橘 永久

<sec><title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</title>Product quality standardization is the solution to market collapses due to quality-insensitive pricing regimes prevalent in West African (WA) rice value chains. However, access to local rice that is differentiated by quality standards is limited. This paper explores feasibility of quality standardization of local rice and evaluates how its price–quality connecting effect depends on retailer characters/reactions. </sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</title>This study uses panel data from a wholesale randomized control trial (RCT) and three surveys of 135 rice retailers in Ghana. </sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</title>Improved local food value chains and access to quality differentiated products are impactful entry points for import substitution policies. The strength of interretailer competition, retail infrastructure and wholesaler activities matter for a stronger connection of prices and quality, given uptake of quality-standardized local rice. </sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-subheading">Research limitations/implications</title>Access to quality-differentiated local rice can be increased via private and third-party certification. This addresses the prevailing inefficient pricing and its related problems. The positive impacts of such access would be magnified by designing quality certification interventions to elicit regular-frequent purchases by retailers and target retailers with adequate retail infrastructure in high competition areas. However, this study only explored profitability and opportunities for strategic behavior as the behavioral basis for quality-sensitive pricing. Other impact mechanisms could be explored in further research that includes consumer data. </sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</title>Despite their difficulty and limited use in value chains studies, RCT and panel data methods are used. This study is the first to empirically analyze feasibility of introducing product standardization, a missing institution in the WA local rice markets. </sec>

Although many studies have found negative associations between GDP per capita and damage caused by nature's shocks, evidence suggests that this negative association is obscure among low-income countries. By utilizing detailed household (HH) survey data from rural areas of Nepal, we investigated whether rising HH incomes, mainly through remittances, mitigated the damages caused by the 2015 devastating earthquake to houses. We confirmed that remittances were positively associated with house structures using concrete. Our analyses, however, did not show that houses using concrete displayed strength against the seismic shocks in 2015 compared with the masonry houses that were commonly used in the study areas. Our estimates further indicated that those HHs receiving more remittances maintained houses that were more vulnerable to the 2015 earthquake. We consider that the most likely factor by which remittances weakened houses against the seismic shocks are less maintenance and minor repairs in the remittance-dependent HHs. For example, remittance-dependent HHs tend to suffer from the shortage of working-age male workers needed for maintenance work. Our results suggest that using modern construction materials with remittances does not necessarily help HHs withstand nature's shocks.

This paper contributes to two strands of literature: disaster literature on post-disaster mental health and economics literature on migration. Remittances are a sizable source of income in many developing countries. Evidence suggests, however, that when adults migrate in order to support their families via remittances, family members left behind often experience poorer physical and mental health. We study the effects of remittances on the mental health of victims of a disaster, the earthquake (EQ) that hit Nepal in 2015. We used three waves of data from 335 individuals in 6 villages in Western Nepal in which emigration is prevalent. The first wave of the survey was conducted one year before the 2015 EQ. In the third wave, which was conducted one year after the EQ, the respondents aged 15 and older were assessed for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms. PTSD symptoms were evaluated by the 17-item Checklist Civilian (PCL-C), and depressive symptoms were measured by the 20-question Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scales (CESD) questionnaire. In order to avoid capturing the impacts of remittances for daily expenses and reduce possible endogeneity in the remittance variables, we measured the change in remittances following the EQ. After controlling for pre-disaster body-mass index and asset holdings, we found that the increase in remittances sent to HHs reduced psychological distress measured by the PTSD and depression severity scores. The remittance variables, however, did not alleviate mental disorder as defined by the international-standard cutoff points of PCL-C and CES-D.