1,720,973 research outputs found
A short survey on climate change and environmental innovations
No full textClimate change is and will be in the coming years one of the major challenges facing the world. The best strategy to cope with climate anomalies seems to be fostering the ability to innovate and find tech-nological solutions. Therefore, understanding the relationship between the stimuli brought about by climate variability and the propensity to innovate is of paramount importance. To this end, this chapter provides some background on climate change and innovation economics and then focuses on climate-induced innovation in the context of mitigation technologies and adaptation strategies
Agricultural and biotechnology patents as an adaptation strategy to climate change: A regional analysis of European farmer's efficiency
No full textThis chapter analyses the effect of innovation encouraged by climate change challenges on European farmers’ technical efficiency. Using the stochastic frontier approach, we estimate the impact of agri-cultural patents on farmers’ technical efficiency by taking into account both unobservable heterogeneity and heteroscedasticity in the inefficiency term. Our findings suggest that European farmers remain quite far from the maximum frontier and irrespective of the country in which they reside; farmers who innovate are more efficient than those who do not. Thus, the inefficiency of agricultural agents in the European context leaves space for policies that incentivise firms to adopt climate change adaptation strategies through technological innovation
Climate variability and agricultural production efficiency: evidence from Ethiopian farmers
No full textIt is known that climate and weather variability have negative impacts on agricultural production efficiency. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of climatic variables on farms’ efficiency in Ethiopia making use of nationally representative datasets from Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) 2011/2012. By using the Stochastic Frontier Approach, we estimate simultaneously the farmers’ optimal production function and technical inefficiency equations, taking into account unobserved heterogeneity of farmers. Our main findings show that climate change variables have a positive effect on households’ efficiency but the impact depends on the different geo-climatic characteristics of the regions of the country
A Multidimensional poverty analysis: evidence from Italian data
Full text linkConventional poverty measures, showing that poverty and inequality have increased in Italy over the
past fifteen years, are based on household income. The main drawback of this method is that it does
not include other non-monetary variables relevant for defining households’ necessities. It is now widely
agreed that poverty should be conceptualised as a multidimensional phenomenon, more related to the
standard of living of the person or household than to the simple inability of satisfying basic subsistence
needs. In this paper we propose to measure poverty in Italy by complementing income information
with non-monetary indicators. To this end a multidimensional poverty analysis is performed by using a
representative sample based on the first wave (2004) of the Italian component of the European Statistics
on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Starting from the concept of deprivation, a non linear
principal component analysis is applied to selected items in order to reveal underlying latent dimensions
to be interpreted as deprivation indicators. We then examine how such measures can be combined with
income measures in order to obtain a better identification of the poor. Finally we examine the overlapping
between the income poor and the deprived and provide an analysis of deprivation profiles. Our results
show that a more comprehensive poverty measure, combining deprivation criteria and income poverty,
leads to a different identification of poor people, compared to analyses based only on income measures
Crop and income diversification for rural adaptation: Insights from Ugandan panel data
No full textUgandan territory is a challenging environment for agriculture due to extreme climate events. These are likely to harm the development of rural communities. Crop diversification and off-farm activities are considered potential adaptation strategies to reduce the impacts of climate risk. This paper explores three main issues. The first one is the frequency and the intensity of climate shocks that push households to diversify their portfolio of livelihood options. The second one is about the market and the institutional factors that enhance the context where farmers can effectively diversify against adverse climate events. The last issue concerns the mix of crop and income diversification that minimises the welfare variability and the downside risk. To address these points, the study exploits four rounds of the Ugandan National Panel Survey and the SPEI climatic index to estimate a panel multinomial endogenous switching model. Results demonstrate that farmers' diversification response to the climate shocks is not linear. Moreover, the empirical analysis shows that a medium crop diversification maximises mean welfare, while a mix of high crop and income diversification generates the largest impact on the downside risk reduction. Social and human capital are crucial to improve the chance of an effective diversification-based adaptation
Does cutting back the public sector improve efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries
No full textThe successful development of the welfare state that transpired for three decades after WWII in the
developed countries, came to a halt around the end of the 1980s. Since then, the number of articles
and books dedicated to the crisis of the welfare state has increased. We can now assert that at the turn
of the century, almost all industrialized countries had cut at least “some” entitlements in their welfare
program along with other expenditure items, and the trend continued in the first decade of this
century. To defend the cuts and possibly to justify continuing cuts, several economic reasons, both
theoretical and empirical, have been highlighted. From mention of Baumol’s disease to the fiscal
crisis, the support for making such decisions by governments gained momentum, with their political
inspiration changing during the same period in favor of more conservative, right-wing positions. The
low productivity of the public sector and the high level of tax burden were the substantial arguments
used to support cuts. The aim of this paper is to provide an empirical investigation into the impact of
retrenchment of the public sector on the performance of 15 European countries. In particular, we aim
to empirically test the view that “big government” reduces a country's efficiency. We have found that
no such empirical support exists. We have also included analysis of the distribution of income through
the Gini index and have found the standard trade-off relation between inequality and efficiency
How does public spending affect technical efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries
No full textThe relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Revisiting the subject from a distinct angle with respect to the mainstream approach, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of public sector's size and of public expenditure components on 15 European countries’ technical efficiency from 1996 to 2014 by using a True Random Effect model. Using the total public expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function and technical efficiency by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings show that the effect of public sector's size on efficiency is positive while the type of public expenditures may have both positive and negative impact. In more details, results suggest that education and health expenditures have a positive effect on technical efficiency, while others have a negative impact
Recovering the counterfactual as part of ex-ante impact assessments: An application to the PASIDP-II project in Ethiopia
No full textReal-world ex-ante impact assessments are far from the ideal experimental design, where the eligible population is supposed to be randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Often, many surveys in developing contexts do not even collect data from a comparison group. We propose a methodology that recovers the counterfactual for ex-ante impact assessments of policy interventions under the conditions of distance decay in the exposure to continuous treatments and lack of control groups. We test this approach on data from a large-scale irrigation project in Ethiopia
What forces children away from home? Evidence from Uganda
No full textChild mobility is a significant phenomenon all over the world and is especially prominent in developing countries, where it is made worse by income conditions in rural households. The aim of this paper is to advance a step forward in the quantitative investigation of factors driving rural households’ decisions to send children away from home. Using Ugandan panel data to account for household unobserved heterogeneity, we find that the age of the household head as well as the presence of a female household head, the number of children, marital status, and the circumstance of mother not living in the household affect the likelihood of sending away children. On the other hand, other factors such as education and mobile phone ownership do not seem to play a role
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