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| Author | : Luc Veyssiere |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 86 |
| Release | : 2009 |
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| Author | : Shuwei Zeng |
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| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2019 |
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This dissertation will provide theoretical and empirical contributions to the evaluation of productivity and environmental performance and policy analysis with an application to milk production. Our case studies involve the use of U.S. as well as Irish farm-level data. I provide methods to quantify differences of productivity estimates with different measures of input and output in production function, incorporate environmental performance in productivity evaluation and investigate the impacts of major dairy policy reforms via three essays.
| Author | : Biswo Nath Poudel |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 208 |
| Release | : 2010 |
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This dissertation probes three issues of current interest in environmental and agricultural economics. The first paper provides an in-depth analysis of sedimentation management issue in large reservoirs. The paper provides a new model of sedimentation management and conditional on assumed primitives of the model, analyses different scenarios under which sedimentation removal may increase or decrease. The paper also provides insights on how temperature fluctuation, increased sedimentation arrival in the reservoir and change in the perception of large reservoirs among the public may affect the sustainability and management of the large reservoir. The second paper looks at the data from the Latin American countries to search for the presence of Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC) in Latin America. The paper is also one of the earliest papers to use forestry data and semiparametric approach in finding EKC. The paper finds no evidence of EKC in Latin America as a whole, and in general finds that EKC is sensitive to the region of choice. The third paper carries out an an empirical investigation to test for the convergence of total factor productivity(TFP) of agricultural sector in the United States. The investigation does not find any evidence of convergence while looking at the U.S. state-level agricultural TFP at the aggregate level. However, it finds support for convergence within some of the clusters or within some of the regions. The paper takes a new approach in grouping states, which makes it different from other papers where ad hoc grouping of states was done. In this paper, such approach is abandoned in favor of a cluster analysis approach that relies on data to form "clusters". Cluster analysis approach finds that convergence in the regional level (cluster) does not improve significantly compared to the findings by a wellknown previously published study which didn't use cluster analysis approach.
| Author | : Qu Tang |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 97 |
| Release | : 2015 |
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Abstract Essays on Environmental Economics by Qu Tang Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Berkeley Professor Gordon C. Rausser, Chair This dissertation is comprised of three essays that apply microeconomics theory and econometric methods to study important issues in environmental economics. In the first essay, I investigate the impacts of imposing inter-state trade restrictions on the compliance costs of coal-fired electric generating units (EGUs) in the context of a U.S. SO2 emissions trading program (the Acid Rain Program). Over the past decade, tremendous efforts have been devoted to modifying emissions trading programs to address cross-state air pollution problems. The modification involves imposing more restrictions on emissions trading across geographical areas. The empirical question is how severe trade restrictions affect the regulated firms' compliance costs. Using rich data from the Acid Rain Program, this essay developed a discrete-continuous model to estimate electric generating units' compliance strategies and marginal abatement costs associated with the nationwide uniform emissions trading as the program was implemented in practice. Based on the estimation results, this essay then simulated units' compliance behaviors and the corresponding compliance costs if interstate trading had been prohibited. The results show that the aggregate compliance costs would increase more than one and a half times for the same emissions reduction goal due to the narrower trading markets in the counterfactual policy design with trade restrictions, and the costs would vary dramatically across space. Combined with the analysis on the benefit side, the results of this essay could be used to predict welfare impacts associated with trade restrictions at both national level and state level. And it may shed light on the future modification and implementation of EPA's cross-state air pollution regulations. The second essay applies an equilibrium sorting model to a brand-new housing market in Beijing, China to estimate household preferences for neighborhood public goods provision, including public transportation services, public primary schools, and environmental amenities. The equilibrium sorting model is based on a discrete choice model of household residential location decisions. Relying on a unique, detailed data set on housing location, price, and other household characteristics, I estimate the model following the two-step BLP method, taking into account the heterogeneity of household preferences, incorporating neighborhood-specific unobservable characteristics, and addressing the endogeneity of housing prices using instrumental variables. The results suggest that in general, lower housing price, better environmental amenities, and being closer to job centers will increase the choice opportunity of a neighborhood, and public transportation systems play a more important role in the neighborhoods far away from urban centers. Moreover, different households show varying preferences for these public goods. A distinct fact is that in addition to income, people's preferences vary greatly with generation (head age of households) and job type (whether there are public employees), which reveal the significant differences between generations and illustrate the welfare for public employees within the context of the transitional economy in China. This preference heterogeneity implies that future policies should be more geographically asymmetric, locally targeted and tailored based on specific socio-economic characteristics. The third essay estimates the impact of climate change on the crop yields in China. I use a 11-year county-level panel data set covering more than 1,000 counties to estimate the effects of random year-to-year variation in weather on three major crops yields, including rice, wheat, and corn. Because it is not easy for small-scale farmers to adapt to climate change quickly in short time, these estimates could be used to plausibly predict the short to medium-run impacts of climate change on crop yields in China. The essay finds that over the period 2040-2060, projected climate change would reduce rice yield by 1.18% under a comparatively high emission scenario and by 0.08% under a medium-low scenario, reduce corn yield by 2.21% and 1.64% under the two emission scenarios, respectively, and increase wheat yield by 6.68% and 5.48% under the two emission scenarios, respectively. These findings may shed light on future policy designs to enhance the adaptive capacity of agriculture in China and thus ensure food security in the context of climate change.
| Author | : Timur Dincer |
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| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2022 |
| Genre | : Farm produce |
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My dissertation comprises three essays on applications of microeconomics in contemporary issues of agricultural freight transportation. The first chapter is an analysis of competition between rail and truck transportation modes in agricultural freight shipment markets in the U.S. The second chapter is an application of game theory on tort litigation that has a vital role in the compensation of externalities. The third chapter centers on the analysis of the agricultural truck freight safety including the effect of the statutory exemptions granted to agricultural truck freight carriers. The first chapter adopts a derived demand model to estimate shipping demand price elasticities for agricultural freight ensuing with an analysis of competition for different market segments. Results indicate that the mode dominance is largely determined by lane distance for grain shipping: the average distance of truck dominant lanes is 183 miles (short hauls), the average distance of rail-dominated lanes is 1,658 miles (long hauls), and the average distance of competitive lanes is 657 (medium hauls). For frozen goods shipping, the majority of the frozen freight lanes are truck dominated.The second chapter models tort litigation as a two-stage game-inducing settlement on the true value of the case. We provide conditions as to trial costs under which tort litigation serves as a subgame perfect implementation. We also provide a guideline for the discussions over limiting the punitive damage awards, a policy change that has been advocated by tort reform initiatives. Results indicate that the authorities should take the split-recovery rules into consideration when capping on punitive damages. We also find that a partial cost shifting as opposed to the American payment rule may remedy for tort litigation inefficiency.The third chapter analyzes the safety of agricultural truck freight transportation including the effects of statutory exemptions using GLM models. Results indicate that the statutory exemptions had no impact on crash riskiness for the period 2008-2018. Other key findings suggest that agricultural carriers are less likely to be involved in an accident than non-agricultural carriers, however once they are involved in accidents, they are more likely to cause injury or loss to human life.
| Author | : Renato Nunes de Lima Seixas |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 108 |
| Release | : 2014 |
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This dissertation is comprised of two essays that apply tools from applied microeconomics and empirical methods to study important issues in agriculture, environment and health economics. The unifying topic of the essays is the use of economic reasoning and careful research design to identify causal relationships using observational data. In the first essay, I investigate the environmental effects due to pesticides for two different genetically modified (GM) seeds: insect resistant (IR) cotton and herbicide tolerant (HT) soybeans. Using an agricultural production model of a profit maximizing competitive farm, I derive predictions that IR trait decreases the amount of insecticides used and HT trait increases the amount of less toxic herbicides. While the environmental impact of pesticides for IR seeds is lower, for the HT seeds the testable predictions are ambiguous: scale and substitution effects can lead to higher or lower environmental impacts. I use a dataset on commercial farms use of pesticides and biotechnology in Brazil to document environmental effects of GM traits. I explore within-farm variation for farmers planting conventional and GM seeds to identify the effect of adoption on the environmental impact of pesticides measured as quantity of active ingredients of chemicals and the Environmental Impact Quotient index. The findings show that the IR trait reduces the environmental impact of insecticides and the HT trait increases environmental impact due to weak substitution among herbicides of different toxicity levels. This is an important result for three reasons. First, it contributes to uncover environmental effects that have been hidden by the qualitative nature of the change mix of herbicides induced by HT trait. Second, environmental policy makers designing policies for biotechnology adoption might consider this new evidence to differentiate among GM traits that produce positive or negative externalities. Finally, the composition of the EIQ index suggests that the environmental impact of pesticides can have multiple dimensions that might involve farmworker health and safety, consumer safety and ecological impacts. Hence, the results on HT soybeans points to additional avenues of work that should be taken to evaluate each of these possible channels since they can also affect other important outcomes such as human capital accumulation. The second essay studies the behavior of mark-up for antihistaminic medicines, used as a treatment for allergy symptoms caused by seasonal high pollen concentration on air, and test whether it's consistent with models of dynamic price competition with fluctuating demand. I draw on the empirical tests of the theory of dynamic price competition which examine the response of observed price-cost margins - retail minus wholesale prices - to expected demand, controlling for current demand. Using a dataset of retail sales, I estimate a reduced form model that captures some of the characteristics of the dynamic price competition with cyclical demand. It consists of a relationship between prices of antihistaminic drugs and measures of pollen concentration on air, taking into account the current level of demand in a given market. Under two basic assumptions - the marginal costs of drugs in each city is the same and level of pollen concentration on air works as a proxy for the expected demand in a given week and prices respond positively to those expectations -, I find evidence that the behavior of the retail margins is consistent with the predictions of models of dynamic price competition under cyclical demand. The essay makes a contribution to understand the dynamics of behavior in oligopolistic markets that might be of interest to academics and practitioners who wants to understand conduct and performance of industrial markets.
| Author | : Dallas Wayne Wood |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 129 |
| Release | : 2015 |
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| Author | : Carmen Eugenia Carrion Flores |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 142 |
| Release | : 2007 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9781109953688 |
In the final chapter of this dissertation, the general findings are concluded and some future avenues of research are discussed.
| Author | : Eva Tène |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 208 |
| Release | : 2021 |
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Human beings have been shaped by their environment through hundreds of years of evolutionary time. They have also become able to shape their environment, to a point where mankind poses serious threat on its own existence. The three chapters of this dissertation examine the interplay between the environment and human activities and institutions. It is the fruit of an interdisciplinary research work in which I answer to scientific questions with econometric methods, exploiting data and techniques from both economics and other fields of science such as biology, ecology and anthropology. The first two chapters of the thesis explore the relation between the environment and human activities. Water and air pollution caused by those latter leads to more than ten millions of human deaths each year worldwide, according to the WHO. In the first and second chapters, I study the effectiveness of environmental public policies targeting water pollution from agricultural sources, exploiting a novel methodology based on the hydrographic network of rivers, to assess policy effects on water quality and economic outcomes. The last chapter of the thesis links climate with historical human institutions. A body of empirical research which has emerged over the past two decades has shed light on the importance of historical features, such as preindustrial cross-cultural differences, on contemporary economic development. This research question first explores the historical roots which contributed to shape preindustrial cross-cultural differences, and more particularly, how geoclimatic conditions in which societies have lived historically have determined their social institutions, understood as traditional cultural practices. Then, it investigates how those social institutions impact economic outcomes in return, focusing on socioeconomic outcomes.
| Author | : Rebbecca Michelle Reed-Arthurs |
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| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : 2012 |
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| ISBN | : 9781267662828 |
This dissertation addresses issues in environmental and public economics. The first part investigates the impact of exposure to toxic chemicals released by manufacturing firms on health and productivity outcomes. It focuses on accurately quantifying the causal impact of these releases, and compares the potential benefits of reductions in exposure to the benefits of other policy interventions. The second part of this dissertation explores three open questions in the literature on social demand for income redistribution in the United States.The first chapter examines the effect of exposure to airborne toxic chemicals on students' academic achievement using annual variations in standardized test scores linked to variations in within-school-cohort exposure to airborne releases of toxic chemicals. I find that airborne releases of toxins suspected or known to impact growth and development have a detrimental impact on education outcomes at schools located within one mile of the release site. For students who attend one of the 638 public elementary schools in the state of Texas located within a mile of a toxic-chemical releasing facility, declines in average releases of developmental toxins since 1989 have increased test scores by 0.7% of a standard deviation. This effect is about 6% as large as the improvement expected if the average quality of every teacher in these schools was increased by one standard deviation, or 4% of the test score improvement expected if every class size was reduced by 8 students.The second chapter employs a novel estimation strategy to quantify the impact of waterborne releases of industrial toxins on infant health outcomes using variation in the source of raw drinking water (groundwater vs. surface water) to control for the effects of economic activity and other omitted variables common to much of the research in this field. I find that within-county toxic releases into surface water are associated with higher infant mortality and lower birthweights in areas which rely on surface water as a source of tap water relative to those which rely on groundwater as a source of tap water. A one within-county standard deviation increase in surface releases is associated with a 3.5% increase in infant mortality and a 2.6% increase in the incidence of very low birthweight births. These results are about half as large as the improvements in birthweight associated with the well-known Food Stamp or WIC programs on county-average birthweights, and are similar to a one standard deviation increase in airborne releases of developmental toxins. The final chapter addresses a different public policy topic - taxation and redistribution. My coauthor and I explore the public's expressed attitudes towards redistribution through taxation and address three open questions related to income redistribution preferences. First, we use data from a nationally representative survey on taxation and fairness to explore the relative demand for redistribution from the wealthy to the middle class and to the poor. We find that, while Americans have interest in redistribution to both groups, this demand is driven by dramatically different factors. Second, we examine how stated demand for redistribution is influenced by issues of question framing. Finally, we conduct an experiment to disentangle pure preferences for income redistribution from beliefs about the disincentive effects of higher tax rates. These findings contribute to understanding current political tensions over income inequality.
