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"Quentin Grafton, R"
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Smartphone use and income growth in rural China: empirical results and policy implications
The diffusion of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) has important implications for rural economic development. Many studies have investigated the potential contributions of mobile ICTs to agricultural production and poverty reduction, but have failed to consider the wider income effects of the use of updated ICTs, such as smartphones. Our findings, based on household-level survey data from rural China and an endogenous switching regression model, indicate that gender, farmers’ education, farm size, and off-farm work participation are the main drivers of smartphone use. Further, we find that smartphone use increases farm income, off-farm income and household income substantially and there is a statistically significant difference in the income effects between male and female users of smartphones. Possible policy interventions from our findings include: (1) support to increase use of smartphones by households headed by women; and (2) a ‘win–win’ approach to rural development that includes improved hard (roads) and soft (education) infrastructure and encompasses the increased use of smartphones so as to increase both off-farm employment opportunities and farm and off-farm incomes.
Journal Article
Global impacts of heat and water stress on food production and severe food insecurity
In contrast to most integrated assessment models, with limited transparency on damage functions and recursive temporal dynamics, we use a unique large-dimensional computational global climate and trade model, GTAP-DynW, to directly project the possible intertemporal impacts of water and heat stress on global food supply and food security to 2050. The GTAP-DynW model uses GTAP production and trade data for 141 countries and regions, with varying water and heat stress baselines, and results are aggregated into 30 countries/regions and 30 commodity sectors. Blue water stress projections are drawn from WRI source material and a GTAP-Water database to incorporate dynamic changes in water resources and their availability in agricultural production and international trade, thus providing a more general measure for severe food insecurity from water and heat stress damages with global warming. Findings are presented for three representative concentration pathways: RCP4.5-SSP2, RCP8.5-SPP2, and RCP8.5-SSP3 (population growth only for SSPs) and project: (a) substantial declines, as measured by GCal, in global food production of some 6%, 10%, and 14% to 2050 and (b) the number of additional people with severe food insecurity by 2050, correspondingly, increases by 556 million, 935 million, and 1.36 billion compared to the 2020 model baseline.
Journal Article
Valuing water for sustainable development
Measurement and governance must advance together Achieving universal, safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030, as envisioned by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, is projected to require capital expenditures of USD 114 billion per year ( 1 ). Investment on that scale, along with accompanying policy reforms, can be motivated by a growing appreciation of the value of water. Yet our ability to value water, and incorporate these values into water governance, is inadequate. Newly recognized cascading negative impacts of water scarcity, pollution, and flooding underscore the need to change the way we value water ( 2 ). With the UN/World Bank High Level Panel on Water having launched the Valuing Water Initiative in 2017 to chart principles and pathways for valuing water, we see a global opportunity to rethink the value of water. We outline four steps toward better valuation and management (see the box), examine recent advances in each of these areas, and argue that these four steps must be integrated to overcome the barriers that have stymied past efforts.
Journal Article
On the Marketisation of Water: Evidence from the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia
Policy makers will increasingly have to turn to water demand management in the future to respond to greater water scarcity. Water markets have long been promoted as one of the most efficient ways to reallocate water by economists, but have also been subject to much criticism due to their possible social, economic and environmental impacts. We engage with common critical perceptions of water markets by presenting first-hand evidence of their effects in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), Australia. Water markets in the MDB, as developed within an appropriate institutional framework and coupled with comprehensive water planning, have: (1) helped deliver improved environmental outcomes; (2) assisted irrigators’ adaptation responses to climate risks, such as drought; (3) increased the gross valued added of farming; and (4) been regulated in ways to meet social goals. If water markets are embedded within fair and effective meta-governance and property right structures, the potential exists for marketisation to increase efficiency, promote fairness in terms of initial water allocations, and to improve environmental outcomes.
Journal Article
Health and economic costs of early and delayed suppression and the unmitigated spread of COVID-19: The case of Australia
We compare the health and economic costs of early and delayed mandated suppression and the unmitigated spread of ‘first-wave’ COVID-19 infections in Australia in 2020. Using a fit-for-purpose SIQRM-compartment model for susceptible, infected, quarantined, recovered and mortalities on active cases, that we fitted from recorded data, a value of a statistical life year (VSLY) and an age-adjusted value of statistical life (A-VSL), we find that the economic costs of unmitigated suppression are multiples more than for early mandated suppression. We also find that using an equivalent VSLY welfare loss from fatalities to estimated GDP losses, drawn from survey data and our own estimates of the impact of suppression measures on the economy, means that for early suppression not to be the preferred strategy requires that Australia would have to incur more than 12,500–30,000 deaths, depending on the fatality rate with unmitigated spread, to the economy costs of early mandated suppression. We also find that early rather than delayed mandated suppression imposes much lower economy and health costs and conclude that in high-income countries, like Australia, a ‘go early, go hard’ strategy to suppress COVID-19 results in the lowest estimated public health and economy costs.
Journal Article
Determinants of residential water consumption: Evidence and analysis from a 10-country household survey
Household survey data for 10 countries are used to quantify and test the importance of price and nonprice factors on residential water demand and investigate complementarities between household water‐saving behaviors and the average volumetric price of water. Results show (1) the average volumetric price of water is an important predictor of differences in residential consumption in models that include household characteristics, water‐saving devices, attitudinal characteristics and environmental concerns as explanatory variables; (2) of all water‐saving devices, only a low volume/dual‐flush toilet has a statistically significant and negative effect on water consumption; and (3) environmental concerns have a statistically significant effect on some self‐reported water‐saving behaviors. While price‐based approaches are espoused to promote economic efficiency, our findings stress that volumetric water pricing is also one of the most effective policy levers available to regulate household water consumption. Key Points Average water price is the best predictor of differences in h/hold consumption Environmental attitudes do not significantly effect h/hold water consumption Average water price is an effective lever to manage h/hold water demand
Journal Article
Responding to the ‘Wicked Problem’ of Water Insecurity
This paper highlights key trends and projections in water scarcity, reviews the ways that water security and water scarcity are most commonly understood, and explores possible responses. Based on a selected review of the literature, an explanation is provided of ways that water pricing can be applied to respond to water insecurity from both a demand and supply perspective. ‘Hard’ and also ‘soft’ approaches that include stakeholder, policy and decision processes are briefly reviewed as ways to promote water security. Collectively, the paper provides a guide about how decision makers might efficiently and equitably respond to the ‘wicked problem’ of water insecurity.
Journal Article
India's depleting groundwater: When science meets policy
A commonly applied policy to India's ongoing depletion of groundwater is feeder separation. Introduced in Gujarat as the Jyotigram Yojana (JGY) scheme, it provides a separate and rationed electricity supply to farmers and an unrationed power supply to nonagricultural users. JGY is claimed to increase groundwater storage. By using Gujarat district-level data from 1996 to 2011 and by separately applying difference-in- differences and Bayesian regressions, we find that groundwater storage has continued to decrease with JGY. We contend that our empirical results show that JGY has been implemented without adequate consideration of (1) a publication bias whereby researchers have a greater likelihood of having their results published if they are statistically significant and show a positive outcome and (2) a 'barrier' effect such that communicating evidence across science and policy divides means that evidence may not be accepted, even when true, and this limits policy advice and options.
Journal Article
