The authors start from the premise that governments act as agents of the public in regulating pollution, using the instruments at their disposal. But when formal regulatory mechanisms are absent or ineffective, communities will seek other means of translating their preferences into reality....

The authors investigate two aspects of China's pollution levy system, which was first implemented about 20 years ago. First, they analyze what determines differences in enforcement of the pollution levy in various urban areas. They find that collection of the otherwise uniform pollution levy is...

The complaints process in China provides useful information and helps encourage community participation in environmental policy. But it also directs a big share of inspection resources to areas where people tend to complain. After analyzing provincial data for 1987-93, the authors find the...

Industry compliance with pollution regulations is far from universal, even in North America. In developing countries, compliance rates are often quite low, particularly where budgets for regulation are low or inspectors are corrupt. And strictness of enforcement varies. Regulators are reluctant...

Indoor air pollution (IAP) from cooking and heating is estimated to kill a million children annually in developing countries. To promote a better understanding of IAP, the authors investigate the determinants of IAP in Bangladesh using the latest air monitoring technology and a national...

The authors find strong evidence that despite weak or nonexistent formal regulation and enforcement of environmental standards, many plants in South and Southeast Asia are clean. At the same time, many plants are among the world's worst polluters. To account for the extreme variation among...

The authors test a model of supply-demand relations in an implicit market for environmental services when formal regulation is absent. They use plant-level data from Indonesia for 1989-90, before the advent of nationwide environmental regulation. Treating pollution as a derived demand for...

In this paper the authors investigate individuals'exposure to indoor air pollution. Using new survey data from Bangladesh, they analyze exposure at two levels-differences within households attributable to family roles, and differences across households attributable to income and education....

Using new international data, the authors test for an inverse U-shaped, or"Kuznets,"relationship between industrial water pollution and economic development. They measure the effect of income growth on three proximate determinants of pollution: the share of manufacturing in total output, the...

Using factory-level data provided by China's National Environmental Protection Agency and the Tianjin Environmental Protection Bureau, the authors of this report estimate the costs of water pollution abatement for Chinese industry. Using their econometric results, they analyze the...