The impact of cyclones on local economic growth: Evidence from local projections

We shed new light on the short-term dynamic effects of cyclones on local economic growth in India. We proxy local GDP growth with night-time light intensity data and construct a cyclone index that varies across months and districts depending on wind speed exposures. Using local projections on highly granular data for the period 1993M1-2011M12, we find that yearly estimations hide large short-term differential impacts and that the negative impact of cyclones is the largest between 4 and 8 months after the event

The Effect of Forest Access on the Market for Fuelwood in India

CESifo Working Paper No. 7095, 47 p.Fuelwood collection is often cited as the most important cause of deforestation in developing countries. Use of fuelwood in cooking is a leading cause of indoor air pollution. Using household data from India, we show that households located farther away from the forest spend more time collecting. Distant households are likely to sell more fuelwood and buy less. That is, lower access to forests increases fuelwood collection and sale. This counter-intuitive behavior is triggered by two factors: lower access to forests (a) increases the fixed costs of collecting, which in turn leads to more collection; and (b) drives up local fuelwood prices, which makes collection and sale more profitable. We quantify both these effects. Using our estimates we show that a fifth of the fuelwood collected is consumed outside of rural areas, in nearby towns and cities. Our results imply that at the margin, fuelwood scarcity may lead to increased collection and sale, and exacerbate forest degradation

The Effect of Forest Access on the Market for Fuelwood in India

Fuelwood collection is often cited as the most important cause of deforestation in developing countries. Use of fuelwood in cooking is a leading cause of indoor air pollution. Using household data from India, we show that households located farther away from the forest spend more time collecting. Distant households are likely to sell more fuelwood and buy less. That is, lower access to forests increases fuelwood collection and sale. This counter-intuitive behavior is triggered by two factors: lower access to forests (a) increases the fixed costs of collecting, which in turn leads to more collection; and (b) drives up local fuelwood prices, which makes collection and sale more profitable. We quantify both these effects. Using our estimates we show that a fifth of the fuelwood collected is consumed outside of rural areas, in nearby towns and cities. Our results imply that at the margin, fuelwood scarcity may lead to increased collection and sale, and exacerbate forest degradation

The short-run, dynamic employment effects of natural disasters: New insights from Puerto Rico

We study the short-run, dynamic employment effects of natural disasters. We exploit monthly data for 70 3-digits NAICS industries and 78 Puerto Rican counties over the period 1995–2019. Our exogenous measure of exposure to natural disasters is computed using the maximum wind speed recorded in each county during each hurricane. Using panel local projections, we find that after the “average” hurricane, employment falls by 0.5% on average. Across industries, we find substantial heterogeneity in the employment responses. Employment increases in some industries while in others employment decreases after a hurricane. This heterogeneity can be partly explained by input–output linkages

Neural mechanisms of economic commitment in the human medial prefrontal cortex

Neurobiologists have studied decisions by offering successive, independent choices between goods or gambles. However, choices often have lasting consequences, as when investing in a house or choosing a partner. Here, humans decided whether to commit (by acceptance or rejection) to prospects that provided sustained financial return. BOLD signals in the rostral medial prefrontal cortex (rmPFC) encoded stimulus value only when acceptance or rejection was deferred into the future, suggesting a role in integrating value signals over time. By contrast, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) encoded stimulus value only when participants rejected (or deferred accepting) a prospect. dACC BOLD signals reflected two decision biases–to defer commitments to later, and to weight potential losses more heavily than gains–that (paradoxically) maximised reward in this task. These findings offer fresh insights into the pressures that shape economic decisions, and the computation of value in the medial prefrontal cortex. - See more at: http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e03701#sthash.rpmo51q5.dpu

Sound properties associated with equiluminant colours

There is a widespread tendency to associate certain properties of sound with those of colour (e.g., higher pitches with lighter colours). Yet it is an open question how sound influences chroma or hue when properly controlling for lightness. To examine this, we asked participants to adjust physically equiluminant colours until they 'went best' with certain sounds. For pure tones, complex sine waves and vocal timbres, increases in frequency were associated with increases in chroma. Increasing the loudness of pure tones also increased chroma. Hue associations varied depending on the type of stimuli. In stimuli that involved only limited bands of frequencies (pure tones, vocal timbres), frequency correlated with hue, such that low frequencies gave blue hues and progressed to yellow hues at 800 Hz. Increasing the loudness of a pure tone was also associated with a shift from blue to yellow. However, for complex sounds that share the same bandwidth of frequencies (100–3200 Hz) but that vary in terms of which frequencies have the most power, all stimuli were associated with yellow hues. This suggests that the presence of high frequencies (above 800 Hz) consistently yields yellow hues. Overall we conclude that while pitch–chroma associations appear to flexibly re-apply themselves across a variety of contexts, frequencies above 800 Hz appear to produce yellow hues irrespective of context. These findings reveal new sound–colour correspondences previously obscured through not controlling for lightness. Findings are discussed in relation to understanding the underlying rules of cross-modal correspondences, synaesthesia, and optimising the sensory substitution of visual information through sound

JPN Guidelines for the management of acute pancreatitis: epidemiology, etiology, natural history, and outcome predictors in acute pancreatitis

Acute pancreatitis is a common disease with an annual incidence of between 5 and 80 people per 100 000 of the population. The two major etiological factors responsible for acute pancreatitis are alcohol and cholelithiasis (gallstones). The proportion of patients with pancreatitis caused by alcohol or gallstones varies markedly in different countries and regions. The incidence of acute alcoholic pancreatitis is considered to be associated with high alcohol consumption. Although the incidence of alcoholic pancreatitis is much higher in men than in women, there is no difference in sexes in the risk involved after adjusting for alcohol intake. Other risk factors include endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, surgery, therapeutic drugs, HIV infection, hyperlipidemia, and biliary tract anomalies. Idiopathic acute pancreatitis is defined as acute pancreatitis in which the etiological factor cannot be specified. However, several studies have suggested that this entity includes cases caused by other specific disorders such as microlithiasis. Acute pancreatitis is a potentially fatal disease with an overall mortality of 2.1%–7.8%. The outcome of acute pancreatitis is determined by two factors that reflect the severity of the illness: organ failure and pancreatic necrosis. About half of the deaths in patients with acute pancreatitis occur within the first 1–2 weeks and are mainly attributable to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). Depending on patient selection, necrotizing pancreatitis develops in approximately 10%–20% of patients and the mortality is high, ranging from 14% to 25% of these patients. Infected pancreatic necrosis develops in 30%–40% of patients with necrotizing pancreatitis and the incidence of MODS in such patients is high. The recurrence rate of acute pancreatitis is relatively high: almost half the patients with acute alcoholic pancreatitis experience a recurrence. When the gallstones are not treated, the risk of recurrence in gallstone pancreatitis ranges from 32% to 61%. After recovering from acute pancreatitis, about one-third to one-half of acute pancreatitis patients develop functional disorders, such as diabetes mellitus and fatty stool; the incidence of chronic pancreatitis after acute pancreatitis ranges from 3% to 13%. Nevertheless, many reports have shown that most patients who recover from acute pancreatitis regain good general health and return to their usual daily routine. Some authors have emphasized that endocrine function disorders are a common complication after severe acute pancreatitis has been treated by pancreatic resection

Neural mediators of changes of mind about perceptual decisions

Changing one's mind on the basis of new evidence is a hallmark of cognitive flexibility. To revise our confidence in a previous decision, we should use new evidence to update beliefs about choice accuracy. How this process unfolds in the human brain, however, remains unknown. Here we manipulated whether additional sensory evidence supports or negates a previous motion direction discrimination judgment while recording markers of neural activity in the human brain using fMRI. A signature of post-decision evidence (change in log-odds correct) was selectively observed in the activity of posterior medial frontal cortex. In contrast, distinct activity profiles in anterior prefrontal cortex mediated the impact of post-decision evidence on subjective confidence, independently of changes in decision value. Together our findings reveal candidate neural mediators of post-decisional changes of mind in the human brain and indicate possible targets for ameliorating deficits in cognitive flexibility

From Fossil Fuels to Renewables: The Role of Electricity Storage.

We analyze the role of electricity storage for technological innovations in electricity generation. We propose a directed technological change model of the electricity sector, where innovative firms develop better electricity storage solutions, which affect not only the relative competitiveness between renewable and nonrenewable electricity sources but also the ease with which they can be substituted. Using a global firm-level data set of electricity patents from 1963 to 2011, we empirically analyze the determinants of innovation in electricity generation, and the role of storage in directing innovation. Our results show that electricity storage increases innovation not only in renewables but also in conventional technologies. This implies that efforts to increase innovation in storage can benefit conventional, fossil fuel-fired electricity plants as well as increasing the use of renewable electricity