[Biweekly Symposium] No.381, Formation of Coals Costs and Prices
Author:Unirule
Time:2009-03-27 14:13:11 Clicks:
Topic: Formation of Coal's Costs and Prices Lecturer:Prof. Sheng Hong Discussants:Prof. Yue Fubin, Prof. Zhang Qizi, Prof. Zheng Yisheng, Prof .Song Guojun, Prof. Zhang Youguo
At the 381st Unirule Bi-weekly symposium, Prof. Sheng Hong, Professor of Economics at Shandong University delivered a speech entitled “Formation of Coal’s Costs and Prices”.
This lecture was based on a research project conducted by Unirule under the direction of Prof. Sheng. The output of the project was the report “Formation of Coal’s Costs and Prices”.
Prof. Sheng first gave a brief introduced about the report. The rest part of the lecture was centered on the external cost of coal and the policy suggestions to tackle the distortion of these externalities.
In this study, the external cost of coal was decomposed into three categories. The first is “direct external loss”; the second is “prevent cost” which is emerged for investing in the measurements to avoid direct external loss; the third is “social welfare loss” which is directly and redirect produced by direct external loss.
It would require “government measures at broad sense”, i.e. taxation, quantity control and establishment and trade of emission rights, to internalize the first-sort of external costs. And the internalization of the second-sort of external costs will require “market measures at broad sense” which are transactions or interactions between agents.