The authors develop a model of environmental resource use in production with an empirical analysis of how electric power companies consume and bank sulfur dioxide pollution permits. The model considers emissions, fuels, and labor as variable inputs with quasi-fixed inputs of permits and capital....

The trading of rights to emit carbon dioxide has not officially been sanctioned by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but it is of interest to investigate the consequences, both for industrial (Annex B) and developing countries, of allowing such trades. The authors...

Market integration raises the relative price of a community's export product. The author examines how the response of child labor supply to an increase in the relative price of a primary export product varies with a child's household composition. The specific context for his study is the...

Cash prices for wheat in Poland are not closely related to futures prices in Chicago and London, for several reasons: differences in seasonality, fluctuations in exchange rate, poor dissemination of information in Poland, and most important the Polish government's intervention in wheat markets....

This paper examines the impact of two crises on the global apparel value chain: the World Trade Organization phase-out of the quota system for textiles and apparel in 2005, which provided access for many poor and small export-oriented economies to the markets of industrialized countries, and the...

Many developing and industrial countries have sought to open their electricity industries to competition. In both contexts, policymakers and investors have to deal with the consequences of earlier, more partial sector liberalization measures. Foremost among these is the existence of long-term...

This paper provides an overview of the impact of once-and-for-all changes in commodity prices and other prices on household welfare. It begins with a collection of stylized facts related to commodities based on household survey data from Latin America and Africa. The data uncover strong...

When food prices spike in countries with large numbers of poor people, public intervention is essential to alleviate hunger and malnutrition. For governments, this is also a case of political survival. Government actions often take the form of direct interventions in the market to stabilize food...

Actual, and potential competition is a powerful source of discipline on the pricing behavior of firms with market power. The authors develop a simple model that shows that the effects of new entry, and import competition on industry price-cost markups, depend on country size. The authors...

The welfare effects of preferential trading agreements, are most directly linked to changes in trade prices - that is, the terms of trade. The authors use a simple strategic pricing game in segmented markets, to measure the effects of MERCOSUR on the pricing of"non-member"exports to the regional...