1,720,986 research outputs found
Do Liquidity Constraints Help Preserve Tropical Forests? Evidence from the Eastern Amazon
Full text linkThis article examines the determinants of forest cover and land use efficiency in a shifting cultivation system. A conceptual model demonstrates that liquidity constraints encourage farmers to allocate more land to forest fallow and less to cultivation by limiting input purchases. Data from farm households in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon allow me to test whether farmers allocate land between cropping and fallow efficiently from an individual or a community perspective. I find that many farmers devote more land to fallow than is privately optimal, benefiting community income as a whole due to positive local externalities provided by secondary forest. I also estimate the effect of a variety of socioeconomic and agroecological factors on fallow allocation and land use efficiency. I find over-fallowing to be negatively associated with commercial credit use, suggesting that liquidity constraints do hinder agricultural intensification.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
What is the Optimal Offsets Discount under a Second-Best Cap & Trade Policy?
Full text linkDespite concerns about additionality, leakage, permanence, and verification, carbon offsets have been proposed as a core component of recent cap-and-trade proposals in order to contain costs, involve uncapped sectors in GHG reduction goals, and build mitigation capacity in developing countries. Discounting the value of offsets relative to GHG allowances (i.e., setting a trading ratio less than one) has been suggested as one approach to protect the integrity of the cap. This paper presents a simple theoretical model to derive the optimal trading ratio between offsets and allowances when coverage of emissions by the cap-and-trade and offsets programs is incomplete. I discuss the relationship between the trading ratio and the GHG cap and offsets baseline, which jointly determine the stringency of the policy. While a discount for leakage is always optimal, one notable result is that if “hot air” is introduced by setting either the baseline cap or the cap too leniently, an extra discount is warranted
Forest Fallow Ecosystem Services: Evidence from the Eastern Amazon
Full text linkWith tropical deforestation a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, the land-use decisions of small-scale farmers at the forest margins have important implications for the global environment. Farmers’ incentives for maintaining forest fallow in a shifting cultivation agricultural system depend upon the market and non-market services it provides to them. This study estimates the value of those services, including hydrological externalities that may affect other farms downstream. The analysis uses cross-sectional farm-level survey data from the Zona Bragantina in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon to assess the value of forest fallow to farmers and test whether it provides local externalities. I estimate production functions for crops and forest products to determine the contributions of on-farm and off-farm forest fallow to income from these two activities. Instrumental variables and spatial econometric approaches help address issues of endogeneity and variation in unobservable factors over space. I use geographic information on the location of farms to obtain data on external forest fallow and to model the hydrological externality as an upstream-to-downstream process. The results indicate that fallow does contribute significantly to productivity both on-farm and downstream, boosting income from both crops and forest products. In addition, most farms appear to allocate sufficient land to fallow, accounting for both the value of hydrological spillovers and the opportunity cost of land left out of cultivation. These results suggest that farming communities may have some self-interest in preserving forest cover locally—a finding that may bolster policy efforts aimed at conserving tropical forests
The Economics of Fallow: Evidence from the Eastern Amazon
Full text linkWith tropical deforestation a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, the land use decisions of small-scale farmers at the forest margins have important implications for the global environment. In some tropical forests, such as the Eastern Brazilian Amazon, farmers practice a shifting cultivation system that maintains large amounts of land under forest fallow. I examine whether local benefits of fallowing such as soil restoration, erosion mitigation and hydrological regulation are of sufficient value to farmers to stem the expansion of permanent cropland at the expense of forest.
I quantify the value of ecosystem services provided by fallow to agriculture and test whether local forest externalities are economically significant, using farm survey and GIS data from the Eastern Amazon. I estimate a production function to determine the contribution of on-farm and upstream fallow to income, using an instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity. I find that on-farm and upstream fallow are both associated with higher farm income. This result both confirms the agronomic evidence that fallow boosts yields and suggests that fallow provides positive hydrological externalities to downstream farms.
I also examine whether farmers respond strategically to their neighbors' land use, taking advantage of ecosystem services provided by upstream farms. I use a spatial econometric model to estimate the effect of upstream farms' fallow on downstream land allocation. I find no evidence that farmers alter their fallowing based on land use upstream.
I then investigate whether market failures encourage fallowing. If farmers cannot purchase inputs used in cultivation due to liquidity constraints, they may keep more land under fallow than optimal. I use the estimated production function parameters to determine whether each farm's allocation of land between cropping and fallow is efficient from an individual perspective. I then estimate the effect liquidity indicators on land use efficiency. I find that over-fallowing is negatively associated with commercial credit use and off-farm income, suggesting that liquidity constraints do hinder agricultural intensification. Because I find evidence to support the existence of positive externalities to fallow, the loosening of liquidity constraints that encourage fallowing has ambiguous implications for community-level welfare
Constraints or Cooperation? Determinants of Secondary Forest Cover Under Shifting Cultivation
Full text linkThis study examines the drivers of land use in a shifting cultivation system with forest fallow. Forest fallow provides on-farm soil quality benefits, local hydrological regulation, and global public goods. An optimal control model demonstrates that farmers have an incentive to fallow less than is socially optimal, though market failures limiting crop production can have a countervailing effect by encouraging fallow. An econometric model estimated using data from the Brazilian Amazon suggests that fallowing does not result from internalization of local fallow services but instead is associated with poor market access and labor and liquidity constraints
Do Liquidity Constraints Help Preserve Tropical Forests? Evidence from the Eastern Amazon
Full text linkThis article examines the determinants of forest cover and land use efficiency in a shifting cultivation system. A conceptual model demonstrates that liquidity constraints encourage farmers to allocate more land to forest fallow and less to cultivation by limiting input purchases. Data from farm households in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon allow me to test whether farmers allocate land between cropping and fallow efficiently from an individual or a community perspective. I find that many farmers devote more land to fallow than is privately optimal, benefiting community income as a whole due to positive local externalities provided by secondary forest. I also estimate the effect of a variety of socioeconomic and agroecological factors on fallow allocation and land use efficiency. I find over-fallowing to be negatively associated with commercial credit use, suggesting that liquidity constraints do hinder agricultural intensification
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