The environmental improvement under China's 'New Normal'

Submitted by Hang Yin on
EfD Authors:

The significant environmental improvement in China has drawn much research attention in recent years. However, in exploring the factors that lead to pollution reduction, most literature has ignored the slowing economic growth under the ‘New Normal’ of China. This omission could lead to the overestimation of the pollution reduction effects of other factors. In this paper, we estimate the effect of the economic slowdown using a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model, CHINAGEM. We find that the contribution of the economic slowdown to pollution reduction ranges from 10% to 30%.

Policy Design

The evolution of the wage gap between rural migrants and the urban labour force in Chinese cities

Submitted by Hang Yin on
EfD Authors:

An increasing earning gap between rural migrants and urban residents has recently aroused public concern about rising urban poverty asscociated with migration of rural people into Chinese cities. To address the issue, this paper explores the possibility of wage assimilation for rural migrants towards their urban counterparts and its determinants between 1999 and 2009, by applying an economic assimilation model to analyse a repeated cross‐sectional data for seven Chinese cites at the individual level.

Agriculture, Policy Design

Acceptability surveys

One of the main obstacles in many countries for an effective climate policy is opposition to climate pricing. This is often based on views concerning distributional fairness between different groups

| Carbon Pricing, Policy Design

Willingness to accept compensation for afromontane forest ecosystems conservation

Submitted by Petra Hansson on
EfD Authors:

Highlights

• Farmers would rather receive compensation for soil and water conservation works than biodiversity.

• Significant costs can be shared by farmers for forest conservation.

• Investments in forestland create incentives for farmers to sustainably use forests.

• Accounting for heterogeneity allows better estimation of willingness to accept.

Biodiversity, Forestry, Land, Policy Design

Agro-processing, value chains, and regional integration in Southern Africa

Submitted by Tali Hoffman on
EfD Authors:

Regional integration in Africa is underway but ongoing progress requires that the gains are widely spread. South Africa’s huge regional trade surplus in manufactured goods is already leading to protectionist pressures in neighbouring countries.

Agro-processing is a large sector, which is widely regarded as having significant potential, but the export performance of the region has been quite poor if South Africa is excluded.

Policy Design

Emergent large traders in smallholder grain markets and their role in enhancing adoption of sustainable agricultural intensification practices in Kenya

Submitted by Tali Hoffman on
EfD Authors:

Pervasive threats of climate change and land degradation have compounded the low farm productivity problem inherent in sub-Saharan Africa. Though sustainable agricultural intensification practices have been shown to improve resilience of farm production in the face of these emerging threats, they suffer low adoption rates typical of technology adoption in these regions. Recent evidence shows the emergence of large grain traders in the smallholder farm output markets.

Agriculture