a multi criteria decision analysis model for carbon emission quota allocation in china s east coastal areas efficiency and equity abstract the allocation of carbon emission quotas is recognized as a fundamental and critical step towards the establishment of an effective nationwide carbon emissions trading cet market in china this paper aims to examine the quota allocation pertaining to china s east coastal areas these regions are pioneers in reformation and the domestic heavy emitters in this paper a multi criteria decision analysis model is proposed this model is based on the principles of efficiency and equity in order to reflect the true efficiency of carbon emissions a weighted russell direction distance model is employed three criteria namely capacity responsibility and potential are used to evaluate the degrees of equity furthermore different situations are set to evaluate the related indicators the results indicate the following 1 industrial provinces have less carbon emission quota increments 2 the yangtze river delta economic zone has notably improved energy efficiency and future quota increments correspond with the zone s current carbon emissions 3 circum bohai sea economic zone will be a major buyer of carbon emission quotas while pan pearl river delta economic zone currently receives surplus quota 4 the overall allocation of quotas converts from uneven to even as a result of gdp growth these results provide a reference for collaborative regional reductions in carbon emissions and for the construction of a cet market

wars foodcost and countervailing policies a panel data approach abstract withholding food or providing it during a conflict is vital for peace missions and challenges for building sustainable peace the purpose of this paper is to introduce a new perspective in considering the impact of wars on relative wages in the food sector we define the foodcost as the share of wages paid to the food sector versus total manufacturing wages we try to estimate the effect of two types of wars namely civil and international wars on the foodcost and explore the policies that are likely to reduce that cost we use panel data for 41 countries from 1960 to 1999 to answer these questions the empirical results show that civil wars positively affect the foodcost while international wars apparently do not the policy implication of this analysis is that in the event of a civil war policy makers lack the resources to exert control on a rising foodcost a rise in the foodcost could be translated into higher food prices or lower purchasing power over food either of which may have devastating impacts on social and economic well being in the event of an international war as opposed to a civil war governments have a greater capacity to prioritize and mobilize resources therefore the impact of an international war on the foodcost is positive but weak the foreign aid remains an effective countervailing tool for reducing the increase in the foodcost

life cycle carbon emission flow analysis for electricity supply system a case study of china abstract the carbon emission embodied in trade is fundamental for allocation of responsibility between producers and consumers this paper quantitatively analyzes embodied carbon emissions along the life cycle of electricity supply based on network theory a modified carbon emission flow model is established based on life cycle assessment considering power losses there is also a case study of china s interregional electricity supply system in 2010 focusing on two carbon emission carriers electricity coal transportation and electricity transmission results show that the total carbon emission flow reached 169 355 mtco 2 eq i e 4 67 of the life cycle carbon emission of this 61 1 was carried by electricity coal transportation before power generation and transmission owing to an uneven distribution of coal resources the eastern and southern regions are the major net sinks of carbon emission flows representing 52 9 and 27 8 of the total respectively because of their enormous energy imports in contrast the sanxi region and central china are major net sources of carbon emission flow the proposed model may help allocate environmental responsibility among different regions to guarantee balanced trans regional development

policy implications for achieving the carbon emission reduction target by 2030 in japan analysis based on a bilevel equilibrium model abstract in japan the national intended determined contributions indcs towards post 2020 ghg emission reductions indicates a reduction of 26 0 is expected by the fiscal year 2030 however regional emissions allowances have not been fully discussed based on japan s indcs target which considers the regional socio economic features given this this study points out a soft path for a fair and efficient quota allocation by proposing an integrated bilevel equilibrium model within a hierarchical structure consisting of the national government and 47 prefectural governments this proposed model can be changed into a single level solvable equilibrium model which can be solved by particle swarm optimization pso method the major findings show that hokkaido tokyo and osaka were allowed the largest emissions quotas while tottori saga and okinawa had the lowest emissions quotas and the equity is necessary to be considered along with improving the emissions efficiency when reallocating carbon emission quotas otherwise the initiative to reduce emissions will not take place in prefectures with higher efficiency performance based on the findings energy policy implications can be generated based on the above quantitative analysis to form a fair and efficient emission quota system at a sub national level

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

the impact of china s carbon allowance allocation rules on the product prices and emission reduction behaviors of ets covered enterprises abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission allowance to realize its carbon reduction target and establish carbon trading market china has designed several allocation rules within seven pilot regions what influence those rules may cause is closely related with the enthusiasm of emission trading scheme ets covered enterprises participation in carbon market and more importantly with the mechanism design and sustainable development of carbon market for this purpose the multi stage profit model is developed to analyze the ets covered enterprises product prices and emission reduction behaviors under different allocation rules the results show that first under the rules of grandfathering self declaration and auctioning when deciding the optimal product price and optimal carbon emission reduction those enterprises may focus on maximizing current stage profit however under the rule of benchmarking those enterprises may care more about the impact of current decisions on the profit in next stage second the optimal product price policy is positively correlated with the price of the same kind products consumers low carbon awareness and government subsidy finally along with the increase of carbon price consumers low carbon awareness and government subsidy and the decrease of carbon emission cap those enterprises tend to reduce carbon emissions

carbon emission performance evaluation and allocation in chinese cities abstract this paper presents a dea approach with multiple abatement factors to evaluate co2 emission performance and allocate co2 emission quotas in chinese cities we first consider the difference of marginal abatement costs among cities and construct the non radial directional distance function with multiple abatement factors the total factor co2 emission performance index and its dynamic change index are then proposed to measure co2 emission performance considering equity and efficiency we develop a composite index by the hybrid method to allocate emissions quota which considers co2 emissions as well as co2 emission performance then we conduct an empirical study using inputs and outputs dataset of 71 chinese cities in 2005 2012 chinese cities have poor energy efficiency and still have high co2 emissions the eastern region outperforms the central region and the western region performs worst whereas the dynamic co2 emission performance of the central region has the largest increase the change of co2 emission performance is driven mainly by technological advances as for the co2 emission allocation the composite index method encourages cities to reduce emissions and enhance emission performance through carbon trading market it also motivates cities with high historical emissions to reduce their emissions by improving technology when they have poor co2 emission performance

carbon dioxide emissions allocation a review carbon dioxide co2 emissions allocation plays a fundamental role in determining reduction responsibility at economy level or emission permits at firm level past decades have seen the development and applications of various methods for co2 emissions allocation this paper provides a literature review of co2 emissions allocation with emphasis on the evolution of allocation methods used it begins with a summary of the most popular allocation principles and criteria that lay a foundation for the development of allocation methods we then classify the existing allocation methods into four groups namely indicator optimization game theoretic and hybrid approaches the main features and findings of past studies are identified and summarized while the fairness principle prevails in earlier studies the efficiency principle has been found to receive increasing attention recently we also present a comparison of the empirical results based on ten popular indicator methods to show how indicator choice affects the allocation results issues related to selecting appropriate methods in co2 emissions allocation are finally discussed further research may be carried out to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency so that the allocation results become more widely acceptable and economically feasible

cost based modelling of optimal emission quota allocation abstract given that a fixed national emission reduction target could be achieved by imposing emission quotas among multiple decision making units under administration a novel nonlinear programming approach is proposed in this paper to obtain an optimal emission quota allocation in a least cost way marginal emission abatement cost curves are simulated based on the environmental performance and marginal emission abatement costs measured in a set of parametric directional output distance functions with multi inputs and multi outputs further the proposed model is applied to empirically investigate the optimal carbon emission quota allocation for china s building construction industry among thirty three provinces in three different regions the results indicate that the relatively developed eastern region in china has higher marginal emission abatement cost and can be imposed with more emission quotas while the central and western regions can undertake more emission reduction approximately 74 million rmb can be saved by implementing the optimal emission allocation proposed in this paper as compared to a uniform emission quota allocation the findings are of great theoretical methodological and practical significance for policymakers and social science researchers in terms of climate change mitigation

carbon emissions trading scheme exploration in china a multi agent based model abstract to develop a low carbon economy china launched seven pilot programs for carbon emissions trading cet in 2011 and plans to establish a nationwide cet mechanism in 2015 this paper formulated a multi agent based model to investigate the impacts of different cet designs in order to find the most appropriate one for china the proposed bottom up model includes all main economic agents in a general equilibrium framework the simulation results indicate that 1 cet would effectively reduce carbon emissions with a certain negative impact on the economy 2 as for allowance allocation the grandfathering rule is relatively moderate while the benchmarking rule is more aggressive 3 as for the carbon price when the price level in the secondary cet market is regulated to be around rmb 40 per metric ton a satisfactory emission mitigation effect can be obtained 4 the penalty rate is suggested to be carefully designed to balance the economy development and mitigation effect and 5 subsidy policy for energy technology improvement can effectively reduce carbon emissions without an additional negative impact on the economy the results also indicate that the proposed novel model is a promising tool for cet policy making and analyses

food aid and child nutrition in rural ethiopia abstract this paper uses a unique panel data set from ethiopia to examine the determinants of participation in and receipts of food aid through free distribution fd and food for work ffw results show that aggregate rainfall and livestock shocks increase household participation in both fd and ffw ffw also seems well targeted to asset poor households the probability of receiving fd does not appear to be targeted based on household wealth but fd receipts are lower for wealthier households the effects of fd and ffw on child nutritional status differ depending on the modality of food aid and the gender of the child both ffw and fd have a positive direct impact on weight for height households invest proceeds from fd in girls nutrition while earnings from ffw are manifested in better nutrition for boys the effects of the gender of the aid recipient are not conclusive

food marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa a survey abstract this article surveys the empirical record of grain marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa over 1930 1995 the paper addresses five key issues with major implications for food policy throughout africa a why the anticipated supply response to market liberalization has not yet occurred b why the common assumption of state taxation of farmers to support a cheap food policy does not apply in most of the countries in the region c why the temporary successes of the state led approach to stimulating smallholder grain production were unsustainable d why the elimination of government food subsidies associated with market reform has not adversely affected consumers and e why the fiscal cost of the marketing systems at least initially worsened rather than improved after the reforms were implemented in most countries the key future challenges for marketing policy are how to develop coordinated and financially sustainable input finance and commodity marketing systems for raising productivity growth in smallholder agriculture while overcoming inherited agricultural dualism and how to mitigate the effects of food price instability in a cost effective manner

marginal co2 abatement costs findings from alternative shadow price estimates for shanghai industrial sectors abstract shanghai one of the most developed cities in china is implementing a pilot regional carbon emission trading scheme estimating the marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions for the industrial sectors covered in shanghai s emission trading scheme provides the government and participating firms useful information for devising compliance policies this paper employs multiple distance function approaches to estimating the shadow prices of co2 emissions for shanghai industrial sectors our empirical results show that the overall weighted average of shadow price estimates by different approaches ranges between 394 5 and 1906 1 yuan ton which indicates that model choice truly has a significant effect on the shadow price estimation we have also identified a negative relationship between the shadow price of co2 emissions and carbon intensity and the heavy industries with higher carbon intensities tend to have lower shadow prices it has been suggested that shanghai municipal government take various measures to improve its carbon market e g using the marginal abatement costs of participating sectors firms as a criterion in the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances

does nutrition sensitive aid reduce the prevalence of undernourishment abstract this paper examines the impacts of nutrition sensitive sector aid inflows on the prevalence of undernourishment we find nutrition sensitive aid can reduce undernourishment estimates suggest that a 10 increase in overall nutrition sensitive aid would approximately decrease hunger by 1 1 2 years later on average among nutrition sensitive aid inflows we find that emergency food aid reduces hunger a year later and that food aid is more effective than emergency food aid at reducing medium term hunger a 10 increase in food aid per capita would result in a 1 3 decrease in hunger 3 years later on average against 1 for a similar increase in emergency food aid per capita generally the size of the aid effects on hunger depend on the time horizon considered in the empirical analysis our findings provide supporting evidence for the prioritization of specific nutrition sensitive investments within the sdg agenda while simultaneously challenging the relative reallocation of nutrition sensitive aid that has reduced the role of food and emergency food aid inflows

explaining the african food riots of 2007 2008 an empirical analysis abstract a sharp escalation in worldwide commodity prices precipitated the global food crisis of 2007 2008 affecting the majority of the world s poor causing protests in developing countries and presenting policymakers with the challenge of simultaneously addressing hunger poverty and political instability these food price shocks fomented violent civil responses in some countries but not others offering a unique opportunity to assess the factors that contributed to these disturbances we explore this question empirically with specific reference to africa where food riots occurred in at least 14 countries by examining the socio economic and political conditions facing african countries we attempt to answer why only some countries in africa witnessed food riots in late 2007 and early 2008 while others did not our empirical analysis demonstrates that higher levels of poverty as proxied by the human poverty index restricted access to and availability of food urbanization a coastal location more oppressive regimes and stronger civil societies are associated with a higher likelihood of riots occurring we also examine three country cases egypt mozambique niger which represent different circumstances and responses to the food crisis and identify specific factors that were associated with food protests in each case our study highlights the importance of pro poor policies and investments and improved governance in addressing the problems facing the poor and in helping secure political stability as the frequency and variability of natural disasters increase in response to climate change such policies can serve to protect the poor from the debilitating consequences of the resulting shocks

giving to the poor targeting of food aid in rural ethiopia abstract this study determines the factors underlying the allocations of food aid in ethiopia we focus on regional differences in targeting criteria and targeting accuracy according to per capita income data are drawn from two linked rural household surveys in 1995 96 we find large differences in food aid allocations across regions that cannot be explained by observable regional characteristics such as per capita income and rainfall these differences are consistent with speculation that food aid is being used by the ethiopian government to transfer resources to favored regions we also find wide variations in the criteria used to identify recipient households across regions we identify measurable indicators that could be used by food aid authorities to improve targeting effectiveness in the future both across and within regions finally we present simulation results on targeting accuracy under various targeting strategies and discuss potential benefits and shortcomings of those strategies

food security and storage in the middle east and north africa in times of highly volatile commodity markets governments often try to protect their populations from rapidly rising food prices which can be particularly harsh for the poor a potential solution for food deficit countries is to hold strategic reserves which can be called on when international prices spike but how large should strategic stockpiles be this paper develops a dynamic storage model for wheat in the middle east and north africa mena region where imported wheat dominates the average diet the paper uses the model to analyze a strategy that sets aside wheat stockpiles which can be used when needed to keep domestic prices below a targeted price this paper shows that if the target is set high and reserves are adequate the strategy can be effective and robust contrary to most interventions strategic storage policies are counter cyclical and when the importing region is sufficiently large a regional policy can smooth global prices this paper shows that this is the case for the mena region nevertheless the policy is more costly than the pro cyclical policy of a targeted intervention that directly offsets high prices with a subsidy similar to food stamps

an effective allocation criterion for co2 emissions abstract the kyoto protocol has set relatively easy targets for emission limitations for annex i parties these are not sufficient to save the earth from climate change or to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference of the climate it is the contention of the authors that eventually all parties to the protocol will have to undertake commitments equal per capita emissions with simple and transparent adjustments for the short and medium term could be the most equitable basis for allocating emissions rights it is reasonable to accept an individual as the unit of account since we are discussing anthropogenic emissions i e those which are generated by humans besides being equitable for any criterion to be successful it should be effective and implementable in order to be effective global emissions have to be restricted to a pre determined level this is possible with the widest participation which would include both annex i and non annex i countries the approach should be practical flexible and one which is easy to implement this paper proposes a very simple exposition of the common but differentiated responsibility concept article 4 1 of the fccc it aims to strike a balance between the concerns relating to the choice of the numeraire viz population and gdp in determining emission targets in other words both equity and efficiency considerations are addressed in the approach suggested herein the authors would like to acknowledge dr leo schrattenholzer for providing invaluable comments and dr tom wigley for providing critical information

carbon allowance auction design of china s emissions trading scheme a multi agent based approach in this paper a multi agent based ets simulation model is proposed for carbon allowance auction design in china in the proposed model two main agents i e the government the ets implementer and the firms in different sectors the ets targets are considered under the ets policy all agents make various decisions individually according to their own goals and interact with each other through three main markets the commodity market the primary carbon auction market and the secondary carbon trading market different popular auction designs are introduced into the ets formulation to offer helpful insights into china s ets design 1 generally the ets would lead to positive effects on china s carbon mitigation and energy structure improvement but a negative impact on economy 2 as for auction forms the uniform price design is relatively moderate while the discriminative price design is quite aggressive in both economic damage and emissions reduction 3 as for carbon price the uniform price auction might generate a slightly higher market clearing price than the discriminative price auction and the prices under two auction rules fluctuate about rmb 40 per metric ton 4 as for carbon cap the total allowances in the carbon auction market should be carefully set to well balance economic growth and mitigation effect

sector decomposition of china s national economic carbon emissions and its policy implication for national ets development abstract uncovering the contributions of each sector s driving factors to the growth of national economic carbon emissions has great significance for china in developing its nationwide emission trading scheme ets the paper applies the index decomposition analysis ida and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model to discuss the underlying drivers behind china s national economic carbon emissions during the period 1996 2012 from both sector and factor decomposition perspectives and accordingly offers policy proposals for china s national ets development major conclusions include 1 six heavy industry sectors the transport storage post sector and the construction sector are the largest contributors and hence proposed for incorporation into the ets s coverage 2 the rapid expansion of economic output dominantly increases carbon emissions the design of cap on emissions should allow for a proper increment and establish a new entrant reserve to coordinate economic development 3 as the dynamics of carbon emissions vary markedly across sectors allowance allocation needs to consider the changing sectoral structure of emissions 4 the combined effects of sectoral energy intensity and structure changes largely offset carbon emissions benchmarking is suggested as an ideal allocation mechanism and the setup of sectoral carbon intensity benchmark should synthetically evaluate the potential impacts of related factors 5 manufacturer based manner and carbon offset mechanism are respectively recommended for the initial implementation of carbon trading in the transport storage post sector and the construction sector

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

is india s economic growth leaving the poor behind there has been much debate about how much india s poor have shared in the economic growth unleashed by economic reforms in the 1990s the authors argue that india has probably maintained its 1980s rate of poverty reduction in the 1990s however there is considerable diversity in performance across states this holds some important clues for understanding why economic growth has not done more for india s poor india s economic growth in the 1990s has not been occurring in the states where it would have the most impact on poverty nationally if not for the sectoral and geographic imbalance of growth the national rate of growth would have generated a rate of poverty reduction that was double india s historical trend rate states with relatively low levels of initial rural development and human capital development were not well suited to reduce poverty in response to economic growth the study s results are consistent with the view that achieving higher aggregate economic growth is only one element of an effective strategy for poverty reduction in india the sectoral and geographic composition of growth is also important as is the need to redress existing inequalities in human resource development and between rural and urban areas

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

designing an emissions trading scheme for china with a dynamic computable general equilibrium model abstract to fulfill its copenhagen pledges to control carbon emissions and mitigate climate change china plans to establish a nationwide emissions trading scheme ets in 2016 this paper develops a multi sector dynamic computable general equilibrium model with an ets module to study the appropriate ets policy design including a carbon cap permit allocation and supplementary policies e g penalty policies and subsidy policies the main results are as follows 1 to achieve china s copenhagen pledge the equilibrium nationwide carbon price is observed to be between 36 and 40 rmb yuan per metric ton 2 the ets policy has a cost effective mitigation effect by improving china s production and energy structures with relatively little economic harm 3 various ets sub policies should be carefully designed to balance economic growth and carbon mitigation in particular the carbon cap should be set according to china s copenhagen pledge a relatively large distribution ratio of free permits the output based grandfathering rule for free permits a penalty price on illegitimate emissions slightly above the carbon price and a sufficient subsidy from ets revenue are strongly recommended in the early stages to avoid significant economic loss these designs can be adjusted in later stages to enhance the mitigation effect

emission allowances and mitigation costs of china and india resulting from different effort sharing approaches to meet ambitious global climate targets mitigation effort in china and india is necessary this paper presents an analysis of the scientific literature on how effort sharing approaches affect emission allowances and abatement costs of china and india we find that reductions for both china and india differ greatly in time across and within approaches and between concentration stabilisation targets for china allocated emission allowances in 2020 are substantially below baseline projections moreover they may be below 2005 emission levels particularly for low concentration targets below 490 ppm co2 eq effort sharing approaches based on allocating reduction targets lead to relatively lower reductions for china than approaches that are based on allocating emission allowances for 2050 emission allowances for china are 50 80 below 2005 levels for low concentration targets with minor differences between approaches still mitigation costs of china including emissions trading remain mostly below global average according to literature chinese emission allowances peak before 2025 2030 for low concentration targets india s emission allowances show high increases compared to 2005 levels if emission trading is allowed financial revenues from selling credits might compensate mitigation costs in most approaches even for low concentration targets india s emission allowances peak around 2030 2040 for all concentration targets c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

public policy markets and household coping strategies in bangladesh avoiding a food security crisis following the 1998 floods abstract at their peak the 1998 floods covered two thirds of bangladesh causing severe damage to the major rice crop and threatening the food security of tens of millions of households in this paper we first highlight the contribution of government policy interventions including trade liberalization in the early 1990s to stabilization of rice markets during and after the flood then using a panel data set covering 750 households in three rounds over a 13 month period we analyze impacts of the flood on household assets consumption and nutritional outcomes finally we present empirical estimates of the contribution of rice market stabilization and government transfers to household food consumption

linking agricultural development to school feeding in sub saharan africa theoretical perspectives abstract this paper takes as a starting point the proposition that social protection interventions involving food can be used to promote transformational change in family farming systems in sub saharan africa the purpose is to highlight the complexity of pathways to agricultural transformation associated with the seemingly simple idea of home grown school feeding hgsf an idea that is increasingly held up as win win by reviewing the hgsf literature and the main theories underpinning it structured demand localism family farmer development we expose areas of inconsistency across the literature and programmes as well as possible tensions that may arise in attempting to pursue both market and social objectives in the same initiative the arguments presented herein aim to provide a basis for moving towards clarity on 1 a theory of change for hgsf programmes 2 the conditions under which hgsf programmes are more able to yield positive agricultural development outcomes and 3 an agenda for moving forward on research and impact evaluation this research agenda also speaks more broadly to important under researched areas within the general social protection and agricultural development discourse

does food aid really have disincentive effects new evidence from sub saharan africa summary limited empirical evidence exists either to refute or confirm the pervasive belief that food aid has significant disincentive effects on recipient food production using household level data from rural ethiopia we demonstrate that while simple descriptive statistics appear consistent with the disincentive effects hypothesis once one controls properly for the endogeneity of food aid receipt no empirical support remains for the hypothesis that food aid creates disincentive effects among recipient households the macro economic evidence yields similar findings applying vector autoregression methods to national level data controlling for possible confounding variables we find that food aid has no disincentive effect on food production

optimizing cooperative carbon emission reduction among enterprises with non equivalent relationships subject to carbon taxation abstract getting enterprises to reduce carbon emissions cooperatively is an effective way of sharing the burden of carbon taxation it is easier for core enterprises to promote cooperation because of their dominant positions in the supply chain the main goal of this paper is to provide a potential method for the core enterprise to organize this cooperation successfully we explore how core enterprises should allocate their reduction investments and coordinate the selection of technology upgrade strategies so as to maximize their profits without disrupting the profits of cooperating enterprises for a supply chain where there are non equivalent relationships between enterprises the main hypotheses are that each enterprise only produces one product and each production process in each enterprise can only select one production technology and the intermediate products are mainly traded among cooperative enterprises a model based on independent carbon emission reduction model i is first constructed and used to analyze each enterprises basic information when they reduce carbon emission without cooperation considering total costs profits and so on then based on this information a model including cooperation is proposed model ii in model ii the enterprises are divided into core and cooperative enterprises and both capital and technical cooperation are considered a multi agent system is presented to simulate the negotiations between the enterprises and is then used to solve model ii finally a numerical example is considered to examine the feasibility of the proposed model the results indicate that a cooperative carbon emission reduction strategy has more advantages than the independent carbon emission reduction approach a notable advantage is that it can further rationalize the emission reduction structure of the supply chain through rational allocation of reduction investments and thus further restores profits

disaggregating energy use cap among china s provinces the 2015 paris climate change negotiations represents the most ambitious worldwide effort to date to combat climate change as the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter china pledges 60 65 cut in carbon intensity below 2005 levels by 2030 to accelerate china s climate efforts china has also committed to cap its primary energy use at 4 8 billion tons of coal equivalent in 2020 this paper proposes an equitable and efficient scheme to disaggregate this national goal among provinces a three step disaggregation procedure is proposed which takes into account the initial allocation national redistribution and inter provincial adjustment first this study allocates the incremental energy quota taking 2010 as the base year second part of the energy quota is set aside by the central government for redistribution purposes while an incremental energy quota index comprising equity and efficiency criteria is used for initial allocation among provinces finally historical efforts and inter provincial energy flows are considered for inter provincial adjustment this disaggregation scheme is flexible and can be easily extended to allocation and management of other resource and environmental targets the empirical findings can assist decision makers in identifying which provinces are likely to over consume the energy quota relative to the proposed allocation and which provinces are likely to perform better in energy conservation moreover the results show that the energy cap set for 2020 is unachievable without further action market based instruments such as an energy allowance trading market are strongly recommended to achieve the energy use target in an equitable and cost effective manner

averting a food crisis private imports and public targeted distribution in bangladesh after the 1998 flood abstract the 1998 flood in bangladesh caused a shortfall of 2 2 million tonnes mill t in the rice production and threatened the food security of tens of millions of households despite the best efforts of donors and the government the public distribution of rice and wheat was only 188 000 t more than originally planned for july 1998 to april 1999 however a major food crisis was averted as private imports made possible by trade liberalisation in the early 1990s stabilised market prices and supplies the government s direct distribution programs though small compared to private imports nonetheless increased access to food by poor households household survey data indicate that immediate relief efforts were well targeted to flood affected households as were transfers from ngos vulnerable group feeding vgf a medium term program was not targeted well to households directly exposed to the flood though the program was relatively well targeted to poor households more broadly the bangladesh experience with the 1998 flood shows that in a liberalised trade regime where private imports respond to price signals food aid s contribution to the total availability of food may be minimal however foreign assistance in kind or in cash can provide resources for subsidised targeted distribution to food insecure households assistance not possible otherwise under tight government budget constraints

stabilizing food markets in eastern and southern africa a major challenge for agricultural policy in africa is how to address the market instability related causes of low farm productivity and food insecurity this paper highlights structural changes affecting the behavior of food markets in eastern and southern africa and discusses their implications for the design of strategies to stabilize food prices these changes include 1 an increasing trend in maize prices toward import parity levels reflecting an emerging structural maize deficit in much of the region 2 increasingly diversified food consumption patterns in both rural and urban areas 3 highly concentrated marketed maize surplus which have largely unrecognized implications for the magnitude of price risk faced by most farm households and 4 the strategic interactions between private and public marketing actors leading in some cases to heightened market instability and food crises in the prevailing dual market environment now characterizing most of the region greater coordination transparency and consultation between private and public market actors is needed to achieve reasonable levels of food price stability and predictability

impacts of in kind transfers on household food consumption evidence from targeted food programmes in bangladesh this article examines the impact of wheat transfers and cash incomes on wheat consumption and wheat markets using propensity score matching techniques the mpc for wheat is on average 0 33 ranging form essentially zero for food for work a programme with large transfers to 0 51 for food for education econometric estimates indicate that the total marginal propensity to consume mpc wheat out of small wheat transfers to poor households is approximately 0 25 while mpcs for wheat out of cash income are near zero this increase in demand for wheat reduces the potential price effect of the three major targeted programmes by about one third

food aid targeting in ethiopia a study of who needs it and who gets it abstract the need for systematic empirical analysis of food aid targeting and impacts is overwhelming especially given the large numbers of people concerned and volume of funds allocated to the problem of feeding ethiopia s food insecure this research examines the efficiency of food aid targeting in rural ethiopia based on empirical evidence from a nationally representative survey of 4166 farm households a key finding of the study is that there is no significant association between household food insecurity vulnerability and food aid receipts a result of high errors of exclusion and inclusion at both the wereda and household levels four factors are identified as causes of the high level of targeting error 1 the primary beneficiaries of food aid programs are found to be households at the extremes in terms of food availability those with the least and those with the most food available 2 a disproportionate number of female and aged heads of households received food aid irrespective of their food needs 3 an inability of the food aid system to reach households outside of the historically deficit areas and 4 a disproportionate concentration of food aid in the region of tigray

poverty alleviation in mozambique a multi market analysis of the role of food aid abstract the use of food aid in poverty alleviation programs has been hampered by two problems the inability to target to households in need and the disincentive effects on agriculture in this paper we present econometric estimates of in almost ideal demand system aids for households in maputo mozambique and develop a multi market model to show that in maputo imported yellow maize is not only self targeting but that owing to a combination of the low cross price elasticity with locally produced staples particularly white maize and cross border trade in food products the disincentive effects on domestic agriculture have been negligible

child growth shocks and food aid in rural ethiopia this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled child growth shocks and food aid in rural ethiopia conducted between 1995 and 1996 in ethiopia the study observed the impact of food aid on child growth and shocks in communities on the child level food aid has a positive significant impact on the growth in height of children the total amount of food aid appears on average to be sufficient to offset the negative effects of plot damage on child growth given the fact there remains a massive amount of child stunting there must be large amounts of mis targeting of aid girls seem to be more resilient to shocks than boys

enhancing food security in south sudan the role of markets and regional trade south sudan faces serious problems of food insecurity due to low levels of domestic food production periodic droughts widespread poverty and since late 2013 renewed armed conflict this article explores market price behavior using cointegration analysis and estimates the effects of production and trade shocks through multimarket model simulations we show that market prices in the capital city juba of both maize and sorghum are cointegrated with import parity prices of these cereals sourced from uganda consistent with observed trade flows model simulations using econometrically estimated demand parameters suggest that private sector imports of maize and wheat would greatly mitigate the potential fall in consumption in the case of a decline in domestic cereal production other simulations indicate that if total imports of cereals are reduced by one third still more than two times the levels of food aid in 2013 because of disruptions to private market flows domestic prices of cereals could rise by 45 or more the article concludes that whatever measures are taken involving national food security reserves it is crucial that government policy serves to maintain incentives for private sector imports to avoid destabilizing market supplies domestic prices and ultimately food consumption of the poor

chinese companies awareness and perceptions of the emissions trading scheme ets evidence from a national survey in china abstract china announced the launch of a national emissions trading scheme ets in 2017 however companies appear show little enthusiasm for participation in the ets in china this paper identifies the factors affecting companies awareness and perceptions of ets by conducting a national survey based on an online questionnaire from may to november 2015 in seven carbon trading pilots the results indicate that companies attitudes towards the ets are positively influenced by government regulations and policy public relations management and estimated economic benefit of these public relations management is the decisive factor and estimated economic benefit is confirmed to be a relatively weak predictor a company s environmental and energy strategy exerts insignificant effects on its preference for the ets although the sampled companies are very willing to save energy and reduce emissions there exists an inverted u shape relationship between a company s level of mitigation technologies and its attitudes towards the ets the carbon price fails to stimulate companies to upgrade mitigation technologies the majority of companies treat participation in the ets only as a means of improving ties with governments as well as of earning a good social reputation rather than as a cost effective mechanism to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions

evolution and human nature from an economic perspective on individual decision making human beings have three key characteristics preferences beliefs and rationality beliefs are the probabilities with which people think various outcomes will occur conditional on information that might be available preferences are the rankings over the set of gambles that are based on such beliefs over the outcomes rationality is the extent to which people succeed in choosing optimal actions in the light of their beliefs and preferences and the extent to which their beliefs are appropriately modified by their information economists typically impose only rather weak assumptions on preferences for example preferences are taken to be transitive and sometimes less explicitly exogenous and unchanging stronger assumptions are typically imposed on preferences in specific contexts however for example preferences over time might be represented by an additively separable function with constant rate of discount despite widespread recognition that this case is a special one further attitudes to risk are often represented by the expected utility theorem which rests on assumptions that are strong if also appealing the assumptions made on rationality in particular are usually very strong that is rationality in economic models usually entails the exact optimization of preferences and modification of beliefs in accordance with bayes theorem the economist s basic picture of preferences beliefs and rationality has been subject to challenges from a growing number of empirical anomalies the proposed explanations of these anomalies involve relaxing the assumptions that economists make on these preferences beliefs or rationality for example preferences

trade liberalization and national food security rice trade between bangladesh and india abstract following a poor harvest in late 1997 and a massive flood in 1998 private sector traders in bangladesh imported several million metric tons of rice from india this paper presents evidence that this trade made possible by separate trade liberalizations in india and bangladesh in the early 1990s augmented domestic supplies and stabilized prices in bangladesh at import parity levels letters of credit data indicating the participation of hundreds of importers and a close correlation of price movements across the two countries suggest that the trade was competitive a risk of co incident crop shortfalls in the two countries remains though these have occurred rarely in the past two decades bangladesh imports from alternative sources would also enhance food availability if another production shortfall occurs but these imports face higher transport costs and would involve far fewer importing firms given the economies of scale of shipments by sea the positive contribution of trade liberalization to short run food security in bangladesh in recent years does not minimize the importance of increased agricultural productivity and rural economic growth to provide rural poor households with sufficient incomes to acquire food nonetheless the bangladesh experience shows that trade liberalization offers potential benefits for national food security by enabling a rapid increase of food supplies following domestic production shortfalls

marginal abatement cost air pollution and economic growth evidence from chinese cities abstract the directional distance function ddf with multiple bad outputs allows estimation of conditional marginal abatement cost mac that would be more informative than the unconditional mac estimated with a single pollutant applying a multi pollutant parametric output ddf approach we estimate the macs of co2 so2 and nox emissions for 105 chinese cities in 2006 2014 it is found that the period medians of the macs for the three emissions all increase over time while the medians of the macs for different cities tend to vary significantly a goodness of fit criterion is developed and used to evaluate the fit of alternative models which demonstrates the superiority of the multi pollutant model we have also shown that there exists a positive relationship between mac and economic growth finally several policy implications are suggested for reducing the overall emission abatement costs of china

food aid domestic policy and food security contrasting experiences from south asia and sub saharan africa abstract food aid both for short term emergency relief and as program food aid that helps address medium term food deficits is often a major component of food security strategies in developing countries this study reviews the experience with food aid of four major recipients of food aid india bangladesh ethiopia and zambia regarding food production trade markets consumption and safety nets as well as the policy responses to food emergencies the widely varying experiences of the study countries suggest that food aid that supports building of production and market enhancing infrastructure is timed to avoid adverse price effects on producers and is targeted to food insecure households can play a positive role in enhancing food security however food aid is not the only or in many cases the most efficient means of addressing food insecurity in many cases private markets can more effectively address shortfalls in food availability and cash transfers may be a viable alternative to food transfers in kind

ex post unbalanced tournaments tournaments create strong incentives under the assumption that the competition between the agents is balanced if at the outset one agent is stronger than the other the tournament is ex ante unbalanced and incentives break down handicaps can in this case restore incentives in practice competing agents are often overall equally strong but have different sorts of strengths then competition will typically be unbalanced ex post and incentives break down but handicaps cannot be used we show how a simple means introducing the possibility of a tie can often resolve the problem we examine under what conditions incentives are maximized by ties