HUA WANG, World Bank - Infrastructure and Environment Team
Email: hwang1@worldbank.org
JIAN XIE, World Bank - Environment and Natural Resources Division
Email: jxie@worldbank.org
HONGLIN LI, affiliation not provided to SSRN

In determining domestic water prices, policy makers often need to use information about the demand side rather than only relying on information about the supply side. Household surveys have frequently been employed to collect demand-side information. This paper presents a multiple bounded discrete choice household survey model. It discusses how the model can be utilized to collect and analyze information about the acceptability of different water prices by different types of households, as well as households'willingness to pay for water service improvement. The results obtained from these surveys can be directly utilized in the development of water pricing and subsidy policies. The paper also presents an empirical multiple bounded discrete choice study conducted in Chongqing, China. In this case, domestic water service quality was seriously inadequate, but financial resources were insufficient to improve service quality. With a survey of about 1,500 households in five suburban districts in Chongqing Municipality, this study shows that a significant increase in the water price is feasible as long as the poorest households can be properly subsidized and certain public awareness and accountability campaigns can be conducted to make the price increase more acceptable to the public. The analysis also indicates that the order in which hypothetical prices are presented to respondents systematically affects their answers, and should be taken into account when designing survey instruments.

CHANDRA KIRAN B. KRISHNAMURTHY, affiliation not provided to SSRN
Email: bkckiran@gmail.com

This article is an attempt at setting up a general dynamic framework explicitly incorporating environmental concerns into a spatial economic model, and to do so in as general a framework as feasible. Migration is driven by utility gradients and population density increases have a beneficial effect on wages and adverse effects on environmental quality. The resulting partial differential equation, while more complicated than the standard diffusion model, is nonetheless solvable by the method of similarity transform ( Ames (1965), Debanath (2005)). Results in this case indicate that while there is diffusion of populations, it is likely to never extend an infinite distance. It is shown that further generalisations, in the same framework, lead to more complicated integrals while solving fundamentally the same equation.

JUAN GABRIEL BRIDA, Free University of Bolzano
Email: BRIDA@UNISI.IT
SANDRA ZAPATA-AGUIRRE, I.U. Colegio Mayor de Antioquia
Email: sazagui17@gmail.com

Cruise tourism generates an estimated $18 billion a year in passenger expenditure and has been the fastest growing sector of the travel industry for the past twenty years with an average annual growth rate of passengers of 7.4%. It has increased at almost twice the rate of growth of tourism overall and this growth is expected to continue in the future. The North American cruise industry is the dominant in this market with 12 million of passengers embarked in the US ports. The Caribbean region, continue being the most preferred cruise destination; according to FCCA statistics, accounting for 41.02% of all itineraries. The cruise passenger arrivals in the Caribbean region increased from 3 million in 1980 to more than 25 million in 2007. Cruise tourism can provide economic benefits to a local economy but the impacts of this activity are not well understood and have been neglected in the literature. In this paper the social, cultural, political economic and environmental impacts of cruise tourism are estimated. We describe the evolution of the cruise tourism industry and we review the experiences of different tourism cruise destinations. We present data to analyze and compare the performance of the main cruise destinations and cruise lines. We also describe different activities associated to the cruise ship industry to identify costs and benefits for the actors of the local economies. A case study is used to illustrate cost and benefits and the different impacts of cruises. This study aims to provide a critical viewpoint of how tourism destinations are transformed by the arrival of an increasing number of cruises.

JUAN GABRIEL BRIDA, Free University of Bolzano
Email: BRIDA@UNISI.IT
WISTON ADRIÃ?N RISSO, University of Siena - Department of Economics
Email: risso@unisi.it
BIBIANA LANZILOTTA, Centro de Investigaciones Economicas (CINVE - Uruguay)
Email: bibiana@cinve.org.uy
STEFANIA LIONETTI, University of Lugano
Email: devocicka@gmail.com

This short paper analyses the effects in the long-run of tourism on the economic growth of Uruguay. Using quarterly data from 1987.I to 2006.IV, the study uses cointegration analysis and shows the existence of a cointegrated vector among Uruguayan real per capita GDP, Argentinean tourism expenditure (the principal source of tourism in Uruguay), and real exchange rate between Uruguay and Argentina. We also show that the causality relationship goes positively in one way from Argentinean tourism expenditure to real per capita GDP of Uruguay. Finally, we compare our study with similar papers also investigating the TLGH.

PATRICK A. PARENTEAU, Vermont Law School
Email: pparenteau@vermontlaw.edu

Climate change poses grave threats to human civilization on earth. As a candidate, President-elect Obama promised to reverse the head-in-the-sand policies of his predecessor and take swift and effective action to address the gathering menace of climate change. This paper briefly outlines ten steps that the new president can take under existing authority to begin reducing greenhouse gases and to lay the foundation for the larger actions that will be required to stabilize the climate in time to avoid the worst consequences that scientists have predicted if bold action is not forthcoming. This is a global problem requiring the cooperation of both developed and developing countries. Time is short and there is a critical need for the United States to reclaim its leadership role, but first it must get its own house in order.

P. K. BABY, Sree Narayana Guru Institute of Science and Technology
Email: babypk@gmail.com

Countries in the world are experiencing damages in human health due to rapid increase in particulate matter, a common pollutant in urban environment. In this paper, Willingness To Pay (WTP) estimates for avoiding the damages from selected illness associated with levels of Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) is obtained, using data from a study in the state of Kerala, in India in 2000-2001. A Contingent Valuation (CV) survey is used to estimate the values of health effects due to air pollution. The CV survey measures welfare loss by asking direct questions to households regarding their WTP to avoid illness. The survey results showed a positive relation between mean WTP and level of SPM. The survey responses showed that the WTP values increase with income, levels of SPM and visits to the doctor.

KIRTI JOSHI, NISTADS
Email: kirti758@yahoo.co.in

Presently India is one of the richest countries in the world as regards genetic resource of medicinal and aromatic plants. With majority of population subscribing to herbal drugs there is boom in indigenous medicinal sector. Globally, there have been concerted efforts to monitor quality and regulate the growing business of herbal drugs and traditional medicine. Health authorities and governments of various nations have taken an active interest in providing standardized botanical medications. Government of India has also plunged into this opportunity and initiated some regulations in this sector.

The government is presently emphasizing on three basic essentials i.e. firstly conservation of whatever is left in the natural habitat by putting a stop on further extraction of medicinal plants from forests. Secondly on cultivation; so as to increase the production of raw materials without destroying the natural habitat. Rather than encouraging collection from the wild habitat, promotion of cultivation of high demand and low availability rare plants is being advocated and lastly to Capitalize: with rekindling in the demand for traditional medicines globally there is a huge potential in this sector & India has to take big steps to capitalize it and that too without compromising on the quality of the product.

Since medicinal plants sector has a number of stake holders having divergent interests, this paper was conceptualized to examine the rules and regulations put forth by the Indian government at every stage of value chain. It gives an overview of the current laws, major initiatives by the government and the gaps therein.

MICHAEL F. MURRAY, Yale University
Email: michael.f.murray@yale.edu

This paper argues that a theoretical account of the formation and operation of the nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that increasingly manage public property must have a place for the way in which nonprofits manifest responsibility. The current nonprofit models, therefore, must be extended and refined in order to explain the private management of public space by nonprofits. NPOs take responsibility in two ways that reduce the cost of monitoring their performance and, consequently, help to create positive outcomes for public spaces with respect to funding and maintenance. First, NPOs as a single entity assume responsibility for public space in a way that contrasts strongly with the diffuse accountability of governmental managers and, more importantly, in a way that makes them easier to monitor. Second, the dependence of NPOs on their revenue streams - donations or user fees, depending on the type of NPO - makes them responsible for the success of the park in a way that both contrasts strongly with insulated civil servants and places the burden on the NPO, instead of on individuals outside the organization, to compile and communicate information about their operation for monitors. Private managers, therefore, are more accountable for their actions than governmental managers because they are more responsible and, thus, less costly to monitor. Several policy and legal reforms are helpful to fostering NPO responsibility that reduces monitoring costs.

GUNNAR A. ESKELAND, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Foundation for Research in Economics and Business Administration
Email: Gunnar.Eskeland@nhh.no
TORBEN K. MIDEKSA, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO)
Email: torbenkm@gmail.com

Temperature influences our notion of comfort. The ways we equip and heat and cool our homes in part reflect this. This paper views electricity use in part as a phenomenon of adaptation to changes in weather. This allows us to provide estimates of climate change impacts on electricity consumption in Europe. Constructing a data set on weather across a panel of European countries, we employ a concept of comfort which relates electricity consumption to outdoor temperatures, to estimate the parameters of electricity demand. Random variations in weather have a statistically significant impact on electricity demand from households and services. The results suggest that changes in electricity use due to climate change will be far from dramatic. Northern Europeans will reduce their heating demand and Southern Europeans will increase their cooling demand. On average, the results suggest that climate change will reduce European energy demand. But the magnitude of this net benefit is small, and likely less important than other changes (income, technology) as well as the more disaggregate effects (by country, by season, etc). A result of our study is unbiased electricity demand parameters, with elasticities of about 80% and negative 20% for income and price, respectively.

LUIZ C. BARBOSA, San Francisco State University
Email: lbarbosa@sfsu.edu

Guided by treadmill of production theory, the paper shows how rising world demand for meats has contributed to deforestation in the southern portion of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, specifically in the state of Mato Grosso, through the expansion of both cattle herding and soybean agriculture. These economic activities in Mato Grosso are described as part of a global agricultural treadmill of production. Their expansion in the state has led to deforestation in existing private properties and in public forested lands, large portions of which have been taken over and commodified. In addition to exploring the role of economic relationships on deforestation, the paper describes the ideology that lubricates the treadmill of production in Mato Grosso. It argues that ideology plays a vital role in the ecopolitics of development vs. preservation. Success in markets for agricultural products has led the Brazilian government to aim at transforming the country into an agricultural superpower, a goal in line with nationalist development ideology that can be adverse to preservation. The paper also describes how ideology affects local people's perception of environmentalist organizations and their calls for preservation. Due to their opposition to commodity agriculture, environmentalist organizations have become the target of hostility from nationalist and pro-development groups who see them as being against development, and thus anti Brazil. Passages from field interviews conducted during a visit to Mato Grosso in April 2007 and news accounts are used to illustrate how ideology helps sustain the status quo. Statistical analysis of data on a municipal level for the state of Mato Grosso is used to reveal the effect of cattle herding and soybean agriculture on deforestation.