615 research outputs found
Essays on Applied Economics
It Never Rains But It Pours: weather shocks on sectoral wage in US counties. Does Foreign Aid Fuel Trust
SHOOTING DOWN THE PRICE: EVIDENCE FROM MAFIA HOMICIDES AND HOUSING MARKET VOLATILITY
In this work, we assess the role of a specific type of organized crime in influencing choices on where living within the city territory, and consequently, volatility in house prices. More specifically, we test how organized crime killing may influence house pricing behaviors. Firstly, we show evidences about how organized crime is associated with higher inequality of housing prices for Italian cities in 2011. Then, by collecting and geo referencing data on the city of Naples for the period 2002-2016, we test for the direct influence of homicides on the relevant territory, as on the neighboring districts. Results show a negative and significant impact of killing on the house prices either for sales or for rents and a positive effect in neighboring district, driving increases in within-city inequality
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Gender, weather shocks and welfare: evidence from Malawi
This paper explores the gender-differentiated effects of weather shocks on householdsâ welfare in Malawi using panel data aligned with climatic records. Results show that temperature shocks severely affect household welfare, reducing consumption, food consumption and daily caloric intake. The negative welfare effects are more severe for households where land is solely managed by women, a finding that sheds light on the gender-unequal impact of temperature shocks. Our evidence also suggests that womenâs vulnerability to temperature shocks is linked to womenâs land tenure security, as temperature shocks impact significantly womenâs welfare only in patrilineal districts, where statistics show that investment in agricultural technologies is lower
Using the transit of Venus to probe the upper planetary atmosphere
The atmosphere of a transiting planet shields the stellar radiation providing
us with a powerful method to estimate its size and density. In particular,
because of their high ionization energy, atoms with high atomic number (Z)
absorb short-wavelength radiation in the upper atmosphere, undetectable with
observations in visible light. One implication is that the planet should appear
larger during a primary transit observed in high energy bands than in the
optical band. The last Venus transit in 2012 offered a unique opportunity to
study this effect. The transit has been monitored by solar space observations
from Hinode and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We measure the radius of
Venus during the transit in three different bands with subpixel accuracy:
optical (4500A), UV (1600A, 1700A), Extreme UltraViolet (EUV, 171-335A) and
soft X-rays (about 10A). We find that, while the Venus optical radius is about
80 km larger than the solid body radius (the expected opacity mainly due to
clouds and haze), the radius increases further by more than 70 km in the EUV
and soft X-rays. These measurements mark the densest ion layers of Venus'
ionosphere, providing information about the column density of CO2 and CO. They
are useful for planning missions in situ to estimate the dynamical pressure
from the environment, and can be employed as a benchmark case for observations
with future missions, such as the ESA Athena, which will be sensitive enough to
detect transits of exoplanets in high-energy bands.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; published in Nature Communications; the full and
copy-edited version is open access at
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150623/ncomms8563/full/ncomms8563.htm
Assessing the profitability and feasibility of climate-smart agriculture investment in Southern Malawi
This working paper analyses the financial cost and benefit of adopting two different bundles of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, which are tailored for the diverse conditions that prevail in southern Malawi. The results show the integration of CSA practices, including soil conservation, agroforestry, and livestock diversification, into conventional maize-legume and maize monocrop systems is profitable for farmers. Moreover, the profitability of these systems increases under extreme weather conditions that occur with increasing frequency in the region. However, the upfront costs and cost variability associated with the adoption of these CSA scenarios is high relative to conventional practices. In addition, while the Net Present Value is positive for the CSA scenarios, the monetary returns are small and are spread over a long investment period. These factors act as significant barriers to adopting CSA practices. Supporting farmers through climate financing or other mechanisms to make long-term private investment in CSA, based on the public benefits these investments generate for the environment, is critical for achieving widespread adoption
Climate Resilience Pathways of Rural Households. Evidence from Ethiopia
This paper explores the resilience capacity of rural Ethiopian households after the drought shock
occurred in 2011. The work develops an original empirical framework able to capture the policy and
socio-economic determinants of householdsâ resilience capacity by making parametric statistical
assumption on the resilience distribution. To this end, the analysis employs a two-wave
representative panel dataset aligned with detailed weather records while controlling for a large set
of household- and community-level characteristics. The analysis shows that the majority of these
factors affects significantly resilience capacity only in the group of households affected by the
drought shock, suggesting that the observed effect relates to the adaptive capacity enabled by
these factors, rather than a simple welfare effect. Three policy indications emerge from the findings
of the empirical model. First, government support programmes, such as the PSNP, appear to
sustain householdsâ resilience by helping them to reach the level of pre-shock total consumption,
but have no impact on the food-consumption resilience. Secondly, the âselling out assets strategyâ
affects positively on householdsâ resilience, but only in terms of food consumption. Finally, the
presence of informal institutions, such as social networks providing financial support, sharply
increases householdsâ resilience by helping them to reach pre-shock levels of food and total
consumption. Policies incentivizing the formation of these networks, through the participation of
households to agricultural cooperative, agricultural associations, or community projects, may also
help farmers in recovering their wealth level after a weather shoc
Essays on Applied Economics
It Never Rains But It Pours: weather shocks on sectoral wage in US counties. Does Foreign Aid Fuel Trust?It Never Rains But It Pours: weather shocks on sectoral wage in US counties. Does Foreign Aid Fuel Trust?LUISS PhD Thesi
Shooting Down the Price: Evidence from Mafia Homicides and Housing Market Volatility
In this paper we estimate the effect of the homicides by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, on housing prices in Naples. The study develops on a unique panel dataset at the administrative district level for the period 2002-2018 of geo-localized homicides involving innocent victims (denoted as IVH ), which are treated as exogenous shocks that negatively affect housing demand. We find that the occurrence of such homicides causes a decrease in housing prices in the range of 2.5 â 3.8 percentage points. This effect decreases with the distance from an IVH and over time. These results are robust to the utilization of different econometric specifications and to the considerations of possible confounding factors such as other types of textitCamorra homicides
Shooting down the price: Evidence from Mafia homicides and housing prices
In this paper, we estimate the effect of the homicides by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, on housing prices in Naples. The study develops on a unique panel data set at the administrative district level for the period 2002â2018 of geo-localized homicides involving innocent victims (denoted as IVH), which are treated as exogenous shocks that negatively affect housing demand. We find that the occurrence of such homicides causes a decrease in housing prices in the range of 2.5â3.8 percentage points. This effect decreases with the distance from an IVH and over time. These results are robust to the utilization of different econometric specifications and to the considerations of possible confounding factors such as other types of Camorra homicides
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