The effective labor possibilities frontier (ELPF) is defined as the set of statically efficient allocations of labor inputs in the competing tasks of production and R&D. It is concave if labor is heterogeneous. In an R&D-based growth model with an essential non-renewable natural resource, the shape of the ELPF affects the optimal speed of the transition. If resource endowment is poor, transition is slower and involves a smaller R&D effort, and slower growth in per capita consumption, in the case of a heterogeneous labor force as compared to a homogeneous one. Policies that modify the distribution of skills in the population imply shifts of the ELPF. We provide a taxonomy of possible shifts of the ELPF, and link them to education policy or demographic trends.

Using a vertically differentiated product model, the paper aims to investigate the effects of economic growth on market provision of product quality. The quality attribute considered is the environmental friendliness of products. Economic growth is modeled as a shift in income distribution. It shows that the effect of economic growth depends on the form it takes. A growth in income that is uniform across consumers improves the cleanup levels adopted by both firms. However, a growth in income that is accompanied by changes in income inequality may result in the lowering of one of the two qualities. More specifically, if the growth in income is accompanied by increased disparities in income distribution, the quality of the (environmentally) inferior variant is reduced. This has serious implications for the poor consumers if the product has safety or health hazards. The paper suggests a regulatory measure to prevent such deterioration in the quality of the inferior variant.

This study addresses the role of multilateral development banks and their effectiveness in bringing environmental considerations, issues and consequences into structural and sectoral adjustment programmes in developing countries. It addresses a series of complex generic issues showing that such programmes cannot be meaningfully studied in isolation from other aid cooperation and government development programmes. The study proposes and discusses alternative explanations on how the multilateral development banks may have influenced thinking in borrowing countries. By looking more closely at the Philippines the study provides an insight into the dynamics and diversity of such programme lending and how its design can affect resource management and the environment in benign or adverse ways. It shows what complementary remedial action can be taken when institutional barriers, policy failures and market failures threaten the environment. It provides an analysis of how awareness of such interlinkages has emerged since 1980 and manifested itself in aid cooperation in general and in economy-wide adjustment lending in particular since 1987, while gradually being absorbed in governmental development plans and programmes with varying degrees of domestic ownership. In particular, we find that there seems to have been shifts in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank's environmental policies after the publication of the Brundtland Commission Report in 1987.

Although the impacts of income, population growth, and other important determinants of land-use change have been widely studied, there is less understanding of how spatial spillovers matter. Utilizing a spatial econometric approach, we investigate the main determinants of natural landscape conversion, focusing on quantifying local and global spatial spillovers. The empirical investigation applies to the Edmonton Metropolitan Region and the Calgary Regional Partnership in Canada. Key results include: (1) determinants of land conversion have significant spillover effects; (2) income, population density, road density, natural land endowment and land suitability for agriculture are all found to have influences on natural land conversion both in the own and neighboring areas; and (3) local (i.e., within the immediate neighboring areas) and global (in the entire study region) spillovers are different in strength and direction. Our work provides useful information for understanding the spillover issues in land conservation, resource governance, and optimal conservation design.

Tropical deforestation has been one of the most significant global environmental changes of recent decades and has spurred a substantial academic literature. Despite this, the empirical literature provides inconsistent evidence on the role of basic economic determinants of deforestation such as income and population. The authors suggest that one explanation for this inconsistency is a tendency to use incomplete or incorrect dynamic regression specifications. They derive three plausible dynamic empirical model specifications and compare their performance both with each other and with an ad hoc model typical of those used in the literature. Statistical tests support the use of more completely specified models which allow for dynamic adjustment of forest cover.

The emerging large-scale production units (LSPUs) have become increasingly important in Chinese agricultural production and rural transformation due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. Based on household and plot-level data from Jiangsu and Jiangxi Provinces in China, this study provides insights into the farming systems of these LSPUs and examines how contract type, as a proxy for land tenure security, impacts on the production unit's soil-improving investments. Results from the two-stage control function approach show that the written nature of contracts positively affects the application of organic fertilizer and green manure on rented-in plots. Descriptive analysis also confirms the collateralization effect of contract type by showing that plots that are used as collateral for credit are characterized by written contracts. Policies facilitating LSPUs' access to farmland with more formal contracts may therefore play an important role in improving soil quality and land productivity.

The water purification functions of forests represent one of the most frequently invoked examples of nonmarket ecosystem services that are economically valuable. This study quantifies the monetary value of forests' water purification services in the form of the ensuing cost savings of municipal drinking water treatment, using a rich panel dataset from China's Sichuan province. Moreover, this study has undertaken a novel spatial piecewise approach to investigate the spatial patterns of such cost savings delivered by forests at different distances from the water intake point. The estimation results find that forests within a 2 km radius upstream from the water intake point have the most sizeable and statistically significant cost saving effect. For forests within a 3 km radius, this effect becomes somewhat smaller but remains statistically significant. Beyond a 4 km radius, this effect becomes notably smaller and statistically equal to zero. Our analysis facilitates the optimal spatial targeting of forest conservation.

This paper tests the pollution emissions and institutional quality nexus in Africa. Specifically, we analyze the effect of the political regime and the quality of political governance on CO2 emissions. To control for endogeneity, we apply the system generalized method of moments on a dynamic panel of African countries over the period 1996–2020. The key finding suggests that better institutions have a negative and significant effect on pollution in Africa. The findings also validate the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Moreover, the results support the pollution haven hypothesis. Finally, if digitalization significantly curbs pollution, then industrialization, natural resources, as well as the intensive use of energy, are considered as positive predictors. All the sensitivity and robustness tests globally validate the strength of the negative association between the good quality of institutions and the level of polluting emissions in Africa. The results call for some policy recommendations in environmental regulation for African economies.

The Nobel Prize Committee for Economics has been pretty good about drawing attention to innovative developments in economics since 1969, but in the past 20 years only one prize has been awarded for work that had a strong natural resources dimension, namely that on ad hoc cooperative solutions to the management of common property resources (Elinor Ostrom, University of Indiana). At least three Peace Prizes have been awarded for contributions to issues in conservation and the environment (Al Gore, the IPCC, and Wangari Maathai in Kenya for a tree-planting campaign). Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper speculated in October 2012 that William Nordhaus would win the prize in economics, probably for his simulation model of economic growth and global warming (an Integrated Assessment Model). But to date only Ms Ostrom has been awarded the Economics Prize for essentially environmental economics. Thomas Schelling has circled back to environmental issues in his research over the years and was awarded the prize in economics, but it was for his contributions to game theory that he was singled out. Ronald Coase (Economics Nobel winner) focused the attention of economists on possible ‘markets’ for externalities, among other things, but few would refer to him as an environmental economist. Robert Solow set out the basic model of economic sustainability but again his prize was for other contributions. Observers in Stockholm and Oslo have thus made known their concern for environmental issues but have remained fairly agnostic about the significance of work by resource and environmental economists on such issues.

This introductory paper summarizes the policy context, methodological approach, and key results from the set of papers contained in this special edition derived from a FAO-led project on seed sourcing in local markets and its farm-level impacts. The introduction provides the conceptual framework used in the papers for considering the relationship between sourcing seed from market and rural household decision-making as well as the effects this has on two key farm outcomes: on-farm diversity and household welfare. Approaches for data collection and study site selection are described, with a focus on how methodological issues were addressed in the different studies. Lastly, the paper summarizes the results of the individual papers and draws broad conclusions and policy implications for promoting the sustainable utilization of crop genetic resources through increasing market access and in a manner that supports agricultural production.

The journal Environment and Development Economics began operating in 1995; in a few months, it will complete 20 years of operation. It seemed appropriate to mark this occasion with a special issue of the journal that would provide some perspective on the field, looking both backward at what has been achieved and forward to what lies ahead.