Browsing by Author "Zhu, Heng"

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    Economic impact of giving land to refugees
    Zhu, Heng; Gupta, Anubhab; Filipski, Mateusz; Valli, Jaakko; Gonzalez-Estrada, Ernesto; Taylor, J. Edward (Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, 2023-01-19)
    This paper adds to a sparse but growing literature on the economic costs and benefits of hosting refugees, including a unique policy of providing refugees with access to cultivable land. We construct a general equilibrium model from microsurvey data to simulate the spillover effects of giving land to refugees on income and production in the host-country economy surrounding a refugee settlement in Uganda. Reduced-form econometric analysis of land allocations at the refugee settlement, robust to several specifications, confirms the simulation finding that providing refugees with agricultural land significantly improves their welfare and self-reliance. Simulations reveal that refugee aid and land allocations generate positive income spillovers in the local economy out to a 15-km radius around the refugee settlement. Host-country households benefit significantly from the income spillovers that refugee assistance creates, and host-country agriculture is the largest beneficiary among production sectors.
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    Economic impact of nature-based tourism
    Gupta, Anubhab; Zhu, Heng; Bhammar, Hasita; Earley, Elisabeth; Filipski, Mateusz; Narain, Urvashi; Spencer, Phoebe; Whitney, Edward; Taylor, J. Edward (Public Library of Science, 2023-04)
    Protected areas (PAs) can help address biodiversity loss by promoting conservation while fostering economic development through sustainable tourism. Nature-based tourism can generate economic benefits for communities in and around PAs; however, its impacts do not lend themselves to conventional impact evaluation tools. We utilize a Monte Carlo simulation approach with econometric estimations using microdata to estimate the full economic impact of nature-based tourism on the economies surrounding three terrestrial and two marine PAs. Simulations suggest that nature-based tourism creates significant economic benefits for communities around PAs, including the poorest households, and many of these benefits are indirect, via income and production spillovers. An additional tourist increases annual real income in communities near the PAs by US$169-$2,400, significantly more than the average tourist's expenditure. Conversely, lost tourism due to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic costs of human-wildlife conflict have disproportionately large negative impacts on local incomes.
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    Economic Impacts of the COVID−19 Lockdown in a Remittance‐Dependent Region
    Gupta, Anubhab; Zhu, Heng; Doan, Miki Khanh; Michuda, Aleksandr; Majumder, Binoy (Wiley, 2020)
    The economic impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on poor and vulnerable households living in rural areas of developing countries are not well understood due to a lack of detailed micro-survey data at the household level. Utilizing weekly financial transaction data collected from households residing in a rural region of India, we estimate the impacts of India’s COVID-19 lockdown on household income, food security, welfare, and access to local loan markets. A large portion of households living in our study region is reliant on remittances from migrants to sustain their livelihoods. Our analysis reveals that in the month immediately after India’s lockdown announcement, weekly household local income fell by INR 1,022 (US$ 13.5), an 88% drop compared to the long-term average with another 63% reduction in remittance. In response to the massive loss in earnings, households substantially reduced meal portions and consumed fewer food items. Impacts were heterogeneous; households in lower income quantiles lost a higher percentage of their income and expenditures, but government food aid slightly mitigated the negative impacts. We also find an increase in the effective interest rate of local borrowing in cash and a higher demand for in-kind loans, which are likely to have an adverse effect on households who rely on such services. The results from this paper have immediate relevance to policymakers considering additional lockdowns as the COVID-19 pandemic resurges around the globe and to governments thinking about responses to future pandemics that may occur.
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    Short-term effects of India’s demonetization on the rural poor
    Zhu, Heng; Gupta, Anubhab; Majumder, Binoy; Steinbach, Sandro (Elsevier, 2018-09)
    This paper analyzes the short-run responses of poor rural households to India’s demonetization in 2016. We estimate an economic loss of 15.5% over the two months post demonetization and discuss a range of strategies that the households adopted to exchange their banned currency-denominations.