Studies of second-best environmental regulation of identical polluting agents have invariably ignored potentially welfare-improving asymmetric regulation by imposing equal regulatory treatment of identical firms at the outset. Yet, cost asymmetry between oligopoly firms may well give rise to...

This valuation exercise presents an estimation of total economic cost associated with deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the year 2000. Although some crucial methodological problems could not be totally overcome, we had the opportunity to apply more consistent and robust estimation...

Fire has been traditionally used by farmers as mean of land preparation and, therefore, benefiting agriculture and pasture. However, fire application may also generate private and social costs. This study attempts to measure these fire use costs in the Brazilian Amazon. Fire control can be lost...

Decisions concerning environmental protection hinge on estimates of economic burden. Over the past 30 years, economists have developed and applied various tools to measure this burden. In this chapter, we present a taxonomy of costs along with methods for measuring those costs. At the broadest...

We analyze a dynamic multi-pollutant problem where abatement costs of several pollutants are not separable. The pollutants can be either technological substitutes or complements. Environmental damage is induced by the stock of accumulated pollution. We find that optimal emission paths are...