Agricultural commodity markets in developing countries often operate in a constrained environment of prohibitive transaction costs. Consequently, smallholder farmers are only partly integrated into these markets, a situation that keeps them in a lower level of development equilibrium (poverty trap). Although cooperative institutional alternatives such as Farmers’ Organizations (FOs) may reduce transaction costs and revitalize agricultural production and commercialization, they rarely have been successful in fully delivering on these promises.

A frequently-raised issue about foreign direct investment (FDI) is the potentially negative consequences for the environment. The potential environmental cost resulting from increased emissions may undermine the economic gains associated with increases in FDI inflow. Although the literature is dominated with this adverse view of FDI on the environment, there is a possibility that FDI can contribute to a cleaner environment, especially, if FDI comes with green technologies and this creates spillovers for domestic industries.

With many countries seeking to increase the area conserved in marine protected areas (MPAs) to achieve the Convention on Biodiversity’s protected area targets by 2020, we employ a bioeconomic model to determine which configurations of MPAs that meet area targets perform the best for secondary goals, including fishing yield, rural income, fish stocks, and sea turtle conservation.

Developing the abundant shale gas in China is a potential means to address the country’s challenges in air pollution and carbon emissions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the production potential of the most promising shale gas play—the Wufeng-Longmaxi Formation (WL) in China. We use a Difference-Index analogy method and well-level U.S. shale gas drilling data to estimate the production potential and use a scenario simulation method to propose optimal drilling plans.

This paper contributes to the growing literature on energy poverty in developing countries. We use a dynamic probit estimator on three rounds of panel data from urban Ethiopia to estimate a model of the probability of being energy poor and to investigate the persistence

We study the impact of Ecuador's national forest conservation incentives program on reported land conflicts. Data come from a survey of >900 households located within 49 indigenous and Afro‐Ecuadorian communities holding communal conservation contracts. We use quasi‐experimental methods to test for relationships between program participation and changes in land conflicts.