Voluntary agreements (VAs) negotiated between environmental regulators and industry are increasingly popular. However, little is known about whether they are likely to be effective in developing and transition countries, where local and federal environmental regulatory capacity is typically...

The city of León, Guanajuato, is Mexico’s leather goods capital and a notorious environmental hotspot. Over the past two decades, four high-profile voluntary agreements aimed at controlling pollution from León’s tanneries have yielded few concrete results. To understand why, this paper...

We conduct a discrete choice experiment with leaders of a random sample of 164 Peruvian indigenous communities (ICs) - to our knowledge, the first use of rigorous stated preference methods to analyze land titling. We find that: (i) on average, IC leaders are willing to pay US$35,000-45,000 for a...

Ambient air pollution is a leading cause of death in developing countries. In theory, using smartphone apps, text messages, and other personal information and communication technologies to disseminate real-time information about such pollution can boost avoidance behavior like wearing face masks...

According to advocates, eco-certification can improve developing country farmers' environmental and economic performance. However, these notional benefits can be undercut by self-selection: the tendency of relatively wealthy farmers already meeting eco-certification standards to...

Protected areas are a cornerstone of forest conservation in developing countries. Yet we know little about their effects on forest cover change or the socioeconomic status of local communities, and even less about the relationship between these effects. This paper assesses whether 'win-win'...

Most of the literature attributes credit constraints in small-farm developing-country agriculture to the variability of returns to investment in this sector. But the literature does not fully explain lenders. reluctance to finance investments in technologies that provide both higher average and...

In the early 1990s, hoping to reduce chronic electricity shortages and enhance the efficiency of Chinese power plants, China opened its doors to foreign direct investment (FDI) in electricity generation. Using data from an original survey of US private investors, official Chinese statistics, and...

The considerable difficulties associated with cross-border environmental management are compounded when polluters are unlicensed micro-enterprises such as auto repair shops and traditional brick kilns; such "informal sector" firms are virtually impossible to regulate in the conventional manner....

In many developing country cities, clusters of small and medium enterprises create severe pollution problems. Because conventional regulatory approaches are typically ineffective in such situations, policy responses have increasingly focused on promoting voluntary clean technological change. Yet...