世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

Climate change 2014 - Synthesis Report

/pdf/the-theory-of-industrial-organization-19bejph0ej.pdf

The Theory of Industrial Organization

This chapter discusses leading problems linked to energy that the world is now confronting and to propose some ideas concerning possible solutions. Oil deserves special attention among all energy sources. Since the beginning of 1981, it has merely been continuing and enhancing the downward movement in consumption and prices caused by excessive rises, especially for light crudes such as those from Africa, and the slowing down of worldwide economic growth. Densely-populated oil-producing countries need to produce to live, to pay for their food and their equipment. If the economic growth of the industrialized countries were to be 4%, even if investment in the rational use of energy were pushed to the limit and the development of nonpetroleum energy sources were also pursued actively, it would be extremely difficult to prevent a sharp rise in prices. It is evident that it is absolutely necessary to pursue actively the development of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power if a physical shortage of energy is not to block economic growth.

World energy outlook

A new and extensive panel of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) at the sector level is used to estimate the determinants of non-resource and resource FDI. Since FDI is I(1), we estimate panel error-correction models of FDI with spatial lags for FDI and market potential. Our main result is that subsoil assets boost resource FDI, but crowd out non-resource FDI. The effect on non-resource FDI dominates, so that aggregate FDI is less in resource-rich countries. Spatial lags aggravate this crowding out of non-resource FDI. In addition, we find that (i) resource FDI is mainly vertical whereas other FDI is of the export-fragmentation variety; (ii) trade openness, free trade agreements and institutional quality do not impact non-resource FDI but institutional quality does have a positive effect on resource FDI; and (iii) the short-run dynamics comes mostly from shocks to FDI itself. Our main and ancillary results are robust to different measures of resource reserves and the oil price and to allowing for sample selection bias.

Do Natural Resources Attract FDI? Evidence from Non-Stationary Sector-Level Data

Democratic countries with substantial inequality and where people believe that success depends on connections and luck induce political support for high tax rates and generous welfare states. Traditional wisdom is that such policies harm the economy, but there is not much evidence that countries with a large welfare state and substantial redistribution have worse economic performance and welfare. One important reason is that governments have been careful to invoke the principles of reciprocity and mutual obligations in the design of the welfare state. Unemployment benefits conditioned on work experience, no misconduct and search effort harm the economy less. Indeed, conditional benefits may even boost employment in an economy with efficiency wages. A second reason is that people care about relative incomes and become unhappy if others earn and consume much more than they do. This explains why people do not seem to get happier, even though societies grow richer and richer. With such consumer rivalry the government wishes to correct for the rat race, even if there is no need for redistribution, by taxing labour. A third reason is that in modern economies many distortions are present and removing one at a time may worsen economic performance. Conversely, increasing tax progression in economies with non-competitive labour markets induces wage moderation and boosts employment. A final reason is that countries with large welfare states typically introduce various pro-growth policies as well.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID572801_code102458.pdf?abstractid=572801&mirid=1

The Welfare State, Redistribution and the Economy, Reciprocal Altruism, Consumer Rivalry and Second Best

No good comparable data on sizes of cultural sectors of the countries of Europe exist. Still, local and national governments of Europe spend substantial resources on culture and cultural sectors contribute significantly to employment and national income. After briefly describing special features of cultural goods and clarifying some misconceptions about the value of culture, valid and invalid arguments for subsidising culture are discussed. Although it is easy to justify government support for the preservation of heritage, this is more difficult for the performing arts. Due to changing technologies and the advent of E-culture, classic public-good arguments for government intervention in broadcasting and other cultural activities become less relevant. Different institutions, varying from selection by arts councils, bureaucrats or politicians to less directed tax incentives, lead to different cultural landscapes. Theories of delegation suggest delegating the judgement on artistic qualities and execution of cultural policy to an independent Arts Fund. The Minister of Culture should concentrate on formulating a mission for cultural policy and make sure it is implemented properly. The insights of the theories of local public goods and federalism are applied to the making of cultural policy in Europe. Different approaches to international cultural policy in Europe are discussed. The overview concludes with lessons for the making of cultural policy in Europe.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID812309_code102458.pdf?abstractid=812309&mirid=4

The Making of Cultural Policy: A European Perspective

Although the relationship between natural resources and civil war has received much attention, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Controversies and contradictions in the stylized facts persist because resource extraction is treated as exogenous while in reality fighting affects extraction. We study endogenous fighting, armament, and extraction method, speed and investment. Rapacious resource exploitation has economic costs, but can nevertheless be preferred to balanced depletion due to lowered incentives for future rebel attacks. With private exploitation, rebels fight more than the government if they can renege on the contract with the mining company, and hence government turnover is larger in this case. Incentive-compatible license fees paid by private companies and mining investment are lower in unstable countries, and increase with the quality of the government army and office rents. This implies that privatised resource exploitation is more attractive for governments who have incentives to fight hard, i.e., in the presence of large office rents and a strong army. With endogenous weapon investments, the government invests more under balanced than under rapacious or private extraction. If the government can commit before mining licenses are auctioned, it will invest more in weapons under private extraction than under balanced and rapacious nationalized extraction.

/pdf/war-and-natural-resource-exploitation-2for7r8ot7.pdf

War and Natural Resource Exploitation

The tensions between books and book markets as expressions of culture and books as products in profit-making businesses are analyzed and insights from the theory of industrial organization are given. Governments intervene in the market for books through laws concerning prices of books, grants for authors and publishers, a lower value-added tax, public libraries and education in order to stimulate the diversity of books on offer, increase the density of retail outlets and to promote reading. An overview of the different ways by which countries differ in terms of market structures and government policies is given. Particular attention is paid to retail price maintenance. Due to differences between European countries it is not a good idea to harmonize European book policies. Our analysis suggests that the book market seems quite able to invent solutions to specific problems of the book trade and that, apart from promoting reading, there is little need for government intervention.

Rick van der Ploeg

Papers

Do Natural Resources Attract FDI? Evidence from Non-Stationary Sector-Level Data

The Welfare State, Redistribution and the Economy, Reciprocal Altruism, Consumer Rivalry and Second Best

The Making of Cultural Policy: A European Perspective

War and Natural Resource Exploitation

The Economics of Books