Economists in Latin America are moving beyond the prevailing ‘macro’ orientation of their research focusing more on questions linked to development and the use and management of the environmental…

Despite the recent popularity of conditional cash transfers (CCT) and payments for environmental services (PES) programs, what determines their success is not well understood. We developed a…

Choice experiments, a stated preference valuation method, are proposed as a tool to assign monetary values to environmental externalities during the ex-ante stages of environmental impact assessment…

We use household survey data and income-outcome coefficients to analyze fuel tax incidence in Costa Rica. We find that the effect of a 10 percent fuel price hike through direct spending on gasoline…

The authors conducted a field experiment in a protected area to explore the effects of conformity to a social reference versus a comparable, but imposed, suggested donation. By keeping the intrinsic…

Using a natural field experiment in a recreational site, a public good almost fully dependent on voluntary donations, the authors explored the crowding-out effect of gift rewards. First, they…

The authors examine the performance of community organizations that provide safe drinking water in rural Costa Rica. They uses a qualitative approach and matching techniques to analyze how the complex…

Although fuel taxes are a practical means of curbing vehicular air pollution, congestion, and accidents in developing countries—all of which are typically major problems—they are often opposed on…

The authors used a framed field experiment with coffee farmers in Costa Rica after tropical storm Alma to explore how farmers react to different levels of risk to income and productive means from…

Results indicate that visitors look at the behavior of others in deciding if and how much to donate, but partially reject being told what to do. Also, as the social reference moves farther away from…