Increasing demand for clean energy sources is expanding investment in natural gas infrastructure around the world. Many international projects involve pipelines connecting energy markets in two or more countries. A key feature of investment taking place in Latin America is the convergence of gas...

As is evident from public finance principles, redistribution objectives do not influence environmental policies if there are other, costless means of redistribution. How does optimal environmental protection depend on redistribution objectives? The authors develop a framework that treats air...

For almost 20 years, the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Korea has published on a monthly basis a list of enterprises that fail to comply with national environmental laws and regulations. In this paper, the authors examine the reaction of investors to the publication of these lists...

Are multinationals flocking to pollution havens in developing countries? Using data from four developing countries (Cote d'Ivoire, Mexico, Morocco, and Venezuela), the authors examine the pattern of foreign investment. They find almost no evidence that foreign investors are concentrated in dirty...

The authors review the economic principles that should guide the efficient choice of targeted policies for environmental protection. They recommend policy instruments along three dimensions: (1) whether they use economic incentives; (2) whether they target environmental damage directly; and (3)...

Armenia meets about 75 percent of its energy needs through imports, with natural gas imports from Russia accounting for about 80 percent of total energy imports and 60 percent of total primary energy supply. Because of high dependence on imported energy, Armenia is vulnerable to external energy...

The author evaluates the strength of the effect that community pressure and pollution charges have on industrial pollution control in China, and estimates the marginal cost of pollution abatement. He examines a well-documented set of plant-level data, combined with community-level data, to...

The authors investigate two aspects of China's pollution levy system, which was first implemented about 20 years ago. First, they analyze what determines differences in enforcement of the pollution levy in various urban areas. They find that collection of the otherwise uniform pollution levy is...

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...