A number of recent papers have found that certain measures of pollution worsen and later improve as income per head increases. It is widely believed that the downhill portion of this inverted-U curve reflects an induced policy response; that, as incomes rise, citizens demand improvements in...

This paper analyses a large public investment in a construction of a hydropower plant in Lesotho and its implications on the growth and debt sustainability. The paper employs an open economy dynamic general equilibrium model to assess the benefits of a large public investment through...

This paper served as a background paper to the European Report on Development 2011/2012: Confronting scarcity: Managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth. The European Report on Development was prepared by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in partnership with the...

In recent years, extensive literature on the Environmental Kuznets Curve leading to optimistic policy conclusions has attracted great attention. However, the underlying cross-section estimations are not very reliable. Accordingly, this contribution uses time series data for a single country with...

In recent years, extensive literature on the Environmental Kuznets Curve leading to optimistic policy conclusions has attracted great attention. However, the underlying cross-section estimations are not very reliable. Accordingly, this contribution uses time series data for a single country with...

We discuss the selection of the socially optimal discount rate for public investment projects that entail costs and benefits in the very long run. More specifically, we examine in an expected utility framework how the uncertainty on the growth rate of the GNP per head affects this rate. Under...

In this paper we investigate the existence and shape of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) by means of nonparametric methods. We also investigate the issues involved in the choice of nonparametric estimator. We find that the nature of the economic relationship and the quality of environmental...

This paper investigates the EKC curves for CO2 emissions in a panel of 109 countries during the period 1959-2001. The length of the series makes the application of a heterogeneous estimator suitable from an econometric point of view. The results, based on the hierarchical Bayes estimator, show...

In this paper, we analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model on how water resilience affacts economic growth and dynamic welfare with special reference to South Africa. While water may become a limiting factor for future development in general, as a drought prone and water poor...