Search

Russia has a serious problem of environmental pollution. As a party to the Paris Agreement, Russia is pivotal in participating in and advancing the global environmental governance agenda. By presenting and analyzing the main environmental policies enacted by the Russian Government after the Paris Agreement, this paper found the following new features of Russian environmental policy: Developing a new ecological concept of harmony between human and nature; Restructuring administrative institutions and strengthen the common responsibilities of environmental policy subjects such as enterprises, social groups, and the public; Strengthening the modern management of natural resources; Focusing on developing other policies that match environmental policies; Attaching importance to the construction of federal nature reserves and national parks. This paper has some enlightenment on Sino-Russian environment protection co‐ operation: Strengthening exchanges and mutual learning between China and Russia in green and low-carbon publicity and education; Learning from the development and management experience of Russian natural resources and nature reserves to consolidate and improve carbon sink capacity; Deepening Sino-Russian cooperation in the field of low carbon energy transition; Expanding Sino-Russian cooperation in the field of green finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource allocation efficiency is one of the most important themes of economic research, so research on environmental policy and resource allocation is an important aspect to evaluate the economic effects of environmental policies. This paper first briefly reviews the research context of the theory of resource reallocation and resource misallocation and then analyzes the conceptual implications and accounting methods of resource reallocation and resource misallocation. Secondly, this paper takes the theoretical assumptions and mechanisms of different models as the main line, systematically sorts out the relevant literature on the impact of environmental policies on resource reallocation and resource misallocation, summarizes and reviews relevant theoretical and empirical research, and puts forward the shortcomings of the research and future direction of expansion. Finally, this paper makes a brief comment on the research status of China’ s environmental policies and resource allocation and puts forward their research prospect. This paper finds that: ① From the perspective of resource reallocation, environmental policies affect the reallocation of resources across firms or within firms by changing the entry and exit conditions, inhibiting the degree of product market competition, and changing product mix. By distorting factor prices, these policies lead to the deviation of the equilibrium allocation of factors from the optimal allocation of firms, thereby causing resource misallocation. ② The conclusions on how the initial distortion affects the resource reallocation effect of environmental policies, or whether environmental policies can mitigate the resource misallocation caused by the initial distortion, differ de⁃ pending on the form of the initial distortion. ③ The existing literature on environmental policies and resource allocation is insufficient in terms of research perspectives, research methods, and research scenarios, and the research conclusions on the impact of environmental policies on resource allocation efficiency usually depend on the relevant assumptions and research scenarios of benchmark models. The theoretical analysis results and the degree of influence under different frameworks of benchmark models are different. This paper believes that, based on the Chinese scenario, theoretical breakthroughs in the measurement of the micro-mechanisms and effects of environmental policies affecting resource allocation, environmental policies and industrial transformation and upgrading, environmental policies and resource space mismatches, etc., may be a marginal contribution of China’ s research on development economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the panel data of 204 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019, this paper used the double-difference method to study the impact of ecological civilization demonstration area policy on ecological efficiency with the help of“quasi-natural natural experiment”from ecological civilization demonstration area. Results showed as follow.（1）Overall, the implementation of ecological civilization demonstration area policy has significantly promoted the improvement of ecological efficiency. At the same time, various robustness tests such as excluding the influence of other policies, counterfactual testing, replacing sample data, and propensity score matching-based difference-in-difference（PSM-DID）were carried out to ensure the reliability of the results.（2）Heterogeneity analysis showed that ecological civilization demonstration area policy had a more significantly effect on the improvement of ecological efficiency in the large cities and cities in eastern and central regions.（3）Mechanism analysis showed that ecological civilization demonstration area policy can improve the ecological efficiency of cities by driving technological innovation and optimizing industrial structure. Accordingly, it is proposed to further summarize the effective practices of the ecological civilization demonstration area policy. And a combination of policies should be carried out based on the consideration of heterogeneity factors. In addition, it is also necessary to focus on transforming and upgrading advantageous industries and stimulating innovation capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural environmental issues are receiving more and more attention from all walks of life, and rural environmental governance is vital to rural rejuvenation. Based on the consideration of heterogeneity and the theory of institutional economics to build a decisionmaking framework for farmers' environmental behaviors under the pressure of environmental policy regulation, this paper analyzed the logical mechanism of environmental policy and farmers' environmental behaviors from the perspective of games. And the micro-survey data of farmers in Hubei, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces were used to empirically test the relationship between environmental policies and farmers' environmental behaviors. The research results showed that environmental policies could promote rural households to participate in rural environmental governance, but the positive impact of environmental policies would only gradually emerge when the household income reached a certain level, and there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between the intensity of environmental policies and farmers' environmental behaviors. Relatively speaking, the restrictive effect of environmental administrative policies on farmers 'environmental behaviors was stronger than the incentive effect of environmental economic policies on farmers 'environmental behaviors. For farmers in areas with higher levels of economic development - it was better to use environmental administrative policies to restrain farmers 'environmental behaviors than to use economic policies to encourage farmers. For different types of farmers, environmental policies played a better role more able in encouraging large-scale households to participate in rural environmental governance. Small-scale farmers would significantly weaken the impact of environmental policies on farmers' environmental behaviors. In addition, environmental administrative policies and environmental economic policies played a mutually regulating role, i, e., environmental economic policies could help strengthen the restraining effect of environmental administrative policies - and the implementation of environmental administrative policies was also conducive to strengthening the incentive effect of environmental economic policies. Based on this, it is necessary to relax the environmental administrative control on small-scale farmers and lowincome farmers. It is also necessary to strengthen the restrictive effect of environmental administrative policies on large-scale households and high-income groups. Related supporting measures should be further improved to make up for the shortcomings of a single policy - and a virtuous circle should be formed for the mutual promotion of administrative and economic policies in order to improve the effectiveness of rural environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy implementation gap in the field of environment has attracted much attention. An analysis of the existing literature has found that the gap was a result from some unreasonable institutional arrangements. However, local governments' environmental policy implementation behaviors are not completely consistent with the research. Given the unchanged nature of the existing institutions that restrict the local governments' implementation enthusiasm, their implementation behaviors are not continuously depressed, but fluctuate from time to time. In other words, the implementation gap of environmental policies does not always exist. Based on the signaling theory, this paper explored the causes of the 'time-varying gap', trying to supplement the existing literature, and sought possible ways to reduce or eliminate the gap. This paper studied the statistics of environmental signals transmitted by the Chinese central government through documents (394 copies) and various media outlets from 2000 to 2015 and coded 26 items from the dimensions of credibility/reliability, powerfulness and transparency according to the signaling theory, and constructed the balanced panel data of central environmental signals and 31 provincial governments' environmental regulation behaviors in China's mainland from 2000 to 2015. The results of the regression analysis showed that the central government's environmental signal was the source of local governments' environmental regulation behaviors; the credibility, powerfulness and transparency of the documents could significantly affect the environmental regulation behaviors of the local governments. Therefore, in order to reduce the environmental policy implementation gap, the central government signals, especially the document signals, should be used more effectively in practice. It is of great importance to strengthen the credibility, intensity and clarity of the documents, with a focus on the issuance of documents with small quantity but high quality, and a focus on the use of the clarity attribute, so as to better mobilize the enthusiasm of local governments in environmental governance. This paper not only supplements the literature on the theme of environmental policy implementation gap, but also overcomes the limitations of the existing environmental governance literature which pays too much attention to the insufficient implementation of environmental policies in China, thus extending the research vision to the theme of maintaining policy compliance, and providing a low-cost method for the effective stimulation of the local governments' environmental governance behaviors under the current institutional arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]