Agricultural & Resource Economics
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Item Individual and Public-Program Adaptation: Coping with Heat Waves in Five Cities in Canada(MDPI, 2011-12-16) Alberini, Anna; Gans, Will; Alhassan, MustaphaHeat Alert and Response Systems (HARS) are currently undergoing testing and implementation in Canada. These programs seek to reduce the adverse health effects of heat waves on human health by issuing weather forecasts and warnings, informing individuals about possible protections from excessive heat, and providing such protections to vulnerable subpopulations and individuals at risk. For these programs to be designed effectively, it is important to know how individuals perceive the heat, what their experience with heat-related illness is, how they protect themselves from excessive heat, and how they acquire information about such protections. In September 2010, we conducted a survey of households in 5 cities in Canada to study these issues. At the time of the survey, these cities had not implemented heat outreach and response systems. The study results indicate that individuals’ recollections of recent heat wave events were generally accurate. About 21% of the sample reported feeling unwell during the most recent heat spell, but these illnesses were generally minor. Only in 25 cases out of 243, these illnesses were confirmed or diagnosed by a health care professional. The rate at which our respondents reported heat-related illnesses was higher among those with cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, was higher among younger respondents and bore no relationship with the availability of air conditioning at home. Most of the respondents indicated that they would not dismiss themselves as “not at risk” and that they would cope with excessive heat by staying in air conditioned environments and keeping well hydrated. Despite the absence of heat outreach and education programs in their city, our respondents at least a rough idea of how to take care of themselves. The presence of air conditioning and knowledge of cooling centers is location-specific, which provides opportunities for targeting HARS interventions.Item Modeling Residential Development in the Baltimore Metro Region(2013-10) Newburn, David A.; Ferris, JeffreyItem Soil - From Texture to Structure to Sustainability(2015-10-27) UnknownItem Development Capacity and the Impact of Septic Law (SB 236) in the Baltimore Metro Region(2013-05) Newburn, DavidThis presentation included an overview of the Sustainability Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act (“septic law") passed by State of Maryland in 2012, looking at Baltimore County, MD, as a case study. Slides include information about land-use trends, zoning trends, septic and groundwater wells, and local watersheds.Item Does Low-density Zoning Impact Rural Land Value?(CANRP, 2012-09-28) Lynch, Lori; Liu, XiangpingDo zoning regulations rob rural landowners’ equity – i.e. decreasing their land values without compensation? Do these land use controls affect different types of land in the same way or in different ways? How far-reaching is the effect? Dr. Lori Lynch at the University of Maryland takes a look at several down-zoning counties on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to find out.Item An Economic Study of 128 Dairy Farms on the Upper Eastern Shore of Maryland(1938) Smith, Carl B.; DeVault, S.H.; Hamilton, A.B.; Agricultural & Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This study analyzes the second year's survey or 128 dairy farms, representative of the dairy industry on the Upper Eastern Shore of Maryland. This area, which includes Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne's, Talbot, and Caroline counties, is a part of the Philadelphia Milk Shed.Item SPATIAL EFFECTS OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS ON ILLEGAL DEFORESTATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES(2019) Kraus Elsin, Yoanna; Lichtenberg, Erik; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Deforestation worldwide is a major concern. In developing countries, it is a merciless and devastating reality. My thesis addresses how local governance institutions' strength influences this phenomenon, focusing on the Colombian Andes. The theoretical analysis examines spatial patterns of illegal deforestation when enforcement is costly, and costs rise with distance from governmental centers. Those spatial patterns depend on the interaction between transportation costs incurred by farmers growing crops on deforested land and enforcement costs incurred by government officials conducting on-the-ground monitoring of deforestation. Areas closer to governmental centers can be monitored effectively and are thus less subject to illegal deforestation. Illegal deforestation is, therefore, more likely in areas where monitoring costs are high, but farmers' transportation costs are not. The calibration exercise then shows, that in this context, patches of deforestation might arise within the forest, causing unwanted forest fragmentation. Based on these results I study empirically, first, if the effect of access difficulty on deforestation may be non-monotonic in accessibility, causing forest fragmentation; and second, if this fragmentation is more likely to occur when enforcement is more costly. I approach this question in two manners: (1) using a cubic function of access difficulty interacted with measures of enforcement capacity and (2) non-parametrically using indicators for discrete ranges of access difficulty, again interacted with measures of enforcement capacity. I construct for this purpose a panel data set for the Colombian Andes from a variety of sources. Data on deforestation comes from satellite imaging at a 30mx30m resolution in two periods (2000-2005) and (2005-2010), this data was matched with biophysical variables such as, altitude, slope, precipitation, soil type, and roads using geographical information systems (GIS), as well as with socioeconomic variables which vary by municipality and time. The regressions show a significant non-monotonic effect of access difficulty on deforestation. The evidence shows that deforestation probability first decreases with access difficulty, and it then increases in remoter places. This evidences forest fragmentation as one moves away from roads. Moreover, this pattern is affected by the fiscal performance index (a proxy for enforcement capacity) of the municipalities, showing that municipalities with lower enforcement capacity have a higher probability to present illegal deforestation at remote places. This research adds to the deforestation literature, by studying the spatial reach of governance capacity and how it affects deforestation patterns. The findings highlight the importance of taking enforcement and monitoring costs as well as their spatial variation into account when designing land-use policies and defining the institutional arrangements, funding and monitoring processes to implement them.Item ESSAYS ON ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS: CARBON TAX, PRICE REGULATION AND RESIDENTIAL ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION(2019) Wang, Jikun; Williams, Roberton; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation features three essays in environmental economics. In the first essay, I analyze how price regulation changes the welfare effects of carbon emission policies. Specifically this paper shows that electricity price regulation in China substantially increases the cost of reducing carbon emissions. I set up a simple general equilibrium model where the price of the carbon intensive sector (electricity) is regulated and examine the welfare impact of a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The model shows price regulation has a direct cost effect and also changes the secondary cost effects caused by pre-existing taxes. I then construct a static CGE model where the parameters are calibrated using stylized facts about the economy of China in 2007. My central estimate shows the marginal cost of achieving a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions is 22% higher in the presence of pre-existing taxes than in a world with only a carbon tax. Price regulation raises the marginal cost of CO2 reduction by a further 27%, on top of the distortion caused by pre-existing taxes. The second essay studies the implication of relaxing electricity price regulation, both in the context of pre-existing taxes and in the context of carbon pricing policy. It employs a general equilibrium model of the Chinese economy and provides ex-ante counterfactuals under a range of electricity regulation policy and assess the social welfare impact with potential electricity market reform. It shows pre-existing labor tax increases the per unit social benefit of deregulation. The analysis also shows carbon emission policy increases the per unit benefit of electricity deregulation compared with second-best setting. The third essay uses micro-level data in China to study the impact of urban heat island on residential electricity use (REU). Combining a household energy consumption survey in China with remote sensing data related to urban heat island intensity and weather conditions specific to each household, the empirical analysis shows that urban heat island has a significant effect on residential electricity use, through interacting with local weather conditions such as temperature. Higher urban heat island increases residential electricity consumption by increasing the impact of Degree Days on REU. The effect also varies seasonally and regionally.Item CASH, TRAINING OR COMMITMENT? EVIDENCE ON BEHAVIORAL AND FINANCIAL INTERVENTIONS FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES(2019) Bin Bakhtiar, Mohammed Mehrab; Leonard, Kenneth; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes how poor households in Africa and South Asia respond to large-scale policy experiments involving conditional and unconditional cash transfers as well as interventions that have training and behavioral components. The first chapter, titled “Do Cash Transfers Improve Women’s Agency? Evidence from Lab and Field Experiments", details results from lab-in-the-field experiments that I have designed and implemented for my PhD job market paper. This chapter investigates whether receiving a cash transfer - in a very low-empowerment context - improves women’s agency in household decision-making, particularly, in the longer term. I try to answer this question by combining data from a female-targeted unconditional cash transfer (UCT) program with lab- in-the-field experiments. The UCT was designed as a Randomized Controlled Trial and was disbursed to adult women from ultra-poor households in rural Nigeria over a period of 15 months. The lab-in-the-field experiments were carried out on 503 married couples one year after the UCT program ended and can measure women’s (as well as men’s) agency in household decision-making. The main experimental measure of agency is the propensity to not defer decision-making to one’s spouse. By randomly varying whether subjects’ decisions can be observed by their spouses, a latent desire for agency (in the absence of spousal observation) versus an actual manifestation of one’s agency (when decisions are observed by one’s spouse) can be separately measured. I find that UCT-receiving women, one year after the completion of the program, defer 13 percentage point fewer decisions to their spouses; however, they do so only when their decisions cannot be observed by their spouses. In the second chapter, titled “Social and Financial Incentives for Overcoming a Collective Action Problem: Sanitation Underinvestment in Rural Bangladesh", we study the effects of social and financial incentives on communities’ ability to overcome collective action problems. Our specific context is a sample of 107 villages (approximately 19,000 households) in rural Bangladesh, and the collective action problem we study is investment in hygienic latrines and their subsequent maintenance and use. We randomized (1) whether and what type of incentive was provided - a financial reward (which was, essentially, a conditional cash transfer) or a non-financial "social recognition" reward, and (2) whether and what type of verbal commitment the households were encouraged to make - a private pledge vs. a public pledge. We measure short-term (3 months) and medium-term (15 months) effects and investigate the mechanisms behind the effects. Preliminary reduced form estimates suggest that a small financial reward has the strongest impact in the short term, inducing an approximately 12 percentage point increase in hygienic latrine ownership relative to ‘control’ villages, which received basic health messages. The public commitment treatment, in which members would publicly commit to have a hygienic latrine at the end of a group meeting, induced an approximately 5 percentage point increase in hygienic latrine ownership in the short term. In the medium term the effect of the financial reward dissipates; however, the smaller effect of the public commitment treatment in the short term continues to persist after 15 months. The results suggest that low-cost interventions which take advantage of social network dynamics have the potential to improve the effectiveness of group-meeting based rural health interventions common in developing countries. The third chapter, titled “Training Mentors? Experimental Evidence from Female-Owned Microenterprises in Ethiopia" reports findings from a randomized evaluation of a business training and mentoring intervention targeted at female- owned microenterprises in Ethiopia shows that formal business training produces an immediate impact on the adoption of beneficial business practices (that were highlighted in the training); however, no impact on business profit is observed in the short term. Three and four years after the training, we observe delayed impacts on business profits. Shortly after the training, the trained cohort is randomly assigned to provide mentoring to less-experienced women who own smaller businesses. These mentees were nominated by mentors at baseline from their own social networks. The overall impact of mentoring on mentees is more muted. There are early impacts on the adoption of beneficial business practices, and some measures of profits. However, the impacts on profits do not persist in the longer term.