We demonstrate the diffusion in use of Earth observations data in social science research. Our study is motivated by the continuing debate among policymakers over the value of the nation’s investment in Earth observations. We also consider the role of related factors including the spread of...

While the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity, various recent cross-country regressions analysing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect insignificant or even surprising negative effects of schooling. In this...

Many African countries are richly endowed with land, but the productive potential of the land base has been underutilised in farming systems with low intensity of external inputs and high intensity of labour. At the same time, mining and erosion of soils have been common features of rural Africa...

This paper provides the first county-level analysis of the impacts of weather variability on rice yield in China, by compiling a unique panel on irrigated single-season rice and daily weather data. We found that temperature and solar radiation had statistically significant impacts on rice yield...

Whether economic growth can be sustained in a finite natural world is one of the earliest and most enduring questions in economic literature. Even with unprecedented growth in human population and resource consumption, humans have been quite adept at finding solutions to the problem of scarce...

A major problem being faced by human society is that the global temperature is believed to be rising due to human activity that releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, i.e., global warming. The major culprit is thought to be fossil fuel burning, which is releasing increasing amounts of carbon...

An RFF Workshop brought together experts from around the world to assess the feasibility of using biological sinks to sequester carbon as part of a global atmospheric mitigation effort. The chapters of this proceeding are a result of that effort. Although the intent of the workshop was not to...

We estimate the link between corn and soybean yields and weather in China, while controlling for other variables that could affect crop yields, such as socioeconomic and climate adaptation variables. We find that: (i) there are nonlinear and asymmetric relationships between corn and soybean...

This study develops cumulative carbon “supply curves” for global forests utilizing an dynamic timber supply model for sequestration of forest carbon. Because the period of concern is the next century, and particular time points within that century, the curves are not traditional Marshallian...

Strategies for controlling invasive species can be aimed at any or all of the stages in the life cycle. In this paper we show how to combine biological data on population dynamics with simple economic data on control cost options to determine the least costly set of strategies that will halt an...