| China is the largest coal mining country in the world in terms of both production and consumption.China also has the the highest mortality rate due to safety failure accidents in coal mining.In recent years,the Chinese government has published a series of laws and regulations regarding the safety codes of coal mining production.The accident rate and mortality rate both declined,however,they are still above the corresponding rates of other main coal mining countries.In addition,major accidents continue to happen,the situation of safety production of Chinese coal mining industry remains less than optimistic.Meanwhile,regulatory capture in coal mining safety code practices is often observed,more importantly,is one the main causes that explained the failure of national coal mining safety regulations in practices and in preventing accidents.Based upon the Chinese specific conditions,this thesis performed systemic study into the coal mining safety regulatory capture problems.Through theoretical analysis of the formation mechanism and empirical studies on the impact effects,this thesis discussed the paths to capture proof mechanism,which is to prevent the happening of regulatory capture.The significance of this study would be to enhance the safety regulatory effect of coal mining,reverse the adverse situation of coal mining safety production in China,and promote the healthy development of Chinese coal mining industry.The study regarding Chinese coal mining safety regulatory capture in this thesis is divided into four parts.Part 1,a systemic analysis of the formation mechanism of Chinese coal mining safety regulatory capture.Part 2,the influences mechanism and empirical study of safety regulatory capture regarding the coal mining safety level.Part 3,the measurement and evaluation of safety regulatory capture regarding the coal industry TFP growth effects,and further discussion in the development mode of coal mining industry.Part 4,the treatment path study regarding coal mining safety regulatory capture.All four parts above constituted the four core chapters of this thesis.Detailed content,discussion,and conclusion of each chapter are listed below.Chapter 3 is in reference of the PSA analysis framework from Tirole(1986).The author systemically analyzed the double principal-agent problem in Chinese coal mining safety regulation practices,which as "central government(principal)-local government(regulator)-coal mining enterprises(agent)." In addition,the author also analyzed the theory and reasoning of Chinese coal mining safety regulatory capture:on the one hand,to increase output and profit,the coal mining enterprises lack the motivation to follow safety codes;on the other hand,under current decentralized fiscal system design and political promotion mechanism,the local government,which is chasing both economical benefits and political promotion advantages fears the negative effects on local economic growth and fiscal income as well as the employment rate due to strict execution of the coal mining safety codes,lacks motivation to do so.The coal mining enterprises are in conspiracy with the local governments,due to the following the reasons:coal mining accidents are random and rare,the information asymmetry between central and local government,the penalty mechanism from central government is less than thorough,the supervision from media is considerably weak,and the lacks of external restraints such as coal miners supervision.The coal mining enterprises performed regulatory capture actively,economically such as bribing the local government officials with money and dry shares,politically such as lobbying the local government using their corresponding governmental or policy-related burdens(contribution in local GDP growth,fiscal income growth,employment).Local governments loosened the administrative licensing and safety production supervision on coal mining enterprises,allowed the coal mines to be less funded in safety investment,allowed the coal mines to operate illegally beyond designated safety levels,even assisted in faking the injury and mortality details after accidents.Coal mining accidents are not well prevented unless regulatory captures are constrained.Chapter 4 analyzed the impact mechanism of coal mining safety regulatory capital on the safety levels of coal mining operations.Based on the accident and mortality data from 25 main coal mines in China and dated from 2001 to 2011,the author applied negative binomial regression which is often used on non-negative discrete data.In addition to identifying the impact mechanism from regulatory capture,this study also examined the mismatch in local government fiscal rights,the coal mining safety investments,coal miners training,property right structure,media supervision,independence of the supervisory institute in coal mining safety issues.The study has proved that regulatory capture has significant negative impacts on the safety production of coal mining industry.This negative impact is even more significant in the areas where coal mining is a core contributor in local GDP.In contrary,the impact is less significant in areas where local economy is more diversified and inclusive.Furthermore,the study also discovered that reducing the mismatch in local government fiscal rights,increasing safety investments in coal mining,more training to coal miners,and stronger independence of the supervisory parties,all would help to restrain the accident rates.However,media supervision has not been a significant tool in doing so.In Chapter 5,Malmquist-Luenburger productivity index is constructed based on directional distance function,the regional coal industry TFP growth rates under both safety regulations and regulatory capture cases are measured and evaluated respectively,by further breaking down the productivity index into technical progress index and technical efficiency index,the main source of TFP growth is explored,then the impact of regulatory capture in coal industry TFP growth is analysed.The results show that,in both cases the coal industry TFP growth is driven by technological progress,technical efficiency is worsened in varying degrees,there exsits huge space for enhancement of TFP growth rate by improving technical efficiency.Eastern coal industry TFP growth rate is generally higher than the Midwest,the difference in the rate of technological progress is the main cause of TFP growth differentials among regions.Compared with the TFP growth under safety regulation scenario,regulatory capture leads to enhancement of technological progress as well as declination of technical efficiency,due to the the rate of technological progress was greater than the decline in the growth rate of technical efficiency,so in the case of regulatory capture,the coal industry can achieve higher TFP growth,and regulatory capture has a greater impact on Midwest coal industry TFP growth.Those results explain the reason of why coal industry purse rapid development at the expense of coal mine safety from the macro level.In additon,this chapter uses the share of coal industry growth coming from TFP growth as a measurable indicator of coal industry development pattern and systematically evaluates it.Results show that TFP growth only contributes 33.41 percent share to the coal industry growth averagely well below the capital and labor input contribution share.It indicates that development of the coal industry is over relied on capital、labor and other factor inputs,TFP growth plays a very limited role,the coal industry development has shown a "high input,high accident rate,low efficiency" mode,the need of coal industry changing the development mode,enhancing the quality of development is imperative.Based on those results,the path of coal industry changing its development mode and policy recommendations for achiving sustainable development safely and efficiently are explored.In Chapter 6,the mechanism of impact of coalmine safety supervisory institute’s enhancing independence as well as safety regulatory cycle on regulatory capture is explored and related hypotheses are proposed.Based on relevant monthly data from January 2001 to August 2010 period,a MS-VAR model is estimated,the empirical research finds that:(1)coalmine safety supervisory institute’s enhancing independence contributes to reducing the probability of occurrence of regulatory capture,which manifests that regulatory fluctuation shows a structural change,from high fluctuant state to low fluctuant state,the scope of fluctuation decreases obviously,increasing safety regulatory effect to a certain extent.(2)Regulatory circle has a cyclical impact on coalmine safety,which manifests that during the "two sessions",CPC National Congress and the Spring Festival wich is sensitive to accidents,number of coalmine accidents as well as casualties drop significantly during those special period.Improvement of coalmine safety is not through reducing coalmine production,but through local government strengthening enforcement of safety regulations,this result shows that safety regulatory cycle can affect occurrence of regulatory capture cyclically.At last,based upon experience of the American coalmine safety regulation,safety regulatory functions reassortment and institutional adjustment,agency staff rotation among regions,safety regulatory information disclosure,safety regulation paradigm shift is further explored in order to preventing regulatory capture and improving coalmine safety in the long run.Possible innovations of this article are as follows:(1)Based on the regulatory capture theory of the new regulation economics and combined with China’s specific national conditions during transformation period,this article launches a systematic study on regulatory capture existing in China’s coalmine safety regulation,including its formation mechanism,impact as well as caputre-proof measures,which enriches regulatory capture research in social regulation of developing countries in a certain extent.(2)This article manually collects coalmine accidents and deaths data(including the number of missing miners)in coal produing regions from the State Administration of Work Safety web site,based on those data this article puts an empirical study on the impact of regulatory capture on coalmine safety level,and further explores the differential impacts among regions characterised by different coal production value of GDP and regions with different institutional environment.Besides,several hypothesis concerning reasons of frequent coalmine accidents has been examined empirically in order to provide empirical basis of answering the mystery of China’s coalmine disasters.(3)This article attempts to use Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index in coalming industry TFP growth measurement.By buliding Malmquist-Luenberger productivity indices based on directional distance functions,TFP growth rate,technological progress rate and technical efficiency change of coalming industries among different regions under both safety regulation case and regulatory capture case is caculated and evaluated,furthermore coalming industry’s development pattern is studied.(4)MS-VAR model is used to depict structural change in regulatory fluctuation in the presence of China’s coalmine safety regualtion reform background,to examine the role played by coalmine safety regulatory institue’s enhancing independence in preventing regulatory capture and analyse the cyclical impact of regulation circle on regulatory capture.In addition,this article presents a set of regulatory capture goverance programs,including regulatory function reconfigured and institute restructuring,regulatory agency staff rotation,regulatory information disclosure,and regulation paradigm shift. |
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