This paper studies the effect of electricity on income, using the Nepal Living Standards Survey-III (NLSSIII), carried out in the years 2010-11. To account for endogeneity issues, we use Three Stage Least Squares (3SLS), and Two Stage Probit Least Squares (2SPLS) models. We find that causality runs both ways. That is, income explains whether a household is connected to electricity, but also, a household being connected to electricity has a very large and significant effect on income. A household being connected to electricity increases consumption per capita by 18% on average.
A National Institutes of Health (NIH) taskforce recently recommended decreasing the number of graduate students supported on research assistantships, and instead favoring traineeship and fellowship funding mechanisms. Using instrumental variables estimation with survey data collected from U.S. PhD-granting biomedical sciences departments and their newly-minted PhDs, we find that increases in these programs’ NIH-funded traineeships and fellowships do significantly increase programs’ total graduate enrollments, particularly of female students. However, PhDs who were funded primarily as research assistants are significantly more likely to take research-focused jobs in the U.S. scientific workforce after they graduate, as compared to PhDs who were primarily supported as trainees or fellows. The suggested policy changes thus may have unintended, negative consequences for scientific workforce participation.
Reducing wildfire risk through forest restoration is vital for the sustainability of watersheds and the human systems that depend upon them. However, identifying public support and securing necessary funding to cover restoration costs is an important implementation challenge. Payment for ecosystem services models may help meet restoration objectives. While examples exist that show how funds can be generated from the public living near forestlands, an unresolved issue is whether households in a relatively distant municipal area would significantly support wildfire risk reduction efforts. This is an important issue as distant households often receive benefits from wildfire risk reductions, such as water source protection for municipal drinking water supply. The objective of this paper is to analyze survey-based contingent valuation data to investigate public support among urban Albuquerque, New Mexico (NM) households for restoration of a watershed that impacts the urban water supply security, but is spatially removed from the urban area. Econometric results show evidence of both significant public support for forest restoration-linking forests to faucets- and the importance of accounting for respondent uncertainty. The latter involves both: (i) uncertainty in the preferences for water security as an important collectively provided good (“preference uncertainty”); and (ii) uncertainty in the possibility that restoration activities across a forested landscape or watershed might actually deliver improved water security (“delivery uncertainty”). Econometric estimation results from a Double Hurdle model indicate a mean annual household willingness to pay (WTP) of US$[Formula: see text]64.44 (with a 95% of confidence interval of US$[Formula: see text]61.57–US$[Formula: see text]67.31), and corresponding median WTP of US$[Formula: see text]37.76 (US$[Formula: see text]36.16–US$[Formula: see text]39.37), for forest restoration that reduces wildfire risk and provides water source protection.
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