The Causes of Chronic and Transient Poverty and Their Implications for Poverty Reduction Policy in Rural China

The study focuses on two components of total poverty: chronic and transient poverty, and investigates their relative importance in total observed poverty, as well as the determinants of each components. We found that transient poverty accounts for a large proportion of total poverty observed in the poor rural areas of China. By analyzing the determinants of the two types of poverty, we found that household demographic characteristics, such as age of the head of households, family sizes, labour participation ratio, and educational level of the head of the households, are very important to the poverty status of households. These factors matter more to chronic poverty than transient poverty, and have greater impacts on the poverty measured by consumption than that measured by income. Besides the demographic factors of households, other household factors like physical stocks, the composition of income, and the amount of cultivated lands also have significant effects on both chronic and transient poverty. It is also confirmed that change in cash holding and saving and borrowing grain are used by rural households to cope with income variation and smooth their consumption. Attributes of community where the households reside are also important to poverty. With very few exceptions, we did not find that poverty programs have significant impact on poverty reduction at the households' level. We interpreted this as the poverty programs benefiting the wealthy more than the poor in a given poor area. The main reason for this could be that the implementation design of these programs fails to target the poor.Income risk, chronic poverty, transient poverty, poverty program evaluation, China

The Redistributive Impact of Taxation in Rural China, 1995-2002: an Empirical Study Using the 1995-2002 CASS CHIP Surveys

This paper evaluates the redistributive impacts of rural taxation in China, using the CASS CHIP survey 1995-2002. The main findings can be summarized as follows.First, the major policy target of rural taxation reform--reducing the average rate of taxes and levies--was accomplished between 1995 and 2002, with favorable redistributive results. When the aggregate scene is observed, the disequalizing redistributive impact of taxation declined between 1995 and 2002. Second, despite these positive results from the aggregate perspective, the favorable impact of the reform was severely limited because overall rural taxation remained disequalizing after the reform and regressivity in taxation itself, measured by the Kakwani index and the income elasticity of taxation, increased between 1995 and 2002. The favorable change in the redistributive impact between these years did not occur as a result of a decrease in the degree of regressivity of the tax itself, but because the average rate of taxation and before-tax income inequality declined. Moreover, when the regional picture is observed, the overall redistributive impact of taxation worsened in several provinces following the reform.redistributive effects of taxation, fiscal reform, local governance, intergovernmental relations, rural China

Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis

In urban China, urban resident annual earnings are 1.3 times larger than long term rural migrant earnings as observed in a nationally representative sample in 2002. Using microsimulation, we decompose this difference into four sources, with particular attention to path dependence and statistical distribution of the estimated effects: (1) different allocation to sectors that pay different wages (sectoral effect); (2) hourly wage disparities across the two populations within sectors (wage effect); (3) different working times within sectors (hours effect); (4) different population structures (population effect). Although sector allocation is extremely contrasted, with very few migrants in the public sector and very few urban residents working as self-employed, the sectoral effect is not robust to the path followed for the decomposition. We show that the migrant population has a comparative advantage in the private sector: increasing its participation into the public sector does not necessarily improve its average earnings. The opposite holds for the urban residents. The second main finding is that population effect is significantly more important than wage or hours effects. This implies that the main source of disparity is pre-market (education opportunities) rather than on-market.chinese labor market ; discrimination ; earnings differentials ; migration

Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis

In urban China, urban resident annual earnings are 1.3 times larger than long term rural migrant earnings as observed in a nationally representative sample in 2002. Using microsimulation, we decompose this difference into four sources, with particular attention to path dependence and statistical distribution of the estimated effects: (1) different allocation to sectors that pay different wages (sectoral effect); (2) hourly wage disparities across the two populations within sectors (wage effect); (3) different working times within sectors (hours effect); (4) different population structures (population effect). Although sector allocation is extremely contrasted, with very few migrants in the public sector and very few urban residents working as self-employed, this has no clear impact on differential earnings. Indeed, the sectoral effect is not robust to the path followed for the decomposition. We show that the migrant population has a comparative advantage in the private sector: increasing its participation into the public sector would not necessarily improve its average earnings. The second main finding is that the population effect is robust and significantly more important than wage or hours effects. This implies that the main source of disparity between the two populations is pre-market (education opportunities) rather than on-market.Chinese labor market ; earnings differentials ; migration ; discrimination

A Safety Evaluation Method of Evacuation Routes in Urban Areas in Case of Earthquake Disasters Using Ant Colony Optimization and Geographic Information Systems (Short Paper)

The present study aims to propose the method for the quantitative evaluation of safety concerning evacuation routes in case of earthquake disasters in urban areas using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Regarding the safety evaluation method, firstly, the similarity in safety was focused on while taking into consideration road blockage probability, and after classifying roads by means of the hierarchical cluster analysis, the congestion rates of evacuation routes using ACO simulations were estimated. Based on these results, the multiple evacuation routes extracted were visualized on digital maps by means of GIS, and its safety was evaluated. Furthermore, the selection of safe evacuation routes between evacuation sites, for cases when the possibility of large-scale evacuation after an earthquake disaster is high, is made possible. As the safety evaluation method is based on public information, by obtaining the same geographic information as the present study, it is effective in other areas regardless of whether the information is of the past and future. Therefore, in addition to spatial reproducibility, the safety evaluation method also has high temporal reproducibility. Because safety evaluations are conducted on evacuation routes based on quantified data, highly safe evacuation routes that are selected have been quantitatively evaluated, and thus serve as an effective indicator when selecting evacuation routes

The effect of alternative investment in hedge funds

Given that there is a growing emphasis in the field of alternative investment, this paper studies the effect of alternative investment in hedge funds and tests whether hedge funds that take positions in non-standard asset classes outperform hedge funds that take positions only in equity and fixed income securities.   The Fung and Hsieh (2004) seven-factor model is used to analyse the hedge fund returns. The seven-factor model is first tested with a substitute factor as the original factor data ceased to exist by 2007, then is extended to cover 2000-2006, 2007-2010, 2011-2015 period to examine its explanatory power, and finally used to obtain the alpha return of the hedge funds. The alpha return will be separated into two groups, with verse without alterative investment exposure. The alphas are tested to see if there is any difference between the two groups. An empirical comparison base on pure return will also be presented.   We observe that the funds which have weights in non-standard assets earned a statistically significant excess alpha than the funds without exposure during the 2007 to 2010 period. It is possible that funds with investment in the non-standard assets could outperform those without exposure in future

CLIMATE CHANGE INFLUENCES ON THE RISK OF AVIAN INFLUENZA OUTBREAKS AND ASSOCIATED ECONOMIC LOSS

This paper examines the effect that climate has on Avian Influenza outbreak probability. The statistical analysis shows across a broad region the probability of an outbreak declines by 0.22% when the temperature rises 1 Celsius degree and increases by 0.34% when precipitation increases by 1millimeter. These results indicate that the realized climate change of the last 20 years not only has been a factor behind recent HPAI outbreaks, but that climate change is likely to play an even greater role in the future. The statistical results indicate that overall, the risk of an AI outbreak has been increased by 51% under past climate change and 3-4% under future climate change. An economic evaluation shows the increased probability of outbreaks has caused damages of about $107 million in China and$29 million in the United States due to past climate change. In the year of 2011-2030, for countries with a high proportion of chicken production, economic loss could reach $105-$146 million in China and $12-$18 million in the United Sates.Climate change, Avian Influenza outbreaks, GDP loss, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,