Understanding and minimizing the transaction costs of policy implementation are critical for reducing tropical forest losses. As the international community prepares to launch REDD+, a global initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation, policymakers need to pay...

This paper presents a Self-assessment Tool (SAT) to help local self-government units (LSGUs) in Poland strengthen public governance practices in the design and implementation of local development strategies. The SAT should help local actors assess their standards and practices across a set of...

Niniejszy dokument przedstawia Narzędzie samooceny (SAT), którego celem jest wspieranie jednostek samorządu terytorialnego (JST) w Polsce w zakresie wzmacniania praktyk zarządzania publicznego na etapie opracowywania i wdrażania strategii rozwoju lokalnego. Narzędzie ma pomóc lokalnym...

This paper measures the energy efficiency performance with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 30 provinces in China during the period of 1997–2011 using a meta-frontier framework with the improved directional distance function (DDF). We construct a new environmental production possibility set...

This paper evaluates the impact of access to groundwater on poverty using data from rural India. The estimation exploits the fact that the technology required to access groundwater changes exogenously due to constraints imposed by laws of physics at a depth of eight meters. I find that rural...

The article is the introduction to the volume edited by the author with the same title on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of Manlio Rossi-Doria. The volume is a collection of selected writings published between 1929 and 1986 divided in four thematic sections: agronomic modernization,...

The challenges faced by both developed and developing nations to collect, distribute, and conserve water are becoming even more difficult. While different strategies have been attempted by different governments, an economically viable solution appears to be the use of increasing block-rate...

The Peace pillar of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development encompasses a diverse range of issues including stability and effective governance. Reforming the public sector is high on the government’s agenda, but involves a number of challenges: the gap between planning and implementation...

In the absence of an infrastructure for the harvest, storage and purchase of cellulosic biomass, contracting is an important mechanism through which biorefineries can ensure adequate feedstock supply. We develop an optimization model to assess the economic potential of dedicated energy crops...