Dissecting the illegal pangolin trade in China: An insight from seizures data reports

Wildlife trafficking poses a major threat to global biodiversity. Species such as pangolins are particularly vulnerable and trade continues almost unabated despite numerous interventions aimed at eradicating illegal wildlife trade. Despite restrictions on the pangolin trade, thousands of pangolins continue to be intercepted annually. We focused on China because of the recent delisting of pangolins from the Chinese pharmacopeia, and their removal from healthcare insurance, despite deeply ingrained traditions of having pangolins for ethno-medicinal use. We collated pangolin interception data from public online media seizure reports to characterize the pangolin trade within China, and found that a total of 326 independent seizures equivalent to 143,130 pangolins (31,676 individuals and 222,908 kg of scale) were reported in 26 provinces. Pangolin domestic seizures are greatest in the southern cities of Dehong, Fangchenggang, and Guangzhou. Also, we found 17 countries within the global pangolins range which were the major source of the pangolin shipments to China. The number of arrests and convictions was much lower than the number of pangolin incidents reported. Our results show a significant increase in the volume of scales and number of live pangolin seizures after amended endangered species law came into effect in 2018, and recorded the highest number of individual pangolin interceptions. China has shown increasing wildlife seizures over time, owing partly to emergent trends in the international wildlife trade as well as increasing global demand for ethnomedicine. The future eradication of illegal wildlife trade in China is dependent not only on stringent border control and offender prosecution but also the; removal of other threatened species from the pharmacopeia and healthcare insurance which includes wildlife derivatives. Furthermore, our work highlights importance of current policy intervention to combat the pangolin trade within China, and the need for further interventions both within China and in export countries.

Predicting Inflation Component Drivers in Nigeria: A Stacked Ensemble Approach

Our study examined the disaggregation of inflation components in Nigeria using the stacked ensemble approach, a machine learning algorithm capable of compensating the weakness of a base learner with the strength of another. This approach gives flexibility of a synergistic performance of stacking each base learner and produces a formidable model that yields the highest level of accuracy and best predictive ability. We analyzed the test data, out-of-sample, and our results show a strong accuracy in predicting inflation. Our results further show that food CPI is the most important driver for headline, urban, and rural inflation while bread and cereals is the most important driver for food inflation. However, biscuits, agric rice, garri white are among the top main drivers of bread and cereal inflation. We note that some CPI items that mostly drive inflation have lower weights while others have higher weights therefore, focusing entirely on CPI weights as a policy guide will stymied a successful control of inflation in Nigeria. In addition, ignoring CPI items with lower weights in policy intervention will make inflation difficult to control. Above all, adequate trace of the source of inflation to the least sub-component of each component will help address or formulates an appropriate policy to confront inflation problems in Nigeria.JEL: C53, E37

THE PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES OF YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA: ADMINISTRATORS’ PERSPECTIVES

Youth entrepreneurship is an emerging enquiry, which is critical in addressing unemployment crisis among young people. This paper explored prospects and challenges of youth entrepreneurship in developing economy, Zanzibar in Tanzania. The paper adopted qualitative methods using thematic analysis techniques to derive prospects and challenges from recorded transcripts according to administrator’s perspective from public and private institutions responsible for entrepreneurship in the country. The study found that youth entrepreneurship is strategic initiative of transforming necessity entrepreneurship into opportunity entrepreneurship, stimulating innovation initiatives for solving challenges facing society, promoting sectoral linkage, job creation and building entrepreneurial culture. However, youth entrepreneurship is constrained internally by lack of funds, poor growth and sustainability of youth enterprises, lack of entrepreneurial mindset and alertness to opportunities, while externally by poor coordination of public institution responsible for entrepreneurship development, bureaucracy, and lack of family support. The study becomes empirical evidence on the importance of youth entrepreneurship and thereby recommended for policy intervention would ameliorate the challenges and helps build entrepreneurial culture for the development of entrepreneurship in the country.

Study on Optimization Path of Energy Consumption Structure of Container Terminal

This study accounts current energy consumption of various types of equipments in Chinese container terminals through investigating typical terminals; compares and analyzes the clean energy application technologies from the perspectives of technical level, investment cost, and others; on this basis, construct the predictive model of energy consumption structure, and uses scenario analysis to carry out energy consumption predictions under each scenario and analyzes the effect of policy intervention, technological development and other factors. According to the predictive results, this study holds that in order to optimize energy structure of container terminal, container terminals should strongly promote the application of clean energy to port machinery instead of fuel on the basis of the industrial development and cost reduction of high-power and large-capacity power batteries; at the same time, strengthen policy encouragement and guidance are needed.

From Chatter to Action: How Social Networks Inform and Motivate in Rural Uganda

From public health to political campaigns, numerous attempts to encourage behavior begin with the spread of information. Of course, seeding new information does not guarantee action, especially when it is difficult for receivers to verify this information. We use a novel design that introduced valuable, actionable information in rural Uganda and reveals the intermediate process that led many in the village to hear the information but only some to act on it. We find that the seeded information spread easily through word of mouth via a simple contagion process. However, acting on the information spread less easily; this process relied instead on endogenously created social information that served to vet, verify, and pass judgment. Our results highlight an important wedge between information that a policy intervention can best control and the behavior that ultimately results.

Does Economic Policy Intervention Inhibit the Efficiency of China’s Green Energy Economy?

Due to the different focus of policies in different regions, China’s energy efficiency has been unstable in recent years. The changing focus of policies at the same time has also impacted the energy system, and therefore, it is very important to explore the impact of China’s new energy policy on its oil and gas energy efficiency. The practical significance of this research is to integrate three policy intervention factors: incentive economic policy intervention, government financial intervention, and mandatory policy intervention. Through the regression of the Stochastic Frontier Approach model, the influence of these policy intervention factors on the efficiency evaluation of decision-making units is eliminated. We calculate the environmental pollution index as an undesired output to measure the efficiency of policy intervention in the green economy of China’s oil and gas energy, use Luenberger model to explore total factor productivity, and find the main reasons that affect the productivity of the green energy economy. The results show that China’s oil and gas energy construction is currently in the stage of scale economy, but the heavy dependence of China’s energy consumption on foreign imports leads to difficulties and urgency in the present stage of technological progress. After excluding the factors of policy intervention, China’s overall energy is in a slightly insufficient policy environment, and energy efficiency is in an unbalanced state.

Strategies for Goat Feeding and Management during Drought

Nowadays, climate change is becoming a serious problem threatening livestock production by affecting their environment, health, and feed sources. Many parts of the tropical countries, particularly the pastoralist area, experience extended periods of drought, leading to shortages of feed and water. During these periods, goats are incapable of meeting their nutrient requirement for maintenance and will begin to lose weight as body reserves are depleted, causing economic loss to the goats. In the extremely long dry season, animals die, with the youngest, weakest, and oldest dying first. As a result, drought management entails balancing pasture and water supply against forage and water demand. In most cases, no single strategy will suffice to address this issue. Each situation would need a different set of strategies Therefore, this chapter will come with some common options/ strategies that can be avail feed shortage during drought. Those strategies are purchase of feed from surplus location, adjustment of animal management, policy intervention, destocking, adjusting grazing strategies during drought, supplementation, maintenance feeding, reallocation of a given amount of feed in the herd, early weaning and creep feeding, lowering stocking rate, water sources and supplies, development and effective utilization of feed resources, and creation of feed banks.

Book Review: The Great Reversal by Thomas Philippon

Thomas Philippon’s The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets is a remarkable piece of research that draws our attention to a timely and relevant issue: the rise of market power and its macroeconomic implications. The book documents the facts, offers a number of hypotheses to explain those facts, and discusses the policy interventions needed to remedy market power. This essay reviews the contribution of the book, especially the conceptual and empirical foundations that lead to the main conclusions. The main virtue of the book is to offer a wealth of facts and implications that highlight the different aspects of the evolution of market power. This essay also considers instances that permit an alternative viewpoint. First, I maintain that the reliance on concentration indices to measure market power can be misleading. Second, the essay argues that to date there is no evidence that bestows a different experience in the evolution of market power in Europe compared to the United States. Third, the book gives most air time to antitrust and merger review as the main cause. While antitrust is relevant, technological change is at least as, if not more, important for the observed rise of market power. This essay manifests that technological change has fundamental implications for welfare and therefore for policy intervention. (JEL D24, E22, G31, G34, K21, L13)

Impact of Volume-Based Drug Procurement Policy on Drug Use Structure of Chinese Public Medical Institutions: A Difference-in-Difference Analysis of Nine Pilot Cities and Twelve Non-pilot Provinces

Background In 2019, the Chinese government implemented the first round pilot of volume-based drug procurement in 4 municipalities and 7 sub-provincial cities, i.e. “4+7” policy. This study evaluated the impact of “4+7” policy on the use structure of policy-related drugs. Methods Data of China Drug Supply Information Platform (CDSIP) database was used, covering 18,636 public medical institutions from 9 pilot cities and 12 non-pilot provinces in mainland China. “4+7” policy-related drugs were selected as study samples, including 25 drugs in the “4+7” procurement List and 83 alternative drugs that have an alternative relationship with “4+7” List drugs. “4+7” List drugs were divided into bid-winning and bid-non-winning products. Drug Structure Index (DSI) was employed as the outcome variable, and higher DSI refers to the use proportion of higher-DDDc (Defined Daily Drug cost) drugs increased. Difference-in-difference (DID) method was employed to estimate the net effect of “4+7” policy. Results After policy intervention, the DSI of bid-winning drugs significantly decreased (β=-0.233, p<0.0001), while non-winning drugs (β = 0.177, p<0.001) and “4+7” List drugs (β = 0.050, p<0.01) increased. No significant change was found for the overall DSI of alternative drugs (β = 0.013, p>0.05), while a remarkable increase was found in primary healthcare settings (β = 0.033, p<0.05). In three post-“4+7” periods, the increments of DSI for non-winning products were 17.54% (period 1), 18.35% (period 2), and 19.66% (period 3). The DSI of “4+7” List drugs significantly increased in post-“4+7” period 2 and 3 (all p-values<0.05). Conclusions The use proportion of higher-DDDc bid-winning drugs significantly decreased after policy intervention. However, among drugs not involved by NCDP policy, the use proportion of higher-DDDc drugs significantly increased after policy intervention, moreover, the increment was more pronounced at the later periods of policy implementation. The clinical use monitoring and the physician’s prescription behavior supervision should be strengthened.