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We use a combination of economic and wellbeing metrics to evaluate the impacts of a climate resilience program designed for family farmers in the semiarid region of Brazil. Most family farmers in the region are on the verge of income and food insufficiency, both of which are exacerbated in prolonged periods of droughts. The program assisted farmers in their milk and sheepmeat production, implementing a set of climate-smart production practices and locally-adapted technologies. We find that the program under evaluation had substantive and significant impacts on production practices, land management, and quality of life in general, using several different quasi-experimental strategies to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated farmers. We highlight the strengths and limitations of each evaluation strategy and how the set of analyses and outcome indicators complement each other. The evaluation provides valuable insights into the economic and environmental sustainability of family farming in semiarid regions, which are under growing pressure from climate change and environmental degradation worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the trade-offs between health and the economy during the period of social distancing in São Paulo, the state hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. We use longitudinal data with municipal-level information and check the robustness of our estimates to several sources of bias, including spatial dependence, reverse causality, and time-variant omitted variables. We use exogenous climate shocks as instruments for social distancing since people are more likely to stay home in wetter and colder periods. Our findings suggest that the health benefits of social distancing differ by levels of municipal development and may have vanished if the COVID-19 spread was not controlled in neighboring municipalities. In turn, we did not find evidence that municipalities with tougher social distancing performed worse economically. Our results also highlight that estimates that do not account for endogeneity may largely underestimate the benefits of social distancing on reducing the spread of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how environmental change affects out-migration in the Brazilian Amazon using census data on municipal-level migration flows between 2005 and 2010. We characterize environmental change in terms of increases in municipal deforested area and gradual changes in temperature and precipitation as well as extreme weather events. Our empirical analysis is based on gravity models of migration, which consider simultaneously characteristics of origins and destinations as determinants of migration flows, treating for potential sources of endogeneity. We find evidence that out-migration from the Amazon region of Brazil is mainly associated with prior levels of deforestation, which is partially explained by the life cycle channel: a younger generation leaving the old frontier of colonization to an aging population. Furthermore, the links between environmental change and migration are more evident in the context of rural-urban and intra-regional migration, contributing to the process of urbanization in the Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migratory dynamics is, more often than not, the result of a process of geographic mobility of the labor force in search of occupational insertion in other regions. This process, according to most of the findings in the international and national economic literature, is based on a positive migration process in which part of the labor force leaves its natural region in search of other opportunities for socioeconomic insertion in other regions. As such, those more ambitious, persistent, courageous, leave the regions of residence to seek better professional opportunities in other regions. That is, they are positively selected. In these aspects, this article aims to analyze if there is a positive migratory intermunicipal selection of Norte-Rio-Grandense. The data are from the Demographic Census of Brazil referring to the years 2000 and 2010. Methodologically, the literature revised; and then the two-stage model of Heckman (1979), as well as the decomposition proposed by Cutillo e Ceccarelli (2012). The results confirm the hypothesis that the intermunicipal migrant from Rio Grande do Norte is positively selected and the decomposition shows that the most unobservable characteristics are corroborating higher labor income in favor of the migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study compares the relationship between wages and labor productivity for different categories of workers in Brazil and in the U.S. Analyses highlight to what extent the equilibrium between wages and productivity is related to the degree of economic development. Wages in the U.S. has shown to be more attached to labor productivity, while Brazil has experienced several economic cycles were average earnings grew initially much faster than labor productivity, suddenly falling down in the subsequent years. Analyses also stress how wage differentials, in fact, match productivity differentials for certain occupational groups, while for others they do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the determinants of the self-reported income and food sufficiency in Brazil, highlighting how these subjective measures of wellbeing are affected by relative conditions. Analyses are based on pooled data from the 2002/2003 and 2008/2009 Brazilian Family Budget Survey and on estimates of the multinomial relation between income and food sufficiency with absolute and relative indicators. The paper highlights that living in a more affluent neighborhood does matter in self-reported perceptions of wellbeing. Stated income sufficiency depends positively on absolute family income and negatively on relative neighbor income. Moreover, neighborhood education and regional inequality affect both stated perceptions of income and food sufficiency. The paper concludes that improving personal income and education, as well as reducing inequality, is one of the most effective ways to improve both the quality of life and the general perceptions of wellbeing in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective policies for adaptation to climate change require understanding how impacts are related to exposures and vulnerability, the dimensions of the climate system that will change most and where human impacts will be most draconian, and the institutions best suited to respond. Here, we propose a simple method for more credibly pairing empirical statistical damage estimates derived from recent weather and outcome observations with projected future climate changes and proposed responses. We first analyze agricultural production and loan repayment data from Brazil to understand vulnerability to historical variation in the more predictable components of temperature and rainfall (trend and seasonality) as well as to shocks (both local and over larger spatial scales). This decomposed weather variation over the past two decades explains over 50% of the yield variation in major Brazilian crops and, critically, can be constructed in the same way for future climate projections. Combining our estimates with bias-corrected downscaled climate simulations for Brazil, we find increased variation in yields and revenues (including more bad years and worse outcomes) and higher agricultural loan default at midcentury. Results in this context point to two particularly acute dimensions of vulnerability: Intensified seasonality and local idiosyncratic shocks both contribute to worsening outcomes, along with a reduced capacity for spatially correlated ("covariate") shocks to ameliorate these effects through prices. These findings suggest that resilience strategies should focus on institutions such as water storage, financial services, and reinsurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the application of the residual imputation method in the environmental economic valuation of mineral water, based on the accounting data disclosed by a company of the sector between the years of 2011 and 2012. Although carried out in ex-post terms, the application of the method demonstrates the importance and impact that would have on the company's results if it were to pay for the exploitation of this environmental resource. Initially, a brief consideration is given on environmental valuation and its main methods, emphasizing the method used in the study: residual imputation. The second part presents the company's accounting data and calculates the environmental economic value of mineral water. We conclude that the company has high margins of return and that, even paying for the use of the environmental resource, would still present high financial results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]