Download or read book Empirical Essays on Environmental and Health Economics in Developing Countries written by Shinsuke Tanaka and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Health and environment have recently been active research areas in development economics. However, estimating impacts on development has been hampered by concerns that there may be confounding variables that bias the estimates. My dissertation evaluates a credible relationship between the two by identifying an empirical context in which the roles of confounding variables are mitigated. The first essay quantifies the impacts of air pollution and related regulations on infant mortality in China. I exploit plausibly exogenous variations in air quality generated by environmental regulations since 1995. The results suggest that the regulations led to significant reductions in air pollution and infant mortality rate (IMR). I estimate that 25,400 fewer infants died per year than would have died in the absence of the regulations, corresponding to about a 21 percent decline in IMR. The instrumental variable estimates indicate that a one percent reduction in total suspended particulates results in a 0.95 percent reduction in IMR, whereas a one percent reduction in sulfur dioxide results in a 0.82 percent reduction in IMR. The estimated impact of a unit change in TSP is of similar magnitude to that found in the U.S., but the elasticity is substantially higher in China, highlighting the greater benefits associated with regulations when pollution is already quite high. The second essay quantifies the returns of health infrastructure to child health status, as measured by weight-for-age z-scores. By exploiting plausibly exogenous changes in access to health services induced by the health policy in South Africa after the end of apartheid, I show that gaining access to health institutions improves nutritional status of boys but not of girls among newly born babies and children with low health status. The third essay investigates whether improved access to health services leads to better educational achievements. The health policy I examine in the second chapter provides a rare opportunity to credibly evaluate a relationship. The results indicate that access to health services has little impact on educational outcomes, except that boys who gained substantial increases in health access at the time of enrollment are likely to start school earlier.

Download or read book Essays on Environmental and Development Economics written by Mahamat Hamit-Haggar and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis comprises four empirical essays on environmental and development economics. In the first chapter, we examine to what extent individual and contextual level factors influence individuals to contribute financially to prevent environmental pollution. We find that rich people, individuals with higher education, as well as those who possess post-materialist values are more likely to be concerned about environmental pollution. We also observe the country in which individuals live matter in their willingness to contribute. More precisely, we find democracy and government stability reduce individuals' intention to donate to prevent environmental damage mainly in developed countries. The second chapter deals with the relation between economic growth and environmental degradation by focusing on the issue of whether the inverted U-shaped relation exist. The study discloses no evidence for the U-shaped relation. However, the empirical result points toward a non-linear relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth, that is, emissions tend to rise rapidly in the early stages with economic growth, and then emissions continue to increase but a lower rate in the later stages. The third chapter investigates the long-run as well as the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in a group of Sub-Saharan Africa. The result discovers the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between clean energy consumption and economic growth. Furthermore, the short-run and the long-run dynamics indicate unidirectional Granger causality running from clean energy consumption to economic growth without any feedback effects. The last chapter of this thesis concerns with convergence of emissions across Canadian provinces. The study determines convergence clubs better characterizes Canadian's emissions. In other words, we detect the existence of segmentation in emissions across Canadian provinces.

Download or read book Essays on Environmental and Development Policy Analysis in Developing Countries written by Demeke E. Bayou and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Environment and Development Economics written by Scott Barrett and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book honours Partha Dasgupta, and the field he helped establish; environment and development economics. It concerns the relationship between social systems (to include families, local communities, national economies, and the world as a whole) and natural systems (critical ecosystems, forests, water resources, mineral deposits, pollution, fisheries, and the Earth's climate). Above all, it concerns the poverty-environment nexus: the complex pathways by which people become or remain poor, and resources become or remain overexploited. With contributions by some of the world's leading economists, including five recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics, in addition to scholars based in developing countries, this volume offers a unique perspective on the environmental issues that matter most to developing countries.

Download or read book Environmental Economics in Developing Countries written by Achiransu Acharyya and published by . This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of socio-economic systems globally and exposed the risks that natural capital degradation imposes on human health, economy, and society. This book studies the environmental challenges faced by developing economies in a post-COVID-19 world. Exploring diverse case studies from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the volume discusses the impact that economic development and, recently, COVID-19 has had on the environment, ecology, and economy of these regions. It analyses nature conservation policies aimed at minimizing ecological damage arising from economic development and discusses the policy objectives of sustainable development. It also highlights the significant role that environmental economics networks have played in capacity building, framing of policies using ecological economics tools, and developing a local leadership trained in addressing local sustainability issues. An important contribution to the study of environmental economics of the Global South, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of economics, environment, development studies, development economics, environmental policies, and South Asia studies. It will also be useful for policymakers and NGOs working in this field"--

Download or read book Three Essays on Development Economics and Environmental Economics written by Yu Fu and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis consists of three independent essays on the fields of development economics and environmental economics. The first two papers use the same theoretical model to explain different issues in developing countries. The third paper studies the effects of population growth on the Environmental Kuznets Curve provided it exists. China's internal migration plays an important role in explaining its recent economic success. The first paper constructs a model of labor migration, focusing on the role of selection effects in determining labor market outcomes, and then calibrates it to quantify the effects of China's labor market reforms on its outputs and inequality. I show that the removal of internal migration restrictions benefits the economy as a whole, while exacerbating inequality within both rural and urban areas. The second paper suggests that minimum wage policy may be beneficial for a transitional economy in which labor is migrating from rural areas to urban areas when positive moving costs occur. With a moving cost wedge a modestly binding minimum wage can cause relatively low productivity urban workers to be replaced by higher productivity rural migrants, and therefore increase aggregate output. To achieve the second best outcome, government shall fully compensate the moving costs for the marginal migrant workers who move from the rural industrial sector to the urban subsistence sector and a binding minimum wage shall be imposed on the urban workers but not the migrant workers in the urban industrial sector. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis postulates an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and many local environmental health indicators. By using an overlapping generations (OLG) model, I focus on technological effects, where the properties of the existing pollution abatement technologies could generate the inverted U-shaped EKC and other forms of growth-pollution paths for the less advanced economies. Moreover, I examine the effects of population growth on the shape of the EKC, provided that it exists. Simulations indicate positive population growth raises the height of the EKC at every level of output per worker; thus, putting an extra burden on environment quality. Empirical evidence from China partially supports the results.

Download or read book Essays in Environmental and Development Economics written by Shun Chonabayashi and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation lies at the intersection of environmental economics and development economics. It includes three essays that empirically examine the effects of climate change and extreme weather events on agriculture in both developed and developing countries.The first essay explores how the choice of weather data sets could affect estimates of climate change impacts. A large body of empirical literature finds that high temperatures are detrimental to a wide range of economic outcomes. These effects are often identified from the within-location temporal variation in exposure to the extreme right tail of the temperature distribution. Here, we document large discrepancies in exposure to extreme temperatures across six high-resolution gridded weather data sets in the US, where weather data is considered to be of high quality. We explore and illustrate the consequences of these data discrepancies in the estimation of potential climate change impacts on agriculture. We find that most climate change impacts based on different climate data sets are not statistically different from each other. Yet, the choice of the underlying weather data set can account for up to 48 percent of estimated warming damages on US crop yields. These findings highlight an important, but generally unrecognized, source of uncertainty in estimates of climate change impacts and the need for more systematic intercomparisons of widely used geospatial data sets in environmental social sciences.In the second essay, we estimate the impact of self-reported occurrences of droughts and floods on crop and livestock net income in Sub-Saharan Africa during the period 2009-2016. Based on a pooled data set for five countries, we find robust negative and heterogeneous impacts of droughts and floods across different levels of irrigation, poverty, and agricultural diversification, including reductions of net crop income by 34 percent and 61 percent due to droughts and floods, respectively. The study also confirms the importance of poverty alleviation and agricultural diversification to cope with the adverse effects of droughts and floods.The third essay studies the effects of droughts and floods on agricultural livelihoods in Zambia. The adverse effects of weather extremes produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of household agricultural production in Zambia. The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, are expected to increase due to climate change. Coupled with high poverty levels and limited institutional capacity, the country is highly vulnerable to the impact of extreme events. We quantify the effects of economic diversification on the agricultural productivity of poor farm households with a skew-normal regression approach while accounting for drought and flood shocks. Our analysis finds that economic diversification is a strategy to increase agricultural productivity and mitigate the adverse impact of droughts and floods on agricultural households. The results also support the country's policies to encourage hybrid maize production and to provide crop seeds and fertilizers to poor farmers. This paper provides a framework to plan and inform interventions to enhance household economic resilience to weather shocks through agricultural diversification in Zambia and other countries.

Download or read book Three Empirical Essays on Environmental Economics written by Yuexia Zhu and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Empirical Environmental Economics and Health written by Stacy Ellen Sneeringer and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics in Developing Countries written by María Paola Zuniga Brenes and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Development and Health Economics written by Shamma Adeeb Alam and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is on three essays on issues in development and health economics. In these essays, I try to examine how different health issues affect economic outcomes and vice versa. I examine individual and household responses to different economic and health issues in Bangladesh and Tanzania. In the first two chapters, I examine how different shocks affect family's fertility decisions and decision to make investments on their children in Tanzania. In the third chapter, I examine how information regarding dangers of pesticide affects the likelihood of pesticide exposure for farmers in Bangladesh. In the first chapter, I examine how parental illness affects child labor and schooling outcomes using panel data from Tanzania. Prior literature provides limited empirical evidence on the impact of parental illness on child labor and schooling outcomes. I examine if parental illness causes households to reallocate children's time from school to work. I find that a father's illness hinders child schooling by decreasing attendance and hours spent in school. These effects on schooling are substantially greater for severe illnesses. There is also evidence that a father's illness has long-term impact on child education, as it decreases their likelihood of completing primary school and leads to fewer total years of schooling. However, a father's illness has no effect on child labor. In contrast, a mother's illness does not affect child education, but does cause a small increase in children's work. Surprisingly, parental illness does not have a differential impact by children's gender. Additionally, illness of other household members, such as grandparents, adult siblings, and child siblings, has no effect on children's schooling. Thus, overall, there is no evidence that parental illness or illness of other household members affects children's schooling through increased child labor. Instead, the results suggest that only illness of fathers, who are typically the primary income earners in Tanzanian households, reduces household income and severely decreases the family's ability to afford child education. In the second chapter, which is a joint work with Claus Portner, we examine the relationship between household income shocks and fertility decisions. Using panel data from Tanzania, we estimate the impact of agricultural shocks on contraception use, pregnancy, and the likelihood of childbirth. To account for unobserved household characteristics that potentially affect both shocks and fertility decisions we employ a fixed effects model. Households significantly increase their contraception use in response to income shocks from crop loss. Furthermore, pregnancies and childbirth are significantly delayed for households experiencing a crop shock. We argue that these changes in behavior are the result of deliberate decisions of the households rather than income shocks' effects on other factors that in influence fertility, such as women's health status, the absence or migration of spouse, and dissolution of partnerships. In the third chapter, which is a joint work with Hendrik Wolff, we examine how different information sources influence precautionary behavior when using pesticide and likelihood of pesticide exposure. Modern agriculture heavily depends on the use of pesticides and has successfully increased productivity, but also led to increasing concerns regarding farmers' health. Mishandling of pesticides continues to pose a serious health problem for farmers especially in developing countries. This chapter describes supply side and demand side regulations for pesticide handling, health outcomes and adoption of health technologies using a detailed household level dataset from Bangladesh. The dataset is unique as it spans the chain from: `where do farmers obtain information from', `which precautionary tools (i.e. masks, gloves) are used' and `what are subsequent health outcomes after spraying'. Previous studies hypothesized that pesticide sellers in developing countries misguide farmers regarding pesticide use. On the other hand, government field extension workers reduce pesticide exposure by training farmers in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques. In our dataset we cannot confirm these hypotheses. In contrast, we find that those famers that use information from pesticide sellers increase the adoption of precautionary tools. These same farmers also enjoy subsequently improved health outcomes. Further, our results show that the agricultural extension program does not significantly impact technology adoption or health. We find instead evidence of social learning as peer farmers, especially those trained in handling pesticides, have a substantial influence. We conclude with policy recommendations.

Download or read book Essays in Health and Environmental Economics written by Beilei Cai and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Environmental Economics and Policy Making in Developing Countries written by Ronaldo Seroa da Motta and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in the Planning and Public Policy journal of the Research Institute for Applied Economics (IPEA) in Rio de Janeiro, this collection of papers was written by economists in Brazil, the US, the UK, and The Netherlands. Individual topics include the use of the environmental Kuznets curve in linking environment, growth, and welfare issues; the relationship between international trade and environmental policy and the use of perverse subsidies; a risk analysis perspective of the statistical value of lives in setting environmental costs to determine health benefits; deforestation in Brazil; and climate change effects on agriculture. c. Book News Inc.

Download or read book Essays in Environmental Health Economics written by Florian Haucke and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Principles of Health Economics for Developing Countries written by William Jack and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developing countries present health economists with an array of situations and circumstances not seen in developed countries. This book explores those characteristics particular to developing countries.

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Download or read book Theoretical and Empirical Analysis in Environmental Economics written by Keiko Nakayama and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph presents potential remedies for some of the current environmental issues in developed countries in a theoretical or empirical manner with the interdisciplinary approaches of economics, statistics, and engineering. The book illustrates effective economic and environmental policies for environmental challenges and factors where corrective policies to date may have failed. The importance of this essential book has is related to the transition in the major concerns of the people or governments in developed countries shifting from economic growth to the stability of life and environmental preservation as their economies have matured. The environmental issues dealt with here include forest environment tax introduced as part of local taxes, air pollution reduction policies for mobile emission sources, introduction of renewable energies and power fuel cell technology, the mechanism of city agglomeration and dispersion, and measurement of environmental sustainability. In analytical methods, some research employs theoretical approaches such as the mathematical economic model or nonlinear dynamic model. Other analyses are implemented with empirical or statistical tools such as the long-run general equilibrium model, the input–output model, and the dynamic optimization model, among others.