Xiuli Liu, Mun S Ho, Geoffrey JD Hewings, Yuxing Dou, Shouyang Wang, Guangzhou Wang, Dabo Guan, and Shantong Li. 2023. “
Aging Population, Balanced Diet and China’s Grain Demand.” Nutrients, 15, 13, Pp. 2877.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThe need to make more accurate grain demand (GD) forecasting has become a major topic in the current international grain security discussion. Our research aims to improve short-term GD prediction by establishing a multi-factor model that integrates the key factors: shifts in dietary structures, population size and age structure, urbanization, food waste, and the impact of COVID-19. These factors were not considered simultaneously in previous research. To illustrate the model, we projected China’s annual GDP from 2022 to 2025. We calibrated key parameters such as conversion coefficients from animal foods to feed grain, standard person consumption ratios, and population size using the latest surveys and statistical data that were either out of date or missing in previous research. Results indicate that if the change in diets continued at the rate as observed during 2013–2019 (scenario 1), China’s GD is projected to be 629.35 million tons in 2022 and 658.16 million tons in 2025. However, if diets shift to align with the recommendations in the Dietary Guideline for Chinese Residents 2022 (scenario 2), GD would be lower by 5.9–11.1% annually compared to scenario 1. A reduction in feed grain accounts for 68% of this change. Furthermore, for every 1 percentage point increase in the population adopting a balanced diet, GD would fall by 0.44–0.73 million tons annually during that period. Overlooking changes in the population age structure could lead to an overprediction of annual GDP by 3.8% from 2022 to 2025. With an aging population, China’s GD would fall slightly, and adopting a balanced diet would not lead to an increase in GD but would have positive impacts on human health and the environment. Our sensitivity analysis indicated that reducing food waste, particularly cereal, livestock, and poultry waste, would have significant effects on reducing GD, offsetting the higher demand due to rising urbanization and higher incomes. These results underscore the significance of simultaneous consideration of multiple factors, particularly the dietary structure and demographic composition, resulting in a more accurate prediction of GD. Our findings should be useful for policymakers concerning grain security, health, and environmental protection.
Jing Cao, Mun Ho, and Qingfeng Liu. 2023. “
Analyzing multi-greenhouse gas mitigation of China using a general equilibrium model.” Environmental Research Letters, 18, 2, Pp. 025001.
Publisher's VersionAbstractClimate actions have focused on CO2 mitigation and only some studies of China consider non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs), which account for nearly 18% of gross GHG emissions. The economy-wide impact of mitigation covering CO2 and non-CO2 GHGs in China, has not been comprehensively studied and we develop a multi-sector dynamic model to compare the impact of CO2-only mitigation with a multi-GHG mitigation policy that also price non-CO2 GHGs. We find that the multi-GHG approach significantly reduces the marginal abatement cost and economic loss to reach the same level of GHG emissions (measures as 100 year global warming potential) compared to a CO2-only scenario. By 2060, multi-gas mitigation can reduce the tax rate by 15.44% and improve real gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.41%. The aggregate gain brought by multi-GHG mitigation are robust to various pathways and but vary across periods and sectors.
Mun S Ho, Koji Nomura, and Jon D Samuels. 2023. “
The growing impact of ICT productivity via the cost of capital: Evidence from the U.S. and Japan.” Telecommunications Policy, 47, 9, Pp. 102635.
AbstractWe identify and measure two impacts of industry-level
total factor productivity(TFP) growth on aggregate price change in the U.S. and Japan. The first is a standard effect from the definition of aggregate GDP. TFP change lowers aggregate prices ceteris paribus. The second is that a change in TFP in the production of investment goods lowers the cost of capital via lower investment prices. We call this the cost-of-capital effect and formulate an expanded growth accounting framework to capture both effects. We apply it to a harmonized dataset for the two countries and find that the standard effect has fallen since the peak around 2000 due to lower TFP growth and a diminished share of GDP. However, the cost-of-capital effect has risen in importance and offsets part of this decline in the standard effect.
Faan Chen, Yaxin Li, Qianqian Feng, Zehao Dong, Yiming Qian, Yi Yan, Mun S. Ho, Qianchen Ma, Dashan Zhang, and Yuanzhe Jin. 2023. “
Road safety performance rating through PSI-PRIDIT: A planning tool for designing policies and identifying best practices for EAS countries.” Socio-Economic Planning Sciences.
Publisher's VersionAbstractRoad traffic injuries are a leading cause of socio-economic loss in East Asia Summit (EAS) countries. A regular performance rating to monitor progress and calibrate interventions is crucial for road safety improvement, helping to save human lives and reducing economic losses. To this end, we propose a new and easy-to-adapt multi-criteria decision-making method for systematically rating the road safety performance of the EAS countries, the preference selection index with principal component analysis of RIDIT scores (PSI-PRIDIT) (scores of a distribution relative to an identified distribution integral transformation). Using the results from other classical methods as a reference, we rank the EAS countries robustly and place them into three groups over the last decade (2009–2019), based on the composite road safety development index. Our findings should be useful for EAS countries to detect underlying problems and identify best practices, as well as provide government officials, policymakers, and practitioners with meaningful guidelines on the adoption of successful road safety measures. Overall, the proposed rating framework should help to strengthen the institutional capacity for road safety management and addresses road safety issues.