Download or read book Three Essays on Natural Resource Economics Agricultural Policy and Food Policy written by Xiangrui Wang and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three independent papers in the field of Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics. The first paper is related to consumer-side water conservation policies. My coauthor and I introduce a structural water demand model based on the assumption that consumers are inattentive and apply a behavioral decision rule in water consumption. We found our model can capture our sample consumers behavior well, suggesting water conservation policies should incorporate non-price instrument to prod consumers for water saving. The second paper relates to the industrial organization and antitrust in the US beer market. My coauthor and I found that in a recent beer merger case, the justice department's divestiture requirement (a popular structural merger remedy tool) may not be effective in prevent merger brands' price from raising, at least in the short-run after the merger. This paper suggests that divestiture may fail as a merger remedy due to its certain idiosyncratic details. The third paper investigates the impact of corn production in US Midwest states on the US Reformulated Gasoline Program. We found that the US Reformulated Gasoline Program caused massive corn production in the Midwest, and the pollution from nitrogen-based fertilizer usage in agriculture reversely affect the efficacy of the Reformulated Gasoline Program, aiming to improve air quality.

Download or read book Three Essays in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics written by Dallas Wayne Wood and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Agricultural Production Behavior Renewable Natural Resources and Welfare Dynamics written by Steven Wayne Wilcox and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proportion of the world's population that directly interacts with agriculture and natural resources for their daily bread is declining amidst structural transformation (Timmer et al. 2009). Commensurately, the expectations and hopes placed on the remaining food and fiber producers in the world seems to ever increase, not only in terms of the provision of food and fiber, but increasingly in terms of environmental management and the conservation of intersecting natural resources (Blundo et al. 2018, Messerli et al. 2019, Wunder et al. 2020, Baylis et al. 2022). It is not a stretch to declare that there is a lot riding on the welfare of the food and fiber producers of the world (e.g., food security), and on the extent to which conditions that enhance the welfare of the farmer (gatherer) also enhance general welfare in matters beyond the direct provision of food and fiber (e.g., climate change, pollution control, and biodiversity conservation). To manage this state of affairs, the economics underpinning the production behavior of food and fiber producers and associated realized outcomes, are paramount to understand theoretically and to test empirically. In what follows, three applications are studied, each with a focus on a renewable natural resource of concern and an intersecting agricultural production sector where little to no empirical work has be done. The settings and questions are each broadly important and timely: * Do food price shocks cause deforestation, and if so how? * How do farmers decide whether to use managed pollination service markets, and are observed use patterns optimal? * Does the provision of index-based agricultural insurance lead to resource degradation, or improvement? Although on one level these topics are unrelated, the reality is that there are similar archetypal economic problems at the root of each of these questions, where the welfare of an agricultural agent, and the impacts from their production behavior, may or may not coincide with a social optimum. In chapter 2, evidence is presented that food price shocks, particularly for staples, can have significant impacts on deforestation (particularly through increases in price levels), that such shocks can drive smallholders to expand production broadly to address internal shocks to consumption and production, and that such land use change patterns can be casually miss-attributed to cash crop markets. In chapter 3, it is demonstrated that pollination dependent farmer's crop pollination behavior may be less static than has been presumed, that crop pollination behavior and production outcomes are influenced by adjacent land use and landscape heterogeneity, that there are diminishing returns to managed pollination use, and that reliance on pollination service markets is intimately related to the farmers production technology. In chapter 4, the roll-out of a successful index-based agricultural insurance product is studied at-scale, which theoretically might lead to resource degradation, or improvement (in this case for rangeland quality), and evidence is presented that resource degradation concerns may be over-blown, lending credence to the idea that addressing missing financial markets can enhance productivity and agent's welfare without degrading fundamental natural resource stocks.

Download or read book Modern Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy written by Harry de Gorter and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume celebrates the life and career of Gordon Rausser, pioneer and leader in natural resource economics, while critically overviewing the emerging literature in the field. As the chair of the Agriculture and Resource Economics department at UC Berkeley, Rausser led the transformation of the department from a traditional agricultural economics department to a diverse resource economics department addressing issues of agriculture, food, natural resources, environmental economics, energy, and development. This book builds on this theme, showcasing not only the scope of Rausser's work but also key developments in the field. The volume is organized into two parts. The first part speaks about the lessons of Gordon Rausser's career, in particular, his role as a leader in different spheres, his capacity to integrate teaching and entrepreneurship, and his impact on the world food system. The second part will address some of the significant developments in the field he contributed to and how it relates to his work. The chapters include contributions from modern leaders in the economics field and cover diverse topics from many subfields including public policy, public finance, law, econometrics, macroeconomics, and water resources. Providing an excellent reference, as well as a celebration of a pivotal figure in the field, this volume will be useful for practitioners and scholars in agricultural and resource economics, especially the many individuals familiar with Gordon Rausser and his career.

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics written by Rong Zhou and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics written by Garth Heutel and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Agricultural Policy Under Asymmetric Information written by Brent Michael Hueth and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics written by Qiong Juliana Wang and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Agricultural Economics written by Jayash Paudel and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dissertation gathers empirical evidence from several data sources in the United States and Nepal to provide a better understanding of the linkage between agriculture and the environment. The first essay examines the impact of fertilizer use on water quality using over 2.9 million pollution readings on nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in water sites across the U.S. Findings show that a 10% increase in the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers leads to a 1.47% increase in the concentration of nitrogen and a 1.68% increase in the concentration of phosphorus, respectively. Results also indicate that there exists heterogeneity in nutrient pollution elasticity estimates across 18 water resource regions. The second essay presents empirical evidence that farmers adjust fertilizer application in response to variation in temperature and precipitation trends during the growing season in the corn belt of the United States. Estimates indicate that farmers increase nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer use by 0.172% and 0.238% in response to moderate heat. However, farmers decrease nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer application by 0.260% and 0.323% in response to temperature exceeding a threshold that leads to damaging effects on crop production. I further find that farmers will apply 37.41% more nitrogen fertilizers by mid-century when compared to a world without climate change, leading to deterioration of water quality. I show that the resulting nutrient runoff will increase nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 9.72% and 12.91% under a business-as-usual scenario. The final essay studies the impact of a fertilizer subsidy program in the Hills region of Nepal that aims to enhance agricultural yields of smallholder farmers. Using data from household surveys conducted before and after the program, I apply difference-in-differences estimation to show that the subsidy, on average, leads to a 38.7% increase in fertilizer use among eligible households. However, compared to farmers with larger plot sizes, smallholder farmers experience a 12.1% decrease in the use of chemical fertilizers and a 21.2% decrease in agricultural yield after the subsidy program. I discuss how fertilizer supply shortages and varying access to the subsidy contribute to the negative impact of the subsidy program among smallholder farmers.

Download or read book Three Essays on Resource Use Sustainabilitiy and Agricultural Productivity written by Michée Arnold Lachaud and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Natural Resources and Development Economics written by Danamona Holinirina Andrianarimanana and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is great geographical overlap between key areas of natural resources, global biodiversity and regions of acute poverty. The world’s poorest people, including 59% of the population of Asia, Africa and Latin America live in rural areas alongside great natural resources on which they heavily rely for food source and income generation. However, proximity does not imply free unlimited access and often involves a great deal of trade-offs and risk ranging from natural weather and catastrophic shocks affecting resource availability, productivity and even human lives, to changes in governance and resource use regulations. In this dissertation, I study the linkages between natural resources use, livelihoods, governance and the environment, using the case study of Madagascar, a low-income country with great biodiversity and natural resources endowment. In particular, I study how different types of regulations and restrictions affect household resource use and well-being. In Chapter 1, I evaluate the health and wealth trade-offs of the widely practiced fire use in agriculture in Madagascar, using high-frequency satellite data to model pollution exposure taking advantage of random variation in wind direction. In Chapter 2, I study how poor households cope with natural disasters using the quasi-experiment setting of high frequency cyclones in Madagascar. In Chapter 3, I take advantage of a unique dataset coupled with the staggered rollout of a biodiversity conservation policy to study the impacts of community-based conservation on bushmeat hunting in northeastern Madagascar. In the first chapter, I study the impacts of agricultural fires on local health and on agricultural productivity in Madagascar. Every year, despite agricultural fires being illegal, 25% to 50% of grasslands and 7% to 10% of forests are set on fire due to slash-and-burn agriculture and livestock farming. This leads to great pollution throughout the island, yet there is limited empirical evidence on the health impacts of fires in the island. I first estimate the health impacts of fires by using high frequency and high resolution satellite data on fire location and wind speed on the day of fire to model pollution exposure around population centers. Identification comes from the random variation in wind direction and the frequent change in pollution source. I find that agricultural fires greatly impact birth outcomes and respiratory health of infants and that fires are responsible for over 4,000 “missing infants”, or 0.7% of all births across the island every year. To identify the agricultural impacts of fires, I use an instrumental variable strategy taking advantage of a rapid expansion of protected areas in Madagascar that led to tripling of protected areas and delimitation of numerous potential parks. I use proposed parks, areas that were physically delimited as potential official protected areas, as an instrument for fires. Delimitation of proposed parks led to reduced fire activity, however, since parks were not actually implemented, surrounding populations were unaffected by potential economic returns or changes in behavior that would raise concerns regarding the validity of the exclusion restriction. Grassland fires led to increased livestock production and yields for cassava and corn, whereas forest fires increased corn farming land and harvest, leading to decreased food prices. These quantity and price effects increased consumer surplus by USD1.884 billion per year, implying that, for the output gains to outweigh the mortality impacts, one would have to assume a value of statistical life of less than USD440,000, whereas typical values for VSL range from 4 million to 9 million USD. Therefore the mortality costs of fires alone, excluding hospitalization costs and morbidity, exceed the benefits from increased agricultural production. Given that land use rights are ambiguous and government resources in regulating forest fires are limited, a more cooperative and integrative approach such as payments for ecosystem services might be effective in incentivizing farmers to engage in less frequent more sustainable fire activity. In the second chapter, I use cyclone track data and hourly wind direction data to model cyclone exposure and study the impact of tropical storms in Madagascar. Madagascar is the second most exposed country to multi-disaster risks in Africa, and experiences multiple episodes of droughts, floods, locust invasions and cyclones every year. On average, the island yearly experiences three to five cyclones that claim 10% to 30% of annual GDP in post-disaster losses and damages. Indeed, 74% of total labor is employed in agriculture, furthermore, agricultural products including exports amount to 45% of GDP. Yet, there is little government effort in terms of risk mitigation, resilience building and even disaster relief. Looking at the impact of cyclones on household well-being along multiple dimensions, I find that both rural and urban households are negatively impacted by cyclones in Madagascar despite better infrastructure and less reliance on natural resources in urban areas. While rural areas experience more physical losses than urban areas as measured by cyclone e↵ects on housing and access to electricity, rural households are able to smooth consumption and are less prone to cyclone-driven poverty compared to their urban counterparts. In this latter group, average cyclones have no significant impact on physical assets, but lead to lower consumption and higher rates of transient poverty. I show that this is the result of a strong informal safety net between rural and urban families through informal insurance and relief in the form inter-household transfers. To provide relief to rural families, urban households reduce expenditure in non-food expenditure including education. This suggests that, while partially effective in managing risk and achieving consumption smoothing along some key dimensions, lack of formal insurance diverts resources away from potentially productive investments such as education and towards unequivocally necessary informal relief. In the third chapter, I use a unique household-level panel data to evaluate how community- based conservation impacts bushmeat or wildlife hunting and consumption in the northeastern rainforests of Madagascar, where lemurs, bats, carnivores, tenrecs and bush pigs are commonly consumed to satisfy nutritional needs. Taking advantage of the staggered rollout of the policy, I find that community-based conservation has decreased overall hunting in the study area by reducing opportunistic hunting and hunting by less reliant, richer house- holds. This effect was larger among relatively more educated households. Furthermore, community-based conservation successfully modified consumption patterns among poorer households such that illegal hunting (hunting of lemurs and bats) was reduced and substituted by hunting practices conforming with conservation practices (seasonal hunting of sustainable prey). While these results are encouraging given the increasing shift towards decentralization, it is important to note that, in my study setting, community-based conservation was found to have some limitations. First, effects did not persist and faded over time. Second, not all types of hunting were successfully reduced and the policy led to increased active hunting through weapons and traps as households respond by retaliating and over- extracting resources in fear of completely losing access in the future. The effectiveness of community-based conservation on opportunistic hunting and bushmeat purchase was found to be heterogeneous based on income and education. Better community integration and dissemination of community conservation design principles is therefore recommended as it has proven to effectively reduce illegal hunting and also has the potential of solving the retaliation and fear-based extraction behavior. Furthermore, given that biodiversity is a global public good, local users should not be the only bearers of conservation costs and alternative livelihood strategies need to be introduced for the long-run success of conservation efforts.

Download or read book Modern Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy written by Harry de Gorter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-23 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume celebrates the life and career of Gordon Rausser, pioneer and leader in natural resource economics, while critically overviewing the emerging literature in the field. As the chair of the Agriculture and Resource Economics department at UC Berkeley, Rausser led the transformation of the department from a traditional agricultural economics department to a diverse resource economics department addressing issues of agriculture, food, natural resources, environmental economics, energy, and development. This book builds on this theme, showcasing not only the scope of Rausser's work but also key developments in the field. The volume is organized into two parts. The first part speaks about the lessons of Gordon Rausser's career, in particular, his role as a leader in different spheres, his capacity to integrate teaching and entrepreneurship, and his impact on the world food system. The second part will address some of the significant developments in the field he contributed to and how it relates to his work. The chapters include contributions from modern leaders in the economics field and cover diverse topics from many subfields including public policy, public finance, law, econometrics, macroeconomics, and water resources. Providing an excellent reference, as well as a celebration of a pivotal figure in the field, this volume will be useful for practitioners and scholars in agricultural and resource economics, especially the many individuals familiar with Gordon Rausser and his career.

Download or read book Three Essays In Environmental And Agricultural Economics written by Biswo Nath Poudel and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation probes three issues of current interest in environmental and agricultural economics. The first paper provides an in-depth analysis of sedimentation management issue in large reservoirs. The paper provides a new model of sedimentation management and conditional on assumed primitives of the model, analyses different scenarios under which sedimentation removal may increase or decrease. The paper also provides insights on how temperature fluctuation, increased sedimentation arrival in the reservoir and change in the perception of large reservoirs among the public may affect the sustainability and management of the large reservoir. The second paper looks at the data from the Latin American countries to search for the presence of Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC) in Latin America. The paper is also one of the earliest papers to use forestry data and semiparametric approach in finding EKC. The paper finds no evidence of EKC in Latin America as a whole, and in general finds that EKC is sensitive to the region of choice. The third paper carries out an an empirical investigation to test for the convergence of total factor productivity(TFP) of agricultural sector in the United States. The investigation does not find any evidence of convergence while looking at the U.S. state-level agricultural TFP at the aggregate level. However, it finds support for convergence within some of the clusters or within some of the regions. The paper takes a new approach in grouping states, which makes it different from other papers where ad hoc grouping of states was done. In this paper, such approach is abandoned in favor of a cluster analysis approach that relies on data to form "clusters". Cluster analysis approach finds that convergence in the regional level (cluster) does not improve significantly compared to the findings by a wellknown previously published study which didn't use cluster analysis approach.

Download or read book Three essays in environmental and natural resource economics written by Qing Xu and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Globalization of Food and Agriculture and the Poor written by Joachim Von Braun and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world agri-food system is getting increasingly 'globalized'. As the majority moves into cities, and those who remain in rural areas adopt urbanized lifestyles the consumption of food is changing toward varied yet similar consumption around the world. This book reflects on how these changes are affecting the poor by looking at specific factors that are driving change. The chapters consider different angles to the following questions: How do these changes affect the roles and powers of various actors along the food chain? How relevant are these trends to the economic developments within the global agri-food system, and in particular to the poor segments of society? How is the globalization of foods affecting human health? How can international and national policy address possible adverse direct and indirect effects of globalization of the world's agri-food system while strengthening positive ones? The book attempts to combine both lines of inquiry, focusing more specifically on the globalization of agri-food systems, the actual and potential impacts of these trends on the poor, and the implications for food and nutrition security in developing countries.

Download or read book Three Essays in the Economics of Growth with Natural Resources and Environment written by Youssef Boudribila and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics written by Célestin Monga and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 993 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular myth about the travails of Africa holds that the continent's long history of poor economic performance reflects the inability of its leaders and policymakers to fulfill the long list of preconditions to be met before sustained growth can be achieved. These conditions are said to vary from the necessary quantity and quality of physical and human capital to the appropriate institutions and business environments. While intellectually charming and often elegantly formulated, that conventional wisdom is actually contradicted by historical evidence and common sense. It also suggests a form of intellectual mimicry that posits a unique path to prosperity for all countries regardless of their level of development and economic structure. In fact, the argument underlining that reasoning is tautological, and the policy prescriptions derived from it are fatally teleological: low-income countries are by definition those where such ingredients are missing. None of today's high-income countries started its growth process with the "required" and complete list of growth ingredients. Unless one truly believes that the continent of Africa-and most developing countries-are ruled predominantly if not exclusively by plutocrats with a high propensity for sadomasochism, the conventional view must be re-examined, debated, and questioned. This volume-the second of the lOxford Handbook of Africa and Economics-reassesses the economic policies and practices observed across the continent since independence. It offers a collection of analyses by some of the leading economists and development thinkers of our time, and reflects a wide range of perspectives and viewpoints. Africa's emergence as a potential economic powerhouse in the years and decades ahead amply justifies the scope and ambition of the book.