We describe important institutions that shape climate change policies together with a set of key market-reliant instruments. We selectively review the related economic literature, emphasizing empirical studies that assess the efficacy of current policies and the workings of policy-dependent...

Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries can meet treaty obligations by investing in projects that reduce or sequester greenhouse gases elsewhere. Prior to ratification, treaty participants agreed to launch country-based pilot projects, referred to collectively as Activities Implemented Jointly...

Farming households that differ in their ability or willingness to take on risks are likely to allocate resources and effort among income producing activities differently with consequences for productivity. In this paper we measure voluntary and involuntary departures from efficiency for rice...

To date, developed countries can only tap mitigation opportunities in developing countries by investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Yet CDM investments have so far failed to reach all of the high-potential sectors identified in IPCC reports. This raises doubts about...

Spatial disparity in incomes and productivity is apparent across and within countries. Most studies of the determinants of such differences focus on cross-country comparisons or location choice among firms. Less studied are the large differences in agricultural productivity within countries...

Over the past dozen years, policymakers have largely abandoned long-standing popular approaches for addressing risk in agriculture without fully resolving the question of how best to manage the negative consequences of volatile agricultural markets. The article reviews the transition from past...

In Africa, most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms. An underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the African context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale—a premise supported by the often...

While some argue that trade liberalization has raised incomes and led to environmental protection in developing countries, others claim that it generates neither poverty reduction nor sustainability. The detailed case studies in this book demonstrate that neither interpretation is universally...

Established by the United Nations in 2015 with a target date of 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework with specific objectives to guide global development policy. The SDGs extend and modify an earlier framework, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), established in...