Commodity price increases associated with the entry of China, India and other countries into the world economy has led to increased pressure on common-property renewable natural resources (NR). The problem is particularly worrisome for economies that obtain a large share of their income from the...

This paper combines elasticities from microstudies with estimates from a cross-country analysis to identify structural relationships explaining deforestation in Brazil, Indonesia,Malaysia, and the Philippines. Economy-wide factors such as trade openness and economic growth explain an important...

A common factor that explains why agriculture causes too much environmental degradation, grows too slowly, and has been ineffective in reducing rural poverty is the generalized tendency by governments to under invest in public goods despite the high rates of return to such investments. A large...

This paper evaluates the impact of agricultural price and intensification policies for common property resources and welfare of rural communities in developing countries. In doing so we develop a new model for the farm-household that has analytical advantages over the traditional one and that...

Decentralization in Indonesia has resulted in an increased influence of local communities over the terms of logging agreements with timber companies. The outcomes of such community–company negotiations vary significantly across communities. What are the conditions that cause this variation,...

It is shown that long-held views on the links between minimum wages and human capital arising from on-the-job training are not in general valid in a general equilibrium context. Of the three propositions obtained from partial equilibrium models, namely that minimum wages cause (i) firms to...

This paper focuses on the interactions between local communities having at least some degree of informal claims over natural resources and firms interested in commercially exploiting such resources, explicitly allowing for interventions by third parties interested in community welfare and...

"Forest Resource Policy in Latin America" gathers the thinking of a score of experts on sustainable use and management of forests, including incentives for investment. The authors tackle the thorny social issues of property rights, deforestation, and forest management and ownership by indigenous...

The standard theoretical literature has shown that environmental sustainability and positive economic growth are not incompatible as long as environmental policies are optimal. However, in showing this result earlier studies have relied on strong assumptions that may appear to charge the dice in...