We evaluate the poverty impacts of the Philippines’ National Greening Program, a large-scale tree planting initiative that generated hundreds of thousands of jobs. Exploiting the program’s staggered roll-out, a dynamic difference-in-differences strategy reveals significant gains in tree cover and reductions in poverty between 2011 and 2018. Poverty reduction is channeled through labor market shifts reducing agricultural work while increasing unskilled and service jobs, in turn generating gains in income, consumption, and assets. While payments have short-term effects, combining them with income-generating forest assets yields longer-lasting effects, highlighting how nature-based, multifaceted interventions can support rural economies.

UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); NERC/UKRI BIOADD Grant NE/X002292/1 and the LSE’s Global School of Sustainability

When insurance markets are incomplete, extreme weather shocks can push farmers toward coping strategies that increase pressure on forested land. This paper studies whether agricultural insurance weakens the link between climate shocks and environmental degradation in the Philippines. Using a stacked triple-difference design that exploits typhoon exposure and the staggered rollout of two government insurance programs, we find that typhoons sharply increase forest loss in uninsured municipalities, while insured municipalities experience no such increase. The increase in forest loss is accompanied by greater burning in rainfed cropland and subsequent agricultural expansion, and is concentrated in poorer municipalities where financial constraints are likely to be most binding. Translating these forest effects into carbon flows, we find that the carbon co-benefits exceed program costs by a factor of 84, implying a breakeven carbon price of $2.3 per tonne CO2.

LSE’s Global School of Sustainability; Department of Geography and Environment Research Seed Fund

Ecosystem restoration is increasingly promoted as a nature-based solution to support both ecosystems and livelihoods, yet evidence on how it reshapes local economic behaviour and wellbeing remains scarce. This paper studies the ecological-economic response of mangrove restoration on fisheries and household wellbeing from over 5,000 planting sites in the Philippines. We develop a bioeconomic fisheries model showing that the net effect of restoration on fishing effort, catch, and incomes is theoretically ambiguous. To test these predictions, we exploit the staggered rollout of the Philippines' National Greening Program between 2011 and 2018, applying difference-in-differences methods to ecological, fishery, and household survey data. Planting sites accumulate measurable mangrove cover over time and temporarily suppress nearshore phytoplankton productivity, consistent with growing trees competing for macronutrients at the base of the marine food web. Fishing vessels, capital investment, and effort all increase following restoration, yet catch and fishing incomes remain unchanged, a pattern consistent with expanding mangrove habitats making fish harder to catch rather than raising fishery productivity. Higher fishing costs are passed through to consumers via higher market prices for fish, inducing entry into fishing while leaving household fishing incomes unchanged. Households substitute away from fish toward meat and eggs, resulting in greater dietary protein diversity, with effects concentrated among poorer households and extending to non-fishing households. This study shows how ecological restoration can reshape livelihoods, markets, and consumption patterns in ways largely unanticipated by program designers.

UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); NERC/UKRI BIOADD Grant NE/X002292/1 and the LSE’s Global School of Sustainability

Community-driven development (CDD) programs are becoming integral components in the development portfolios of major international development agencies, and are further being positioned as a parallel strategy to the sustainable development goals relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation. As this dual positioning occurs, little is known about the environmental effects stemming from such programs, especially in terms of deforestation. Using satellite-generated forest coverage data, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the impact of CDD programs on deforestation. More specifically, I apply a regression discontinuity design (RDD) and a randomized control trial (RCT) to a large-scale CDD program over two different time periods in the Philippines. Eligible municipalities in the RDD period experienced an average of 236 percent more deforestation and treated municipalities in the RCT period experienced an average of 265 percent more deforestation than the control. I then explore heterogeneous effects on a detailed dataset of the subprojects to show that the greatest impact on deforestation arose from infrastructure subprojects, which include trails, bridges and roads, followed by support, education and health facility subprojects. As international development agencies continue to invest heavily in CDD programs, more focus should be placed on the sustainability of such programs and on how CDD programs can be more in line with forest conservation policy.

This paper studies whether extractive-resource-activities provoke an ecological response on the emergence and proliferation of malaria by altering the reproductive environment of mosquitoes. In January 2004, the government of the Philippines launched the Minerals Action Plan (MAP), which significantly improved the investment climate in the country’s mining sector. I exploit the timing of the reform and the spatial distribution of mineral endowments through a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that compares provinces with and without gold deposits before and after the reform. After the MAP reform, provinces with deposits of gold had 32 percent more malaria cases per 100,000 relative to provinces without gold deposits. I perform several falsification tests as well as investigate other potential mechanisms which further suggest that the main mechanism is through gold mining’s creation of slow-moving bodies of stagnant water, which provide an ideal breeding site for Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria’s main transmission vector, to propagate and reproduce.

The Jones Act is a protectionist policy intended to address cabotage, seamen’s rights, and US maritime interests. This study estimates the economic impact of the Jones Act and coastwise restrictions from multiple economic points of view for 2006–2017. The building cost differential between domestic and foreign produced vessels represents a welfare loss to US consumers ranging from $5.2 billion to $6.6 billion, or $59.0 million to $74.6 million per Jones Act vessel. Average daily crew costs make up around 68% of the overall operating costs for domestic ships, compared to 35% for foreign-flagged vessels, and generate an additional per-vessel annual crew cost of $4.1 million, or an estimated annual loss of approximately $383 million for the Jones Act fleet. Differences between domestic and foreign-flagged ship operating costs (which include crew) average $923 million each year, with a total deficit for the entire period of $11.1 billion. Distributing that deficit across state-level imports finds that Texas accounts for $2 billion of the total, followed by Louisiana ($1.8 billion) and California ($1 billion). On a per capita basis, Louisiana is highest at $384, followed by Hawaii ($100). An analysis out of all domestic shipping reveals that Louisiana is again disproportionately disadvantaged. Breaking down the deficit by commodities finds crude petroleum and petroleum products most heavily affected.

This article expands on previous research regarding the relative efficiency of National Collegiate Athletic Association III Athletic Departments. In our analysis, we employ Frontier Analysis to develop an efficiency score for each program over the time frame of 2007-2008 to 2011-2012. We find that private schools dominate the rankings of the most efficient athletic departments. In addition, it is clear that some inputs are more valuable than others. In reviewing the yearly cross-sectional results, it is evident that for the average institution, increasing the number of female students participating in sports will yield the greatest expected increases in Director’s Cup points.