This article using the database of Taiwanese land property lawsuits studies the economic effects of rainfalls on land property lawsuits during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1920–1941). The results obtained from basic ordinary least squares indicate that it shows no significant influences. However, an interesting result is that, when we adopt the approach of two stage least squares and use the variables of temperature and evaporation as the instrument variables of rainfalls, we find that there are highly significant influences on the lawsuits of land property. If 1 year comes with low average rainfalls, it means that the costs of productive inputs increase, because the available natural resource will decrease, and brings the distorted using of land property.

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This study explores whether the development of democracy can significantly affect CO2 emissions and the energy efficiencies in the countries. Database reference from Freedom House, Polity IV project and World Development Indicator was applied to analyze the relationship between the democracy development, CO2 emissions and the energy efficiency of 26 countries in America from the year 1990 to 2013. Empirical result shows that the deepening democracy has a significant impact on the reduction of national CO2 emissions and brings a positive influence on energy efficiency. The further application of quantile regression also indicates that the influence of democratization on CO2 emissions and countries' energy efficient scores is significant. The empirical results may reflect the reduction of emission or the improvement of energy efficient outcome from the enhancement of democratic institution.

With the development of Chinese economy, more and more attention has been paid to environmental protection, the implementation of water price policy affects economic and environmental changes in China. This paper analyzes the impact of water price policy on agricultural land use and the scale of water pollution discharge in 240 cities in China between 2001 and 2017, by including data from China Urban Statistical Yearbook and China Land & Resources Almanac. The theoretical analysis of this study indicates that the optimal scale of pollution depends on the local initial endowment, economic investment capital and the marginal cost of environmental pollution caused by government's economic activities. Furtherly, the economic activities have a worsening impact on environmental pollution, but when the government implements environmental protection and water price policy measures in response to environmental pollution caused by economic activities, it has a significant impact on the decline in the scale of pollution. The government has promoted the pollution suppression model in the formulation of water prices, which has internalized the external cost of pollution in economic activities and can effectively reduce the scale of agricultural water pollution discharge.