Bo Xu, Qie Sun, Ronald Wennersten and Nils Brandt
This paper aims to analyse Chinese policy instruments for climate change mitigation.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse Chinese policy instruments for climate change mitigation.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the paper reviews Chinese energy consumption per unit of GDP (EC/GDP) in order to determine the overall effects of the combined policy instruments. Second, the different policy instruments are compared in terms of their effects. Third, the actual trends of EC/GDP in two provinces and the instruments adopted by them are analysed on the provincial level.
Findings
The decline in EC/GDP can indirectly reflect the Chinese contribution to mitigation of CO2 emissions since fossil fuels dominate Chinese energy consumption. The national EC/GDP values have shown a declining trend from 2005 to date, indicating that the policy instruments are very important to mitigate climate change as regards reducing EC/GDP. The technological improvement regulations have made the greatest contribution to date to reduce EC/GDP values. The experiences from the Beijing and Shandong province indicate that their final targets in 2010 will be most likely achieved because the different provinces are not only following the national policy instruments but have also developed quite a few new instruments to assist in reaching the these reductions.
Research limitations/implications
There are three limitations regarding Chinese policy instruments analysis. First, the paper does not go far to determine the other factors which can affect EC/GDP apart from policy instruments. Second, some data were lacking and there may be inaccuracies in the existing data that could affect the analysis results. Third, EC/GDP cannot reflect the Chinese contribution to mitigation of CO2 emissions if the composition of Chinese energy consumption changes significantly.
Originality/value
The paper addresses the importance of various policy instruments in reducing EC/GDP. The results can be referenced by Chinese policy makers on both the national and provincial level.
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Larsgöran Strandberg and Nils Brandt
Theories and practice of sustainable development have to be discussed and developed within a broad range of actors in different areas of society. The complex concept of…
Abstract
Theories and practice of sustainable development have to be discussed and developed within a broad range of actors in different areas of society. The complex concept of sustainable development interacts with at least four separate systems that in one way or another affect each other: ecosystem function and change, economic performance and change, technological performance and change and social performance and change. We have to analyse the interrelationship to these systems in order to find a future sustainable path. Describes an inter‐Nordic cooperation project educating regional and local officials and practitioners in sustainable development using the Internet as a course platform. The course content discusses the relation between the four system areas in its theoretical part (Block 1). In another – more practical – part of the course (Block 2), we discuss “best practice” in different Nordic countries and experiences in using environmental and sustainability indicators on the national, regional and local level.
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What kinds of support do interstate rivals provide to domestic actors in ongoing civil wars? And how do domestic actors utilize the support they receive? This chapter answers…
Abstract
What kinds of support do interstate rivals provide to domestic actors in ongoing civil wars? And how do domestic actors utilize the support they receive? This chapter answers these questions by comparing Iranian and Saudi military and non-military (mediation, foreign aid and religious soft-power promotion) support to the Houthis and to the Government of Yemen (GoY) during the Saada wars (2004–2010) and the internationalized civil war (2015–2018). It also focuses on the processes through which the GoY and the Houthis have utilized this support for their own strategic purposes. This chapter applies a structured, focused comparison methodology and relies on data from a review of both primary and secondary sources complemented by 14 interviews. This chapter finds that there were less external interventions in the conflict in Saada than in the internationalized civil war. During the latter, a broader set of intervention strategies enabled further instrumentalization by domestic actors, which in turn contributed to the protracted nature of the conflict. This chapter contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry and third-party intervention. The framework of analysis is applicable to civil wars that experience intervention by rivals, such as Syria or Libya.
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Bjørn Stensaker, Ellen Brandt and Nils Henrik Solum
The purpose of this paper is to review and identify changes in systems of external examinations in Denmark, the UK and Norway.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review and identify changes in systems of external examinations in Denmark, the UK and Norway.
Design/methodology/approach
Comparative analysis of studies, reviews and documents concerning the purpose and functioning of systems of external examination in three selected countries.
Findings
The paper concludes that systems of external examinations are being transformed from a focus on student performance to a focus on programme quality and coherence in all three countries studied.
Practical implications
The paper shows that older and newer forms of quality assurance are becoming more integrated with the potential of creating quality assurance procedures addressing teaching and learning issues more directly.
Originality/value
Much attention has been given to newer forms of external quality assurance schemes. More traditional forms of quality assurance have, as a consequence, received less attention although they may still provide benefits to higher education.
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Emir Malikov, Shunan Zhao and Jingfang Zhang
There is growing empirical evidence that firm heterogeneity is technologically non-neutral. This chapter extends the Gandhi, Navarro, and Rivers (2020) proxy variable framework…
Abstract
There is growing empirical evidence that firm heterogeneity is technologically non-neutral. This chapter extends the Gandhi, Navarro, and Rivers (2020) proxy variable framework for structurally identifying production functions to a more general case when latent firm productivity is multi-dimensional, with both factor-neutral and (biased) factor-augmenting components. Unlike alternative methodologies, the proposed model can be identified under weaker data requirements, notably, without relying on the typically unavailable cross-sectional variation in input prices for instrumentation. When markets are perfectly competitive, point identification is achieved by leveraging the information contained in static optimality conditions, effectively adopting a system-of-equations approach. It is also shown how one can partially identify the non-neutral production technology in the traditional proxy variable framework when firms have market power.
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Joseph Deutsch, Pundarik Mukhopadhaya, Jacques Silber and Jing Yang
To explore income inequality in urban China, this paper investigates disparities between- and within-urban locals and rural migrants from 2002 to 2013, using three waves of the…
Abstract
To explore income inequality in urban China, this paper investigates disparities between- and within-urban locals and rural migrants from 2002 to 2013, using three waves of the China Household Income Project (CHIP) data. While the existing literature concentrates on the wage disparity between these two groups, our results show that the Gini among the migrants increased by 17.86% between 2007 and 2013 and that among the locals increased by 15.54% from 2002 to 2007. The urban–migrant average income gap decreased during the whole period mainly due to higher growth in migrants’ average income. Estimates based on Mincerian earnings functions for both groups reveal the significant role of the education, occupation and type of contract in determining the within-group inequality. In addition, using a recentred influence function (RIF), we observe that short-term and other types of contracts, duration of the job, in-system ownership, marriage and skill have inequality-enhancing effects for migrants. The variation of skills has a larger impact on the income disparity among migrants than on that among urban locals. The RIF-based Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition of the mean difference of incomes shows that labour market discrimination between the two groups is not significant; however, both pure explained and unexplained differences are significant when applying the RIF decomposition to the variance of the logarithms of incomes. While the type of contract significantly reduces the pure explained difference between migrants and urban locals, occupation has a positive impact on this difference between these two groups. The heterogenity analysis shows that the factors influencing incomes in these two groups are different. We recommend labour market intervention to reduce unreasonable occupational and sectoral disparities, especially in the net inflow provinces, to mitigate urban inequality in China effectively.