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Understanding how long‐term climate patterns affect food security outcomes is crucial for crafting food policy in developing countries. In the case of Nepal, existing studies have focused overwhelmingly on food production and supply, but relatively little attention has been paid to understanding how extreme climate trends affect food utilization. This study fills that gap in the literature by examining the effects of temperature and rainfall trends from 1976 to 2005 on individual daily caloric intake and food diversity in Nepal. We use the copula method to jointly estimate the two potentially correlated food utilization outcomes. We find that climate risk negatively affects both outcomes. One percent increase (0.01 points) in climate risk index (index ranges from 0 to 1) leads to a decrease in weighted caloric intake by 8.1 calories (equivalent to 1.1% of average weighted caloric intake of 726 calories) and food diversity by 0.114 points (a reduction of 0.43% reduction of the mean score). We also find that factors such as ecological belts and social capital are strongly correlated with food security. Based on our findings, we recommend policies that attract private and public investments towards improving farmers' access to financial institutions, transportation networks, and risk‐mitigation products and programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economists assume that global externalities, such as pandemics and climate change, require global or multi-national solutions. Yet, many aspects of these externalities can be addressed at the micro-level. As Elinor Ostrom pointed out, what scholars perceive as global externalities are in fact nested externalities that are organized in multiple, overlapping scales. By drawing on Ostrom's oeuvre, we explore the notions of nested externalities, polycentricity, and co-production in the context of pandemic governance. We highlight two crucial features of pandemics: first, preventative measures such as social distancing are co-production processes that cannot be provided by governments alone. Second, pandemics, much like climate change, pose nested externalities problems at different levels. Thus, pandemic externalities are better viewed as collective action problems arranged at multiple, nested, and/or overlapping scales. Finally, we propose an alternative institutional take that considers the nestedness of pandemic externalities and the diversity in institutional conditions across jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite donor assistance and government subsidies, the uptake of microinsurance products to insure against extreme climate events remains low in many climate vulnerable economies. Emerging evidence indicates that various non-price factors such as lack of knowledge, trust in institutions, beliefs, and perceptions about climate change partly explain the low uptake. This study uses the CVM approach to investigate the effect of one such factor – farmers' climate change perceptions – on the adoption of weather index micro-insurance. We introduce two hypothetical weather index microinsurance products to farming households in Nepal: the first one (basic) insures paddy only, whereas the second one (comprehensive) also insures livestock. We use bivariate probit models with order effects for empirical estimation. We find that households' ex ante perception of future climate change as well as their ex-post perceptions of past climate change impacts have significant effects on their microinsurance purchase decisions. Mean WTP-values for the basic and comprehensive products are NRs. 3096 and NRs. 13209 respectively. We also find some evidence of crowding-out effects on private risk transfer markets by other public and donor climate adaptation programmes. Our findings suggest that public policies should focus on increasing climate awareness, accountability and the development of competitive microinsurance markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post‐disaster recovery requires co‐production; that is, the inputs of citizens are essential for successful community recovery to occur. Citizens contribute to post‐disaster recovery by volunteering, taking on consultative and decision‐making roles within their communities, and directly participating in post‐disaster reconstruction efforts. Without meaning ful contributions from citizens—the intended beneficiaries—unilateral efforts by public officials and authorities will inevitably fail. This study shows that social entrepreneurs can thus play a critical role in spurring post‐disaster recovery by facilitating co‐production. It focuses on the role of social entrepreneurs after disasters and centres on one rural village, Giranchaur Namuna Basti in the Sindhupalchowk District of Nepal. Specifically, the study uses the case of the Dhurmus Suntali Foundation's Namuna village project in Giranchaur following the 7.8‐magnitude earthquake that struck on 25 April 2015 to examine the pivotal role that social entrepreneurs assume in promoting voluntary activities, community engagement, and participation in post‐disaster recovery efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Containing the spread of a virus during a pandemic requires citizens to self-discipline and adopt precautionary measures. This paper focuses on one such measure: social distancing. Governments can force citizens to comply with social distancing by imposing mandates and increasing penalties. However, constitutional restraints prevent governments in democratic societies from utilizing extreme measures. Thus, a pandemic presents an extreme case in which the goals of security (virus containment) and individual freedom appear irreconcilable. Moreover, a pandemic presents collective action problems, because a few defectors, who can remain undetected, can impose incalculable costs on a society. This predicament leads many to make a case for draconian measures to force compliance. We present an alternative take that views social distancing as a coproduction process; that is, virus containment requires active participation and a high degree of cooperation from citizens. Because external costs are difficult to measure and it is near impossible to monitor and sanction violations, coercive measures that do not account for coproduction processes are unlikely to succeed. Instead, strengthening existing mechanisms for mutual monitoring and sanctioning that are consistent with the norms and values of the populace may yield more favorable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the Ostroms' oeuvre to suggest that the binary Samuelsonian taxonomy of goods – or the 'sterile dichotomy', as Elinor Ostrom calls it – cannot serve as a reliable guide for public policy. Using the Ostroms' insights on co-production, institutional matching, and polycentricity, we argue that the 'inherent' nature of goods and their specific taxonomy are not static and definitive concepts but are instead contestable and dynamic features that are institutionally contingent. We explore four crucial mechanisms and/or contexts, not altogether unrelated, whereby the nature of goods becomes contestable and malleable: namely, (1) technological and geographical factors, (2) coproduction and entrepreneurial ingenuity, (3) bundling and unbundling of services, and (4) ideologies and regime shifts. This exercise has twofold purposes. First, we generalize the notion that there is nothing 'inherent' in the nature of goods and services and that they are fluid, heterogeneous, and malleable concepts. Second, we contribute to the debate on the provision of public goods and the role of civil society by highlighting the need for institutional malleability and diversity adaptive to changing technology, contexts, and institutional conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, was the worst natural disaster to hit Nepal since 1900. This article reports field survey findings on earthquake damages and ex‐post coping responses adopted by rural households in Sindhupalchowk, Nepal. Subsequently, we conduct empirical analyses to illustrate how earthquake damages influence ex‐post coping strategy choices and potentially limit paths to post‐disaster recovery. The goal of this empirical demonstration is to underscore the need to cater post‐disaster policies in developing countries in ways that expand households' post‐disaster coping strategy choices through market and non‐market mechanisms. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]