We study a dynamic regulation model where firms’ actions contribute to a stock externality. The regulator and firms have asymmetric information about serially correlated abatement costs. With price-based policies such as taxes, or if firms trade quotas efficiently, the regulator learns...

Global climate change poses significant risks to the California economy. Recognizing and responding to these threats, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Executive Order #S-3-05 (Schwarzenegger 2005) which called for a 30 percent reduction below business-as-usual of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020...

The present work assesses the effectiveness of educational grants at raising schooling attainment of poor children in rural areas. The per grade gains in reducing drop outs cumulate in an additional half a year in total schooling. Progressive impacts are found along three dimensions: degree of...

This note outlines conditions under which we can identify a vertical supply model of multiple retailers’ and manufacturers’ oligopoly-pricing behavior. This is an important question particularly when the researcher believes, contrary to the traditional assumption followed in the...

While access to land is back high on the policy agenda as an instrument to attack poverty, strong reservations have been expressed as to whether this strategy can indeed be effective. To help shed light on this important debate, this paper establishes the conditions under which access to land...

Clinical data serve as a necessary basis for medical decisions. Consequently, the importance of methods that help officials quickly identify human tampering of data cannot be underestimated. In this paper, we suggest Benford’s Law as a basis for objectively identifying the presence of...

This paper analyzes the effects of insecure property rights over land on the functioning of the land rental market in the Dominican Republic. It shows that insecurity of property rights not only reduces sharply the level of activity on the land rental market, but also causes market segmentation....

We define the irreversibility effect and demonstrate its importance in problems involving investment decisions under uncertainty. We establish several analytical and numerical results that suggest both that the effect holds more widely than generally recognized, and that an existing result...

This report summarizes preliminary findings of the Mexican National Database and Community Survey Project which examines linkages between institutional characteristics in Mexico’s common property forestry sector and economic and environmental outcomes. Framing the Mexican agrarian...

In the absence of a global climate agreement, countries employ local policies to curb pollution and introduce clean energy. These policies limit domestic consumption of a traded energy source but increase exports thus improving a country’s energy balance and its balance of trade. While...