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

职业：发展中国家的健康、环境问题和价格影响

• 批准号: 1156941
• 负责人: Seema Jayachandran
• 金额: $ 40.29万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-02-15 至 2017-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1156941&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Health; Environmental; Issues; Price

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.

该提案概述了发展经济学的实证研究和教学议程，重点是三个领域：价格效应，人力资本和环境。在每一个领域，拟议的研究都建立了发展中国家的共同特点的模型，如缺少信贷市场或与世界市场的融合有限，然后使用家庭数据检验预测，这项建议涉及的第一个领域是农村经济中的价格影响。首先，村庄往往是孤立的、半封闭的经济体。因此，价格是由当地供求决定的，影响供求的政策可以通过价格产生重要的间接影响。拟议的研究审查了墨西哥政府向穷人转移支付的价格影响，比较了现金和实物转移。实物转移增加了经济的供给，因此相对于使用现金转移，实物转移应该会降低转移商品的价格。这种金钱效应可以大大增加或减少对穷人的净转移，这取决于穷人是转移货物的消费者还是生产者。这项研究的主题是健康如何与生育率和婚姻共同决定;缺失的市场如何影响健康;以及健康方面的性别差距。一个拟议的项目审查了获得避孕药具对母乳喂养的意外影响。这种影响可能是积极的，也可能是消极的：母乳喂养暂时降低了生育能力，因此是现代节育的替代品，但更好的节育也使女性能够将生育间隔更远，并更长时间地母乳喂养较大的孩子。这对贫穷国家的健康有重要影响，因为母乳喂养可以保护婴儿免受污染的食物和水的伤害。第二个项目研究穆斯林社会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，新娘和新郎家庭之间的非正式合同在大家庭中可能更容易执行。另一个项目验证了这样一个假设，即母亲往往比父亲对子女的人力资本投资更多，原因是她们从子女那里得到更多的养老金，因此对子女的人力资本投资获得更高的回报。减少发展中国家的森林砍伐可能是减少全球碳排放量的最具成本效益的方法之一;森林储存了大量的碳，穷国避免森林砍伐的机会成本（例如，种植农作物的土地较少）相对较低。这项研究使用随机实验来研究减少森林砍伐的一种方法：为私人森林所有者支付费用，以避免在他们的土地上砍伐森林。除了评估整体计划的效果，研究探讨如何激励支付的有效性取决于时间的森林所有者的机会成本，这在理论上应该是相当重要的信贷市场是不完善的。转让方案的金钱影响是决策者选择以现金还是实物提供转让的一个重要考虑因素，特别是当目标社区与较大的市场隔绝时。在避孕的研究中，如果我们发现避孕措施不鼓励母乳喂养，那么随着避孕措施变得更加可行，鼓励母乳喂养的运动可能变得更加重要。或者，如果避孕导致母乳喂养的持续时间更长，那么计划生育服务的好处可能比以前想象的要大。关于表亲婚姻的项目将帮助决策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，关于森林砍伐的研究涉及环境决策的一个重要领域。最近，联合国发起了一项重大倡议，通过这项倡议，富国将向穷国支付避免砍伐森林的费用。这项研究将提供证据，证明减少森林砍伐的一种有希望的方法，即向个人提供现金转移，条件是他们不清除自己的林地。