Abstract Floods and droughts are major concerns for rice farmers in Thailand, particularly those in the Chao Phraya River Basin (CPRB). To mitigate the impacts of these extreme weather events on their rice cultivation and livelihoods, some farm households have implemented adaptation strategies, such as adjusting the crop calendar and changing rice varieties. Using data from a survey of farm households in the CPRB, this study highlights the adaptation strategies adopted and analyzes their impacts on rice productivity through an endogenous switching model. Our results indicate that adaptation to floods in the CPRB increases wet-season rice productivity. The unconditional impact of adaptation on wet-season rice productivity is approximately 120 kg per rai (about 0.16 hectares). The treatment effect, which captures the hypothetical scenario where farm households that adapted chose not to adapt, shows that the impact of adaptation on wet-season rice productivity is around 31 kg per rai. This means that farm households that adapted to extreme weather events would have produced 31 kg less per rai if they had not adapted.

Zhao Chen: This paper addresses a very important topic. Overseas Chinese is a highly representative group of international immigrants worldwide who have contributed significantly to the development of high-tech sectors in developed countries. High-level talents of overseas Chinese returnees are also crucial for developing countries since they bring to their home country advanced know-how of technology embedded with their human capital. As a result, both attraction and retention of highly skilled overseas Chinese are important factors that policymakers should know, as they would reshape the spatial allocation of human capital of high-level talents.It is also a timely discussion on the recent situation about overseas Chinese since the situation for Chinese individuals in North America has become increasingly challenging in recent years. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has become more and more eager to attract high-level talent from overseas. So, given this situation, it is quite interesting to discuss the attraction and retention of highly skilled overseas Chinese in developed countries such as the United States and Canada.The authors have conducted a survey of overseas talents at the micro-level based on two questionnaires. I have some concerns about the representativeness of the data. First, I have to say that the sample is quite limited, making it difficult to judge if the findings are robust or not. Additionally, as we can see from the paper, most of the returnees are quite satisfied with their career or income—one possible concern is whether the sampling method makes the sample biased toward those with a higher satisfaction level. For example, those who are not satisfied might be inactive in social interactions and, as a result, are less likely to be covered by the survey.Nevertheless, the data is unique and provides a comprehensive view of both push and pull factors of Chinese overseas’ returning home country. Thus, it is possible to evaluate various factors associated with the career and income satisfaction of Chinese returnees, such as talent policy, marriage, food, and so forth. However, although it is interesting to know various factors that relate to the satisfaction of Chinese returnees, I still suggest that in the empirical work, the authors have a clear focus on some main factors.I assume that most readers will be quite interested in the role of the talent policy in attracting Chinese overseas. However, “talent policy” is a subjective measure in this paper, which indicates whether the returnee thinks a talent attraction policy is one of the main reasons for settling and developing their career at the destination. I would suggest that, in future studies, the authors could think about collecting data measuring local talent attraction policies at the city level and investigate whether such policies are effective in Chinese returnees’ locational choice of their destination when they want to settle down from overseas to mainland China. Of course, that would be another paper.In sum, I would say that this is an interesting paper although the data is quite limited. I hope it will attract a lot of interest and further discussion as well as studies on this topic.

Jungsoo Park: This study investigates gender disparities, and the adverse effects associated with caregiving, particularly in terms of employment, work hours, and overall well-being. Using a contextualized primary time-use survey (TUS) data set from India, the research analyzes a sample of 1,076 individuals, including 538 married couples. The survey captures detailed information on time allocation and various contextual factors. To address potential reverse causality, the study uses a two-stage least squares instrumental variable (2SLS-IV) approach. Additionally, it investigates well-being outcomes for men and women separately, highlighting the gender-specific impacts of caregiving.The authors find that caregiving has greater adverse effects on women compared with men. These effects are shown as reduced labor force participation, fewer employment hours, and lower levels of well-being for women. Women experience diminished time for self-care and socializing, as well as self-reported life satisfaction, happiness, and physical health. These disparities not only deter progress toward gender equality but may also slow economic growth and slow down human development goals.An instrumental variables method is utilized to address potential reverse causation between caregiving and employment in Table 2. The negativity in the estimates for the impact of elderly caregiving on labor force participation in the ordinary least squares estimates might be overstated due to reverse causation. This implies that once endogeneity is controlled for via IV, the strength of negative effects should decrease, not increase. However, the results for the IV estimates show even stronger negative effects, which is difficult to explain. A further investigation may be needed. Additionally, the results differ significantly between panel (B), where the dependent variable is the likelihood, and panel (C), where it is the time spent. To enhance clarity, the study could benefit from providing a more integrated discussion that combines these two sets of results regarding extensive and intensive margins.The study introduces gender norm controls in Table 4 to examine how they affect the coefficient estimates in panel (B) of Table 2. After adding these controls, it observes that most of the significant coefficient estimates loses their significance, and the negative effects are reduced. The study interprets this as evidence that “norms play a role in affecting the likelihood of female labor market participation.” However, an alternative interpretation is that Table 4 provides estimates of the true model, accounting for the additional controls. The strong and significant negative effects seen in Table 2, which omits these controls, may instead reflect biased estimates resulting from an omitted variable problem.In panel (C) of Table 4, the inclusion of controls for time spent on domestic chores reduces the negative effects of elderly caregiving on self-employment. The study interprets this as evidence that “reducing the time spent on domestic chores can increase the likelihood of female self-employment.” However, a stronger interpretation could be that the results from Table 2 remain robust, even after the inclusion of domestic chore controls. To examine how domestic chores influence the effect of elderly caregiving, further investigation using interaction terms between the domestic chore and the elderly caregiving variable is needed.

Abstract This paper studies how trade exposure affects election outcomes in South Korea. We quantify the degree of export expansion as well as import penetration for 240 regions in South Korea by incorporating industry-specific labor distributions at the regional level using data compiled from the firm-level census. We implement a two-stage least squares estimation to handle the possible simultaneity associated with the trade exposure variables. The results indicate that the regions with higher import penetration from China had relatively more support for the conservative candidate in the 2022 presidential election compared with the 2002 presidential election. On the other hand, the regions with higher export expansion to China had relatively smaller support for the conservative presidential candidate in 2022. Adding South Korea's bilateral trade with Vietnam, another major trading partner of South Korea, provides the same insights. These findings confirm that the heterogeneous local labor market impacts coming from exposures to import and export can lead to different political preferences of voters and hence different political outcomes.

Abstract Over the past decade, Cambodia has enjoyed robust economic growth as well as notable improvements in socioeconomic development, including a decline in poverty and improvements in education and health. However, women continue to earn less than men at the headline level. This paper uses the latest available data (2014, 2017, and 2019) and examines changes in the trends in wage gap from 2014 and 2019 and its underlying contributors. Like previous studies, results presented in this paper point to unobservable factors, most likely including gender discrimination, as the primary contributors fueling the labor market's gender wage gap. This study also finds some improvements in gender gap reduction attributable to observable factors from 2014 to 2019, including improvements in bridging the gender gaps in education, types of occupation, industry, and workplace. These findings reinforce the call for policy measures aimed at further reducing the gender gap.

Abstract We study the signs of fragmentation—that is, the process of weakening economic interdependence between blocs of countries—in world trade and investment during the U.S.–China trade war (2018–21) relative to the period preceding it (2014–17). We show that although bilateral flows between the United States and China have been badly hurt, there is still little evidence of a wider fragmentation, even for technology intensive manufactures. We find some shifts in global trade, especially toward Central and Eastern Europe and ASEAN countries. This may reflect partial reshuffling of global value chains but is not necessarily driven by geoeconomic factors. Both China and the United States have been favoring these regions during the trade war.