This paper uses a public economics framework to review evidence from randomized trials on domestic water access and quality in developing countries and to assess the case for subsidies. Water treatment can cost-effectively reduce reported diarrhea. However, many consumers have low willingness to...

We review key developments in the cost-benefit analysis of water projects, including conceptual and empirical issues. We emphasize general equilibrium and dynamics, in particular the links between economic and ecological systems.

Over the past two decades, hundreds of stated preference studies have been conducted in less-developed countries. This article examines what has been learned on the methodological front from stated preference research, and it summarizes the empirical evidence from stated preference studies about...

We consider health and environmental quality in developing countries, where limited resources constrain behaviors that combat enormously burdensome health challenges. We focus on four huge challenges that are preventable (i.e., are resolved in rich countries). We distinguish them as special...

This review critically looks at the theoretical and empirical foundations of positive mathematical programming and its evolution in the past decade or so. We show how the need to model new empirical phenomena has induced the literature to rethink model specifications and to address new questions...

I present the economic principles of water allocation and pricing in a schematic water economy representing a wide range of real-world situations. The water policy has inter- and intratemporal components. The former determines extractions from the naturally replenished sources, given the...

The effects of climate change on natural systems will be substantial, wide-spread, and likely irreversible. Warmer temperatures and changing precipitation patterns have already contributed to forest dieback and pushed some species towards extinction. Natural systems contribute to human welfare...

For benefit-cost analysis of policies with respect to environmental and natural resources, economic researchers often require monetized values of households’ willingness to pay for reductions in risks to human life and health. I briefly recap some of the main issues in the related task of...

Federal regulatory policy and the evaluation of regulations using benefit-cost analysis continue to be quite contentious. Advocates for more regulation claim that benefit-cost analysis loses information and impedes our understanding of the real beneficial consequences of regulatory action....

The value of mortality risk reduction is an important component of the benefits of environmental policies. In recent years, the number, scope, and quality of valuation studies have increased dramatically. Revealed-preference studies of wage compensation for occupational risks, on which analysts...