This research explores the dependence of rural incomes on nearby urban centers, mostly implied by rural-to-urban and/or urban-to-rural selective migration. Migration flows are affected by wage differentials as well as differences in housing costs and other amenities, and by commuting costs and costs of migration. An income-generating equation, which includes characteristics of nearby urban communities among the explanatory variables, is estimated for rural households in Israeli moshav villages. The results show that the population of nearby urban communities is significantly and positively associated with rural household per-capita income. The same is true for mean income in these communities. In addition, distance from urban communities affects rural income negatively, suggesting that commuting costs are important determinants of the direction of the net migration of high-income households.

Fertility is one of the most important decisions that a household makes. The economic literature has examined numerous aspects of fertility decisions: the optimal number of children, the tradeoff between quantity and quality of children, intergenerational transfers, old-age security and intra-family insurance, the effect of children on parents’ labor supply, the effect of children on parents’ marital stability, and so on (Browning 1992). However, despite the emerging economic literature on the important role played by social networks in various aspects of economic behavior (Jackson 2005; Birke 2009), little is known about the effect of family composition in general, and children

Emerging markets are often characterized by the presence of foreign brands and local brands in a product category. These brands tend to get positioned differently in the market by utilizing marketing mix elements with different focuses on the functional, image, or value nature of the brands. We utilize a choice model specification quite different from the commonly used types, to identify whether a particular brand benefits more from a certain type of marketing mix emphasis than from another type of emphasis. The model enables us to evaluate main and synergistic effects of mix elements on brand market shares. In an empirical analysis of brands in an emerging market, we found that international brands tended to benefit from highlighting the image attributes of the brands, while local brands benefited more from a focus on brand functionality. We also found significant variations in the saliency of different positioning foci across different market segments characterized by demographic variables. The methodology used in our research can also be utilized for identifying appropriate brand-specific marketing strategies for multiple brands in a variety of consumer markets.

An estimated 4.5 billion people are currently exposed to particulate matter (PM) levels at least twice the concentration that the WHO considers safe. Existing evidence linking health to air pollution is largely based on populations exposed to only modest levels of PM and almost entirely composed of observational studies, which are likely to confound air pollution with other unobserved determinants of health. This study uses quasiexperimental variation in particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) generated by an arbitrary Chinese policy to find that a 10-μg/m3 increase in PM10 reduces life expectancy by 0.64 years. The estimates imply that bringing all of China into compliance with its Class I standards for PM10 would save 3.7 billion life-years.This paper finds that a 10-μg/m3 increase in airborne particulate matter [particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10)] reduces life expectancy by 0.64 years (95% confidence interval = 0.21–1.07). This estimate is derived from quasiexperimental variation in PM10 generated by China’s Huai River Policy, which provides free or heavily subsidized coal for indoor heating during the winter to cities north of the Huai River but not to those to the south. The findings are derived from a regression discontinuity design based on distance from the Huai River, and they are robust to using parametric and nonparametric estimation methods, different kernel types and bandwidth sizes, and adjustment for a rich set of demographic and behavioral covariates. Furthermore, the shorter lifespans are almost entirely caused by elevated rates of cardiorespiratory mortality, suggesting that PM10 is the causal factor. The estimates imply that bringing all of China into compliance with its Class I standards for PM10 would save 3.7 billion life-years.

We suggest two psychological mechanisms, temporal discounting and feeling of resource scarcity, for explaining the relation between food insecurity and body overweight. We demonstrate how Nettle et al.'s findings could be explained, post hoc, by each of these accounts, suggesting that their data are not rich enough to allow identification of mechanisms that underlie food insecurity and overweight relationship.

Experimental studies of choice behavior document distinct, and sometimes contradictory, deviations from maximization. For example, people tend to overweight rare events in 1-shot decisions under risk, and to exhibit the opposite bias when they rely on past experience. The common explanations of these results assume that the contradicting anomalies reflect situation-specific processes that involve the weighting of subjective values and the use of simple heuristics. The current article analyzes 14 choice anomalies that have been described by different models, including the Allais, St. Petersburg, and Ellsberg paradoxes, and the reflection effect. Next, it uses a choice prediction competition methodology to clarify the interaction between the different anomalies. It focuses on decisions under risk (known payoff distributions) and under ambiguity (unknown probabilities), with and without feedback concerning the outcomes of past choices. The results demonstrate that it is not necessary to assume situation-specific processes. The distinct anomalies can be captured by assuming high sensitivity to the expected return and 4 additional tendencies: pessimism, bias toward equal weighting, sensitivity to payoff sign, and an effort to minimize the probability of immediate regret. Importantly, feedback increases sensitivity to probability of regret. Simple abstractions of these assumptions, variants of the model Best Estimate and Sampling Tools (BEAST), allow surprisingly accurate ex ante predictions of behavior. Unlike the popular models, BEAST does not assume subjective weighting functions or cognitive shortcuts. Rather, it assumes the use of sampling tools and reliance on small samples, in addition to the estimation of the expected values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

The sense of taste enables evaluation of food and is an important regulator of food consumption. In general, sweet is an attractive taste modality that leads to ingestion of nutritive food, while sour and bitter are aversive taste modalities that lead to avoidance of spoiled and toxic food. Recent studies suggest inter-connections between taste, emotion and cognition. Here we test the potential effects of two prototypical taste modalities, bitter and sweet, on emotions and on generalized avoidance behaviors, such as risk aversion and mistrust. Three experiments included over 250 participants who tasted, without swallowing, one of the following stimuli: water control, quinine solution, sucrose solution, quinine-sucrose mixture solution, or propylthiouracil (PROP) solution. The participants had to identify the taste, rank its intensity, perform seemingly unrelated behavioral tasks, and fill a PANAS mood questionnaire. Our results indicate that oral exposure to bitter compounds negatively correlates with mood scores; that the effect depends on perceiving the solution as bitter; that bitter mouth rinse can lower PANAS mood score and that there is a potential asymmetry in the effects of bitter and sweet taste modalities on mood.

The Holt–Laury measure for risk aversion has been used extensively in economic studies to measure individuals’ risk aversion. The idea behind this measure is that individuals have stable risk preferences when making decisions under risk. We show that having repeated experiences with the Holt–Laury task can move individuals from exhibiting “risk aversion” to displaying “risk neutrality.” This finding suggests that either risk preferences are not robust to a few experiences or that responses to the tasks indicate something else. We show that a simple model of adaptation can capture this behavioral pattern.

We develop an Israeli version of the Multi-Year Water Allocation System (MYWAS) mathematical programming model to conduct statewide, long-term analyses of three topics associated with agricultural reuse of wastewater. We find that: (1) enabling agricultural irrigation with treated wastewater significantly reduces the optimal capacity levels of seawater and brackish-water desalination over the simulated 3-decade period, and increases Israel's welfare by 3.3 billion USD in terms of present values; (2) a policy requiring desalination of treated wastewater pre-agricultural reuse, as a method to prevent long-run damage to the soil and groundwater, reduces welfare by 2.7 billion USD; hence, such a policy is warranted only if the avoided damages exceed this welfare loss; (3) desalination of treated wastewater in order to increase freshwater availability for agricultural irrigation is not optimal, since the costs overwhelm the generated agricultural benefits. We also find the results associated with these three topics to be sensitive to the natural recharge of Israel's freshwater aquifers, and to the rate at which domestic-water demand evolves due to population and income growth.

Nitrophilic thistles such as milk thistle (Sylibum marianum) and Syrian thistle (Notobasis syriaca) encroach rangeland areas where animals gather and defecate, in particular around watering and feeding points. High densities of milk and Syrian thistles (MST) diminish forage yields and detract from the amenity value of these areas. The aims of the present study were: (i) to test the safety of feeding MST to adult goats; (ii) to determine if preconditioning adult goats to MST, by feeding it indoors together with concentrate, enhances preference for MST when they graze MST-rich pastures; and (iii) to test for generational transfer by comparing the propensity to consume MST and the preference for MST over clover hay for weaned kids that previously suckled from does that were, or were not, preconditioned to consume MST fed as green fodder. We found that eating MST was not toxic to adult goats. Over six observation sessions of one hour, preconditioned goats devoted 50% more time to consuming MST than non-conditioned counterparts (30.3% versus 20.6%, respectively; P = 0.0005), and kids that experienced the preconditioning period together with their does tended (P = 0.08) to show a greater preference for MST over clover hay than their counterparts born to non-conditioned adults. Although the efficacy in depleting the seed bank has yet to be verified, from the point of view of the animal, goats may be used in targeted grazing of milk and Syrian thistles. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

The chapter examines the outcomes of 20 years of land reform in the Russian Federation’s agriculture. The landownership structure is assessed, the risks voiced at the beginning of the reform are re-evaluated and new risks related to the development of landownership are highlighted. Russia’s land policy has gone through several stages since the beginning of reform: from clearly formulated policies and procedures in the early 1990s to a set of administrative activities entrusted to disjointed land authorities at the present time. Despite institutional difficulties, the land market appears to be emerging in Russia; land has become transferable, it is actively redistributed between peasant farms and corporate farms and it is reallocated to new users. In the absence of an institution that controls and manages the country’s land resources, the land policy is unable to respond to new challenges that arise in the course of the ongoing land reform. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017.

In this chapter, we evaluate and analyse the outcomes of agrarian reform in the post-Soviet Russian Federation. The reform has led to a clear change in the agrarian system in Russia, but not all the population, especially not all rural people, have come out as winners. The observed increase in agricultural labour productivity has been accompanied by shedding of labour in agriculture and increasing rural unemployment; the higher productivity of livestock has been accompanied by herd contraction; improved input efficiency has been accompanied by reduction of input use; improved financial stability of agricultural producers has been accompanied by more frequent bankruptcies; and increase of total support to agriculture has been accompanied by reduced efficiency of the support. So far, Russia has not reached the pre-reform production level, and food self-sufficiency is below 90%. A new middle class has not emerged in rural areas: most rural people are the new ‘proletariat’; they earn their livelihoods as hired workers and many of them have lost their land. We observe that agricultural production is increasingly concentrated in large vertically integrated structures with a multiplicity of agricultural subsidiaries and structures that are without analogues in developed economies. The evaluation of Russia’s reform requires a multi-faceted analysis of the entire range of outcomes, accounting for all effects including the adverse impacts. It is only in this way that we can draw valid conclusions from experience and develop recommendations for the future. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017.

The most striking feature of land reform in the post-Soviet space has been the overall shift from collective to individual land tenure in agriculture, generally accompanied by privatisation of legal landownership. Individualisation of farming has been among the main factors that acted to arrest the initial decline in production during the transition and to bring about agricultural recovery in the region. In Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the recovery point for agricultural growth is closely linked with the observed watershed dates for individualisation of farming. Furthermore, the rate and the attained level of recovery are higher in countries that pursued decisive individualisation policies (Transcaucasus, Central Asia), while in countries with less sweeping individualisation reforms (European CIS) the recovery has been sluggish. Land reform and individualisation have also led to significant improvements in agricultural productivity due to the higher incentives in family farming. Greater production and higher productivity have contributed to significant poverty reduction since 2000. To ensure continued improvement of rural family incomes and poverty mitigation, policy measures should be implemented that facilitate enlargement of very small family farms and encourage the access of small farms to market channels and services. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017.

In the Soviet period, Turkmenistan specialised in cotton production. When the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a breakdown of agricultural trade links between the former Soviet republics, Turkmenistan could no longer rely on assured supplies of wheat in exchange for its cotton, and the food security situation deteriorated. The government launched the Zerno (Grain) Programme in 1991 to resolve emerging difficulties with wheat supply. The measures undertaken between 1991 and 2013 within the framework of this programme included the reorganisation of the government control system for agriculture, the transformation of the farming structure and the implementation of land and water reform. Massive investments amounting to USD 5.5 billion were made in opening up virgin lands for cultivation, developing new infrastructure for grain processing and purchasing new farm machinery. The special attention paid to the grain sector led to the rapid expansion of wheat production. Traditionally a wheat importer, Turkmenistan started exporting wheat in 2010. Projections by local experts suggest that, despite the expected population increase of about 30% over the next 15 years, Turkmenistan will be able to maintain wheat exports at the level of 200,000-400,000 tons annually. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017.

The sustainable supply of natural water available in the water basin feeding the Dead Sea (comprising of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority) will soon drop below 100 cubic metres (m3) per person per year. This has resulted from upstream diversions that over time have deprived the Dead Sea of more than 90 % of its historical inflow and led to a progressive decline of its water level with detrimental effects on the surrounding environment and infrastructure. We examine four alternatives to stabilise or restore the Dead Sea and evaluate the costs associated with each alternative. We also offer a mechanism to pay for the reclamation alternatives based on a surcharge levied on all upstream diversions (including water consumed by the potash industries). The surcharge rates associated with the four alternatives range between zero and USD 0.10 per m3. © The Author(s) 2016.

Excessive exploitation diminishes the capacity of natural resources to withstand environmental stress, increasing their vulnerability to extreme conditions that may trigger abrupt changes. The onset of such events depends on the coincidence of random environmental conditions and the resource state (determining its resilience). Examples include species extinction, ecosystem collapse, disease outburst and climate change induced calamities. The policy response to the catastrophic threat is measured in terms of its effect on the long-term behavior of the resource state. To that end, the L-methodology, developed originally to study autonomous systems, is extended to non-autonomous problems involving catastrophic threats.

By now it is widely recognized that the more serious threats of climate change are associated with abrupt events capable of inflicting losses on a catastrophic scale. Consequently, the main role of climate policies is to balance between mitigation efforts, aimed at delaying (or even preventing) the occurrence of such events, and adaptation actions, aimed at minimizing the damage inflicted upon occurrence. The former affects the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the latter determines the impact of loss once the event occurs. This work examines the tradeoffs associated with these two types of policy measures by characterizing the optimal mitigation–adaptation mix in the long run.

We study how the composition of capital imports affects relative demand for skill and the skill premium in a sample of developing economies. Capital imports per se do not affect the skill premium; in contrast, their composition does. While imports of R&D-intensive capital equipment raise the skill premium, imports of less innovative equipment lower it. We estimate that R&D-intensive capital is complementary to skilled workers, whereas less innovative capital equipment is complementary to unskilled labor—which explains the composition effect. This mechanism has substantial explanatory power. Variation in tariffs, freight costs and overall barriers to trade, over time and across types of capital, favors imports of skill-complementary capital over other types. We calculate that reductions in barriers to trade increase inequality substantially in developing countries through the composition channel.

Exploitation of alternative water sources is expected to grow in the decades to come in water-stressed countries with fast population growth, especially in regions where a further decline of natural freshwater availability is expected due to climate change. Increasing utilization of non-freshwater usually leads to salinity build-up in fields and water sources as well as accumulation of various pollutants — both having a considerable impact on the suitability of non-freshwater for irrigation due to constraints associated with crop salinity tolerance and food safety regulations. We developed a linked Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) — farm-level model of a water economy with representation for multiple water types characterized by different qualities. We employ the model to assess the impact of water shortage on the Israeli economy, where steadily growing water scarcity leads to an increasing utilization of alternative water sources. We simulate water shortage scenarios based on the Long Term National Master Plan for The Water Economy developed by the Israeli Water Authority (IWA). The linked CGE — farm-level model provides a mechanism for estimating the Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) rates between different irrigation water types used in agriculture. This mechanism accounts for the effects of salinity on yields and takes into consideration food safety regulations for irrigating crops with treated wastewater. We demonstrate that, in contrast to previous studies, CES rates between different water types are not identical. The CES rates obtained in our study have relatively low values, which can be attributed to the constraints associated with crop salinity tolerance and food safety regulations. Our results reveal that water shortage can lead to a significant decline of Israel’s GDP, where a considerable part of the decline is attributed to the decrease in agricultural outputs. The magnitude of the impact depends on the underlying assumptions regarding future desalination capacity. To further study the effect of desalination, we run simulations under various desalination levels and examine its impact on the GDP. We also examine the extent to which the impact of water shortage is sensitive to CES rates between different irrigation water types.