Research efforts towards new energy sources and towards the efficiency of energy use will be vital to reducing CO2 abatement costs in the long term. Can such efforts be induced by price instruments? Economists often cite induced technological change as a possible consequence of environmental...

Increased use of alternative fuels and low commodity prices have contributed to the recent expansion of the ethanol industry. As with any competitive industry, there exists some level of output price risk in the form of volatility. Yet, no actively traded ethanol futures market exists to...

Water availability in semiarid regions commonly exhibits patterns of extreme variability. Even in basins with large infrastructure development, some users are subject to low levels of water reliability, incurring economic losses during periods of scarcity. More flexible instruments, such as...

In this paper we present a methodology to analyse input use in the agricultural sector. The novelty of the theoretical model explained is that it has been developed considering a multi-criteria environment. Thus, the optimal input use condition is determined by the assessment of "multi-attribute...

Conservation auctions such as the Conservation Reserve Program in the United States and the BushTender Program in Australia have been used to identify landholders who can provide on-farm conservation and biodiversity protection actions at lowest cost. These conservation auctions are typically...

There is growing evidence that freshwater availability is declining, while competition among sectors for the withdrawal of this scarce resource is rapidly increasing,(Rosegrant et a, 2002). Therefore, the need to promote inter-sectoral water use efficiency from the demand-side management has...

Traditional productivity measures have been much less prevalent than other measures of economic and biological performance in fisheries economics. It has been increasingly recognized, however, that mod eling and measuring fisheries’ production relationships is central to understanding and...

A conservative ex-ante assessment of supply-shift gains alone (excluding social and environmental gains), shows that the investment in zero tillage (ZT) R&D by the Rice-Wheat Consortium and CIMMYT was highly beneficial with a benefit-cost ratio of 39, a net present value of US$ 94 million and an...

Laotian rice producers in upland areas experience highly fluctuating yields and production and producers in wet season rice areas in the southern region face high price risk. This paper examines the exposure to risk of producers in both regions facing changes in water supplies. A supply and...

The impact of farmed shrimp on the economy of ten municipalities are analyzed. A model of the municipal economy is developed and input-output tables are used to estimate indirect and induced impacts on job, income and municipal finances. It is concluded that farmed shrimp has a sizable...