Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and carbon emissions reductions, based on the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics regarding the effects of making promises, we investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey.

The adoption of certain farm management practices, such as tree planting and soil and water conservation, can reduce exposure to weather shocks. However, in many countries the adoption of such risk mitigating measures is far from complete.

This article develops a “real options” approach for planning new water resources infrastructure investments and their operating strategies in a world of climate change uncertainty. The approach is illustrated with an example: investments in large new multipurpose dam alternatives along the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.

We explain the spatial concentration of economic activity when the cost of environmental policy – which is increasing in the concentration of pollution – acts as a centrifugal force, while positive knowledge spillovers and a site with natural cost advantage act as centripetal forces. We study the agglomeration effects caused by trade-offs between centripetal and centrifugal forces which eventually determine the distribution of economic activity across space.

Discounting has the dubious distinction of being the most controversial issue in social cost-benefit analysis. This is largely because choosing the discount rate will often dominate other choices a modeler makes. For example, consider how we might estimate future damages from greenhouse gas emissions.

In spite of the multiple layers of uncertainty surrounding natural science issues, most of the controversy over Stern’s The Economics of Climate Change concerned one number: the discount rate.

Using a sequential discrete choice experiment, we investigate preferences for distributing the economic burden of reducing CO2 emissions in the two largest CO2-emitting countries: the United States and China.

Private sector initiatives certifying that producers of goods and services adhere to defined environmental process standards are increasingly popular worldwide. According to proponents, they can circumvent chronic barriers to effective public sector environmental regulation in developing countries. But eco-certification programs will have limited effects on producers’ environmental performance if, as one would expect, they select for those already meeting certification standards.

International and domestic efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions require a coordinated effort from heterogeneous actors. This experiment uses a public good game with a climate change framing to consider whether cooperation is possible in just such a climate change context.