The rapid growth of China's demand for grains is expected to continue in the coming decades, ... more The rapid growth of China's demand for grains is expected to continue in the coming decades, largely as a result of the increasing feed demand to produce protein-rich food. This leads to a great concern on future supply potentials of Chinese agriculture under climate change and the extent of China's dependence on world food markets. While the existing literature in both agronomy and climate economics indicates a dominance of the adverse impacts of climate change on rice, wheat, and maize yields, there is a lack of study to assess changes in multi-cropping opportunities induced by climate change. Multi-cropping benefits crop production by harvesting more than once per year from a given plot. To address this important gap, we established a procedure within the agro-ecological zones (AEZ) modeling framework to assess future spatial shifts of multi-cropping conditions. The assessment was based on an ensemble of five general circulation models under four representative concentrat...
The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale is crucial for meeting the desired clima... more The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale is crucial for meeting the desired climate commitments, where affordability plays a vital role. However, the expected surge in prices of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, four critical materials in EV batteries, could hinder EV uptake. To explore these impacts in the context of China, the world’s largest EV market, we expand and enrich an integrated assessment model. We find that under a high material cost surge scenario, EVs would account for 35% (2030) and 51% (2060) of the total number of vehicles in China, significantly lower than 49% (2030) and 67% (2060) share in the base-line, leading to a 28% increase in cumulative carbon emissions (2020-2060) from road transportation. While material recycling and technical battery innovation are effective long-term countermeasures, securing the supply chains of critical materials through international cooperation is highly recommended, given geopolitical and environmental fragil...
Uncertainty in sea level rise and future extreme climate events presents a great planning challen... more Uncertainty in sea level rise and future extreme climate events presents a great planning challenge for flood defence in coastal mega cities like Shanghai. While academic literature has largely focused on uncertainty analysis, engineering solution design requires effective uncertainty management. Here we incorporate the regret theory of economics and decision science into the dynamic-adaptation-pathways framework and assess the impacts of high rates of changes on the flood defence systems in Shanghai. Specific options are developed to manage flooding on the Huangpu River from tidal water levels, river flows, rainfall, drainage inflows and combinations of these flood sources including sea level rises of up to 3 m. Dynamic adaptation pathways are developed where the timing of tipping points from one intervention to the next depends on the actual changes in sea level, rainfall and other variables that affect the future design. This framework is potentially applicable for planning ‘no r...
This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on P... more This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on Property Rights Regimes, Microeconomic Incentives and Development. It identifies the major research interests, questions, and focuses. The theoretical emphasis is on the very relevance of concrete institutional context, development stages, and technological environment to the determination of ownership and governance structures of the firm, and on the rationality behind the emergence of unconventional ownership and governance structures of the firm in the industrial sector. Four types of examples are presented to show the characteristics of major emerging unconventional ownership forms, which include the rise of institutional ownership in large publicly traded corporations in the US and UK; the expansion of employee stock ownership in the US; the emergence of joint- stock co-operatives on a large scale in China; the famous Mondragon co- operative group in Spain and Italian co-operatives i...
This paper examines the nature of the unorthodox ownership and governance structures that are eme... more This paper examines the nature of the unorthodox ownership and governance structures that are emerging among firms and the way these structures are supporting the remarkable economic growth in the transition economies of East Asia, as represented in particular by China and Vietnam. These economies are embarked on a distinctive process of property rights reform that resists widespread privatization in favour of evolutionary transformation. From the perspective that organizational innovation is an adaptive recombination and ownership is a bundle of rights, this paper focuses on an evaluation of the extent and consistency of property rights reform in the state-owned enterprise sector of these economies. It reveals the features of the ownership and governance structures of Chinese township-village-enterprises and their consequences for liability and incentives and justifies the fact that private entrepreneurs are typically willing to include community authority as an ambiguous owner or ...
In the 1990s, a new ownership form called ‘joint-stock co-operative ’ (gufen hezuozhi) became wid... more In the 1990s, a new ownership form called ‘joint-stock co-operative ’ (gufen hezuozhi) became widely adopted in China’s township and village enterprise sector. The promising dynamics and high adaptive ability of the new ownership form is in contradiction with the conclusions suggested by the existing literature on industrial co-operatives and other types of employee ownership. To show the adaptive efficiency feature of the new form, this paper identifies and analyses the mechanisms that are developed by China’s joint-stock cooperatives to avoid excessive costs of collective decision making, to check insider control, to mobilize internal and external finances, to diversify risk, and to facilitate further evolving. By this way, the paper also sheds light on the roles that an alternative form of ownership and governance can play in an alternative institutional environment.
Indonesia has been the largest supplier of palm oil since 2007, and now supplies around 56% of th... more Indonesia has been the largest supplier of palm oil since 2007, and now supplies around 56% of the global market. While the existing literature has paid serious attention to the diverse impacts of oil palm plantation on socioeconomic factors and the environment, less is known about the joint role of biophysical and socioeconomic factors in shaping the temporal and spatial dynamics of oil palm expansion. This research investigates how the benefits and costs of converting other land use/ land cover (LULC) types to oil palm plantation affects these expansion patterns. We employ a spatial panel modeling approach to assess the contributions of biophysical and socioeconomic driving factors. Our modeling focuses on Sumatra and Kalimantan, two islands which have accounted for more than 90% of oil palm expansion in Indonesia since 1990, with Sumatra holding the majority of the country’s plantations, and Kalimantan having the highest growth rate since 2000. The results show that the expansion...
Intelligent Systems and Decision Making for Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, 2013
We study the structure of inter-industry relationships using networks of money flows between indu... more We study the structure of inter-industry relationships using networks of money flows between industries in 45 national economies. We find these networks vary around a typical structure characterized by a Weibull link weight distribution, exponential industry size distribution, and a common community structure. The community structure is hierarchical, with the top level of the hierarchy comprising five industry communities: food industries, chemical industries, manufacturing industries, service industries, and extraction industries.
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most respons... more It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change (Darwinian proverb).
Aggregate Behaviour of Investment in China, 1953–96, 2001
Energy and transport have long been considered the two major bottleneck constraints to China’s ec... more Energy and transport have long been considered the two major bottleneck constraints to China’s economic development. This chapter examines the extent to which investment expansion and economic development have been constrained by shortfalls in energy supplies. It highlights the close linkage between effective energy supply and long-distance transport, particularly railway freight transport. Energy in this research refers to primary modern (commercial) energy, which includes coal, crude oil, natural gas and hydro-power, as opposed to traditional (noncommercial) fuel such as crop by-products, firewood, grass, and dung.
There is an extensive body of literature promoting the conventional paradigm that private investo... more There is an extensive body of literature promoting the conventional paradigm that private investors should own the firm and that the existence of well-defined, personalized property rights is a basic precondition for the proper functioning of a market economy. The intuition underlying this wisdom is that placing property under the exclusive control of private owners makes them liable for the consequences of bad decisions but also entitles them to the rewards of good ones, thus making them more willing to motivate managers and workers.
This paper argues that the deeply rooted cause of poor corporate governance practices in China’s ... more This paper argues that the deeply rooted cause of poor corporate governance practices in China’s state-owned banks is the discretion enjoyed by policy makers to re-optimise their policy choices when they deem necessary and the consequent moral hazard leading to opportunistic behaviours of bank managers. By examining the case of Bank of China Hong Kong (BoCHK), the paper suggests that international listing can provide an effective mechanism to mitigate the consequence of discretionary policies and managerial opportunism at home because the company is now disciplined and regulated by a more developed capital market outside the home jurisdiction. It shows that BoCHK’s IPO preparation and first two years of listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) have induced in-depth corporate restructuring and noticeable improvement in governance practices.
The rapid growth of China's demand for grains is expected to continue in the coming decades, ... more The rapid growth of China's demand for grains is expected to continue in the coming decades, largely as a result of the increasing feed demand to produce protein-rich food. This leads to a great concern on future supply potentials of Chinese agriculture under climate change and the extent of China's dependence on world food markets. While the existing literature in both agronomy and climate economics indicates a dominance of the adverse impacts of climate change on rice, wheat, and maize yields, there is a lack of study to assess changes in multi-cropping opportunities induced by climate change. Multi-cropping benefits crop production by harvesting more than once per year from a given plot. To address this important gap, we established a procedure within the agro-ecological zones (AEZ) modeling framework to assess future spatial shifts of multi-cropping conditions. The assessment was based on an ensemble of five general circulation models under four representative concentrat...
The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale is crucial for meeting the desired clima... more The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale is crucial for meeting the desired climate commitments, where affordability plays a vital role. However, the expected surge in prices of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, four critical materials in EV batteries, could hinder EV uptake. To explore these impacts in the context of China, the world’s largest EV market, we expand and enrich an integrated assessment model. We find that under a high material cost surge scenario, EVs would account for 35% (2030) and 51% (2060) of the total number of vehicles in China, significantly lower than 49% (2030) and 67% (2060) share in the base-line, leading to a 28% increase in cumulative carbon emissions (2020-2060) from road transportation. While material recycling and technical battery innovation are effective long-term countermeasures, securing the supply chains of critical materials through international cooperation is highly recommended, given geopolitical and environmental fragil...
Uncertainty in sea level rise and future extreme climate events presents a great planning challen... more Uncertainty in sea level rise and future extreme climate events presents a great planning challenge for flood defence in coastal mega cities like Shanghai. While academic literature has largely focused on uncertainty analysis, engineering solution design requires effective uncertainty management. Here we incorporate the regret theory of economics and decision science into the dynamic-adaptation-pathways framework and assess the impacts of high rates of changes on the flood defence systems in Shanghai. Specific options are developed to manage flooding on the Huangpu River from tidal water levels, river flows, rainfall, drainage inflows and combinations of these flood sources including sea level rises of up to 3 m. Dynamic adaptation pathways are developed where the timing of tipping points from one intervention to the next depends on the actual changes in sea level, rainfall and other variables that affect the future design. This framework is potentially applicable for planning ‘no r...
This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on P... more This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on Property Rights Regimes, Microeconomic Incentives and Development. It identifies the major research interests, questions, and focuses. The theoretical emphasis is on the very relevance of concrete institutional context, development stages, and technological environment to the determination of ownership and governance structures of the firm, and on the rationality behind the emergence of unconventional ownership and governance structures of the firm in the industrial sector. Four types of examples are presented to show the characteristics of major emerging unconventional ownership forms, which include the rise of institutional ownership in large publicly traded corporations in the US and UK; the expansion of employee stock ownership in the US; the emergence of joint- stock co-operatives on a large scale in China; the famous Mondragon co- operative group in Spain and Italian co-operatives i...
This paper examines the nature of the unorthodox ownership and governance structures that are eme... more This paper examines the nature of the unorthodox ownership and governance structures that are emerging among firms and the way these structures are supporting the remarkable economic growth in the transition economies of East Asia, as represented in particular by China and Vietnam. These economies are embarked on a distinctive process of property rights reform that resists widespread privatization in favour of evolutionary transformation. From the perspective that organizational innovation is an adaptive recombination and ownership is a bundle of rights, this paper focuses on an evaluation of the extent and consistency of property rights reform in the state-owned enterprise sector of these economies. It reveals the features of the ownership and governance structures of Chinese township-village-enterprises and their consequences for liability and incentives and justifies the fact that private entrepreneurs are typically willing to include community authority as an ambiguous owner or ...
In the 1990s, a new ownership form called ‘joint-stock co-operative ’ (gufen hezuozhi) became wid... more In the 1990s, a new ownership form called ‘joint-stock co-operative ’ (gufen hezuozhi) became widely adopted in China’s township and village enterprise sector. The promising dynamics and high adaptive ability of the new ownership form is in contradiction with the conclusions suggested by the existing literature on industrial co-operatives and other types of employee ownership. To show the adaptive efficiency feature of the new form, this paper identifies and analyses the mechanisms that are developed by China’s joint-stock cooperatives to avoid excessive costs of collective decision making, to check insider control, to mobilize internal and external finances, to diversify risk, and to facilitate further evolving. By this way, the paper also sheds light on the roles that an alternative form of ownership and governance can play in an alternative institutional environment.
Indonesia has been the largest supplier of palm oil since 2007, and now supplies around 56% of th... more Indonesia has been the largest supplier of palm oil since 2007, and now supplies around 56% of the global market. While the existing literature has paid serious attention to the diverse impacts of oil palm plantation on socioeconomic factors and the environment, less is known about the joint role of biophysical and socioeconomic factors in shaping the temporal and spatial dynamics of oil palm expansion. This research investigates how the benefits and costs of converting other land use/ land cover (LULC) types to oil palm plantation affects these expansion patterns. We employ a spatial panel modeling approach to assess the contributions of biophysical and socioeconomic driving factors. Our modeling focuses on Sumatra and Kalimantan, two islands which have accounted for more than 90% of oil palm expansion in Indonesia since 1990, with Sumatra holding the majority of the country’s plantations, and Kalimantan having the highest growth rate since 2000. The results show that the expansion...
Intelligent Systems and Decision Making for Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, 2013
We study the structure of inter-industry relationships using networks of money flows between indu... more We study the structure of inter-industry relationships using networks of money flows between industries in 45 national economies. We find these networks vary around a typical structure characterized by a Weibull link weight distribution, exponential industry size distribution, and a common community structure. The community structure is hierarchical, with the top level of the hierarchy comprising five industry communities: food industries, chemical industries, manufacturing industries, service industries, and extraction industries.
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most respons... more It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change (Darwinian proverb).
Aggregate Behaviour of Investment in China, 1953–96, 2001
Energy and transport have long been considered the two major bottleneck constraints to China’s ec... more Energy and transport have long been considered the two major bottleneck constraints to China’s economic development. This chapter examines the extent to which investment expansion and economic development have been constrained by shortfalls in energy supplies. It highlights the close linkage between effective energy supply and long-distance transport, particularly railway freight transport. Energy in this research refers to primary modern (commercial) energy, which includes coal, crude oil, natural gas and hydro-power, as opposed to traditional (noncommercial) fuel such as crop by-products, firewood, grass, and dung.
There is an extensive body of literature promoting the conventional paradigm that private investo... more There is an extensive body of literature promoting the conventional paradigm that private investors should own the firm and that the existence of well-defined, personalized property rights is a basic precondition for the proper functioning of a market economy. The intuition underlying this wisdom is that placing property under the exclusive control of private owners makes them liable for the consequences of bad decisions but also entitles them to the rewards of good ones, thus making them more willing to motivate managers and workers.
This paper argues that the deeply rooted cause of poor corporate governance practices in China’s ... more This paper argues that the deeply rooted cause of poor corporate governance practices in China’s state-owned banks is the discretion enjoyed by policy makers to re-optimise their policy choices when they deem necessary and the consequent moral hazard leading to opportunistic behaviours of bank managers. By examining the case of Bank of China Hong Kong (BoCHK), the paper suggests that international listing can provide an effective mechanism to mitigate the consequence of discretionary policies and managerial opportunism at home because the company is now disciplined and regulated by a more developed capital market outside the home jurisdiction. It shows that BoCHK’s IPO preparation and first two years of listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) have induced in-depth corporate restructuring and noticeable improvement in governance practices.
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