This past Thursday November 19th “La Nación” (the main newspaper in Costa Rica) published an article highlighting the work done for a special report about the impact evaluation of conservation policies that was written for the “State of the Nation Program" by EfD Central America researchers Juan Robalino and Laura Villalobos. 

Center director Francisco Alpízar and Chairman of the Board of the association “Forever Costa Rica”  released an opinion article titled: “The sharks, the finning and the public interest”.

Abstract: We compare of  the  performance  of  emission  taxes  between  Colombia  and  Sweden in an experimental  setting  where  subjects are regulated  through  environmental  taxes  and  had  to decide on emission levels, compliance behavior, and adoption of an environmentally friendly technology.  Our  design  allows  us  to  analyze  the  role of variations  in  the  stringency  of  the policy  enforcement&nbsp

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between social class belonging and contributions to local public goods. By utilizing the social class classifications in Colombia and an experimental design based on the strategy method, we can both study contributions to public goods and classify subjects into contribution types. We find similar contribution levels between high and medium-low social classes and also similar distributions of contributor types. However, low social class members conditionally contribute a significantly higher level than high social class members.

Pro-environmental behavior is the willingness to cooperate and contribute to environmental public goods. A good understanding of why individuals undertake pro-environmental actions is important in order to construct policies that are aligned with preferences and actual behavioral patterns, such as concern for social esteem and reputation.

The literature analyzing the effects of extreme weather events on social and economic outcomes has increased significantly in the last few years. Most of these analyses use either self-reported data about whether the storm affected the respondent or aggregated data such as precipitation at municipality level. We argue that these estimates might be biased due to the inclusion of households that are not directly affected but live close enough to be indirectly affected through economic or government assistance spillovers.