Land grabbing: a preliminary quantification of economic impacts on rural livelihoods

Global demands on agricultural land are increasing due to population growth, dietary changes and the use of biofuels. Their effect on food security is to reduce humans’ ability to cope with the uncertainties of global climate change. In light of the 2008 food crisis, to secure reliable future access to sufficient agricultural land, many nations and corporations have begun purchasing large tracts of land in the global South, a phenomenon deemed “land grabbing” by popular media. Because land investors frequently export crops without providing adequate employment, this represents an effective income loss for local communities. We study 28 countries targeted by large-scale land acquisitions [comprising 87 % of reported cases and 27 million hectares (ha)] and estimate the effects of such investments on local communities’ incomes. We find that this phenomenon can potentially affect the incomes of ~12 million people globally with implications for food security, poverty levels and urbanization. While it is important to note that our study incorporates a number of assumptions and limitations, it provides a much needed initial quantification of the economic impacts of large-scale land acquisitions on rural livelihoods.     

Transhumance Revisited: On Mobility and Process Between Ethnography and History

This paper advances the argument that transhumance, the seasonal movement of pastoral people and their livestock, is a useful site for critical reflection on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (1988) and its importance to the understanding of mobility and process. It does so by bringing into dialogue ethnographic and historical perspectives on the resonance between transhumance and Deleuzian configurations of both nomadism and relations between human and non‐human animals. It concludes that adjacent juxtaposition and syncretic ordering of diversity, rather than any ontological reconstruction, may be key to a more effective engagement with the complexities of contemporary existence.     

Maximum likelihood drift estimation for a threshold diffusion

We study the maximum likelihood estimator of the drift parameters of a stochastic differential equation, with both drift and diffusion coefficients constant on the positive and negative axis, yet discontinuous at zero. This threshold diffusion is called drifted oscillating Brownian motion. For this continuously observed diffusion, the maximum likelihood estimator coincides with a quasi-likelihood estimator with constant diffusion term. We show that this estimator is the limit, as observations become dense in time, of the (quasi)-maximum likelihood estimator based on discrete observations. In long time, the asymptotic behaviors of the positive and negative occupation times rule the ones of the estimators. Differently from most known results of the literature, we do not restrict ourselves to the ergodic framework: indeed, depending on the signs of the drift, the process may be ergodic, transient, or null recurrent. For each regime, we establish whether or not the estimators are consistent; if they are, we prove the convergence in long time of the properly rescaled difference of the estimators towards a normal or mixed normal distribution. These theoretical results are backed by numerical simulations.     

An alternative assessment of global climate policies

This paper analyzes alternative pricing schemes for funding investment in climate policies. This paper proposes a new policy scenario, explicitly disentangling the issue of burden sharing of financing new investments from the issue of taxation energy consumption and therefor emissions. We compare traditional allocation schemes with an optimal Ramsey pricing by applying demand elasticity values, derived from empirical estimations of household behavior for the 106 leading countries in the world, representing around 90% of total world energy consumption and carbon emissions in 2014. We calculate country-specific alternative taxation options: uniform, equitable and Ramsey pricing schemes, applied to households, assessing the related welfare effects. Our results show that the optimal pricing scheme, for a given investment need, can improve world welfare at the expenses of equitable considerations. In addition, the aggregate societal benefit outweighs the losses associated with specific group of countries, paving the way for easier political agreement, using compensation schemes to redistribute the proceeds.     

生态村发展及其生态整体设计

生态村（Ecovillage）作为一种新兴的可持续社区模式在20世纪末期在欧美发达国家蓬勃兴起。介绍了生态村的产生背景、概念和发展特征,在相关研究的基础上,基于以社区精神为核心的社会、经济、环境整体可持续性关系,提出了生态村的“生态整体设计”体系。     

Temporary Workers in Italy: Who Are They and Where They End Up

Abstract. Temporary work has been an important component of employment growth in Italy since the early 1990s. This paper focus upon labour market transitions of temporary workers in order to test whether temporary work enhances the subsequent labour market chances. We use propensity score matching to compare subsequent employment outcomes of people who have recently acquired a temporary job with those of people who remained unemployed. Individuals' hetero geneity explains a good amount of the raw differences in the subsequent labour market status of temporary workers and the comparison group. Yet there appears to be a sizable net gain from experiencing a temporary work. Our benchmark average estimate is a 30 percentage points rise in the ‘satisfactory employment’ chances 1 year after the start of the temporary work experience. The net gains are the largest for females and adult people and the areas with low unemployment; moreover, gains are the largest for the most recent years in our sample and for those people who were (according to the propensity score estimates) either least or most likely to exit from unemployment.     

Homocysteine, menopause and cardiovascular disease

A high plasma concentration of total homocysteine (tHcy) and a deficiency of vitamins related to its metabolism, such as vitamin B12 and folate, have been associated with cardiovascular disease. Postmenopausal women have higher concentrations than age-matched premenopausal women, and plasma concentrations of homocysteine in postmenopausal women taking hormone replacement therapy are significantly lower than they are in those who do not take estrogen supplements. Because of the possible mixed effects of HRT on cardiovascular events, surrogate end-points must be evaluated with caution. While measuring homocysteine levels is relatively simple, evidence from well designed trials is awaited before population screening can be advocated. Also, the benefits of reducing homocysteine levels with folic acid and vitamin B6 and B12 supplements are highly debated.