Tradable permit markets for carbon dioxide (C02) emissions respond to short-run fluctuations in economic activity. To provide stability, both price and quantity interventions have been proposed. This paper focuses on the relative performance of fixed versus intensity allowances in the presence...

El objetivo del presente documento es describir los principales elementos conceptuales y operacionales utilizados por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) para diseñar y dimensionar una estrategia de gestión financiera del riesgo de desastres naturales en la República Dominicana para...

The objective of this research agenda is to outline the issues that need to be investigated in order to produce an informed assessment of what strategies and policies Latin America and its international organizations should pursue with respect to climate change. This report makes the three...

Catastrophes caused by natural disasters are by no means new, yet the evolving understanding of their relevance to economic development and growth is still in its infancy. In order to facilitate further necessary research on this topic, this paper summarizes the state of the economic literature...

This paper explores the role played by policy instruments in access to housing finance by low-income households. It also analyzes the impact of housing credit and subsidies on both the quality of life and the quality of dwelling of the beneficiaries. Using the Quality of Life Surveys conducted...

Studies of the effects of pre-school programs on child development in developing countries have found scant impact. This study was conducted to reconcile the importance of daycare for child development with the empirical estimates of small effects. Using a random sample of 500 children from 100...

Environmental taxes have been discussed as one of the main mechanisms to deal with environmental problems. Nonetheless, instruments of this type have rarely been implemented, and the adoption of new or higher environmental taxes has faced resistance in some countries. The purpose of this work is...

This paper focuses on the question of whether the magnitude of long-established environmentally related taxes (ERT) is related to countries environmental performance. While environmental taxes efficiencies have previously been discussed, those taxes contribution to reducing pollution and...

This book is a joint effort lead by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in collaboration with the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) focused on the climate and development challenge for LAC. It deals with a matter that is bound...

This report includes the proceedings of the Seminar on Climate Change and Severe Weather Events in the Caribbean and Asia, held in Barbados at the Grand Barbados Beach Resort on July 24-25, 2003. The seminar provided a forum in which experts from the Southeast Asian and Caribbean regions...