Will Green Finance Contribute to a Green Recovery? Evidence From Green Financial Pilot Zone in China

In the post-epidemic era, green finance plays a more significant role in supporting the “green recovery” of the economy, so it is necessary to evaluate the implementation effect of previous green financial policies. In 2017, the green finance reform and innovation pilot zone set up in five provinces and autonomous regions made an exploration in the development of green finance. From the perspective of micro-enterprises, can this policy play a beneficial policy effect in the long run? Based on the quasi-natural experiment of green finance pilot, using the data of A-share listed companies, this paper empirically tests the impact of pilot policies on the long-term value of green enterprises in pilot areas. It is found that, compared with non-pilot zones, the green finance pilot enables a significant increase in the Tobin Q-measured value of green enterprises in the pilot zones. Heterogeneity analysis shows that green finance pilot has a more significant impact on non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises in traditional industries, large enterprises, and enterprises in the eastern region of China. Green finance pilot zone can achieve better policy effects in areas with stronger environmental impact regulation and higher financial development levels. The mechanism test shows that the green finance pilot affects the long-term value of green enterprises through the capital market effect improving the stock trading activity of enterprises and through the real effect improving the operational efficiency and profitability of enterprises. From the perspective of micro-enterprises, this paper enriches the research on the development effect of green finance and provides theoretical support for the effect evaluation of green finance pilot policies.

How Finance Reform May Alter Teacher and School Quality: California’s $23 Billion Initiative

Gains in school spending helped to lift achievement over the past half century. But California’s ambitious effort—progressively distributing $23 billion in yearly funding to poorer districts—has yet to reduce disparities in learning. We theorize how administrators in districts and schools, given organizational habits and labor constraints, may fail to move quality resources to disadvantaged students. We identify the exogenous portion of California’s post-2013 reform, finding that schools receiving progressively targeted funding tended to hire inexperienced teachers and disproportionately assign novices to courses serving English learners. New funding expanded the array of courses in high schools, as access to college-preparatory classes by English learners declined. These unfair mechanisms operated most strongly in high-needs schools serving larger concentrations of poor students.

Answering Skeptics

This chapter considers whether the new labor system could work as intended in the United States and whether alternative policies could better address the country's economic and political problems. It reviews some of the likely implementation challenges the new system would face, including determining the appropriate bargaining unit in a broad-based system and relationship friction between national and local unions, and finds, based on the US historical experience, that the challenges are likely manageable. It also reviews alternatives to the new labor system and argues that while most would be helpful, all have limitations. Other strategies to strengthen labor, such as increased organizing by unions and banning right-to-work laws, are necessary but on their own would not sufficiently increase union density or dramatically increase collective bargaining coverage. Non-union policies — from increased training to a jobs guarantee to campaign finance reform — would do less to raise wages, reduce inequality, or increase political voice. These often rely on strong labor unions to work best. All told, the new labor system is practical and necessary.

Federalism, Regionalism, and the Construction of Spaces

The Weimar Republic was a democratic and a federal state. The Reich had significantly more powers than it had had in Prussian-dominated Imperial Germany. Not only the Reich, but also the Länder (states) were structured democratically. Neither the plans for a reorganization of the Reich nor those for ending the dualism between the Reich and Prussia came to fruition. The unitarian leanings of the democrats ran against the will of the democratic state governments to assert themselves. The 1920 Reich Finance Reform reversed the course of fiscal federalism by creating a nationwide centralized system of taxation replacing the older Länder tax codes. The Reich and the Länder shared revenues which put the Länder at risk in the crisis after 1930. A range of economic, social, and cultural dynamics changed Germany’s spatial order. No longer were the Reich’s financial administration and unemployment-insurance system oriented toward state borders. The same applied to transport areas and tariff zones, which were oriented towards rationalization and optimization. The Heimat movement found the essence of the nation in an ethnically and culturally defined peoplehood, which brought it close to the völkisch movement. A sharp nationalism prevailed in the Heimat movement putting border regions more and more at the center of national imagination.

Test-Based Accountability and the Effectiveness of School Finance Reforms

A recent literature provides new evidence that school resources are important for student outcomes. This paper examines whether school accountability systems that incentivize performance (such as No Child Left Behind) raise the efficiency with which additional resources get spent. We leverage the timing of school finance reforms to compare funding impacts on student test scores between states that had accountability in place at the time of the reform and states that did not. The results show that finance-reform-induced increases in student performance are driven by those states where the reform was accompanied by the presence of test-based accountability.

Reforming the Financial Mechanism of Public Non-Business Units in Vietnam: Research in Lao Cai Province

The content of the administrative reform plan for the period 2011–2020 of the Government of Vietnam on the basis of the overall reform of the national administration, focuses on four main areas, namely institutional reform and organizational reform. structure, building and developing contingent of civil servants and public finance (Government, 2011). Thus, along with the institutional and organizational reform, the public finance reform is also a central task of the administrative reform in the condition that Vietnam continues to strongly transition from the centralized mechanism. The subsidy to a socialist-oriented market economy, in particular, is even more necessary when Vietnam has become an official member of the World Trade Organization. One of the current concerns for good implementation of public finance reform is the implementation of autonomy and self-responsibility for the use of payroll and administrative management funding for administrative agencies. state and financial autonomy mechanism for non-business units. This article focuses on analyzing the current situation of reforming the financial operation mechanism of public non-business units in Lao Cai province, Vietnam, pointing out the achievements, limitations, causes and some recommendations to end. promote the reform of the financial operation mechanism of public non-business units in Lao Cai province, Vietnam in the context of world economic integration.

Crackup

Crackup: The Republican Implosion and the Future of Presidential Politics explains how changes in campaign finance laws and the proliferation of mass media fractured the Republican Party into uncompromising groups with irreconcilable demands. The 2002 “McCain-Feingold” campaign finance reform bill aimed to weaken the power of big businesses and strengthen political parties by ending corporate donations to the parties. Instead, it weakened legislative leaders and made bipartisanship a four-letter word. Moving money outside the political parties fuelled the rise of “purity for profit” groups and Super PACs funded by billionaires with pet issues. This allowed self-promoting politicians to undermine intraparty colleagues with an unprecedented use of tactics once only used to disrupt the opposition.

Using Campaign Finance Reform to Protect U.S. Elections from “Dark Money” and Foreign Influence

Russian interference in U.S. elections has shined a light on gaping holes in the longstanding rules designed to protect against foreign political influence through spending from abroad on American elections. There are three key areas where U.S. elections are most vulnerable to political spending directed by foreign powers: the internet, “dark money” groups that do not disclose their donors, and corporations and other business entities with substantial foreign ownership. A comprehensive set of campaign finance reforms is needed to shore up the United States’ defenses against foreign election spending; the chapter describes those necessary reforms.

Research on the Environmental Effect of Green Finance Policy Based on the Analysis of Pilot Zones for Green Finance Reform and Innovations

In this study, taking the pilot zones for green finance reform and innovations set up in 2017 as the objects, a quasi-natural experiment is conducted to assess the environmental effects of green finance policy using the difference-in-difference propensity score matching (PSM-DID) method based on the panel data in 30 provincial-level administrative regions from 2011 to 2019. In addition, further efforts are made to investigate the differences of green financial policies in environmental effect. According to the research findings, the set-up of green finance pilot zones can reduce the environmental pollution, and green finance policy is conductive to environmental enhancement. Meanwhile, a partial mediating effect exists between a region’s innovation capability and industrial structure. On the whole, green finance policy plays the most significant role in improving the eastern region’s environmental pollution, followed by the central region, but barely enhances the environment in the western region. To sum up, the more serious the environmental pollution is, the better the effect of green finance policy.