Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy最新文献

Numerous structural vulnerabilities put developing regions at a disadvantage as they confront the prospect of increasingly frequent extreme shocks. Typical of these regions, South Asia had several characteristics that suggested it would be badly hit by COVID-19: a sizeable informal sector, growing inequalities in access to health services and social protection, and high levels of hunger and malnutrition. This Special Issue focuses on the South Asian experience through COVID-19 and distills forward-looking lessons for the developing world. Included papers point to the importance of strengthening individual resilience, building basic infrastructure and institutional capacity, and implementing inclusive social protection measures.

Globally, over 400 million tons of biomass are burned in agricultural fires for management purposes each year, substantially affecting air quality (Korontzi et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles 2006; 20; Yevich & Logan, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 2003; 17). Rangel and Vogl (Review of Economics and Statistics 2019; 101:616–630) provide evidence that agricultural fires in Brazil cause large declines in newborn health in downwind communities. We replicate this analysis and evaluate the sensitivity of their results to changes in the dataset and alternative modeling choices. Although accounting for the potential of spatial correlation in errors reduces precision of estimated effects, we find that their primary conclusions are robust to alternative specifications and reasonable placebo tests. We discuss how our findings may guide future research on the relationship between agricultural fires and health.

Ensuring the sustainability of small farms relies on understanding farm economics, a crucial yet often overlooked aspect. In North Carolina, many small farms are confronted with financial challenges and the risk of collapse. This study examines the factors that influence farm profitability while considering the intersectionality of race and gender. The findings reveal significant disparities in farm and operator characteristics. Specifically, first-generation and retiree farmers exhibit a lower likelihood of profitability. Conversely, factors positively associated with profitability include owning larger farm acreage, engaging in commercial agricultural production, utilizing paid family labor, practicing full-time farming, and being a non-White minority farmer. To foster the sustainability of small farms, it is imperative to implement policies that support full-time farming and incentivize the use of paid family labor. These measures can contribute to bolstering profitability and safeguarding the economic viability of small farms.

This paper explores the effects of a public policy that reduces by 50% the use of mineral nitrogen in European agriculture. Our results show that, for the European Union, halving mineral fertilizer use leads to: a decrease in agricultural production, a substantial increase in nitrogen use efficiency, lower use of organic fertilizer and a loss of agricultural competitiveness. At the global level, it leads to greater nitrogen consumption if no measure is taken on the demand side. Ultimately, our research highlights the critical importance of supply side adjustments, particularly in terms of cropland area expansion.

Reliable testing data for new infectious diseases like COVID-19 is scarce in developing countries making it difficult to rapidly diagnose spatial disease transmission and identify at-risk areas. We propose a method that uses readily available data on bi-lateral migration channels combined with COVID-19 cases at respective migrant destinations to construct a spatially oriented risk index. We find significant and consistent association between our measure and various types of outcomes including actual COVID-19 cases and deaths, indices of government policy responses, and community mobility patterns. Results suggest that future pandemic models should incorporate migration-linkages to predict regional socio-economic and health risk exposure.

Crop insurance protects lenders by increasing the likelihood of loan repayment when revenue declines. We develop a theoretical mode that explains the role of crop insurance in agricultural lending and how impacts may be different for lenders that are not specialized in agricultural lending. We then test whether the total volume of production credit extended by commercial banks at the county level increases in response to crop insurance availability and whether the level of the response is related to bank specialization in agriculture. We use a novel difference-in-differences strategy based on some counties having a higher share of agricultural production that was not covered by Federal crop insurance in the 1990s. Crop insurance has a robust relationship with increased loan volumes during this period, especially in counties with fewer banks specialized in agriculture.

Myanmar experienced multiple COVID shocks as well as a military takeover in February 2021. Impacts on household poverty remain uncertain, however, because large-scale in-person surveys were impossible during the pandemic and heightened internal conflict. We use ex ante simulation models and phone survey evidence to estimate the poverty effects of these shocks and identify factors correlated with them. While each approach has limitations, and cannot explicitly validate each other, they both indicate rising rural and urban poverty and capital-depleting coping mechanisms. Wider use of simulation modeling could help mobilize social protection faster than waiting for survey results in emergencies.

Black farmers have historically been discriminated against in services from the federal government, including access to credit. Discrimination can take the form of delayed loan processing requests, which can affect timely planting, harvesting, feeding of livestock, and farm performance. This study uses nationwide, farm-level data from 2009 to 2021 from the Farm Service Agency's direct farm loan program to investigate racial discrimination in the farm loan program. Findings reveal loan processing times average longer for Black borrowers on operating loans, though with a substantial state-level variation. Specifically, it takes an average of more than two additional days for Black farmers' operating loan applications to be completed and another two additional days to be processed. However, there was no significant difference in time for farm ownership loans suggesting a more nuanced cause than outright racial discrimination. Other factors that increased loan processing time for borrowers included larger loan amounts, more complex loan types, a mix of collateral, and being a new borrower.

Beginning in mid-2021, U.S. food prices surged at the fastest pace in decades, due to pandemic-related supply chain and labor shortages, rising transportation costs and wages, food commodity and fertilizer shocks resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and perhaps demand-side effects of recent monetary and fiscal stimulus. We decompose the path of domestic food prices into explanatory factors, grouped by supply or demand orientation. Our findings indicate that although supply-side factors explain most of the observed price changes, the demand-side factors we studied—particularly the money supply—have a stronger correlation with recent food price increases than they have, historically.

Using panel data for the period between April 2019 and September 2021, this paper investigates how the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns imposed differential labor market shocks on different social identity groups. We find that while all caste groups lost jobs in the first 2 months of the lockdown, the job losses for lowest-ranked caste are greater by factor of more than two. The data shows that caste gaps in employment outcomes remain sizeable, even when we compare groups within the same industry, occupations, or those who have completed secondary schooling. These findings suggest that caste is not merely a proxy for class, and identity-based policies might be essential to overcoming these disparities.