This paper examines the effect that biofuels production has had on commodity and global food prices. The innovative contribution of this paper is the interactive spreadsheet that allows the reader to choose the assumptions behind the estimates. By allowing the reader to choose the country, time...

The woodlands in some parts of the Sahel are effectively an open-access resource. Under open access, fuelwood cutters have no incentive to allow for benefits that might accrue if the wooded area were managed rather than mined. Those benefits include sustainable streams of fuelwood, fruits, and...

This paper presents an economic framework and a computationalmethodology for assessing the evolution of woodfuel supply costsand the spatial distribution of biomass in a Sahelian woodlandsetting. Spatial data on standing stock and the costs oftransport to market are used to construct a supply...

The "social cost of carbon" (SCC) is the present value of the stream of future damages from one additional unit of carbon emissions in a particular year. This paper develops a rapid assessment model for the SCC. The model includes the essential ingredients for calculating the SCC at the global...

In this study, we examine the effects of chronic exposure to air pollution on asthma exacerbation through a cross-sectional analysis of asthma prescriptions for quick-relief medications at the 5 digit zip code level in California. Using information on the use of maintenance therapies by each...

The use of voluntary approaches to achieve environmental improvements has grown dramatically in the United States since they were first introduced thirteen years ago. As of 2004, there are over 50 voluntary programs in the U.S. at the federal level alone. These programs take a variety of forms,...

In 2005, EPA promulgated the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) to permanently cap and reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. During the final stages of promulgating this rule, an article was published by Trasande et al. that raised some issues regarding how to measure benefits from...

Voluntary approaches have become a popular in the U.S. to enhance the efficacy and scope of existing regulations and to reduce emissions in sectors or for pollutants where formal environmental regulation is lacking. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of a particular EPA voluntary...

Since 1982, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has used benefit-cost analysis to evaluate many of its surface water quality regulations. Early regulations were aimed at controlling conventional and toxic pollutants that were directly linked to highly visible water quality problems. More...