主讲人:
Shiqi Guo(上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院)
参与老师:
(北大经院)刘冲、吴群锋、曹光宇
(北大国发院)李力行、席天扬、徐化愚、于航、王轩、易君健
时间:
2024年5月8日(周三)
10:00-11:30
地点:
北京大学国家发展研究院承泽园245教室
主讲人简介:
Shiqi Guo is an Assistant Professor at the Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Development Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva in 2021. Prior to this, he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University and the United Nations.
摘要:
This paper examines the impact of rural-urban migration on agricultural fires, a notable source of air pollution in China. Using county-level data from the 2010 Population Census and satellite imagery of agricultural fires, we demonstrate that a one-percentage-point increase in the rural labor emigration rate in 2010 leads to a 0.7% increase in detected agricultural fires from 2011 to 2017. This rise is attributed to the burning of crop straw residues as a labor-saving method for field clearance when agricultural labor becomes scarce. Our findings corroborate this mechanism, revealing that the effect is predominantly driven by rural emigrants, is weaker for those working nearby, and is more pronounced in areas with an aging agricultural workforce, higher grain production and greater use of agricultural machinery. To address potential endogeneity issues, we employ an instrumental variable approach, leveraging the exogenous shift in trade policy between China and the U.S. as a pull factor for rural emigration. Furthermore, we discover that land titling reforms effectively mitigate agricultural fires associated with decreased rural labor, outperforming the effectiveness of other straw regulation policies. Overall, our study reveals the intricate interplay between migration and pollution in developing countries and highlights the unintended negative externalities of rural-urban migration.