重大公共政策社会稳定风险评估中风险沟通机制的构建--基于北京市水价调整政策的案例分析

针对重大公共政策社会稳定风险评估（以下简称“稳评”）中利益相关方之间风险沟通不足的问题,引入IRGC的风险治理理念,建立重大公共政策稳评中风险沟通机制的分析框架,将风险沟通作为稳评工作的核心环节并贯穿于政策制定与实施的全过程。为了验证该分析框架的适用性,选取北京市水价调整政策为典型案例,对稳评过程中风险沟通机制的现实运作进行深入剖析和经验总结,并从注重评估工作与风险沟通的全程性、加强多元主体间的协商对话、充分发挥媒体作用等方面,就如何进一步推进和完善重大公共政策稳评机制展开探讨。     

Revisiting the residential electricity demand in the United States: A dynamic partial adjustment modelling approach

In recent years, price policies and price changes derived from environmental regulations have played a more important role to promote residential energy conservation. Using recent annual state-level panel data for 48 states, we estimate a dynamic partial adjustment model for electricity demand elasticities on price and income in the residential sector. Our analysis reveals that in the short run, one unit price increase will lead to 0.142 unit of reduction in electricity use after controlling for the endogeneity of electricity price. Thus, raising energy price in the short run will not give consumers much incentive to adjust their appliances to reduce electricity use. However, in the long run, one unit price increase will lead to almost one unit consumption reduction, ceteris paribus. In addition, we find new evidence that for states of higher per capita GDP, raising the electricity price may be more effective to ensure a cut in consumption.     

Brokering Interests: The Use of Market-Based Policies by Interest Groups

Objective. This article begins the process of broadly evaluating the role of nongovernmental actors in regulatory markets by specifically examining environmental groups’ use of the sulfur dioxide (SO2) market established by Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. This research posits that the use of nonexclusionary markets in environmental quality regulation allows interest groups a nonpareil opportunity to seek to directly affect policy outcomes. Methods. This article uses two forms of analysis. The first part of the article provides a qualitative analysis of the motives of interest groups that use incentive‐based policies in an attempt to achieve their desired policy outcomes. The last section of the article uses empirical data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Allowance Tracking System to evaluate interest groups’ use of market‐based policies. Results. The use of market‐based mechanisms in public policies offers interest groups a new form of participation in the policy process, yet it seems that only “new” groups are willing to enter the market. Further, I find that though the participating groups may not be able to affect the relative price of allowances (as they claim they will), they nonetheless are able to reduce the absolute number of allowances available. Finally, using market‐based policies to achieve their preferred outcomes may be a “rational” decision for groups in that the “return” on their investment may indeed be quite high. Conclusions. One aspect of pollution markets is clear—they do create an interesting new mechanism of public activism for groups that wish to protect the environment but do not want to “lobby or litigate.” By purchasing pollution allowances groups attempt to directly affect environmental policy outputs without entering the policy cycle as it has been previously understood. As market‐based policies are employed more broadly, opportunities accorded to environmental groups for active involvement in seeking to limit ambient pollutants, as well as the groups’ potential impact, may only expand.     

Disentangling Energy Policy from Environmental Policy*

Objectives. I attempt to disentangle energy policy from environmental policy in order to explain the shifting politics surrounding the former. I can then explain why energy policies have historically provided distributive benefits but also the implications of the fact that energy proposals have in recent years become more regulatory in nature. Methods. I use a range of methods. These include qualitative accounts of the evolution of energy policy, graphic depictions of congressional activity, spending, and partisanship, and multivariate analyses of oversight activities. Results. I find that policymakers have historically treated energy issues as distributive policy, resulting in an emphasis on spending and oversight but not on substantial legislation. Over the last three decades, as policymakers push energy proposals that are more regulatory in nature, energy politics have become more divisive and partisan. Conclusion. Ultimately, I conclude that the enactment of strong energy policies will necessarily involve conditions that have been conducive to passage of other strong regulatory policies.     

Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of Sustainability

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.     

European Health Care Costs

The rising cost of health care in Western European countries is now seen by many governments as a problem, and attempts are being made to find a solution by introducing cost-containment policies.
The author begins by reviewing trends in health care expenditures, and examines some of the underlying reasons for the upward trend.
He then considers some of the more important differences in the organization and financing of Western European health care systems, before surveying the different kinds of cost-containment policies which are being, and could be, pursued.
The conclusion is that present cost-containment policies do not take sufficiently into account the underlying reasons for rising costs, and that the criteria for evaluating the success of these policies are inadequate. To be successful, the policies will have to be altered, and the objectives and means of evaluation reconsidered.     

Research Misconduct Policies of Social Science Journals and Impact Factor

In this study we gathered data on the misconduct policies of social science journals and combined it with the data from our previous study on journal misconduct policies, which did not include enough social science journals for data analysis. Consistent with our earlier finding, impact factor of the journal was the only variable significantly associated with whether a journal had a formal (written) misconduct policy with an odds-ratio of 1.72 (p < 0.01). We did not find that type of science (physical, biomedical, or social) or publisher had a significant effect on whether a journal had a policy. Another important finding is that less than half of the journals that responded to the survey had a formal misconduct policy.     

论1949-1956年党对私人资本主义政策的意义和启示

1949-1956年党对私人资本主义政策的制定和实施,具有重要的理论意义和实践意义,它丰富和发展了科学社会主义理论,是国际共产主义运动史上的伟大创举,是新时期党关于资本主义和私营经济思想的理论先导.通过对1949-1956年党对私人资本主义政策的全面研究,可以得到很多深刻的启示(1)利用资本主义是社会主义初级阶段必须长期坚持的基本国策;(2)在为私营经济提供广阔发展空间的同时,应加强管理;(3)国有企业和私营企业的竞争应该是一种有利于各自发展的良性竞争.     

The conceptualization and measurement of need: a key to guiding policy and practice in children's services

Effective services for children must be grounded in the sound conceptualization and measurement of need. The concept of need is often misunderstood because it is used in different ways. Defining need as both a requisite and a goal is desirable. The conceptualization ought to rest on an acceptance that not only are objective and universal needs to attain physical health and autonomy requirements for all human beings, but subjective needs may also sit alongside of universal needs. The ecological/developmental perspective is best suited as a framework for assessing the needs of children. One of its tenets, the importance of understanding the interaction of risk and protective factors, is highly relevant to assessing needs. An assessment of the interaction of risk and protective factors operating in a child's life reveals the requisites and goals necessary for child development. The proposed approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of need when combined will be conducive to better assessment and intervention by social workers with children.     

减少砍伐和退化所致排放量（REDD＋）机制国内外研究新进展

减少砍伐和退化所致排放量（简称REDD＋）机制作为目前最可行的减排措施，可帮助中国以较低成本减少碳排放。对于REDD＋的研究，学者们主要沿着四条线索展开：一是评估REDD＋对于减缓气候变化的影响，二是研究激励机制对毁林行为的影响以及REDD＋对毁林行为的影响机制，三是分别从环境服务付费机制和原住民利益保护的视角研究REDD＋实施过程中的权力平等性问题，四是研究REDD＋的政策效果评估和实施策略。未来，应深化评估REDD＋对中国减缓气候变化影响的研究，分析REDD＋实施后所产生的毁林行为减缓效应背后的传导路径，研究定量评估方法，考察REDD＋权利平等性和REDD＋的政策实施效果。     

Controlling for causality in the link from income to mortality

While previous research shows that wealthier people tend to live longer, it is not clear whether this occurs because wealthy people make greater investments in health and safety or because inherently healthy people tend to make more money. This article uses measures of initial health to focus on the flow from wealth to good health. While the estimated link between income and mortality is less than in other articles, we find that a significant link still remains. In particular, we estimate that health and safety regulations, which cost more than $12.2 million per life saved, are likely to kill more people through increased poverty than they save directly. Estimates of costs per life saved provided by the Office of Management and Budget suggest that many health and safety programs implemented in the last 20 years would be eliminated using this criterion.     

从西雅图的信看美洲印第安人的自然观

原始民族的自然观对现代社会在面对环境危机时重新思考人与自然的关系可以提供一些启发。从 1 9世纪一位印第安酋长的信可以看出 ,美洲印第安人的自然观有不少与西方当代环境哲学的一些重要思想 ,特别是生态学关于要破除人与自然间疆界的主张和生态系统中存在着丰富的生命联系的洞见 ,以及生物中心论与生态中心论提倡的尊重生命的思想有很多契合之处     

Stakeholders and voluntary climate reduction goals at large U.S. firms: An institutional analysis

What leads firms to develop voluntary greenhouse gas reduction goals? This paper discusses the results of interviews conducted with vice presidents and managers responsible for environmental sustainability initiatives at large U.S. firms. To situate the analysis, it develops a theoretical framework that sees the firm as a socially embedded creation, where stakeholder groups exert varying levels of influence and provide the context in which the firm responds to outside information in the face of uncertainty. By understanding the firm as socially embedded, the influence and power of groups that have strong preferences for or against environmental protection can be understood. The interviews provide empirical support for this model. Subjects discuss the role of stakeholder groups such as activists, shareholders, consumers, and workers in the development of the firm’s environmental policy. Groups can prompt the firm to set greenhouse gas or energy use reduction goals, and they encourage the firm to reexamine production processes to find new ways to both reduce costs and emissions. This suggests that policies to regulate industrial greenhouse gas emissions may be less costly than some projections indicate.     

Alcohol Policy and Health Promotion: Rhetoric and Reality

This paper examines the economic and political constraints on the development of Australian policy directed at the prevention of alcohol-related health problems. An analysis is made of recent official statements and enquiries and it is argued that heightened concern about prevention arose in the context of budgetary problems and the need for governments to find ways of containing expenditure in the welfare area. The effectiveness of current efforts is called into question by the real nature of the constraints on health, and of the disparity between prevention rhetoric and policy implementation. It is suggested that government statements of intent to reduce the overall level of alcohol comsumption in the community entail no clear-cut commitment to a particular strategy or set of strategies, and that recent government actions indicate the limited possibilities for the implementation of such a policy. Any policies governments are likely to pursue are unlikely to disrupt major sources of government revenue. Because of the high profile that governments have created for the problem, there is the possibility that the policies that are adopted will be politically expedient in the short-term rather than providing real solutions.     

The macroeconomics of Italy: a regional perspective

In this contribution we show that the dualistic nature of the Italian economy has been, and still is, crucial for the design of short- and long-run macroeconomic policies, concerning unemployment, income growth and public finance.We establish the seriousness of the dualistic process of Italian regional development using several approaches. We then considered the regional nature of the Italian unemployment and show that it has profound implications for short- and long-run policies. In particular, we find that an aggregate price–unemployment relationship must be rejected. Different values of equilibrium unemployment rates for the main macro-regions of Italy are found and short-run policy implications discussed. We then consider how this heterogeneity relates to the design of growth-promoting policies.Lastly, we present evidence in favor of the importance of the missing growth of the Italian southern regions for the evolution of the Italian public finance.     

高等教育的国际化趋势

全球化浪潮的大背景下,高等教育国际化的本质涵盖了“幻想”与“行动”互相交织的双重层面。为了实现人类和平,培养走向世界的人,高等教育国际化发展应该注重高等教育跨文化交际和关注个体发展。国家的政策应当给予高等教育整体良性运行做出保障;高等教育功能在于为实现全球意识观照下的多元文化做出价值导引。     

Explicit Versus Implicit Income Insurance

By supplementing income explicitly through payments or implicitly through taxes collected, income-based taxes and transfers make disposable income less variable. Because disposable income determines consumption, policies that smooth disposable income also create welfare improving consumption insurance. With data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we find that annual consumption variation is reduced by almost 20 percent due to explicit and implicit income smoothing. Consumption insurance is as important economically as private health or automobile insurance. Although taxes have become an increasingly important source of consumption insurance, the 2001 income-tax reform legislation should have little effect on implicit consumption insurance.     

Evaluating the effect of de facto pegs on currency crises

This paper empirically evaluates the treatment effect of de facto pegged regimes on the occurrence of currency crises. To estimate the treatment effect of pegged regimes properly, we must carefully control for the self-selection problem of regime adoption because a country's exchange rate regime choice is nonrandom. To address the self-selection problem, we thus employ a variety of matching methods. We find interesting and robust evidence that (1) pegged regimes significantly decrease the likelihood of currency crises compared with floating regimes, and (2) pegged regimes with capital account liberalization significantly lower the likelihood of currency crises compared with other regimes. From the standpoint of the macroeconomic policy trilemma, we can reasonably conclude that pegged regimes with capital account liberalization are substantially less prone to speculative attacks because they can enhance greater credibility in their currencies by maintaining strict discipline for monetary and macroeconomic policies.