Against the backdrop of severe global warming, the low-carbon city pilot policy, with carbon emission reduction as its main objective, is an important initiative for China to fulfil its international commitment to carbon emission reduction and promote a green and low-carbon development strategy. However, none of the literature has yet evaluated whether the pilot low-carbon city policy promotes urban land use efficiency as a policy effect. In view of this, this paper measures urban land use efficiency from a low-carbon perspective using a global reference super-efficiency SBM model based on data from 186 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005–2017, and subsequently constructs a difference-in-differences method to test the true impact of low-carbon city pilot policies on urban land use efficiency and carbon emissions, and uses a propensity score matching method to test its robustness. It is found that: (1) the average level of urban land use efficiency in China is low and on a downward trend; (2) overall, cities are predominantly low-efficiency cities, with only the high-efficiency cities in Guangdong Province showing spatial agglomeration; and (3) the low-carbon city pilot policy reduces carbon emissions while also negatively affecting urban land use efficiency. Accordingly, this paper puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.

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The Low-Carbon City Pilot Policy and Urban Land Use Efficiency: A Policy Assessment from China

The study attempts to determine the effects of weather and climate on different economic activities. Various climatic parameters were analysed and their influence on economic resources and operations were discussed. As in other fragile desert ecosystems, economic activities in the Arab Gulf States are significantly influenced by water scarcity and heat.

Some aspects of climate and economic activities in the Arab Gulf states

Some attempts to estimate the economic response of weather information

In the late 1960s, new environmental policies emerged that attempted to reach predetermined pollution standards in a cost-effective way: i.e., the “standard-and-tax” approach proposed by William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates, and the permits market approach proposed by John Dales. This paper describes the early history of the two approaches, and compares them. Although today they refer to different traditions, namely Pigovian versus Coasean, and are often contrasted in the literature, these cost-effective solutions emerged at the same time and for the same reasons. First, they both tried to promote incentives-based policies against traditional regulations; second, they criticized the optimal Pigovian tax, which raised the contentious issue of measuring pollution damage. More broadly, they emerged as a kind of pragmatic compromise, fed by a common attempt to move toward more practical policies: reaching efficiency without optimality, while relying on standards whose setting is a matter for political decision.

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Efficiency without optimality: environmental policies and pollution pricing in the late 1960s

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14693062.2022.2078769?needAccess=true

A right to pollute versus a duty to mitigate: on the basis of emissions trading and carbon markets

The emergence of three major problems has given rise to growing public concern about the atmosphere and an increasing desire to manage it like other natural resources. These problems relate to the mounting volume of air pollution, the rising toll of losses due to extreme weather events, and man's increasing ability to modify the weather. Such problems have brought into sharp focus the fact that our knowledge of the human impact of atmospheric variations is still quite limited, and has emphasized the need for a considerable acceleration in research relating to the economic, social, institutional, and ecological aspects of the management of atmospheric resources. This article outlines types of research that are most urgently required in this connection and offers suggestions as to possible means of stimulating an expansion in the present research effort in this field.

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emerging problems in the management of atmospheric resources: the role of social science research

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008423900025282

W. R. Derrick Sewell

Papers

emerging problems in the management of atmospheric resources: the role of social science research

J. H. Dales, Pollution, Property & Prices: An Essay in Policy-making and Economics . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968, pp. vii, 111.