Environmental degradation can inflict serious damage on poor people because their livelihoods often depend on natural resource use and their living conditions may offer little protection from air, water, and soil pollution. At the same time, poverty-constrained options may induce the poor to...

The author brings together two of government's primary challenges: environmental protection, and taxation to generate revenues. If negative externalities can be reduced not only by changes in consumption patterns, but also by making each activity cleaner (abatement efforts), how shall...

Little evidence exists on the distribution across countries of toxic releases by manufacturing, or on how those patterns change through time. A number of studies have asked whether environmental controls imposed in the industrialized economies are diverting investments in pollution-intensive...

Despite massive oil rent incomes since the early 1970s, the economic performance of oil-exporting countries-with notable exceptions-is poor. While there is extensive literature on the management of oil resources, analysis of the underlying political determinants of this poor performance is more...

The authors review the economic principles that should guide the efficient choice of targeted policies for environmental protection. They recommend policy instruments along three dimensions: (1) whether they use economic incentives; (2) whether they target environmental damage directly; and (3)...

Without continuous monitoring of emissions, a pollution control agency needs to evaluate abatement options itself. Apart from making activities cleaner, it should also stimulate reductions in the level of activity in polluting sectors. The author develops an analytical framework to show that a...

Charging for social marginal costs is efficient regardless of price elasticities, but the importance of getting prices"right"is greater the more manageable, or elastic, the demand. In efficient pollution control programs, options to make cars cleaner are combined optimally with demand...

Struck by the fact that economists did not have a plausible model for why emissions standards, and mandated technologies, play a dominant role in pollution control, the author sought answers to two questions: 1) Should one stimulate emissions reductions by firms, and households, rich and poor,...

This paper analyzes the economic and environmental consequences of a potential demand side management program in Thailand using a general equilibrium model. The program considers replacement of less efficient electrical appliances in the household sector with more efficient counterparts. The...

Should the United States increase taxes and tariffs in the energy sector to reduce its federal deficit? This paper uses a twelve sector general equilibrium model to estimate the fiscal effects, and the effects on welfare and employment, of : (i) a 25 percent import tax on imported crude...