Abstract: Previous studies on improved cookstove adoption in developing countries use cross-sectional data, which makes it difficult to control for unobserved heterogeneity and investigate what happens to adoption over time. We use robust non-linear panel data and hazard models on three rounds of panel data from urban Ethiopia to investigate the determinants and dynamics of electric cookstove adoption. We find the price of electricity and firewood, and access to credit as major determinants of adoption and transition. Our findings have important implications for policies aiming at promotion of energy transition and reduction of the pressure on forest resources in developing countries.

Abstract: Using individual travel diary data collected before and after the rail transit coverage expansion in urban Beijing, this paper estimates the impact of rail accessibility improvement on the usage of rail transit, automobiles, buses, walking, and bicycling, measured as percent distance traveled by each mode in an individual trip. My results indicate that the average rail transit usage significantly increased, by 98.3% for commuters residing in the zones where the distances to the nearest station decreased because of the expansion, relative to commuters in the zones where the distances did not change. I also find that auto usage significantly decreased, by 19.8%, while the impact on bus usage was small and not statistically significant. Average walking and bicycling distance (combined) increased by 11.8%, indicating that walking and bicycling are complements to urban rail transit, instead of substitutes. Furthermore, I find that estimated changes in auto usage and rail transit usage vary significantly with auto ownership and income.

Abstract: The illegal exploitation of wild abalone in South Africa has been escalating since 1994, despite increased enforcement, leading to collapse in some sections of its range. South Africa banned all wild abalone fishing in 2008 but controversially reopened it in 2010. This paper formulates a poacher’s model, taking into account the realities of the abalone terrain in South Africa—the prevalence of bribery, corruption, use of recreational drugs, and the high value of abalone—to explore why poaching has not subsided. The paper suggests two additional measures that might help ameliorate the situation: eliminating the demand side through enforcement targeted on organized crime, and ceding the resource to the local coastal communities. However, local communities need to be empowered to deal with organised crime groups. Complementary measures to bring back community patriotism will also be needed given the tattered social fabric of the local coastal communities.

Abstract: International and domestic efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions require a coordinated effort from heterogeneous actors. This experiment uses a public good game with a climate change framing to consider whether cooperation is possible in just such a climate change context. Specifically, we examine whether groups of heterogeneous individuals can meet a collective emissions reduction target through individual contributions. Participants represent two different sectors of society with differing marginal costs of abatement. Thus, the equity considerations that make climate change such a contentious issue are implicit in the experiment framing. Subjects are able to communicate with one another in order to coordinate contribution strategies. The results indicate that participatory processes and stakeholder engagement play an important role in promoting cooperation—even when heterogeneity is present. However, heterogeneity makes it more difficult for groups to reach consensus on how to distribute an abatement burden. Further, the non-binding nature of the agreement results in significant levels of free-riding. In addition, heterogeneity appears to provide disadvantaged player-types with a justification for free-riding. Ultimately, the results indicate that participatory processes alone are not sufficient to induce widespread compliance with a mitigation obligation.

Abstract: Presently, the mountain gorilla in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is endangered mainly by poaching and habitat loss. This paper sets out to investigate the possible resolution of poaching involving the local community by using benefit sharing schemes with local communities. Using a bioeconomic model, the paper demonstrates that the current revenue sharing scheme yields suboptimal conservation outcomes. It is shown, however, that a performance-linked benefit sharing scheme in which the Park Agency makes payment to the local community based on the growth of the gorilla stock can achieve socially optimal conservation. This scheme renders unnecessary poaching effort by the local community. Therefore, it becomes unnecessary to impose poaching fines and anti-poaching enforcement on the local community. Given the huge financial outlay requirements for the ideal benefit sharing scheme, the Park Agencies in Central Africa could reap more financial benefits for use in conservation if they employ an oligopolistic pricing strategy for gorilla tourism.

Abstract: Tourism associated with beaches, protected areas, and other natural resources often has serious environmental impacts. The problem is especially acute in developing countries, where nature-based tourism is increasingly important and environmental regulation is typically weak. Eco-certification programs—voluntary initiatives certifying that tourism operators meet defined environmental standards—promise to help address this problem by creating a private-sector system of inducements, monitoring, and enforcement. But to do that, they must provide incentives for tourism operators to participate, such as price premiums and more customers. Rigorous evidence on such benefits is virtually nonexistent. To help fill this gap, we use detailed panel data to analyze the effects of the Blue Flag Program, a leading international eco-certification program, in Costa Rica, where nature-based tourism has caused significant environmental damage. We use new hotel investment to proxy for private benefits, and fixed effects and propensity score matching to control for self-selection bias. We find that past Blue Flag certification has a statistically and economically significant effect on new hotel investment, particularly in luxury hotels. Our results suggest that certification has spurred the construction of 12 to 19 additional hotels per year in our regression samples. These findings provide some of the first evidence that eco-certification can generate private benefits for tourism operators in developing countries and therefore has the potential to improve their environmental performance.

Abstract: Tourism associated with beaches, protected areas, and other natural resources often has serious environmental impacts. The problem is especially acute in developing countries, where nature-based tourism is increasingly important and environmental regulation is typically weak. Eco-certification programs—voluntary initiatives certifying that tourism operators meet defined environmental standards—promise to help address this problem by creating a private-sector system of inducements, monitoring, and enforcement. But to do that, they must provide incentives for tourism operators to participate, such as price premiums and more customers. Rigorous evidence on such benefits is virtually nonexistent. To help fill this gap, we use detailed panel data to analyze the effects of the Blue Flag Program, a leading international eco-certification program, in Costa Rica, where nature-based tourism has caused significant environmental damage. We use new hotel investment to proxy for private benefits, and fixed effects and propensity score matching to control for self-selection bias. We find that past Blue Flag certification has a statistically and economically significant effect on new hotel investment, particularly in luxury hotels. Our results suggest that certification has spurred the construction of 12 to 19 additional hotels per year in our regression samples. These findings provide some of the first evidence that eco-certification can generate private benefits for tourism operators in developing countries and therefore has the potential to improve their environmental performance.

Abstract: The restitution of parkland to the Khomani San “bushmen” and Mier “agricultural” communities in May 2002 marked a significant shift in conservation in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and environs in South Africa. Biodiversity conservation will benefit from this land restitution only if the Khomani San, who interact with nature more than do other groups, are good environmental stewards. To assess their attitude toward biodiversity conservation, this study used the contingent valuation method to investigate the values the communities assign to biodiversity conservation under three land tenure arrangements in the Kgalagadi area. For each community and land tenure arrangement, there are winners and losers, but the winners benefit by more than the cost that losers suffer. The net worth for biodiversity conservation under the various land tenure regimes ranged from R928 to R3,456 to R4,160 for municipal land, parkland, and communal land respectively for the Khomani San, compared to R25,600 to R57,600 to R64,000 for municipal land, parkland, and communal land respectively for the Mier. Both communities have the highest preference for the implementation of the biodiversity conservation programme on communal land. There are no significant differences in the WTP between the two communities when adjusted for annual median household income; hence, the Khomani San can be trusted to become good environmental stewards. However, in order for all members of the local communities to support biodiversity conservation unconditionally, mechanisms for fair distribution of the associated costs and benefits should be put in place.

Abstract: Deforestation and forest degradation are estimated to account for between 12 percent and 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. These activities, largely in the developing world, released about 5.8 Gt per year in the 1990s, which was more than all forms of transport combined. The idea behind REDD+ is that payments for sequestering carbon can tip the economic balance away from loss of forests and in the process yield climate benefits. Recent analysis has suggested that developing country carbon sequestration can effectively compete with other climate investments as part of a cost-effective climate policy. This paper focuses on opportunities and complications associated with bringing community-controlled forests into REDD+. About 25 percent of developing country forests are community controlled; therefore, it is difficult to envision a successful REDD+ program without coming to terms with community controlled forests. It is widely agreed that REDD+ offers opportunities to bring value to developing country forests, but there are also concerns related to insecure and poorly defined community forest tenure, informed by often long histories of government unwillingness to meaningfully devolve ownership rights to communities. Further, because communities are complicated systems, there is also concern that REDD+ could destabilize existing well-functioning community forestry systems.

Abstract: Namibian hake is the most important fish resource in Namibia. This monograph is a compilation of all the hake data, historic and recent, that has been used to inform stock assessment and management since the late 1970s. It presents the statistical catch-at-age analysis used to evaluate the state of the Namibian hake resource under different assumptions. This analysis treats the two hakes, Merluccius paradoxus and M. capensis, as a single stock. The data and modeling show that the stock has not as yet recovered to its maximum sustainable yield level, despite foreign fishing effort having been removed in 1990. Best estimates suggest the current stock to be roughly 20% of pre-exploitation levels; however this figure is sensitive to model assumptions. Signs indicate that the stock is slowly recovering from its all-time low in 2002-2004. Because the two hake species are pooled for assessment, the resource is currently managed on a relatively simple adaptive basis; 80% of the estimated replacement yield is reserved for fishing, the remainder being left for rebuilding.

Abstract: In developing countries, consumers can buy many goods either in formal markets or in informal markets and decide where to purchase based on the product's price and anticipated quality. We assume consumers cannot assess quality prior to purchase and cannot, at reasonable cost, identify who produced the good they are considering. Many products (meats, fruits, vegetables, fish, grains) sold both in formal groceries and, less formally, on the street fit this description. We assume that producers can adjust quality at a cost and only firms in the formal sector are subject to government regulation. In the long run, producers migrate to the sector that is more profitable. Using this model, we demonstrate how regulations in the formal sector can lead to a quality gap between formal and informal sector goods. We moreover investigate how changes in regulation affect quality, price, aggregate production, and the number of firms in each sector.

Abstract: This paper provides evidence that China's system of tax revenue sharing is an important explanation for differences in the rate of sewage treatment plant construction among its cities. As a result of the 1994 tax reform, Chinese cities retained different shares of their value-added tax (VAT). Exploiting the persistence of this sharing system, we use the VAT share in 1995 as an instrument for the present fiscal incentives. We find that a 10 percentage point increase in the VAT sharing rate resulted in a 13.8% increase in the construction of sewage treatment capacity. This result suggests that fiscal incentives can play an important role in the provision of pollution-reducing infrastructure.

Abstract: This paper introduces a new argument to the debate about the role of environmental taxes in modern tax systems. Some environmental taxes, particularly taxes on gasoline or electricity, are more dicult to evade than taxes on labor or income. When the tax base is shifted in a revenue-neutral manner toward these environmental taxes, the result is a net reduction in the amount of tax evasion. Using a carbon tax as a motivating example, the "tax evasion effect" is shown to sharply reduce the welfare cost of controlling emissions. A simple computable general equilibrium model suggests that the impact of considering tax evasion can be large: costs are lowered by 28% in the United States, by 89% in China, and by 97% in India. In countries with high levels of pre-existing tax evasion, a carbon tax will pay for itself through improvements in the efficiency of the tax system.

Abstract: Using the land tenure system in Ethiopia, where all land is state-owned and only farm households have usufruct rights, as a case study, we assessed the links between land owners’ tenure insecurity, associated behavioral factors, and contract length. In this paper, we analyze these links with survey data of rural households in the Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia. The empirical strategy follows a hazard function model employed in duration data analyses and investigates the fitness of the data to the alternative exponential and Weibull functional forms. The results show that landlords’ risk aversion increases the duration of contracts, which is in line with the reverse tenancy argument that landlords’ risk preferences affect land-contract decisions. The findings of the study also indicate that tenure insecurity is a critical factor in the nature and length of contracts; hence, policies should aim to reduce landlords’ frustrations regarding future land redistribution by the state. An important implication of the results is that secure tenure systems can reduce the disincentives from tenure insecurity due to uncertainty about contract duration and thereby enhance tenants’ welfare. Longer-term and stable contracts can improve the land rental market. In addition, the impact of risk preferences points toward the importance of poverty in the functioning of the land rental market.

Abstract: To help inform pollution control policies in the Indian electricity sector we estimate the health damages associated with particulate matter, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from individual coal-fired power plants. We calculate the damages per ton of pollutant for each of 89 plants and compute total damages in 2008, by pollutant, for 63 plants. We estimate health damages by combining data on power plant emissions of particulate matter, SO2 and NOx with reduced-form intake fraction models that link emissions to changes in population-weighted ambient concentrations of fine particles. Concentration-response functions for fine particles from Pope et al. (2002) are used to estimate premature cardiopulmonary deaths associated with air emissions for persons 30 and older. Our results suggest that 75 percent of premature deaths are associated with fine particles that result from SO2 emissions. After characterizing the distribution of premature mortality across plants we calculate the health benefits and cost-per-life saved of the flue-gas desulfurization unit installed at the Dahanu power plant in Maharashtra and the health benefits of coal washing at the Rihand power plant in Uttar Pradesh.

Abstract: The new fertilizer subsidies in sub-Saharan Africa are intended to increase agricultural production and ensure development of a fertilizer market. Fertilizer adoption requires complementary inputs, such as investment in soil and water conservation (SWC), for efficient and optimal nutrient uptake, and many fertilizer subsidy programs implicitly assume that fertilizer subsidies crowd in such investments. The results of our study of the impact of fertilizer subsidies on SWC efforts in Ghana indicate that beneficiaries of the program do not invest significantly more in SWC. This suggests that policies should not expect farmers to respond to fertilizer subsidies with substantial investment in SWC. Thus, in order to achieve increased investment in SWC for sustainable agricultural development, more comprehensive measures that include fertilizer investments explicitly (such as integrated soil fertility management programs) may be needed.