Laos is a mountainous country with poor roads and a high rate of poverty incidence, especially in rural areas. It is obvious that better roads could reduce poverty, but by how much? And what forms of road improvement reduce poverty the most? The economic effects of road improvement are complex...

In response to demand from China, rubber smallholdings are being established by shifting cultivators in Northern Laos, encouraged by government land-use policy. We examine the economics of smallholder rubber production in an established rubbergrowing village and model the likely expansion of...

Watershed degradation is a major environmental concern in the steeply sloping uplands of the Philippines. Land use in these upland regions is dynamic and there is growing interest in how livelihood strategies bring about land-use change in the uplands, with impacts on other resource users...

The willingness to pay (WTP)/willingness to accept (WTA) disparity raises serious questions about preference elicitation techniques based on the Hicksian model of decision-making. In this paper we investigate the possibility of incorporating the strategies suggested by Plott and Zeiler (2005) in...

Human activity has modified the environment at all scales from the smallest ecosystems to the global climate systems. In the analysis of the Murray-Darling Basin, it is necessary to take account of effects of human activity ranging from local changes in water tables and soil structure through...

A bioeconomic model of reservoir aquaculture in northern Vietnam is used to investigate the impacts of price and yield risk on the level, variability and skewness of expected net revenue and utility. Prices and yields are assumed to follow lognormal and beta distributions, respectively. Net...

Avian influenza is a deadly disease that can spread rapidly through poultry. There are many documented cases of transmission from birds to people, but as yet only rare instances of human to human transmission. Nonetheless, public health officials are concerned about the possibility of a human...

The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, in developing recommendations for the Victorian Government on the future management of public lands forests along he Murray River, and in East Gippsland, commissioned an analysis of environmental protections values. This paper reports the results...

With the rapid development of the Chinese dairy industry, various researchers have examined the industry from many perspectives related to supply and demand. One of the most important factors for this industry is the total number of dairy cows and it is this aspect that will be addressed in this...

Mandatory inspection and maintenance programs require on-road vehicles to be tested regularly and repaired if they are not in compliance with air emission regulations. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the abatement cost function for a representative inspection and maintenance program. We...