Stated preference approaches, such as contingent valuation, focus mainly on the estimation of the mean or median willingness to pay (WTP) for an environmental good. Nevertheless, these two welfare measures may not be appropriate when there are social and political concerns associated with implementing a payment for environmental services (PES) scheme. In this paper the authors used a Bayesian estimation approach to estimate a quantile binary regression and the WTP distribution in the context of a contingent valuation PES application.

In semi-arid highlands of northern Ethiopia, episodes of droughts of varying severity and duration occur. The occurrence of these droughts is associated mainly with the seasonal rainfall variability. This study attempts to investigate the temporal and spatial variability of climate parameters, particularly rainfall and temperature for the period 1954-2008. Standardized rainfall anomaly was used to examine the temporal characteristics of climate variability and determine the prevalence of droughts.

Climate change and variability severely affect rural livelihoods and agricultural productivity, yet they are causes of stress vulnerable rural households have to cope with. This paper investigated farming communities’ vulnerability to climate change and climate variability across 34 agricultural-based districts in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. It considered 24 biophysical and socio-economic indicators to reflect the three components of climate change vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.

We investigate the effects of climate variables on food and nutrition security and the probability of a household being food and nutrition insecure. Panel data methods from three waves of the Tegemeo Institute Household survey data (2004, 2007, and 2010) are used. Climate change is measured by long-term averages of temperature and rainfall, all measured at the peak precipitation month and extreme values of the Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI).

This paper constructs a theoretic model to study the behaviors of China local governments in environmental policy-making process. In our model, local governments make environmental policies under promotion incentives, while polluting firms produce according to such policies. The model predicts a Ushaped relationship between the GDP ratio of local secondary industry and the strictness of local environmental policies, which we use the 2003-2011 "China City Statistical Yearbook" panel data to test.

[Objective] Based on the micro survey data of key state-owned forestry area, this paper analyzed the impacts of state-owned forestry region reform on the changes in employment, which would provide a useful reference for the policy of key state-owned forestry region.

[Method] We described the changes of industries, departments and aspects of employment in state-owned forestry region by statistical methods. Furthermore, we applied an econometric model to estimate the effect of state-owned forestry reforms on the employments.

Based on a household survey on farmers’Willingness To Accept (WTA) the goverment’s ecological compensation in Sichuan Province, this paper attempts to study the compensation mechanism in the context of goverment’s purchase of ecological forest by establishing the ecological forest supply curve. We find that, given the budget constraint of 500000 CNY, the appropriate purchase price is 5400 CNY/hm2, and the survey villages can supply 80% of their forest lands.

There is solid scienti c evidence predicting that a large part of the developing world will
su er a greater incidence of extreme weather events, which may increase the incidence of displacement
migration. We draw on the new economics of migration to model migration decisions
of smallholder and rain-dependent farm households in rural Ethiopia and investigate both the
ex-ante and ex-post impacts of climate variables. Using detailed household survey panel data
matched with rainfall data, we show that weather variability - measured by the coecient of

This is a chapter in a book entitled “Bioenergies in East Africa between challenges and opportunities” Edited by Marco Setti, Daria Zizzola, 2016.

This is a chapter in the book entitled ' The Economy of Mainland Tanzania Into the 2000s: Productivity, Human Capital, and other Leading Issues'.

This volume contains the main contributions to a Symposium on Development, held in 2012, that was jointly organized by the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Professorial Chair in Development and the Department of Economics, both of the University of Dar es Salaam