The world has experienced dramatic food price inflation in recent years, which sparked social unrest and riots in various developing countries. In this paper, we use a novel approach to measure the impact of food price inflation on subjective well-being of urban households in Ethiopia, a country which exhibited one of the highest rates of food price inflation during 2007–2008.

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.

This paper integrates soil science variables into an economic analysis of agricultural output among small-scale farmers in Kenya's highlands. The integration is valuable because farmers’ choice of inputs depends on both the status of the soil and socioeconomic conditions. The study uses a stochastic production frontier in which the individual farm's distance to the frontier depends systematically on individual factors.

A CO2 tax assures that different fossil fuels are taxed in a neutral way according to actual CO2 emissions. The Swedish experience can be summarized by increased tax levels over time and steps taken towards a more uniform national price on fossil CO2. Moreover, the CO2 tax base is only moderately elastic to price changes (particularly in the short run) when it comes to petrol and diesel implying quite stable tax revenues.

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.

A prevailing view in the literature is that social sanctions can support, in equilibrium, high levels of obedience to a costly norm. The reason is that social disapproval and stigmatization faced by the disobedient are highest when disobedience is the exception rather than the rule in society.

Concerns for environmental quality and its impact on people's welfare are fundamental arguments for the adoption of environmental legislation in most countries. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between air quality and subjective well-being in Europe. We use a unique dataset that merges three waves of the European Social Survey with a new dataset on environmental quality including SO2 concentrations and climate in Europe at the regional level. We find a robust negative impact of SO2 concentrations on self-reported life satisfaction.

A theoretical model of the ethical preferences of individuals is tested by conducting a choice experiment on safety-enhancing road investments.

The relative value of a saved life is found to decrease with age, such that the present value of a saved year of life is almost independent of age at a pure rate of time preference of a few percent, and a saved car driver is valued 17-31% lower than a pedestrian of the same age. Moreover, individuals’ ethical preferences seem to be fairly homogenous.

Land conflicts can be detrimental. An important goal of development policy is to help define and instill respect for borders. This is often implemented through mandatory and expensive interventions that rely on the expansion of government land administration institutions.