Economists have either avoided or
struggled with the concept of culture and its role in
economic development. Although a few theoretical works --
and even fewer empirical studies -- have appeared in the
past decades, this paper tries to build on a
multidisciplinary approach to review the evidence on whether
and how culture matters for development. First, the paper
reviews available definitions of culture and illustrates

It is a virtual certainty that sea-level
rise will continue throughout the century and beyond 2100
even if greenhouse gas emissions are stabilized in the near
future. Understanding the economic impacts of salinity
intrusion thus is essential for planning adaptation in
low-lying coastal areas around the world. This paper
presents a case study in Bangladesh on how climate change
leads to the spread of soil salinity and the impact on

Information on ecosystem characteristics
as well as economic statistics is needed to more fully
inform decision makers on the impacts of climate change on
human well-being. Climate change risks involve potentially
large and irreversible as well as highly uncertain impacts
that need to be evaluated with information that complements
cost-benefit analysis. Information on the irreversibility of
impacts also is relevant for evaluating implications for

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 experts from 36 countries,
who were asked to predict the outcome of a survey to elicit
willingness to pay for Amazon forest preservation among

This paper investigates the
effectiveness of protected areas in slowing tropical forest
clearing in 64 countries in Asia/Pacific, Africa, and Latin
America for the period 2001-2012. The investigation compares
deforestation rates inside and within 10 kilometers outside
the boundary of protected areas. Annual time series of these
deforestation rates were constructed from recently published
high-resolution data on forest clearing. For 4,028 parks,

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 and would reduce the
cost-effectiveness of emission allowance trading. When
allowance transactions are treated as capital investments,

This paper informs the national and
international policy discussions related to the adoption of
the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation Programme. Effective program instruments
must carefully consider incentives, opportunity costs, and
community interactions. A choice experiment survey was
applied to rural Ethiopian communities to understand
respondents’ preferences toward the institutional structure

This paper provides field
experiment–based evidence on the potential additional forest
carbon sequestration that cleaner and more fuel-efficient
cookstoves might generate. The paper focuses on the Mirt
(meaning “best”) cookstove, which is used to bake injera,
the staple food in Ethiopia. The analysis finds that the
technology generates per-meal fuel savings of 22 to 31
percent compared with a traditional three-stone stove with

How much do poor rural households rely
on environmental extraction from natural ecosystems? And how
does climate variability impact their livelihoods? This
paper sheds light on these two questions with household
income data from the Poverty and Environment Network
pantropical data set, combined with climate data for the
past three decades. The study finds that extraction of wild
resources (from natural forests, bushlands, fallows, etc.)

This paper analyzes environmental
reliance, poverty, and climate vulnerability among more than
7,300 households in forest adjacent communities in 24
developing countries. The data are from the detailed,
quarterly income recording done by the Poverty Environment
Network project. Observed income is combined with predicted
income (based on households’ assets and other
characteristics) to create four categories of households:

This paper is motivated by the emphasis
on secure property rights as a determinant of economic
development in recent literature. The authors use village
and household level information from about 800 villages
throughout China to explore whether legal reform increased
protection of land rights against unauthorized reallocation
or expropriation with below-average compensation by the
state. The analysis provides nation-wide evidence on a

Policies that enable rural communities
to participate in expanding economic opportunities can be
central to inclusive growth in Myanmar. Rural communities
are home to the majority of Myanmar’s population, the
majority of its many ethnic groups, and 70 percent of its
poor. Development in rural areas is constrained by low
returns to agriculture, and significantly lower levels of
public service delivery and human development outcomes