Will environmental issues challenge the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)? Calls for a new round of multilateral trade negotiations on the environment have multiplied. Environmentalists have kept up pressure to modify GATT. Industries with higher environmental costs may seek...

The carrying capacity of our natural environment is an important unpriced input to production. A consensus is growing that users should pay for the environmental damage that they cause. Although most people can accept this policy in principle, many are concerned with magnitude and incidence of...

When domestic energy prices in developing countries fall below opportunity costs, price increases are recommended to conserve fiscal revenue and to ensure efficient use of resources. Using six case studies, the authors investigate the effect of energy price increases on the poor, inflation,...

Greenhouse gas emissions are largely determined by how energy is created and used, and policies designed to encourage mitigation efforts reflect this reality. However, an unintended consequence of an energy-focused strategy is that the set of policy instruments needed to tap mitigation...

Environmental performance rating and disclosure has emerged as an alternative or complementary approach to conventional pollution regulation, especially in developing countries. However, little systematic research has been conducted on the effectiveness of this emerging policy instrument. This...

The World Health Organization's 2004 Global and Regional Burden of Disease Report estimates that acute respiratory infections from indoor air pollution (pollution from burning wood, animal dung, and other bio-fuels) kill a million children annually in developing countries, inflicting a...

This paper aims to estimate the global aggregate of disaster impacts during 1960 to 2007 using Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) methodology. The authors selected 184 major disasters in terms of the size of economic damages, based on the data available from the International Emergency Disasters and...

The process of global climate change has been associated with an increase in the frequency of climatic disasters. Yet, there is still little systematic evidence on the macroeconomic costs of these episodes. This paper uses panel time-series techniques to estimate the short and long-run impact of...

This paper examines the distribution of climate change impacts across the 16 agro-ecological zones in Africa using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization combined with economic survey data from a Global Environment Facility/World Bank project. Net revenue per hectare of cropland is...