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...

Land use and land-use change can result in the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Climate change also affects the productivity of land, which in turn leads to further land-use change. This paper explores the growing research on both topics. The land-use emission literature...

Because habitat conversion is the greatest threat to species, this article focuses on economic incentives for private land users to protect habitat. Habitat protection policies that fail to account for private incentives often have unintended negative consequences. Private incentives for habitat...

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...

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 presents a framework for analyzing the structure of contracts for public-private partnerships (PPP) that produce products and services that generally include mixtures of both public and private goods. A three-stage framework, sourced with the incomplete contracting and control rights...

Non-point-source (NPS) pollution refers to a form of pollution in which neither the source nor the size of specific emissions can be observed or identified with sufficient accuracy. In NPS pollution the ambient concentration of pollutants associated with the individually unobserved emissions is...

We examine policy instruments for ambient water quality protection. One objective is to illustrate the unique and complex informational challenges that must be addressed in constructing instruments that are effective and efficient for point and nonpoint sources. A second objective is to describe...

Regulation of hazardous waste and cleanup of contaminated sites are two major components of modern public policy for environmental protection. We review the literature on these related areas, with emphasis on empirical analyses. Researchers have identified many behavioral responses to regulation...

We review the literature on the distribution of farm sizes in sub-Saharan Africa, trends over time, drivers of change in farm structure, and effects on agricultural transformation, and present new evidence for six countries. While it is widely viewed that African agriculture is dominated by...