This lecture discusses relationships between environmental and resource qualities and loads, and economic development, theoretically and empirically. We start in section 2 with a list of theoretical arguments that may or may not justify a tendency for environmental quality to first deteriorate,...

We derive the optimal exchange rate policy for a small open economy subject to terms-of-trade shocks. Firm owners and workers are risk averse but workers more so. Wages are given or partially indexed in the short run, and capital markets are imperfect. The government sets the exchange rate to...

We present a stated-preference study where values of statistical lives (VSL) are derived both as public and private goods, and we distinguish between three different death causes, heart disease, environmentally related illnesses and traffic accidents. 1000 randomly chosen individuals in Norway...

I derive alternative measures of maximum willingness to pay (WTP) and value of statistical life (VSL) related to changes in the supply of a public good affecting mortality for both members of two-person households, when members are selfish, live for at most two periods, and strike efficient Nash...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an offset mechanism designed to reduce the overall cost of implementing a given global target for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in industrialized"Annex B"countries of the Kyoto Protocol. This paper discusses various ways in which CDM projects do not...

This article uses some simple conceptual models to derive implications of infrastructure investments with long lifetimes for future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Such investments, related both to energy supply and demand, may commit societies to high and persistent levels of GHG emissions that...

We study water demand among non-tap households in three cities in El Salvador and in marginal barrios in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, using data from identical household studies in the four cities. We estimate water demand functions separately for El Salvador and Tegucigalpa, using a two-step...

The Amazon rainforest, the world's largest and most biodiverse, represents a global public good of which 15 percent has already been lost. The worldwide value of preserving the remaining forest is today unknown. A"Delphi"exercise was conducted involving more than 200 environmental valuation...