| Human economic activities have had such a great effect on the nature that it has reached a critical and threatening point. However, a careful study reveals that, in this area there co-exist three externalities:international trade, environmental pollution and imperfect property right of natural resources. The externality of international trade means that, due to import tariff and import quota in the international trade, there are deadweight losses which can result in inefficient resource allocations(Krueger, Valdes and Schiff,1988). Environmental pollution means that industrial pollution will damage natural resources and negatively affect the production of natural resources(Copeland and Taylor,1999). Imperfect property right of natural resource mainly refers to the openness of natural resources. That is, due to imperfect property right definition of natural resources, the defective mechanism and difficulty in implementation of relevant policies can make the social value of the entire natural resources not completely internalized(Lopez,1997).Each of these three externalities has its own characteristics, and their mutual interactive mechanisms are not the same, either. From perspectives of theory, empirics and experiment, this dissertation carries a systematic research on the mechanisms and characteristics of the mutual interactions between these three externalities. Specifically, it studies the different working mechanisms in theory, collects multiple foreign and domestic data sets to empirically test the phenomena of overexploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution, and compares two different management systems through experimental design.This dissertation is composed of seven chapters.The first chapter is introduction. It states the research purpose and significance, comprehensively reviews previous relevant researches according to different categories, and elucidates the dissertation’s main idea and research approaches. Furthermore, it also points out the innovations and disadvantages of this dissertation.The theoretical part includes the second chapter, the third chapter and the fourth chapter.The second chapter reviews the theory on the mutual effect of international trade and environmental pollution. It mainly introduces the theoretical model of Copeland and Taylor(1994). In this model, they proposes a disintegration of the effects of international trade on environmental pollution:scale effect, technology effect and structure effect. This model has gained a widespread recognition in the academic circle.The third chapter introduces the theory of mutual effect of international trade and natural resources. It mainly appraises the researches of Brander and Taylor(1997) and ZHAO Jinhua(2000). The previous dissertation studies the phenomenon of overexploitation of the forest in international trade, and answers the question of whether this is welfare-improving or welfare-reducing. However, this dissertation fails to study the effect of imperfect property right of natural resources. The latter dissertation studies the welfare effect of imperfect property right in international trade, and discusses the sufficient condition of applying "the second best" theory in this situation. However, the assumption of its condition is too rigid to be extended to a more general case.The fourth chapter is the main theorectical innovation and contribution of this dissertation. It mainly discusses the theory of the mutual effect of environmental pollution and natural resources. Similar to ZHAO Jinhua(2000), this chapter also studies the condition of application of "the second best" theory, and reaches a conclusion that:if the environmental pollution cannot be entirely removed, the optimal property right of natural resources may not be perfect. According to Coarse Theorem, if transactional cost is ignorable, then the externality of natural resources can be entirely removed by a clear definition of natural resources. While the research here indicates that, when imperfect natural resource property right and environmental pollution coexist, and environmental pollution cannot be entirely removed, especially when the negative externality of environmental pollution on natural resources is increasingly intensive, then it is possible that the optimal property right of natural resources is not perfect.Because this dissertation has established a precise mathematical model of this mutual effect, further progress can be made by proposing and comparing two different management systems:dynamic system and static system. The dynamic system means that, each production unit in natural resources is given long-term property right, for example, in the contracts of some areas of China, peasants are given50-100years of stewardship of forest. The static system means that, each production unit in natural resources is given short-time property right, for instance, to manage the commercial blue crab harvesters in the Chesapeake Bay, the state government of Maryland in the United States issues an annual permit.Although in both static system and dynamic system, government will always maximize overall welfare in the second stage, economic intuition tells us that the dynamic system should be able to do a better job in protection of natural resources, because in the first stage of the dynamic system, produces are already motivated to protect natural resources in the long run. However, in practice, since it is almost impossible to allow only one production unit into natural resource area, even the dynamic system cannot achieve the completely ideal result. Meanwhile, the result here reveals that, only when the optimal property right of natural resources is perfect, the dynamic system is surely better than the static system; when this condition does not hold, the dynamic system is not necessarily better. Furthermore, although this dissertation extensively collects data to do empirical analysis, in practice it is very difficult to directly get the data on tenure variations. Therefore, the empirical results in this dissertation do not provide a direct test of the theory here. So, in the seventh chapter, this dissertation further adopts the method of experimental economics and compares the conditions of these two systems through mechanism design and simulation.The empirical part includes the fifth chapter, the sixth chapter and the seventh chapter.The fifth chapter uses the foreign statistical data and confirms the overexploitation of natural resources. Three survey data sets are used here. The first data set is from a1999mail survey of commercial crabbers in the Chesapeake Bay of the United States, which was conducted by Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee Chesapeake Bay Commission of Maryland and Virginia and Survey&Evaluation Research Laboratory of Virginia Commonwealth University.The second data set comes from "World Atlas of Coral Reefs", the Reef Check program at Institute of the Environment in University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Pacific Regional Information System (PRISM) of Secretariat of Pacific Community (SPC). The reef check survey was done over1100reefs in31countries and territories by Reef Check, Institute of the Environment, UCLA during1997-2001. As a result, the book of "The Global Coral Reef Crisis:Trends and Solutions1997-2001" was published. This data, combined with country level data from the website of PRISM of SPC, generate the second data set.The third data set is obtained from two sources:one is the Living Standards Survey (LSS) conducted in Cote d’Ivoire between1985and1988, the other is remote sensing data based on satellite images of20villages scattered throughout the country for the years1985-88. This program is sponsored by the World Bank.Statistical results based on these three data sets reveal that, human activities have resulted in overexploitation of natural resources. These results have laid down a solid background for the further detailed research by using data in China.It should be noted that, all the data sets used in the fifth chapter are old. Further empirical test should be done by collecting new data. In fact, the author has already collected the most recent China’s data and carried out the statistical test. The results have already been published in an academic journal. Therefore, as part of my dissertation thesis, numerical simulation by the computer will be used instead.The sixth chapter uses computer simulation to solve the general equilibrium of this closed economy and compares the results of static system and dynamic system by using the First Order Conditions. The result shows that, when the pollution function is convex, the static system can quickly converge to a steady state, while the dynamic system fluctuate around the steady state of the static system and does not converge. The resource property right statuses are not very different in these two systems. In the dynamic system, the resource stock is better protected, while in the static one, more total income is generated. Furthermore, by introducing a temporary positive production shock to the static system steady state, the author tests the stability of the steady state in the static system. However, when pollution function is linear, the resource property right statuses are totally different. In the static system, the resource is entirely open access, while in the dynamic system, the resource property right is absolutely exclusive. The comparison of other performances indicates, although the dynamic system can better protect the resource stock, it will not necessarily generate a higher total income.The Seventh Chapter is about experimental economics. Through experimental design, this chapter simulates the theoretical dynamic system and static system in the lab. In the academic year of2006-2007,11experiments were carried out with88student participants. Most of them were fresh persons and senior students of Economic and Management School at Wuhan University, including Chinese students and foreign students from Viet Nam and South Korea. In one of these experiments, all the student participants were from Viet Nam. Here, this experiment of Viet Nam students is especially worth mentioning. Before this experiment, it was predicted that since all the students were Viet Nam students, it would be easier for them to form a collective cooperation than pure Chinese students. However, the actual result proved that, in the aspect of calculating personal benefits and group benefits, Viet Nam students were exactly the same as Chinese students, and they did not exhibit specific tendency to form a collective cooperation. In other words, the result was no different from some other experiment by pure Chinese students.The experimental results in the seventh chapter reveal that, although dynamic system has the potential of being more able to protect natural resources, this advantage can be realized only in an atmosphere of mutual trust and mutual cooperation. When individual myopic benefit is considered more, the performance of the dynamic system is actually even worse than that of the static system.At last, in the conclusion, the entire dissertation is summarized. This dissertation carries out a comprehensive and systematic analysis of mutual effects of the three externalities in international trade, environmental pollution and natural resources. The results show that, each of these three externalities has its own characteristics, and their mutual interactive effects also display different patterns. At present, people are called on to build a resource-thrifty and environment-friendly society in China. The results here remind us that, when we build our beautiful home, we not only need to have a uniform plan and a comprehensive budget, but also need to differentiate different situations, analyze the practical conditions and provide the correspondent solutions. Only by doing so, can China’s overall rich but per-capita-poor resources be utilized more efficiently.
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