CAREER: Health, Environmental Issues, and Price Effects in Developing Countries

这项提案概述了发展经济学的实证研究和教学议程，重点放在三个领域：价格效应、人力资本和环境。在这些领域中的每一个领域，拟议的研究都对发展中国家的共同特征进行了建模，例如缺乏信贷市场或与世界市场的一体化程度有限，然后使用家庭数据对预测进行检验。这项提议涉及的第一个领域是农村经济中的价格效应。起点是，村庄往往是孤立的、半封闭的经济体。因此，价格由当地的供求决定，影响供需的政策可以通过价格产生重要的间接影响。这项拟议的研究考察了墨西哥政府对穷人的转移支付的价格影响，比较了现金转移支付和实物转移支付。实物转让增加了经济的供应，因此它们应该降低转让商品的价格，而不是使用现金转让。这种金钱效应可以显著增加或减少对穷人的净转移，这取决于穷人是转移商品的消费者还是生产者。第二个领域是人力资本，重点是健康的决定因素。这项研究的主题是：健康如何与生育率和婚姻共同决定；市场缺失如何影响健康；以及健康方面的性别差距。一个拟议的项目调查了获得避孕措施对母乳喂养的意外影响。其影响可能是积极的，也可能是消极的：母乳喂养暂时降低了生育力，因此是现代节育措施的替代品，但更好的节育措施也允许女性将出生间隔更远，并延长对年龄较大的孩子的母乳喂养时间。这在贫穷国家具有重要的健康影响，因为母乳喂养保护婴儿免受受污染的食物和水的影响。第二个项目调查了穆斯林社会中常见的表亲婚姻对后代健康的影响。该项目还审查了表亲婚姻的经济利益；例如，在大家庭中，新娘和新郎家庭之间的非正式合同可能更容易执行。另一个项目检验了这一假设，即母亲往往比父亲更多地投资于子女的人力资本，是因为她们从子女那里获得了更多的老年赡养，因此在子女的人力资本上获得了更高的投资回报。这项提议涉及的第三个领域是环境退化。减少发展中国家的森林砍伐可能是减少全球碳排放的最具成本效益的方法之一；森林储存了大量的碳，而在贫穷国家避免砍伐森林的机会成本相对较低(例如，用于种植作物的土地较少)。这项研究使用随机实验来研究一种减少森林砍伐的方法：向私人森林所有者支付避免在他们的土地上砍伐森林的费用。除了评估整体计划的效果外，该研究还考察了激励支付的有效性如何取决于森林所有者机会成本的时间分布，在信贷市场不完善的情况下，这在理论上应该是非常重要的。转移支付项目的金钱影响是政策制定者在选择是以现金还是实物进行转移时的一个重要考虑因素，特别是在目标社区与更大的市场隔绝的情况下。在避孕研究中，如果我们发现节育不鼓励母乳喂养，那么随着节育措施的普及，鼓励母乳喂养的运动可能会变得更加重要。或者，如果避孕导致母乳喂养持续时间更长，那么计划生育服务的好处可能比之前想象的更大。关于表亲婚姻的项目将帮助政策制定者评估穆斯林人口面临的健康风险，并制定这些社区的遗传咨询政策。最后，对森林砍伐的研究是环境政策制定中的一个重要领域。最近，联合国发起了一项重大倡议，富裕国家将通过该倡议向贫穷国家支付避免砍伐森林的费用。这项研究将为减少森林砍伐提供一个有希望的方法的证据，即向个人提供现金转移，条件是他们不清理自己的林地。

This proposal outlines an empirical research and teaching agenda in development economics, focusing on three areas: price effects, human capital, and the environment. In each of these areas, the proposed research models common features of developing countries such as missing credit markets or limited integration with world markets and then tests the predictions using household data.The first area addressed by this proposal is price effects in rural economies. The starting point is that villages are often isolated, semi-closed economies. Thus, prices are determined by local supply and demand, and policies that affect supply and demand can have important indirect effects through prices. The proposed research examines the price effects of government transfers to the poor in Mexico, comparing cash versus in-kind transfers. Inkind transfers add supply to the economy, so they should reduce the price of the transferred goods relative to if cash transfers were used. This pecuniary effect can significantly enhance or diminish the net transfer to the poor, depending on whether the poor are consumers or producers of the transferred goods.The second area is human capital, with an emphasis on the determinants of health. The themes of this research are how health is jointly determined with fertility and marriage; how missing markets affect health; and gender gaps in health. One proposed project examines the unintended effect that access to contraception has on breastfeeding. The effect could be positive or negative: Breastfeeding temporarily reduces fecundity so is a substitute for modern birth control, but better birth control also allows women to space births further apart and breastfeed the older child longer. This has important health implications in poor countries because breastfeeding protects infants from contaminated food and water. A second project examines the effect of cousin marriage, which is common in Muslim societies, on the health of offspring. The project also examines the economic benefits of cousin marriage; for example, informal contracts between the bride and groom's families may be more enforceable within extended families. Another project tests the hypothesis that the reason mothers often invest more in children's human capital than fathers do is that they receive more old age support from their children and hence earn a higher return on investment in their children's human capital.The third area addressed in this proposal is environmental degradation. Reducing deforestation in developing countries is possibly one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce global carbon emissions; forests store a large amount of carbon, and the opportunity cost of averted deforestation in poor countries (e.g., less land to cultivate crops) is relatively low. This research uses a randomized experiment to study one approach to reducing deforestation: paying private forest owners for avoiding deforestation on their land. In addition to assessing the overall program effect, the research examines how the effectiveness of incentive payments depends on the time profile of forest owners' opportunity costs, which theoretically should be quite important when credit markets are imperfect.Broader impactThis research has important policy implications. The pecuniary effects of transfer programs are an important consideration for policy makers choosing whether to deliver transfers in cash or in-kind, particularly when the targeted communities are isolated from larger markets. In the research on contraception, if we find that birth control discourages breastfeeding, then as birth control becomes more available, campaigns to encourage breastfeeding may become more important. Alternatively, if contraception leads to a longer duration of breastfeeding, then the benefits of family planning services may be larger than previously thought. The project on cousin marriage will help policy makers to assess the health risks facing Muslim populations and to design policies on genetic counseling in these communities. Finally, the research on deforestation speaks to an important area in environmental policy-making. Recently, the United Nations launched a major initiative through which rich countries will pay poor countries for avoided deforestation. This research will provide evidence on one promising way to reduce deforestation, namely cash transfers to individuals that are conditional on their not clearing their forest land.