This paper describes the flows of aid after large catastrophic natural disasters by using the extensive record of bilateral aid flows, by aid sector, available through the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. For each large donor, the extent of cross-sector reallocation is identified that is occurring in the aftermath of large disasters whereby humanitarian aid increases but other types of aid may decrease. The evidence in this paper suggests that the expectation of large surges in post-disaster aid flows is not warranted given the past diversity of experience of global foreign post-disaster aid by donor and by event. No evidence is found, however, that donors reallocate aid between recipient countries (cross-recipient reallocation). These observations suggest that countries which are predicted to face increasing losses from natural disasters in the coming decades (and almost all are) should be devoting significant resources to prevention, insurance and mitigation, rather than expecting significant post-disaster aid inflows.

This study constructs comprehensive operational equitable initial rights of emissions allocation models by estimating the total abatement cost based on the criteria of egalitarianism, sovereignty, the ability to pay, polluter pays and various scenarios of the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) framework among groups of countries or individual nations. The analyses provide the potential crux regarding the agreements, cooperation and/or conflict among nations for joining the trading. The results show that the polluter pays principle generates the greatest total abatement cost saving for upper-middle and low-middle income nations, but not for others. Full capacity GDRs apply to China, egalitarianism to India and sovereignty to the United States on an individual basis. The results show that the disagreement and gaps with regard to an equitable initial allocation of rights among groups or individual nations is one of the possible obstructions and hindrances to the promotion and formation of a world trading scheme.

Quantitative research on household participation in the Payments for Environmental Services (PES) programme remains scarce. This paper aims to determine the key factors influencing household participation in a PES programme in Mozambique. Questionnaire-based quarterly surveys were conducted with 290 randomly selected households. We used the instrumental variables technique to identify the factors influencing household participation. The instrumental variables used for forest dependence were: household head born in the village, duration of residence of the household head in the village, ethnicity of the household head, business ownership of the household head and off-farm income of the household. The results show that education of household head and households' trust towards community members positively influenced household participation in PES, while forest dependence influenced it negatively. Future PES projects may thus need to focus more on developing social capital and the resource dependence of households.

This study investigates the effects of ‘time to think’ and ‘ballot box’ on willingness-to-pay, while providing the first empirical evidence on assessing the benefits of an air quality improvement program in urban Africa. Our hypothetical referendum scenario proposes to reduce the air pollution related morbidity rate in Douala, Cameroon by 25 per cent in exchange for a one-time surcharge on the electricity bill of each respondent. We find that on average WTP decreases by nearly one-fourth when allocating respondents time to think but markedly increases when we use a ‘ballot box’ approach allowing respondents to state their willingness privately. Our results suggest that on average households are willing to pay US$0.42 per month (0.2 per cent of household annual income). We conclude that total citywide benefits are unlikely to exceed the costs of implementing such a program at this point, although this situation may change quickly with increasing economic growth.

Using data from the World Value Survey for the period 1981–2007, this paper shows that the level of trust is positively linked to the willingness to contribute to environmental goods in selected African countries. The results are robust to possible errors in measuring trust, to the presence of various controls, and the potential endogeneity bias. These findings complement and extend the existing literature in the sense that they provide evidence on the importance of trust in improving the collective management of natural resources in Africa.

Using a vertically differentiated product model, the paper aims to investigate the effects of economic growth on market provision of product quality. The quality attribute considered is the environmental friendliness of products. Economic growth is modeled as a shift in income distribution. It shows that the effect of economic growth depends on the form it takes. A growth in income that is uniform across consumers improves the cleanup levels adopted by both firms. However, a growth in income that is accompanied by changes in income inequality may result in the lowering of one of the two qualities. More specifically, if the growth in income is accompanied by increased disparities in income distribution, the quality of the (environmentally) inferior variant is reduced. This has serious implications for the poor consumers if the product has safety or health hazards. The paper suggests a regulatory measure to prevent such deterioration in the quality of the inferior variant.