报告题目：Reducing energy poverty by nearly universal pension coverage of rural China
报告时间：6月9日（周五）15:00
报告地点：翡翠科教楼B座1004室
报 告 人：李江龙 教授 西安交通大学经济与金融学院
主办单位：经济学院
报告简介：
This paper estimates the causal effect of income change on reducing energy poverty by exploiting age-based eligibility for China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) through a regression discontinuity (RD) design. More than one billion people worldwide live in energy poverty, and the situation is even more difficult in developing world. It is an important development challenge to reduce energy poverty, which could be further associated with health outcome, labor productivity, and educational achievements. While public policies that increase income for poor households are the most direct ways to reduce energy poverty, the reverse causality makes establishing a convincing causal link between income and energy poverty challenging. Using the quasi-experimental variation in income induced by NRPS, this paper addresses the endogeneity of income and examines the impact of exogenous sharp changes in income on energy consumption behaviors. The findings indicate substantial increases in modern energy consumption and sizable reductions in solid fuels (e.g., straw and fuelwood), suggesting that “windfall income” by pension coverage alleviates energy poverty. Although individuals could anticipate the income shocks by pension coverage, the evidence suggests that they do not engage in anticipatory responses to smooth their consumption. Further evidence shows that liquidity constraints may be the underlying mechanism for the lack of anticipatory responses in household energy consumption. Besides reducing energy poverty, the results demonstrate that pension coverage leads to a decrease in elderly labor supply, an increase in subjective health and life satisfaction, and an increase in non-energy consumption, all of which are positively associated with the well-beings of senior citizens. We anticipate that the findings of this paper in the context of China may be extended to developing world which has been expected to set up targeted measures to tackle energy poverty in upcoming decades.
报告人简介：
李江龙，西安交通大学经济与金融学院教授，博士生导师，入选国家级青年人才计划，研究方向为能源环境经济与管理、产业组织。兼任哈佛大学客座研究员、中国人文社会科学期刊评价专家委员会委员、《西安交通大学学报（社科版）》编委、《当代经济科学》青年编委以及多个国际期刊（青年）编委。学术成果发表于《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《金融研究》、World Development、Energy Economics、China Economic Review、Economics of Transition等期刊，主持国家社会科学基金重大项目和重点项目、国家自然科学基金面上项目和青年项目、教育部人文社会科学基金等多项课题。研究成果获国家能源局“能源软科学优秀成果奖”、福建省“社会科学优秀成果奖（一等奖）”、陕西省“高等学校人文社会科学研究优秀成果奖（一等奖）”等奖项。
