Opportunistic behaviour due to incomplete contract enforcement is a risk in many economic transactions such as forest carbon sequestration contracts. In this paper, an enforcement-proof incentive contract is developed in which a buyer demands a guaranteed delivery of a good or service given a...

We exploit a unique panel of 75 metro areas (‘cities’) across the globe and employ a cityfixed effects model to identify the determinants of within-city changes in air pollution concentration between 2005 and 2011. Increasing car and population densities significantly reduce air pollution...

The expansion of a given land use may affect deforestation directly if forests are cleared to free land for this use, or indirectly, via the displacement of other land-use activities from non-forest areas towards the forest frontier. Unlike direct land conversion, indirect land-use changes...

This paper assesses trade-offs between carbon sequestration and farmers’ incomes from land-use systems implemented in a community-based project, in Mozambique. Systems either focus on carbon sequestration or combine sequestration with cash crop cultivation. The latter provide carbon payments...

Payments for environmental services (PES) schemes in developing countries face trade-offs between environmental and development objectives. This tension is inherent in cost effective direct PES since, by their very nature, they limit transfers to recipients. However, where recipients of PES are...

The paper analyses the implications of landowners’ option values in land allocation and derives policy recommendations for payments for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Given that REDD will not represent a permanent change in the cumulative flux of carbon...

This paper investigates the direct and indirect impacts of ethanol production on land use, deforestation and food production. A partial equilibrium model of a national economy with two sectors and two regions, one of which includes a residual forest, is developed. It analyses how an exogenous...

Eco-entrepreneurs in developing countries are often subject to market or institutional constraints such as missing markets. Conservation interventions which relax constraints may be both cost effective and poverty reducing. A simulation using data from an intervention in Madagascar to relax the...

National-level strategies for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), financed by international transfers, have begun to emerge. A three-sector model is developed to explore the economy-wide effects of two policies implemented by a government participating in REDD that...