the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

a positive effect of human capital on growth abstract recent studies have found that economic growth appears to be unrelated to increases in educational attainment in this note i show that there is a correlation in one dataset but it is typically hidden by unrepresentative observations

income distribution and environmental quality in china a spatial econometric perspective abstract paying heed to a surge of concern about the serious and continuous environmental degradation that is currently being witnessed in china in this paper we investigate whether income distribution contributes to environmental deterioration environmental degradation can be linked not only to income growth we argue but also to increases in income inequality the study calculated the gini coefficient of 31 province using a data set of 403 city level data in mainland china and estimated the linkage between income distribution and environmental deterioration utilizing balanced data for 31 chinese provinces during the period 1996 2015 first the degree of environmental pollution was calculated by constructing a comprehensive index system which was formulated using the entropy method based on six environmental indicators then a spatial panel regression model was also employed in order to estimate whether income inequality is likely to be a relevant factor in environmental deterioration in china the estimation results showed that using the index and spatial analysis techniques significant spatial positive agglomeration were found existing between chinese provinces in terms of their levels of environmental degradation the influencing factors estimation results substantiated the existence of an invert u shaped relation lending support to the environmental kuznets curve theory more importantly the study found that income inequality played a significant role in preventing environmental degradation suggesting that an appropriate level of income inequality over a delimited period is beneficial to improving environmental quality it should however also be emphasized that optimizing the country s income distribution is remains an important long term task for the chinese government other factors were found to exert different types and magnitudes of impacts on environmental pollution results showed that many factors for instance energy intensity the share of secondary industry population density and foreign direct investment contribute to environmental deterioration conversely our findings also indicate that rising urbanization levels can have a positive effect on environmental quality in addition no clear evidence was found to suggest that local government expenditure is related to environmental degradation

inequality and the environmental kuznets curve abstract is income inequality harmful to the environment the answer to this question has not reached a consensus in the literature this study seeks to provide insight into this question by examining the influence of income inequality on the environmental kuznets curve ekc i e the impact of income inequality on the ekc turning point two potential mechanisms through which inequality may affect the ekc turning point by reducing public demand for environmental protection and by increasing a power of capital owners to prevent such protection using a large sample n 170 174 of countries we find evidence of the ekc for so2 emissions and income inequality has a significant impact on the ekc turning point income inequality increases the ekc turning point suggesting that high inequality can be damaging to the environment the results are robust to potential outliers different data sources of income inequality a different so2 emissions measure changes in model specification different samples and an alternative estimation method we also find that inequality appears to be more important than corruption in determining the ekc turning point

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

a bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995 2014 abstract natural resource accounting plays a critical role in sustainable utilization and conservation of natural resources this paper aims to review research progress on natural resource accounting for the period of 1995 2014 the main research methods for this study include bibliometric analysis and social network analysis covering publications performances characteristics of related journals countries institutions authors and keywords the results show that the total amount of publications on natural resource accounting has increased rapidly since 2001 the most productive journal country institution and author are journal of environmental management usa university of california and dr chen respectively all of them have higher academic influence meanwhile natural resources that attract most attentions are water and energy the six main research methods in this field include mathematic modeling emergy exergy ecological footprint ef life cycle assessment lca and material flow analysis mfa reasons for the prominent performance of key countries and institutions are then discussed and uncovered as well as for six methods finally suggestions on how to further promote the development of this research field are raised

political and economic inequality and the environment abstract this paper analyzes and tests the hypothesis that political and economic equality result in lower levels of environmental degradation based on formal statements of the argument put forward by boyce r 1994 ecological economics 11 169 178 i show that equality may or may not be necessary to minimize degradation under some plausible conditions greater inequality may even be conducive to lower degradation actual results depend primarily on the intersection between the distribution of preferences across groups and the institutional rules two cross national empirical tests tend to support the contention that distributional issues do not systematically explain variations in environmental quality the results reinforce the conclusion that assumptions about the structure of preferences and workings of social choice institutions ignore complex interactions which influence the relationship between degradation and equality

income inequality and the environment aggregation bias in environmental kuznets curves abstract the environmental kuznets curve assumes an inverted u shaped relation between environmental damage and per capita income recently it has been argued in the literature that in addition to income levels the inequality in the distribution of power and income is positively related to environmental degradation we provide an additional argument based on simple aggregation for including a measure of income dispersion in empirical analyses when the relationship between environmental damage and household income is concave e g resembles an environmental kuznets curve then income inequality is negatively related to total environmental damage results from an empirical analysis of cross national variation indicate that the aggregation effect can run counter to and outweigh the political economy effect for some environmental indicators

a comparative study of inequality and corruption this article argues that income inequality increases the level of corruption through material and normative mechanisms the wealthy have both greater motivation and more opportunity to engage in corruption whereas the poor are more vulnerable to extortion and less able to monitor and hold the rich and powerful accountable as inequality increases inequality also adversely affects social norms about corruption and people s beliefs about the legitimacy of rules and institutions thereby making it easier for them to tolerate corruption as acceptable behavior this comparative analysis of 129 countries using two stage least squares methods with a variety of instrumental variables supports the authors hypotheses using different measures of corruption the world bank s control of corruption index and the transparency international s corruption perceptions index the explanatory power of inequality is at least as important as conventionally accepted causes of corruption such as economic development the autho

does commercialization undermine the benefits of decentralization for local services provision evidence from mexico s urban water and sanitation sector summary decentralization has been promoted as a means to better reflect citizen preferences and improve local services many developing countries decentralized and promoted neoliberal policies such as commercialization simultaneously leaving mayors with the responsibility of improving public services through self financing reforms this study evaluates experiences in three mexican cities to assess whether decentralization and commercialization practices have resulted in improved water and sanitation services it finds that commercialization has increased social conflict surrounding urban services provision and that local institutional constraints further undermine mayor s ability to adopt politically contentious policies the result has been stalled and uneven service improvements

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

legal pluralism and decentralization natural resource management in mali summary much recent work on decentralized natural resource management has focused on the institutional arrangements that shape the balance of powers between central and local governments it has given comparatively less attention to relationships between local government and community level institutions in mali decentralization has superimposed modern legal institutions on community institutions the ambiguous relationships between them can undermine both the authority of nascent local governments and the performance of customary institutions legal pluralism the coexistence and interaction of multiple normative orders with different sources of legitimacy and authority helps explain the dynamic nature of local institutions under decentralization this article examines the experiences of three malian communities with decentralized natural resource management one maintains autonomy from government another engaged its local government and a third negotiated a multi stakeholder agreement a local convention they demonstrate that crafting workable relationships between communities and local government requires a pragmatic approach to negotiating and institutionalizing political space for innovation in self governance

coordination issues in policy implementation networks an illustration from madagascar s environmental action plan abstract policy implementation brings together multiple agencies and groups to work in concert to achieve a set of objectives making these joint arrangements function effectively depends upon multiactor linkages and coordination drawing upon the interorganizational and policy network literature this article discusses these issues and applies them to national environmental action plans neaps the article looks specifically at madagascar examining the implementation structure of the neap and how coordination problems are manifested the essay concludes with some recommendations directed toward improving the effectiveness of madagascar s neap but which have wider applicability to managing coordination among policy implementation actors in general

evaluation of biodiversity policy instruments what works and what doesn t w e review and confirm the claim that credible evaluations of common conservation instru ments continue to be rare the limited set of rigorous studies suggests that protected areas cause modest reductions in deforestation however the evidence base for payments for ecosystem services decentralization policies and other interventions is much weaker thus we renew our urgent call for more evaluations from many more biodiversity relevant locations specifically we call for a programme of research conservation evaluation 2 0 that seeks to measure how programme impacts vary by socio political and bio physical context to track economic and environmental impacts jointly to iden tify spatial spillover effects to untargeted areas and to use theories of change to characterize causal mechanisms that can guide the collection of data and the interpretation of results only then can we usefully contribute to the debate over how to protect biodiversity in developing countries

who talks with whom the role of repeated interactions in decentralized forest governance summary this article suggests that efforts to study decentralization outcomes would benefit from widening the unit of analysis from the local government administration to the local governance system many individual local governments especially in developing countries lack the human and physical resources to be effective governors by themselves it is thus useful to recognize the linkages between different governance actors the empirical analysis based on observations in bolivia s forestry sector finds that the degree of connectivity between the actors in a municipal governance system helps explain why some systems are more effective than others 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

reducing inequalities toward the development of a market for income inequality abstract the objective of this study is to propose the development of a market for income inequality by specifying a firm s contribution to income inequality and outlining a simple model to find the equilibrium price for a given target of income inequality reduction the paper reviews the concepts of firm heterogeneity and externalities in relation to income inequality it then proposes a model by establishing income inequality reduction targets for a population of firms presenting a marginal income inequality reduction cost curve and matching demand and supply to derive the equilibrium price and ends by simulating a market for income inequality reduction using data from a sample of fifteen firms this paper shifts the focus of income inequality research and policy to the firm and proposes a market based mechanism for firms to reduce income inequality

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

exploring the environmental kuznets hypothesis theoretical and econometric problems focussing on the prime example of co2 emissions we discuss several important theoretical and econometric problems that arise when studying environmental kuznets curves ekcs an ekc refers to an inverse u shaped relationship between a pollutant and economic activity the dominant theoretical approach is given by integrated assessment modelling which consists of economic models that are combined with environmental impact models we critically evaluate the aggregation model dynamics and calibration aspects and their implications for the validity of the results we then turn to a discussion of several important econometric problems that go almost unnoticed in the literature the most fundamental problems relate to nonlinear transformations of nonstationary regressors and in a nonstationary panel context to neglected cross sectional dependence we discuss the implications of these two major and some minor problems that arise in the econometric analysis of kuznets curves our discussion shows that ekc modelling as performed to date is subject to major drawbacks at both the theoretical and the econometric level

recentralizing while decentralizing how national governments reappropriate forest resources summary decentralization initiatives have been launched in the majority of developing countries but these rarely lay the foundations necessary to reach decentralization s purported efficiency and equity benefits this paper uses a comparative empirical approach to show how central governments in six countries senegal uganda nepal indonesia bolivia and nicaragua use a variety of strategies to obstruct the democratic decentralization of resource management and hence retain central control effective decentralization requires the construction of accountable institutions at all levels of government and a secure domain of autonomous decision making at the local level

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

the viability of local payments for watershed services empirical evidence from matiguas nicaragua abstract using both qualitative and quantitative approaches this article investigates the under researched demand side of locally financed payments for environmental services pes it assesses downstream users willingness to pay wtp for improved tap water quality in a setting where upstream landowners are clearing watersheds the research findings are indicative of a considerable wtp for improved drinking water services and a definite local awareness of upstream downstream interdependencies suggesting potential for successful pes contingent valuation cv however found a substantially lower wtp under a pes scenario than under an alternative scenario involving infrastructure investments the qualitative research angle indicates that the feasibility of a locally financed pes system may have been negatively affected by the prevailing discursive framing of agricultural externalities and entitlements raising issues about the fairness of such payments moreover low levels of mutual trust were found to undermine the credibility of the pes framework these results confirm that institutional failures contribute to environmental degradation and that pes should not be viewed as a market panacea transcending the local institutional context but rather as a potentially complementary instrument within a broader rearrangement of environmental governance

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

political preferences for the pork barrel a generalization this paper provides a rational explanation for the observation of oversized coalitions often approaching unanimous size in the realm of distributive policies distributive policies are those which concentrate benefits in specific geographic areas states congressional districts while spreading costs through general taxation the explanation offered here that legislators may rationally prefer universalism to hard ball coalition politics generalizes earlier work of weingast and fiorina in particular it extends their results to pork barrel politics i e projects that are economically inefficient and demonstrates how packages of economically inefficient projects can nevertheless be politically popular the main theoretical feature that induces preferences for universalism is uncertainty over the composition of winning coalitions and consequently the desire for the political insurance that universalism provides

the emergence of local capacity lessons from colombia abstract the paper analyzes the process of capacity development in a sample of colombian local governments which resulted from a strategy of state decentralization initiated in the mid 1980s the central message of the study is that competition for political office opened the door to responsible and innovative leadership that in turn became the driving force behind capacity building efforts more widespread community participation expanded the range of possibilities open to local governments and provided the basis to sustain capacity over time the experience of these municipios suggests that capacity can be enhanced through skillful innovations even under difficult circumstances

natural resources and decentralization in nicaragua are local governments up to the job abstract both decentralization and natural resource management literature suggest that natural resources could benefit from the redistribution of centralized management authority yet neither has sufficiently examined the processes already underway in numerous developing countries to decentralize resource management from central to municipal government authorities this study reviews the role of 21 local governments in forest management in nicaragua it finds that most interventions are economically motivated and that three key factors are needed for local governments to be good resource managers capacity incentive and long term commitment these three factors are part of a process in which civil society can play a critical role

fiscal decentralization in indonesia a new approach to an old idea abstract the system for financing and delivering local public services in indonesia as in many developing countries is highly centralized growing awareness of the weaknesses of the present system has recently generated much interest in decentralization and numerous government policies and programs toward that end in spite of these efforts the role and capacity of local governments remain weak in this paper we outline the most critical obstacles to decentralization and examine a strategy to reduce their significance instead of centering our analysis on the definition of a normatively desirable decentralization outcome we focus on the development of a process through which genuinely feasible outcomes could be defined and implemented in this case an interministerial and intergovernmental process for evaluating local governments

does trade openness improve environmental quality the literature on trade openness economic development and the environment is largely inconclusive about the environmental consequences of trade this study treats trade and income as endogenous and estimates the overall impact of trade openness on environmental quality using the instrumental variables technique we find that whether or not trade has a beneficial effect on the environment varies depending on the pollutant and the country trade is found to benefit the environment in oecd countries it has detrimental effects however on sulfur dioxide so2 and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in non oecd countries although it does lower biochemical oxygen demand bod emissions in these countries we also find the impact is large in the long term after the dynamic adjustment process although it is small in the short term

the new economics of organization over the last ten years or so an important new approach to the study of organizations has emerged within economics it is perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a theoretical focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this paper provides political scientists with an overview of the new economics of organization and explores its implications for the study of public bureaucracy so far positive political theory has not contributed much to our understanding of public bureaucracy in part this is due to the unsympathetic treatment that rational modeling and most other modes of quantitative analysis have long received from students of public administration the other side of the coin however is that positive theorists have not made much of an effort to develop theories of bureaucracy their concerns have centered around two basic mechanisms of social choice voting and markets and they have devoted little systematic attention to a third mechanism that is clearly important for understanding how societies and other aggregates make collective decisions this third and relatively unexplored mechanism is hierarchy movement toward a positive theory of hierarchies would fill a serious gap in the social choice literature while at the same time making a theoretical contribution that strikes to the essence of public bureaucracy indeed of all organizations in fact significant steps toward a positive theory of hierarchies have very recently been taken but by economists not political scientists in small numbers of course economists made contributions to the study of public bureaucracy some time ago with the pioneering works of downs 1967 tullock 1965 and niskanen 1971 but this new wave of theoretical work is different it is already a large complex body of literature that is the focus of innovation and excitement among a growing number of economists and it reflects an unusual degree of theoretical coherence and cumulative effort work in this tradition tends to receive orientation from a distinctive economic approach to the analysis of organizations an approach perhaps best characterized by three elements a contractual perspective on organizational relationships a focus on hierarchical control and formal analysis via principal agent models this approach has emerged from recent attempts to move beyond the neoclassical theory of the firm which assumes away all organizational considerations to a theory of economic organizations that can explain why firms corporations and other enterprises behave as they do propo

bureaucrats legislators and the size of government some recent theories have blamed the growth of government on budget maximizing bureaucrats who are assumedly capable of imposing their most preferred budget output combination on legislatures subject to cost and demand constraints however theoretical examination of the range of bargaining outcomes that might occur between bureau and legislature shows that budget maximizing behavior does not necessarily lead to super optimal levels of production nor do the suggested reforms of competition and privatization necessarily improve the situation in this bargaining model the central determinants of governmental growth are not budget maximizing bureaucrats but the legislature s decisions regarding mode of oversight and form of internal organization

does inequality affect environmental quality evidence from major japanese cities abstract this study investigates whether income inequality affects environmental degradation we use city level data in japan where local governments have limited authority and often use voluntary agreements with private firms we test the hypothesis that inequality weakens residents bargaining power over polluters and has a negative effect on environmental quality our results show that inequality negatively affected air quality in residential and commercial areas during the 1990s but not in industrial areas this evidence suggests that the inequality pollution relationship is not just a correlation but reflects a causal effect of residents bargaining power on environmental quality this implies that equal communities can pressure firms into accepting pollution prevention agreements

the environmental kuznets curve cointegration and nonlinearity this paper clarifies some conceptual shortcomings of the empirical environmental kuznets curve ekc literature that arise because of the hitherto inadequate application of unit root and cointegration techniques the literature to date has ignored the fact and a fortiori the consequences that powers of integrated processes are themselves not integrated processes the paper explains why standard methods should not be applied and discusses some recently proposed viable estimation and testing approaches for cointegrating polynomial regressions the application to co2 and so2 emissions data shows that using appropriate methods leads to strongly reduced evidence for a cointegrating ekc compared to typical but conceptually not sound findings

the trade off between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions abstract we investigate the theoretically ambiguous link between income inequality and per capita carbon dioxide emissions using a panel data set that is substantially larger in both regional and temporal coverage than those used in the existing literature using an arguably superior group fixed effects estimator we find that the relationship between income inequality and per capita emissions depends on the level of income we show that for low and middle income economies higher income inequality is associated with lower carbon emissions while in upper middle income and high income economies higher income inequality increases per capita emissions the result is robust to the inclusion of plausible transmission variables

corruption and the environmental kuznets curve empirical evidence for sulfur abstract we investigate how corruption influences the income level at the turning point of the relationship between sulfur emissions and income using a wide cross national panel of countries at different levels of development and with different degrees of corruption our results support the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for sulfur we find evidence that the higher the country s degree of corruption the higher the per capita income at the turning point suggesting different income pollution paths across countries due to corruption we build upon a new specification for the ekc developed by bradford et al 2005 that avoids using nonlinear transformations of potentially nonstationary regressors in panel estimation also we account for the indirect impact of corruption on emissions through its impact on per capita income our main findings remain unchanged when we investigate additional heterogeneity allowing for different income slopes across richer and poorer countries

the effects of structural adjustment on deforestation and forest degradation in lowland bolivia bolivia s structural adjustment policies initiated in 1985 increased poverty among certain groups but this did not lead to widespread migration to the agricultural frontier nor did adjustment greatly affect the average area planted in annual crops by small lowland farmers structural adjustment contributed to large scale forest clearing for soybean production for export and to a lesser extent forest degradation by lumber companies the economic benefits generated by soybean and timber expansion may have outweighed the environmental costs but alternative policies might have reduced those costs and improved the distribution of the benefits

economic implications of inalienable and communal native title the case of wik forestry in australia abstract wik people on cape york peninsula in queensland australia have been granted native title over 18 500 km2 of customary land this was seen as a coup by wik people and it appears that they have a relatively unencumbered right to manage a large proportion of this land including for commercial timber production however economists of the private property rights tradition are of the view that the inalienable and communal nature of native title presents an obstacle to economic development in remote indigenous communities that will prevent the land from being managed in an economically and ecologically efficient manner and preclude the land from realising its full market value this negative view has risen to prominence in australia and privatisation of the indigenous land estate is being debated in this paper it is argued that privatising australian native title land will not suddenly provide conditions where indigenous enterprise will flourish nor will it necessarily maximise resource use efficiency where cultural and ecological values are important for the wik and other indigenous australians factors such as their low western education and skill levels poor health limited financial resources complex social environment the remoteness and low productive capacity of their land and the high importance of non pecuniary land management objectives are more important impediments to economic development than the broad type of property right held over natural resources

democracy and environmental quality we develop and estimate an econometric model of the relationship between several local and global air pollutants and economic development while allowing for critical aspects of the socio political economic regime of a state we obtain empirical support for our hypothesis that democracy and its associated freedoms provide the conduit through which agents can exercise their preferences for environmental quality more effectively than under an autocratic regime thus leading to decreased concentrations or emissions of pollution however additional factors such as income inequality age distribution education and urbanization may mitigate or exacerbate the net effect of the type of political regime on pollution depending on the underlying societal preferences and the weights assigned to those preferences by the state

paradoxes of decentralization water reform and social implications in mexico summary decentralized governance of water resources is a centerpiece of mexico s neoliberal reform strategy we analyze decentralization based on urban rural case studies in distinct geographical regions to ascertain whether it is linked to more efficient water management or sustainable use of water resources and to examine its development implications we assess whether or not private sector management is related to a more efficient sustainable and accountable management of water variety of municipal and private management arrangement in four urban areas we find that it has not resulted in efficiency or sustainability gains for agricultural water management irrigation districts in two case studies benefited from the more democratic participatory management by water users under mexico s transference strategy but did not result in greater equity efficiency or sustainability of water use we argue that decentralization in the mexican water sector is context specific and marked by limited benefits privatization is less an instrument aimed at improving efficiency than a channel for preferred treatment for capital accumulation by private entities as well as a legitimized way for the state to transfer the burden of water management to non state institutions the creation of new forms of water institutions requires not the retrenchment of the state but rather its involvement to ensure accountability transparency equity and sustainability

is china at the tipping point reconsidering environment economy nexus abstract environmental kuznets curve ekc has become the predominant approach between environmentalists and sociologists to modeling environment economy nexus during the past quarter century also with regard to china the largest industrial pollutant emitter in the world where unprecedented change offers a unique approach to the aggregate emissions in the case of china the question is whether a tipping point can be reached without de industrialization and at a lower income phase than in developed economies it is also the worldwide intrinsic concern of environment economy nexus in the prospective industrialization process of developing countries however china relative researches involve some existing challenges such as cross regional time series various socioeconomic drivers and turning thresholds taking the new normal china economy formulation into consideration a rethink and reexamination of the environment economy relationship was performed using the longest possible environmental and economic data from 30 provincial economies for the period of 1985 2017 different from the existing mostly time series based china ekc literature not only the llc ips fisher unit root tests pedroni and kao panel cointegration tests and the panel ols are used but the problem of cross sectional dependence is handled in panel unit root tests across various cross economies and the error correction based cointegration test is employed allowing for various forms of heterogeneity robust against the cross sectional dependence and the dols estimators are applied to resolve the standard ols for serial correlation and for endogeneity of regressors especially in only small possible china samples in particular the finding contrasts with the overly optimistic research of certain scholars who state that china could be on a clearly different path from the routes of some developed economies in the world realizing the environmental turnaround at low levels of economy and industrialization china economy is not just having a certain environmental dividend effect but mainly faces a more significant environmental pressure effect environmental input and its efficiency is still insufficient to perform the intended pollution reduction effects fundamentally the environmental investment as a proportion of gdp should reach the past levels of some developed economies in the similar pollution economy phase

the power of parallel thinking a small computer model demonstrates that an appropriate organization of boundedly rational individuals can find optimal policies in an environment that is overwhelmingly complex for unorganized decision makers the model is also used to identify conditions under which optimal or even good policies are not found the demonstrated adaptive power of the model is interpreted in light of recent developments in the theory of computational complexity that place new stress on powerful methods of search and of new models from computer science which markedly advance search effectiveness by harnessing parallel structures of information processing

innovation and trade performance in the united kingdom a popular explanation for the u k s poor trade performance in the postwar period is that insufficient attention was paid to the quality of goods offered to consumers the authors explore the role of both price and quality factors in determining the net trade balances of a number of u k manufacturing and service industries particular attention is paid to the role of innovation used empirically as a proxy for product improvement the findings show considerable support for the view that an advanced industrial country like britain needs to continually upgrade its products to avoid erosion of its domestic and international market shares

re exploring the trade and environment nexus through the diffusion of pollution some scholars argue that trade liberalization results in the outsourcing of pollution to pollution havens and this may explain the existence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc in industrialized countries others claim that trade liberalization effectively lessens pollution by allowing a more efficient use of resources and the diffusion of clean technologies in part because these theories generate similar predictions for industrialized countries empirical studies have not provided conclusive evidence for either argument to identify the role of trade i draw on the insights of the diffusion literature and estimate a spatial regression model where trade operates as the mechanism through which pollution shifts from country to country using the case of per capita carbon dioxide hbox co 2 emissions i find that once spatial correlation is accounted for the ekc disappears the effect is even stronger when looking at trade from developing countries only providing support for the pollution haven hypothesis i also show that the hbox co 2 trajectory of developing countries goes above the one previously followed by industrialized countries this suggests that developing countries carry on an additional carbon burden above the one that would be obtained in the absence of trade these findings contribute to the literature on the non economic effects of trade and the constraints of domestic policies when the costs of trade are low

corruption income and the environment an empirical analysis abstract in response to the recent growth of a largely theoretical body of literature analysing the linkages between corruption and pollution this paper subjects the corruption pollution relationship to a detailed empirical examination a distinction is drawn between the direct impact of corruption on pollution and the indirect impact which operates through corruption s impact on per capita income and the resultant impact of income on pollution using data for 94 countries covering the period 1987 2000 both direct and indirect impacts of corruption on air pollution emissions are estimated for both sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide corruption is estimated to have a positive direct impact on per capita emissions indirect effects are found to be negative and larger in absolute value than direct effects for the majority of the sample income range as a result the total effect of corruption on emissions is negative for all but the highest income countries in the sample

the consequences of mrs thatcher for u k manufacturing exports this article sets out to study whether the dramatic events that took place in the u k economy since 1979 can be shown to have had any effects on certain crucial parameters that determine the export performance of the u k manufacturing sector a number of export models are examined over the post 1979 period and all reveal a certain amount of systematic parameter variation in particular estimates of the world income elasticity of demand for u k manufacturing exports show an upward drift when this drift is explicitly modeled using a spline function approach to allow time varying parameters the data do not reject the hypothesis that this income elasticity has risen from its traditional postwar value of around 0 7 to around unity in 1986 this model is applied to explain export performance of both aggregate u k manufacturing as well as of individual manufacturing industries copyright 1989 by royal economic society

trust networks and norms the creation of social capital in agricultural economies in ghana this paper contributes to the continuing debate over the multifaceted concept of trust and its ability to provide a richer explanation of processes of economic activity using case studies of agricultural production marketing and financing systems in brong ahafo region of ghana the analysis documents the means by which trust is created among farmers traders and agricultural input suppliers the mechanisms include formal and informal networks of working relations customer friendships pre existing networks and intermediaries the study shows that trust is necessary for the development of a vibrant private sector based on microenterprises in conditions where actors cannot rely on formal legal institutions at present

transaction costs power and multi level forest governance in indonesia since 2005 there has been considerable international interest in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd a program intended to finance protection of tropical forests through the sale of carbon offsets or from donor funding requiring the collaboration of local and international civil society stakeholders firms and donor and host governments redd is inherently a multi level governance project but to date participation in redd and coordination across governmental levels have been weak combining literature on multi level and polycentric governance of socioecological systems with transaction cost economics we argue that transaction costs structure cross level information sharing and collaboration relationships among organizations engaged in redd policy development at the national and provincial levels in indonesia using an exponential random graph modelling approach with data collected from interviews with over 80 organizations between 2010 and 2012 we find that powerful organizations tend to dominate cross level connections though this effect is somewhat mediated by organizational similarity which reduces transaction costs we suggest that explicit efforts to help local organizations overcome the transaction costs of building cross level relationships will be a central component of building an effective and equitable multi level governance system for redd in indonesia

fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental fiscal relations a cross country analysis abstract fiscal decentralization consists primarily of devolving revenue sources and expenditure functions to lower tiers of government by bringing the government closer to the people fiscal decentralization is expected to boost public sector efficiency as well as accountability and transparency in service delivery and policy making decentralization also entails greater complexity in intergovernmental fiscal relations and coordination failures in fiscal relations are likely to have a bearing on fiscal positions nationally and subnationally evidence provided in this paper for a sample of 30 countries suggests that coordination failures in intergovernmental fiscal relations are likely to result in a deficit bias in decentralized policy making particularly in the case of developing countries which may not meet important requirements for successful decentralization

mechanisms explaining the impact of economic inequality on environmental deterioration abstract rising economic inequality often considered intrinsically harmful is increasingly being viewed as having a number of secondary impacts as well including impacts on health and economic growth the ongoing nature of today s environmental crisis also raises questions about inequality s role in environmental deterioration despite the large number of papers that have been written on this topic no theoretical or empirical consensus presently exists firstly our article identifies that authors conclusions in this area depend on their hypotheses regarding 1 the relationship between individual income and individual environmental pressure 2 the impact of inequality on the social norms that influence individual environmental pressure 3 the interests that social groups have in degrading or protecting the environment 4 how these interests play out in terms of political demands and 5 how these political demands translate into political decisions secondly the study shows that despite enabling a general test of the causal relationship between inequality and the environment the empirical methods utilised do not account for the full range of theoretical mechanisms in play hence the suggestion that a research programme be launched to conduct empirical studies of the five aforementioned hypotheses by applying a recursive approach

economic structure development policy and environmental quality an empirical analysis of environmental kuznets curves with chinese municipal data in many cases the relationship between environmental pollution and economic development can be generally depicted by an inverted u shaped curve or an environmental kuznets curve where pollution increases with income at the beginning and decreases after a certain level of income however what determine the shape of an enviornmental kuznets curve such as the height and the turning point of the curve have not been thoroughly studied a good understanding of the determinants is vitally important to the development community especially for the developing world where income growth is a high priority and yet environmental pollution also needs to be carefully controlled this study analyzes the impacts of economic structure development strategy and environmental regulation on the shape of the environmental kuznets curve with a city level panel dataset obtained from china the results show that economic structure development strategy and environmental regulation can all have important implications on the relationship between environmental environmental quality and economic development but the impacts can be different at different development stages

from local strongman to facilitator institutional incentives for participatory municipal governance in latin america efforts to engage citizens in democratic forms of governance in developing societies are complicated by deeply rooted socioeconomic and political inequalities in this article the authors analyze

income inequality and carbon emissions in the united states a state level analysis 1997 2012 abstract this study investigates the relationship between u s state level co 2 emissions and two measures of income inequality the income share of the top 10 and the gini coefficient each of the inequality measures which focus on unique characteristics of income distributions is used to evaluate the arguments of different analytical approaches results of the longitudinal analysis for the 1997 to 2012 period indicate that state level emissions are positively associated with the income share of the top 10 while the effect of the gini coefficient on emissions is non significant the statistically significant relationship between co 2 emissions and the concentration of income among the top 10 is consistent with analytical approaches that focus on political economy dynamics and veblen effects which highlight the potential political and economic power and emulative influence of the wealthy the null effect of the gini coefficient is generally inconsistent with the marginal propensity to emit approach which posits that when incomes become more equally distributed the poor will increase their consumption of energy and other carbon intensive products as they move into the middle class

the impact of decentralization on spatial equity and rural development in tanzania abstract the decentralization reform in tanzania 1972 had the objective of giving power to the people at the subnational level to plan and implement projects that would mobilize local resources together with villagization which was influenced by and also influenced decentralization the reform has had positive impacts on reducing spatial inequalities and on rural development equitable allocations of development inputs and provision of social services to the villages through decentralization have resulted in increased popular participation in local level planning in agriculture and construction of social service facilities increased spatial interactions through the hierarchical planning process and greatly increased access to social services especially health care clean water supply and primary education problems of maintenance and supplies often make service delivery inefficient and less adequate than expected this calls for a reexamination of policy to charge users a fee for maintenance and continued equitable expansion of the services

corruption pollution and the kuznets environment curve abstract this paper examines the implications of corruption and rent seeking behavior by the government for the relationship between pollution and growth cases of both cooperative and non cooperative interaction between the government and the private firm are studied it is shown that corruption is not likely to preclude the existence of an inverted u shaped kuznets environmental curve under both these cases however for any level of per capita income the pollution levels corresponding to corrupt behavior are always above the socially optimal level further the turning point of the kuznets curve takes place at income and pollution levels above those corresponding to the social optimum

drivers of industrial and non industrial greenhouse gas emissions abstract though there has been extensive analysis of the drivers of aggregate carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production there has been much less analysis of the drivers of greenhouse gases in general and especially of aggregate emissions of greenhouse gases from agriculture forestry and other land uses which we call non industrial emissions in this paper we statistically analyze the relationship between both industrial and non industrial greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth and other potential drivers for 129 countries over the period from 1971 to 2010 our analysis combines the three main approaches in the literature into a single framework for investigating the evolution of emissions and income we find that economic growth is a driver of both industrial and non industrial emissions though economic growth has twice the effect on industrial emissions the time effect is negative for both sources of emissions though this effect is larger for non industrial emissions there is also convergence in emissions intensity for both types of emissions but given these other effects there is no evidence for an environmental kuznets curve

intellectual property technological advantage and trade performance of uk manufacturing industries the technological advantage of advanced countries is often cited as a potential source of comparative advantage in world trade although with internatonal mobility of capital this may not be sufficient to retain domestic production net trad volumes for a panel of uk manufacturing industries are investigated using two measures of industry specific technological advantage one absolute innovations and one relative patents it is demonstrated that the determining factors of uk manufacturing trade performance do include technological advantage an all manufacturing estimate of trade determination is derived which could be of use in forecasting by pooling industry level data however it is shown that using a single data panel makes it difficult to produce a statistically acceptable equation because the underlying industry parameters vary considerably across the panel separate technology sub group estimates of the impact of innovation on net trade volumes are also derived which are more statistically acc

does decentralization increase government responsiveness to local needs evidence from bolivia this paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from bolivia empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization these changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need nationally these changes were driven by the smallest poorest municipalities investing devolved funds in their highest priority projects the findings contradict common claims that local government is too corrupt institutionally weak or prone to interest group capture to improve upon central government s allocation of public resources d 2002 published by elsevier b v