Market-led Policies Research Articles

Making a market in environmental credits I: Streams of value

This pair of papers examines and describes the state action necessary to make markets function as environmental policy instruments and as strategies of governance. They do this through a detailed look at the mechanics of environmental credit compliance markets in the US states of Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina in which stream credits are privately created and sold to developers who have impacted protected stream systems. In this paper, we examine the tools, techniques, and people involved in the creation of a value-bearing stream credit out of a physical stream or river site. These observations reveal important principles of how science functions within governance, as well as where gaps and resistances appear that create unforeseen outcomes in market-led policy. We examine the construction and use of instruments that define natural processes as objects with value; these techniques and tools include databases and spreadsheets, algorithms, and field scoring tools that have been scavenged from a wide range of scientific and governance practices and are not themselves inherently capitalist or developed for capitalist purposes. In three different state settings, the move from measure to value is made in different ways that depend on the local institutional and social context. However, they all act to render a network of interacting ecological forces as a field of discrete ecosystem objects amenable to governance with markets.

Making a market in environmental credits II: Watershed moments

This pair of papers examines and describes the state action necessary to make markets function as environmental policy instruments and as strategies of governance. We do this through a detailed look at the mechanics of environmental credit compliance markets in the US states of Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina in which stream credits are privately created and sold to developers who have impacted protected stream systems. In this paper, we observe that the governance of streams as water resources requires the state to create a scalar hierarchy that fixes certain characteristics of streams at certain scales of state action. These fixes attempt to resolve, bracket, or ignore the temporal and spatial variability of streams that can confound governance; however, these variabilities are essential to the scientific study of streams. At each of the four distinct scales, four different operations crucial to market function were observed; at each scale, elements of natural variability were fixed or confined to be expressed only within the given scale. These observations reveal principles of how scale functions within environmental governance, as well as failures where gaps and resistances appear that create unforeseen outcomes in market-led policy. In three different state settings, the establishment of a fixed scale of governance is made in different ways that depend on the local institutional and social context. However, they all act to render an unruly set of temporal and spatial flows as instead occurring within certain fixed scalar boundaries, and thus amenable to governance with markets.

Soft privatization in the Norwegian school: cooperation between public government and private consultancies in developing ‘failing’ schools

ABSTRACT Even though Norway is one of the Nordic countries that has been hesitant when it comes to implementing privatization policies, the influence of market-led reforms has facilitated an educational landscape where private companies increasingly serve public education. In this article, the interrelation between marketization and privatization is analysed as a process of soft privatization. Focusing on a school development project in Oslo, soft privatization is investigated in relation to how the public authorities actively facilitate private participation. This is especially related to how the framing of educational problems within a market-led context serves private interests and public-private cooperation. While arguing that marketization facilitates private-sector participation, the article also suggests that private actors reinforce the ideas that constitute the premises for their participation, thus confirming public policies. A consequence of this is not only a situation where market-led policies facilitate private-sector participation, but a situation where the two reinforce each other and where public and private actors develop mutual dependency.

Environmental policies that shape productivity: Evidence from cattle ranching in the Amazon

We examine two potential economic benefits of environmental policy, increased agricultural investment and productivity. This is important because if these benefits are realized, environmental policy could optimize land use for food production while minimizing the negative environmental impacts. We employ multiple empirical techniques to analyze a market-led and a public-led anti-deforestation policy that influence the vast cattle ranching sector in the Brazilian Amazon. We show that both policies increased cattle productivity, while the market-led policy also increased investment. We find no evidence that the two policies were substitutes or complements. Results indicate that the policies were each effective in different market- and land-use-contexts, so that enforcement of both policies increased productivity for a larger set of properties. Our research reveals both indirect and unintended benefits of environmental regulation, which have implications for the design of policies that affect the agricultural sector, a major driver of land-use change.

Economic Policies to Improve the Current State of the Brazilian Economy

The Brazilian economy grew rapidly until the past few years. A downturn in commodities prices led to recession, despite demand-led policies. In early 2015, the president dropped demand-side policies in favor of market-led policies. They do not seem as yet to be benefiting the economy. These two authors assess the damage and propose policies that are still consistent with post-Keynesian views.

Digital Television Switchover: China Goes Its Own Way

Switching to digital television has become an established global trend. With all the major TV markets in developed countries now set to switch - or having already done so - China too has a strategy to replace its analogue television transmissions with digital technology across all TV platforms. However, except in Hong Kong, its approach is very different from that of most other countries. Elsewhere the priority has been to switch off analogue terrestrial transmissions to make more efficient use of spectrum, often against a background of satellite and cable growing in importance and diminishing the role of terrestrial reception. In China, however, converting analogue cable systems to digital has been the primary switchover activity. Progress in implementing digital terrestrial television has been slowed by China's decision to develop its own technical standards, and regulatory restrictions apply to direct satellite reception. This article explores why the Chinese route to switchover is different. Economic and political factors make a market-led policy difficult to design or apply. Moreover, China's motivation is different: rather than pushing to re-use analogue terrestrial spectrum, the government aims to support the interests of the TV receiver manufacturing industry and, especially, to improve the managed communication of information to the Chinese people.

Market-led policy measures for urban redevelopment in Singapore

This paper analyses the effectiveness and impacts of two market-led policy measures for stimulating private housing redevelopment in Singapore. The first measure accorded betterment potential to sub-optimally used land through density incentives. Subsequently, enabling legislation was enacted to facilitate site amalgamation. Using data from 1994 to 2000, the measures successfully induced the supply of privately owned land and site assembly through en bloc sales. However, the urban intensification strategies have resulted in unintended and adverse consequences such as infrastructural pressure, loss of environmental character and accelerated economic obsolescence. Moreover, policy delivery that relies on private sector capital is highly dependent on market conditions.

Enabling business innovation: government policy in the UK

Since 1997, the Labour government in the UK has espoused policies of competitiveness and innovation, assuming the role of of a knowledge driven economy. The intention is to encourage competitiveness and to define a third way between market-led economic policies and state intervention. The government has inherited significant problems that are impediments to progress - for example, inadequate skill levels, low rates of start-up for small businesses and wide disparities in regional performance. There are difficulties about the basis for assessment of such policies. Despite the shift in rhetoric there is evidence of continuity with the previous Conservative government's market-led policies. The evidence that is available to date suggests that the rhetoric concerning the government's role as an enabler of innovation is stronger than the reality.

»Vom Ende der Stadt als staatlicher Veranstaltung«

The focus of this article are the shifts in the political forms and expressions of urban politics due to a neoliberal restructuring. It is argued that these trends consist in a transition from a distribution-oriented to an entrepreneurial, globally oriented city. This is connected to a reformulation of city images and a discourse about deregulation, privatization and market-led policies. Even the atypical case of Berlin can serve as an example of this transition.