Discouraging Rainforest Transformation: An Ex-ante Policy Impact Analysis

Despite extensive efforts made by national and international certification agencies, Indonesian smallholder farmers’ participation in palm oil certification schemes adoption remains low. A fundamental obstacle is the smallholder practice of rainforest transformation into oil palm plantation which is forbidden by the agencies. In this context, we investigate three policies that could lead to a reduction in rainforest deforestation by smallholders: price premium on certified palm oil; the provision of environmental information; contributor recognition. In order to evaluate the influence of the policies ex-ante, we conduct a social dilemma experiment involving rubber and oil palm smallholders in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The findings indicate that the price premium and provision of context-specific environmental information could reduce rainforest transformation. However, a statistically significant effect of contributor recognition was not found.     

Dynamic Cost Inefficiency of the European Union Meat Processing Firms

We apply dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate dynamic cost inefficiency for a sample of European Union (EU) large meat processing firms over the period 2005–2012 and decompose this into the contributions of technical and allocative inefficiency. The estimation of dynamic inefficiencies controls for adjustment costs associated with firms’ investments. We further contribute by measuring dynamic cost inefficiencies and their components with regard to own region group (managerial inefficiencies) and the gap between the pooled frontier and the region-specific frontier (programme inefficiencies). Results show that technical inefficiency tends to be the largest component of cost inefficiency when both conducting the analysis for the EU as a whole and estimating a region-specific frontier. Results suggest significant differences in cost, technical, and allocative inefficiencies between meat processing firms in eastern, western and southern EU countries. We also find that the gaps between the pooled and region-specific frontiers tend to be small to negligible, which suggests that the main source of pooled inefficiencies are shortcomings in managerial practices rather than differences in region-specific conditions.     

Cash transfer program and child underweight—Empirical evidence from a causal mediation analysis

Despite the existence of a voluminous literature on cash transfer programs, little is known about their impacts on the underweight of children. To fill the knowledge gap, this study uses a unique individual panel data set to analyze how participation in the Children Sponsorship Program (CSP) improves underweight status among needy children and adolescents in Taiwan. This study examines not only the program effect on children's underweight, but also underscores the potential pathways behind the program effect by employing a causal mediation analysis. Our analysis finds that exiting the CSP has a negative impact on the improvement of underweight status. Moreover, eating breakfast every day and receiving pocket money from parents can be two significant mediators that link the effect of exiting the CSP and the change in underweight status among children and adolescents.     

Effects of redistributing policy support on farmers’ technical efficiency

The objective of this article is twofold: first, investigating the relationship between technical efficiency and decoupled direct payments of a sample of Italian farms prior to the application of the 2014–2020 Common Agricultural Policy reform; second, evaluating possible implications of alternative scenarios about distribution of direct payments on technical efficiency. To these aims, a stochastic frontier analysis is adopted. Results indicate that direct payments produce significant effects on technical efficiency in specialized farms, which received higher levels of support. However, effects are contrasting. Moreover, results show that redistribution of policy subsidies may negatively impact on technical efficiency to an extent depending upon the criterion of redistribution applied. Finally, some policy suggestions are given.     

Destabilizing role of futures markets on North American hard red spring wheat spot prices

The objective of the paper is to determine if the futures prices of hard red spring wheat (HRSW) have stabilizing or destabilizing impact on spot HRSW price in North America. Several important results emerge from thorough empirical analysis. First, both Granger causality tests and directed acyclic graph algorithms (DAGs) point to two-way causality between futures and spot HRSW prices and thus endogeneity in both prices formation. To the contrary, both procedures suggest that ending stocks are exogenous to spot and futures HRSW prices. Both vector error correction model and impulse response functions point to a large and long-lasting impact of a shock to futures price on spot price level. Finally, variance decomposition analysis indicates that futures prices are responsible for the bulk of spot price volatility in both short and long run. Our result is consistent with those of theoretical models suggesting that when production (supply side) is the dominant disturbance, spot price is destabilized in both the short and the long run by futures prices. An important implication of this research is the need for alternative market mechanisms or alternative farm policy measures that would mitigate price risk and ensure sustainable farming of American HRSW farmers.     

Optimal allocation of direct and embodied arable land associated to urban economy: Understanding the options deriving from economic globalization

Land resources do not flow directly but can be allocated as “embodied land” in goods and services during economic globalization. The term “embodied arable land” can help link local land allocation strategies to the global and national supply chains and trade activities, and suggest new lens in optimizing arable land allocation. China is facing a serious arable land shortage, especially in municipal administrative areas. Based on the nested input-output analysis (Nested IOA), this work takes Shanghai as an example, exploring the allocation of direct and embodied arable land of an urban economy within the process of economic globalization. The amount of embodied arable land associated with Shanghai economy is 6.09 Mha, broken down into local arable land use (0.20 Mha), domestic inflows (3.20 Mha) and foreign inflows (2.69 Mha). This area supports local final demand (4.32 Mha), domestic outflows (1.24 Mha) and foreign outflows (0.53 Mha). Land-related imbalances emerge in the study, namely the economy’s demand versus the city’s size, the arable land demand versus supply, and embodied arable land inflows versus outflows. Regarding the role of the urban economy in allocation of global arable land under economic globalization, on the one hand, Shanghai has intensively involved with a large amount of embodied foreign arable land resources, and has been heavy dependent on foreign embodied arable land; On the other hand, there is still large potential for Shanghai to take the opportunity of economic globalization for an optimal allocation of direct and embodied arable land. Policy suggestions on taking the opportunity of economic globalization for an optimal allocation of direct and embodied arable land are put forward.     

Does the spatial representation affect criteria weights in environmental decision-making? Insights from a behavioral experiment

The need and interest to consider cognitive and motivational biases has been recognized in different disciplines (e.g. economics, decision theory, risk analysis) and has recently reached environmental decision-making. Within this domain, the intrinsic presence of a spatial dimension of both alternatives and criteria calls for the use of maps throughout the decision-making process to properly represent the spatial distribution of the features under analysis. This makes spatial Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) a particularly interesting domain to explore new dimensions of cognitive biases. This study proposes a behavioral experiment aimed at discovering to what extent the spatial visualization (i.e. maps) of criteria versus the non-spatial one (i.e. tables) can bias the weight elicitation phase of a spatial MCDA process. The experiment simulates a very common analysis in environmental and land use planning: land suitability analysis. Our findings show that there are significant consequences on how important we perceive a certain criterion to be, depending on whether it is represented as a map or as a table among a mix of maps and tables. Indeed, the map representation of the same criterion leads to higher weights attributed to that criterion compared to the table representation. Visualizing the same information as a map or as a table, although technically equivalent, is thus not psychologically equivalent for Decision Makers. The results of this experiment are expected to have implications for spatial decision-making processes, by generating better awareness on the impacts of map-mediated land suitability analysis.     

Understanding the impacts of ‘Grain for Green’ land management practice on land greening dynamics over the Loess Plateau of China

Land greening in China is regarded as contributing a great deal to greening of the Earth. The phenomenon is mainly attributed to climate change, arising atmospheric CO₂ and ‘Grain for Green’ (GFG) land management policies. However, limited knowledge is known how much land greening is from contributions of the GFG practice. Therefore, the study took the typical region of the GFG practice, the Loess Plateau, as the study area, and used 1982–2015 satellite-observed GIMMS3g normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, ERA-Interim climatic variables (precipitation, temperature and solar radiation) and atmospheric CO₂ concentration data with the help of a developed TPRC-based NDVI model to derive GFG-induced NDVI after 1999. Furthermore, this study tracked the spatial-temporal dynamics of GFG-induced NDVI and assessed contributions of the GFG practice to regional vegetation changes. Results showed that satellite-observed NDVI and TPRC-based NDVI both exhibited an increasing spatial pattern from the northwestern to southeastern Loess Plateau, but their greening trends were separately 0.0022 and 0.0009 per year in 1982–2015 (p < 0.05). Note that the satellite-observed greening trend was much steeper with a slope of 0.0056 per year after 2006 (p < 0.05). The subsequent analyses documented that GFG-induced land greening were largely responsible for the steep trend. In space, evident greening patterns began to be observed in the central Loess Plateau from 2006 to 2008, afterwards expanded towards eastern and southwestern Loess Plateau. In 2011–2015, the increase magnitude of GFG-induced land greening in the Loess Plateau averagely accounted for 8.5 % in comparison to estimated TPRC-based NDVI, but in six natural zones were various, ranging from 3.2%–15.7%. In some regions of central Loess Plateau, GFG-induced NDVI contributed even more than 20 % to vegetation increase. This study highlights that land use management contributes more to land greening dynamics over the Loess Plateau compared to climate change and arising atmospheric CO₂ concentration. These findings likely provide some valuable information for curbing or enhancing specific-location vegetation changes in future regional land management and planning.     

On the direct and indirect effects of the Great East Japan earthquake on self rated health through social connections: Mediation analysis

The Great East Japan Earthquake created health hazards for many people. Using Panel Data gathered in Iwanuma city, Japan, at two points in time (in 2010 before the quake, and in 2013 after the quake), we found that the high degree of housing damage negatively affected victims’ self rated health (SRH) (direct effect), and decreased the levels of their social connections, which in turn also had a harmful effect on their SRH (indirect effect). We also found that although the direct impacts of earthquakes disappear relatively quickly, the harmful indirect effects associated with a decrease in social connections are slower to dissipate. We conducted a first-difference two-step GMM estimation to consider the possible problem of endogeneity. The results support the above conclusion, and show that in the short-term, the indirect impacts of the earthquake accounted for 55 % of all the impacts experienced.     

曲酸摇床发酵与发酵罐发酵工艺参数的比较

通过单因素及正交实验,比较高产米曲霉在摇床培养与发酵罐培养中生产曲酸的发酵工艺参数。结果表明,在温度为23℃、发酵天数为9 d、接种量为25%、菌龄为96 h时,摇床发酵的曲酸产量达到最高,最高可达98.6 g·L-1;而发酵罐培养的最佳工艺条件是温度23℃、发酵天数4 d,接种量15%,菌龄96 h时,此条件下曲酸产量可达到99.6 g·L-1。本研究为工业化生产曲酸提了供理论依据。