Face masks are an important component in controlling COVID-19, and policy orders to wear masks are common. However, behavioral responses are seldom additive, and exchanging one protective behavior ...for another could undermine the COVID-19 policy response. We use SafeGraph smart device location data and variation in the date that US states and counties issued face mask mandates as a set of natural experiments to investigate risk compensation behavior. We compare time at home and the number of visits to public locations before and after face mask orders conditional on multiple statistical controls. We find that face mask orders lead to risk compensation behavior. Americans subject to the mask orders spend 11-24 fewer minutes at home on average and increase visits to some commercial locations-most notably restaurants, which are a high-risk location. It is unclear if this would lead to a net increase or decrease in transmission. However, it is clear that mask orders would be an important part of an economic recovery if people otherwise overestimate the risk of visiting public places.
Abstract
The aim of China’s Grain for Green Program is to reduce soil erosion by subsidizing reforestation of farmland located on steep slopes with low crop productivity. I show theoretically that ...the incentives created by the program combined with insufficient oversight have led to afforestation of non-sloped highly productive farmland. With a unique land transition dataset, I show that this unintended land use effect has been substantial, amounting to nearly one-fifth of the total amount of cropland converted to forest. This unexpected displacement of highly productive farmland represents a form of slippage/leakage that has not been fully explored in the literature on payment for ecosystem services programs. This form of land displacement is significant in the context of China as well as other countries with limited arable land relative to population size as it can negatively impact national food production targets and self-sufficiency goals.
Staying home and avoiding unnecessary contact is an important part of the effort to contain COVID-19 and limit deaths. Every state in the United States enacted policies to encourage distancing and ...some mandated staying home. Understanding how these policies interact with individuals' voluntary responses to the COVID-19 epidemic is a critical initial step in understanding the role of these nonpharmaceutical interventions in transmission dynamics and assessing policy impacts. We use variation in policy responses along with smart device data that measures the amount of time Americans stayed home to disentangle the extent that observed shifts in staying home behavior are induced by policy. We find evidence that stay-at-home orders and voluntary response to locally reported COVID-19 cases and deaths led to behavioral change. For the median county, which implemented a stay-at-home order with about two cases, we find that the response to stay-at-home orders increased time at home as if the county had experienced 29 additional local cases. However, the relative effect of stay-at-home orders was much greater in select counties. On the one hand, the mandate can be viewed as displacing a voluntary response to this rise in cases. On the other hand, policy accelerated the response, which likely helped reduce spread in the early phase of the pandemic. It is important to be able to attribute the relative role of self-interested behavior or policy mandates to understand the limits and opportunities for relying on voluntary behavior as opposed to imposing stay-at-home orders.
Moose present a complex management problem because they generate a mixture of benefits and costs to humans, some of which are caused by browsing of regenerating trees. We developed a Lotka–Volterra ...model, parameterized by moose management areas, to link moose browsing to spruce and balsam fir dynamics on the island of Newfoundland. The model predicts the distribution of moose, adult fir, and spruce well. Empirical estimates of juvenile fir biomass were variable, and our model predicted its biomass poorly. Our model predicts a small negative effect of moose on adult fir biomass (−0.06%) and juvenile fir biomass (−1.65%) and a small positive effect on spruce biomass (+0.02%) under baseline assumptions, but larger effects (±10%–60%) if moose browse commercial softwoods preferentially. Small effects of moose on trees at steady state do not fully reflect the importance of moose because moose parameters (e.g., growth rate and harvesting rate) impacted the return time of our model from disturbance. Our model analysis demonstrates one way to add animal effects into vegetation growth models and suggests that parameterizing ecological models by management unit is useful when the data to support more detailed models are not available.
China's economic growth has come with the cost of environmental deterioration. The economy has faced with many problems in land resource depletion and industrial pollution. I examine two policies ...that tackle three major environmental aspects on land, water, and air in China. All three chapters share the theme that devolution without enough oversights in environmental policies has lead to unintended consequences in practice, as local officials have their trade-offs to promote local economy and protect environment.The first chapter explores the local government's behavior in a land conservation program, which intends to reduce soil erosion by subsidizing afforestation of low productive farmland on steep slopes. Theoretically, the incentives created by the program combined with insufficient oversight have led to afforestation of highly productive farmland on level ground. With a unique land transition dataset, I show that this unintended land use effect has been substantial. This unexpected displacement of highly productive farmland represents a form of leakage that has not been fully explored in the literature. And it is problematic to a country with limited arable land relative to population size as it can negatively impact national food production targets and self-sufficiency goals.The second chapter investigates water pollution activities under China's Pollution Reduction Mandates. In response to the substantial environmental deterioration, the central government taxes firm emissions and subsidizes abatement technology installation. In theory, devolution to local governments to lower pollution and promote economic growth can create local incentives to allocate subsidies to effectively export pollution. I provide the first evidence of the magnitude of these distortions with unique firm-level pollution panel data and find evidence of water pollution exported to downstream and further away from local residences. A simulation indicates that the distortions created by local jurisdictional control harm the environment substantially: centralized allocation of subsidies could reduce total emissions by 20–30%.The third chapter keeps investigating the inter-jurisdictional pollution externalities on air pollution under the same mandates. It provides a complimentary evidence to show that local governments have incentives to promote spatial spillovers and free-ride on the downwind neighbors.
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