Technology Innovation as a Response to Climate Change: The Case of the Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation of Alberta

Innovation is the central element of climate change policy in many jurisdictions. Reduced to technology development and linked to market‐driven priorities, innovation accommodates the interests of large emitters in the energy sector and underpins a sustainable development discourse that denies ecological limits to economic growth. This study examines the use of innovation as a key component of climate change policy in the case of Alberta's Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation, utilizing a political economy approach to explain the drivers of government funding priorities. An analysis of this technology fund's investments over nine years, under two different governments, revealed that nearly half of the revenue has been used to subsidize R&D in the fossil fuels industry in the name of clean energy development, and that this priority has continued despite recent government commitments under the Paris CoP agreement. The carbon levy system that generates revenue for the fund has been unsuccessful in incentivizing facility reductions, pointing to the need for more stringent regulation. Innovation as a framework for transition to a post‐carbon economy is severely limited by its exclusion of the roles of social knowledge and citizen participation in envisaging and designing paths for change.     

Censors Get Smart: Evidence from Psiphon in Iran

Information controls are actions intended to deny, disrupt, monitor, or secure information for political ends. They can be implemented using a wide variety of technical and nontechnical means. Political contests over the control of information are heightened around important events, such as major anniversaries, armed conflicts, protests, and elections. In this paper, we offer a comparative case study of online censorship of the circumvention tool Psiphon during the Iranian elections in 2016 and 2013, drawing on unique access to analytics data from Psiphon. We find that the Iranian regime developed its censorship approach in two ways, deploying blocking that was more targeted and strategically timed in the more recent case. Evidence suggests that the regime relaxed censorship of Psiphon during the official campaign period for the 2016 election. The apparent objective of this new approach was to control access to information while minimizing the political consequences of doing so.     

Extending environmental justice research to religious minorities

For more than 30 years, significant research in the United States has found that racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from nearness to environmental disamenities compared with white non-Hispanics and that these results persist even controlling for poverty and “which came first,” the minorities or the disamenities. The engrained discriminatory findings of this environmental justice (EJ) research have led some to argue that we observe “systemic racism,” built into our social systems in ways that may be difficult to perceive. Yet, within the history of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities are not the only groups that have been systematically discriminated against; various religious groups also have histories of discrimination. Here we consider whether, holding constant race and ethnicity, some religious groups may also suffer from “EJ syndrome.” Since the US Census does not collect data on religion, to measure the presence of some religious groups that may be discriminated against, we use an original dataset on the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon), and Roman Catholic houses of worship within California's Census tracts. Our results indicate that even controlling for race/ethnicity and income, the presence of Jewish or Muslim houses of worship in a California Census tract increases the likelihood of environmental burden as measured by the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 index of pollution and community vulnerability.     

The advocacy coalition framework in Japan: Contributions to policy process studies and the challenges involved

The advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a unified framework for understanding the policy process, has been applied in various countries and regions; however, there are few contributions from Japan, despite seemingly favorable conditions for applying it. An exploration of what hinders ACF applications in Japan is worthwhile for developing the ACF as a framework for comparative policy process studies across various social and political settings. Therefore, this study aims to systematically review previous Japanese ACF studies. Our review found that Japanese ACF studies are fewer in number, have less coverage of policy fields, and have less methodological diversity and transparency than international trends. While most of the Japanese ACF studies supported the basic hypotheses of the ACF, we found a need to refine some hypotheses and research methods of the ACF studies. We also discuss the background factors in the inactivity of ACF studies in Japan and suggest solutions for it.     

Tax incentives for innovation: time to restructure the R&;E tax credit

The R&E tax credit has never been effective and subsequent attempts to restructure it have not addressed the major deficiencies. Moreover, in the 25 years since the R&E tax credit was enacted, a steadily increasing number of countries have implemented or expanded competing tax incentives, which in many cases are better structured and larger in size. As a result, the relative impact of the US credit is now negative in terms of incentives to conduct R&D within the domestic economy. The inadequacy of the credit stems largely from its small size and its incremental format. The impact of an R&D tax incentive is affected by its scope of coverage, the ability of industry to take advantage of it over the entire R&D cycle, the magnitude of the incentive relative to other nations’ tax policies, and its ease of implementation. In the end, a tax incentive must sufficiently lower the user’s cost of R&D to overcome barriers to allocation of private-sector resources commensurate with the potential rates of return on such investments. As a policy instrument, a tax incentive for R&D should be most effective if its form is a flat rate applied to all R&D.

论环境收入税

环境税主要包括收回成本型环境税、提供刺激型环境税和增加收入型环境税三种类型,而环境收入税是增加收入型环境税的主要税种。为贯彻"受益者付费原则",我国在开征排污税、污染产品税等环境税的同时,也应开征环境收入税。环境收入税应以在我国境内从事生产、经营活动并取得销售(营业)收入的的单位和个人作为其纳税义务人,以应税收入为其计税依据,适用税率为比例税率。     

论非均衡经济制度下税法的公平与效率

我国的非均衡经济制度创造了举世瞩目的经济奇迹,这得益于社会转轨时期两种经济模式并存,其制度资源新旧交替的溢出,令"效率优先,兼顾公平"的基本原则左右逢源;然而,贫富失衡的社会必须内生衡平的法律机理予以回应,作为转移支付实现社会财富公平分享的税法,其调节功能的非均衡构造和回应只有在特定的本土制度资源的基础上对症下药,以税负的实质性公平原则契合现实的不平衡状态,方能达到共富和谐的理想目标。     

行为的异质性对税法规制的影响及其缓释思路——一种“能力——行为”的分析范式

税法上的"行为"范畴存在高度的异质性,建构统一的"财税行为"概念较为困难。税法领域,不同主体从事的行为性质各异又相互依存,均产生法效果,并需要接受税法的评价和规范;即便是形式上相同的税法主体,由于能力等因素的差异,外在的行为同样呈现突出的异质性。两个层面的异质性对于税法功能的发挥均产生一定影响,须于制度设计时有的放矢、妥为回应。在完善个人所得税制、藉此发挥分配规制的功能时,即应重视税法上行为的异质性,将纳税人的博弈行为纳入决策依据;区分博弈行为的不同层类,循"能力——行为"逻辑脉络辨证施治;同时关注纳税人之间因能力差异引致的行为分殊,在改进征税模式等核心税制时,俱应强调理论和实践的融通。     

Functioning strategies of the research groups' leaders in the context of funding and policy instabilities☆

We explore the strategies implemented by Research Groups' Leaders while coping with unstable contexts, characterized by incoherence and lack of coordination among different policy discourses and instruments, and scarce resources. We focus on a country where these conditions are present: Colombia. In doing so, we study two cases, one in nanotechnology and another one in biomedical engineering. Interviews, focus groups and workshops allowed us to identify and validate strategies grouped in four popular sayings, proper to local idiosyncrasy, highlighting the role of home institutions and principal investigators in facing such situations with resilience and resourcefulness, and even taking advantage of them. We find that Research Groups' Leaders use strategies such as: adapting, balancing agendas and funding sources, networking, and taking advantage of the support programs available at their home institution to continue functioning. These are setting the ground for a further survey which could pretend some generalization. However, policymakers could consider these findings when defining policy instruments or for assessing their effectiveness or impacts.