the impact of rural electric access on deforestation rates summary overpopulation and economic industrialization are two common explanations for deforestation political ecology however highlights that good governance and effective land management at the local level can offset the impact of population growth and development on environmental degradation in this paper we provide an innovative argument derived from political ecology to explain deforestation but rather than pursing a bottom up approach to governance we take a top down approach we argue that the state can ease deforestation rates by weaning rural populations off of the consumption of biomass for their energy needs by expanding rural electrification access using a panel analysis of 158 countries for the years 1990 2000 and 2010 we find that not only does rural electrification cause deforestation rates to decrease but also that it is more robust in explaining deforestation than population growth or development our study provides two innovations to political ecology it highlights that the state can help rather than hinder local populations with managing their local environments in a more sustainable way by providing them with public goods based energy alternatives and it supplements political ecology s qualitative focus on environmental degradation with a generalized quantitative analysis of state based initiatives on deforestation our results suggest that current global initiatives addressing deforestation specifically the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd agenda of the united nations framework convention on climate change should not only assist local land managers but also work with the state to ensure universal access to electricity

the energy ladder theoretical myth or empirical truth results from a meta analysis abstract modern fuels are an important enabler of social and economic development still over 2 billion people rely on traditional biomass for their daily energy needs to overcome the negative effects of traditional energy on human health and the environment and to enhance the livelihood conditions of the poor a transition towards cleaner and more efficient forms of energy is needed understanding household fuel choice and fuel switching behaviour is of vital importance in search for policies to support such a transition process this paper adds to the existing energy transition literature in two ways first we provide a novel conceptual framework to analyze the decision environment underlying energy and fuel choices second we apply this framework in a meta analysis of existing choice models investigating energy switching and stacking behaviour in urban and rural areas in developing countries the meta analysis shows that socio economic household characteristics appear to receive most attention so far in identifying groups of fuel users while relatively little information is available on the impact of the external decision context on household energy choices

fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies indian sample survey evidence india has been running large scale interventions in the energy sector over the last decades still there is a dearth of reliable and readily available price and income elasticities of demand to base these on especially for domestic use of traditional fuels this study uses the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids using micro data of more than 100 000 households sampled across india the la aids model is expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics marshallian and hicksian price and expenditure elasticities of demand for four main fuels are estimated for both urban and rural areas by different income groups these can be used to evaluate recent and current energy policies the results can also be used for energy projections and carbon dioxide simulations given different growth rates for different segments of the indian population

poverty and conservation the new century s peasant question summary by issuing its millennium development goals the united nations has declared its intention to alleviate poverty and hunger at a global scale over the next decade but the perspectives and policies to achieve those goals have not addressed the failures of previous development efforts of this kind nor have the plans to meet the millennium development goals paid sufficient attention to the costs of rural development for wild nature this paper points up the absence of a new analytical framework for sustainability and an action program in favor of a poverty and conservation oriented rural development program to ensure that the benefits of multilateral development plans accrue to the truly poor and to the future of wild nature

pathways out of poverty in lagging regions evidence from rural western china how to reduce poverty in lagging regions remains much debated and underserved with solid empirical evidence this study illustrates an empirical methodology to analyze the pathways households followed out of poverty and to explore their potential in the future using 20002004 rural household panel data from two lagging provinces of china inner mongolia and gansu it finds that rising labor productivity in agriculture has been key in understanding poverty reduction in rural lagging areas of these provinces and that it still holds much promise circular migration has also been important in gansu though less so in inner mongolia on average rural diversification has not proven to contribute much to poverty reduction and income transfers and agricultural tax abolishment have only helped at the margin the findings from these two case studies highlight that the scope for reducing poverty in rural lagging regions can still be substantial in agriculture also when nonagriculture drives national growth

household fuelwood demand and supply in nepal s tarai and mid hills choice between cash outlays and labor opportunity abstract subsistence households are a leading source of deforestation and their consumption of fuelwood in particular is important in many developing countries yet the empirical economic examinations of fuelwood consumption are sparse particularly for rural areas where the deforestation occurs and we would argue that forest policy is often designed without a good understanding of the potential responses of subsistence households to the new policy this paper addresses these issues with household evidence from the two major populated regions of nepal market prices labor opportunities the availability of substitutes and measure of access to the basic resource are the most reliable predictive variables for fuelwood consumption and production there are however regional differences and important distinctions between the elasticities of fuelwood collecting or purchasing households with respect to these predictive variables the difference between collecting and purchasing households is notable it recommends forestry policies that target the labor opportunity and the physical resource in regions where collecting households dominate and policies that affect the fuelwood market itself in regions where purchasing households are important a second interesting finding is that fuelwood is relatively scarcer prices are higher in the mid hills and both collecting and purchasing households in this region are beginning to respond to deforestation by using their own land for fuelwood production

migration and fuel use in rural mexico many households in developing countries rely on renewable natural resources as their main source of energy collecting and burning firewood requires a considerable amount of time has negative health consequences and can cause deforestation and depletion of local resources if forests are not properly managed a transition from traditional to modern fuels can benefit households by reducing these negative effects migration a quintessential feature of development may facilitate this transition but its impacts on fuel choice are theoretically ambiguous it can reduce the household labor available for firewood collection and provide cash to purchase substitutes however it has an income effect that changes the demand for home cooked food and energy to cook it firewood or gas could be used to meet the increase in energy demand to resolve this theoretical ambiguity we use an instrumental variables method with household panel data from rural mexico and investigate the impact of mexico to us migration and remittances on gas expenditures and household labor allocated to firewood collection sending a migrant to the united states causes a significant decrease in reliance on firewood collection and an increase in both stove and gas purchases these findings have potentially far reaching environmental implications as labor moves off the farm

energy demand substitution from biomass to imported kerosene evidence from tanzania abstract we analyze domestic household energy demand and use patterns in tanzania using a detailed household survey of purchase transactions a multivariate probit model and the quaids modeling framework the main fuel sources that we study are kerosene charcoal and firewood these three accounted for 96 5 of spending on energy by households charcoal and firewood are used for cooking while kerosene is used for lighting and cooking kerosene is almost exclusively imported while charcoal and firewood are produced domestically these fuel sources are important given the impacts of wood harvesting on the environment and kerosene imports on public finances we find a statistically significant response in kerosene demand to charcoal prices suggesting a pattern of substitution but no strong substitution relationships between other fuel pairs these results which we use in a simulation of tariff change imply that policies centered on price changes may not be effective in changing consumer behavior unless alternative sources of energy are readily accessible

explaining the non implementation of health improving policies related to solid fuels use in south africa in 1998 the south african government developed an energy policy that focused on a pro poor agenda its objectives included addressing the health impacts of solid fuel use in households fourteen years later and with household electrification at over 80 millions still use solid fuels and yet ambitious policy objectives to address this situation are not being met using three theoretical frameworks institutional capacity policy inheritance and the symbolic use of policy this paper analyses the reasons why household energy policy objectives related to solid fuels and health as stated in the 1998 south african energy policy have not been implemented the results of the analysis show that the symbolic use of policy including meanings of objects used for meeting policy objectives is the most critical explanation the paper illustrates that political and historical contexts are critical to understanding policy outcomes in developing and transition countries which often experience tensions between implementing what may seem as objective policies and that matches their political and historical experiences and aspirations we recommend that policy analysts in the energy sector complement currently common methods to include political contexts of policy development and implementation in order to better understand why policy makers chose to implement certain policies over others

equity externalities and energy subsidies the case of kerosine in indonesia abstract this paper examines two arguments used to justify the subsidy provided kerosine the primary commercial fuel of indonesian households one argument holds that the subsidy reduces deforestation externalities resulting from wood gathering econometric analysis of a large cross section of households finds that firewood kerosene substitution is very limited in java where the deforestation problem is most severe so that kerosene subsidy is not an effective means of alleviating the problem the second argument holds that social equity requires the subsidization of basic needs such as kerosene it is found that the kerosene subsidy disproportionately benefits urban and wealthier households

declining nutrient intake in a growing china does household heterogeneity matter summary this paper uses chinese household data for 1989 2009 to explain why mean nutrient intake has declined despite economic growth we focus on household heterogeneity in nutrient intake response to increases in household income allowing for its endogeneity a quantile instrumental variable fixed effects panel estimation shows that rising income tends to reduce inequality in macronutrient intake in both urban and rural areas in 2004 09 this is driven by increases in nutrient intake for the urban nutrient poor and falls in nutrient intake for the rural nutrient non poor on the other hand fluctuations in prices of meat eggs and oil increase nutrition poverty

financial derivative instruments and social ethics recent finance literature attributes the development of derivative instruments interest rate futures stock index futures to 1 technological advances and 2 improved mathematical models for predicting option prices this paper explores the role of social ethics in the acceptance of financial derivatives the relationship between utilitarian ethical principles and the demise of turn of the century bucket shops is contrasted with modern tolerance of financial derivatives based upon libertarian ethical precepts our conclusion is that a change in social ethics also facilitated the growth in trading in modern financial derivatives

country level analysis of household fuel transitions abstract solid fuel combustion remains a dominant energy source for household heating and cooking in less developed countries as a result almost three billion people are exposed to household air pollution causing four million premature deaths annually primarily among poor women and children we analyze data from demographic and health surveys in 69 countries to identify determinants of transition from solid to cleaner fuel estimates from a population averaged linear model show that population density and size rural population share income inequality and charcoal production are positively associated with countries solid fuel use while gdp per capita electricity and natural gas production have the opposite effect economic development measured as gdp per capita has the strongest link to solid fuel use a standard deviation increase in per capita gdp above its mean reduces solid fuel use from 70 to 57 of households electricity production is another strong predictor solid fuel use drops by 11 when electricity production increases by one standard deviation above the mean in addition in a fixed effects linear model population size has a positive association with solid fuel use while increases in gdp per capita and the number of governments renewable energy incentives are associated with lower dependence on solid fuels

a new index of housing sentiment we propose a new measure for housing sentiment and show that it accurately tracks expectations of future house price growth rates we construct the housing sentiment index using partial least squar

the effect of labor market performance on deforestation in developing countries under open access an example from rural nepal abstract this research examines the deforestation behavior of smallholder agriculturalists as off farm labor market conditions change a model of a representative village is proposed which incorporates dependence on open access forests for fuelwood and animal raising dynamic simulations are then presented which compare time paths of forest stocks deforestation levels and household labor supply under a variety of conditions despite the open access regime assumed in the model with a perfect albeit low wage off farm labor market the agro forestry system in nepal is basically stable an alternative model where there is no off farm labor market eliminates the important features of adjustment to deforestation which generate forest stability suggesting that the availability of off farm opportunities is an important determinant of deforesting behavior and equilibrium forest stock levels

applying ethics to insider trading insider trading has received a bad name in recent decades the popular press makes it sound like an evil practice where those who engage in it are totally devoid of ethical principles yet not all insider trading is unethical and some studies have concluded that certain kinds of insider trading are actually beneficial to the greater investment community some scholars in philosophy law and economics have disputed whether insider trading should be punished at all while others assert that it should be illegal in all cases this paper explores the nature of insider trading and analyzes the issues to determine the positive and negative aspects of insider trading and how policy should be changed the best hope would be for studies to be made that isolate the individuals or groups who are fraudulently harmed by insider trading if any such groups exist then clearly worded legislation could be passed to prevent any fraud from being committed against these individuals and groups while allowing non fraudulent transactions to be completed without fear of prosecution until it can be clearly determined that someone is fraudulently harmed by insider trading there should be no law or regulation restricting the practice since such restrictions violate individual rights and will likely have a negative market reaction

rural electrification in developing countries abstract rural electrification programmes take up significant proportions of energy investment expenditures in developing economies conventional economic criteria for judging investments are not always thought appropriate for rural electrification because of the largely non quantifiable benefits that are thought to ensue including its bias towards helping the poor its catalytic role in stimulating rural development its role in reducing the adverse consequences of rural urban migration and the enabling of improved literacy rates and its general contribution to political stability this paper looks at each of these benefits in turn and asks what evidence there is to substantiate them the paper argues that conventional rate of return criteria should play a stronger role in determining rural electrification expenditures and that some of the non monetary benefits appear neither to be widespread nor as strong as supporters of rural electricity suggest while rural electrification is nonetheless important in the development process it is more usefully integrated into wider rural energy development schemes

housing really is the business cycle what survives the lessons of 2008 09 the downturn of 2008 09 has confirmed that i housing is the single most critical part of the u s business cycle ii the proper conduct of monetary policy needs to be cognizant that choices made at one point in time affect the options later and iii the best time to intervene in the housing cycle is when the volume of building is above normal and growing more so what was different this time was the rapid and substantial decline in home prices

margin regulation and stock market volatility using daily and monthly stock returns we find no convincing evidence that federal reserve margin requirements have served to dampen stock market volatility the contrary conclusion expressed in recent papers by hardouvelis 1988a b is traced to flaws in his test design we do detect the expected negative relation between margin requirements and the amount of margin credit outstanding we also confirm the recent finding by schwert 1988 that changes in margin requirements by the fed have tended to follow rather than lead changes in market volatility after 55 years stock market margin requirements are again a source of controversy the securities and exchange act of 1934 transferred to the federal reserve system the authority exercised previously by the new york stock exchange and other private sector exchanges to set the minimum margins i e down payments that securities brokers and dealers subsequently expanded to all lenders must require of customers purchasing common stocks on credit the transfer of authority reflected the view widely held at the time that the low initial margins set by the exchanges had fueled the stock market boom of the 1920 s and that the frenzied liquidation of shares in response to margin calls had accelerated the crash in october 1929 supposedly dragging the economy down with it congress hoped that timely raising of margin requirements by the monetary authorities might dampen speculative excesses before they raged out of control or in today s terms that margin controls might reduce market volatility what the federal reserve has done since then with its margin setting authority can be seen from figure 1 which shows the time paths both of margins and one measure of market volatility from october 1934 to december 1987 margin requirements were set initially at 45 percent raised to 55 percent during the boomlet of 1936 and then cut back to a low of 40 percent after the sharp stockmarket break in the autumn of 1937 the requirement stayed at that level for the remainder of the 30 s and most of the war years but was stepped up sharply as the war drew to a close reaching 100 percent i e all cash no borrowing for most of 1946 changes were frequent over the next two and a half decades

evaluating the relative strength of product specific factors in fuel switching and stove choice decisions in ethiopia a discrete choice model of household preferences for clean cooking alternatives switching from conventional stoves to modern clean safe and efficient stoves will improve health and social welfare for the 2 7 billion people worldwide that lack reliable access to modern energy services in this paper we critically review some key theoretical dimensions of household consumer behaviour in switching from traditional biomass cooking stoves to modern efficient stoves and fuels we then describe the results of empirical research investigating the determinants of stove choice focusing on the relative strength of product specific factors across three wealth groups a stated preference survey and discrete choice model were developed to understand household decision making associated with cooking stove choice in addis ababa ethiopia the study found that with the exception of price and usage cost factors for the high wealth group the product specific factors that were investigated significantly affect stove and fuel choices the relative strength of factors was assessed in terms of marginal willingness to pay and provides some evidence that consumer preference for higher quality fuels and stoves tends to increase with increasing wealth

structural breaks in renewable energy in south africa a bai perron break test application abstract in order to remedy the continuous problem of sustainable energy supply the south african government committed itself to pursuing renewable energies re as a viable alternative to traditional sources such as fossil fuels the aim of this study is to understand whether the policies pursued by the south african government in the period 1990 2010 have had any effect on the consumers and producers of re to do so the bai perron 1998 2003 break test methodology is employed to examine the evolution of re production and consumption deviations from the base case are then explained in the south african economic and policy context

household biomass energy choice and its policy implications on improving rural livelihoods in sichuan china abstract it is widely known that a switch from traditional biomass energy to modern clean safe and efficient energy could improve local rural livelihoods by enhancing the access to high quality energy and reducing the negative impacts of traditional biomass energy on health environment and living standards hence in this paper we used alternative specific conditional logit model asclm to examine the rural household energy choice behaviors in sichuan province of china from the perspective of revealed and stated preferences the results show that the fuel switching in our study region is not a simple unidirectional process from traditional biomass energy to modern fuels as incomes improve household energy choice behaviors could be not only affected by energy specific characteristics such as fuel price smoky level and safety risk but also influenced by household specific factors such as income level age and educational level of the decision maker household demographic structure number of people frequently eating at home distance to the nearest biomass collecting spot and household location suggesting that government should attach more importance to simultaneously improve energy quality control energy price and enhance household socio economic status

simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity i study a simple widely applicable approach to handling the initial conditions problem in dynamic nonlinear unobserved effects models rather than attempting to obtain the joint distribution of all outcomes of the endogenous variables i propose finding the distribution conditional on the initial value and the observed history of strictly exogenous explanatory variables the approach is flexible and results in simple estimation strategies for at least three leading dynamic nonlinear models probit tobit and poisson regression i treat the general problem of estimating average partial effects and show that simple estimators exist for important special cases copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

on measuring energy poverty in indian households summary the relationship between energy and poverty is obvious and goes both ways recognizing this this paper provides a short overview of different approaches to measuring energy poverty it then presents a novel two dimensional measure of energy poverty and energy distribution that combines the elements of access to different energy types and quantity of energy consumed an assessment of the extent of energy poverty and changes in energy distribution pattern are analyzed by applying this measure to indian household survey data for 1983 2000 the analysis shows a significant reduction in the level of energy poverty and a rapidly developing subcontinent the new measure is a good complement to conventional monetary measures and is general enough to be applied to other developing countries

preferences for domestic fuel analysis with socio economic factors and rankings in kolkata india abstract the choice of domestic fuel is a matter of great concern for households and policy makers in india this paper investigates the demand for domestic fuels when households face four choices fuelwood coal kerosene and lpg the study is based on a survey of 500 households in kolkata india the demand estimates are conducted using a two stage process where the first stage investigates choice and the second the quantity used determinants of fuel demand are identified and their relative importance shown extending the study the paper also analyses the choice of the main cooking fuel in terms of the households stated rankings of six fuels for five attributes the policy discussion indicates that subsidies have less potential to reduce polluting fuels such as coal and fuelwood due to weak cross price elasticities while increased availability of lpg and potentially also increased awareness of indoor air pollution have greater prospect

factors underlying rural household energy transition a case study of china abstract this paper identifies factors underlying the energy transition of rural households in china based on province level panel data for years of 1991 2014 it indicates that there exists the energy stacking process of rural household energy transition characterized by the significant consumption inertia effects of traditional biomass energy tbe traditional commercial energy tce and advanced commercial energy ace respectively the insignificant substitution effect of tce and ace for tbe and the significant partial substitution of ace for tce with regard to the factors underlying rural household energy transition 1 per capita disposal income is negatively correlated with tbe tce and ace consumption 2 the number of motorcycles is positively correlated with tce and ace consumption 3 the number of firewood saving stoves and the price for ace are positively correlated with tbe consumption 4 household size and the number of motorcycles and the number of appliances are positively correlated with ace consumption 5 education level is positively correlated with tbe but negatively with tce consumption 6 the number of rural energy management institutions is positively correlated with tbe but negatively correlated ace consumption therefore some policy implications are discussed

spatial patterns of market participation and resource extraction fuelwood collection in northern uganda while distance to markets is a key determinant of market participation for households that are dependent on natural resources the distance to the resource stock is also essential thus a household s location with respect to markets and the resource stock determines household market participation and associated resource degradation applying a discrete choice framework for fuelwood collection in a developing country we characterize the spatial pattern of market participation regimes and forest use all else being equal autarkic households are closest to the forest and furthest from the market buyer households are closest to the market and furthest from the forest and seller households are at intermediate distances empirical tests based on survey data from northern uganda support the predictions from our theoretical model our findings have important implications for understanding the spatial patterns of forest degradation and determining the control group when designing impact evaluations of the effectiveness of development and conservation interventions

quantitative method in finance from detachment to ethical engagement quantitative analysts or quants are a source of competitive advantage for financial institutions they occupy the relatively powerful but often misunderstood role of modeling structuring and pricing complex financial instruments in the capital markets but quants often function in a discipline free from ethical burdens models used to price complex instruments are usually beyond the mathematical understanding of financial sector participants who rely heavily on the integrity of the quant who built them although there has been some attempt to cover the ethics of mathematics applied to the capital markets designing a set of rules to guide the ethical behavior of quants cannot be made explicit and remains inexpressible because quants generally experience a sense of detachment from moral obligation there is a growing need to convert moral detachment into engagement our framework is indebted to key elements of wittgenstein s practical ethics philosophy and rawls justice principle the burden of balancing justice as fairness as defined by rawls with the inability to explicitly articulate ethical rules as defined by wittgenstein must fall to the quant we propose that the threshold delineating the barrier between ethical detachment and engagement can only be defined by the quants themselves it is their moral duty to disclose their level of ethical engagement when their models are put into practice

fuelwood consumption and forest degradation a household model for domestic energy substitution in rural india this paper disusses domestic en ergy supply and demand in rural india links be tween forest scarcity and household fuel collec tion are analyzed in a non separable household model focusing on substitution of non commer cial fuels from the commons and the private do main based on data from villages bordering a protected area a novel maximum entropy ap proach is used for estimation it is found that households respond to forest scarcity and in creased fuelwood collection time by substituting fuels from private sources for forest fuelwood however the magnitude of the response appears insufficient to prevent current fuelwood collection practices from causing serious forest degrada tion jel q24

reassessing the energy ladder household energy use in maun botswana abstract in the context of sub saharan africa s rapid urbanization improved insight into urban energy use is increasingly important based on the predictions of energy transition theory a regional shift from biomass to modern fuels has long been expected to occur in tandem with urban growth however trends observed in the region s towns and cities have often not followed such patterns and fuelwood continues to be important in most areas this paper examines the practical relevance of transition theory using a recent case study conducted by the authors in maun botswana and results previously reported in the literature it finds that despite the long term link between socio economic development and increased modern fuel consumption at the national scale the notion of transition does not accurately reflect ongoing energy use patterns at lower levels of aggregation this is chiefly because its model of household fuel switching largely dismisses the importance of active and strategic decision making by urban consumers and their responsiveness to structural factors such as relative fuel prices as the botswana case illustrates this weakness can significantly distort expectations and policies around urban fuelwood use

shocks income and wealth do they affect the extraction of natural resources by rural households summary this paper examines the effects of household and village level characteristics on environmental reliance and participation in resource extraction decisions unlike previous analyses that used case studies or regional samples i use a nationally representative sample of rural households rounds i and ii of the mexico national rural household survey enhrum econometric results show that participation in resource extraction follows an inverted u shaped relationship with income and that environmental reliance decreases with income beyond income results show that relatively wealthy households in rural mexico are less likely to participate in resource extraction and have lower reliance than those with less wealth there is also clear evidence that natural resources provide some sort of insurance for households that are subjected to negative agricultural shocks

building on poor people s capacities the case of common property resources in india and west africa revised version of a paper commissioned by the international development research centre idrc of canada for a world bank conference on poverty environment growth linkages held in washington dc march 1999

rural residential energy transition and energy consumption intensity in china abstract this paper examines the impact of residential energy transition on residential energy consumption per capita recpc and identifies the underlying drivers in rural china based on province level panel data for years 1991 2014 in rural china it is shown that energy transition from traditional biomass energy tbe to traditional commercial energy tce significantly decreases recpc while energy transition from tbe or tce to advanced commercial energy ace significantly increases recpc as is revealed by the energy stacking model per capita income has a significantly negative impact on recpc and the impact of lagged recpc is opposite due to the regulation of energy price there exists price distortion in china s rural energy market and the price mechanism functions poorly besides factors including juvenile dependency ratio and education level significantly reduce recpc therefore it is vital to integrate rural energy into national energy strategic system facilitate energy transition process and introduce the market system reform of rural energy and continue to improve the education level of rural residents in rural china

female labor force participation and household dependence on biomass energy evidence from national longitudinal data this research received financial support from the food policy institute at the australian national university

ethics fairness and efficiency in financial markets 1993 ethics fairness and efficiency in financial markets financial analysts journal vol 49 no 6 pp 21 29

the population problem theory and evidence this study is concerned with the relationships among population growth poverty and environmental degradation with particular focus on the situation in developing countries the author rejects the concept of a general theory of fertility behavior in favor of an interpretation of these relationships which might be applicable to certain situations in the poorest parts of the indian subcontinent and sub saharan africa such situations include unacceptable risks of maternal death for poor illiterate women and a condemnation to extreme poverty in conditions of the deterioration of local resources and of the environment the author concludes that population growth rates are too high in certain specific areas and that an appropriate policy reaction to such conditions would be to try to change the options that men and women face so that their reasoned choice would be to lower their fertility

stoves or sugar willingness to adopt improved cookstoves in malawi malawi has set a target of adoption of two million improved cookstoves ics by 2020 meeting this objective requires knowledge about determinants of adoption particularly in rural areas where the cost of traditional cooking technologies and fuels are non monetary and where people have limited capacity to purchase an ics we conducted a discrete choice experiment with 383 households in rural malawi asking them if they would chose a locally made ics or a package of sugar and salt of roughly equal value six months later we assessed adoption and stove use patterns sixty six percent of households chose the ics we find that having a larger share of crop residues in household fuel supply awareness of the environmental impacts of woodfuel reliance time the primary cook devotes to collecting fuelwood and peer effects at the village level increase the odds of choosing the ics having a large labor supply for fuelwood collection and experience with a non traditional cooking technology decreased the odds of choosing the ics in a rapid assessment six months after stoves were distributed we found 80 of households were still using the ics but not exclusively our findings suggest considerable potential for wide scale adoption of ics in malawi

poverty and environmental degradation a review and analysis of the nexus abstract there is much controversy surrounding the poverty environmental degradation nexus the predominant school of thought argues that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and if policy makers want to address environmental issues then they must first address the poverty problem another school of thought argues that a direct link between poverty and environmental degradation is too simplistic and the nexus is governed by a complex web of factors in this paper a formal structure for analyzing the complex web of factors is formulated and used to review the existing literature on the links between poverty and the degradation of four natural resource sectors the analysis highlights the important role institutional and market failure in encouraging agents from various income groups to exhibit unsustainable activities which in turn forces some of the agents to fall into poverty another important factor is the role of conflicts between different agents income groups in the povertyenvironmental degradation nexus the analysis also highlights the presence of feedback loops between environmental degradation and poverty

startup costs and the decision to switch from firewood to gas fuel firewood remains a key source of energy for households in developing countries contributing to forest degradation and deforestation the adoption of alternative fuels may be hindered by high startup costs and this problem may be compounded by restrictions in credit availability we use survey data to examine how credit access affects firewood consumption in guatemala our results suggest that access to credit plays a statistically significant role in determining firewood consumption through its effect on the ability to purchase a gas stove however simulations suggest that these effects are small and that subsidizing stoves would be amore promising policy for reducing firewood consumption

risky business the allocation of capital abstract in models of the firm a mean preserving spread in the price of output increases the expected value of profits and frequently the firm s demand for capital these results seem to contradict the conventional wisdom from financial asset pricing models where an increase in an asset s risk decreases the demand for that asset this paper shows that in general equilibrium an increase in exogenous risk usually increases expected output in that technology the result from the theory of the firm but it may also increase the risk of that technology the results from finance an increase in exogenous risk always reallocates capital toward less risky businesses

inequality as a determinant of malnutrition and unemployment policy this paper explores the policy implications that are obtained once it is recognized that at low nutrition intakes a person s productivity is an increasing function of intake in the context of a fully general equilibrium model it is shown that if aggregate assets in an economy are neither large nor small certain patterns of lorenz improving asset redistributions or nutrition transfers increase aggregate output and reduce the volume of involuntary unemployment and the incidence of undernourishment copyright 1987 by royal economic society

household preferences for cooking fuels and inter fuel substitutions unlocking the modern fuels in the nepalese household different cooking fuels are associated with various economic and environmental challenges such as increased economic costs indoor air pollution deforestation and deterioration of public health in this study we assess the impact of various socioeconomic factors in a household s cooking fuel choice and motive for making a transition toward cleaner fuels this study uses household level cross sectional data 2011 and pooled data 1996 2004 and 2011 from the nepal living standard survey we use multinomial and binomial logit models for the empirical analysis the results suggest that along with household income other social and ecological factors play a critical role in inter fuel switching decisions we find that transferring property rights of government owned forests to the communities encourages households to move towards cleaner cooking fuels we also find that household head s education distance to the firewood sources energy access status and household income are significant factors influencing the households fuel choice decisions the policy implication is that increasing information spillover involving local communities in forest management and expanding alternative socioeconomic opportunities such as jobs and modern fuels in the remote regions play a vital role in encouraging the households to move towards cleaner energy sources

welfare impacts of rural electrification a panel data analysis from vietnam abstract most past studies on the development impact of rural electrification have relied on cross sectional surveys comparing households with and without electricity this study tests the validity of the perceived correlation between welfare outcomes and rural electrification and quantifies electricity s benefits on the basis of sound econometric techniques that control for endogeneity bias the study used panel surveys conducted in rural vietnam in 2002 and 2005 covering some 1 120 households in 41 communes by 2005 all surveyed communes had connected to the grid and four fifths of their households had a connection the econometric estimations suggest grid electrification s positive effects on both household income and expenditure and education we find differential returns to electricity for commune and household level connection the former generates externality benefiting the poor more than the rich farm more than nonfarm income and girls over boys for schooling outcome conversely the latter

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

identifying a sustained pathway to multidimensional poverty reduction evidence from two chinese provinces poor rural households in developing countries often endure many faceted burdens including monetary poverty nutrition deficiency and energy shortage due to reliance on limited local natural resourc

environmental income and rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in cifor s poverty environment network pen environmental income accounts for 28 of total household income 77 of which comes from natural forests environmental income shares are higher for low income households but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought the poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests in absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile compared to the two lowest quintiles

common drifting volatility in large bayesian vars the general pattern of estimated volatilities of macroeconomic and financial variables is often broadly similar we propose two models in which conditional volatilities feature comovement and study them using u s macroeconomic data the first model specifies the conditional volatilities as driven by a single common unobserved factor plus an idiosyncratic component we label this model bvar with general factor stochastic volatility bvar gfsv and we show that the loss in terms of marginal likelihood from assuming a common factor for volatility is moderate the second model which we label bvar with common stochastic volatility bvar csv is a special case of the bvar gfsv in which the idiosyncratic component is eliminated and the loadings to the factor are set to 1 for all the conditional volatilities such restrictions permit a convenient kronecker structure for the posterior variance of the var coefficients which in turn permits estimating the model even with large datasets while perhaps misspecifi

the ecological footprint of poverty alleviation evidence from mexico s oportunidades program abstract we study the consequences of poverty alleviation programs for environmental degradation we exploit the community level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program s initial randomized rollout to explore household responses we find that additional income raises consumption of land intensive goods and increases deforestation the observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure this suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

on the sign of the investment uncertainty relationship understanding the effects of uncertainty over any decision variable has fascinated economists for a long time risk aversion and incomplete markets are likely to make the investment uncertainty relationship negative e g roger craine 1989 joseph zeira 1989 what happens in the absence of risk aversion and incomplete markets is however ambiguous richard hartman 1972 and andrew b abel 1983 1984 1985 found that in the presence of symmetric convex costs of adjustment mean preserving increases in price uncertainty raise investment of a competitive firm as long as the profit function is convex in prices on the other hand the recent literature on irreversible investment e g robert s pindyck 1988 giuseppe bertola 1988 has shown that increases in uncertainty lower investment all these results have been derived under either risk neutrality or complete markets intuition suggests that the explanation for such a difference lies with the asymmetric nature of adjustment costs in the irreversible investment case as compared with the symmetry of the adjustment cost mechanisms proposed by abel and hartman although this intuition is confirmed in this paper asymmetric adjustment costs are shown not to be sufficient to explain why the results differ in fact a more hidden but at least as important difference between these two literatures is that the former assumes perfect competition and constant returns to scale whereas the latter assumes either imperfect competition or decreasing returns to scale or both 2 the purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of the decreasing marginal return to capital assumption due to either imperfect competition or decreasing returns to scale or both in determining the effects of adjustment cost asymmetries on the sign of the response of investment to changes in uncertainty under risk neutrality for this the paper develops a simple model with a cost of adjustment mechanism general enough to consider both symmetric convexity and irreversibility as special cases one of the most important findings is the lack of robustness of the negative relationship between investment and uncertainty under asymmetric adjustment costs3 to changes in the degree of competition in fact when firms are nearly competitive the conclusion of hartman and of abel holds no matter how asymmetric adjustment costs are studying adjustment cost mechanisms has a central role in understanding the dynamics of investment and its business cycle implications but conclusive results about the sign of the instantaneous relationship between uncertainty and investment should not be department of economics columbia university new york ny 10027 i am grateful to giuseppe bertola prajit dutta glen hubbard anil kashyap richard lyons and the referees for their useful comments 1the financial literature on investment has considered risk aversion through a premium in the discount rate determined by the capm capital asset pricing model intertemporal capm or consumption capm however often this discount rate is left unchanged when studying the response of investment to uncertainty changes e g pindyck 1988 pp 974 5 thereby omitting the effect of changes in uncertainty on investment due to risk aversion and incomplete markets 2in the typical version of the irreversible investment problem there is no cost of upward adjustments thus imperfect competition and or decreasing returns to scale are required to bound the size of the firm 3in this paper asymmetric adjustment cost refers to the case in which it is more expensive to adjust downward than upward certainly the opposite case is a trivial extension of the case studied in this paper

the changing transmission of uncertainty shocks in the u s this article investigates if the impact of uncertainty shocks on the u s economy has changed over time to this end we develop an extended factor augmented vector autoregression var model that simultaneously allows the estimation of a measure of uncertainty and its time varying impact on a range of variables we find that the impact of uncertainty shocks on real activity and financial variables has declined systematically over time in contrast the response of inflation and the short term interest rate to this shock has remained fairly stable simulations from a nonlinear dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model suggest that these empirical results are consistent with an increase in the monetary authorities antiinflation stance and a flattening of the phillips curve supplementary materials for this article are available online

the heart kuznets curve understanding the relations between economic development and cardiac conditions abstract as countries turn wealthier some health indicators such as child mortality seem to have well defined trends however others including cardiovascular conditions do not follow clear linear patterns of change with economic development abnormal blood pressure is a serious health risk factor with consequences for population growth and longevity as well as public and private expenditure in health care and labor productivity this also increases the risk of the population in certain pandemics such as covid 19 to determine the correlation of income and blood pressure we analyzed time series for the mean systolic blood pressure sbp of men s population mmhg and nominal gross domestic product per capita gdppc for 136 countries from 1980 to 2008 using regression and statistical analysis by pearson s correlation r our study finds a trend similar to an inverted u shaped curve or a heart kuznets curve there is a positive correlation increase gdppc increase sbp in low income countries and a negative correlation in high income countries increase gdppc decrease sbp as country income rises people tend to change their diets and habits and have better access to health services and education which affects blood pressure however the latter two may not offset the rise in blood pressure until countries reach a certain income investing early in health education and preventive health care could avoid the sharp increase in blood pressure as countries develop and therefore avoiding the heart kuznets curve and its economic and human impacts

rural household energy consumption the effects of access to electricity evidence from south africa this paper examines household energy consumption patterns in rural areas in the light of energy transition theories in particular the study aims to identify the effects of access to electricity on fuel choice the analysis uses data from an extensive household survey conducted in south africa and examines the prevalence of different fuels energy expenditure the end uses of fuels and multiple fuel use patterns it is concluded that evidence exists for the presence of an energy transition in rural households largely driven by income access to electricity affects the nature of this transition and there is weak evidence to suggest that it accelerates the process

domestic technology consumption economies of scale and poverty evidence from sri lanka while it is well known that new technologies enhance consumer welfare the manner in which these technologies impact the ability to realize economies of scale in consumption is not well understood we use sri lankan household data to examine how the adoption of new technologies by households positively impacts their ability to achieve household economies of scale this suggests that new technologies not only deliver a greater variety of consumption goods to consumers but they may also play an important role in enabling large households to escape poverty by lowering the per capita costs of maintaining a given standard of living given the importance of consumption economies of scale in the measurement of poverty this study provides some insights on the extent to which the number of poor households changes when food consumption scale economies due to technology adoption in the domestic sphere are incorporated

are forest incomes sustainable firewood and timber extraction and productivity in community managed forests in nepal summary lack of combined forest productivity and income studies means there is scant evidence for the sustainability of rural household level forest incomes in developing countries this study examines levels and patterns of forest increment wood product extraction and household level incomes in three community managed forests in nepal using data from 240 permanent sample plots and a structured household survey conducted in 2006 and 2009 n 507 and 558 respectively we find that analyses of sustainability need to recognize the complexity of forest stand utilization and that there is considerable scope by altering how existing local forest management rules are implemented for increasing rural household forest incomes while keeping harvesting levels sustainable

rural household energy consumption with the economic development in china stages and characteristic indices abstract this paper discusses history variance and general features on rural household energy consumption with the economic development in china energy shortage has been a long standing problem in rural areas of china the average effective energy consumption was 0 46 0 54 kgce per day per household in the 1960s and 1970s the reason for this is that the rural household energy supply mainly relies on the available amounts of local natural energy resources the problem of cooking fuel shortage was basically solved in the early 1980s since more straw and stalks were produced due to the rapid development of agriculture the process of energy commercialization also started from the early 1980s due to the availability of coal fuel oil and other energy sources in the market and the reconstruction of rural power supply network energy consumption was 369 8 kgce per capita with 30 of commercial energy consumption and the effective heat per capita per day was 0 64 kgce in 1995 a closer relationship was found between household energy consumption level structure and family income along with the economic development this paper analyzed the rural household energy consumption of three typical regions i e out of poverty well off and rich regions in terms of effective heat per capita per day percentage of commercial energy consumption in total effective heat electricity consumption per capita and room temperature of northern areas in winter

the ethics of insider trading revisited following manne 1966 insider trading and the stock market new york free press we introduce a distinction between insider trading and market manipulation on the one hand and corporate insiders versus misappropriators on the other hand this gives rise to four types of alleged inside transactions we argue that the literature on insider trading has often targeted inside transactions type ii iii and iv but that these arguments do not necessarily hold for type i transactions we look for consequentionalist as well as non consequentionalist arguments against type i transactions and demonstrate that these are hard to find throughout the article we refer extensively to the economic literature on insider trading in order to overcome a relative divide between the economic legal and philosophical discussion on insider trading

economic growth and the rise of forests although forests have diminished globally over the past 400 years forest cover has increased in some areas including india in the last two decades aggregate time series evidence on forest growth rates and income growth across countries and within india and a newly assembled data set that combines national household survey data census data and satellite images of land use in rural india at the village level over a 29 year period are used to explore the hypothesis that increases in the demand for forest products associated with income and population growth lead to forest growth the evidence is consistent with this hypothesis which also shows that neither the expansion of agricultural productivity nor rising wages in india increased local forest cover

application of an almost ideal demand system aids to ethiopian rural residential energy use panel data evidence abstract it is well known that poor rural households in low income economies are reliant on traditional fuels to meet basic domestic energy needs but little is known about the specific underlying socio economic drivers of residential fuel choices in ethiopia i used the linear approximation almost ideal demand system laaids with normalized prices to compute expenditure elasticity and a multinomial logit model mlm to examine household fuel use the laaids model result showed that expenditure was elastic for modern fuels but inelastic for traditional fuels regression results from the mlm indicated that fuel choice behaviour of rural households could be more accurately described as fuel stacking behaviour as opposed to the energy ladder hypothesis in rural areas household fuel choice may be constrained by limited access to commercial fuels and efficient cook stoves supply dependency and affordability consumer preferences and a web of other intricate factors rural households had less incentive for fuel switching due to underlying factors and the availability of fuel wood without direct financial cost with continued deforestation and receding forests households are expected to develop inter fuel substitution and switching behaviour conditional on access to modern energy technologies

urban fuelwood challenges and dilemmas abstract this paper explores the use of fuelwood in third world cities the importance of fuelwood and the factors which condition its use in cities are set out and three fuelwood problems are identified the cost to urban consumers fuel supply security and the impact of urban fuelwood markets on rural areas urban fuelwood interventions are evaluated with four categories identified interventions in marketing conservation increased wood production and fuel switching of these fuel switching by improved supply systems and increased production from smallholders and better management of natural woodlands appear to have the greatest potential the need for flexibility community participation in planning is stressed

connecting political economies of energy in south africa abstract the south african energy debate is and will remain a heated one given south africa s history of racial inequality and contemporary concerns around sustainability much of it rightly focuses on the links between energy poverty and the environment yet many contributions to the mainstream debate seem to have a somewhat one sided focus that might hamper rather than stimulate the understanding of these links they either display a strong technical quantitative bias and or lean towards rather simplistic ideas about policy processes and dynamics the article argues that many of these analyses could benefit greatly from a critical focus on the political economy of energy the political economic power structures that influence both many energy policies and the issues of energy equality and sustainability two major global developments emphasise the importance of this focus the recent financial crisis and south africa s role in the increasingly tense geopolitics of energy in africa the article concludes with some suggestions on how currently disparate political economies of energy could be better connected

shadow wages and peasant family labour supply an econometric application to the peruvian sierra a striking feature of developing economies is the large proportion of the work force that is self employed lack of widespread labor market participation in the agricultural sector can pose a major obstacle to the empirical implementation of economic models of the peasant household whether because wage data are simply not available or because the assumptions required to make use of wage data stretch the bounds of credulity this paper develops a methodology for estimating a structural labor supply model for primarily self employed peasant households which holds under a general agricultural technology and set of labor market conditions the unique feature of the approach is that the opportunity cost of time or shadow wage of household workers is explicitly estimated from an agricultural production function and is subsequently used to identify a set of structural labor supply parameters recent household survey data from rural peru is employed to estimate and perform various diagnostic tests on the model the empirical findings lend support to the hypothesis that peasant households allocate their members time as if to maximize a family utility function and moreover demonstrate the tractability of the shadow wage methodology and its usefulness in estimating more elaborate time allocation models

determinants of electricity demand for newly electrified low income african households access to clean affordable and appropriate energy is an important enabler of development energy allows households to meet their most basic subsistence needs it is a central feature of all the millennium development goals mdgs and while a lack of access to energy may not be a cause of poverty addressing the energy needs of the impoverished lets them access services which in turn address the causes of poverty while much is known about the factors affecting the decisions made when choosing between fuel types within a household few quantitative studies have been carried out in south africa to determine the extent to which these factors affect energy choice decisions it is assumed that the factors traditionally included in economic demand such as price and income of the household affect choice tastes and preferences as well as external factors such as distance to fuel suppliers are expected to influence preferences this study follows two typical low income rural sites in south africa antioch and garagapola where the electricity basic services support tariff ebsst was piloted in 2002 the ebsst is set at 50 kwh month per household for low domestic consumers this is worth approximately r20 1 7us 3 this subsidy is a lifeline tariff where households receive the set amount of units per month free of charge irrespective of whether more units are purchased these data collected in 2001 and 2002 recently collated with detailed electricity consumption data allow us to determine the drivers of electricity consumption within these households the sample analysed is taken from the initial phase of the study when no fbe had been introduced to the households this enabled the study presented here to make use of the well populated datasets to assess what affects the electricity use decision in these households this paper attempts to assess which factors affected the decision making process for electricity consumption within these households a brief history of the electricity industry and the electrification is provided and the theoretical background for the electricity consumption model is provided it was found that income woodfuel usage iron ownership and credit obtained were significant in determining consumption levels within these households price and cross price elasticities were difficult to assess due to lack of data within the sample the results have many possible implications for policy including the effect that easily obtained credit has for low income households

regulating financial markets protecting us from ourselves and others the current global financial and economic crisis highlights the ongoing tug of war between those who pull toward free markets and those who pull toward strict regulation of markets between those who pull toward libertarianism and those who pull toward paternalism rising stock markets and economic prosperity empower those who favor free markets and libertarianism stock market crashes and economic recessions empower those who favor strict regulation and paternalism this article discusses the current crisis against the backdrop of earlier crises and focuses on margin regulations which limit leverage suitability regulations which require providers of financial products to act in the interests of their clients blue sky laws which prohibit securities deemed unfair or unduly risky and mandatory disclosure regulations which require providers of financial products to disclose pertinent information even if potential buyers do not ask for it

who adopts lpg as the main cooking fuel and why empirical evidence on ghana based on national survey the aim of this paper is to identify the factors that influence the probability of adopting lpg as the main cooking fuel in ghana using household level data gleaned from last two nationwide household surveys glss 5 glss 6 using a flexible semi parametric specification the following were uncovered first we find socioeconomic and demographic factors such as income education access to urban infrastructure and location of household as key drivers of households choice of lpg as main cooking energy source again the influences of these factors are stable across time and with a strong price effect the evidence shows that urban households with better socioeconomic and demographic factors are likely to adopt lpg as the main cooking fuel relative to households in rural areas and also urban households with poor socioeconomic and demographic factors finally we observe that the imposition of fully parametric structure functional form prior to estimation on factors such as age of household head income and household size as done in the literature is inappropriate at least in the case of ghana and tend to bias the marginal effects there is strong evidence of variations in the response rate of lpg adoption over the domains of income household size and the age of the household head the results suggest a policy dichotomy between rural and urban dwellers for it to be effective

the impact of the household decision environment on fuel choice behavior abstract consumer preferences for fuels and alternative cookstove technologies in kenya are examined focusing on household internal and external determinants driving choice behavior in a choice experiment the potential for a transition towards cleaner and more efficient fuels and technologies is assessed by zooming in on three fuel stove combinations we find substantial demand and positive willingness to pay for the fuel stove combinations in three locations representing different decision environments demand is significantly higher in the peri urban and the resource abundant rural location than in the resource scarce rural location the presence of better developed consumer markets for fuels in these locations functions as an important driver for cookstove adoption although charcoal and ethanol stoves are preferred over improved firewood stoves continued firewood usage is expected energy switching behavior cannot be substantiated instead energy stacking is more likely where charcoal and ethanol add to and extend a household s energy portfolio

bioenergy and rural development the role of agroforestry in a tanzanian village economy recent papers indicate that decentralized bioenergy crop production offers increased market access and income diversification strategies for the rural population the analyses concentrate on the potential effects of newly discussed crops such as jatropha curcas cassava and sugarcane on macro level thereby two aspects are neglected the income effects on micro level and the integration of traditional firewood production systems for comparison to fill this gap an environmentally extended social accounting matrix esam at the village level is developed and applied to a rural village in tanzania the objective is first to explore the integration of agroforestry systems in rural smallholder systems and second to analyze income effects of agricultural biomass production for bioenergy purposes in comparison to firewood production in order to distinguish the use of firewood from public and private tree resources environmental accounts for changes in tree stocks public and private are included findings indicate the importance of including common firewood production as a reference point the highest income effect for the poorest households derives from agroforestry which households use as a source of firewood and fruits for sale or home consumption followed by j curcas sugarcane and finally cassava agroforestry in general has been also found to substantially release the pressure on public forest reserves

fairness outside the cocoon investment bankers security analysts traders and other finance professionals often behave as if they lived in a cocoon they need to recognize that they live under the community s rules of fairness as well as the market s rules through anecdotes quotations and survey reports this article discusses how internal and external obstacles keep finance professionals from perceiving the community s rules of fairness rules that often make their way into the law ultimately those who fail to understand and follow the community rules of fairness are taking risks they would be wise to avoid

producing woodfuel for urban centers in the democratic republic of congo a path out of poverty for rural households woodfuel is a renewable energy source with good potential for climate change mitigation in the democratic republic of congo drc the sector employs over 300 000 people for the supply of kinshasa alone but the benefits to the poor are often unknown this paper analyzes the contribution of commercial woodfuel production to livelihoods and poverty reduction in the drc woodfuel revenues especially those of charcoal contribute substantially to producers household income ranging from 12 for fuelwood producers around kisangani to 75 for charcoal producers around kinshasa it supports basic needs and investments in other livelihood activities for 82 of charcoal producers and 65 of fuelwood producers which helps to reduce poverty the contribution of woodfuel commercialization to poverty reduction should be part of energy and forestry policies

income variance dynamics and heterogeneity recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance in this paper the assumption of i i d income innovations used in previous empirical studies is removed and the focus of the analysis is placed on models for the conditional variance of income shocks which is related to the measure of risk emphasized by the theory we first discriminate amongst various models of earnings determination that separate income shocks into idiosyncratic transitory and permanent components we allow for education and time specific differences in the stochastic process for earnings and for measurement error the conditional variance of the income shocks is modelled as a parsimonious arch process with both observable and unobserved heterogeneity the empirical analysis is conducted on data drawn from the 1967 1992 panel study of income dynamics we find strong evidence of sizeable arch effects as well as evidence of unobserved heterogeneity in the variances

rural household energy use and its determinants in china how important are influences of payment for ecosystem services vs other factors abstract fuelwood is an essential environmental good for livelihood in rural china heavy reliance on fuelwood is associated with numerous negative externalities due to decades of rapid economic growth in china we hypothesize that the increase in rural household income would reduce reliance on fuelwood using data from a survey of 481 households conducted in 2014 we examined the effects of two payments for ecosystem services programs the conversion of cropland to forest program ccfp and the ecological welfare forest program ewfp on energy use along with other factors we found that the ccfp did not significantly affect fuel choice nor the quantity of fuelwood used but households with more forestland in ewfp were less likely to adopt modern fuels and likely to use more fuelwood household per capita annual income was the main factor promoting adoption of modern fuels while household size was the most important factor determining the quantity of fuelwood used per capita overall the gradually increasing adoption of modern fuels has thus far not resulted in any significant abandonment of fuelwood fuelwood remains the dominant fuel across all income groups suggesting that households in the study area are in the early stages of the energy transition

time varying impact of uncertainty shocks on the us housing market abstract this paper investigates the impact of uncertainty shocks on the housing market of the united states using the time varying parameter factor augmented vector autoregression tvp favar we use a comprehensive quarterly time series dataset on real economic activity price and financial variables besides housing market variables covering the period 1963 q1 to 2014 q3 in addition to housing prices we also consider variables related to home sales permits and starts in general the results of the cumulative response of housing variables to a one standard deviation positive uncertainty shock at the one four eight and twelve quarter horizon tends to change over time both in terms of sign and magnitude with the uncertainty shock primarily negatively affecting the housing variables in particular prices permits and starts in longer runs i e two and three years ahead horizons