From 1974 through 1997 the Galapagos experienced very rapid population growth, around six per cent per year. Sustained at this level, the population would continue to double every 12 years. Increased population brings an increased risk of invasive introduced species, which endangers the fragile...

In August 2002, the Commission was asked to look at the economic and social importance of the different industries in the Great Barrier Reef and its catchment. The Commission also would evaluate the costs and benefits of actions to address declining water quality which currently threatens the...

If, in international agreements, governments “link'' trade to environmental policy (or other issues with non-pecuniary externalities), will this promote more cooperation in both policies or will cooperation in one policy be strengthened at the expense of the other? We analyze this question in...

To help explain some of the issues and examine the potential environmental impacts (positive and/or negative) of selected tax arrangements, the Productivity Commission sought advice from Robert Douglas, a specialist in the field. This consultant’s report makes a contribution to understanding...

Ecosystem services are the functions performed by ecosystems that lead to desirable environmental outcomes, such as air and water purification, drought and flood mitigation, and climate stabilisation. Markets rarely exist for them. This study examines how newly defined property rights have been...

Many production processes yield both good outputs and undesirable ones (e.g. pollutants). In this paper, we develop a generalization of a stochastic frontier model which is appropriate for such technologies. We discuss efficiency analysis and, in particular, define technical and environmental...