Heterogeneous Environmental Regulations And Green Economic Efficiency In China: The Mediating Role of Industrial Structure

As the largest emerging economy, China has been experiencing significant environmental problems. To sustain green economic efficiency and modernize industrial structure, China has devised several environmental regulations. While, previous studies have obtained insightful conclusions on this subject, others have presented the reverse arguments, thereby leaving gaps in the literature. This study therefore analyzes the effects of heterogeneous environmental regulations on green economic efficiency in China while taking industrial structure as a mediator over the period 2003-2017. The green economic efficiency was estimated through slacks-based direction distance function (SBM-DDF) model which considers slacks and avoids overestimation. The results of dynamic panel two-stage system generalized method of moments (GMM) show that control-and-command regulation, market-based regulation and voluntary regulation are conducive to China’s green economic efficiency. Regarding spatial heterogeneity, control-and-command and voluntary regulations significantly promote green economic efficiency of inland provinces while the effect is insignificant in coastal provinces. Additionally, market-based regulation promotes green economic efficiency by advanced and rationalized industrial structure. Control-and-command regulation accelerates green economic efficiency only through advanced industrial structure. Voluntary regulation yields positive effect on green economic efficiency through advanced industrial structure and negative effect through rationalized industrial structure. Finally, a number of policy implications are provided.

Correction of Impaired Sound Pronunciation in Senior Preschoolers with Phonetic-Phonemic Speech Underdevelopment

The research featured senior preschoolers with phonetic-phonemic speech underdevelopment. The authors described the peculiarities of speech development in such children and analyzed related publications. As a rule, impaired sound pronunciation includes low tempo and weak voluntary regulation. The study featured substitutions, distortion, or absence of various sounds. The authors tested a set of measures aimed at correcting speech disorders in senior preschool children with phonetic-phonemic speech underdevelopment. The experiment revealed a combination of incorrect pronunciation with sounds that were partially consistent in a certain context. Cognitive parameters included difficulties in memorizing verbal information and poor auditory memory. The subjects failed active speech tests and could not remember oral information. The article also introduces data on the specifics of speech therapy of phonemic hearing.

VOLUNTARY Regulation: Evidence from Medicare Payment Reform

Government programs are often offered on an optional basis to market participants. We explore the economics of such voluntary regulation in the context of a Medicare payment reform, in which one medical provider receives a single, predetermined payment for a sequence of related healthcare services, instead of separate service-specific payments. This “bundled payment” program was originally implemented as a five-year randomized trial, with mandatory participation by hospitals assigned to the new payment model; however, after two years, participation was made voluntary for half of these hospitals. Using detailed claim-level data, we document that voluntary participation is more likely for hospitals that can increase revenue without changing behavior (“selection on levels”) and for hospitals that had large changes in behavior when participation was mandatory (“selection on slopes”). To assess outcomes under counterfactual regimes, we estimate a stylized model of responsiveness to and selection into the program. We find that the current voluntary regime generates inefficient transfers to hospitals, and that alternative (feasible) designs could reduce these inefficient transfers and raise welfare. Our analysis highlights key design elements to consider under voluntary regulation.

Revisiting voluntarism: Private voluntary regulation by Employer Forums in the United Kingdom

The abstract contributes to the literature by identifying a new form of voluntarism, the employer-led voluntarism of Employer Forums in the United Kingdom. Forums carry out private voluntary regulation to raise labour and social standards within their member firms through introducing codes of conducts and implementing norms through assessments, benchmarking, and certification. The article compares this new form with the traditional approach where unions and employer associations regulate jointly through collective bargaining. While the scope, scale, and impact of new and traditional voluntarism diverge, both are underpinned by the regulation of Employment Relations by non-state actors. Voluntarism is not in secular decline, but instead continues through the emergence of new employer-led forms.

Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains

This book examines the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility on improving labor standards in global supply chains. The book charts the development and effectiveness of corporate codes of conduct to ameliorate “sweatshop” conditions in global supply chains. This form of private voluntary regulation, spearheaded by Nike and Reebok, became necessary given the inability of third world countries to enforce their own laws and the absence of a global regulatory system for labor standards. Although private regulation programs have been adopted by other companies in many different industries, we know relatively little regarding the effectiveness of these programs because companies don't disclose information about their efforts and outcomes in regulating labor conditions in their supply chains. The book presents data from companies, multi-stakeholder institutions, and auditing firms in a comprehensive, investigative dive into the world of private voluntary regulation of labor conditions. The picture painted is wholistic and raw, but it considers several ways in which this private voluntary system can be improved to improve the lives of workers in global supply chains.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides a background of private regulation of labor standards in global supply chains. Over the past three decades, there has been a plethora of private, voluntary regulatory initiatives with regard to social (labor) and environmental issues. This proliferation has come about in part because of pressure from antiglobalizers calling for global governance, and consumer and activist movements calling for global corporations to be more socially and environmentally responsible. There are many different methods of private voluntary regulation for labor standards, but the most common is the private regulation model. It has three elements: setting of standards regarding labor practices in global supply chains through a corporate code of conduct generally based on the conventions of the International Labour Organization; “auditing” or “social auditing” that involves monitoring whether supplier factories comply with the code of conduct; and incentives for suppliers to improve compliance by linking future sourcing decisions to their compliance records (penalizing or dropping noncompliant suppliers and rewarding more compliant ones). The book looks at the current state and future trajectory of this form of private regulation.

AgNano, the Construction of Occupational Health Standards: A Status Update

The regulation of chemical substances involves a negotiation between social actors to translate controversial scientific evidence about risks into legal norms. This chapter addresses the discussion elicited by a public consultation on a voluntary regulation guide on silver nanoparticles (AgNP) in workplaces. It examines the comments made from 2016 to 2018 by diverse social actors – business representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGO), and independent researchers – to two successive draft versions of a Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) in working environments with AgNP. The REL is a voluntary guideline on permissible exposure limits elaborated by the NIOSH in the U.S. The methodology used was a qualitative content analysis, structured upon a historical and sociotechnical contextualization of nanotechnologies carried out through literature review. The findings show how different social actors position themselves in the controversy, revealing a pattern of behavior consistent with their position in the research, production, and commercialization of this new nanomaterial. While a group of actors, aligned with the interests of AgNP producers, proposed the restriction of mandatory and AgNP-specific regulation, another group of more heterogeneous actors, identified with the interests of workers and consumers, demanded more scientific and technical information and stricter health protection measures.