India promotes the production of biodiesel from tree-borne oilseeds. This is seen as an option for substituting fossil fuels, reducing CO2 emissions, afforesting wastelands, and generating rural employment. Critics, however, claim that it may lead to food scarcity and seizure of common lands by...

Many coastal resources, including fish stocks and mangrove forests, are “common pool resources”. It is difficult to exclude anyone interested from harvesting them, which typically results in overexploitation. The study compares three incentive schemes that may induce resource users to...

It is now widely accepted that the countries that managed to catch up with the old industrialised, high-income countries are the ones whose governments proactively promoted structural change. But industrial policies also frequently fail. The risk of failure is particularly high in latecomer...

To avoid irreversible damage to global ecosystems, new “green” technologies are needed. Some of those are still far from commercial maturity. In such cases, governments may create temporary rents to make investments “artificially” attractive. The creation of such rents, however, involves...