Nature s Impact on Economic Diversification and Welfare: Theory and Evidence from an Indian Fishery.

全球7亿多穷人的收入依赖生态系统服务，生活在个人专业化和总体多样化水平较低的农村自给自足经济中。然而，个人专业化和总体经济多元化是经济发展的基本要素，本研究的目的是确定环境因素对个人专业化和总体经济多元化的影响，并量化贫困农村经济中经济多元化和福利之间的反馈。我假设，环境波动性和生物多样性是解释农村经济多样化的关键因素，经济多样化和财富分配之间存在强烈的相互关系。为了检验环境条件对多样化的影响，我将使用来自印度内陆大型渔业的时间序列和横截面数据的经验方法。此外，我将建立和调整一个模型，以确定多元化对福利的影响，并测试有关信贷市场和资源使用监管的政策对福利的影响。

More than 700 Million of the globally poor depend on ecosystem services for their incomes and live in rural subsistence economies with low levels of individual specialization and aggregate diversification. Yet, individual specialization and aggregate economic diversification are fundamental elements of economic development.The aim of the proposed research is to determine the influence of environmental factors on individual specialization and aggregate economic diversification and to quantify the feedbacks between economic diversification and welfare in poor rural economies. I hypothesize, that environmental volatility and biodiversity are key factors in explaining rural economic diversification and that there are strong interrelations between economic diversification and wealth distributions.To test the effect of environmental conditions on diversification I will use empirical methods with time series and cross-sectional data from a large Indian inland fishery. Further, I will set up and calibrate a model to determine the impact of diversification on welfare and to test the welfare implications of policies concerning credit markets and resource use regulations.