A multiple case study on the cooperative governance model of treating environmental deterioration

Managing the acute problem of environmental deterioration due to the industrialization of modern China is necessary.Using three cases from a theoretical perspective of procedure-structure,this study explored how environmental deterioration is governed in three circumstances.Research findings revealed that the pattern to treat the worsening environment is associated closely with individual-specific circumstances,and thus three patterns of governance are developed:bureaucratic,contractual,and network-based cooperatives.The cases and the results are described the advantages and disadvantages of these models are discussed.Suggestions on how to more effectively manage these urgent problems are as follows:first,the governance must fit the circumstance,namely,its physical,biological,and social attributes;second,the regulations and conditions regarding the government-dominated pattern are came up from the perspective of mega-governance,mutual trust contracts,benefit sharing,and social capital;and third,the government should abandon the pattern based on the single subject and adopt a plural subject governance model to integrate all the relevant forces to facilitate the attainment of benign environmental governance.

Anti-Competitive Effects of Discriminatory Licensing for Standards-Essential Patents and Antitrust Policymaking

Antitrust examination of discriminatory patent licensing fees imposed by companies who own standards-essential patents(SEPs) is a difficult issue in antitrust law enforcement. After studying Huawei's litigation against IDC and China's anti-monopoly investigation of Qualcomm, this paper creates a vertical oligopolistic game theory model to demonstrate that discriminatory licensing fees imposed by firms with patent monopoly will lead to the collection of high licensing fees from downstream low-cost firms, weaken their competitive advantage, reduce their output and market share, impede their follow-up innovations, and generally harm the social welfare. Therefore, charging high discriminatory licensing fees constitutes an act that harms competition and should be prohibited by antitrust law. Antitrust examination of discriminatory licensing fees should make assessments primarily on the basis of the FRAND principle. Antitrust examination may adopt a triple-structure method to assess the reasonableness of licensing fees, but antitrust authorities should avoid directly prescribing the level of licensing fees and should safeguard the effectiveness of transaction mechanisms based on free negotiations among micro-level entities. Antitrust remedies should follow the principle of "intervening in the price formation mechanism rather than prescribing the level of licensing fees."

A Stackelberg game model with tax for regional air pollution control

The command-and-control regulation is likely inefficient and costly.This study investigates a regional pollution control scheme with tax(RPCST)under which the central government sets the tax rate under a given pollutant reduction quota and local governments determine their pollution removal rates based on the central government’s policy.First,a one-leader-multi-follower(OLMF)Stackelberg game model is formulated,in which the central government is the leader and the local governments are the followers.Then,a procedure based on bilevel programming and relaxation method is applied to solve the OLMF model.Finally,a case study analyzing the SO2 reduction of the Yangtze River Delta in China is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the RPCST.The results show that RPCST works better than the current command-andcontrol scheme.Our analysis provides a guideline for governments to design optimal tax schemes to effectively solve the regional air pollution crisis.