Impacts of ENSO on the Welfare of Rural Residents in China: A Stochastic CGE Model Assessment

ENSO-driven extreme weather events such as droughts and floods can cause significant damage to agricultural production and different intensities of ENSO events make uncertain changes to rural residents'welfare in different regions.To emphasize this uncertainty,the stochastic CGE model is constructed by imbedding a stochastic parameter into the production module to analyze the impacts of ENSO on the welfare of rural residents in various regions of China and the volatility of uncertain ENSO events on the welfare of residents.The role of agricultural technology in improving welfare stability and transfer payments in reducing welfare losses from ENSO are also examined.The results show that weak ENSO events have little effect on the welfare of rural residents while strong ENSO events cause the welfare of rural residents a significant decline,and the largest decrease appears separately in the southwest region and the smallest one in the northeast.The uncertainty of ENSO events seriously affects the stability of the welfare of the residents,with the average fluctuation level of 200%in the change of the rural residents'welfare in all regions under El Ni o.Technically improving the anti-risk ability of agriculture can effectively reduce the fluctuation of residents'welfare.Besides,if the government increases the transfer payment to the rural resident for disaster relief,the welfare would increase,and the higher the payment,the greater the improvement of the welfare.

Impacts of Sand and Dust Storms on Regional Economy Based on Stochastic CGE Model : A Case Study in Inner Mongolia, China

[Objectives]The paper was to study the impacts of sand and dust storms(SDS)on regional economy.[Methods]In this paper,we combined the computable general equilibrium(CGE)model and the Monte Carlo method to examine the impact of SDS on the regional economy,with a focus on GDP,price index,employment rate,industrial structure and output,income and expenditure.We extended the standard CGE model,introduced the stochastic parameters into the production module,which had significant impact on economic output,and inserted the rate of change of the total labor supply and the expenditure share of early warning and protective measures into the income and expenditure module.[Results]SDS had significant impacts on regional GDP,employment rate,and industrial output from a macro perspective,and can reduce the income of residents and enterprises and increase expenditures from a micro perspective.The impact can be reduced by taking early warning and protective measures.[Conclusions]The protective measures taken for different grades of SDS have different effects.