enterprises compliance with government carbon reduction labelling policy using a system dynamics approach abstract a carbon reduction labelling scheme is an effective policy tool for motivating enterprises or organizations to reduce their life cycle based carbon emissions to benefit the environment this paper uses system dynamics to model enterprises compliance with a combined government policy instrument for a carbon reduction labelling scheme that is government subsidies and economic sanctions a case study of paper enterprises in china is provided to demonstrate the application of the proposed model in which two optional technological plans to reduce the enterprises carbon emissions are examined the technological plans are categorized as a low cost and high cost plan the simulation results show that both the technological plans are vulnerable to the combined policy making and the high cost plan shows superior environmental performance for carbon emissions reduction however the enterprises are more inclined to choose the low cost plan because of superior economic performance the study offers insights to help enterprises select optimal actions on carbon emissions reduction and to inform government of possible sustainable policy design to promote low carbon development the model limitations are discussed as a basis for further improvements in low carbon development

a survey on the impediments to low carbon technology investment of the petrochemical industry in korea abstract responding to the climate change korea has been establishing a domestic policy framework for promoting energy saving and greenhouse gases reduction with the expansion of low carbon technologies for industry as a key area this paper analyzes investment barriers for low carbon technology investment and suggests supportive policies based on a survey to petrochemical companies in korea a total of 35 samples were collected among which 32 companies are targeted by the korean domestic emission trading scheme and represent 63 of the total co 2 emissions of all petrochemical companies under this scheme the analysis result indicates that low carbon technology introduction is not a priority for the sampled companies besides the lack of financial support there exist other impediments to low carbon technology investment e g lower investment priority economic loss during new technology replacement technology uncertainty and less pressure on energy prices in addition technology payback period acceptable for companies was estimated by the multi bounded discrete choice method the acceptable payback period on the part of half samples ranges from 2 4 to 3 6 years the relatively high preference to short term profitability of low carbon technologies may hinder the companies to make the investment decision financial support and information dissemination for low carbon technologies may be useful to facilitate company s investment in low carbon technologies carbon pricing policies such as emission trading scheme is agreed to be supportive by providing the price signal for the investment this analysis enhances the understating of korean company s perception on low carbon technology investment and provides meaningful policy implications for the development and improvement of related policies

why do corrupt governments maintain public support this article addresses an issue often neglected by the current literature on political corruption why do citizens support corrupt governments the authors argue that people in countries where gove

a theory of interregional tax competition a general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels an exact definition of tax competition is provided and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible it is argued however that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled the amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms

corruption and trust theoretical considerations and evidence from mexico the growing empirical literature on political corruption shows trust interpersonal and political to be both cause and consequence of corruption a conclusion that largely builds on studies using

the role of corporate reputation and employees values in the uptake of energy efficiency in office buildings although office market actors in the united kingdom show a growing interest in energy efficiency the pace of takeup of energy efficient office features is slow previous studies have highlighted the roles of limited direct financial costs and benefits efficiency gaps and market barriers in limiting the rate of technology adoption this study provides further evidence on the importance of these factors but the primary contribution is focused on the role of corporate reputation and on the importance of individuals values in shaping corporate behaviour the paper presents a theoretical framework to explain environmental decision making in firms and we present qualitative evidence drawing from sixteen semi structured individual and group interviews with office market stakeholders in london glasgow and edinburgh the research finds that companies despite gradually becoming more energy conscious still regard energy costs as a negligible part of their business costs nevertheless an increasingly important driver is the reputational gain obtained by corporate businesses implementing sustainable practices all the interviewees agreed that the pace of change in the office market is slow and that only further policy interventions will accelerate it

the vp function a survey of the literature on vote and popularity functions after 25 years vp functions explain the support for the government at votes and polls by economic and political variables most studies analyze macro time series we also cover studies of individual voters socio economic groups and regional cross sections the theory starts from the responsibil ity hypothesis voters hold the government responsible for economic conditions it works in two party block systems but not else voters in most countries are found to be sociotropic egotropic voting also occurs voters myopia is well established voting is retrospective as expectations are static it costs the average government almost 2 of the vote to rule

welfare improving competition for mobile capital abstract this paper constructs a model in which regions provide firms with a public input financed by taxes that residents choose to levy on capital and wage income self interested government officials face incentives to provide the public input because its positive impact on labor and capital productivity leads to larger tax bases the positive relation between tax revenue and the public input is strengthened if capital is mobile across regions government officials engage in expenditure competition leaving residents better off than they would be in the absence of capital mobility to further enhance public sector incentives residents may choose to tax capital income at a positive rate although investment is discouraged

redistribution and the marginal cost of public funds abstract discussions of the marginal cost of public funds with distortionary taxation are often cast in the framework of a one consumer economy while the main justification of distortionary taxes is that they are needed for redistribution this paper analyzes the issue in a model with heterogeneous consumers and a linear income tax focusing on the tradeoff between labour market distortions and the redistribution from high wage to low wage workers in an optimal tax system the mcf will be the same for all sources of funds and under certain assumptions less than one without optimality the mcf will in general differ between different sources of finance

a theory of optimal inheritance taxation this paper derives optimal inheritance tax formulas that a capture the key equityeciency trade o b are expressed in terms of estimable sucient statistics c are robust to the underlying structure of preferences we consider dynamic stochastic models with general and heterogeneous bequest tastes and labor productivities we limit ourselves to simple but realistic linear or two bracket tax structures to obtain tractable formulas we show that long run optimal inheritance tax rates can always be expressed in terms of distributional parameters aggregate behavioral elasticities and social preferences for redistribution importantly those results carry over with tractable modications to a the case with social discounting instead of steady state welfare maximization b the case with partly accidental bequests c the standard barro becker dynastic model in all cases the optimal inheritance tax rate increases with the concentration of bequest received and decreases with the elasticity of aggregate bequests to the net of tax rate the optimal tax rate is positive and quantitatively large if concentration is high the elasticity is low and society cares mostly about those receiving little inheritance in contrast the optimal tax rate is negative when society cares mostly about inheritors we propose a calibration using micro data for france and the united states we nd that for realistic parameters

the measurement and impact of corruption victimization survey evidence from latin america summary does democracy suffer when corruption is high unfortunately most studies of corruption have been descriptive making it difficult to develop a well supported answer to this question there are of course quantitative corruption measures but the most popularly used of them are measures of corruption perception aggregated at the national level rather than corruption experience at the individual level it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the impact of corruption from such data this paper proposes a corruption victimization measure based on a survey research approach to the measurement problem and discusses in a non technical fashion its strengths and limitations the paper then presents data from studies conducted by the vanderbilt university latin american public opinion project lapop and demonstrates the impact of corruption victimization on belief in the legitimacy of the political system a critical element in democratic political stability

the politics of 1992 fiscal policy and european integration the internal market in europe will greatly increase the international mobility of resources how will this affect fiscal policy in different countries we consider taxation of capital in a two country model where a democratically chosen government in each country chooses tax policy higher capital mobility changes the politico economic equilibrium in two ways on the one hand it leads to more tax competition between the countries this economic effect tends to lower tax rates in both countries on the other hand it alters voters preferences and makes them elect a different government this political effect offsets the increased tax competition although not completely

tax incidence majority voting and capital market integration we re examine from a political economy perspective the standard view that higher capital mobility results in lower capital taxes a view in fact that is not confirmed by the available empirical evidence we show that when a small economy is opened to capital mobility the change of incidence of a tax on capital from capital owners to owners of the immobile factor may interact in such a way with political decision making so as to cause a rise in the equilibrium tax this can happen whether or not the immobile factor labour can be taxed and whether or not savings can be subsided under capital mobility d 2005 published by elsevier b v

the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and energy efficiency practices adoption abstract the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and the adoption of energy efficiency practices recommended by the us department of energy doe through the industrial assessment center iac using non parametric techniques such as data envelopment analysis dea and parametric techniques like stochastic frontier analysis sfa and corrected ordinary least square cols to measure the efficiency the regression quantile rq is carried out to test the hypothesis that the most efficient companies have adopted a higher level of practice the main conclusion is that when the enterprise operates at increasing returns to scale rts the impact of efficiency on adoption increases positively inversely when the enterprise operates at decreasing rts the impact of efficiency on adoption increases negatively

social protection and political competition this paper analyses how the level of social protection is determined when its choice depends on political competition first this is done under autarky then the analysis is extended to take account of the existence of an international capital market we show that social protection never increases under international competition and in several circumstances drastically decreases

determinants of pollution abatement in developing countries evidence from south and southeast asia abstract developing countries pa ticularly those in asia are fast adopting industrial pollution control standards similar to those in developed countries formal regulation has been greatly hampered however by the absence of clear and legally binding regulations limited institutional capacity lack of appropriate equipment and trained personnel and inadequate information on emissions one would predict highly pollution intensive production under such conditions our research however has uncovered strongly contradictory evidence despite weak or nonexistent formal regulation there are many clean plants in the developing countries of south and southeast asia of course there are also many plants which are among the world s most serious polluters what explains such extreme interplant variation this paper reviews evidence drawn from three empirical studies of plant level abatement practices conducted 1992 1994 the analyses test the importance of plant characteristics economic considerations and external pressure in determining environmental performance the results consistently show that pollution intensity is negatively associated with scale productive efficiency and the use of new process technology it is strongly and positively associated with public ownership but foreign ownership has no significant effect once other plant characteristics are taken into account among external sources of pressure community action or informal regulation emerges as a clear source of interplant differences in all three studies the results suggest that local income and education are powerful predictors of the effectiveness of informal regulation they also show that existing formal regulation has measurably beneficial effects even when it is quite weakly developed

asymmetric tax competition abstract the paper analyzes nash equilibrium when two jurisdictions set tax rates on a tax base which is mobile between them population differences imply tax differences the smaller jurisdiction levies a lower tax rate in equilibrium and its residents are better off than those in the larger jurisdiction the nash equilibrium is inefficient if the two jurisdictions merged the resulting allocation would be efficient however if differences in population are great enough residents of the small jurisdiction would be made worse off by such a merger

factor taxation income distribution and capital market integration this paper addresses the optimal mix of capital and wage taxation when policymakers maximize the political support of workers and capitalists subject to a fixed revenue requirement capital market integration increases the efficiency costs of a tax on capital hut simultaneously changes the political equilibrium through its effect on the distribution of factor incomes these distributional effects are directly opposed in the capital importing and the capital exporting region while the capital tax rate will always be lowered in the capital importing region the tax rate in the exporting country will rise when political resistance to market induced changes in the distribution of income is sufficiently high

a survey study of energy saving activities of industrial companies in the republic of korea abstract this study measures industrial energy saving activities esas in the republic of korea and identifies their determinant factors by a questionnaire survey to the energy intensive companies more than 90 of the samples have practiced the institutional and managerial esas requiring relatively lower costs and efforts although the companies have felt strong pressures from the governmental regulations and recognized the importance of industrial associations the externally coercive normative and mimetic factors still indicate no significant influence on their esas at present as internal factors the willingness for energy saving support from top management and internal training specific for energy saving determine a company s practice level of esas economic incentives like financial subsidies are useful for encouraging the company s involvement in esas korean government shall also provide more technical support to the companies particularly the small and medium sized ones for enhancing their capacities in promptly reacting to the newly initiated mandatory regulations on industrial energy efficiency

the intermediary role of an industry association in policy making processes the case of the dutch paper and board industry in the policy making process concerning energy and environmental issues cooperation between government and firms is a means to create a more efficient energy and environmental policy intermediary organizations can play an important role in this policy making process aim of this study is to get insight into the role of one specific intermediary organization the industry association in this paper we focus on the dutch paper and board industry important policy themes for this industry are waste water waste and energy efficiency we distinguished four types of governmental policy instruments top down regulation interactive regulation negative economic instruments and positive economic instruments we analyzed the role of the industry association in the policy making process for all of these four instruments the results clearly show different relative roles of the industry association in different steps of the policy making processes and for different types of instruments

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

the varying political toll of concerns about corruption in good versus bad economic times under what conditions do citizens connect concerns about corruption to their evaluations of sitting executives in contrast to conventional scholarship positing a direct negative relationship between corruption and political support we build on a small but suggestive body of research to argue that this relationship is conditional on economic context we test this claim with national survey data collected in 19 presidential systems as part of the americasbarometer 2010 study using both fixed effects ordinary least squares and hierarchical linear regression analyses we show that individuals facing bad good collective economic conditions apply a higher lower penalty to presidential approval for perceived political corruption this result holds across both an individual level indicator of national economic assessment and a regional economic measure we further test and find less substantial results for the moderating influence of personal economic conditions on the political toll of corruption perce

barriers to increasing energy efficiency evidence from small and medium sized enterprises in china abstract this paper analyzes financial informational and organizational barriers to energy efficiency investments for small and medium sized enterprises smes in china its findings are based on a survey of 480 smes in zhejiang province and complemented by semi structured interviews with enterprises contained in the survey sample responses reveal that only a minority of smes in china actively perform energy saving activities at a significant level the survey data suggest further that informational barriers are the core bottleneck inhibiting energy efficiency improvements in china s sme sector financial and organizational barriers also influence a company s energy saving activities with interview based evidence stronger than statistical evidence the interviews point out three additional barriers to energy saving activities the role of family ownership structures lax enforcement of government regulations and the absence of government support as well as a lack of skilled labor more than 40 of enterprises in the sample declared themselves unaware of energy saving equipment or practices in their respective business area indicating that there are high transaction costs for smes to gather assess and apply information about energy saving potentials and relevant technologies one policy implication of the study is that the chinese government could play a more active role in fostering the dissemination of energy efficiency related information in the sme sector

tax competition and tax coordination in an optimum income tax model abstract the paper uses the self selection approach of stiglitz 1982 to study tax competition and tax coordination in a many country optimum income tax model in the model the government can impose a non linear tax schedule on wage income and a source based tax on mobile capital in an uncoordinated equilibrium it turns out that countries can use the capital tax instrument to weaken the self selection constraint the paper presents examples where positive and negative capital taxes are optimal from a single country perspective if the production function is weakly separable between labor and capital it can be shown that the optimal capital tax is zero the paper also shows that contrary to the standard tax competition model the uncoordinated equilibrium can be efficient if the wealth distribution the endowments with capital among individuals is egalitarian a coordination of capital taxes does not affect welfare for non egalitarian wealth distributions a coordinated increase in capital taxes can raise or lower welfare depending on the redistributive impact of a higher capital tax

energy demand and supply energy policies and energy security in the republic of korea abstract the republic of korea rok has enjoyed rapid economic growth and development over the last 30 years rapid increases in energy use especially petroleum natural gas and electricity and especially in the industrial and transport sectors have fueled the rok s economic growth but with limited fossil fuel resources of its own the result has been that the rok is almost entirely dependent on energy imports the article that follows summarizes the recent trends in the rok energy sector including trends in energy demand and supply and trends in economic demographic and other activities that underlie trends in energy use the rok has been experiencing drastic changes in its energy system mainly induced by industrial supply security and environmental concerns and energy policies in the rok have evolved over the years to address such challenges through measures such as privatization of energy sector activities emphases on enhancing energy security through development of energy efficiency nuclear power and renewable energy and a related focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions the assembly of a model for evaluating energy futures in the rok rok2010 leap is described and results of several policy based scenarios focused on different levels of nuclear energy utilization are described and their impacts on of energy supply and demand in the rok through the year 2030 are explored along with their implications for national energy security and long term policy plans nuclear power continues to hold a crucial position in the rok s energy policy but aggressive expansion of nuclear power alone even if possible given post fukushima global concerns will not be sufficient to attain the rok s green economy and greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals

exploring new ways of assessing the effect of regulation on environmental management abstract studies indicate that while a variety of factors positively influence voluntary environmental management regulatory pressures are among the most important however most research examines samples representing large manufacturers or single industries essentially assuming a level of regulatory constraint using a sample of heterogeneous facilities this study finds that facilities can be classified according to the level of regulatory constraint and that group membership impacts the choice of environmental management strategy when assessed within a utility maximization framework more extensively regulated facilities implement more individual environmental management practices but participate in fewer formal voluntary environmental programs veps compared to other facilities

property taxation nash equilibrium and market power abstract differences in tax policy arise from differences in the number of jurisdictions in a metropolitan area following wildasin 4 and bucovetsky 2 the tax rates in the jurisdictions are determined in a nash game in the tax rate the tax rate and public service level as well as the welfare of residents increase as the number of jurisdictions in the metropolis decreases

affordability of energy cost increases for korean companies due to market based climate policies a survey study by sector this paper estimates the affordability of energy cost increases for energy intensive companies due to the introduction of market based climate policies in korea data were collected from 62 respondents from iron steel cement and petrochemical industries over 90 of which are under control of the target management scheme an ongoing mandatory system limiting the greenhouse gases ghg emissions of large energy consuming entities the affordable energy cost increase was estimated using the multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format results of which show that a mean energy cost increase of 2 6 is acceptable for all the entities sampled companies from the three sectors had similar affordability with an average acceptable energy cost increase of 2 5e2 8 the affordable policy induced energy cost in creases equate to carbon prices of 2500e4000 krw t co2 about 2 3e3 5 usd t co2 for the companies surveyed econometric analysis confirmed a strong correlation between energy price level and company ownership with cost affordability with a view to developing carbon tax policy and a domestic ghg emissions trading scheme in korea this research provides a basis from an industrial perspective for carbon pricing

income redistribution and public goods provision under tax competition abstract a standard result in existing literature is that public goods are under provided under tax competition see zodrow and mieszkowski 1986 this paper shows that introducing redistribution concerns changes the result capital mobility reduces income redistribution by increasing the efficiency costs of capital taxation if public goods have positive distributional effects providing more public goods counteracts the negative effects of capital mobility moreover under the condition that labor income and capital income are positively correlated less income redistribution through capital taxation can be compensated by stronger taxation of labor income as a result a higher level of public goods is desirable if capital mobility increases

a coalition formation approach to equilibrium federations the authors develop a model in which states may choose to form coalitions to capture efficiency gains from policy coordination joining a coalition entails setting the policy variable to maximize the coalition s aggregate payoff at a nash equilibrium against nonmembers and to commit to a transfer scheme to share the gains with two states the unique equilibrium structure is complete federation with more than two states incomplete federation can be the unique equilibrium interpreting this result in terms of custom unions the trend to trading bloc formation may be equilibrium behavior even with cooperation and transfers within customs unions copyright 1997 by american economic association

labor and capital income taxation fiscal competition and the distribution of wealth this paper studies optimum income taxation in a small open economy where households differ with respect to their endowments with wealth the government raises taxes on income from labor and wealth and a source tax on capital used in domestic production to avoid taxes households may at some cost shift capital to labor income and vice versa the government can only observe income after shifting has taken place it turns out that the optimal source tax on capital is negative the optimal income tax is characterized by a positive marginal tax rate for the wealthy households which is equal for labor income and income from wealth for the poor households the marginal tax rate on capital income is higher than that on labor income we also study international tax coordination and show that a reduction in the source subsidy on capital raises welfare