Central Supervision Research Articles

Can central and local forces promote green innovation of heavily polluting enterprises? evidence from China

Adequate government environmental supervision is the key to promoting green innovation which is an essential driver of green development. In environmental decentralization, an analysis of the mechanism of the inherent influence of central and local supervision on green innovation may prove to be of practical importance. The paper selects data from heavily polluting enterprises in A-shares in China from 2013 to 2019 using fixed-effects models, moderating effect models, heterogeneity tests, and other research methods for analysis. These results are: 1. Both central and local supervision can significantly facilitate green innovation in heavily polluting enterprises. Local supervision has a weaker promotion effect than central supervision. 2. The two environmental supervision approaches can work synergistically. Central supervision can enhance the effect of local supervision on enterprises’ green innovation. 3. An analysis of heterogeneity indicates that the two environmental supervision approaches significantly promote eastern heavy polluters engage into green innovation. However, they do not promote it significantly for non-eastern enterprises. In addition, the same regional heterogeneity exists in the positive moderating effect of central supervision. 4. Further research finds that both types of supervision induce high-quality substantive green innovation. Central supervision can further enhance the impact of local supervision on enterprises’ substantive green innovation. The paper provides empirical data references for establishing an environmental supervision path under collaboration by governments at different levels, and offers implications for achieving green innovation and optimizing pollution emission mechanisms in heavy polluters.

Greening through central inspection: The role of legitimacy pressure and risk-taking

We evaluate the effect of the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) in China on green innovation for Chinese A-share firms from 2008 to 2019. The results of the difference-in-differences estimation show that the CEPI has a long-term positive effect on corporate green innovation in the form of green patents. The CEPI influences corporate green innovation through legitimacy pressure and value-enhancing corporate risk-taking. The positive effect is more pronounced in the provinces which are relatively more developed and less dependent on the secondary industry. Moreover, this effect is primarily driven by overcompliance motive and is visible in firms with better internal governance, state-controlled firms, and firms with political connections. Our findings demonstrate the impact of campaign-style central supervision on corporate innovation policy.

Evolutionary Game Strategies Analysis of Economic Development and Environmental Protection between Local Governments under Central Supervision Mechanism in China

The positive interaction between economic development and environmental protection is an important social issue which concerns people’s livelihoods. In order to explore the coordinated path of economic development and environmental protection, game models are constructed, successively, between local governments and among central-local governments by the evolutionary game method, and then, numerical simulation technology is used to analyze the results. The results show that the presented evolutionary stability strategies are consistent with the three stages of economic development and environmental protection since the reform and opening up in China. From the early to the middle stage, the sum of the special governance funds and local penalty fees play a key role; from the middle to the late stage, the heterogeneity coefficient between the local governments, local environmental governance costs, and environmental pollution losses plays a decisive role; during the late stage, the sum of the special governance funds and local penalty fees and the performance appraisal indicators play an important role. According to the above conclusions, local governments tend to choose environmental priority strategy, and the central government tends to choose a loose supervision strategy to achieve coordinated development by improving the phased planning for coordinated development, appropriately increasing the special governance funds and local penalty standards, and appropriately balancing the weights of the economic and environmental indicators.

Central supervision and earnings management: Quasi-experimental evidence from China

Earnings management is costly to society because it decreases the informativeness of earnings and hence distorts capital market efficiency. Drawing upon a natural experiment generated by the staggered random on-site inspection programme initiated by China's central government between 2013 and 2017, this paper finds that highly intensive central supervision significantly decreases local firms' earnings management behaviours. Moreover, the effect of central supervision is found to be more pronounced in provinces with severe GDP exaggeration, provinces with local governors facing impending promotion, and firms controlled by the government. These findings suggest that on-site inspections by the central government may alleviate local officials' political incentives and ability to pressure local firms to engage in earnings management. However, the estimation results of timing tests indicate that this monitoring effect is short-lived, calling for a more comprehensive strategy to enhance the supervision of local officials and consequently improve the reliability of firms' financial reporting quality. These findings highlight the importance of addressing the agency problem between central and local governments in curbing firms' earnings manipulation to improve the capital market efficiency of economies characterized by strong government intervention.

The Euro @20: Lessons for the Next Generation of Virtual Currencies

The euro is for many reasons a remarkable legal tender. Even though formally introduced only in 1999, it soon became the second most important currency after the US Dollar in the international monetary system. The 20th anniversary of the euro offers an ideal occasion to reflect on decisive factors underlying its successes and failures. Employing a combined approach that links aspired reforms of the Economic and Monetary Union with novel topics arising from financial technology, this article derives important lessons for the next generation of virtual currencies and furthermore proposes a set of guiding principles for modern regulation and supervision. As a result, the study contributes to safeguarding the financial order in a global and dynamic environment. EU law, euro, virtual currency, crypto-asset, digital currency, legal tender, money, payment system, Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), European Central Bank (ECB), regulation and supervision, international standards, financial crisis, risk management, financial technology (fintech), Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)

Exploring the motivation and effect of government-enterprise collusion in the utilization of marine resources: Evidence from China's coastal areas

From the perspective of the new political economy, this paper aims to reveal the phenomenon of government-enterprise collusion in the utilization of marine resources, and finds that government-enterprise collusion is one of the reasons for the overexploitation and disorderly utilization of marine resources and the continuous deterioration of the marine ecological environment. First, a sequential game model is constructed and solved to reveal the motivation of government-enterprise collusion in the utilization of marine resources. Then, using a comprehensive feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) method and panel data from 11 coastal areas in China from 2002 to 2015, we investigate the effect of government-enterprise collusion on the utilization of marine resources. The findings show that government-enterprise collusion has a significant positive effect on the utilization of marine resources, which has led to the expansion of the use of sea areas. Specifically, (1) officials serving in their hometowns prefer to approve more sea areas for sea-using enterprises than officials transferred from other places. (2) There is a U-shaped relationship between the age of the officials and the utilization of marine resources. (3) Central supervision can effectively reduce the collusion between local governments and enterprises. The findings of this paper are of great policy significance for the current management of the utilization of marine resources and environmental protection.

China: A New Trajectory Prioritizing Rural Rather Than Urban Development?

The adverse effects of rapid urbanization are of global concern. Careful planning for and accommodation of accelerating urbanization and citizenization (i.e., migrants gaining official urban residency) may be the best approach to limit some of the worst impacts. However, we find that another trajectory may be possible: one linked to the rural development plan adopted in the latest Chinese national development strategy. This plan aims to build rural areas as attractive areas for settlement by 2050 rather than to further urbanize with more people in cities. We assess the political motivations and challenges behind this choice to develop rural areas based on a literature review and empirical case analysis. After assessing the rural and urban policy subsystem, we find five socio-political drivers behind China’s rural development strategy, namely ensuring food security, promoting culture and heritage, addressing overcapacity, emphasizing environmental protection and eradicating poverty. To develop rural areas, China needs to effectively resolve three dilemmas: (1) implementing decentralized policies under central supervision; (2) deploying limited resources efficiently to achieve targets; and (3) addressing competing narratives in current policies. Involving more rural community voices, adopting multiple forms of local governance, and identifying and mitigating negative project impacts can be the starting points to manage these dilemmas.

The Influence of Work from Home and Work Discipline on the Performance of Employees with Work-Life Balance as Mediating Variable in the COVID-19 Outbreak Period

The Covid-19 pandemic affected all dimensions of human life. To prevent the spread of the disease, many companies have allowed their employees to work from home in the quarantine period. However, working from home requires a high level of self-discipline from the employee. Changing the balance between work and personal life can impact employee productivity, which requires independent research. This study aims to determine the influence of work from home and work discipline on employee performance through the work-life balance as mediating variable. The sample in this study is 311 employees of the Central Financial and Development Supervision Agency in Jakarta. Data for analysis were collected by questionnaire with Likert scale. Based on the formula Slovin, for the purposes of this study, 311 respondents were selected to take the survey. The spread of the questionnaire runs approximately 1(one) week. The return questionnaires are done indirectly through a Google form. The authors used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and AMOS version 22 program to process the data. To develop the research toolkit, the authors applied tested and validated indicators in previous studies. The analysis results show that work from home, work discipline, and work-life balance significantly affect employee performance. Despite this, the companies increase the attention to their employees in carrying out work from home, work discipline, and work-life balance because working from home is a challenge for many employees. In particular, some employees lack discipline in carrying out their work at home. The pandemic has forced workers to be more flexible to maintain a work-life balance and achieve higher performance at work from home.

ISSUES ON POWER CONTROL OF EARLY LE DYNASTY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES AND OPERATIONS OF SUPERVISOR GROUP

Under Early Le Dynasty, the supervisor group includes the Censorate, The Six Offices of Scrutiny and The Constitutional Agency. Through the characteristic features of their position as “word keeping” mandarins, they have had a significant contribution to the king’s maintenance of discipline and upholding of the court's laws, therefore increasing the central government's control and supervision over the mandarin group. This article focuses on the position, the tasks and the activities of the supervisor group in the Early Le Dynasty. The research of the model of power supervision through a supervisor group will evoke valuable experiences and lessons that need to be drawn from the present practice.

Plunder and Paradiplomacy: The Corruption of China's Decentralised State in Yunnan Province

This article conducts an investigation into Yunnan province to study the risks and opportunities associated with two institutional changes that have reshaped contemporary China: the decentralisation of power from the centre to provinces and the emerging agency of provinces in China's increasingly multilayered foreign policy. These changes have enabled Yunnan to develop a bridgehead strategy that positions the province as an economic corridor to the markets of Southeast Asia. While this has succeeded in fostering economic development, it has also created a complex set of transnational links that has contributed to the obstruction of central supervision, enabling local leaders to engage in regionalised corruption on a scale that has outpaced other Chinese provinces.

A distributed coverage hole recovery approach based on reinforcement learning for Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), various anomalies may arise and reduce their reliability and efficiency. For example, Coverage Hole can occur in such networks due to several causes, such as damaging events, sensors battery exhaustion, hardware failure, and software bugs. Modern trends to use relocation of deployed sensor nodes when the manual addition of nodes is neither doable nor economical in many applications have attracted attention. The lack of central supervision and control in harsh and hostile environments have encouraged researchers to shift from centralized to distributed node relocation schemes. In this paper, a new game theory approach based on reinforcement learning to recover Coverage Holes in a distributed way is proposed. For the formulated potential game, sensor nodes can recover Coverage Holes using only local acquaintances. To reduce the coverage gaps, the combined action of node reposition and sensing range adjustment is chosen by each sensor node. The simulation results prove that, unlike previous methods, the proposed approach can sustain a network overall coverage in the presence of random damage events.

Central Environmental Supervisors and Departure Audits of Outgoing Local Government Officials’ Environmental Accountability: An Analysis Based on Game Theory

The establishment of central environmental supervision system (CESS) and the departure audits of outgoing local government officials are major environmental initiatives established by the Chinese government during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012. Their aim is to separate the different environmental responsibilities of the local and central governments. In just one year, central environmental supervisors inspected 30 provinces’ and cities’ environmental performance and punished many local officials for their failures to fulfil their environmental responsibility as part of a national pollution crackdown. Inspired by the significant and profound effects of the environmental audits, we construct a tripartite game model involving the central auditors, environmental whistle-blowers and local government officials. We show that local government officials are more likely to act responsibly and that auditors adopt more detailed auditing procedures due to the involvement of whistle-blowers. This suggests that the central environmental supervision system must be institutionalised, legalised, normalised and focus on protections for whistle-blowers. Environmental audits are useful for focusing on departing officials’ accountability for environmental protection. We urge the government to strengthen the transparency of audit and to distribute environmental audit information on social media.

Interbank Withdrawal Protocol (IWP): A Complementary System of Rastin Banking

Purpose: This paper aims to define a new protocol, whereby brings the required preparations for the bank to collect its claim or its customer’s claim through withdrawal from the debtor’s account in other banks and financial institutions that have signed the protocol.
 Design: According to this protocol and under central bank supervision, the bank (as owner or attorney of the third party) as claimer of check, promissory note, bill, or a debt initiated by customer's commitment based on collaterals or guarantees, withdraws the claim from the debtor’s accounts in other banks and financial institutions that are members of the protocol through Automatic Clearing House (ACH).
 Findings: Despite taking collaterals, guarantees, and binding of contracts, executive debt collection process through the legal proceedings is a major challenge that banks, financial institutions, and persons are facing. The legal and execution process of debt collection through collaterals and guarantees are complicated, lengthy, and costly. Interbank Withdrawal Protocol (IWP) solves the problem by proposing a protocol to be accepted by banks to permit withdrawal of the account of the debtor in other banks.
 Practical implications: It is seen much that a person owes a lot to a person or bank, but s/he deposits her/his money at her/his accounts in other banks. The Interbank Withdrawal Protocol (IWP) is an agreement between banks which permits the bank to collect the debt through online-withdraw from the accounts of the debtor at other banks after depleting the account of the debtor at the agent bank.
 Social implications: This protocol increases reliance and security upon commitments and provides fast settlement and debt collection without time-consuming judicial process. It also reduces judicial proceedings and execution of active files in courts and consequently related costs.
 Originality/value: Complementary systems in Rastin Banking have been designed to solve the prevailing problems of banking and financial activities. IWP was designed to provide necessary arrangements for fast, clean debt collection and encashing check and collecting the bill.
 JEL: L86, L87, G21, G24

Optimal Supervisory Architecture and Financial Integration in a Banking Union*

Both in the USA and in the Euro area, bank supervision is the joint responsibility of local and central supervisors. I study a model in which local supervisors do not internalize as many externalities as a central supervisor. Local supervisors are more lenient, but banks also have weaker incentives to hide information from them. These two forces can make a joint supervisory architecture optimal, with more weight put on centralized supervision when cross-border externalities are larger. Conversely, more centralized supervision endogenously encourages banks to integrate more cross-border. Due to this complementarity, the economy can be trapped in a suboptimal equilibrium with either too little or too much central supervision, when a superior equilibrium would be achievable.

Supervision of local government in Zimbabwe: The travails of mayors

ABSTRACT The discourse on decentralisation theoretically supports central government supervision of local government. The exercise of such powers by the central government of Zimbabwe is mired in controversy. Mayors are often suspended and/or dismissed to safeguard so-called "public interests". In particular, those who are from the opposition political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, have been greatly affected in this regard. The supervisory interventions of the Zimbabwe African National Unity-Patriotic Front led national (central) government have raised questions about the very existence of local democracy and the parameters within which supervision should be implemented. The inadequacy of the laws regulating central supervision over local government and, in some cases, the blatant disregard of such laws by the supervising authority have left mayors vulnerable to arbitrary suspensions and/or dismissal. Such interventions have been motivated mainly by sinister political objectives rather than a genuine desire to improve local governance. A case study methodology focusing on the supervision of mayors in Zimbabwe since independence has been adopted. Keywords: Local government, local autonomy, mayors, supervision, power politics, decentralisation, Zimbabwe

OP112 Project Management for EUnetHTA Non-Pharmaceutical Technologies

IntroductionThe European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) facilitates and produces Health Technology Assessments (HTA) across Europe. Project Management (PM) provides the coordination and strategic overview of assessment production and enables the flow of scientific knowledge and assessment publications through collaboration and standardized processes, procedures and documentation.MethodsEUnetHTA established a central PM function at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for HTA (LBI-HTA) for central coordination and assessment production of non-pharmaceutical technologies. LBI-HTA subsequently pursued capability and capacity through a decentralized hub-and-spoke-PM model with six activity centers (AC) providing decentralized coordination and PM of assessments. LBI-HTA provided central oversight and supervision with training days, e-meetings and ad hoc e-mail and telephone support as required. This was complemented by standardized operating procedures (SOPs) in the online Companion Guide (CG). A qualitative data collection via electronic questionnaires collected feedback from AC-PM, LBI-HTA-PM and assessment authors. Specific questions with free-text responses assessed current experiences, challenges, recommendations, communication and task distributions of the centralized and decentralized PM processes from these different perspectives.ResultsThe feedback concluded that PM is a separate, well-defined and important role for assessment coordination and production. The AC-PM received adequate training from the central PM and authors experienced no difference between projects managed centrally or decentrally. The CG and SOPs are important for guiding standard practice and allowing AC-PM to operate independently. Challenges were around extended timelines due to complex topics, external stakeholder involvement, insufficient team communication and not yet published SOPs resulting in additional central support.ConclusionsDecentralized coordination of assessments, knowledge management and governance achieve scale, capacity and capability through a designated pool of agencies with established roles and growing experience in sustainable collaboration of HTA production. Valuable insight into the PM model's operational efficiency, avoidance of duplication and resource savings potentially provides a sustainable post 2020 European network policy and efficiency model for high quality HTA assessment production.

Rebalancing the central-local relationship: achieving a bottom-up approach to localism in England

AbstractRecent governments have introduced a plethora of reforms seeking to decentralise power to local government in England. Invariably, however, these have fallen short of stated objectives, leaving councils at the mercy of central supervision and with insufficient local autonomy. This paper explores the reasons underpinning this concern. It identifies a top-down approach to localism and considers the culture of centralism that persists as a consequence. It then discusses how a bottom-up approach might be achieved, exploring how political and legal mechanisms can protect councils from centralised interference in the future.

Queue Based Energy Efficient Routing with Dynamic Resource Allocation in Mobile Adhoc Networks

Mobile Adhoc networks (MANETs) is defined as an assembly of mobile nodes that are connected wirelessly in which they are dynamic in nature and form a short-term and non-permanent without the dependence of any framework or central supervision and management. Restricted battery potential is considered as one of the significant snag in mobile adhoc networks, as all the nodes included in the network will operate with restricted battery potential. Because of this restricted battery potential, it is mandatory to observe energy consciousness quality in our design. In this paper, we have addressed the energy efficiency in routing by examining the buffer queue status in sequence to avoid packet loss in networks. Finally, a dynamic resource allocation scheme is depicted to minimize the time complexity. In mobile adhoc networks, stabilizing energy and minimum energy utilization are considered as the prime necessity to elongate the existence of network. For this purpose Buffer queue based energy efficient routing algorithm is proposed. This algorithm will upgrade the quality and standard of network by minimizing energy consumption. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has an efficient performance compared to conventional schemes.

Does central supervision enhance local environmental enforcement? Quasi-experimental evidence from China

This paper draws on a natural experiment generated by the National Specially Monitored Firms (NSMF) program in China to evaluate the effectiveness of central supervision at improving local environmental enforcement. We explore a unique firm-level Chinese Environmental Statistics dataset and utilize a regression discontinuity design to assess the impact of central supervision through the NSMF program on an industrial firm's chemical oxygen demand (COD) emissions. The results suggest that central supervision significantly reduces industrial COD emissions by at least 26.8%. These results highlight the substantial room for improvement in Chinese environmental regulations via central supervision. A more flexible environmental decentralization regime and comprehensive central supervision are thus recommended for future reforms.

Fiscal Decentralization and Local Public Health Expenditure: Empirical Analysis Based on Different Caliber Indicators and Provincial Panel Data

Based on the construction of different caliber fiscal decentralization and local public health expenditure index, this paper makes an empirical analysis of the influencing factors of local public health expenditure in China by using the methods of FGLS and dynamic panel GMM. It is found that different fiscal decentralization indicators have different effects on public health expenditure, and local governments have a large right of financial autonomy to effectively increase public health expenditure, and the central government's transfer payment to local governments also has a significant positive effect on local public health expenditure. In addition, the difference in the level of local economic development will result in uneven local public health expenditure, manifested in the double imbalance between the expenditure structure and the provision of public health services. Therefore, China should continue to increase the central transfer payment, reasonably divide the central and local financial authority, establish a hard restraint mechanism of local public health expenditure, clarify the expenditure responsibility boundary between the central and local governments, and implement the measures of combining central supervision and control with local financial autonomy, in order to solve the problem of the double imbalance between regional and regional expenditure of local public health expenditure and ensure the effective supply of local public health products.