Conference Agenda

This study examines how mine size shapes the local economic impacts of coal mine closures in China. Leveraging granular information of 7,006 coal mines and nighttime light data, we implement staggered difference-in-differences and instrumental variable strategies to identify causal effects and document sharply divergent results: while the closure of large mines diminishes local prosperity, the closure of small ones unexpectedly increases nighttime light intensity. The positive outcome following small mine closures is driven by not only top-down special fiscal support, but also bottom-up land use change, informal social support embedded in clan networks, and a higher efficiency of coal enterprise exit. Beyond mine size, we also highlight the need for context-specific transition policies for resource-dependent and poor regions, historically significant mines, unprepared closures, private-owned mines, and mines operated by nonlocal enterprises. Further micro-level analysis reveals that large mine closures disproportionately reduce income and increase unemployment risk among females. Overall, our mine size-based evidence shows that coal mine closures produce systematic winners and losers; thus, a context-differentiated rather than one-size-fits-all policy design is needed to reduce economic loss during the process of coal phase-out.

This paper examines how gender norms shape the labor market response to climate shocks in Egypt, using four waves of the Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey (2006–2023) matched with high-resolution temperature data. Exploiting exogenous variation in subdistrict temperature deviations from historical means, I document three findings. First, climate shocks widen the gendered employment gap: a one degree Celsius increase in temperature deviation raises male labor force participation by about 0.9 pp while reducing female participation by 1.6 pp, with women exiting the labor force entirely rather than transitioning into unemployment. Second, this exit is not driven by differential occupational heat exposure; the female differential is strongest in low-exposure current employment categories, pointing to household-level mechanisms. Third, the moderating role of norms is heterogeneous. Perceived societal norms, capturing the external image of female employment and marriageability, have no significant influence on the female climate penalty. In contrast, more egalitarian intra-household gender norms attenuate it. The findings suggest that climate change may exacerbate gender inequalities in labor markets governed by restrictive household norms, with implications for climate adaptation policy in developing economies where intra-household bargaining, rather than public perception alone, mediates women’s economic resilience.

This paper studies how income, income inequality, and environmental policy jointly shape households’ green consumption across OECD countries. We construct a novel, internationally comparable measure of green consumption based on expenditure on Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) over the period 1995–2019. Using panel fixed-effects models with non-linear income terms, we find a concave Environmental Engel Curve: green consumption rises with income but at a diminishing rate and behaves as a luxury good over most of the observed income range. Income inequality is negatively associated with green consumption and weakens income-driven diffusion. Environmental policies—particularly market-based instruments—are positively associated with green consumption, but their effectiveness depends on income levels and inequality. The results reveal threshold-type dynamics in which environmental policy becomes more effective at higher income levels, even in unequal societies, highlighting the distribution-dependent nature of the demand-side green transition.

Clean cooking represents an important pathway through which households in Sub-Saharan Africa can contribute to environmental sustainability and improve health outcomes. However, both adoption and sustained use of clean cooking technologies remain limited. While existing studies document barriers to initial adoption, less is known about how household-level financial shocks affect the ability to sustain clean cooking practices and whether such shocks lead households to revert to traditional cooking methods. This paper addresses this gap using panel data from the Nigeria General Household Survey–Panel, covering Wave 4 (2018/2019) and Wave 5 (2023/2024). We apply a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of financial shocks experienced between survey waves on clean cooking outcomes. The results indicate that households exposed to financial shocks are significantly less likely to sustain the use of clean cooking technologies and are more likely to revert to traditional cooking fuels, with particularly strong effects among rural households. These findings suggest that policies aimed at promoting clean cooking should move beyond access and initial adoption to address affordability and resilience over time. In particular, policies that reduce upfront cash requirements such as smaller LPG refill options may help ease short-term liquidity constraints and reduce the likelihood of reversion among low-income households.