This article presents lessons from the rich adoption literature for the nascent research on adaptation. Individuals' adoption choices are affected by profit and risk considerations and by credit and biophysical constraints. New technologies spread gradually, reflecting heterogeneity among...

The literature on game theory and fisheries is reviewed, beginning with the initial papers from the late 1970s on cooperative and noncooperative games. Later developments considered repeated games and trigger strategies as well as the stability of coalitions. It is argued that the latter...

Scientific evidence suggests that economic activity is threatening global biodiversity in ways that could severely degrade nature's flow of ecosystem services. Yet, there is relatively little work in economics that addresses biodiversity loss. Some economists have called for better integration...

Widespread global collapses of fisheries corroborate decades-old predictions by economists, made long before large-scale industrialization of the world's fisheries, that open access would have deleterious ecological and economic effects on fishery resources. Incentive-based alternatives...

We show that grandfathering fishing rights to local users or recognizing first possessions is more dynamically efficient than auctions of such rights. It is often argued that auctions allocate rights to the highest-valued users and thereby maximize resource rents. We counter that rents are not...

New research in fisheries economics addresses incentives across many margins. These margins include within-season effects, incentives to harvest different ages and sizes of fish, responses to ecological disturbances, spatial choices, and multispecies interactions. Even developments in global...

Despite compelling evidence that property rights–based management can improve the economic and ecological performance of fisheries, reform proposals are often met with political opposition. Moreover, the opposition sometimes comes from incumbent fishermen and fishing communities that would...

Without monitoring and enforcement, environmental laws are largely nonbinding guidance. Although economists and philosophers have thought seriously about the broader public enforcement of law since at least the eighteenth century, environmental monitoring and enforcement remain both understudied...

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...

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...