Developing wind energy is one of the win win measures in response to climate changes and energy security. In order to promote technical innovation in the wind-energy industry, the government grants various fiscal subsidies to wind-energy companies every year. To acquire these subsidies, enterprises often employ those with political backgrounds as members of the board of directors and board of supervisors. On the one hand, the acquisition of subsidies may indeed promote the technical innovation capacity of enterprises, but, on the other hand, due to the existence of “the grabbing hand”, the technical innovation capacity of enterprises may be weakened. We selected 35 Chinese wind-energy listed companies to analyze the relationship between political connections, subsidies and the technical innovation capacity. Results indicate that, political connections to an enterprise weaken its innovative potential and achievement. Moreover, the higher the strength of political connections is, the stronger the negative impact it will bring to the innovative capacity of the enterprise. Modulation of government subsidies, however, can alleviate the negative effects of political connections.

The importance that households place on reducing health risks from drinking water can guide policies intended to enhance safety. Self-reported household water quality opinions and avoidance measures used by households in Kampala, Uganda, to manage health risks were analyzed. The paper is based on survey data collected from four divisions in Kampala district and analyzed using binary logit model. Survey results indicate that the majority of the respondents boil water to manage potential health risks. On the other hand, logit results confirmed the existence of strong relationships between household characteristics, opinions on water quality, and the use of avoidance measures.

The issue of price linkage in the catfish supply chain in Uganda is important because catfish has become an important traded species with exports to regional markets rising even faster than production, yet limited research has been undertaken to understand the linkages and the non-linearity in the price transmission mechanism. This paper explores the issue using monthly price data from January 2006 to August 2013, and applies threshold autoregressive approaches to test for the existence of a long-run relationship and price asymmetry. The results show that prices in the catfish value chain are tied together by a long-run relationship. It is also revealed that ex-vessel and wholesale price adjustments to retail price changes are symmetric while ex-vessel price adjustments to wholesale price changes are shown to be asymmetric. The direction of causal relationships was observed from the retail to the wholesale and ex-vessel markets, indicating that retailers are the price leaders in the Uganda catfish supply chain.

In this study, the authors estimate demand elasticities for East African fish exports to the European Union. Today, fish is one of the most important renewable resources in East Africa, and ranks as the region's highest nontraditional agricultural export earner. Furthermore, fish represents a vital contribution to the food and nutritional security of millions of people in the region and the sizeable export revenue it generates plays an important role in advancing the region's development strategy of increasing overall foreign exchange earning capability. In this respect, elasticity is one of the basic indicators when discussing policy impacts, but currently there are no elasticity estimates for East Africa's fish export demand to guide trade policy formulation. The results for the estimated export demand equation showed evidence of lower price and higher income elasticities, implying that, on one hand, the European Union's demand for East Africa fish is more sensitive to income changes than price changes and, on the other hand, the East African fishery industry can simultaneously reduce the rate of resource use while boosting fishery income through higher prices.