This innovative book places China’s urbanization within a broader global context, including a detailed estimate of China’s total domestic market and its impact on the world economy.

A pricing reform in Turkey increased the residential electricity tariff by more than 50 percent in 2008. The reform, aimed at encouraging energy efficiency and private investment, sparked considerable policy debate about its potential impact on household welfare. This paper estimates a short-run...

Emission permit trading is a centerpiece of the Kyoto Protocol which allows participating nations to trade and bank greenhouse gas permits under the Framework Convention on Climate Change. When market conditions evolve stochastically, emission trading produces a dynamic problem, in which...

The Government of the Republic of Belarus (GoB) plans to increase district heating tariffs to cost-recovery levels and gradually phase out subsidies, replacing them with social assistance programs. Residential DH tariffs in Belarus are currently at roughly 10-21 percent of cost-recovery levels....

This paper analyzes the dynamic effects of rate-of-return regulation on firms'emissions compliance behavior when the price of emissions permits is uncertain. The paper shows that uncertainty regarding the price of permits would motivate a regulated firm to adopt a more self-sufficient strategy...

Feed-in tariffs have become the most widely used policy instrument to promote renewable energy deployment around the world. This paper examines the relation between tariff setting and policy outcome based on wind capacity expansion in 35 European countries over the 1991-2010 period. Using a...

The aggregate manufacturing energy intensity of 28 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia had declined by 35 percent during 1998-2008. This study reveals strong evidence of convergence: less efficient countries improved more rapidly and the cross-country variance in energy productivity...

Electricity shortages are among the biggest barriers to South Asia'sdevelopment. Some 255 million people-more than a quarter of the world'soff-grid population-live in South Asia, and millions of households and firmsthat are connected experience frequent and long hours of blackouts.Inefficiencies...