•We study poverty dynamics and vulnerability in rural China from 1991 through 2006.•Over time, the structure of poverty has changed from being mostly chronic to mostly transitory.•Vulnerability to ...poverty has been declining over time, largely due to increasing real incomes.•As of 2006, high income variability is the source of most vulnerability to poverty.
China’s economic reforms starting in the late 1970s have resulted in rapid economic growth, with annual growth in gross domestic product averaging greater than 10% per year for more than 30years. Accompanying this rapid growth in national accounts have been rapid and widespread reductions in poverty. With these reductions in poverty, however, there has often been observed an increase in income inequality, both between as well as within rural and urban sectors. This rising income gap challenges the notion that economic reforms in China have been as successful as the poverty statistics would suggest.
In this paper, we suggest that an alternative view would be to consider the effects of these reforms on changing the chronic nature of poverty and reducing household vulnerability to poverty. Using a balanced panel from rural China from 1991 through 2006, we find that most poverty among our sample has shifted from being chronic in nature to being transient, with households either shifting into a state of being non-poor moving in and out of poverty. Among our sample, vulnerability to poverty has been declining over time, but the declines are not uniform over time or space. We decompose household vulnerability status into two proximate causes: low expected income and high income variability, finding vulnerability increasingly due to income variability. Additionally, we demonstrate that vulnerable households have very different characteristics than non-vulnerable households.
•COVID-19 resulted in a 4.54% decrease in the number of human-induced forest fires in Nepal.•Fire radiative power associated with forest fire events decreased by 11.36% in Nepal.•Restrictions on ...movement of people across districts in response to the pandemic likely played a role.•The analysis used satellite data on real-time active fire locations from Nepal.
The outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has raised questions about changes in economic production and subsequent effects on the environment. This article employs satellite data on real-time active fire locations in Nepal to evaluate the short-term environmental effects of COVID-19. Using plausibly exogenous variation in the number of reported COVID-19 cases across the country, this study finds that the incidence of COVID-19 led to a strong negative effect on the incidence of human-induced forest fires. Results indicate that an additional reported case of COVID-19 resulted in a 4.54% decrease in the number of forest fire incidents and a 11.36% reduction in fire radiative power associated with these events. Findings also show that districts with smaller areas of community-managed forests per capita experienced a 8.11% decrease in the number of forest fire incidents. Restrictions on movement of people across districts in response to the pandemic likely reduced the incidence of forest fire events in Nepal. These short-run estimates of environmental benefits, which do not account for negative consequences of the virus outbreak on health and labor market outcomes, partially offset the social cost of pandemics in the developing world.
This paper takes China's pilot emission trading policy as a quasi-natural experiment to study the green innovation effect. Based on the green patent data of listed companies in China from 2000 to ...2018, the spatial Durbin model was used to explain the green innovation effect of the emission trading policy on pilot areas and neighboring areas at the national level, and the heterogeneity was further discussed according to the patent types in this paper. Further, the interaction effect of the policy and government intervention was studied in this paper. The conclusions can be obtained as follows: First, the emission trading policy has a significant promotion effect on the green innovation in the pilot areas, and a significant inhibitory effect in the neighboring areas. Second, there is a patent type heterogeneity between the green invention innovation effect and the green utility model innovation effect. The emission trading policy only shows a significant spatial spillover effect in green utility model innovation. Third, a high level of government intervention will inhibit the green innovation effect. This article provides empirical evidence and policy implementations to better promote the green innovation by implementing the emission trading policy more rationally.
•We study the green innovation effect of CETS on pilot areas and surrounding areas.•The spatial dependence is considered in conducting spatial econometric model.•The CETS shows a spatial spillover effect in green utility model innovation.•A high level of government intervention will inhibit the green innovation effect.•Suggestions on how to promote green innovation with CETS are put forward.
Does economic development result in tree cover loss for poor countries, but not so for already more developed countries? Using a new subnational dataset and employing a quasi-experimental method, ...this paper addresses this question using tree cover loss data for 14 contiguous countries. The analysis uses geographical regression discontinuity (using national borders as discontinuities) and our findings show that Sub-Saharan Africa and low-income countries in general have the highest development-deforestation elasticity.
Toward a better world Helleiner, Gerald (Gerry)
Toward a better world,
2018, 20180116, 2019, 2018, 2018-01-16, 2018-01-18
eBook
In his memoir, Towards a Better World, Helleiner recounts his profound trip to Africa, a trip that propelled him into a career devoted to the research, advice and teaching of economic development and ...the reduction of global poverty.
How does the central state affect public goods provision by local actors? I study the effect of state capacity on local governance in sub-Saharan Africa, which I argue depends on whether traditional ...authorities are integrated in the country’s constitution. I use distance to administrative headquarters as a measure of state capacity and estimate a regression discontinuity design around administrative boundaries. If traditional authorities are not integrated, then the state and traditional authorities compete with each other, working as substitutes. That is, a stronger state undermines the power of traditional authorities. If traditional authorities are integrated, then the two work as complements. A stronger state then increases the power of traditional authorities. I show that these relationships are crucial to understanding the influence of state capacity on local economic development.
This study examines the dynamic interrelationships among financial development, energy consumption, and economic growth in emerging markets by focusing on accounting for structural changes in causal ...linkages. We first employ the Toda-Yamamoto causality framework and then augment it with a Fourier approximation which captures structural shifts as a gradual/smooth process. The empirical findings show that taking into account gradual structural shifts matters for the causal linkages between financial development and energy consumption. While the causality analysis which does not account for structural changes supports a causality between financial development and energy consumption only in 4 out of 21 emerging markets, the causality analysis with structural changes provides a causal linkage in half of the sample. This finding is consistent with the fact that emerging markets have experienced structural changes in either finance or energy sectors or both. We also conduct additional analyses which point out that cross-sectional dependency and the quantiles of the distribution matter for the causal linkages. Our results further shed light on the evidence that the economic activity mainly causes the financial development and energy consumption at the highest quantile of distribution in the fast-growing emerging economies.
•Accounting for gradual/smooth structural shifts plays an important role.•The finance-energy nexus is mostly sensitive to structural shifts.•Testing in a multivariate or a bivariate framework leads to significant differences.•Cross-sectional dependency and the quantiles of the distribution also matter for the causal linkages.•Evidence on the tail dependency in the finance-energy-growth nexus.
We examine the long-term effects on individual economic outcomes of a set of earthquakes – numerous, large, but mostly not extreme – that occurred in rural Indonesia since 1985. Using longitudinal ...individual-level data from large-scale household surveys, together with precise measures of local ground tremors obtained from a US Geological Survey database, we identify the effects of earthquakes, exploiting the quasi-random spatial and temporal nature of their distribution. Affected individuals experience short-term economic losses but recover in the medium run (after 2–5 years), and even exhibit income and welfare gains in the long term (6–12 years). The stocks of productive assets, notably in farms, get reconstituted and public infrastructures are improved, seemingly partly through external aid, allowing productivity to recover. These findings tend to discount the presence of poverty traps and exhibit the potential long-term benefits from well-designed post-disaster interventions in contexts where disasters primarily affect physical assets.
•We study the short- and long-run effects of earthquakes on welfare in rural Indonesia.•We merge data on longitudinal surveys and local intensities of past earthquakes.•After initial losses, individuals recover and even exhibit long-term welfare gains.•Business owners reconstitute their stocks of productive assets with aid transfers.•Post-disaster infrastructures reconstruction and improvements generate benefits.
In this paper, we empirically test the convergence of income and energy intensity for 61 countries using an augmented spatial growth model that includes energy and urbanization variables. We test an ...income convergence model to understand how energy use affects economic growth, and reveal that developing countries have energy constraints on their economic development. We show that energy is an essential component of economic growth in the early stages of development and that energy intensity converges between countries. It is consistent with the OLS estimation results that the convergence rate of energy intensity in developing countries of the spatial panel data model is still higher than in developed countries. However, the spatial panel data model shows that the gap between the two convergence rates is narrowed when spatial dependence is included. This implies that a country's steady state is influenced by the neighbouring countries and emphasizes the importance of international cooperation policies for reducing energy intensity. Since the effects of economic variables on the reduction of energy intensity are different in developed and developing countries, a country-specific energy policy rather than an internationally uniform policy is required.
We study the long-term impact of climate change on economic activity across countries, using a stochastic growth model where productivity is affected by deviations of temperature and precipitation ...from their long-term moving average historical norms. Using a panel data set of 174 countries over the years 1960 to 2014, we find that per-capita real output growth is adversely affected by persistent changes in the temperature above or below its historical norm, but we do not obtain any statistically significant effects for changes in precipitation. We also show that the marginal effects of temperature shocks vary across climates and income groups. Our counterfactual analysis suggests that a persistent increase in average global temperature by 0.04 °C per year, in the absence of mitigation policies, reduces world real GDP per capita by more than 7 percent by 2100. On the other hand, abiding by the Paris Agreement goals, thereby limiting the temperature increase to 0.01 °C per annum, reduces the loss substantially to about 1 percent. These effects vary significantly across countries depending on the pace of temperature increases and variability of climate conditions. The estimated losses would increase to 13 percent globally if country-specific variability of climate conditions were to rise commensurate with annual temperature increases of 0.04 °C.
•We study the long-term impact of climate change on cross-country economic activity•Growth is affected by persistent changes in temperature relative to historical norms•Growth effects vary based on pace of temperature increases and climate variability•The marginal effects of temperature shocks vary across climates and income groups.•Abiding by the Paris Agreement goals limits future income losses substantially
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