The authors use a contingent valuation method to study the design of economic incentives to phase out polluting motorcycles in Bangkok. Like in many other cities, the government of Bangkok has been considering a series of control measures to discourage and eventually eliminate the use of heavily...

The Amazon region has been responsible for a major share of Brazilian gold production in recent years. The region has witnessed a sizable gold rush comparable only to the California gold rush last century. The gold rush has spawned a powerful informal mining sector and has attracted many people...

This report analyzes the economics, legal, and business logic of the United States, Sweden, and the European Community regarding the stainless steel industry. Trade policies and legal cases are analyzed and presented to support the author's conclusion that good economics, international...

This paper reviews movements in raw materials consumption over the past 30 years. Included in this review are all base metals and steel, and important agricultural raw materials. These primary commodities share the common characteristic that they are used as inputs in manufacturing and...

This report looks at the use of a new functional form - the Symmetric Generalized Mcfadden Cost Function (SGM) - to estimate substitutability among metals in five U.S. industries. The SGM specification has the advantage of imposing curvature conditions globally on the cost function, thus...

Lack of international comparability in crude steel prices presents a problem in constructing an econometric model of the global steel market. The commonly used measures of crude steel prices are the weighted average of the prices of steel products and the index of the weighted average of prices...

For 15 years the metals market has been characterized by slow growth - in some cases, even decline - in consumption. To test the proposition that structural changes in demand were the main cause of the slowdown, the author - drawing on U.S. data - uses an extended metals demand model that...