Safe and adequate water supply is a vital element to preserve human health; however, access to clean water is limited in many developing countries. Furthermore, improved water sources are often contaminated with fecal matters and consumption of unsafe water poses a great public health risk. This...

This paper examines the impact of drinking water quality and sanitation behavior on child health in rural districts of Ethiopia. Using primary household survey data and microbiological water test for Escherichia coli, we use various estimation methods to quantify the impacts of water quality and...

This paper investigates the effect of drinking arsenic contaminated water on mental health. Drinking water with an unsafe arsenic level for a prolonged period can lead to arsenicosis and associated illness. Based on rich and newly collected household survey data from Bangladesh, we construct...

The major challenge of the 21st century is to achieve food security under, roughly, a doubling in food demand by 2050 compared to present, and producing the additional food under marked shifts in climatic risks and with environmentally sound farming practices. Sustainable intensification of...

We study a policy response to an increase in post-merger social stress. If a merger of groups of people is viewed as a revision of their social space, then the merger alters people's comparators and increases social stress: the social stress of a merged population is greater than the sum of the...

The focus of our analysis is on nexus issues among energy use, incomes, employment, investment decisions, and agricultural production for meeting food and feed demands, as well as health-related effects on rural households. As an example we investigate potential policies, such as public...

This paper takes a global, long-run perspective on the recent debate about secular stagnation, which has so far mainly focused on the short term. The analysis is motivated by observing the interplay between the economic and demographic transition that has occurred in the developed world over the...

In determining the optimal redistribution of a given population's income, we ask which factor is more important: the social planner's aversion to inequality, embedded in an isoelastic social welfare function indexed by a parameter alpha, or the individuals' concern at having a low relative...

The recent literature postulates that aspirations are one of the key determinants of economic decision making, and that aspirations are formed socially through observations and by learning from 'relevant others' (or the 'reference group'). This study empirically examines the latter using survey...

As crop straw and firewood are generated as by-products of food production systems, they are perceived to be sustainable energy sources that do not threaten food security by Chinese government for a long time. However, the time spent on collecting straw and firewood may create a burden on rural...