Mind the Gap! Reconciling Environmental Water Requirements with Scarcity in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

The Murray–Darling Basin Plan is a $AU 13 billion program to return water from irrigation use to the environment. Central to the success of the Plan, commenced in 2012, is the implementation of an Environmentally Sustainable Level of Take (ESLT) and a Sustainable Diversion Limit (SDL) on the volume of water that can be taken for consumptive use. Under the enabling legislation, the Water Act (2007), the ESLT and SDL must be set by the “best available science.” In 2009, the volume of water to maintain wetlands and rivers of the Basin was estimated at 3000–7600 GL per year. Since then, there has been a steady step-down in this volume to 2075 GL year due to repeated policy adjustments, including “supply measures projects,” building of infrastructure to obtain the same environmental outcomes with less water. Since implementation of the Plan, return of water to the environment is falling far short of targets. The gap between the volume required to maintain wetlands and rivers and what is available is increasing with climate change and other risks, but the Plan makes no direct allowance for climate change. We present policy options that address the need to adapt to less water and re-frame the decision context from contestation between water for irrigation versus the environment. Options include best use of water for adaptation and structural adjustment packages for irrigation communities integrated with environmental triage of those wetlands likely to transition to dryland ecosystems under climate change.

Covid-19 Policy Implications for Blended Learning in Higher Education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Universities have aspired to embrace the concepts of Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution with varying degrees of success. The Covid-19 epidemic, however, has created a disruption of unprecedented proportions. Managements of universities were forced to do whatever it took to save the academic year by means of emergency remote teaching. This form of teaching required a relaxation of numerous rules and policies that were designed primarily for contact institutions. Many of these concessions will probably be irrevocable and will require intensive revisions of university policies of teaching and learning. However, since teaching and learning do not exist in a vacuum, there are policy implications for all sections of the university. This autoethnographic desk study follows a theory-building approach by integrating the lived experience of the author with the current literature, to create a framework for the development and revision of policies to accommodate blended learning in higher education in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Although the definition and implementation of blended learning lie at the heart of issues regarding teaching and learning, policy adjustments will have to be made in all aspects of the university.

As Inland Becomes Coastal: Shifting Equity and Flood Risk in the Amite River Basin (USA)

Coastal Louisiana is experiencing the most rapid relative sea-level rise in the US due to a combination of a subsiding delta and rising coastal waters. Consequently, the influences of extreme coastal weather are reaching farther inland and impacting urban areas where traditional environmental policy, organised at the parish (county) level, is unable to address this changing flood risks. This situation is most prominent in the metro Baton Rouge region with the largest city situated upstream from two small, but rapidly growing, parishes. Following a massive flood in 2016, the upstream parishes have undertaken policy adjustments to facilitate the expulsion of water toward downstream neighbors and foster redevelopment in the floodplain. The lower parish has expressed concerns about the anticipated increases in discharge to be sent its way. Although the state is concerned with rising sea levels, it has not merged coastal and inland flood policy considerations. Downstream residents have little voice in upstream policy making and the absence of basin-wide management strategy perpetuates emergent risks and environmental injustices. As climate change drives coastal conditions inland, the misalignment between locally based governance and regional environmental realities will become more pronounced and exacerbate social injustices.

Grand challenges and emergent modes of convergence science

To address complex problems, scholars are increasingly faced with challenges of integrating diverse domains. We analyzed the evolution of this convergence paradigm in the ecosystem of brain science, a research frontier that provides a contemporary testbed for evaluating two modes of cross-domain integration: (a) cross-disciplinary collaboration among experts from academic departments associated with disparate disciplines; and (b) cross-topic knowledge recombination across distinct subject areas. We show that research involving both modes features a 16% citation premium relative to a mono-domain baseline. We further show that the cross-disciplinary mode is essential for integrating across large epistemic distances. Yet we find research utilizing cross-topic exploration alone—a convergence shortcut—to be growing in prevalence at roughly 3% per year, significantly outpacing the more essential cross-disciplinary convergence mode. By measuring shifts in the prevalence and impact of different convergence modes in the 5-year intervals up to and after 2013, we find that shortcut patterns may relate to competitive pressures associated with Human Brain funding initiatives launched that year. Without policy adjustments, flagship funding programs may unintentionally incentivize suboptimal integration patterns, thereby undercutting convergence science’s potential in tackling grand challenges.

Bureaucratic Leninism in Cuba

After 1970, Cuba became increasingly dependent on the USSR economically and adopted a Soviet-style management structure for the economy. But the economy ground down over time and crashed after the disappearance of the Soviet subsidy when that country collapsed in 1991. The party-military elite that runs Cuba has tried varieties of domestic and foreign policy adjustments but remains victimized by the US embargo and the inefficiencies of the bureaucratic Leninist model.

Assessing the short-run effects of lockdown policies on economic activity, with an application to the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile

This paper develops a methodology for the assessment of the short-run effects of lockdown policies on economic activity. The methodology combines labor market data with simulation of an agent-based model. We apply our methodology to the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile. We recover the model parameters from observed data, taking into account the recurring policy adjustments that characterized the study window. The model is used to build counterfactual scenarios. We estimate an 8 percent output loss in the first 5 months of the pandemic from the policy that was put in place, achieving a 56 percent reduction in the total number of infections. During this period, with an output loss to 10.5 percent of GDP, the infection rate would have decreased 92 percent, significantly delaying the spread of COVID and spike in infections. Our methodology applied to real data provided results that could be valuable in guiding policies in other lockdown situations in times of disaster, pandemics or social upheaval.

RESEARCH ON THE IMPACT OF EQUITY PLEDGE ON ENTERPRISE VALUE—TAKE SMES AS AN EXAMPLE

The pledge of controlling shareholders’ equity is one of the important ways for small and medium-sized enterprises to raise funds. However, due to the complexity of controlling shareholders’ motivations for equity pledge, equity pledge has become a double-edged sword that affects the sustainable development of enterprises. This study explores the impact of controlling shareholder equity pledge on corporate value by constructing an empirical model, so as to provide suggestions for small and medium shareholders, regulatory agencies and related financial institutions. The empirical results show that the pledge of controlling shareholders’ equity is conducive to the improvement of corporate value; however, under different macro policy adjustments, the impact of equity pledges on corporate value is different. In the period of loose monetary policy, the pledge of controlling shareholders’ equity has a significant positive effect on corporate value .On the contrary, during the monetary policy tightening period, equity pledge has a significant negative impact on corporate value.

Medicare’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program Values Quality over QALYs

Medicare’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program (HVBP) is the first national pay-for-performance program to combine measures of quality of care with a measure of episode spending. We estimated the implicit tradeoffs between mortality reduction and spending reduction. To earn points in HVBP, a hospital can either lower mortality or reduce spending, creating a tradeoff between the 2 measures. We analyzed the quality performance and earned points of 2814 hospitals using publicly available data. We then quantified the tradeoffs between spending and mortality in terms of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). If incentives in the program were balanced, then the tradeoff between spending and QALYs should be comparable with those of high-value health interventions, roughly $50,000 to $200,000 per QALY. Instead, the tradeoff in HVBP was about $1.2 million per QALY. HVBP overvalues improvements in quality of care relative to spending reductions. We propose 2 possible policy adjustments that could improve incentives for hospitals to deliver high-value care.

Equilibrium Resolution Mechanism for Multidimensional Conflicts in Farmland Expropriation Based on a Multistage Van Damme’s Model

Multidimensional conflicts in farmland expropriation originate from the game of multidimensional interests between the local government and farmers. The strategy choices and equilibrium results of the two sides have evolved with changes to the situation and policy adjustments. Focusing on different types of farmland expropriation conflicts, this paper constructs a multistage Van Damme’s model of multidimensional conflicts in farmland expropriation, analyzes the stable equilibrium point of the behavior evolution of the local government and farmers under litigation settlement and nonlitigation settlement, and conducts simulation analysis on the behavior evolution and conflict resolution of both sides at different stages through MATLAB numerical simulation. The results show that (1) the interests’ game between the local government and farmers has changed periodically due to the evolution of the farmland expropriation system; (2) under litigation settlement, there is only the “government rent-seeking” conflict: in order to resolve the conflict, the cost of litigation for farmers can be reduced, while other policy interventions, such as controlling the rent-seeking ceiling of the local government and increasing the rent-seeking costs of the local government, can be implemented; (3) under nonlitigation settlement, there are three types of conflicts: to resolve the “government rent-seeking” conflict, we should control the rent-seeking ceiling of the local government and increase the rent-seeking costs of the local government or its positive social externality benefits under reasonable expropriation; to resolve the “nail household dilemma” conflict, we should increase the rent-seeking costs of farmers or their positive social externality benefits under reasonable compensation; to resolve the “extreme controversy” conflict, on the one hand, we should control the rent-seeking ceiling of farmers, and on the other hand, while controlling the rent-seeking ceiling of the local government, we should increase the farmers’ positive social externality benefits under reasonable compensation or negative social externality losses of both sides under rent seeking.