Eco-certification of coffee, timber and other high-value agricultural commodities is increasingly widespread. In principle, it can improve commodity producers’ environmental performance, even in countries where state regulation is weak. However, evidence needed to evaluate this hypothesis is...

Eco-certification of coffee, timber and other high-value agricultural commodities is increasingly widespread. In principle, it can improve commodity producers’ environmental performance, even in countries where state regulation is weak. However, evidence needed to evaluate this hypothesis is...

The risk of losing income and productive means due to adverse weather can differ significantly among farmers sharing a productive landscape and is, of course, hard to estimate or even “guesstimate” empirically. Moreover, the costs associated with investments in adaptation to climate are...

Initiatives certifying that farms and firms adhere to predefined environmental and social welfare production standards are increasingly popular. According to proponents, they create financial incentives for farms and firms to improve their environmental and socioeconomic performance. This paper...

Although fuel taxes are a practical means of curbing vehicular air pollution, congestion, and accidents in developing countries--all of which are typically major problems--they are often opposed on distributional grounds. Yet few studies have investigated fuel tax incidence in a developing...

Initiatives certifying that farms and firms adhere to predefined environmental and social welfare production standards are increasingly popular. According to proponents, they create financial incentives for farms and firms to improve their environmental and socioeconomic performance. This paper...

Advocates claim that voluntary programs can help shore up poorly performing command-and-control environmental regulation in developing countries. Although literature on this issue is quite thin, research on voluntary environmental programs in industrialized countries suggests that they are often...

Because conventional command-and-control environmental regulation often performs poorly in developing countries, policymakers are increasingly experimenting with alternatives, including voluntary regulatory programs. Research in industrialized countries suggests that such programs are sometimes...

Most of the literature attributes credit constraints in small-farm developing-country agriculture to the variability of returns to investment in this sector. But the literature does not fully explain lenders’ reluctance to finance investments in technologies that provide both higher average...

Shade coffee farms in Central America provide important ecological services. But because international coffee prices have fallen since 1990, many have been cleared to make way for more remunerative land uses. This problem is of particular concern in heavily deforested El Salvador, where a large...