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In this paper, we present evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment of the effects of the Chinese one-child policy on adults in China who were born just before and after the introduction of the policy. We measure risk, uncertainty, and time preferences, as well as subjects' preferences in the social domain, i.e., concerning competitiveness, cooperation, and bargaining. We sampled people from three Chinese provinces born both before and after the introduction of the policy in 1979. We utilize the fact that the one-child policy was introduced at different times and with different degrees of strictness in different provinces. Overall, we find a statistically significant effect only on risk and uncertainty aversion and not on any other preferences in the experiments: Those born after the introduction of the one-child policy are less risk and uncertainty averse. These results hold for various robustness checks and heterogeneity tests. Hence, our results do not confirm the general wisdom and stereotype of only-children in China being "little emperors." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degradation of grasslands is a pressing global issue. Extensive research has explored the implementation of collective action as a means to ensure the sustainable use of grassland resources. However, empirical analysis of its impact in the field is lacking. Therefore, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment to evaluate the intensity of herders' participation in collective action and estimated its impact on grassland conservation and livestock production at herder household level. As a robustness check, we performed a principal component analysis to measure herders' willingness to participate in collective action. The empirical results show that collective action has significant positive effects on grassland quality and livestock number. A mechanism analysis indicates that herders who are more actively engaged in collective action are more likely to adopt rotational grazing management practices, leading to better grassland quality and a higher number of livestock. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that the benefits of collective action on grassland conservation vary based on resource endowments and individual characteristics, including grassland area and social network. This study makes a significant contribution to the study of sustainable grassland management that promotes the coupling development of grassland protection and livestock production. • A lab-in-the-field experiment evaluated herders' collective action intensity. • Collective action promoted the coupling development of grassland protection and livestock production. • Intense collective action improves grassland quality and livestock production through rotational grazing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence suggests that close to 100 million women are "missing" worldwide. We revisit the empirical evidence for China, the country with the most missing women. Nearly ten million girls born in the 1980s and 1990s who were "missing" according to earlier census data can be found again in the 2010 population census. We discuss two possible explanations for the re-emergence of these formerly missing girls: the delayed registration of girls owing to economic reasons, and the response to amendments to the Chinese Statistics Law in 2009 and policy changes in the 2010 population census. Using the most recent statistics, we document patterns of the underreporting of women over time and across regions as well as explore the basic determinants of underreporting of women. Important policy challenges remain. For the unregistered children, the lack of access to public services will increase their vulnerability and adversely affect their quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incorporation of an agglomeration bonus payment to encourage spatial coordination in auction mechanisms to allocate payments for ecosystem services (PES) contracts has been explored as a promising innovation that could enhance the effectiveness of PES schemes. Empirical evidence on the performance of this particular design feature is scant, and almost exclusively derived from laboratory experiments using student subjects. This study reports results from a framed field experimental auction allocating PES contracts with and without agglomeration bonus payments using actual forest land owners in rural China as subjects. We find tentative evidence that, in a PES auction that provides agglomeration bonuses, subjects tend to bid less in anticipation of receiving bonus payments when their neighbours are also successful in the auction. In addition, we have mixed findings as to whether the agglomeration bonus is able to induce a bidding pattern in favour of contiguous conservation. The two sets of results convey some encouraging signals of the theoretically postulated cost-effectiveness and conservation efficacy of the agglomeration bonus. Further research from the actual field is warranted in light of the policy significance of this innovative incentive mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of adopting certified food production on chemical fertilizer and pesticide use in China.Design/methodology/approach The authors estimate fixed effect models to track the changes in agro chemical consumption at household level over time and evaluate the effect of certified food production, using an unbalanced panel data set covering 4,830 households in six provinces over the period 2005–2013.Findings On average, the authors do not find significant effects of certified food production on either chemical fertilizer or pesticide consumption among Chinese farmers. The effects are heterogeneous across villages, but the heterogeneous effects show no clear pattern that is consistent with different types of certification. The findings are robust to the use of alternative panel structure and certification indicators. The lack of knowledge about certification among farmers, the price premium and differences in regulation enforcement across regions may explain why the authors do not find negative effects on agro chemical use.Practical implications This study suggests that careful inspections and strong enforcement of certified food production is needed to ensure that the environmental goals of certified food production can be achieved and the reputation of certification in China can be improved. The inspection of certification producers and the enforcement of current regulations should be stricter for the further healthy development of certified food production in China.Originality/value This study is the first attempt to systematically evaluate the impact of food certification on the use of agro chemicals in Chinese agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vibrant literature has emerged that explores the economic implications of the sex ratio (the ratio of men to women in the population), including changes in fertility rates, educational outcomes, labor supply, and household purchases. Previous empirical efforts, however, have paid less attention to the underlying channel via which changes in the sex ratio affect economic decisions. This study combines evidence from a field experiment and a survey to document that the sex ratio importantly influences female bargaining power: as the sex ratio increases, female bargaining power increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Markets can only function properly in the presence of sufficient trust. We explore the relation between trusting behavior and market integration in rural China. We link the results of a trust experiment to actual behavior in the field (participation in the labor market versus informally exchanging labor), and find that high-trust households are more likely to use formal markets. We proceed by exploring the relation between labor market participation and economic outcomes, finding tentative evidence of a causal relation running from market participation to higher levels of income. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study uses micro-level data gathered for Tibetans and Mongolians living in the same region (Qinghai Lake area in Northwest China) and having similar religion (Buddhism) and livelihoods (livestock raising) to examine how cultural differences between these two ethnic groups affect their integration into markets, their means of livestock production, and the extent of degradation of the grassland. We find significant cultural differences between the two ethnic groups, and conclude that the impact of religious attitudes on the market orientation of herder households is the dominating force explaining a relatively high degree of grassland degradation among Mongolian households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high prevalence of infectious diseases (mostly lungworms) is found in finless porpoises (genus Neophocaena) in the coastal waters of China, which is one of the most dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)-polluted areas worldwide, while its association with contaminant exposure remains undetermined. To address this gap, we investigated blubber levels of polychlorinated diphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Indo-Pacific finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides) stranded in the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) of China. In the post-mortem examinations, lungworms (Halocercus species) were found to be the most common parasites, with a high density observed in lungs and bronchi. Severe infections by nematode parasites were also found in the uterus (Cystidicola species), intestine (Anisakis typica) and muscle (A. typica). For all the pollutant compounds analyzed, only the concentrations of p,p'-DDT, p,p'-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDD) and o,p'-DDD were significantly higher in porpoises died of infectious diseases than in the "healthy" individuals (died from physical trauma). Contrasted accumulation pattern of DDTs and their metabolites was found between animals with different health status. The proportion of p,p'-DDT in ΣDDTs was higher than that of p,p'-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) in diseased animals, whereas an opposite pattern was shown for "healthy" ones. While this study is the first to describe a significant positive correlation between parasitic diseases and high levels of DDTs in cetaceans, the direction of causality cannot be determined in our data: either a parasitic infection affected the porpoises' ability to metabolize DDTs, resulting in high levels of p,p'-DDT in their blubber, or the pollutant burden rendered them more susceptible to parasitic infection., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) are apex predators in the Pearl River Estuary waters (PRE) of China. PCBs, DDTs and other organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) (e.g., HCHs, HCB, mirex and dieldrin) were analysed in blubber samples of 45 dolphins and 10 prey fishes of S. chinensis collected from 2004 to 2013 in the PRE region to investigate the bioaccumulation and potential biomagnification of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). DDTs were the most abundant residue in the dolphins, with an average of 6,2700 ng g(-1) wet weight (ww), followed by PCBs (average: 1,790 ng g(-1) ww) and other OCPs including ∑HCHs, mirex, endrin, ∑chlordanes, HCB, dieldrin, aldrin, heptachlor, and pentachlorobenzene. The concentrations of PCBs and DDTs in male dolphins significantly increased with age and length. In contrast, female dolphins did not show obvious bioaccumulation trends with age and body length, possibly due to the lactational and parturitional transfer of these compounds. Compared with the POP residues in the prey fishes, the concentrations of PCBs, DDTs, and HCHs in the dolphin blubber increased by factors of 99, 212, and 5, respectively, whereas the residue levels of the other OCPs increased 2-185 times, indicating a potentially significant biomagnification in the top predators. The potential biomagnification factors calculated for most POPs were significantly higher than those in the cetacean species from other regions., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)