Environmental Tax,Polluting Plants’ Strategies and Effectiveness: Evidence from China

Although environmental taxes have become a popular policy tool, their effectiveness for pollution control and impact on the compliance strategies of agents remains questionable. This research uses a quasi‐experimental design to examine the effectiveness of the Pay for Permit policy, an environmental tax that has been imposed on water pollution emissions in Lake Tai Basin, Jiangsu, China, since 2009. A plant‐level panel dataset from 2007 to 2010 is used for both difference‐in‐differences and difference‐in‐difference‐in‐differences analyses to compare the pollution discharge, pollution abatement, and pollution generation of policy participants and control groups. The results indicate that treated plants reduce their emissions by about 40 percent after two years of the policy implementation. Thus, the policy generated approximately a 7 percent decrease in the industrial chemical oxygen demand emission in the entire Lake Tai Basin based on the emission level of 2007. Pollution is primarily reduced via end‐of‐pipe abatement instead of cleaner production. Our results show the effectiveness of environmental taxes in controlling industrial pollution, and indicate that the tax may not motivate the adoption of innovative techniques in the short term.     

North Korea and the East Asian Security order: competing views on what South Korea ought to do

This article investigates South Korean views on how to deal with the two major security issues regarding North Korea: its nuclear threat and regime instability. In this Special Section, the article analyzes the ongoing debate in South Korea over the government's policy toward North Korea in regard to these two issues. It argues that uncertainties about these two major issues are shaping the regional order in East Asia. In particular, the different levels of cooperation between South Korea and the United States may affect the regional security order in East Asia. In analyzing policy options available to South Korea, the riskiest option would be to employ early preemptive attacks and accelerate the collapse of North Korea given the security dilemma-driven action?reaction in East Asia. Given that the role of China has become the most crucial factor in dealing with North Korea, the most promising strategy would be to reinforce guarantees of extended nuclear deterrence and prompt a soft-landing unification.     

毛泽东的中国现代化建设思想论要

毛泽东关于中国现代化建设的思想 ,虽然散见于许多讲话、谈话和文稿当中 ,却仍对在中国这样一个特定国度里实现现代化的一系列现实问题作了理论说明 ,构成了相对完整的内容。尽管他并没有完全解决自己提出的问题 ,理论中甚至存有相悖之处 ,但在探索中仍然留下了很多宝贵的思路和见解 ,成为今日中国现代化建设指导思想的重要思想渊源。对此 ,本文拟择要分析。中国现代化建设的先决条件为中国现代化建设提供先决条件 ,既是毛泽东对中国现代化建设的真正启动最突出的贡献 ,也是他关于中国现代化构想的一个重要内容。在毛泽东看来 ,革命本身就是…     

The political economy of global firms from India and China

This article attempts to build a bridge between contemporary studies of global firms from emerging economies and existing theories in comparative political economy. It argues that given the primacy of the state as an economic actor in developing countries, the variety of capitalism literature could provide a theoretical foundation for firm-level analyses of emerging market multinationals. For example, the authors suggest that China and India may be moving towards a ‘hybrid market economy’. They also offer a typology of Indian and Chinese corporates to demonstrate an empirical approach to analysing domestic business–government relationships and the ways in which these firms are shaped by the peculiarities of their respective institutional setting. Finally, they identify some of the likely pitfalls of doing cross-national comparisons of emerging market multinationals, particularly with respect to the reliability of corporate data.     

Does China’s middle class prefer (liberal) democracy?

Many surveys show that China’s political regime, under the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rules, enjoys a high level of public support. However, it is still uncertain whether China’s emerging middle class will become the “agent of democratization” as suggested by modernization theory. Using the data of Asian Barometer Survey conducted in China in 2011, this article demonstrates that the relationship between class identity and preference for liberal democracy in China may be inverted U-shaped. The Chinese middle class shows a higher preference to features of liberal democratic regimes than its counterparts of the lower- and upper-class. Members of the Chinese middle class also tend to regard democracy as the best form of government. Thus, the middle class has the potential to initiate democratization in China if the Chinese government fails to keep satisfying the middle class’ quest for economic well-being and protection of property rights.     

The Peer Context and the Development of the Perpetration of Adolescent Dating Violence

The peer context is a central focus in research on adolescent risk behaviors but few studies have investigated the role of the peer context in the perpetration of adolescent dating violence. This longitudinal study examined between-subjects and within-person contemporaneous and lagged effects of peer attributes, measured with social network analyses, on trajectories of dating violence perpetration and determined if effects varied by grade and/or sex of the adolescent. Data are from adolescents who participated in a five-wave panel study beginning when they were in 7 through 9th grade and ending when they were in 10 through 12th grade (n = 3,412); half were male, 40.5 % were white, 49.9 % were black and 10.4 % were of another race/ethnicity. Significant between-subjects effects indicate that adolescents who typically have friends who use dating violence, and girls who are typically high in social status, are at increased risk for using dating violence throughout adolescence. Adolescents who typically have high quality friendships and girls who typically have friends with pro-social beliefs are at decreased risk for using dating violence throughout adolescence. Significant within-person contemporaneous effects indicate that both boys and girls reported lower levels of dating violence than usual at times when they had more friends with pro-social beliefs, and reported higher levels of dating violence than usual at times when they had higher social status. None of the lagged effects were significant and none of the effects varied across grade. These findings suggest that the peer context plays an important role in the development of the perpetration of adolescent dating violence.     

Rethinking public policy in agriculture: lessons from history,distant and recent

This article reviews the histories of agricultural policy in 11 of today's developed countries between the late-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century and in 10 developing and transition economies since the mid-twentieth century. After discussing the theoretical limitations of the prevailing orthodoxy, the article discusses the history of a wide range of agricultural policies concerning issues like land, knowledge (e.g., research, extension), credit, physical inputs (e.g., irrigation, transport, fertilizers, seeds), farm income stability (e.g., price stabilisation measures, insurances, trade protection), marketing, and processing. The article ends by discussing the policy lessons that may be learned from these historical experiences.     

Effect of Wind on Horizontal Displacement of Fatal Fall from a Height

The horizontal displacement of the human body resulting from fatal fall from a height is an important variable commonly used to inversely determine the cause or identify other forensic aspects of the fall. When examining the horizontal displacement, the wind effect is generally ignored. This technical note reports analytical modeling of the falling process, utilizing previous measurements of wind force acting on the human body, for determining the functional relationship between the wind speed and the horizontal displacement in the falling process. The result reveals that it does not take extremely rare wind conditions to cause a considerable shift of the human body, highlighting the importance to consider wind as a factor in investigations of fatal falls.     

Molecular Identification of Necrophagous Dermestes Species in South Korea Using Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit I Nucleotide Sequences (Genus Dermestes)

Species identification of necrophagous insects found on a dead body is an essential key in applying medicolegal entomology to the estimation of postmortem interval (PMI). Due to limited morphological identification of insect evidence, several studies have identified species using molecular information such as DNA markers. While considerable cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene sequence data of necrophagous fly species have been collected and annotated, those of necrophagous beetle species have not. Since necrophagous beetles such as Dermestes species have a larval period longer than that of flies, beetles are useful in even the late decomposition phase in estimating minimum PMI. To obtain the full-length COI gene sequences of six Dermestes species collected from South Korea, we designed primers for polymerase chain reaction amplification and sequencing. The obtained full COI nucleotide sequences were used for performing phylogenic analysis and comparison with previously reported sequences. The results demonstrated that the COI gene sequences could be used to identify forensically important Dermestes species in South Korea.     

Correction to: Age Patterns in Risk Taking Across the World

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - In the original publication, the legends for Figs 4 and 5 were incorrect, such that each regression line was mislabeled with the incorrect country. Below are the...