Accounting for diverse risk attitudes in measures of risk perceptions: A case study of climate change risk for small-scale citrus farmers in Indonesia

Climate change is likely to generate severe impacts on smallholder farmers in developing countries. As key drivers of adaptation, climate risk perceptions are highly heterogeneous, varying both across people and context, and are complex, being defined as behaviour which varies across both impact and likelihood dimensions in non-linear ways. Yet most studies examining risk perceptions are unable to disentangle the role of perceptions regarding impacts from those regarding the likelihood of climate-related events taking place. This paper presents a decomposition and associated analysis of survey-based ‘risk perception’ measures. The decomposition we apply allows independent accounting for perceptions over frequencies and impacts linking to behavioural patterns of risk attitude. The approach presented here draws on a detailed 2017 survey of 500 farmers in rural Indonesia to generate insights into the relationship between risk perceptions and extension services, accessibility of information, and other factors. Results show that risk perceptions are generated from complex interaction between perceived future frequencies and outcomes of climate events and indicate differential impacts of extension services across these perceptions. This paper also presents empirical support for the use of information and communication technology based extension as an efficient extension tool to reach more farmers than in traditional methods.     

The Pre-industrial landscape in Moravia. The case study of inventory and analysis of the ancient land use structures in the Czech Republic)

The paper deals with the process of searching and inventorying of relict - so-called pre-industrial landscape - in Moravia (approximately 1/3 of the territory in the east of the Czech Republic). So far, during the inventory of pre-industrial landscape segments in Moravia, around 1,500 land use mosaic areas have been registered, surviving without significant changes since the completion of maps of the so-called stable cadastre realized in the 1830s to the present. Each of these areas with a steady mosaic has been supplemented with substantial quantitative and qualitative characteristics. This paper presents the results of geodatabase analysis of segments of the pre-industrial landscape concerning the sea elevation and morphology of the area. The results show that although numerous parts of stable ancient landscapes have been preserved at higher altitudes, they reach larger separate areas and larger aggregate areas at lower altitudes with more fertile soils. Hypotheses attempting to explain this territorial disparity are also presented in the text of the paper.     

How government-led land consolidation efforts achieve grain production stability? An empirical analysis in Hubei Province,China

China has been conducting massive land consolidation (LC) projects since the late 1990s to ensure national food security which has been one of the common issues in the world. How the implementation of LC projects affects grain production stability is a question should be answered. Basing on an empirical analysis at the county level in Hubei Province, China, this paper separates the trend component and the fluctuation component from a time series of grain production over 1991-2016 using the H-P filtering method. Then we estimate the impacts of LC projects and climate change on the trend and fluctuation rate of grain production for the entire Hubei Province. Moreover, the effects on the production of different major crops for the central, eastern, southwestern, northwestern and northern areas are also examined, respectively. The results show that: (1) the production trends for five subareas and the whole area all have followed a trajectory of “increase-decrease-increase” from 1991 to 2016. The magnitude of fluctuation rate was large but became smaller in recent years. (2) The contribution of LC to the long-term trends of grain production for the entire samples in Hubei Province mainly benefits from the growth in the cultivated land area through LC; more LC investment and newly-added arable land area promote the sudden increase in grain production above the long-term trends, while the impacts of LC area are negative. (3) The impacts of LC on the major crop production vary across areas. LC exerts significant impacts on the production of major crops in the central and eastern Hubei, and this effect persists to the following year. Similarly, this influence also exists in the southwestern and northern area, while becomes insignificant in the following year. No significant effect of LC variables is found in the northwestern area. These findings may provide reference for the government to address LC inefficiency and food security problems, and an effective and innovative mechanism combining the agricultural production, land consolidation and meteorological factors needs to be established to ensure food security and long-term and stable agricultural production. In addition, the regional difference in natural conditions and LC orientations should also be considered.     

Does participation in the sloping land conversion program reduce the sensitivity of Chinese farmers to climate change?

Over the last two decades, extensive literature has examined the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of China's Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), a program that was launched in late 1990s to mitigate the environmental effects of agricultural production and reduce rural poverty. However, little empirical evidence exists with regard to the impact of SLCP on rural households' sensitivity to nature-induced changes and environmental challenges. In this study, household-level data covering the period 1995–2010 from five Chinese provinces were used to examine the effect of SLCP on farmers' sensitivity to climate change. The empirical results show that participation in SLCP significantly reduced farmers' sensitivity to climate change by reducing their dependency on land and natural resources for income, and by diversifying their livelihood options. Spatially, the results reveal that the effect of SLCP on farmers' sensitivity vary across regions. Specifically, SLCP was found to have a ‘rate effect’ on farmers in the Northern regions and a ‘level effect’ on farmers in the Southern regions. Likewise, we found that the effect of SLCP differs considerably across income groups, with the effect on low- and middle-income groups being most significant. The results indicate that subsidy is the main pathway through which SLCP reduces farmers' sensitivity to climate change. In contrast, we found inclusive evidence about the indirect effect of SLCP farmers' sensitivity through the promotion of non-agricultural employment. These results carry major implications with regard to the effectiveness of ecological conservation programs and their mitigation potential through building farmers' resilience in China and ecologically fragile environments.     

Climate Change,Innovation, and Economic Growth: The Contributions of William Nordhaus and Paul Romer

ABSTRACT

William Nordhaus and Paul Romer shared the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work on long-run macroeconomic analysis. Nordhaus adapted the neoclassical growth model to study climate change, while Romer developed a model of innovation-based growth. The authors provide two distinct explanations of what drives growth, and employ contrasting methodologies for interpreting the results of their mathematical models. Macroeconomic policy in general, and climate policy in particular, would benefit from better integrating the theory and methods of these two laureates.     

业绩承诺变更会影响企业研发费用操纵吗?

以 2011-2022年A股并购业绩承诺事件为研究对象,探讨了业绩承诺变更对研发费用操纵的影响。研究发现:业绩承诺变更加剧了上市公司研发费用操纵现象,且这一影响是通过激发高管机会主义、降低商业信用融资能力实现的;异质性检验发现,业绩承诺变更对研发费用操纵的影响在关联并购事件、主并方为国有企业、以及分析师关注程度较低的企业中更为显著;动机和经济后果检验发现,业绩承诺变更主要通过激发高管的政策迎合动机提高了研发费用操纵水平,而该行为使得企业获取了更多的税收优惠和政府补助。     

Community resilience to long-term tourism decline and rejuvenation: a literature review and conceptual model

Studied for decades in disciplines such as ecology, psychology, engineering and sociology ‘resilience’ can be defined as a system's ability to withstand and respond to change. The tourism literature has embraced the concept of community resilience by harnessing concepts of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Many of these studies have focused on the tourism system's ability to respond to short-term disasters and hazards. With the growth of resilience studies in tourism, it is timely to take stock of the core premise of resilience as it is applied to tourism and to identify key gaps in current research. Consequently, this research aims to identify the core concepts of community resilience, with a focus on its application within tourism. The findings reveal that many studies have been conceptual, although there are an increasing number of empirical studies underpinned by resilience theory. Therefore, a conceptual model is presented to broaden existing resilience research and to guide future research into community resilience to tourism decline and rejuvenation.     

China’s reform and opening process: a new model of political economy?

The reform and opening process has led to an impressive economic development which saw China becoming the second-largest economy in the world. This development resulted in an ongoing discussion about the nature of the Chinese state and reinvigorated the discussion of the role the state plays in national development. Addressing the challenges of how to interpret the contemporary Chinese state, it will be argued that a particular institutional setting has a strong impact on future developments, and China’s reform process provides an insightful example in this regard. Indeed, we should remember that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution the Communist Party of China faced both a fundamental political crisis and an economic crisis of underperformance. In order to develop a deeper insight into the political-economic changes, we can observe during the reform process, a comprehensive analysis is required, one which focuses on the changes in China’s political-economic regime.     

我国人口状况变化及政策应对

一个国家人口政策制定的好坏对其经济和社会发展有着极其重要的影响。特别是在当今中国这个快速发展中的国家,其人口政策的制定更应该引起政府的高度重视。本文试从婚育年龄、就业、老龄化、教育和人口流动等几个方面入手,着重分析其近年变化对政府制定人口政策的影响。     

建筑用相变蓄能材料研究现状与发展趋势

利用相变材料对清洁能源进行储存和使用已成为建筑节能设计的重要措施之一。对建筑用相变材料的研究和应用现状进行了总结概况,介绍了对建筑用相变材料的要求、常见种类、封装方法和选用原则,总结了相变材料与传统建筑材料复合、与建筑设施相结合两种主要应用形式,并通过案例阐述了已有的典型应用方法,讨论了相变材料在建筑中的应用面临的挑战和应用前景。为相变材料在建筑中的应用和研究提供参考。