To develop efficient strategies for pollution control, it is essential to assess both the costs of control and the benefits that may result. These benefits will often included improvements in public health, including reductions in both morbidity and premature mortality. Until recently, there has...

Indoor air pollution (IAP) from cooking and heating is estimated to kill a million children annually in developing countries. To promote a better understanding of IAP, the authors investigate the determinants of IAP in Bangladesh using the latest air monitoring technology and a national...

Mexico City has for years experienced high levels of ozone and particulate air pollution. In 1995-99 the entire population of the Mexico City metropolitan area was exposed to annual average concentrations of fine particulate pollution (particulates with a diameter of less than 10micrometers, or...

The authors make a case for federal monitoring of state environmental agencies'(SEPAs') performance because of the tradeoff for the states between the need to raise revenue from taxes on local output and the need to limit pollution. They also show that fines and taxes assigned respectively to...

The authors analyze China's experience with the water pollution levy, an emissions charge system that covers hundreds of thousands of factories. The levy experience has not been studied systematically, but anecdotal critiques have suggested that the system is arbitrarilyadministered and...

Critics of free trade have raised the specter of a"race to the bottom,"in which environmental standards collapse because polluters threaten to relocate to"pollution havens"in the developing world. Proponents of this view advocate high, globally uniform standards enforced by punitive trade...

This paper presents the design of cost effective interventions to protect the environment from excessive pollution in developing countries. The concept of intervention is motivated by the typical explanation for environmental problems in economic theory--external effects. The aim of the paper is...

For developing countries, budget constraints help set the agenda on mitigating environmental damage, one of the indelible marks of our era. Political considerations often dictate the measures taken. There are no firm analytical formulas to help even environmentally conscious policymakers rank...

The accounting and public release of information about industrial toxic pollution emissions is meeting increasing criticism in that these listings typically do not account for the different toxicity risks associated with different pollutants. A firm emitting a large amount of relatively harmless...

The authors explore the differences in pollution control performance of industries with different types of ownership in China-state-owned (SOE), collectively- or community-owned (COE), privately owned (POE), companies with foreign direct investment (FDI), and joint ventures. About 1,000...