Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a re-emerging transboundary viral disease of cattle and buffaloes with severe economic impact and listed as a notifiable disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE, 2017). The severity of clinical signs of LSD varies from subclinical to fatal depending on the virulence of the strains and the cattle breed's susceptibility. Generally, LSD tends to have a mortality of <10% and a morbidity of 0%-90% (OIE, 2017;Sprygin et al., 2018). LSD, first detected in Zambia (1929), was historically restricted and endemic to southern and eastern Africa (Beard, 2016). The first LSD outbreak outside sub-Saharan Africa occurred in Egypt and Israel
Food insecurity is an aspect of living conditions that is particularly important for quality of life, health, and subjective well-being. The implementation of the 8-item Food Insecurity Experience Scale in 147 countries in the 2014 Gallup World Poll provided an unprecedented opportunity to understand the association of food insecurity with subjective well-being. We examined how food insecurity relates with measures of living conditions and how food insecurity and other living conditions relate with physical health and, in turn, subjective well-being. Data were collected from individuals aged ≥15 y by telephone in 38 countries and via face-to-face interviews in 111 others. The available sample was 132,618 (138 countries) and 122,137 (137 countries) for the daily experience and life evaluation indexes of subjective well-being, respectively. Daily experience was a continuous measure and life evaluation was categorized into thriving, struggling, and suffering. We estimated 6 linear or logistic regression models for each index controlling for country as a fixed effect. Food insecurity was associated with the other 3 measures of living conditions: household income, shelter and housing, and employment. Food insecurity explained poor physical health and lower subjective well-being beyond other measures of living conditions. Instrumental and emotional support was associated with higher subjective well-being. The associations of food insecurity with subjective well-being were larger than with other explanatory variables. Food insecurity was associated with subjective well-being within each of the 4 World Bank income classes of countries, with a larger magnitude of differences for the higher-income classes. Food insecurity was strongly and negatively associated with subjective well-being in a large global sample of individuals aged ≥15 y. These results demonstrate the consistency of goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which has targeted 2030 to ensure food security for all people, year-round, with other goals to reduce food insecurity.
Extensive land and market reform in Vietnam has resulted in dramatic increases in rice output and incomes. This is illustrated with measures of total factor productivity, net incomes, and net returns in rice production from 1985 to 2006. Results show considerable gains in major rice growing areas, but recent evidence of a productivity slowdown. The differences over time and region speak to existing land use practice, calling for further reform. Estimations detail the effects of remaining institutional and policy constraints, including existing restrictions on land use, ambiguous property rights, and inadequate markets for land and access to extension services and credit. (JEL O12, O13)
This paper analyses the properties of the fixed-effects vector decomposition estimator, an emerging and popular technique for estimating time-invariant variables in panel data models with unit effects. This estimator was initially motivated on heuristic grounds, and advocated on the strength of favorable Monte Carlo results, but with no formal analysis. We show that the three-stage procedure of this decomposition is equivalent to a standard instrumental variables approach, for a specific set of instruments. The instrumental variables representation facilitates the present formal analysis which finds: (1) The estimator reproduces exactly classical fixed-effects estimates for time-varying variables. (2) The standard errors recommended for this estimator are too small for both time-varying and time-invariant variables. (3) The estimator is inconsistent when the time-invariant variables are endogenous. (4) The reported sampling properties in the original Monte Carlo evidence are incorrect. (5) We recommend an alternative shrinkage estimator that has superior risk properties to the decomposition estimator, unless the endogeneity problem is known to be small or no relevant instruments exist.
Background Food insecurity is strongly associated with subjective well-being. People compare their well-being to a subjective reference that adjusts over time, which is called hedonic adaptation. Objective We aimed to deepen understanding of the relation between food insecurity and subjective well-being among countries from the perspective of possible hedonic adaptation between food insecurity and subjective well-being. Methods Global data from the Gallup World Poll 2014 were collected from 152,206 individuals in 147 countries. Telephone and face-to-face surveys were conducted in 37 and 111 countries, respectively, collecting data on law and order; food and shelter; institutions and infrastructure; job climate; and financial, social, physical, and evaluative well-being, including the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Data were aggregated to country level and merged with economic and social measures from World Bank and United Nations sources: infant mortality, gross domestic product, economic inequality, agricultural value added, fertility, maternal mortality, female schooling, and female participation in the labor force. Multilevel linear regression was used to examine associations between well-being and food insecurity. Results Experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity was prevalent among countries, with a mean probability of 0.273 ± 0.220. Countries that were less developed economically and socially had a higher probability of experiencing food insecurity, lower subjective well-being as measured by the daily experience index, and less negative slopes for the relation between daily experience index and food insecurity. Food insecurity was the strongest predictor of daily experience from among the measures of economic and social development. Conclusions The prevalence of food insecurity was strongly and negatively associated with subjective well-being across 147 countries. The association between food insecurity and poor subjective well-being within countries was stronger for more-developed countries, providing evidence of hedonic adaptation between food insecurity and subjective well-being. Food insecurity explained substantial variation in subjective well-being both among and within countries.
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