the laggard firm is tied to its backward profile these theoretical predictions are empirically tested by exploiting the duality of italy s economy with high income citizens mainly concentrated in northern regions while low income citizens are largely located in the south we adopt a fixed effects spatial error model at the provincial level to relate variables on firms environmental management system with citizens environmental behaviour proxied by the recycling rate overall the empirical estimates are in line with the theoretical predictions from the empirical analysis it emerges that consumers environmental behaviour positively affects enterprises future environmental choices moreover firms have a stronger incentive to raise their environmental quality when low income consumers namely those buying dirtier variants internalise the network effect

analyzing korean consumers latent preferences for electricity generation sources with a hierarchical bayesian logit model in a discrete choice experiment generally consumers use electricity without considering the source the electricity was generated from since different energy sources exert varying effects on society it is necessary to analyze consumers latent preference for electricity generation sources the present study estimates korean consumers marginal utility and an appropriate generation mix is derived using the hierarchical bayesian logit model in a discrete choice experiment the results show that consumers consider the danger posed by the source of electricity as the most important factor among the effects of electricity generation sources additionally korean consumers wish to reduce the contribution of nuclear power from the existing 32 11 and increase that of renewable energy from the existing 4 32

institutional forces and organizational culture in china effects on change schemas firm commitment and job satisfaction this paper examines the effects of institutional forces on change schemas of senior managers mid level managers and front line workers of different types of firms in china we postulate that several socio economic forces including regional economic prosperity firm type state owned and foreign invested within firm ranks and organizational cultures are at work the cognitive differences among people in local and foreign firms operating in similar contexts are examined through a survey of 3 960 managers and workers we test hypotheses that relate various institutional forces on how individuals perceive evaluate and infer future changes that challenge them we also examine the effects of individual change schema on firm commitment and job satisfaction two indicators that may mediate future changes in these firms

car buyers and fuel economy abstract this research is designed to help researchers and policy makers ground their work in the reality of how us consumers are thinking and behaving with respect to automotive fuel economy our data are from semi structured interviews with 57 households across nine lifestyle sectors we found no household that analyzed their fuel costs in a systematic way in their automobile or gasoline purchases almost none of these households track gasoline costs over time or consider them explicitly in household budgets these households may know the cost of their last tank of gasoline and the unit price of gasoline on that day but this accurate information is rapidly forgotten and replaced by typical information one effect of this lack of knowledge and information is that when consumers buy a vehicle they do not have the basic building blocks of knowledge assumed by the model of economically rational decision making and they make large errors estimating gasoline costs and savings over time moreover we find that consumer value for fuel economy is not only about private cost savings fuel economy can be a symbolic value as well for example among drivers who view resource conservation or thrift as important values to communicate consumers also assign non monetary meaning to fuel prices for example seeing rising prices as evidence of conspiracy this research suggests that consumer responses to fuel economy technology and changes in fuel prices are more complex than economic assumptions suggest the us department of energy and the energy foundation supported this research the authors are solely responsible for the content and conclusions presented

valuation of marginal co2 abatement options for electric power plants in korea the electricity generation sector in korea is under pressure to mitigate greenhouse gases as directed by the kyoto protocol the principal compliance options for power companies under the cap and trade include the application of direct co2 emission abatement and the procurement of emission allowances the objective of this paper is to provide an analytical framework for assessing the cost effectiveness of these options we attempt to derive the marginal abatement cost for co2 using the output distance function and analyze the relative advantages of emission allowance procurement option as compared to direct abatement option real option approach is adopted to incorporate emission allowance price uncertainty empirical result shows the marginal abatement cost with an average of 14 04 ton co2 for fossil fueled power plants and confirms the existence of substantial cost heterogeneity among plants which is sufficient to achieve trading gains in allowance market the comparison of two options enables us to identify the optimal position of the compliance for each plant sensitivity analyses are also presented with regard to several key parameters including the initial allowance prices and interest rate the result of this paper may help korean power plants to prepare for upcoming regulations targeted toward the reduction of domestic greenhouse gases

varieties in state capitalism outward fdi strategies of central and local state owned enterprises from emerging economy countries institutional diversity characterizing state owned enterprises soes from emerging economies holds critical but under examined implications for their internationalization activities different types of soes can exhibit distinct motivations strategic resources and adaptive capabilities for penetrating foreign markets to understand how such idiosyncratic differences emerge we conceptualize the heterogeneity of soes as an outcome of multiple institutional reform processes administrative and fiscal decentralization industrial restructuring and market liberalization which create diversity between soes affiliated with central and local levels of government building on the idea of institutions as configurations we elucidate how such reforms reconfigure soes constellation of resources capabilities and priorities which shape the parameters of their ability to negotiate for home and host country institutional legitimacy specifically we propose that the restructuring of central soes into national champions exposes them to stronger institutional pressures from home and host country governments while local soes which have fewer obligations to serve national strategic prerogatives display greater managerial autonomy and market orientation but lower levels of monopolistic behavior we discuss how such contrasting attributes contribute to variations in soes international business diversification patterns foreign subsidiary establishment and ownership modes and overseas location preferences recognition of soes organizational diversity holds important implications for theories on state owned multinationals

do family wealth shocks affect fertility choices evidence from the housing market abstract this paper uses wealth changes driven by housing market variation to estimate the effect of family resources on fertility decisions using data from the panel study of income dynamics we show that a 100 000 increase in housing wealth among home owners causes a 16 to 18 increase in the probability of having a child there is no evidence of an effect of msa level housing price growth on the fertility of renters however we also present evidence that housing wealth growth increases total fertility and that the responsiveness of fertility to housing wealth has increased over time commensurate with the recent housing boom

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

a dynamic approach to environmental compliance decisions in u s electricity market the acid rain program revisited the acid rain program arp was implemented in 1995 since then coal fired boilers have had to choose among three main compliance alternatives purchase pollution permits switch to an alternative lower sulfur coal or adopt a scrubber this decision problem is driven by the evolution of several economic variables and is revised when significant changes to prices quality of inputs output level technology transport costs regulations among others occur using a structural dynamic discrete choice model i recover cost parameters and use them to evaluate two different counterfactual policies the results confirm there is a trade off between fuel switching and scrubbing costs with the latter having a higher investment cost and a lower variable cost and also the existence of regional heterogeneity finally the arp implied cost savings of approximately 4 7 billions if compared to a uniform emission rate standard and 14 8 billions if compared to compulsory scrubbing for the 1995 2005 period

intergenerational persistence of earnings the role of early and college education recent empirical evidence from the united states indicates a high degree of persistence in earnings across generations designing effective public policies to increase social mobility requires identifying and measuring the major sources of persistence and inequality in earnings we provide a quantitative model of intergenerational human capital transmission that focuses on three sources innate ability early education and college education we find that approximately one half of the intergenerational correlation in earnings is accounted for by parental investment in education in particular early education we show that these results have important implications for education policy

market liberalization and firm performance during china s economic transition this paper examines the impact of market liberalization on firm performance through institutional changes during the economic reform in china the conceptualization focuses on the decentralization of control ownership restructuring and industrial policy as the primary institutional changes to implement market liberalization in china these institutional changes affect firm performance by shaping managerial incentives affecting transaction and agency costs and making selective resource allocations across and within industries using a large scale data set including 23 577 firms between 1992 and 1996 the study examines how market liberalization affects the profitability and productivity of chinese firms and the relationship between ownership change and the performance of state owned enterprises

the empirical properties of two classes of designs for transferable discharge permit markets abstract previous work by atkinson and lewis j environ econ manag 1 237 250 1974 and anderson et al an analysis of alternative policies for attaining and maintaining a short term no2 standard mathtech inc princeton n j 1979 has indicated the tremendous cost advantages to be achieved by moving from a policy based on emission standards to one based on marketable emission permits as tietenberg land econ 56 391 416 1980 points out however neither of the major permit designs treated in the literature are optimal from all points of view this has triggered a search for alternative permit designs which while they may not minimize compliance costs have sufficient other virtues as to make them attractive on other grounds the purpose of this paper is to examine within the context of an empirical mathematical programming model the air quality emission and cost consequences of two classes of the permit designs which can be implemented in the absence of information on control costs this case study involves particulate control in st louis

the elasticity of intergenerational substitution parental altruism and fertility choice dynastic models common in macroeconomics use a single parameter to control the willingness of individuals to substitute consumption both intertemporally or across periods and intergenerationally or across parents and their children this article defines the concept of elasticity of intergenerational substitution egs and extends a standard dynastic model in order to disentangle the egs from the eis or elasticity of intertemporal substitution a calibrated version of the model lends strong support to the notion that the egs is significantly larger than one in contrast estimates of the eis suggests that it is at most one what disciplines the identification is the need to match empirically plausible fertility rates for the u s we illustrate the potential role of the egs in macroeconomics

identifying the factors affecting the willingness to pay for fuel efficient vehicles in turkey a case of hybrids this paper aims to determine the factors that have an impact on the consumers willingness to pay a premium for hybrid automobiles in turkey a web based random survey was conducted in different regions of turkey a questionnaire was administered to 1983 participants in january march of 2009 the questionnaire was prepared by taking the issues raised in various sources into account an ordered probit model was used to meet the objective results show that variables such as income gender education concerns about global warming number of automobiles importance of automobile performance risk preference attitude toward the alternative energy sources have an impact on the consumers willingness to pay a premium for hybrids findings suggest that consumers who have high income higher educational level and concerns about the global warming are more likely to pay a premium for hybrids this study is expected to make important contributions to the current literature related to the consumers willingness to pay for hybrids by providing a research study from a developing country s perspective results of this study also make important contributions to the policy and decision makers environmental groups and automotive industry

the potential for cost savings in the sulfur dioxide allowance market empirical evidence from florida since the passage of the 1990 clean air act amendments researchers have hastened to appraise the new market for sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances as the epa s program moves into its second phase some analysts question whether large enough savings are available to induce widespread market participation this study calculates the shadow prices of emission reductions for power plants that serve florida and compares the actions of utility owners to the actions predicted by the shadow prices the evidence suggests that plant owners have not taken full advantage of the opportunities the allowance market has provided to date

the impact of market orientation and strategic hrm on firm performance the case of chinese enterprises this study examines market orientation as the antecedent to strategic human resource management shrm and the related effects on firm performance in an emerging economy context it is suggested that the relationship between shrm and firm performance is moderated by ownership type and autonomy in staffing of these firms empirical results from a sample of chinese firms from various industries and regions reveal that shrm mediates the relationship between market orientation and firm performance it is also found that the effect of shrm on firm performance is stronger for firms with a higher degree of autonomy in staffing and weaker for private firms other types of ownership state or foreign have no effect on this relationship

meso level factors in technological transitions the development of td scdma in china this paper uses an industry case study of technological transition from second generation 2g to third generation 3g networks in china to unfold how meso level factors drove the development of td scdma china s home born 3g standard in this purposive transitional process under the coordination of a central authority multiple regime actors government agencies engaged in bargaining negotiation and consensus building that determined the developmental directions and outcome of td scdma td scdma proved to be a political success but an economic failure the policy implications are profound in particular as the silo regulatory model of policy making which focuses on a single industry is gradually replaced by a collective model involving interindustry players issues about how to manage the collective model pose a serious challenge to policy makers in china and other emerging countries the paper provides evidence for the importance of meso level factors in the multi level perspective mlp framework of sociotechnical transitions

high risk low return and vice versa the effect of product innovation on firm performance in a transition economy common wisdom suggests that high risk strategies will be associated with high expected returns and vice versa focusing on the effect of new product development on firm performance in this paper

reduction potentials of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector abstract rapid growth of road vehicles private vehicles in particular has resulted in continuing growth in china s oil demand and imports which has been widely accepted as a major factor effecting future oil availability and prices and a major contributor to china s ghg emission increase this paper is intended to analyze the future trends of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector and to assess the effectiveness of possible reduction measures a detailed model has been developed to derive a reliable historical trend of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector between 2000 and 2005 and to project future trends two scenarios have been designed to describe the future strategies relating to the development of china s road transport sector the business as usual scenario is used as a baseline reference scenario in which the government is assumed to do nothing to influence the long term trends of road transport energy demand the best case scenario is considered to be the most optimized case where a series of available reduction measures such as private vehicle control fuel economy regulation promoting diesel and gas vehicles fuel tax and biofuel promotion are assumed to be implemented energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector up to 2030 are estimated in these two scenarios the total reduction potentials in the best case scenario and the relative reduction potentials of each measure have been estimated

disentangling the effects of policy and payment consequentiality and risk attitudes on stated preferences abstract incentivizing respondents to truthfully reveal their preferences in stated preference surveys requires that they believe their survey responses can influence decisions related to the outcome in question policy consequentiality and that they will have to bear their share of the coercive cost if the outcome is implemented payment consequentiality we investigate the effects of these two aspects of perceived consequentiality on stated preferences in a field survey concerning renewable energy development in poland we find that beliefs in policy and payment consequentiality strengthen the respondents interest in having the project implemented however policy consequentiality decreases and payment consequentiality increases their sensitivity to the project cost which respectively increases and decreases their willingness to pay for the project we conclude that the two aspects of consequentiality should be addressed separately additionally we inquire the theoretically speculated links between the respondents perceptions of policy and payment consequentiality and their risk attitudes and we find no significant relationship

intergenerational income group mobility and differential fertility one question development economists are especially interested in but so far left unanswered is how would the societal income distribution be affected by introducing a family planning program to reduce the reproduction rate of the poor which is usually high in developing countries the purpose of this paper is to search for analytical answers to this question we are able to make definite comparisons about some class of inequality measures of the steady state societal income distributions and these comparisons provide strong theoretical support in favor of the above mentioned family planning program excerpt

wealth distribution in life cycle economies abstract this paper compares the age wealth distribution produced in life cycle economies to the corresponding distribution in the us economy the idea is to calibrate the model economies to match features of the us earnings distribution and then examine the wealth distribution implications of the model economies the findings are that the calibrated model economies with earnings and lifetime uncertainty can replicate measures of both aggregate wealth and transfer wealth in the us furthermore the model economies produce the us wealth gini and a significant fraction of the wealth inequality within age groups however the model economies produce less than half the fraction of wealth held by the top 1 percent of us households

market failure in incentive based regulation the case of emissions trading abstract among the existing evaluations of the us epa s emissions trading program a consensus has emerged while the program has resulted in significant cost savings it has not even approximately achieved a cost effective allocation of the control responsibility the cost savings have been smaller and the trades fewer than might have been expected at the outset of the program in this article we explore one hypothesis which purports to explain the divergence between the cost minimizing and the observed pattern of trades for nonuniformly mixed pollutants the trading process hypothesis attributes some significant proportion of this divergence to the nature of the process by which emission reduction credits are traded under the bubble policy an examination of actual bubble trades reveals that the actual trading process is sequential and bilateral and hence differs considerably from the implicit process modeled in the existing empirical studies simulations of this more realistic trading process suggest that the resulting equilibria deviate considerably from cost effective allocations of the control responsibility

trends in intergenerational income mobility previous studies of recent u s trends in intergenerational income mobility have produced widely varying results partly because of large sampling errors by making more efficient use of the available information in the panel study of income dynamics we generate more reliable estimates of the recent time series variation in intergenerational mobility our results which pertain to the cohorts born between 1952 and 1975 do not reveal major changes in intergenerational mobility

a new approach to measuring shadow price reconciling engineering and economic perspectives abstract shadow price is one of the most important pieces of information in environmental decision making two different approaches namely economic and engineering have been applied to obtain the shadow price of undesirable outputs while using different methodological backgrounds and perspectives the current study proposes a new conceptual framework and an economic estimation model to reconcile the shadow price estimates derived via the two approaches we also suggest a new mapping rule that incorporates the concept of abatement level which is a basic element in the engineering approach as a result the proposed model generates continuously changing estimates i e comprising a shadow price curve based on the abatement level we further investigate the determinant factors of shadow price by using second step regression the suggested methodology is used to investigate the shadow price of carbon emissions in south korean electricity generating plants thus yielding relevant policy implications

marginal abatement costs of carbon dioxide emissions in china a parametric analysis this paper investigates the technical inefficiency shadow price and substitution elasticity of hbox co 2 emissions of china based on a provincial panel for 2001 2010 using linear programming to calculate a quadratic parameterized directional output distance function we show that china s technical inefficiency increases over the period implying further scope for hbox co 2 emissions reduction in the medium and longer term at best by 4 5 and 4 9 respectively our results notwithstanding regional differences highlight increases in the shadow price of hbox co 2 abatement 1 000 yuan ton in 2001 to 2 100 yuan ton in 2010 additionally increasingly steep substitution elasticity highlights the difficult reality of reducing china s hbox co 2 emissions

the effects of social capital and organizational innovativeness in different institutional contexts this paper examines how social capital and organizational innovativeness influence business performance through their separate indirect or interactive effects and how these effects differ across the institutional contexts of a transition economy and a market economy in line with institutional theory our findings show that the effects of social capital are more extensive and probably more malignant in a transition economy than in a market economy furthermore different types of organizational innovativeness as corporate culture can be cultivated by different forms of social capital in different institutional contexts the implications for institutional theory and social capital theory and the managerial implications are discussed

institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights and innovation strategies of firms in china this study develops a novel conceptual framework to understand the differential impact of formal institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights on the innovation and patenting strategies of chinese and western firms operating in china we argue that to the extent that chinese firms have been deeply embedded in china s informal institutions they are less responsive to formal institutional changes than western firms operating in china using the major china patent law reform of 2001 as an exogenous event we find results consistent with our key arguments with the strengthening of the previously weak utility model patent protection chinese firms are less likely to apply for such patents to safeguard their innovations than western firms however this difference becomes less pronounced in regions with higher quality intellectual property rights and legal institutions that foster research and development and innovation and when western firms gain longer operational experience in china this s

consignment auctions of free emissions allowances abstract while the initial distribution of emissions allowances is usually thought to be independent of the emissions outcome free allocation can affect the efficiency and fairness of allowance trading inefficiency may result from thin allowance markets poor price discovery and regulatory or organizational complexities that hinder the recognition of opportunity costs concerns about fairness may result from intransparency in the process of transferring substantial allowance value we explore the role of consignment auctions in mitigating these concerns these revenue neutral auctions return the financial value of allowances to their original holders while revealing prices and directing allowances to their highest valued use they also can be used to support a minimum price when allowances are freely distributed which may facilitate program linkage consignment auctions have minimal administrative costs and do not necessarily involve government experience indicates that they can play an important role especially in new markets

parental altruism and the value of avoiding acute illness are kids worth more than parents abstract a model describing parents preferences to relieve their own and their children s acute illnesses is estimated using stated preference data estimated marginal rates of substitution mrs between child and parent illness are about two indicating that parents value children s illness attributes twice as highly as their own the mrs is larger for younger children falls toward unity as the child approaches adulthood and appears to reflect parental altruism rather than parent child differences in initial health or illness costs intra family allocations may compensate for chronic health impairments parents willingness to pay to avoid own or child illness increases with income declines with fertility increases at a decreasing rate with duration and number of symptoms and depends on perceived discomfort and activity restrictions current methods of assessing morbidity benefits of environmental regulations may understate substantially the value of children s health particularly in african american families

measuring environmental efficiency of industry a case study of thermal power generation in india technical and environmental efficiency of some coal fired thermal power plants in india is estimated using a methodology that accounts for firm s efforts to increase the production of good output and reduce pollution with the given resources and technology the methodology used is directional output distance function estimates of firm specific shadow prices of pollutants bad outputs and elasticity of substitution between good and bad outputs are also obtained the technical and environmental inefficiency of a representative firm is estimated as 0 06 implying that the thermal power generating industry in andhra pradesh state of india could increase production of electricity by 6 while decreasing generation of pollution by 6 this result shows that there are incentives or win win opportunities for the firms to voluntarily comply with the environmental regulation it is found that there is a significant variation in marginal cost of pollution abatement or shadow prices of bad outputs across the firms and an increasing marginal cost of pollution abatement with respect to pollution reduction by the firms this result calls for the use of economic instruments like pollution taxes instead of command and control regulation used currently in india to reduce air pollution

does human resource management matter in a transitional economy china as an example this paper investigates the significance of how firms manage their human resources hrs within the confines of powerful social institutions in a transitional economy the people s republic of china china we propose that two dimensions the role of human resource management rhr and followers perception of the leader top are important contributors to firm performance as are the influences of the regional economy and firm ownership we tested our hypotheses with a survey of 180 firms from nine cities in china we found that both role of hrm rhr and follower s perception of top level management top are important to firm performance the study confirms that while social institutions remain powerful in a transitional economy effective hrm is important to firm performance

international business responses to institutional voids for nearly two decades scholars in international business and management have explored the implications of institutional voids for firm strategy and structure although institutional voids offer both opportunities and challenges they have largely been associated with firms efforts to avoid or mitigate institutional deficiencies and reduce the transaction costs associated with operating in settings subject to those institutional shortcomings the goal of this special issue is to advance scholarship on this topic by a exploring institutional voids that are new to the literature b providing a deeper assessment of the different ways in which firms respond to these voids and c utilizing diverse disciplines and theoretical approaches to do so in this introduction we first review and synthesize extant research on institutional voids tracking the evolution of institutional void scholarship since the inception of the concept khanna palepu journal of economic literature 45 2 331 372 1997 and providing our perspective on its contributions and limitations we then summarize the contributions of the articles included in this special issue in addition to identifying an array of institutional voids economic and social the articles highlight four different strategies for responding to them internalization substitution borrowing and signaling drawing on these we develop new insights on the implications of institutional voids for firm behavior we conclude with suggestions for future research

do greens drive hummers or hybrids environmental ideology as a determinant of consumer choice this paper uses several california data sets to test for differences in consumption patterns between greens and browns a person s environmentalism is rarely observed in consumer data sets in california a community s share of green party registered voters is a viable proxy for community environmentalism environmentalists are more likely to commute by public transit purchase hybrid vehicles and consume less gasoline than non environmentalists

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

fertility social mobility and long run inequality dynastic altruistic models with endogenous fertility have been shown to be unable to generate enough intergenerational persistence using a bewley model with endogenous fertility we show that it is possible to recover persistence key ingredients for our result include exponential child discounting discrete number of children diminishing costs of child rearing and an elasticity of intergenerational substitution larger than one our model provides a unified framework of analysis for long run inequality that incorporates fertility choices

an interim evaluation of sulfur dioxide emissions trading ide iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments established the first large scale long term environmental program to rely on tradable emissions permitscalled allowances in this program to control pollution this program was designed to cut acid rain by reducing sulfur dioxide so2 emissions from electric generating plants to about half their 1980 level beginning in 1995 it is of interest both as a response to an important environmental issue and as a landmark experiment in environmental policy this experiment comes at a particularly important time since emission trading is under serious consideration with strong u s backing for use to deal with global climate change by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the economic stakes in climate change surpass those in acid rain by several orders of magnitude intergovernmental panel on climate change 1996 this article summarizes the results to date of our ongoing empirical analysis of compliance costs and allowance market performance under the u s acid rain program

china s transition and its implications for international business this paper focuses on institutional change as the central and most consequential contextual aspect of china s transition identification of key characteristics of china s emergent institutions leads to propositions on their relevance for international business practice china s transition also raises issues for theory development including the way that transition is modeled the need to draw upon multiple perspectives and the concomitants of a contextual approach

how mncs choose entry modes and form alliances the china experience this study examine two dimensions of firms foreign market entry strategy mode of entry and formation of alliances based on the existing literature we propose a model that describes how host country home country and industry specific factors affect foreign firms decisions on how they enter the market and whether they will enter with a partner firm or not the model also describes how operation related factors i e the location and the level of local government affect these decisions seven major hypotheses were tested using a longitudinal sample of 2 998 foreign business activities in china between 1979 and 1993 our sample consists of foreign investing firms from the u s europe japan and other asian countries by choosing china as a host country the study offers insights into how firms of different regional groups adapted their strategies to a changing host environment

doing business in the 21st century with the new generation of chinese managers a study of generational shifts in work values in china our goal is to develop a profile of chinese managers and in particular a profile of the new generation of chinese managers the purpose for developing this profile is primarily to provide relevant information for non chinese business people especially westerners who plan to engage in business in china this profile is based on measures of individual values individualism collectivism and confucianism relevant to china and business our findings suggest that the new generation manager is more individualistic and more likely to act independently while taking risks in the pursuit of profits however these new managers are likewise not forsaking their confucian values thus they may be viewed as crossverging their eastern and western influences while on the road of modernization

the impact of order and mode of market entry on profitability and market share market share performance and profitability of overseas business activities has long been an important issue in international business in this study we explore the impact of order and mode of market entry into an overseas market we find that early entrants have significantly higher market shares and profitability than late followers we also find that equity joint ventures have a higher profitability than either wholly owned operations or contractual joint ventures a significant interaction exists between order and mode of market entry as expected firm efficiency and size affect the performance of firms these results are based on the business activities of a sample of 14 466 foreign firms in china in 1995

regional differences in china s co2 abatement cost abstract under a framework of output distance function with multiple outputs the study discusses the carbon abatement cost at provincial and regional levels in china using the shadow price analysis the findings show that the abatement cost reflecting the marginal opportunity cost of carbon reduction varies greatly among the provinces on average the abatement cost of the eastern region was much higher than that of the mid western region during the observed period the findings provide evidence that the carbon prices in the current ets pilots have been much lower than desired levels implying inefficiency of the markets the wide range of the abatement cost estimates supports that the equi marginal principle does not hold for the regulations on carbon pollution at regional levels the regional cost differences indicate the huge potential for china to minimize the total abatement cost with policy instruments that may motive the emissions moving from areas of low abatement cost to where the abatement cost is higher for a few undeveloped provinces that are environmentally fragile and have high abatement cost supplementary measures will be needed to reduce the negative impact of carbon cutbacks on the poor to the minimum

when to switch to a hybrid electric vehicle a replacement optimisation decision abstract this research proposes a replacement purchase decision model in which trade in and subsidy are provided for vehicle owners to replace their old conventional fuel powered vehicles with hybrid electric vehicles hevs the uncertainty in fuel prices has distinguished this model for its ability to illustrate a time dependent cost trade off between hev induced economic benefit and replacement cost a cost effective replacement time cert is quantitatively determined using a dynamic programming approach afterwards the theoretical model is illustrated with an empirical example of which the result shows that the adoption of byd qin hev in china is not optimal at current fuel price without subsidies moreover sensitive analyses are presented revealing significant effects of subsidy level fuel price and personal travel mileage on the cost effective replacement time results suggest that the effect of subsidy is attenuated by an increase in fuel price whereas cert is shortened by a decrease in fuel price volatility the implications and recommendations for policymakers are also provided

household willingness to pay for green electricity in urban and peri urban tigray northern ethiopia determinants and welfare effects abstract this paper set out to estimate household willingness to pay for green electric services and welfare gains attributed to such schemes for this purpose contingent valuation survey was conducted on 300 urban and peri urban households in northern ethiopia a bivariate probit model was used to elicit willingness to pay and analyze determinants of household willingness to pay on the other hand welfare gains were analyzed using consumer and producer surpluses the mean willingness to pay was estimated to be birr 12 5 0 66 usd per month per household for five years on top of monthly electricity bill among others income played positive role on willingness to pay while difference in willingness to pay behavior was observed between male and female headed households in addition distance to wood and charcoal alternative energy markets played encouraging role for willingness to pay results from the welfare analysis show that there is significant societal gain to be made both in terms of surplus for households and producers government if the previously untapped green electricity service was implemented the revenue producer surplus for the state would be instrumental in contributing to the state s endeavor to generate a much needed capital for investment in and expansion of renewable energy

random earnings differences lifetime liquidity constraints and altruistic intergenerational transfers abstract this paper develops a model of private savings behavior in which households care about their descendants cannot have negative net worth and have lifetime earnings depending on random draws from an exogenous distribution of abilities the elements interact very lucky parents are likely to leave large estates constrained children are unusually likely to receive intergenerational transfers the paper proves the existence of a stationary cross sectional distribution of wealth endogenously determines where liquidity constraints will bind and shows that the long term interest rate must be such that ricardian neutrality fails its last section generates several illustrative numerical simulations

accounting for the u s earnings and wealth inequality we show that a theory of earnings and wealth inequality based on the optimal choices of ex ante identical households that face uninsured idiosyncratic shocks to their endowments of efficiency labor units accounts for the u s earnings and wealth inequality almost exactly

potential cost savings from internal external co2 emissions trading in the korean electric power industry abstract korea plans to introduce an emissions trading scheme for the controlling greenhouse gas emissions in 2015 using shephard s 1970 output distance function we first estimate the shadow price of co 2 for power generators in the korean fossil fueled electric generation industry then by assuming that each power generator is required to reduce co 2 emissions by one ton we compute the potential cost savings from internal trading among generators within the same plant and from external trading across plants at prevailing market prices the results indicate that on average the generators paid 14 63 to abate one ton of co 2 emissions in 2007 plants realized additional gains through external trading in particular cost savings from trades between different fuel fired plants were substantial

impact of experience on government policy toward acceptance of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in korea abstract as the low carbon green growth agenda which emphasized sustainable development through equilibrium between economic growth and environmental preservation is propagated rapidly in korea despite this progress it is not uncommon for new products made through advanced technologies such as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to face public skepticism preventing market penetration therefore the factors impacting customer acceptance of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have to be estimated furthermore it is necessary to examine whether or not the policies related to these products can prevent public skepticism regarding them this empirical study examining the relationship between personal experiences related to the policy and acceptance of the innovative products of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles shows that government involvement in technology targeting and promotions administered by the low carbon green growth agenda rarely stimulate potential customers purchase intentions thus technology targeting administered by the low carbon green growth agenda needs to be reconciled with customer responses to the future market

phase i completed an empirical assessment of the 1990 caaa with the conclusion of phase i trading of so2 allowances the epa declared the allowance trading policy to be a success the time had come to include cap and trade programs in the arsenal of effective policy tools in terms of reducing atmospheric emissions of sulfur dioxide the program appears to be successful it is not clear however whether or not the program has minimized the cost of achieving the emission reductions the measure of the true success of a market based incentive program however has yetto be quantified has the program resulted in converging marginalabatement costs across participant plants in this study i report theshadow prices of phase i power plants from 1994 to 1998 anddetermine that there are more costs to be saved within theambitious public policy experiment

income and wealth heterogeneity in the macroeconomy how do movements in the distribution of income and wealth affect the macroeconomy we analyze this question using a calibrated version of the stochastic growth model with partially uninsurable idiosyncratic risk and movements in aggregate productivity our main finding is that in the stationary stochastic equilibrium the behavior of the macroeconomic aggregates can be almost perfectly described using only the mean of the wealth distribution this result is robust to substantial changes in both parameter values and model specification our benchmark model whose only difference from the representative agent framework is the existence of uninsurable idiosyncratic risk displays far less cross sectional dispersion and skewness in wealth than u s data however an extension that relies on a small amount of heterogeneity in thrift does succeed in replicating the key features of the wealth data furthermore this extension features aggregate time series that depart significantly from permanent income behavior

retirement wealth and lifetime earnings this article argues that a satisfactory theory of wealth inequality should account not only for the marginal distribution of wealth but also for the joint distribution of wealth and earnings the article describes the joint distribution of retirement wealth and lifetime earnings in the panel study of income dynamics it then evaluates the ability of a stochastic life cycle model to account for key features of this distribution the life cycle model fails to account for three key features of the data 1 the correlation between lifetime earnings and retirement wealth is too high 2 the wealth gaps between earnings rich and earnings poor households are too large 3 wealth inequality among households with similar lifetime earnings is too small models in which households differ in rates of return or time preferences account much better for the joint distribution of retirement wealth and lifetime earnings

an expectancy model of chinese american differences in conflict avoiding this paper develops an expectancy model for chinese american differences in conflict avoiding and tests this model using a scenario study with respondents from taiwan and the us our results show that a higher chinese tendency to avoid conflict is explained by higher chinese expectations that direct conflict will hurt the relationship with the other party and by greater concern for the other party among chinese it is not however explained by differences in the expected career costs benefits of good bad relations with others also chinese are more sensitive to hierarchy than americans so that avoiding is heightened more for chinese than for americans when the other party is of higher status qualitative results suggest that chinese american differences in time frames may also explain differences in avoiding implications for businesses and management are suggested journal of international business studies 2006 37 76 91 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400172

consumer preferences for alternative fuel vehicles comparing a utility maximization and a regret minimization model this paper presents a utility based and a regret based model of consumer preferences for alternative fuel vehicles based on a large scale stated choice experiment held among company car leasers in the netherlands estimation and application of random utility maximization and random regret minimization discrete choice models shows that while the two models achieve almost identical fit with the data and differ only marginally in terms of predictive ability they generate rather different choice probability simulations and policy implications the most eye catching difference between the two models is that the random regret minimization model accommodates a compromise effect as it assigns relatively high choice probabilities to alternative fuel vehicles that perform reasonably well on each dimension instead of having a strong performance on some dimensions and a poor performance on others

the dynamics of population growth differential fertility and inequality studies of population growth relative to income distribution from single equation and simultaneous equation models have shown that higher population growth rates increase inequality the reasons for this inequality contain important welfare issues including the fact that different income groups grow at different rates with lower income the fastest the differential fertility of the income groups complicates these issues the lorenz curve has often been used as a foundation of the theory of inequality comparisons and uses cumulative shares of income as a function of cumulative shares of population the mortality rates age of new entrants and the mobility across income groups must be factored in these can be analyzed simultaneously using a multistate life table which describes simultaneous transitions across age groups and states data from brazil was used to test whether increase in the fertility rates of the poor would affect income inequality the results indicate a 100 increase in the fertility of the poor which increases the percentage of poor in the equal fertility case there were decreases in the percent of poor from the original number these results confirm that inequality measures can give conflicting signals and could be inconsistent with real changes in relative welfare analyzing relationships between population growth and inequality is difficult and standard measures are inadequate to test hypotheses about the distribution effects of migration or high fertility it appears to be impossible to differentiate changes in population make up from changes in economic status

consumers evaluation of national new energy vehicle policy in china an analysis based on a four paradigm model abstract the chinese government has issued numerous policies to promote the development and adoption of new energy vehicles nevs to address the problem of excessive energy consumption and environmental pollution in this study we divided these policies into seven categories macroscopic demonstration subsidization preferential tax technical support industry management and infrastructure since consumers opinions affect the policy choices of government based on questionnaire data we use a four paradigm model to analyze the consumers evaluation of each policy in terms of perceptions of importance and satisfaction the results show that macroscopic policies are perceived to be of high importance and satisfaction whereas for industry management policies they are perceived to be of low importance and satisfaction the importance perceptions of preferential tax and demonstration policies are low whereas perceptions of their satisfaction are high perceptions of the importance of subsidization technical support and infrastructure policies are high whereas perceptions of their satisfaction are low we find that the subsidization technical support and infrastructure policies need urgent improvement finally we put forward several suggestions to improve the current policies and increase the consumers intention to adopt nevs

inequality and growth why differential fertility matters we argue that inequality and growth are linked through differential fertility and the accumulation of human capital we build an overlapping generations model in which dynasties differ in their initial endowment with human capital growth the income distribution and fertility are endogenous due to a quantiy quality tradeoff families with less human capital decide to have more children and invest less in education when initial inequality is high large fertility differentials lower the growth rate of average human capital since poor families who invest little in education make up a large fraction of the population in the next generation a calibrated model shows that this fertility differential effect is quantitatively important we also provide empirical evidence to confirm the links between inequality differential fertility and growth suggested by the model

local governments as industrial firms an organizational analysis of china s transitional economy despite widespread skepticism about government ownership in transitional economies china s rapid industrial growth has been led by public enterprises kornai s theory of soft budbet constraints born of the failure of earlier hungarian reforms fosters such skepticism but it assumes as fixed organizational characteristics that in fact vary widely across government jurisdictions local governments with smaller industrial bases have clearer financial incentives and constraints fewer nonfinancial interests in enterprises and a greater capacity to monitor them in china s vast public sector the fastest growth in output and productivity has occurred where government ownership rights are clearest and most easily enforced which enables officials to manage public industry as a diversified market oriented firm

the structure of jibs s social network and the relevance of intra country variation a typology for future research we examine articles published in the journal of international business studies jibs and introduce a typology to support the relevance of intra country variation in international business ib based on social network theory our analysis uses multidimensional scaling to study 53 203 citations from 1158 qualifying jibs articles to determine the journal s social structure the results indicate that three current research clusters multinational enterprise knowledge development foreign entry and cultural effects and the internationalization process and national culture are based on established ib theory then we respond to calls in the literature to improve research concerning intra country variation and propose a typology of three dimensions social demographic and geographic to study the diversity of individual firm and economic activity in a country the social dimension evaluates the importance of modernist and traditionalist values the demographic dimension proposes differences between urban and rural settings and the geographic dimension discusses the relevance of border and interior locations we suggest a nested typology that unifies these three dimensions for continued use in ib future research opportunities related to jibs s social structure and the intra country variation typology are recommended

the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

an institution based view of international business strategy a focus on emerging economies leveraging the recent research interest in emerging economies this perspective paper argues that an institution based view of international business ib strategy has emerged it is positioned as one leg that helps sustain the strategy tripod the other two legs consisting of the industry and resource based views we then review four diverse areas of substantive research 1 antidumping as entry barriers 2 competing in and out of india 3 growing the firm in china and 4 governing the corporation in emerging economies overall we argue that an institution based view of ib strategy in combination with industry and resource based views will not only help sustain a strategy tripod but also shed significant light on the most fundamental questions confronting ib such as what drives firm strategy and performance in ib

an evaluation of government incentives for new energy vehicles in china focusing on vehicle purchasing restrictions abstract in order to reduce carbon emissions and urban smog the chinese government has instituted a number of policies to promote the diffusion of new energy vehicles nevs achieving remarkable results this paper aims to quantify the effectiveness of various policies after reviewing and quantifying the policies directly related to the sales and driving of nevs in the past five years we established a multivariate co integration model and an error correction model to analyse the long and short term effects of these policies the results demonstrate positive co integration for the relationship between the nev market share and the nev purchase subsidy tax exemption the policy of restricting internal combustion engine vehicle icev purchase and the abolishment of traffic restrictions for nevs china s unique policy of restricting icevs has in fact promoted nev sales by adjusting the supply and demand to influence the consumers choices finally we found technology to still be a bottleneck factor in the nev industry and technological progress s effect on nev diffusion is greater than the economic subsidy policy therefore this study suggests that the funds being made available from the gradual reduction of the purchase subsidy should be transferred to research and development

the impact of government policy on preference for nevs the evidence from china to reduce gasoline consumption and emissions the chinese government has introduced a series of preferential policies to encourage the purchase of new energy vehicles nevs however enthusiasm for the private purchase of nevs appears to be very low this timely paper addresses the need for an empirical study to explore this phenomenon by identifying purchase motivations of potential nev consumers and examining the impact of government policies introduced to promote nevs in china a questionnaire survey was carried out the acceptance of nevs is measured in three different logistic models the willingness of consumers to purchase nevs the purchasing time and the acceptable price the results showed that financial benefits performance attributes environmental awareness and psychological needs are the four most important factors influencing consumers acceptance of nevs among these performance attributes rather than financial benefits are the most important indicator the moderating effect of government policies to relations between purchasing intention time and price is not strong as respected while the policy implications are clear that the public awareness of government policy functions as a moderator in the process of acceptance these findings could give some hints to the government to make better nev industry policy

the effects of absorptive and joint learning on the instability of international joint ventures in emerging economies the objective of this study is to advance a theoretical framework pertaining to how interpartner learning in international joint ventures ijv may affect ijv instability in emerging economies the proposed framework expands the interpartner learning theory of ijv instability in the current literature which is focused on absorptive learning of ijv partners by incorporating ijv partners joint learning using longitudinal dyadic data from ijvs in china we found that local and foreign ijv parties absorptive learning capacity decreases one party s dependence on the other while joint learning capacity in ijv increases both parties dependence on each other in addition an ijv partner s absorptive learning capacity positively moderates the effect of joint learning capacity on its dependence on another partner these findings lend support to the expanded interpartner learning perspective of ijv instability and have important theoretical and managerial implications for ijvs in emerging economies the results underscore the importance of the ijv actively developing organizational rules procedures and structures to create and embed new knowledge in order to maintain the stability of the ijv finally we found that ijv partners dependence asymmetry increases ijv instability whereas their total dependence decreases ijv instability

the benefits of spatially differentiated regulation the response to acid rain by u s states prior to the acid rain program location is a crucial driver of both the marginal abatement and damage costs of sulfur dioxide emissions by u s coal fired power plants before the start of the acid rain program in 1995 old boilers were subject to emission rate standards set by individual states we investigate how individual states adjusted their sulfur regulation laws in response to acid rain and whether they accounted for differences in marginal abatement costs vulnerability to agricultural damages special industry interests or inter state externalities the welfare gain compared to a uniform reduction in emission rate standards is estimated to be 21 million in 1995 dollars annually

optimal contracting with dynastic altruism family size and per capita consumption we use a barro becker model of endogenous fertility in which parents are subject to idiosyncratic shocks that are private information either to labor productivity or taste for leisure to study the efficient degree of consumption inequality in the long run the planner uses the trade off between family size and future consumption and leisure to provide incentives for workers to reveal their shocks we show that in this environment the optimal dynamic contract no longer features immiseration in consumption we also discuss the implications of the model on the long run properties of family size in the optimal contract and show that the long run trend in dynasty size can be either positive or negative depending on parameters

transitional dynamics and the distribution of wealth in a neoclassical growth model abstract the evolution of the personal distribution of wealth in a standard neoclassical growth model is studied if the economy is growing toward the steady state and preferences are such that marginal utility from consumption is infinite finite at some all positive non negative consumption level s then the average saving propensity of agents is positively negatively related to their wealth if the economy is decaying toward the steady state these relationships are reversed if wealth and average saving propensity are positively negatively related the distribution of current period wealth lorenz dominates is lorenz dominated by next period s distribution of wealth

intergenerational transfers and the fertility income relationship evidence from cross sectional data reveals a negative relationship between family income and fertility this article argues that constraints to intergenerational transfers are crucial for understanding this relationship if parents could legally impose debt obligations on their children to recover the costs incurred in raising them then fertility would be independent of parental income a relationship between fertility and income arises when parents are unable to leave debts because of legal enforcement or moral constraints this relationship is negative when the intergenerational elasticity of substitution is larger than one a case in which parental consumption is a good substitute for children s consumption

the effect of allowance allocations on cap and trade system performance abstractan implication of the coase theorem is that under certain conditions the market equilibrium in a cap and trade system will be cost effective and independent of the initial allocation of tradable rights that is the overall cost of achieving a given aggregate emission reduction will be minimized and the final allocation of permits will be independent of the initial allocation we call this the independence property this property is important because it means that the government can establish the overall pollution reduction goal for a cap and trade system by setting the cap and leaving it up to the legislature to construct a constituency in support of the program by allocating the allowances to various interests without affecting either the environmental performance of the system or its aggregate social costs we examine the conditions under which the independence property is likely to hold both in theory and in practice

economic prescriptions for environmental problems how the patient followed the doctor s orders o ne of the dangers with ivory tower theorizing is that it is easy to lose sight of the actual set of problems which need to be solved and the range of potential solutions as one who frequently engages in this exercise i can attest to this fact in my view this loss of sight has become increasingly evident in the theoretical structure underlying environmental economics which often emphasizes elegance at the expense of realism in this paper i will argue that both normative and positive theorizing could greatly benefit from a careful examination of the results of recent innovative approaches to environmental management the particular set of policies examined here involves two tools which have received widespread support from the economics community marketable permits and emission charges pigou 1932 dales 1968 kneese and schultze 1975 both tools represent ways to induce businesses to search for lower cost methods of achieving environmental standards they stand in stark contrast to the predominant command and control approach in which a regulator specifies the technology a firm must use to comply with regulations under highly restrictive conditions it can be shown that both of the economic approaches share the desirable feature that any gains in environmental quality will be obtained at the lowest possible cost baumol and oates 1975 until the 1960s these tools only existed on blackboards and in academic journals as products of the fertile imaginations of academics however some countries have recently begun to explore using these tools as part of a broader strategy for managing environmental problems

purchasing intentions of chinese citizens on new energy vehicles how should one respond to current preferential policy in recent years china s environmental pollution and energy security issues have become increasingly more prominent as a result new energy vehicles nevs have been strongly supported by government s policy privilege but at this stage these preferential policies are facing updates and adjustments to meet the current development of nev industry and consumer demand of purchase this means that an understanding of the nev purchasing behavior in china what the current policy is and how to respond to its adjustment are of theoretical and practical significance for china s nev industry to this end a reliable scale is developed in this study to investigate the situation in seven chinese geographical regions and 22 provinces based on application of an extended theory of planned behavior model to the real situation a structural equation model is used to analyze the factors affecting the nev purchasing intentions of residents the results show that financial benefits infrastructure readiness environmental concerns and policy privileges have a positive impact on purchasing intention however the nev s cruising range does not based on the paper s findings we have discussed whether current subsidies and preferential policies reflect consumers potential purchase demand how to make subsidies more tangibly targeted and thereby present some proposals for manufacturing strategy under the influence of policy and demand of consumers

bequests as signals an explanation for the equal division puzzle in the united states more than two thirds of decedents with multichild families divide their estates exactly equally among their children in contrast gifts given before death are usually unequal these findings challenge the validity of existing theories regarding the determination of intergenerational transfers in this paper we develop a theory that accounts for this puzzle based on the notion that the division of bequests provides a signal about a parent s altruistic preferences the theory can also explain the norm of unigeniture which prevails in other societies

efficiency in pollution control in the short and long runs a system of rental emission permits efficiency in pollution control in the short and long runs a system of rental emission permits author s robert a collinge and wallace e oates source the canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique vol 15 no 2 may 1982 pp 346 354 published by blackwell publishing on behalf of the canadian economics association stable url http www jstor org stable 134787 accessed 05 05 2008 21 07

to invest or not to invest in china this research used two samples of enterprises 123 that invested in china and 213 that did not to examine why many taiwanese enterprises stay home despite others that have invested in china our results found that most taiwanese enterprises are pushed to invest abroad by increasing wages at home and increasing competition in the export market which lowers their profitability the key factors determining to invest or not to invest in china are whether they are satisfied with their profits and whether they are able to upgrade organizational capability if they are not satisfied with the profits however this conclusion does not totally apply to large enterprises for large enterprises their investment in china has little to do with profitability and r d intensity but more to do with export competition and technological capability furthermore investment in southeast asia is complementary to investment in china for large enterprises but a trade off for small and medium ones

the dubious role of institutions in international business a road forward our commentary returns to the conundrum of how institutions matter in international business ib by revisiting the 2018 jibs decade award article by jackson and deeg 2008 on comparing capitalisms we first synthesize their main insights around institutional diversity and track its significant impact within ib and other management fields we then suggest three main takeaways that could move jackson and deeg s agenda further in terms of developing a more nuanced approach to institutions in ib we close with suggestions for future research and urge ib scholars to be more cautious when drawing on different strands of institutions theory