Abstract:To alleviate increasingly serious water pollution and shortages in developing countries, various kinds of policies have been implemented by local governments. It is vital to quantify and evaluate the performance and potential economic impacts of these policies. This study develops a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the regional economic and environmental effects of discharge fees. Firstly, water resources and water environment factors are separated from the input and output sources of the National Economic Production Department. Secondly, an extended Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Jiangsu province is developed to simulate various scenarios. By changing values of the discharge fees (increased by 50%, 100% and 150%), three scenarios are simulated to examine their influence on the overall economy and each industry. The simulation results show that an increased fee will have a negative impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, waste water may be effectively controlled. Also, this study demonstrates that along with the economic costs, the increase of the discharge fee will lead to the upgrading of industrial structures from a situation of heavy pollution to one of light pollution which is beneficial to the sustainable development of the economy and the protection of the environment.

The flow of a micropolar fluid through a porous channel with expanding or contracting walls of different permeabilities is investigated. Two cases are considered, in which opposing walls undergo either uniform or non-uniform motion. In the first case, the homotopy analysis method (HAM) is used to obtain the expressions for the velocity and micro-rotation fields. Graphs are sketched for some parameters. The results show that the expansion ratio and the different permeabilities have important effects on the dynamic characteristics of the fluid. Following Xu's model, in the second case which is more general, the wall expansion ratio varies with time. Under this assumption, the governing equations are transformed into nonlinear partial differential equations that can also be solved analytically by the HAM. In the process, both algebraic and exponential models are considered to describe the evolution of α(t) from the initial state α0 to the final state α1. As a result, the time-dependent solutions are found to approach the steady state very rapidly. The results show that the time-dependent variation of the wall expansion ratio can be ignored because of its limited effects.

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