The cost of complying with environmental regulations has been cited as a major burden on businesses. Is it enough of a burden to influence where businesses locate new plants, which are not restricted to their choice of location? The authors examine a unique establishment level dataset to find...

This study provides estimates of social and financial costs of environmental damage in India from three pollution damage categories: (i) urban air pollution; (ii) inadequate water supply, poor sanitation, and hygiene; and (iii) indoor air pollution. It also provides estimates based on three...

Tropical deforestation is considered one of the major environmental disasters of the 20th century, although there have been few careful studies of its causes. This paper examines the causes of deforestation in Thailand between 1976 and 1989, a period when the country lost 28% of its forest...

Front Cover -- Contents -- The Book at a Glance -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- About the Authors -- Abbreviations -- Overview -- A Vulnerable Region -- Climate Change and Living Standards -- Climate Modeling and Effects -- Hotspots -- Toward Greater Resilience -- References -- Chapter 1 A...

This paper examines the reasons why corruption and policy distortions tend to exhibit a high degree of persistence in certain regimes. We identify circumstances under which a firm seeks to evade regulations by (1) bribing of local inspectors, and (2) lobbying high-level government politicians to...

An increasing number of tropical timber producing nations have enacted bans on export of logs. Proponents argue that a log export ban is a second-best policy tool for addressing environmental externalities; it also creates more jobs and improves scale efficiencies domestically. Theoretical...

Natural disaster risk is emerging as an increasingly important constraint on economic development and poverty reduction. This paper first sets out the key stylized facts in the area-that the costs of disaster have been increasing, seem set to continue to increase, and bear especially heavily on...

Trade liberalizations have been shown to improve domestic firms' performance through the new varieties of imported intermediate inputs. This paper uses a unique, representative sample of Bangladeshi garment firms to highlight that local intermediate inputs may also enhance domestic firms'...

China has defied the declining trend in domestic content in exports in many countries. This paper studies China's rising domestic content in exports using firm- and customs transaction-level data. The approach embraces firm heterogeneity and hence reduces aggregation bias. The study finds that...

The short-term impact of Brexit on goods exports is assessed using the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Index of the United Kingdom's major trading partners. The analysis shows that in the short run, leaving the European Union may cause the United Kingdom's exports to the European Union to decrease...